info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (07/18/85)
From: NEVILLE%umass-cs.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Ahhhh, but you see... There IS a way to test SMG termtable definitions right now. That is, if you have VaxLisp. It's internal editor uses SMG for the screen/window managing stuff. The termtables are not hard to write, really. There are DEC terminal versions there to mung up, and the capabilities are certainly more mnemonic than termcap. Actually, i think the capability definition facility would beat both termcap and terminfo if only it were easy and not so UGLY to get at from user programs. All of which brings me to another point. Is anyone (please, please, say yes) working on a program to convert termcap entries into terminfo entries and termtables? Or maybe to generate your choice of the three from a common interface. i'm getting tired of hand-building these things. Gripes: 1) terminfo is not compatible with existing termcap files; only the calling interface is compatible 2) the SMG manual pretends to know what termcap mnemonics mean but they blow it on ti/te, which makes me suspect of the Vax11-C curses-built-out-of-SMG package. 3) SMG is ugly to use, as are all VMS RTL packages, but this this is the price we pay to be able to combine languages. 4) i have to keep 4 (count 'em, FOUR) definitions of my terminal around for Mail, Phone, Emacs, and CCA Emacs. (termtable, scrft, termcap, terminfo respectively) We have working termtables for ADM workalikes and Freedom workalikes. i would think that DECUS would be a good clearing house for collections of these things, but i have no experience dealing with DECUS software. -neville Neville D. Newman newman@umass-cs (CSnet)