Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: VT100- why?
Message-ID: <14844@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 13 Jan 91 03:53:39 GMT
References: <6553@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <10975@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <1991Jan12.215222.13905@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 26

In article <1991Jan12.215222.13905@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> bazyar@cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>   Because VT100 is an industry standard.  Xterms are based on VT100.

Xterm interprets a subset of X3.64, and not the same subset as a VT100.
VT100s offer pretty much a minimal subset of X3.64, so that if you
pretend you have a VT100 when using some other X3.64 implementation,
odds are that most applications would be usable in that mode.

>Everyone uses VT100.  It's robust (except for my implementation, at the
>moment :-) does everything under the sun, and is indispensable for Unix
>work.

There is nothing about UNIX that especially favors the VT100.

>...  Some people with 2400 baud complain that VT100 is 'slow'.

There is a noticeable slowdown in many cursor-addressing applications
when using X3.64 escape sequences rather than, say, VT52 sequences.
At higher bit rates, real VT100s and perhaps some VT100 emulations
have effective throughput considerably below the bit rate due to having
to stall host transmission while they catch up on processing previous
control sequences.  (This is only slightly worse for VT100s than for
VT52-like implementations, however.)

	- D A Gwyn
	  4.3BSD termcap editor