Peter Coghlan wrote:
This is the
first time I have heard of DECterm supporting more than 24 lines,
so the answers which you provide are particularly helpful since they confirm the
results that have been found by E. Groenenberg and John Wilson, and
specifically in respect of screens of more than 24 lines of which you are the only
one to note what DEC did when more than 24 lines are available.
For another data point, I dug out my VT510 and set it to 48 lines per page.
The results were the same. The scrolling region was not altered if the second
parameter was larger than 48. In light of what John said in another posting,
I also tried defaulting the second parameter and setting it to zero. In both
cases, the scrolling region was set to start at the line specified by the
first parameter and end at the bottom of the screen. This also worked for me
on a DECterm.
Finally, I tried a Qume QVT202 (80x24 only) which behaved the same.
The results from a number of platforms do seem consistent.
There is one other test which would be extremely helpful
to confirm. You mention the case when you set the second
parameter to zero. I tend to assume that you used ONE
zero character, i.e. "<ESC>[TOP;0r" where TOP was the
upper line number. My question is what occurs if you use
THREE zero characters for the second parameter, i.e.
"<ESC>[TOP;000r" since that would help quite a bit
if I want to support previous versions of some emulators
which do not support the scrolling range command correctly.
In that case, the user could patch the file to be whatever the
number of lines on the screen actually is without having to
expand the number of characters allocated for that second
parameter JUST in case the screen has more than 99 lines.
In fact, TOP should also have THREE characters with leading
ZEROs as well just in case. I realize that this means repeating
each test again, but assuming that THREE character parameter
values with leading zeros are acceptable, it would make the
programming a lot easier. I tend to assume that three characters
are always OK since the maximum number of columns for most
screens is 132 characters and the common firmware to parse
parameters would always need to be able to handle up to
three characters including with embedded zeros, so leading
zeros could be handled in the same manner and should not
need anything special - if the subroutine is coded the way
that seems most reasonable - not that anyone outside of the
firmware manufacturer would ever see that code.
Your mention of the VT510 with 48 lines is also EXTREMELY
interesting. I think that the VT420 also has that capability. I
have made a few enhancements to KED under RT-11 which
now supports emulated terminals up to 255 columns by 255
lines, although not both at the same time. No one seems to be
at all interested, but it has been very helpful in my case since
E11 supports these emulated screen sizes. My justification
and naming for the new KED variant is K42 after the VT420.
Since there are two other KED variants, K52 and K62, each
respectively for the VT52 and VT62 real DEC terminals, the
K42 name seemed appropriate.
I would hope that at least a few individuals are reading this
thread who might still using RT-11 or TSX-Plus. The new
K42.SAV has code to run under TSX-Plus without needing
to INSTALL the program under TSX-Plus (with special
handling parameters) as KED must be. It would seem that
DEC went only so far in supporting the TSX-Plus operating
system in that nothing prevented running KED under TSX-Plus,
but S&H had to add extra EMTs and RUN options to support
features which are handled very differently in RT-11.
Jerome Fine