Sampsa Laine <sampsa at mac.com> writes:
I am playing around with iTerm as well at the moment though.
What do you use as a terminal client on OS X?
Pros and cons of the various terminal emulations can be debated ad nauseum
and ad infinitum.
I have iTerm and iTerm2, and Terminal.app on OS X. Both of the iTerm pass
the preliminary VTTEST suites but they both fail miserably when asked to do
the DECSWL and DECDHL tests. Terminal.app renders both DECSWL and DECDHL
rather well.
Neither of them will do DECELR and DECSLE. However, in their defense, none
of the unix/linux default xterm appear to do them either. I've built xterm
from source and there are switches which will enable these. I've not found
the ideal combination yet of all of the build switches to make xterm do all
of the things I can now accomplish with a real VT terminal or DECterminal.
--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.
Basically the end result is the same whether I do a 'cat salam.txt' locally or 'type salam.txt' on the VMS host. The correct letters display, they're just not joined together like they should be.
It's a bug in Terminal, it doesn't handle ligatures for Arabic (which are rather trick, but then again they are built into OS X, so it's odd)..
And I think Johnny's right, they are UTF-8 encoded, here's what the text looks like in binary:
00000000 D8 B3 D9 84 D9 85 20 D8 B9 D9 84 D9 8A D9 83 D9 85 ...... ..........
How are these files being exposed to the Terminal.app? If by "$ TYPE",
then VMS doesn't know anything about the file contents other then its
record structure. The information in it will be transmitted as bytes
of some value. There is no interpretation of that data upon output.
"$ TYPE" just pumps the file data into the terminal driver.
If the file contains the appropriate UTF for some Arabic letter, that
would be output to the Terminal.app. THere may be some need for codes
that tell the Terminal.app to use the Arabic fonts; however, I believe
even that is handled by the accepted UTF encoding.
FWIW, VMS does handle arabic numerals. :)
Basically the end result is the same whether I do a 'cat salam.txt' locally or 'type salam.txt' on the VMS host. The correct letters display, they're just not joined together like they should be.
It's a bug in Terminal, it doesn't handle ligatures for Arabic (which are rather trick, but then again they are built into OS X, so it's odd)..
Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> writes:
On 2013-09-28 11:30, Sampsa Laine wrote:
Yeah I was thinking of typing up some Arabic documents in say EDIT and using TYPE to view them - but Terminal.app doesn't seem to pass the Arabic letters across correctly.
I think you are a little confused.
"Arabic letters" as such don't pass through anywhere. We're talking
computers here. Everything is ones and zeroes.
It's just a case of how you choose to interpret those ones and zeroes at
each end. Are you saying that Terminal.app (a program I avoid by the
way, since the VT100 emulation is buggy) do not pass all values? How are
you using it, by the way?
Selected some arabic language on your MAC, running the terminal, typing
in there, and in the terminal you have telnetted to some VMS box.
That might end up with the terminal sending UTF-8 encoded Unicode, which
VMS might have some opinions about. VMS do not handle UTF-8, and some of
the values you get from the UTF-8 encoding might cause VMS to do
specific things.
The MAC will think of several bytes as one character encoded in UTF-8,
but VMS will think of that as several characters in Latin-1, unless you
are running some special program in VMS which grabs all incoming data,
in which case you can (or course) do anything you want.
How are these files being exposed to the Terminal.app? If by "$ TYPE",
then VMS doesn't know anything about the file contents other then its
record structure. The information in it will be transmitted as bytes
of some value. There is no interpretation of that data upon output.
"$ TYPE" just pumps the file data into the terminal driver.
If the file contains the appropriate UTF for some Arabic letter, that
would be output to the Terminal.app. THere may be some need for codes
that tell the Terminal.app to use the Arabic fonts; however, I believe
even that is handled by the accepted UTF encoding.
FWIW, VMS does handle arabic numerals. :)
--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.
Are you saying that Terminal.app (a program I avoid by the way, since the VT100 emulation is buggy) do not pass all values? How are you using it, by the way?
Selected some arabic language on your MAC, running the terminal, typing in there, and in the terminal you have telnetted to some VMS box.
Yes, essentially, Terminal.app will not accept Arabic letter input but displays Arabic text (incorrectly, without ligatures).
I've tried this both locally, over SSH and Telnet.
Again, I don't think this is a VMS issue.
As for why I like Terminal.app? I dunno, got used to it I guess in the last 8 years, not really come across too many bugs that bothered me..
I am playing around with iTerm as well at the moment though.
What do you use as a terminal client on OS X?
On 28 Sep 2013, at 11:39, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
On 2013-09-28 11:33, Sampsa Laine wrote:
If I type the document locally and upload it via Kermit, it sort of works.
Unfortunately it doesn't keep the ligatures which makes it more or less useless for Arabic :)
How do you verify that it "works"? What does the document look like on the Mac? I mean, if you really look at all the bytes. What did you use to create it?
The letters are all there, but they're not correctly connected (ligatures) - again, probably a Terminal.app problem, VMS is storing them just fine.
I've attached two PNGs - what the correctly formatted Arabic should look like and how Terminal.app displays it. But yeah, I don't think this is a VMS issue, it seems to happily accept any script thrown at it :)
It would work for Hebrew though
You will most likely have similar issues with any document using any characters beyond ASCII, since I bet you have a UTF-8 encoded Unicode text on the Mac.
In Hebrew there are no ligatures so as long as the letters made it, Terminal.app can't mess it up :)
On 2013-09-28 11:33, Sampsa Laine wrote:
If I type the document locally and upload it via Kermit, it sort of works.
Unfortunately it doesn't keep the ligatures which makes it more or less useless for Arabic :)
How do you verify that it "works"? What does the document look like on the Mac? I mean, if you really look at all the bytes. What did you use to create it?
It would work for Hebrew though
You will most likely have similar issues with any document using any characters beyond ASCII, since I bet you have a UTF-8 encoded Unicode text on the Mac.
Johnny
sampsa <sampsa at mac.com>
mobile +358 40 7208932
On 28 Sep 2013, at 11:30, Sampsa Laine <sampsa at mac.com> wrote:
Yeah I was thinking of typing up some Arabic documents in say EDIT and using TYPE to view them - but Terminal.app doesn't seem to pass the Arabic letters across correctly.
sampsa <sampsa at mac.com>
mobile +358 40 7208932
On 28 Sep 2013, at 11:28, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
On 2013-09-28 11:05, Sampsa Laine wrote:
Is it possible to use say Arabic or Hebrew script on VMS - I don't mean for DCL of course but for editing text files etc.
Or does this require DECWindows?
What do you mean? Just displaying text, or are you looking for some software that actually would understand any of it.
I mean, you could just use a different character encoding, and just output the bytes you want, and have your terminal show anything.
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
--
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
On 2013-09-28 11:30, Sampsa Laine wrote:
Yeah I was thinking of typing up some Arabic documents in say EDIT and using TYPE to view them - but Terminal.app doesn't seem to pass the Arabic letters across correctly.
I think you are a little confused.
"Arabic letters" as such don't pass through anywhere. We're talking computers here. Everything is ones and zeroes.
It's just a case of how you choose to interpret those ones and zeroes at each end. Are you saying that Terminal.app (a program I avoid by the way, since the VT100 emulation is buggy) do not pass all values? How are you using it, by the way?
Selected some arabic language on your MAC, running the terminal, typing in there, and in the terminal you have telnetted to some VMS box.
That might end up with the terminal sending UTF-8 encoded Unicode, which VMS might have some opinions about. VMS do not handle UTF-8, and some of the values you get from the UTF-8 encoding might cause VMS to do specific things.
The MAC will think of several bytes as one character encoded in UTF-8, but VMS will think of that as several characters in Latin-1, unless you are running some special program in VMS which grabs all incoming data, in which case you can (or course) do anything you want.
Johnny
sampsa <sampsa at mac.com>
mobile +358 40 7208932
On 28 Sep 2013, at 11:28, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
On 2013-09-28 11:05, Sampsa Laine wrote:
Is it possible to use say Arabic or Hebrew script on VMS - I don't mean for DCL of course but for editing text files etc.
Or does this require DECWindows?
What do you mean? Just displaying text, or are you looking for some software that actually would understand any of it.
I mean, you could just use a different character encoding, and just output the bytes you want, and have your terminal show anything.
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
--
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
If I type the document locally and upload it via Kermit, it sort of works.
Unfortunately it doesn't keep the ligatures which makes it more or less useless for Arabic :)
It would work for Hebrew though
sampsa <sampsa at mac.com>
mobile +358 40 7208932
On 28 Sep 2013, at 11:30, Sampsa Laine <sampsa at mac.com> wrote:
Yeah I was thinking of typing up some Arabic documents in say EDIT and using TYPE to view them - but Terminal.app doesn't seem to pass the Arabic letters across correctly.
sampsa <sampsa at mac.com>
mobile +358 40 7208932
On 28 Sep 2013, at 11:28, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
On 2013-09-28 11:05, Sampsa Laine wrote:
Is it possible to use say Arabic or Hebrew script on VMS - I don't mean for DCL of course but for editing text files etc.
Or does this require DECWindows?
What do you mean? Just displaying text, or are you looking for some software that actually would understand any of it.
I mean, you could just use a different character encoding, and just output the bytes you want, and have your terminal show anything.
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
On 2013-09-28 11:26, Sampsa Laine wrote:
On 28 Sep 2013, at 11:23, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
I've never seen or heard of anyone using it. I think it was available a very short time on the market.
It is mentioned in one of the processor handbooks that covers the 11/70, but basically no other DEC documentation even mentions it.
Shame and a bit weird - why would DEC build a block-mode terminal for an application platform and then not sell / distribute the platform?
Not a successful product maybe? Maybe some shortcoming in the whole design made it not get any acceptance in the market.
Also, does anyone know where we might get specs on the VT62's block-mode data stream? Might be amusing to write a VT62<->IBM 3270 translator :)
Never seen any of that either. There was a block mode version of the VT100 as well, if I remember right. Maybe compatible? Although I have not seen the documentation for that one either.
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
