Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: ProTERM
Message-ID: <14830@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 11 Jan 91 23:40:34 GMT
References: <9101100605.AA03915@apple.com> <91010.230057ART100@psuvm.psu.edu>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 32

In article <91010.230057ART100@psuvm.psu.edu> ART100@psuvm.psu.edu (Andy Tefft) writes:
>1. Its vt100 emulation rather sucks. For some of us, this is one
>of the most important features in a term program. I haven't had the
>intestinal fortitude to tell you exactly what sucks about the emulation
>itself, except that it never seems to do or avoid line wrapping according
>to my desires.

Genuine DEC VT100s have an extremely baroque and buggy line-wrap behavior.
My advice is to make sure that the host does not attempt to rely on the
VT100 line-wrap behavior; for example, on UNIX you would NOT specify the
"automargin" capability in termcap or terminfo, even if your VT100 (or
emulation thereof) has line wrap enabled.  It may also be necessary to
tell the host that your display is only 79 columns wide, so that it does
not accidentally trigger line wrap by displaying some character in the
80th column.

>   a) To send vt100 cursor key sequences you must press one of the
>      apple keys with the arrows. Shouldn't have to.

If the keypad is indistinguishable to Apple programs from the corresponding
main keyboard keys, there may be no alternative but to require some such
kludge.  (I don't know whether or not this is the case but it might be.)

>3. Maybe this has to do with the particular copy of Proterm I have used
>(don't have my own but have borrowed a friend's on occasion),
>but whenever I abort a file transfer, the next transfer I attempt
>causes the machine to lock up and hang.

This might be a genuine ProTerm bug, but note that AppleWorks GS 1.1
was shipped with a warning that aborting a multi-file download might
cause similar problems, and that it was due to a problem with GS/OS
(System Disk 5.0) that Apple was aware of and was working on.