Steve, Waldek,
Many thanks for looking into these issues.
I've started looking briefly at the problems and have read your messages.
Until tonight I did not know this, from 'man termcap'
The termcap database is an obsolete facility for describing the
capabilities of character-cell terminals and printers. It is
retained only for capability with old programs; new programs should
use the terminfo(5) database and associated libraries.
I presume this implies a need to replace all uses of termcap in poplog with
terminfo. Unfortunately I am too far behind with other commitments, and also
insufficiently familiar with these details to be of much help.
Would it be useful to produce a proposed/agreed strategy for dealing with
the situation? It seems likely to involve a lot of work, and I wonder
whether sub-tasks could be enumerated and then volunteers invited take on
sub-tasks via this list.
One of the tasks could be to summarise what's already in the current
system, for which current poplog documentation should be useful even if it
isn't complete, especially these (presumably partly out of date) files
REF VED
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< OVERVIEW OF VED REF FILES >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
HELP VED
which includes this:
-- Terminal setups for different terminals
Other help files on specific terminals are available:
HELP * AUTOV55 for automatic recognition of a Visual 55
HELP * TVI for TELEVIDEO model 920C with VT-52 equivalence.
HELP * V55 for Visual 55
HELP * V550 for Visual 550
HELP * VEDCIFER for CIFER model 2634 (supercedes * CIFER)
HELP * VEDSUN for SUN monitor emulating a VDU
HELP * VEDWINSUN extends SUN facilities in a Shelltool window
HELP * VEDWYSE for WYSE emulating Televideo 925
HELP * VT220KEYS for Falco 5220, Televideo 9220, DEC VT220
HELP * VT52 for a 'dumb' VT52 type VDU
HELP * VT100 for a VT100 type terminal
Others:
HELP *MOREVT100 *SETV55KEYS *BBCVT100 BBCVT100KEYS *CIFERKEYS *NCDKEYS
*OLDVEDSUN *SETV55KEYS *V200 *V500 *V55KEYS *ANSIKEYS *VEDATARI
*VEDATARIKEYS *VEDKEY5 *VEDSUN *VEDWINSUN *VEDWYSE
*VT100KEYS *VT101KEYS
Much of this sounds obsolete to me.
Perhaps the existing
REF OBSOLETE
documentation could be extended with a list of Ved or interface documentation
items moved out of the main directory tree into a new subtree:
$usepop/pop/obsolete
(with appropriate sub-directories?)
At a later stage the obsolete tree could be removed from poplog, but
perhaps left available online somewhere in case anyone wants information
from it (or in case something turns out not to be obsolete...)
But I have no idea whether there are enough people with spare time to
contribute. The task sounds too big for just one or two people and I
won't be able to help much except as a tester, when requested.
(Among other things, I still haven't sorted out my own new computer
installation at home.)
I wonder whether there's a funding agency that could be persuaded to pay
for someone to work on poplog (for a year? two years?) and whether there is
anyone competent who would be willing to be bought out of other commitments
to do this?
Alan Montgomery (previous owner of ISL) may have ideas.
Aaron
