[Info-vax] VTxxx/VMS term driver: bug or feature?

[VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG]

In article <iuvf3h$ng2$1 at news.albasani.net>, Jan-Erik Soderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> writes:
>{...snip...}
>Now, emulators have been there for, say, 20+ years.
>I have a hard time thinking this is a *real* problem
>if the emululators still works as they do ("wrong" in
>your opinion). If this was a real problem, I would have
>expected this to be "fixed" long ago.

Many Viruses have been about for millions of years.  Their long existence 
doesn't necessarily correlate with their benevolence, does it?  And, look
at how long Micro$oft has been about and it's still producing shit.

I'd reported issues to one emulator's support over a decade ago that have
not yet been addressed.  I'm now trying to work with Ericom and PowerTerm.
I don't need or want it, but a mutual customer is using it and it has been
causing me quite a bit of grief.

The question of these PoS (piece of shit) emulators quality has absolutely
nothing to do with how long people have been suffering them.  If yours has
performed to your needs, then it's OK.  However, more complex software can
and does employ more of VT escape sequence features that you or others have
not fail miserably on these emulators.

I've been trying to get PowerTerm working here.  It's so full of bugs that
I can't understand how they can, in good conscience, charge money for it.

So, if you have software that was designed to work with VT terminals, then
the people using that software should have VT terminals.



>What is the real-life example where this is an issue ?

At one of the Pharmas a few years ago, they developed in-house software to
run on VT terminals in the necroscopy labs.  They didn't use terminals in
those labs or anywhere in the company for that matter.  They used WEENDOZE
terminal emulation software.  Strangely enough, the emulator they used to
develope their software got some of the escape sequences wrong.  One such
sequence was <CSI>?2h and <CSI>?2l.  The person coding their application
used <CSI>2?h and <CSI>2?l as DECCOLM.  It worked on the emulator changing
column mode from 132 to and back again.  Along comes another piece of code
that is expecting to see a proper DECCOLM escape sequence and everything 
goes to hell in an instant.

DEC had private escape sequences but many were drafted into the ECMA-48
standard.  I'd expect that these terminal emulators w/could, at a minimum,
at least respect the ECMA-48 standard.  They don't.

Sorry, good enough just doesn't cut it.

-- 
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