seaburg@uiucdcs.UUCP (01/25/85)
If this is a dumb question, please excuse my ignorance.
Does the ANSI.SYS device driver that comes with IBM DOS resemble
anything else? In other words, is this a standard set of escape
sequences that could be used to emulate a terminal?
(What I really want to know is, is there a termcap around which will
let an IBM PC running say, PC-TALK III, emulate some common terminal
so I can use vi or whatever?)
Please respond via mail, and thanks for your help.
Gunnar P. Seaburg
Engineering Psychology Research Lab
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
...{ihnp4,pur-ee}!uiucdcs!seaburg
(217) 333-7116west@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Steve Westfall) (01/26/85)
PC-TALK will NOT take advantage of ANSI.SYS because IBM PC's basic bypasses it and does its own screen driving. (Perhaps a compiled PC-TALK would.) Some other communications packages for the IBM PC, such as Kermit, will use it, although in Kermit's case you don't really need to, since Kermit emulates a vt52. -- Steve Westfall, Staff Analyst University of Chicago Computation Center uucp: ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!west Mailnet: staff.westfall@UChicago.Mailnet
geller@rlgvax.UUCP (David Geller) (01/29/85)
> If this is a dumb question, please excuse my ignorance. That's what the net is for - the promulgation of information. > Does the ANSI.SYS device driver that comes with IBM DOS resemble > anything else? I believe that the IBM ANSI driver provides the same terminal character- istics and capabilities as a DEC VT-52. Please check the DOS manual to make sure - mine isn't handy. On the same subject there is a program called FANSICON floating around on some of the PC bulletin boards that fully replaces the ANSI driver provided with DOS as well as the screen ROM BIOS code. You should seek this product out (freeware, I think). > (What I really want to know is, is there a termcap around which will > let an IBM PC running say, PC-TALK III, emulate some common terminal > so I can use vi or whatever?) The termcap facility in Unix was designed to allow the system as well as the application code to know the characteristics of your terminal and be able to know what paramters need passing to terminal to accomplish a particular task. Unless PC-TALK can recognize sequences to CLEAR the screen, ERASE a character in a line, MOVE to col,ro, etc., then the best you could do would be to create a termcap for the most basic of functions - backspace - etc. However - it would be far easier to just use PC-TALK with your Unix system assuming it is a dumb terminal. If you do have TERM set to, say, VT-100 just make sure you don't try to run any applications which you know will need to do things with the screen that PC-TALK can't control/understand. You might consider purchasing such terminal programs as CROSSTALK or InterConnect for they both provide VT-100 emulation. I have PC-TALK - I even contributed to the author - I don't use it though because it is only good for dial-up and its slow. But we can't be picky with freeware - it still has its merits. David P. Geller {seismo}!rlgvax!geller (its all mine - even the mistakes - don't even think for a minute that I'm representing the opinions of my employer or anyone else - so there)
guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris) (01/29/85)
> I believe that the IBM ANSI driver provides the same terminal character- > istics and capabilities as a DEC VT-52. VT100, more likely - a VT52 isn't an ANSI X3.64 terminal. Guy Harris {seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy
seaburg@uiucdcs.UUCP (01/30/85)
I've successfully (I think) modified PC-Talk III to use the ANSI.SYS
driver , thanks to a tip from johnston@uiucdcsb:
"PCTALK III is written in BASIC and uses BASIC's primitive
I/O which does not utilize CON:. Therefore, the ANSI.SYS driver is
not involved. You could fix this by modifying PCTALK III. First,
you have to open CON: for output (as a file). Then, change all PRINTS
statements which take characters from the ASYNC input buffer and
print to the screen so that they print to the file CON:.
You still have to find a termcap for the ANSI.SYS driver."
Well, ...
"Here is the termcap entry I use when running Lotus Symphony. The major
difference between ANSI.SYS and true ANSI is that some escape sequence
parameters default to 0 when omitten in true ANSI, but are required by
ANSI.SYS. (Specifically, end standout {se} and end underline {ue}.) You
can use a standard ansi/ANSI terminal type (if your termcap has it) if
you don't mind staying in reverse video or underline mode constantly
once you enter one or the other.
Ip|ibmpc|IBM PC using ANSI driver:\
:am:bs:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[1;1H\E[2J:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:co#80:li#24:\
:do=\E[B:up=\E[A:nd=\E[C:kd=\E[B:kl=\E[D:kr=\E[C:ku=\E[A:\
:se=\E[0m:so=\E[7m:ue=\E[0m:us=\E[4m:
Ted Hopp {seismo,umcp-cs}!nbs-amrf!hopp"
It works great. Thanks everyone.johnl@ima.UUCP (01/30/85)
> Does the ANSI.SYS device driver that comes with IBM DOS resemble > anything else? In other words, is this a standard set of escape > sequences that could be used to emulate a terminal? ANSI has promulgated a standard for terminal control escape sequences. Many terminals adhere to it, most notably the DEC VT-100 (not VT-52) and IBM 3101. Unfortunately, the ANSI standard was designed by a large committee so it has escape sequences designed for every conceivable eventuality as well as for many inconceivable ones. This means that every ANSI terminal you see actually implements a subset of the ANSI standard, and usually includes some vendor- specific additions. As far as PC-TALK goes, this means you're more or less in luck. I hacked PC-TALK in about 20 minutes to use the ANSI driver, and it worked adequately with several termcap programs when I set TERM to vt100. The changes to PC-TALK are quite simple -- open CON: as an output file and change all the PRINT statements to PRINT #n to that file. Works fine. I'd send out the changes except that I lost them in a frenzy of disk cleanup. John Levine, ima!johnl PS: I think PC-TALK is certainly worth what it costs (it's free) but I use either PC/InterComm with my Hayes at work, and the Microcom ERA2 package with my Microcom at home. Both are much nicer to use than PC-TALK.
derek2@garfield.UUCP (Derek S Keeping) (01/31/85)
Hello.
I tried opening con: as a device and found it still bypassed ANSI.SYS
This was on a old motherboard PC with DOS 2.0 so it may work with 2.1
or whatever.
The problem which has been mentioned before is that Basic does its own
I/O. (at least as far as the screen is concerned.) The way I finally
got around this was to write a small routine that took a string and
displayed it using a DOS function call. That way ANSI.SYS got a chance
to process the string.
This is not to say that this is a great way to do this. From what I have
read, BIOS is terribly slow for displaying things on the screen.
Perhaps that's why it was bypassed for Basic.
Also as I recall, the Basic compiler did not fix the problem. It also
does its own screen handling. (Again this applies to the version I
used.)
Derek S. Keeping.
{allegra,inph4,utcsrgv}!garfield!derek2dr@duke.UUCP (Dietolf Ramm) (02/01/85)
I suspect that the confusion between ANSI and the VT52 comes from the Heath/Zenith H19/Z19 terminal. It has two modes: one is a VT52 compatibility mode and the other is an ANSI mode. -- Dietolf Ramm
west@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Steve Westfall) (02/02/85)
David Geller (geller@rlgvax.UUCP) writes: >I believe that the IBM ANSI driver provides the same terminal character- >istics and capabilities as a DEC VT-52. Please check the DOS manual to >make sure - mine isn't handy. The IBM ANSI.SYS driver implements some of the escape sequences of the Ansi 3.64 standard, which are used in the DEC vt-100, not the vt-52. >You might consider purchasing >such terminal programs as CROSSTALK or InterConnect for they both provide >VT-100 emulation. I have PC-TALK - I even contributed to the author - >I don't use it though because it is only good for dial-up and its slow. Kermit for the IBM PC is cheap, has excellent file transfer ability, and it does h19/vt52 emulation. AND, if you turn off its h19/vt52 emulation, it will use the ANSI.SYS driver if you loaded it in your config.sys file; therefore it will provide vt100 emulation (to the extent that ansi.sys does that). Also, one other advantage of Kermit over Pc-Talk is that it will work at baud rates up to 9600. -- Steve Westfall uucp: ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!west Staff Analyst bitnet: staff.westfall%chip@UChicago.bitnet U. of Chicago Computation Center
robert@gitpyr.UUCP (Robert Viduya) (02/03/85)
>< > ANSI has promulgated a standard for terminal control escape sequences. Many > terminals adhere to it, most notably the DEC VT-100 (not VT-52) and IBM 3101. Excuse me, but we've got a few IBM 3101's around here and I know their control codes look nothing like the ANSI standard. robert -- Robert Viduya Georgia Institute of Technology ...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,masscomp,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!robert ...!{rlgvax,sb1,uf-cgrl,unmvax,ut-sally}!gatech!gitpyr!robert