Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!peregrine!ccicpg!nick
From: nick@ccicpg.UUCP (Nick Crossley)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: ksh incompatabilities with sh?
Summary: Cannot throw away Wang terminals
Message-ID: <1066@ccicpg.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jun 88 01:33:57 GMT
References: <16147@brl-adm.ARPA>
Reply-To: nick@ccicpg.UUCP (Nick Crossley)
Organization: CCI CPG, Irvine CA
Lines: 21

In article <16147@brl-adm.ARPA> rbj@ICST-CMR.ARPA (Root Boy Jim) writes:
>As for braindamaged terminals, they should be thrown away, period.

Unfortunately, the Wang terminals I mentioned are *so* brain-damaged that
they cannot easily be replaced.  They have a unique key layout, with a large
number of special keys, including 17 function keys, and send very odd codes.
The character set is non-standard, and the flow control is not Xon-Xoff but
something else invented by Wang.  They have line and box drawing facilities
which cannot easily be emulated by other common terminals, since the lines
do not occupy character positions but pass between them, and a character
written to somewhere on the screen does not overwrite said lines or boxes.
And so on.  They are horrible to fit onto Unix (require a special driver for
the Xon-Xoff flow control and a special line discipline for the function
keys), so I wish they could be thrown away, but the applications need their
peculiar characteristics!

-- 

<<< standard disclaimers >>>
Nick Crossley, CCI, 9801 Muirlands, Irvine, CA 92718-2521, USA
Tel. (714) 458-7282,  uucp: ...!uunet!ccicpg!nick