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1995-03-17
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81 lines
File: AMIGA.2556
From: woods@glacier.ARPA (Don Woods)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: AmigaDisplay (AmigaTerm --> display emulator)
Date: 28 Mar 86 09:33:08 GMT
Reply-To: woods@glacier.UUCP (Don Woods)
Organization: Xerox Corporation
Lines: 1155
Since my old display terminal was giving up the ghost, I latched onto
Michael Mounier's "AmigaTerm" program and turned it into a "smart display"
program that I call "AmigaDisplay". AmigaDisplay is willing to behave like
a "dumb terminal", i.e., one with no special functions except for "clear
screen" (^L), or it will emulate a DataMedia 2500. The dm2500 is in most
Unix termcap files, but if you'd prefer something else it shouldn't be hard
to change that part of the program.
The file send/capture menu commands now use Requesters to ask for the file
name, instead of injecting characters into the midst of the displayed text.
For the same reason, there is no indication given when a file-send
operation finishes. (If for some reason you can't tell when it's done, you
can find out by checking whether the menu offers a "Start Send" or "Cancel
Send" command.) The send feature offers to change \n (line feed, ^J) into
\r (carriage return, ^M), since the Amiga uses \n as line terminators but
many systems want \r instead. The capture feature offers the option of
including control characters in the captured file; captured control
characters are translated into visible characters using the "^" notation.
I added an audible bell. You even get to choose among different volumes
and pitches depending on whether there are people trying to sleep nearby.
(No, the program doesn't automatically detect sleeping people.) You can
also opt for a visible bell (screen flash).
Some of the new features probably aren't of much use to people anywhere but
Stanford, but those features shouldn't get in anyone's way. E.g., the
SU-AI machine uses 9-bit input; two extra "shift" keys control the 8th and
9th bits. AmigaDisplay emulates this using the ALT and AMIGA keys. If you
just want 7-bit characters, don't hold down the ALT or AMIGA keys while
you're typing. Also, AmigaDisplay looks for a font named SAIL/8, which has
various special characters hidden in codes $80-$9F. SAIL/8 also includes
slightly cleaner versions of some other characters, so that characters
don't run into each other as often. If you want a copy of the font, read
on; I'm going to mail an assembler source that creates it per the example
in the ROM Kernel Manual. But if AmigaDisplay can't find the font, it just
uses the default font, so you don't really need it. I also constructed an
icon for the program, but I'm not sure how to distribute that to the net.
AmigaDisplay interprets the keyboard pretty much as you might expect, but
some of the more unusual keys produce characters that are frequently used
at Stanford. E.g., cursor-down and cursor-up produce ^L and ^K, ENTER
produces ^J, and HELP produces ^@ (NUL). The function keys produce short
sequences that SU-AI expands in various (user-specified) ways. All of
these key assignments are easy to change if you have something you'd rather
they do (e.g., map the up/down/left/right keys to EMACS commands).
The only AmigaTerm function I left out was the xmodem stuff. None of the
hosts I use support it, and my phone lines are good enough (well, at 300
baud anyway) that I could get by with just file send/capture. If someone
wanted to add that stuff back, it wouldn't be hard. I've structured the
program to be pretty modular and extensible. Oh yeah, it also no longer
lets you change the window size; it takes over the whole screen to give you
24x80. It has to take away the menu bar to get the room it needs, but the
mouse menu button still brings up the menus, and one menu includes commands
to move the AmigaDisplay screen to the back or front of the window stack,
so you can get at other windows while AmigaDisplay is running. That's
where the Close Window command is hidden, too.
The source for AmigaDisplay illustrates some potentially useful techniques.
For instance, it includes a couple of fairly short subroutines that let you
construct an entire menu using just two lines: one that lists the menu
strings and one to build the menu. And as mentioned above, it includes
examples of audio and requesters. The source is split across 4 files: main
program, menus/requesters, display, and audio. All four files are
concatenated below. The SAIL/8 font will be mailed separately.
NOTE: I do NOT read netnews, since my primary host is not a usenet machine.
So if you want to get in touch with me, you'll have to send mail directly.
My primary address is Woods.pa@Xerox.ARPA, but if you can't force that
through your mailer you can send to ...!glacier!woods or to
...!decwrl!parcvax!woods and it'll forward to me.