Why magic cookies? (was: Alternate character modes...)

[Roger Nelson - Grad Student]

In article <3XX9VY1 at xds13.ferranti.com> peter at ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>Some televideo-braindamage style terminals allow you to set the attribute
>character width to 0, allowing you to write a character in the magic cookie
>cell. So the magic cookies don't show up on the screen but still do weird
>stuff like set the rest of the screen to the attribute.

1. Why did terminal manufactures go with magic cookies?  The magic cookies
   make display attributes useless.

2. In working with TVI910, TVI912c, and HP700/41 terminals, I've tried
   playing around with the terminfo (HP/UX) magic cookie glitch settings and 
   haven't been able to work around the problem.

   I haven't been able to get rid of the magic cookies when using Esc
   codes in local mode either.  The picture on the TVI manuals show a nice 
   data entry screen using all the display attributes, but I see no 
   possible way to make that data entry screen, how did they do it?