Still Cursing at Cookies

Roger Droz roger at .uucp
Wed Aug 29 07:06:58 AEST 1990


(Apologies if you read my posting last week.  We lost our news feed for several
days, so I missed any replies that may have been posted.  Please respond
be mail, as that seems more reliable to our site these days.  You may
want to post your reply as well.  I recall someone else asking a similar
question last week.)

The clever subject line shows that I still have some sense of humor left
after trying to get a "magic cookie" terminal to work with curses under
Interactive Unix 386, release 3.2. 

The terminals in question are a Wyse 50 and an Lear Siegler ADM 11.
The terminfo for the ADM 11 follows:

adm11|lsi adm11,
	xon,
	cols#75, lines#24, xmc#1,
	bel=^G, clear=\E*, cr=\r, cub1=\b, cud1=\n, cuf1=\f,
	cup=\E=%p1%'\s'%+%c%p2%'\s'%+%c, cuu1=^K, ed=\EY,
	el=\ET, home=^^, ind=\n, kcub1=\b, kcud1=\n, kcuf1=\f,
	kcuu1=^K, rmso=\EG0, smso=\EG4,


This terminfo works on our Unisys System V just fine.  Under
Interactive, curses emits a cub1 after depositing the "magic cookie" to
activate standout mode.  The next character overstrikes the magic
cookie, which removes the command to go into standout mode.  Thus
standout mode does not function on the Interactive system while it works
fine on the Unisys system. 

Specifying xmc#0 sort of works, but many non-magic cookie terminfos use
xmc#0 to indicate that attributes do not take up space on the screen. 
On both the Wyse 50 and the ADM 11 the "magic cookie" that sets up the
attribute visibly takes up a space.

/usr/bin/less correctly compensates for the magic cookie taking up one
space on the screen.  If the terminfo is changed to xmc#0, less will
output an extra space on either side of highlighted words in man pages.

This is beginning to look a lot like a bug in curses to me.  (I know,
the bug is in the "magic cookie terminal" for being a "magic cookie terminal.)

(Readers familiar with termcap substitute smg#1 and smg#0 in the above
discussion.)
____________
               Roger Droz       UUCP: uw-beaver!gtisqr!roger
()       ()    Maverick MICRoSystems / Global Technology International
 (_______)     Mukilteo, WA 
  (     )      
   |   |       Disclaimer: "We're all mavericks here: 
   |   |                    Each of us has our own opinions,
   (___)                    and the company has yet different ones!"



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