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From: zane@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Sameer Parekh)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: VT100- why?
Message-ID: <1991Jan15.023927.18026@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Date: 15 Jan 91 02:39:27 GMT
References: <6553@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <10975@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <1991Jan12.215222.13905@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Organization: ddsw1.MCS.COM Contributor, Wheeling, IL
Lines: 26

In article <1991Jan12.215222.13905@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> bazyar@cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>In article <10975@darkstar.ucsc.edu> unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User) writes:
>>	Nobody answered my question why VT100 was so damn important either...
>>just curious..
>
>   Because VT100 is an industry standard.  Xterms are based on VT100.
>Everyone uses VT100.  It's robust (except for my implementation, at the
>moment :-) does everything under the sun, and is indispensable for Unix
>work.
>   Please, don't reply extolling the virtues of Proterm Special.  Proterm
>Special is a duplicate of the Apple II monitor display features with sound
>and maybe four extra commands added.  It's really weak.  Some people 
>with 2400 baud complain that VT100 is 'slow'.  I disagree. I insist that
>THEY are the ones that are slow.  Perhaps 5% of the text sent is vt100
>commands in a typical VI session.
	But vt100 is inefficient, to move the cursor to a spot, it is
ESC[ and then a number in ASCII so if it is two digits that it two bits
and a ; and another number in ASCII and some ending character. (I forgot
what.)
	If they used the ASCII VALUE for the numbers it would be much
more efficient.  (And I THINK the terminals would not need as much programming.)



-- 
zane@ddsw1.MCS.COM