JWMANLY@amherst ("John W. Manly") (01/12/88)
Hi, all. JWM here with the straight dope on the GIGI problem. For those of you unfamiliar with the problem, you should be aware that the VMS V4.6 upgrade rendered VK100s (GIGI terminals) unusable with EDT, TPU, and most other packages which do full-screen operations. What happened is that the default characteristics for VK100s were altered in this update. In particular, VK100s (whether set with SET TERM/DEV=VK100 or SET TERM/INQUIRE) now have the DEC_CRT characteristic set. This should not be. This characteristic is supposed to indicate that the terminal supports certain escape sequences. In particular, it indicates that the terminal supports scrolling regions via the DECSTBM (<ESC>[Pn;Pnr) set top and bottom margins sequence. The GIGI, to its shame, does not support this sequence, since it does not support scrolling regions. So when EDT (or TPU) does a SENSEMODE on the terminal, it notes that DEC_CRT is set, and sends DECSTBM sequences to handle the screen, which the GIGI just ignores. Hence the gibberish. There are several ways to correct this. The best is to set the correct terminal characteristics. So, if you are on a terminal which does a SET TERM/INQUIRE at login, insert the following code into the LOGIN.COM: > $ SET TERM/INQUIRE ! set terminal type > $ termnum = f$getdvi(f$logical("TT"),"DEVTYPE") ! get terminal type > $ if termnum.eq.2 then $SET TERM/NODEC_CRT ! "2" indicates GIGI Of course, if your terminal is initialized at system startup, then just add to your SYSTARTUP.COM: > $ SET TERM TXnn:/PERM/DEV=VK100/NODEC_CRT Either of these will correctly set the terminal to NODEC_CRT. Thus, any packages which are well-behaved (that is, they actually check the bits and not just the terminal type) should function correctly. EDT and TPU are well-behaved. A less interesting solution is, using an EDTINI.EDT file or similar startup command, instruct EDT not to use scrolling regions via the SET TERM NOSCROLL command. But this only helps EDT, and is just not a very 'clean' solution. Another possibility was to set the GIGI to VT52 emulation, and let the system use VT52 escape sequences for everything. This also a rather solution. Thanks to AB Stine, Chris Chiesa, and Joe Callahan for their help and ideas. P.S. I am told that DEC did this once before at a previous upgrade. I have not yet installed VMS V4.7 (it just arrived), and it may be fixed in that release. BITNET: JWMANLY@AMHERST - John W. Manly PHONE: (413)-542-2526 System Manager Amherst College