Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!elroy!cit-vax!ucla-cs!wales
From: wales@CS.UCLA.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: PROCOMM PLUS bugs
Message-ID: <9826@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 29 Feb 88 06:11:27 GMT
Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: wales@CS.UCLA.EDU (Rich Wales)
Organization: UCLA CS Department, Los Angeles
Lines: 80

I got my PROCOMM PLUS last Friday.  Although in general I am very
pleased by it, I have noted several bugs.

These bugs are NOT addressed by the recent set of "patches" from Data-
storm that have been posted to the net.

I will be informing Datastorm of these bugs.  In the meantime, I am
also describing them here; if anyone else has seen them and/or has a
workaround to any of them, I would very much like to hear about it.

(1) "Insert character" does not shift text into the 80th (extreme
    rightmost) character position.  The 80th character is retained, and
    the remaining text is shifted into the 79th position.

    I have verified this in ANSI, WYSE 50, and TVI 950 emulations.  For
    what it's worth, I have the LINE WRAP terminal option set to ON.

    This bug ruins the screen display when I use VI.  However, I should
    point out that I have successfully demonstrated the bug simply by
    "cat"ing a file with the appropriate control sequences -- without
    using VI or any "termcap"-related software.  Hence, I *know* that I
    am not simply seeing a bug in VI.

    This same bug existed in ProComm 2.4.2, and I reported it in great
    detail to DATASTORM's support BBS quite some time ago.  I had been
    under the impression that this was one of the bugs explicitly men-
    tioned as being fixed in PROCOMM PLUS; evidently not.

(2) In ANSI emulation, "delete line" (ESC-[-M) doesn't work.  If this
    sequence is sent by the host, PROCOMM PLUS "hangs"; nothing I type
    thereafter is sent to the host until I hit the ESC key.

    I've verified that nothing is being sent to the host by looking at
    my external modem's indicator lights; I hit keys, but the modem's
    "send" light does not blink in response.

    When I do hit ESC, and PROCOMM PLUS starts sending data again, the
    line to be deleted has *not* been deleted.

    Although the ESC-[-M sequence is not documented in the ANSI.SYS
    driver description in my MS-DOS 3.3 user's guide, the PROCOMM PLUS
    manual mentions the sequence (mapped to the "CTRL-PgUp" key; p. 301
    in the manual) -- so I assume DATASTORM intended to implement it.

(3) Page 210 of the manual says to use "TVI950" in an EMULATE command
    to specify the TVI 950.  However, it doesn't work.  "EMULATE TV950"
    (without the "I") does work, just as in ProComm 2.4.2.

(4) In the WYSE 50 and TVI 950 emulations, I can't seem to get the
    video attributes set so that "highlighted" text shows up in "high
    intensity", and "regular" text with regular intensity.

    For both WYSE 50 and TVI 950 emulations, I am using the control
    sequences ESC-( and ESC-) to begin and end highlighting.  (The reg-
    ular "video attribute" control codes eat up an extra character space
    on the screen, whereas ESC-( and ESC-) do not.)

    The best I was able to do in WYSE 50 emulation (by playing around in
    the "color options" setup mode) was a state where *normal* text was
    displayed in *high* intensity -- and *highlighted* text in *normal*
    intensity (the reverse of what I want!).  In TVI 950 emulation, I
    was unable to make any difference at all between normal and high-
    lighted text.

    I have a monochrome display adapter, and I tried starting PROCOMM
    PLUS with the "/B" option the first time I modified the color
    options (as the manual recommended).

    In ProComm 2.4.2, I used TVI 950 emulation and had no trouble get-
    ting highlighted text to show up in high intensity.

I am currently using ANSI emulation, with a "termcap" entry set up to
use reverse video for highlighting, and with the "dl" (delete line)
capability removed (hopefully only temporarily, until I can get a patch
to fix that bug!).  I can't see any workaround for the "insert charac-
ter" bug, short of redrawing the screen whenever things get messed up.

-- Rich Wales // UCLA CS Dept // wales@CS.UCLA.EDU // +1 (213) 825-5683
   3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA
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   "Sir, there is a multilegged creature crawling on your shoulder."