mike@SNOWHITE.CIS.UOGUELPH.CA (11/03/90)
rbriber@poly1.nist.gov writes: >Tim Buxton writes about problems with losing the ESC character >from the arrow key codes when using a terminal emulator and PC connected >to his Iris. We have had the same problem with both vi and emacs >and PC's hooked to the Iris serial ports. It can be serious enough >to make the editors unusable. We even have been having trouble with >emacs and a dumb vt100 type terminal connected to ttyd1. Slowing the >baud to 4800 seemed to help the terminal but that is not a desirable >solution. We are currently running 3.2.0 so I don't know if the >situation will improve with 3.3. Putting our PC's on the ethernet >and using the NCSA package has made the PC's usable but the dumb >terminal still has problems. I've noticed the same kind of thing happening on PIs, 4D50s, and our 240, on all IRIX versions up to 3.2.1 (which is the latest that we have). Even our old 1400 (yes, it still runs, but nobody wants to use it much anymore) had the same behavior. What I find perplexing about this habit of dropping <esc> characters is that it still happens when I use 'rlogin' to get into the SGI machine. I thought that the rlogin protocol was supposed to be more reliable than that. Since I usually log on to another machine (a DECstation 2100) and then use rlogin to get on to our 240, my work-around has been to add a special 'sgi' keymap in my .Xdefaults file to map the arrow keys to 'hjkl' _before_ they are ever sent across to the 240. Works fine. But my innate curiousity coupled with a large amount of ignorance about IRIX internals (a dangerous combination, I admit) causes me to wonder: why are SGI machines particularly vulnerable to this problem? Does anyone else have any clues? P.S. Anyone want to buy a slightly used Iris 1400? Low MIPS, practically no MFLOPS, this little baby is perfect for a budding History of Graphics Computing display. But wait, that's not all! If you act now, you also get the original FLIGHT demo! Operators are standing by... So come on, Yeast be nimble, | Yeast be quick! | Mike Chapman Yeast please make my head real thick, | Grab Student, University of Guelph 'cause beer is the student's only friend.| mike@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca
MAHAFFY@psuvm.psu.edu (11/05/90)
Somewhere at least part of the solution to this problem has been discovered. I often connect to out Irix 3.2, 4D70 via the campus network terminal service. My first action at login is to set the terminal type to VT100. If I use my favorite editor with no other actions, the arrow keys do not function. If I then use vi, I have no problems with the arrow keys. What is more, for the remainder of the login session, any time I use my favorite editor again, the arrow keys function perfectly well. Clearly their is something in the startup of vi that recognizes and patches my particular difficulty.