Sampsa Laine <sampsa at mac.com> writes:
I came across this little gem when perusing VT220 escape code:
"4.4.2 Designating Soft (Down-Line-Loadable) Character Sets
You can define a soft character set (font) that may or may not replace =
one of the existing hard sets (ROM fonts). If you do replace a hard set, =
the replacement occurs for both the 80 and 132-column versions"
Does VMS support this? Or is it up to the terminal emulator?
Of course VMS supports this. All that is needed is to send a series of
properly formatted escape sequences to the VT220.
Back in the early 1980s, I used this feature to turn the US Navy's VT220
terminals being used with the DATCP HITS (Digital Automatic Test Program
Generation Hierarchical Integrated Test Simulator) I was developing into
a data scope. You used these soft-font in much the same was as the DEC
Line Drawing sets. You load the terminals GR (Graphic Region) with the
soft-font set with an escape sequence and then, subsequence ASCII codes
will cause the font in the selected graphic region to be displayed. The
terminology DEC used for the format for depositing these character sets
was SIXELs.
I'll look around. Somewhere I have some of thee soft-font files. There
were a number of them that DEC/DECUS produced such as Cyrillic, Hebrew,
and even an upside-down and backard ASCII set.
--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.
Actually this looks like a nice clean solution that is by default extensible in Python.
I think I'll start with SIXEL and add ReGIS later.
http://www.macterm.net
sampsa <sampsa at mac.com>
mobile +358 40 7208932
On 18 Sep 2013, at 12:53, Sampsa Laine <sampsa at mac.com> wrote:
How to paint any kind of graphics into Terminal.app windows are beyond me. But if you want to play with soft fonts, or sixel graphis (or ReGIS), you need to intercept the incoming byte stream to Terminal.app, and then interpret that stuff to pull out what you are expected to display.
Johnny
That was going to be my basic approach, write a little shim that looks for control chars and if it sees ReGIS/SIXEL it draws a canvas, otherwise it passes it along to Terminal.app..
Some guys did with PNGs and JPEGs in Python, this could be fun..
sampsa
How to paint any kind of graphics into Terminal.app windows are beyond me. But if you want to play with soft fonts, or sixel graphis (or ReGIS), you need to intercept the incoming byte stream to Terminal.app, and then interpret that stuff to pull out what you are expected to display.
Johnny
That was going to be my basic approach, write a little shim that looks for control chars and if it sees ReGIS/SIXEL it draws a canvas, otherwise it passes it along to Terminal.app..
Some guys did with PNGs and JPEGs in Python, this could be fun..
sampsa
On the run up to DEC Legacy can anyone furnish me with information about a game called 'SHARK ATTACK' which I believe was available on the PDP/11. My school friend and I used to played this game via an acoustic coupler and an ASR/33 connected to the local college's PDP (which I think was an 11 of some description).
Are there any other PDP games that people have or can remember? We definitely played more than just SHARK ATTACK but I don't remember any others and my friend is also coming up a blank. Source code would be great - I can probably port to VAX/VMS if required.
We are due to have two restored ASR33's coming to DEC Legacy, it's definitely an opportunity not to be missed!
Regards, Mark
On 2013-09-18 11:43, Sampsa Laine wrote:
To point out a few (maybe obvious) things.
Sixel graphics is not the same as soft fonts. Soft fonts are defined in a very sixel-like format, but you cannot get a sixel graphics image and display it on such a terminal.
I was just going to paint the bitmap canvas into the Terminal.app window, that should work right?
Not sure what you mean here. Sixel is a bitmap format. On pixel per bit. Six bits per byte. Each group of six pixels are done vertically, but the stream of bytes are done horizontally. So you get one band six pixels wide at a time. If you want to do colors with sixel you need to do several passes. Each pass do one color.
The VT330 and VT340 were the last terminals who could deal with this. Obviously a lot of DEC printers also did sixel graphics.
The soft fonts on the other hand defines characters. You can have a maximum of 96 characters defined. So that is one limit. Each character however, can look any way you want. The software that converts gif for a VT320 finds common patterns to decide what characters to define, and then use those characters to paint the picture. So there are obviously going to be imperfections in the picture when viewed on a VT320.
How to paint any kind of graphics into Terminal.app windows are beyond me. But if you want to play with soft fonts, or sixel graphis (or ReGIS), you need to intercept the incoming byte stream to Terminal.app, and then interpret that stuff to pull out what you are expected to display.
Johnny
To point out a few (maybe obvious) things.
Sixel graphics is not the same as soft fonts. Soft fonts are defined in a very sixel-like format, but you cannot get a sixel graphics image and display it on such a terminal.
I was just going to paint the bitmap canvas into the Terminal.app window, that should work right?
Not that I've done any OS X development to speak of.
On 2013-09-18 10:23, Sampsa Laine wrote:
If you're looking for real world examples then Google is your friend. There is a program floating around that converts gifs to sixel graphics that can be displayed using the soft character set on VT320 terminals.
Regards, Tim.
Yup, I converted some GIFs using NETPBM to Sixel graphics.
I wish there was a Mac or Windows terminal emulator capable of showing them..
Did you checkout VTstar? That runs on Windows. Although I'm not sure of the latest version it will work on. I believe it works with Vista. Here is the link anyway:
Sadly it doesn't work either. I'm tempted to write some kind of shim that would capture ReGIS / Sixel escape sequences and draw them on Terminal.app.
The protocols are pretty simple.
To point out a few (maybe obvious) things.
Sixel graphics is not the same as soft fonts. Soft fonts are defined in a very sixel-like format, but you cannot get a sixel graphics image and display it on such a terminal.
The soft fonts do indeed differ between the terminals. There are some limited backward compatibility between them, but that is best left alone. The differences are pretty much just a question of different resolution, or size of the character cell if you want to put it that way.
Also, I think a couple of extra parameters were added to the escape sequence along the way, but nothing really significant.
The OS do not really have to do anything in relation to this. It's just like any other font on the terminal. You can switch between them using escape sequences, and the OS is none the wiser.
I've designed fonts for pretty much all VT models, in both 80 and 132 column format. I did this for the Z-machine font, which I used with my Z-machine emulator when playing Beyond Zork.
And so, yes, I have a font editor. This have been mentioned before on the list. It can be found at MIM::DU:[FED]. Written in C (not by me originally], converted to DECUS C, and adapted to handle most VT models. Free to play with if people want...
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 2013-09-18 02:08, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:
On Sep 17, 2013, at 7:25 PM, Bob Armstrong <bob at jfcl.com> wrote:
...
Many LK-xxx keyboards
I have a VT501 but no keyboard for that (LK201 has the wrong plug). Do you have something compatible?
Did you mean a VT510 Paul?
I assume you know that a normal PC keyboard with a PS/2 connector works? You don't get all the right keys, but at least you can use it.
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 2013-09-18 02:07, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:
On Sep 17, 2013, at 7:28 PM, Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com> wrote:
Hello!
Bob how big is the DELNI? And the DECserver-100? I am always
interested in new gear.
Those are both 19 inch rack devices, 2 or 3 U, forgot which. Not very deep, less than 19 inches as I recall.
They can both be rack mounted, but the default for them is to be standalone. But the outer plastic shell can be removed, and brackets attached.
If someone wants to get a picture, just search the net. There are plenty.
The DELNI and DS100 are the same height and width, but I'm trying to remember if the DELNI isn't even shallower than the DS. They are both way less than 19" anyway.
They are both pretty light. Mostly air inside.
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
