VGA text mode
[2] The main features of VGA text mode are colored (programmable 16-color palette) characters and their background, blinking, various shapes of the cursor (block/underline/hidden static/blinking),[3] and loadable fonts (with various glyph sizes).
Distinctive features of VGA text as it commonly used: Light gray background (normally not white).
VGA modes have no need for the MDA's reverse and bright attributes because foreground and background colors can be set explicitly.
[8] With the default VGA palette, setting bit 0 to enable underline will also change the text color to blue.
[6] An exception to this is in Line Graphics Enable mode, which causes code points 0xC0 to 0xDF inclusive[6] to have the 8th column repeated as the 9th.
Some text-based interfaces, such as that of Impulse Tracker, went to even greater lengths to provide a smoother and more graphic-looking mouse cursor.
The latter method is considerably faster, and allows quick reading of the text buffer, for which reason it is preferred for advanced TUI programs.
When an application (on a modern multitasking OS) does not have control over the console, it accesses a part of system RAM instead of the actual text buffer.
Depending on the graphics adapter used, a variety of text modes are available on IBM PC compatible computers.
They are listed on the table below: VGA and compatible cards support MDA, CGA and EGA modes.
MDA modes have some specific features (see above) – a text could be emphasized with bright, underline, reverse and blinking attributes.
The most common text mode used in DOS environments and initial Windows consoles is the default 80 columns by 25 rows, or 80×25, with 16 colors and 8×16 pixels large characters.
[29] (Linux 3.x and later allow to set resolution using "video=
[32] Character sizes and graphical resolutions for the extended VESA-compatible Super VGA text modes are manufacturer-dependent.
[33] Some graphic adapters of the 2000s were capable of setting up an arbitrarily-sized text mode (in reasonable limits) instead of choosing its parameters from some list.
On Linux and DOS systems with so-named SVGA cards, a program called SVGATextMode[34] can be used to set up better looking text modes than EGA and VGA standard ones.
Because these are too restrictive for modern (post 2000) applications, the hardware text mode on VGA compatible video adapters only has a limited use.
