Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!bbn!rochester!ur-tut!akk2
From: akk2@ur-tut.UUCP (Atul Kacker)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: desperately seeking vt100 emulator
Message-ID: <709@ur-tut.UUCP>
Date: 16 Dec 87 14:27:02 GMT
References: <1369@lll-lcc.aRpA> <11250012@hpldola.HP.COM> <722@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Reply-To: akk2@tut.cc.rochester.edu.UUCP (Atul Kacker)
Organization: Univ. of Rochester Computing Center
Lines: 35

In article <722@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> windley@iris.ucdavis.edu (Phil Windley) writes:
>Actually, I'm not that desperate.  What I do want however is a vt100
>emulator for the PC that uses the keyboard to send out the same escape
>sequences that a vt100 keyboard does in application mode.  I have seen
>four or five that claim to be vt100 emulators and while some do a
>remarkable job of RESPONDING to the right escape sequences, not one
>use s the keyboard to produce them.  

Programs like PC-VT, Qmodem, Procomm, PC-Kermit are fairly decent VT100
emulators. Kermit in fact does a decent job of emulating a VT102 terminal.
The problem that you are referring to is that the PC keyboard is not used
like a VT100 keypad in these programs.  There are good reasons for this.
The PC (all variants) just do not have the same number of keys on the
keypad and if they do (old AT) some of the keys are 'system' keys that
cannot be used by a terminal emulation package.  Furthermore, successive
generations of PC keyboards have keypad keys in different positions on the
keypad.  This is the reason that terminal emulation programs map the
PC function keys to the VT100 keypad.  After all the function keys are
the same from one PC to another. 

I use Kermit and have modified the keys so that on my old PC-AT style 
keyboard, I have everything other than the top row mapped to a VT100
keypad one-to-one.  The top row is mapped to the F1-F4 PC function keys.
If you really need a true VT100 style keypad, you can buy third party
keyboards that have the same layout as a VT100 terminal and remap the
keys so that they send the right escape sequences.  This is fairly easy
to do in Kermit.  I don't believe PC-VT or Procomm allows you to do
keyboard remapping.  Blame IBM for it's infinite wisdom of coming up
with non-standard keyboards and not the terminal emulators.  

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Atul Kacker  |     Internet: akk2@tut.cc.rochester.edu
             |     UUCP: {ames,cmcl2,decvax,rutgers}!rochester!ur-tut!akk2
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------