Re: vt100 compliance

[Brian Roland <bjr@ebicom.net>]

On Sat, 23 May 1998, Petr Stehlik wrote:

> MR>It's not a question of how many vt100 or ANSI escape codes your tw100
> MR>termcap defines;  it's a question of tw100 being a non-standard oddball
> MR>term, and termcap becoming obsoleted by terminfo.
> 
> the point is that tw100 is probably 99% compatible with vt100, so all we
> need is to rename "non-standard oddball" tw100 into vt100. Perhaps all
> you need is "export TERM=vt100" ?

I've studied the behavior of tw100 for some weeks now.
Peter is right....it does seem to be %99 compatable, even using a
"standard" vt100 termcap.

Keep in mind, I"m no programmer, and have no idea what vt100 is actually
documented to support.

Here are some improvements I'd like to see.

First, is there a way to put the cursor on a different timer from the
mouse pointer (or whatever might cause this)?  Launching a TW window
causes the mouse pointer to blink in time with the TW cursor.  No big deal
except topping or launching other GEM windows will often loose the mouse
if it happens to initalize when the pointer is off (espcially with NeoDesk
4).

Next, I find I must manually set my color pallet using a cpx to get ANSI
colors to coridinate with their names.  Is it possible to get TW to keep
up with the default pallet, and one of its own, hence swaping to the
default when TW is NOT topped?  Perhaps the AES is supposed to do this?  I
dunno, but I'm having pallet fits when using TW on my Falcon.  Also, on my
system, the ansi code for black and red seem like they should swap places
in the pallet.  I.E. If I use the cpx to make ansi black, black, and red
red, all my menus titles go RED.

Finally, scrolling is not "quite right" for split screen programs.
The easiest way I know to explain, is to get the binaries for Tiny Fugue
from atari.archive.umich.edu, install them, and run tf in its visual mode
in TW, with scrolling enabled.

It's worth adding, that scrolling isn't done well if at all under VT52
vconsoles either.

"In essence, TW doesn't like it if you split the screen, and expect each
region to scroll independently."  Lucily, many prgrams can be set to
"wrap" rather than "scroll", and some can even run in "dumb mode" with no
special term at all...BUT...the term improvements, allowing for better
user interfaces, are usually the primary differences in all these bloody
clients anyway.

Brian