Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ames!haven!adm!smoke!ibd!heilpern
From: heilpern@ibd.BRL.MIL (Mark A. Heilpern )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Unix xmas tree
Message-ID: <236@ibd.BRL.MIL>
Date: 3 Jan 89 14:39:34 GMT
References: <47800020@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <4321@freja.diku.dk>
Reply-To: heilpern@brl.arpa (Mark A. Heilpern (IBD) <heilpern>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 25

In article <4321@freja.diku.dk> seindal@sleipner.diku.dk (Rene' Seindal) writes:
>gupta@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>
>> I received this "cute" file last week and when you do a 'cat' or 'more' on
>> it then it'll draw a christmas tree and a train circling it. It only works
>> on vt100s and I've been trying to figure out how it works. 
>
>I peeked at it, and found out that it replies heavily on an alternate
>character set, which makes it impossible to convert it to other terminals
>without a similar alternate character set.  It would have looked great in
>motd, though :-)

NOT TRUE! Although if the alt char set is available it is used, it is not
required. I use both a dedicated vt100 terminal (with char set) and a PC
running under kermit, in vt100 emulation, OR under CROSSTALK in vt100 mode.
The xmas tree works in all these, though ONE of the PC terminal emulators
(I'm not sure which) does not display fancy graphics, just characters.
The result is not as pleasing, but just as comprehensible. The escape
and control codes used ONLY work for a vt100 terminal, there is no such
thing as mix-and-match codes for other terminals.

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