After defining the textual region as colored, you can specify the position and color for any of its characters in one of two ways, or a combination of the two:

•If text already exists in the colored textual region in your program, use the make segment or make block action statement. (See Coloring Text that Already Exists in the Program )

•If you have an ASCII text file that will be read into the colored textual region, use the CText module. (See The CText Module)

When you assign a color to a character in a colored textual region, you assign it to the character on a column and line basis, but the color is assigned to the character itself, not to the character's position. Therefore, if the character changes position (for example, if text is inserted or deleted during runtime), it will retain its assigned background and foreground colors. The colors are not applied to text which, when inserted or read in, occupies that portion of the textual region. But if you overwrite non-colored text into an area that has been colored, the new text will take on the color attributes of the overwritten characters.

When colored text is emphasized (see Controlling Text Emphasis), the foreground and background colors of each of the characters within the emphasized segment are reversed.