[HECnet] TOPS-20 terminal and escape sequences

[Dave McGuire]

On 10/29/2012 04:07 PM, Jordi Guillaumes i Pons wrote:
Now that there is some TOPS-20 chatter in the list, I have a question for the experts...

My VAXen have ANNOUNCE banners with escape sequences so the screen gets erased, some text gets highlighted, some other gets reversed and so on. I have tried to do a similar banner for my TOPS20 system, but the <ESC> characters don't get to the terminal. It is like the terminal driver cleans up the stream somehow:

@type announce.txt
[2J[0;0H[1m                         HECNet - The Hobbyist DECnet network
[7;1m
[27m
                  [[[[[[[[     [[[[   [[[[[[[[[[   [[       [[   [[[[[[[[[[   [[[[[[[
                    [[       [[     [[             [[             [[   [[             [[                     [[[
                    [[       [[     [[             [[               [[[[               [[                   [[                   

That is just the beginnign of the banner, but you can get the idea. The question is:

Is there any way to configure the terminal driver so the <ESC> don't get cleared?

  I don't know, but I can tell you that ANNOUNCE banners with embedded
escape sequences were always frowned upon when I was a commercial VMS admin.

                          -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA