[Info-vax] Last Call for (New) DEC VT Terminals

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Sunday, 28 June 2015 13:11:21 UTC+1, VAXman-  wrote:
> In article <mmnbmi$tv8$1 at dont-email.me>, Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
> >On 2015-06-27, Jan-Erik Soderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> wrote:
> >> Scott Dorsey skrev den 2015-06-27 20:00:
> >>
> >> >
> >>> How important is good emulation to you?  Is emulating the vt100 line 25
> >>> bug important?  For me, it's not.  For others it might be.
> >>> --scott
> >>>
> >
> >I'm only interested in emulating the published specifications (unless
> >DEC used undocumented VT bugs when writing it's software).
> 
> Where did you find published *specifications*?
> 
> The problem I've found with most all of the emulations is that they perform
> the functions WRT the documented escape sequences but often do not perform
> these functions correctly when combined with other functions and or cursor
> positioning.  This is exhaustively tested in the first test suites of the
> VTTEST utility.
> 
> FWIW, because it was brought up by Hoff, xterm can perform reasonably well
> as a VT emulator but it requires the proper selection of build "switches" 
> to get that.  I have two "xterms" on my Linux systems.  The xterm that is
> usually the defacto build when installing Linux and one I built myself.
> The defacto xterm is lacking MANY VT features.  My build incorporates the
> options to add things like DECELR and DECSLE (which are also available if
> one is using DECterm).  I still find issues with the VT4xx/VT5xx sequences
> to do rectangular functions with xterm.
> 
> -- 
> VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
> 
> I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

Lots of references floating around to xterm.

Couple of points to note:
1) Ia there more than one 'xterm'? E.g. the official one seems to live
on the website of Thomas Dickey who has also been maintaining ncurses,
and it seems xterm is still being actively updated. Same ftpsite also
has a copy of vttest.
invisible-island.net/xterm/

2) CDE's terminal emulator (as was used by DEC, HP, IBM, and Sun?)
wasn't called xterm, it was dtterm. No idea what the differences
might have been (other than the CDE UI-style ones, and the ones
briefly mentioned in Thomas Dickey's xterm FAQ). No idea what the
current status is of dtterm.

Obviously a full CDE is a bit OTT for just terminal emulation.
There may be simple ways of addressing that e.g. LXDE is a
lighterweight DE and has lxterm, which is apparently a wrapper
round xterm, but even that may be too heavyweight for some setups).
Other even lighterweight options are doubtless available.

Have a lot of fun. The sun's shining, I'm off out.