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From: sommar@enea.UUCP (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: VMX-C curses
Message-ID: <2247@enea.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 5-Sep-87 05:48:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: enea.2247
Posted: Sat Sep  5 05:48:01 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Sep-87 06:20:49 EDT
References: <1069@bsu-cs.UUCP> <186@genghis.UUCP>
Reply-To: sommar@enea.UUCP(Erland Sommarskog)
Followup-To: comp.lang.c
Organization: ENEA DATA Svenska AB, Sweden
Lines: 34

In a recent article sns@genghis.UUCP (Sam Southard) writes:
>In article <1069@bsu-cs.UUCP>, dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>> But perhaps the most outstanding advantage of VMS C environment is that
>> the cursor control routines require a terminal manufactured by DEC or
>> something equivalent.  This saves no end of trouble--no more time
>> wasted having to create termcap entries for strange terminals of
>> questionable quality.
>
>If you want to limit yourself to DEC terminals, then go ahead - hard code
>the DEC control sequences into your programs.  Don't limit us to only those
>terminals. /etc/termcap (or terminfo) is a feature, not a disadvantage.

I think that Sam Southard missed the ironic tone in Rahul Dhesi's article.
Anyway, a little correction here. As far I know VAX-C curses is built on
SMG, the modern correspondence to curses on VMS. SMG has support for 
non-DEC terminals. You can write your own TERMTABLE.TXT describing the
terminal you have. I guess this is just like termcap and as far as I can
read from my VMS manual, VMS takes much more terminal capabilities in
regard than termcap does. For those who are interested, I refer to chapter
3.10 in VMS Run-Time Library Reference Manual.
  It should be added that there is a performance penalty using this table.
VT100/200 terminals are supported more "directly".

If you want to argue with me personally on this point, please do this by
mail. I wouldn't even dream of reading comp.lang.c. (The quoted articles
did for some reason appear in the Ada group too. That's how my eyes met 
them.)


-- 

Erland Sommarskog       
ENEA Data, Stockholm    
sommar@enea.UUCP