VP/IX (keyboards, serial terminals)

[Bjorn R. Bjornsson]

In article <1990Feb17.020846.11108 at NCoast.ORG>, allbery at NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) writes:
>I suspect that VP/ix terminal descriptions out of the box are about as usable
>as termcaps/terminfos right out of the box.  I wrote and debugged the Falco
>5000 description myself, and made d*mned sure it *works*.  I suggest you find
>someone to write a *correct* description for your terminal.

I'm quite capable of creating these descriptions myself, thank you.
The screen refresh is not there for scan code terminals.  It's not
documented, and assigning anything to 'k_refr' with a scan code terminal
produces no effect.  I've just completed a scan code addition to
a terminal emulator program.  A vital feature for using VP/ix is
that the terminal support a properly executed "invis" (or blanking)
command (via escape sequence), else with some applications your screen is
going to be screwed up every now and then.


> As quoted from <1519 at krafla.rhi.hi.is> by brb at rhi.hi.is (Bjorn R. Bjornsson):
>+---------------
>| 3. Why isn't there support for ANSI color escape sequences.  Really?
>|    A lot of folks have these (on there PCs for instance).
>+---------------
>
>Don't you want ANSI.SYS for this?  Or does VP/ix not handle color at all?

ANSI.SYS supports ANSI color escape sequences.
The terminal emulator I was working on supports ANSI color
escape sequences.  VP/ix does not support color for serial
terminals.

>+---------------
>| 5. A program to set the BIOS data area keyboard type should come
>|    with VP/ix.  A program to synchronize CapsLock, NumLock, ScrollLock
>|    for PC-compatible terminals should also come with VP/ix.
>+---------------
>
>Not sure I understand this one.  But the Falco has some bugs in this area, and
>I'm not sure that any amount of coaxing by VP/ix would help.

Some programs check the BIOS data area for the presence of an enhanced
keyboard.  This is indicated by bit 4 at 40:96h and is supposedly set
at boot time on real machines.  For serial terminals this bit is
off no matter what sort of keyboard you have, after all how is VP/ix to
know (actually there might be ways once VP/ix starts seeing your
scan codes).  Anyway some programs that do check for an enhanced keyboard
will look the other way when an extended scan code comes their way.
It goes without saying that the remedy for this is simple once you've
found out what's going on.

Too make a long story short, the terminal emulator is now working
more or less like a charm.  But better documentation and support for
VP/ix would have helped a lot.  My complaints stand, and there
is no refresh.


Bjorn R. Bjornsson		brb at falcon.is