sqrkl@csvax.liv.ac.uk (03/10/88)
Firstly, Simon, I'm sorry about posting this up to the net, but I'm not convinced that I have access to your UUCP/Bitnet addresses... Secondly, let me apologise if the original 'wishlist' had 'aggressive undertones' - obviously this is a major personality defect I have that I'll try and fix soon (radical surgery, I hear you cry). Anyway, here's some interesting thoughts for you : >If you want to design 6 fonts, three in a 4x4 cell, and the other half >in a 4*2.5 (:-)) cell, your welcome. Seriously, designing fonts is a >LOT of work and adding more fonts means the program gets larger Obviously, this is a limitation of the Atari ST. I wrote a font designer program for my Archimedes and designed a complete (256 char, including the digital chars) character set that uses 8 * 10 pixels in about 2 hours. I don't need 6 fonts because I've written ARM routines that support all double height/double width modes on a VT100 (that took about 2 days of coding). I think that 6 fonts is over the top - you should be writing code to expand the original set (so you need only 1 font). >The vector >drawing is fast enough for 9600 baud, at least I've never had any I disagree. TERMINAL/ST version 2.1 has vector drawing at about twice the speed of yours (it was written in this department by a lecturer). >If you hold down the <Alternate> key, you've essentially got a one key >NO SCROLL key, anyway in the more recent versions you can actually put That's funny. I'm running UniTerm V2.0a 020 and the Alternate key doesn't do an awful lot (I haven't reconfigured the keyboard in any way). >No it doesn't, you obviously don't understand why it can be disabled... DCL on a VAX/VMS system already has an SLE, so I disabled it...with annoying results if I accidentally hit INSERT (this happens on V2.0a 020 as well). >Wrong! No VT1XX, VT2XX or VT3XX compatible terminal works this way, >all clear the screen and home the cursor. The command set of D*C Again, rather strange. I am using a PT100 (Plessey VT100 compatible) and I can quite easily switch in and out of 132 column mode without a clear screen/home cursor (although the terminal can be configured to do so via the SETUP options). >compatible terminals has no provision for dealing with mixed length >lines (I can think of all kind of perversions you would have to deal Where does this mixed length business fit in ? I've never seen a terminal that has different screen widths on the same display at the same time ! >> If there is keyboard input or serial line activity, leave the mouse >> switched off UNLESS the mouse is moved (switch it back on again in that > case). > >Too late, it already works this way in the recent versions. Again, V2.0a 020 DOES NOT switch the mouse on when it is moved. The I-bar only appears when you click on the mouse button first. >And how do you suggest to do this? (It's not so simple as you think it >is...) There are about as many different ways to postition the >cursor, as there are editors, the way it's implemented now, it works I've got the 'intelligent listen-back' cursor movement routines in the Macintosh VT100 Terminal Emulator I wrote a couple of months ago. I'll send you either the (Turbo) Pascal source or a 'pseudocode' version of it if you want. It avoids the nasty skipping past tabs problem that all move mouse/click/work out diff/send arrow codes systems I've ever seen in ST and Mac terminal emulators. By the way, you might have worked out that I'm working on a VT100 terminal emulator for Acorn's wonderful new Archimedes machine. I bought one about 10 weeks ago and ARM code is an absolute joy to write. Richard K. Lloyd, *************************************************** Computer Science Dept., * JANET : SQRKL@UK.AC.LIV.CSVAX * Liverpool University, * UUCP : {backbone}!mcvax!ukc!mupsy!liv-cs!SQRKL * Merseyside, England, * ARPA : SQRKL%csvax.liv.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk * Great (?) Britain. *************************************************** "I have VERY strong opinions which are nothing whatsoever to do with the University of Liverpool, so blame ME if I bitch about useless IBM PC clones, even more redundant IBM mainframes and the terrible Atari ST..."