VP/IX (keyboards, serial terminals)

[Bjorn R. Bjornsson]

In article <7368 at hlborl.UUCP>, h_les at hlborl.UUCP (les brown) writes:
> What happens is that (apparently) randomly, the keyboard on my console
> locks up.

Try hitting the ALT key, if that doesn't work try hitting the CONTROL
key, any one of your sessions may have missed the break scancodes for
these keys.

I personally think VP/ix works rather well on a console, but I have
quite a few questions and complaints for VP/ix use on serial terminals.
I almost have the feeling that I must be the only person that has battled
VP/ix through serial terminals.

1. Why are input and scancode mappings limited to 7 chars.  This makes
   "enhanced keyboard" emulation impossible on many ASCII terminals,
   even if they have more or less the right number of keys.
   Good limits are: 0, 1 and infinity (or a reasonable facsimilie,
   thereof)

2. Why is there no screen refresh function for PC compatible terminals*?
   It's present for ASCII terminals but goes away for PC compatible
   terminals.
   Why isn't refresh in the VP/ix menu?

   This is rather important since there seem to be a number of problems
   in VP/ix video emulation for serial terminals.

3. Why isn't there support for ANSI color escape sequences.  Really?
   A lot of folks have these (on there PCs for instance).

4. EGA or VGA emulation with user accessible hooks would be real
   nice instead of the MDA emulation.

5. A program to set the BIOS data area keyboard type should come
   with VP/ix.  A program to synchronize CapsLock, NumLock, ScrollLock
   for PC-compatible terminals should also come with VP/ix.


*A PC compatible terminal is a terminal that is capable of sending
PC keyboard scancodes (make and break) instead of ASCII characters.


Bjorn R. Bjornsson	brb at falcon.is