Here's a quick hint for you old
style (pre-APRO 3) Terminal users. Have you ever wished you could hide
the "cursor" in the Terminal component's display while complex screens
were being displayed? Well, you can. This is possible thanks to the
underlying Windows architecture of the Terminal component in Async
Professional.
The first thing to understand is that the Terminal component is
really a VCL wrapper around a custom window that is created deep inside
Async Professional. This fact is manifested at the VCL level by the
Terminal's Handle property. The Handle is, in fact, a window handle to
that low-level custom window.
Since it uses the Windows caret mechanism, you can use the Windows
API calls that manage the caret to hide the Terminal's cursor.
The second thing to know is that in order to represent the location
in the window where typed text will appear, the Terminal component uses
the Windows "caret" which some folks also call the "insertion point" and
in text mode screens is traditionally referred to as the "cursor." Under
Windows that latter term has (for good or ill) been appropriated to
refer to the mouse pointer.
Since the Terminal component is using the Windows caret mechanism,
you can use the Windows API calls that manage the caret to hide and show
the Terminal Cursor at run-time. In particular:
To Hide the Cursor:
