Terminal Emulation

[Paul Barton-Davis]

In article <1991Jun7.114023.8067 at cbfsb.att.com> nll at cbnewsb.att.com (neal.l.leitner) writes:
>We are faced here with a problem I was hoping someone out in Net land
>can help with.  We have several AT&T 6386/33 running AT&T Unix Sys 5.
>On the 6386/33 machine we have a scanner and appropriate software to
>view the images that are scanned.  What we need to do is to allow 
>people who log in remotely to be able to view these images as well.
>
>The TERM varaible at the console is set to AT-386 and that works great
>for viewing the scanned images.  I am guessing that people who log in
>remotely via their PC, need to have a terminal emulator that will
>emulate an AT-386.  
>
>Does anyone know of PC software that exists that can do this??  Any
>help is appreciated!!


It is rather unlikely that your are viewing images using any of the
facilities that a terminal emulator provides. Such software simply
handles special escape code sequences to allow you to move the cursor
around, turn on/off various video modes etc.

Displaying scanned images is extremely likely to be using actual
hardware features (e.g. VGA, or a frame buffer), and no terminal
emulator will help you with this.

What you need, but probably won't find very easily, is an X window
version of your display software. X acts as a layer between the
hardware and the software, allowing the latter to make generic calls
to do things that are actually implemented in a h/w specific manner.
It also, rather usefully, provides network transparency, so that a
program running on one machine can request display changes on a screen
actually connected to another machine.

With such a version, and a suitable PC X window implementation (there
are a few out there now, but don't ask me about them because I don't
know anything about them), you will be able to provide what you want.
Otherwise, I think you're stuck.


-- 
Paul Barton-Davis <pauld at cs.washington.edu> UW Computer Science Lab	 

"People cannot cooperate towards common goals if they are forced to
 compete with each other in order to guarantee their own survival."