On 2021-10-31, Lawrence D?Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Monday, November 1, 2021 at 10:52:35 AM UTC+13, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> Emulators are fine. But we need VT200 emulation and terminal
>> type set to VT200 (or higher).
>
> What extra capabilities do you need? All the ones that are worth
> implementing should already be in the available open-source
> emulators.

Editing keypad (this is NOT the numeric keypad placed into application
keypad mode, but an extra smaller keypad).

Function keys.

8-bit escape sequence support.

None of these are present in VT100-only terminal emulators.

Also, a good number of years ago, I went through a good range of
Linux-based open source terminal emulators, and many of them were
useless when it came to using them fully with VMS, so I stuck with
PuTTY and xterm (with keyboard remappings) as both of these are
rock solid for me.

Many of the open source terminal emulators I tried only did the display
part of terminal emulation and forgot about the DEC keyboard emulation
part (ie: application keypad mode, function keys, editing keypad).

Some couldn't even display output from VMS-specific programs, such
as EVE, correctly.

Have things improved in recent years or is it still PuTTY and xterm
if you need to use a rock solid Linux based terminal emulator to
connect to VMS and use _all_ of the DEC terminal functionality,
including full DEC keyboard functionality ?

A really good test for me at the time was to try using EDT or EVE
(in EDT mode) with some of these open source emulators and see if they
failed immediately or lasted for as long as 30 seconds before failing.

I also tried using them with emacs configured for EDT keypad mode and
got pretty much the same result when testing DEC keyboard emulation.

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

On 11/1/2021 3:21 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2021-10-31, Lawrence D?Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Monday, November 1, 2021 at 10:52:35 AM UTC+13, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> Emulators are fine. But we need VT200 emulation and terminal
>>> type set to VT200 (or higher).
>>
>> What extra capabilities do you need? All the ones that are worth
>> implementing should already be in the available open-source
>> emulators.
>
> Editing keypad (this is NOT the numeric keypad placed into application
> keypad mode, but an extra smaller keypad).
>
> Function keys.
>
> 8-bit escape sequence support.
>
> None of these are present in VT100-only terminal emulators.
>
> Also, a good number of years ago, I went through a good range of
> Linux-based open source terminal emulators, and many of them were
> useless when it came to using them fully with VMS, so I stuck with
> PuTTY and xterm (with keyboard remappings) as both of these are
> rock solid for me.
>
> Many of the open source terminal emulators I tried only did the display
> part of terminal emulation and forgot about the DEC keyboard emulation
> part (ie: application keypad mode, function keys, editing keypad).
>
> Some couldn't even display output from VMS-specific programs, such
> as EVE, correctly.
>
> Have things improved in recent years or is it still PuTTY and xterm
> if you need to use a rock solid Linux based terminal emulator to
> connect to VMS and use _all_ of the DEC terminal functionality,
> including full DEC keyboard functionality ?
>
> A really good test for me at the time was to try using EDT or EVE
> (in EDT mode) with some of these open source emulators and see if they
> failed immediately or lasted for as long as 30 seconds before failing.
>
> I also tried using them with emacs configured for EDT keypad mode and
> got pretty much the same result when testing DEC keyboard emulation.

The "killer test" for terminal emulators is stuff like soft font.

Most don't do them at all.

But OK - I do not consider that a critical feature.

8 bit support is a critical feature.

Arne

>
> 8 bit support is a critical feature.
>

PuTTY does do 8-bit; note that Putty's identification sequence is hard-coded, so SET TERM /INQUIRE will always identify it as a VT102.

You can override this by setting the terminal type manually. SET TERM /DEV=<pick> /EIGHT. You can even make color work if you set the color attribute manually.

It also helps if you set the font to DEC MCS. :-)

On 11/1/2021 9:40 PM, dthi...@gmail.com wrote:
>> 8 bit support is a critical feature.
>
> PuTTY does do 8-bit; note that Putty's identification sequence is
> hard-coded, so SET TERM /INQUIRE will always identify it as a VT102.
>
> You can override this by setting the terminal type manually. SET TERM
> /DEV=<pick> /EIGHT. You can even make color work if you set the color
> attribute manually.
>
> It also helps if you set the font to DEC MCS. :-)

I use PuTTY myself.

Arne

Den 2021-11-02 kl. 15:59, skrev Arne Vajhøj:
> On 11/1/2021 9:40 PM, dthi...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> 8 bit support is a critical feature.
>>
>> PuTTY does do 8-bit; note that Putty's identification sequence is
>> hard-coded, so SET TERM /INQUIRE will always identify it as a VT102.
>>
>> You can override this by setting the terminal type manually. SET TERM
>> /DEV=<pick> /EIGHT. You can even make color work if you set the color
>> attribute manually.
>>
>> It also helps if you set the font to DEC MCS.  :-)
>
> I use PuTTY myself.
>
> Arne
>
>

We have the oposite problem. We *need* 7-bit national "SW/FI" char set.

I have not found a way in Putty to support that. Extra! from Attachmate
(now Micro Focus) do that. And I think that WRQ Reflection did.

6-7 years ago I wrote a report about changing to 8-bit ISO-8859-1,
but that was never made to an actual project...

So, if using Putty, one has to remember to use []{}\ (and one more
I do not remember for the swedish chars åäöÅÄÖ...

Well, well...

On 11/2/2021 12:59 PM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> Den 2021-11-02 kl. 15:59, skrev Arne Vajhøj:
>> On 11/1/2021 9:40 PM, dthi...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> 8 bit support is a critical feature.
>>>
>>> PuTTY does do 8-bit; note that Putty's identification sequence is
>>> hard-coded, so SET TERM /INQUIRE will always identify it as a VT102.
>>>
>>> You can override this by setting the terminal type manually. SET TERM
>>> /DEV=<pick> /EIGHT. You can even make color work if you set the color
>>> attribute manually.
>>>
>>> It also helps if you set the font to DEC MCS.  :-)
>>
>> I use PuTTY myself.
>
> We have the oposite problem. We *need* 7-bit national "SW/FI" char set.

> So, if using Putty, one has to remember to use []{}\ (and one more
> I do not remember for the swedish chars åäöÅÄÖ...

(I believe the last one is |)

NRC. A long time since I last saw them.

I took a quick look at Putty sources. It looks tricky to
add to Putty since Putty on Windows use Windows API and
code pages - and modern Windows does not come with support
for CP 1018 and 1106.

Could you hack it by putting in a little passthrough
program using pseudo-terminal and doing a replacement
on both input and output characters?

Arne

Den 2021-11-03 kl. 03:06, skrev Arne Vajhøj:
> On 11/2/2021 12:59 PM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>> Den 2021-11-02 kl. 15:59, skrev Arne Vajhøj:
>>> On 11/1/2021 9:40 PM, dthi...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>> 8 bit support is a critical feature.
>>>>
>>>> PuTTY does do 8-bit; note that Putty's identification sequence is
>>>> hard-coded, so SET TERM /INQUIRE will always identify it as a VT102.
>>>>
>>>> You can override this by setting the terminal type manually. SET TERM
>>>> /DEV=<pick> /EIGHT. You can even make color work if you set the color
>>>> attribute manually.
>>>>
>>>> It also helps if you set the font to DEC MCS.  :-)
>>>
>>> I use PuTTY myself.
>>
>> We have the oposite problem. We *need* 7-bit national "SW/FI" char set.
>
>> So, if using Putty, one has to remember to use []{}\ (and one more
>> I do not remember for the swedish chars åäöÅÄÖ...
>
> (I believe the last one is |)
>
> NRC. A long time since I last saw them.
>
> I took a quick look at Putty sources. It looks tricky to
> add to Putty since Putty on Windows use Windows API and
> code pages - and modern Windows does not come with support
> for CP 1018 and 1106.
>
> Could you hack it by putting in a little passthrough
> program using pseudo-terminal and doing a replacement
> on both input and output characters?
>
> Arne
>
>

No, our solution is to use Attachmate Extra! for the end-users.
It has a setup for 7-bit NRC. We, in support, uses DEC-NCS, which
is mostly the same as ISO 8-bit standard.