1 Oct
2018
1 Oct
'18
7:17 p.m.
On Oct 1, 2018, at 1:55 PM, Paul Koning <paulkoning
at comcast.net> wrote:
I can?t remember the exact VT-100 / Rainbow differences. I do remember seeing a
description (usenet-post kind of thing, not an official document) that detailed them, and
deciding the Rainbow emulation was ?good enough? for my purposes. If I can find that
document (later this week) I?ll try to post or re-post it, but I?m submerged by $work at
the moment. If someone else comes up with it before me, I?ll be glad!
- Mark
On Oct 1, 2018, at 2:46 PM, Ethan Dicks via
cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 2:16 PM, Tapley, Mark via cctalk
I don't know that particular one. But a possible answer would be: because the VT100
had a bunch of strange corner cases that were not documented and not necessarily well
understood.
DEC created an internal standard for terminal behavior; that specification was extremely
detailed and very well written. It became the functional specification for the VT200
series. I used it to write the terminal emulator for RSTS on the Pro. It was understood
at the time that this spec was close to VT100 behavior (apart from 8 bit characters
instead of 7) but not exactly that, and deliberately so.
Similar things have happened in other places. There is DDCMP, and "DMC
compatibility mode" which is best described as "DDCMP with certain bugs".
It hard to find a reasonable description of the latter. If you want to do DDCMP,
you're best off implementing the spec (which is easy) but if you do, it won't work
100% with the "high speed" variant of the DMC-11.
paul ...I have to say my favorite VT-100-alike is a
Rainbow. One box (plus monitor plus the dreaded LK-201), three functions in the
collection: VT-100 emulation (not perfect but not bad), CPM-80/86 (is that one or two
functions?), MS-DOS 3.11b.
I have only recently learned of the built-in VT100 emulation. I'm
curious how it's "not perfect".