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From: jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson)
Newsgroups: comp.terminals
Subject: New(er) Televideo problems
Message-ID: <285@pan.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Sep-87 13:43:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: pan.285
Posted: Tue Sep 15 13:43:46 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Sep-87 13:44:04 EDT
Reply-To: jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson)
Organization: Pansystem Informatics AG, Zuerich, Switzerland
Lines: 22

What could be worse than a Televideo?  Perhaps a newer Televideo?  One of
my customers recently ended up with a couple of Televideo 955 terminals.
It really wasn't his fault...

They asked me to set it up and write termcap descriptions for them.  When I
read the manual, I was dumbfounded.  I vaguely recalled hearing or reading
somewhere that Televideo had finally gotten away from the magic cookie
glitch.  Well, if this is it, they didn't quite get away from it.

The 955 has two attribute modes, which Televideo boldly calls 'embedded'
and 'non-embedded'.  The embedded mode is just what you expect, attributes
have magic cookies, like the 950, did, and the 925, and the 912...  But the
non-embedded mode has a very long description, which boils down to when you
send the set-attribute sequence, something magic happens inside the terminal
which allows you to write the next - *only* the next - character on the same
screen location you were at when you sent set attribute.  After that next
character, whatever it was, the terminal reverts to traditional Televideo
behavior; if at any later time you write any character to that screen
location, you lose the attribute!  What could this mode possibly be called?
Perhaps, 'magic magic cookie'?  Or 'voodoo cookie'?

jw