[TUHS] I swear! I rtfm'ed

[bqt@update.uu.se (Johnny Billquist)]

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On 2015-01-01 17:01, Clem Cole wrote:
> below ..
>
> On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 6:52 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at update.uu.se
> <mailto:bqt at update.uu.se>> wrote:
>
>
>         2.) VT-100's did not implement the full ANSI spec like Ann
>         Arbor, Heathkit,
>         Wyse etc.  So there are a number of things that those terminals did
>         better.  A really good reason to you curses(3) because all the
>         knowledge is
>         keep in the termcap and as a programmer you don't need to worry
>         about it.
>
>
>     Probably true. However, I'm not sure Ann Arbor or Heathkit did much
>     better.
>
> ​They did - but they had the advantage of complete spec, which when then
> VT-100 team did their thing, was working with a proposal.​

True. Not sure how much changed though. Do you have any list of things 
that differs, and things that AA or Heathkit did better?

>     As far as I can remember, they were always more "weird"
>
> ​I guess.   Maybe the were not too go at running programs like EDT on
> VMS. which used the DEC private sequences.  As I recall you grew up on
> RSX and VMS so would not have had the same affinity that we in the UNIX
> side did.

True that I grew up on DEC OSes, but I never used EDT. Always Emacs. 
(Proper Emacs, that is, not the GNU stuff... :-) )

> VMS folks tended to stay with something that looked a lot like VT-100,
> whereas UNIX folks often chose more functionality in the terminal.

Possible. But people in general seems to have preferred the VT100 to 
most other stuff on Unix as well, judging by history.

>     Personally, I'd give an AAA or a Heathkit away if one was dropped on
>     me. A VT100 I would keep. :-)
>
>
> ​To each each his own.  I still have an H19 and a Wyse-60.  Would love
> to find an old AAA, but I personally would not bother with any member of
> VT-100 family since most SW emulators are "good enough" for my use when
> I might want VT-100 specifics.​

Indeed. To each his own. No problem with that.
And yes, most VT-100 emulators suck seriously. I usually identifies the 
first problem within 10 seconds, and almost all emulators do some of the 
common simple stuff wrong.

xterm is my savior. It actually do things pretty might right all the time.

> ​  I heard that some folks in the VMS world gripe about the emulators
> not being good enough, but my use has never been that much and certainly
> there are lots of other issues with the newer VT-xxx's that drove me
> bonkers.

Let me guess - the missing escape key? :-)
(That one drove almost everyone bonkers...)

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol