rick@sara70.UUCP (rick) (02/13/85)
[Curiouser and curiouser]
At SARA, the Amsterdam universities computing center, we plan to
use VersaTerm as the terminal emulator program. One of the
reasons people buy Macintosh here, is its use as (graphics) terminal.
In Europe Macintoshes are delivered with the UK keyboard,
which has a somewhat different layout than the USA keyboard.
This caused severe problems with MacTerminal as the makers
of that program wrote their own keyboard-routines and did
not make use of the standard keyboardmapping. So installing
the proper keyboardmapping resources had no effect.
VersaTerm appears to have a problem with the UK keyboard too:
after localizing the disk all keys are at the correct position,
the return key = return and the keys 'z' .. '/' are ok.
The only key wrong is the spacebar. That key doesn't generate
a space but a number of null-characters instead! The number of
nullchars generated depends on the baudrate:
1200 baud: the number of nullchars varies from 42 .. 43
2400 baud: the number of nullchars varies from 84 .. 87
9600 baud: the number of nullchars varies from 338 .. 351
There must be a little bug somewhere.
The VersaTerm distributed by USENET, the pre-release, did NOT
have this problem!
A feature I miss is shortcuts for menuselections, especially
for 'Copy-Paste'. At SARA the mainframes are Cyber machines.
Communication with these machines is highly line-oriented:
editing a line is done "off-line", in your terminal. The entire
line is then sent to the mainframe. VT100 does not support
this kind of editing, it has no line-send mode. So using
copy-paste you can edit a previous command but it is rather
tedious. I'd like to edit a line on the screen in the standard
Macintosh way by selecting words, backspacing etc.
This message is sent as an article for I don't have the mail-path
to the maker of VersaTerm, Lonnie Abelbeck, any more. The path
is more than 80 characters wide, so it went off my printout...
Hope to hear from you soon, lra!
Rick Jansen
{philabs!decvax!seismo}!mcvax!sara70!rick
lra@aluxe.UUCP (Lonnie R. Abelbeck, AT&T Bell Labs) (02/18/85)
Since this may be of general interest, I will respond here... VersaTerm will now work properly with the UK keyboard, and hopefully any foreign keyboard. The problem that Rick has refered to is that the BREAK key is created by the Enter key, which I referenced directly, rather that looking for the ^C that Enter creates. Soooo, since Apple switches the Enter Key and Spacebar on the UK keyboard relative to the US keyboard, the result is that the spacebar generates a BREAK. The moral is not to reference keys directly, but rather look for the characters that they generate, if you want foreign compatability. As I have learned, a foreign Mac owner can buy a US program, and then run a "localizer" program that esentially is a form of the the Resource Editor, that moves around the US keyboard resource to fit his/her foreign Mac. Since VersaTerm uses the standard System keyboard resource, all is well (with a little care), but MacTerminal uses its own keyboard map resource, and changing the System resource doesn't do it. Lonnie Abelbeck ihnp4!aluxe!lra
jaap@mcvax.UUCP (Jaap Akkerhuis) (02/21/85)
In article <710@aluxe.UUCP> lra@aluxe.UUCP (Lonnie R. Abelbeck, AT&T Bell Labs) writes: >... US keyboard, the result is that the spacebar generates a BREAK. >The moral is not to reference keys directly, but rather look for the >characters that they generate, if you want foreign compatability. H'm, sorry to disturb this interesting discussion, but as far as I know BREAK is not a character but a state of the transmit line of an RS-232 interface (a MARK or SPACE, not sure about which state), longer then the character time, so it will cause an overrun error in the UART. Jaap.
rick@sara70.UUCP (rick) (02/21/85)
[]
I am sorry, but I *DID* run the localizer to install the proper
keyboardmapping resources. All keys are at the correct position,
only the spacebar generates a BREAK, as I now understand.
The prerelease VersaTerm generates a BREAK of equal length,
no matter the baudrate. VersaTerm 1.32 generates a break of a
length depending on the baudrate, as I wrote before.
The moral is not to reference keys directly, but rather look for the
characters that they generate, if you want foreign compatability.
So things are NOT well yet! (So sorry)
I will also respond by mail lra, whatever goes faster (we
desperately need a good terminal emulator).
Rick Jansen
{philabs,decvax,seismo}!mcvax!sara70!rick