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I want to make my tty driver vt100 compatible, but I can't seem to find the specification anywhere - does anyone (a) have it or (b) know where to find it apart from a google search?

Hi,

JamesM wrote:I want to make my tty driver vt100 compatible, but I can't seem to find the specification anywhere - does anyone (a) have it or (b) know where to find it apart from a google search?

AFAIK the "VT???" standards relate to model numbers used for virtual terminals made by one company (Digital Equipment Corporation). There's a fairly good list of the original information on this web site.

Also AFAIK, most software that says it supports "VT???" actually doesn't - it supports a subset of "VT???" and/or a superset of "VT???" (for e.g. things like alternate character sets, double width and underline often don't work even though they are part of VT100, and things like ANSI colour codes sometimes do work even though they aren't part of VT100).

In the end, you may need to choose between true VT100 compatability, or software that actually works.

A good test is to see if your software works with HyperTerminal (when HyperTerminal is set to "VT100"). This is a good test for 2 reasons - a lot of people will probably want to use HyperTerminal because it comes with Windows; but also because HyperTermal really does suck (if your software works with HyperTerminal then it'll probably work on anything else that claims to be "VT100 compatible")...


Cheers,

Brendan

http://www.termsys.demon.co.uk/vtansi.htm

I'm guessing to find a complete listing of VT100 escape codes requires a call to DEC.

Yayyak wrote:I'm guessing to find a complete listing of VT100 escape codes requires a call to DEC.

Or, one checks Wikipedia, with a link to this excellent site: http://vt100.net with amongst others:

vt100.net wrote:VT100 User Guide (EK-VT100-UG). This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to construct a VT100 emulator. If you use this as the specification and test your implementation with vttest, you won’t go far wrong.

Seriously guys, it's not that hard...


JAL

Well I could bloody find it! There's ten thousand PDFs on that site!!

I read the complete specification with codes a few weeks ago. with a little googling and some intelligent browsing it really wasn't that hard. If I find it I'll be sure to post it here.

JamesM wrote:Well I could bloody find it! There's ten thousand PDFs on that site!! :)

Yeah, but the ones you need are in a neat list, just use the one I linked to above :).


JAL