jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson) (09/15/87)
While considering brain damaged terminals, and manufacturers attempts to invent new, different and inscrutable new kinds of brain damage, ponder this for a while. Esprit systems (some sort of successor to Hazeltine) make a terminal that is sort of almost ansi compatible, kind of. Except, sigh, with the very high price of memory today, they couldn't afford to put in enough to be able to handle attributes correctly. Now, they didn't want to get nailed for the old magic cookie problem, so they came up with something that is, in my experience, a completely unique, orginal botch. This terminal (I think it was called the 6515) supports one attribute on the screen without using magic cookies. Exactly one. Any one. The real kicker is, you *change* which attribute it is by sending the ansi standard set attribute sequence! So, you go somewhere on the screen, and write some underlined text. Then, you go to some completely different place, and send the set bold attribute sequence. Presto! That underlined text that you wrote just turned into bold! Of course, this works with blink, half bright and so on - my favorite is no-display. jw
jpp@slxsys.UUCP (John Pettitt) (09/18/87)
In article <286@pan.UUCP> jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson) writes: >Esprit systems (some sort of successor to Hazeltine) make a terminal that >is sort of almost ansi compatible, kind of. . . . . >This terminal (I think it was called the 6515) supports one attribute on >the screen without using magic cookies. Exactly one. Any one. The real >kicker is, you *change* which attribute it is by sending the ansi standard >set attribute sequence! So, you go somewhere on the screen, and write some >underlined text. Then, you go to some completely different place, and send >the set bold attribute sequence. Presto! That underlined text that you >wrote just turned into bold! Of course, this works with blink, half bright >and so on - my favorite is no-display. The ADDS viewpoint had the same trick (they use the high bit in the video ram to signal an attribute). The great thing about this type of terminal is to paint the whole screen with the 'blank' attribute set, then set normal and 'presto' instant display, and since all users beleive that display_speed == CPU_speed who need's a (your favorite big cpu) anyway ! :-) -- John Pettitt - G6KCQ, CIX jpettitt, Voice +44 1 398 9422, Discalimer applies ! UUCP: {backbone}!mcvax!ukc!{ pyrltd || stc!datlog }!slxsys!jpp Remember: Bill Gates is the worlds greatest expert on Operating Systems :-)