Converting old file pro processing tables

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Stockler" <bob at trebor.iglou.com>
To: "fplist2" <filepro-list at seaslug.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2006 7:51 PM
Subject: Re: Converting old file pro processing tables


> Brian wrote:
>
> | Two problems:
> |
> | $PFME changes the behaviour of filepro input prompts and so you should 
> hard
> | code it in the script to match the expectations of the string you are
> | feeding dcabe.
>
> ISFAIK, PFME applies only to {dr]clerk, and NOT to [dr]cabe.

It definitely affects cabe.
The only reason it's in my script is because it bit me.

> | $TERM changes what is really correct in place of EscEsc, so you should 
> hard
> | code TERM=<something known in everyones fp/termcap> in the script too.
> | I should have just done that myself instead of making a variable and 
> telling
> | the user in comments that they have to edit that variable.
>
> Also, ISFAIK, filePro on UNIX recognizes [Escape][Escape] as SAVE,
> so echoing "\033\033" to it should suffice no matter what TERM is
> set to.

Anyone is free to write or modify a fp/termcap entry such that P4=<something 
other than esc esc>
And if TERM=<that termcap entry>, then esc esc has no special meaning, or 
worse, it may have some completely unrelated and unexpected special meaning.
And people do do it. And they do it to existing well known entries like 
"ansi" without changing their name to something like "myansi", so when you 
add this to your script I suggest you don't use "TERM=ansi" either. Pick 
something else from fp/termcap that both comes stock with everyone's filepro 
installation, and is not used by most people.
ansi comes stock and has esc esc, but it's among the most used entry, and so 
it's among the most likely to be site-customized so you can't rely on it.

I thought there was a nice minimalist termcap entry that just did plain 
lower ascii with no colors that would be good for exactly this kind of 
thing, and cron jobs and cgi scripts, but I don't see it.
Maybe I made one at some point and lost it.

I also thought it was possible to put a termcap entry itself right into the 
variable TERMCAP (which normally holds a filename like /etc/termcap if it's 
defined at all)
I think Xenix used to do that by default from the tset command in ~/.profile 
? Actually I think sco still does it by default but I've been ripping tset 
out of the template .profile before adding users for so long I forgot 
exactly what a completely stock system does anymore.
If filepro understands that, then you could really avoid all risk by just 
supplying your own termcap entry in TERMCAP and then set TERM or PFTERM to 
use it and it wouldn't matter what the users fp/termcap has or doesn't have.
That would make it a lot easier to deal with any other special keys too, you 
could simply define a termcap that used all keystroks of your choosing and 
you wouldn't have to capture them with tput or hope the users system is the 
same as yours.

Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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