Re: Looking for suggestions on WY-325ES support

[L. Dee Holtsclaw]

On Tue, 2002-11-12 at 19:52, Daniel Weaver wrote:
> At 05:17 PM 11/12/2002 -0500, L. Dee Holtsclaw wrote:
> >We've got several Wyse 325ES color terminals here. There is an
> >NCurses-supplied terminfo but it has no color support included.
> 
> I am the guy that wrote the terminfo's for all the Wyse terminals.
> All the terminals, except the wy325.  It was designed after I left
> the company.  It was a low end color terminal.  To the best of my
> knowledge the wy325 is a wy350 with more personalities.  The wy350
> has a particular annoying color scheme.  Here is what I put into the
> terminfo file about the 350:
> 
> #
> #       The Wyse 350 is a Wyse 50 with color.
> #       Unfortunately this means that it has magic cookies.
> #       The color attributes are designed to overlap the reverse, dim and
> #       underline attributes.  This is nice for monochrome applications
> #       because you can make underline stuff green (or any other color)
> #       but for true color applications it's not so hot because you cannot
> #       mix color with reverse, dim or underline.
> #           To further complicate things one of the attributes must be
> #       black (either the foreground or the background).  In reverse video
> #       the background changes color with black letters.  In normal video
> #       the foreground changes colors on a black background.
> #           This terminfo uses some of the more advanced features of curses
> #       to display both color and blink.  In the final analysis I am not
> #       sure that the wy350 runs better with this terminfo than it does
> #       with the wy50 terminfo (with user adjusted colors).
> #
> 
> If the Wyse uses the same color support as the Wyse 350 you are not
> going to be happy.

I'm afraid you're correct but I've seen this terminal display more
combinations than that (i.e. non-black fg & bg) and w/out any magic
cookies. This was using ANSI sequences instead of native emulation in VI
but other stuff was giving trouble...
> 
> >
> >The real problem, however, is that there's no way to distinguish between
> >the left-arrow key and backspace or the down-arrow and a line-feed. I
> >presume the person(s) who designed the native emulation were either
> >total morons or didn't have enough coffee that day.
> 
> The 325 matches all the other Wyse ASCII products:  50, 60, 150 etc.
> At the time the 325 came out it was just a matter of compatibility.
> 
> >
> >Anyway, my choices seem to be:
> >(1) Reprogram the left-arrow and down-arrow keys on every terminal
> >(which apparently cannot be done remotely).
> 
> Not recommended.

Yeah, not my first choice either.

> 
> >or
> >(2) Setup the terminal to use VT220 emulation and bastardize a terminfo
> >defn to include color support. This requires a Programmer's Reference
> >for the terminal but it's still in production and I should have one
> >ordered within a day or two.
> 
> This may be your best bet.
> 
> >
> >So, has anyone done anything like this or have any related suggestions?
> 
> Do your best to specify the Wy-370.  This terminal has much better color
> support.

I'd love to but Wyse has discontinued that model. In fact, the 325
appears to be the *only* non-Winterm color product they still offer.
They appear to migrating everything to WinTerms and I think that's
grotesquely stupid (unwyse?<sic>), but that's just my opinion and I've
been wrong before...

> 
> I don't have a wy325 to test.  Try the VT-220 personality and make sure
> that it supports color.  The VT-220 after all is a B&W terminal.

There's an "Enhanced" option that is supposed to provide color support
under the VT220 emulation but the available docs are confusing at the
very least. I'm going to wait until I have the Programmer's manual in
hand before I tackle that option.

Thanks!

Dee