OT: broken/useless ansi - console driver??

[John Esak]

Okay JP says the at386ei termcap is niether broken or useless.  I disagree.
His explanation that it is merely the Unixware  something or another doesn't
quite address the situation... which as I see it is this.

You are working on the SCO OpenServer console... you are working fine with
nary a problem for just about 17 or so years!  Then one day, the new version
of SCO Open Server comes out and the console STOPS working properly in
nearly every significant way.  There is no explanation of how to make it
work like it used to work. There is no conversion provided to help you make
it work like it used to work. It is just provided completely broken and
non-working... notwithstanding what JP says about it.  Should you try using
the old ansi termcap or termio that you've been using for the past 17
years... nothing, graphics, nor color, nor just about anything works
correctly.

You spend hours working on application termcaps and gain very little
success. You find that the cursor can not actually, really be turned off.
You find that leaving any session turns the numlock key to a different
state.  You find that on some/many systems the background color goes red and
stays red no matter what you do.  Attributing all these hassles to your own
inabilities and incompetence is fine, but it doesn't get you anywhere.  For
someone to make the decision that the console will now work under this new
set of rules, and not take into consideration AT ALL that there is a
seventeen year history preceding this release is just unbelievably stupid,
and rank bush league.... not anything I at least would have said about SCO
in the past.  However, after trying to deal with the console problems for
long enough to get me this irritated, I finally resolved to just use
FacetWin and telnet/rlogin, other emulators like Anzio... instead of wasting
time doing the work that SCO should have done and provided *along* with this
major release.  To load a next-version release and not immediately be able
to run a program like filePro, which has run for the previous 17 years in
just the same way, or some adapted and specified way is simply ridiculous.

JP, what in the world does saying that the new OpenServer  version uses the
Unixware console  driver have to do with anything. Whoo cares?  The system
is not capable of running the ansi termcap provided out-of-the-box and this
was just a plain stupid oversight.  At the very least, a procedure for
converting to the new  stuff should have been provided.  Imagine how you
would have raked FP Technologies over the coals if they released a new
version of FP that simply did not work with either your old termcap or any
new one provided, and they also suggested no possible ways you might even
run the new version successfully.  I don't think you would be so calm about
it, saying Oh well this is the new wumpty-wump version of FP so it's all
fine.

John Esak




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John Esak
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