Linux - perfect replacement for desktops

[Tom Aldridge]

On Thu, Jul 26, 2007 at 09:12:05PM -0500, Tom Aldridge wrote:
 > > I guess it's somewhat off the original subject, but I am wondering
 > > Walter, if your users will also be running filePro sessions via
 > > gnome-terminal, xterm, Putty (for Linux) or other, from their desktop
 > > back to a server running linux filePro?
 > >
 > > I've been doing that very thing at numerous locations for several 
years
 > > but have never been completely happy with the emulation. Therefore, 
I am
 > > interested in what others are doing for filepro users in terms of
 > > terminal emulation for users running Linux desktops.

Then Jay R. Ashworth asked:
Very specifically what don't you like?

Jay, Mark and others:

OK I'm probably giving more information than is necessary for you guys. 
But I'm a restaurant owner not an expert in this stuff so bear with me. 
Mark wrote some nice filePro apps for me many years ago. After that I 
learned filePro (to a point) via John Esac at classes he held and STN at 
their classes, Nancy Palmquist from time-to-time, trial and error, and 
via this list. I wrote (cobbled together) many filePro applications that 
work for my business, including payroll at our headquarters and all 
kinds of other office productivity apps. There we use winxp for desktops 
to a Fedora Core 1 server (behind a firewall) running filePro. Okay 
don't yell to loud at me for that.

At the restaurants I run Fedora Core1 boxes. The manager clicks on their 
little Gnome desktop icon and gets their Manager Menu containing a bunch 
of filePro apps like Scheduling, Cash Reconciliation and others. I'm 
using Gnome-terminal 2.4.0.1 and Vt102 termcap. If I remember correctly, 
I messed with the VT102 termcap years ago when I set this up to get all 
the Fkeys working nicely, as well as delete key, etc. The icon runs 
"gnome-terminal --command "ssh login at server.com", auto logs in and 
presents them with an input popup to log into their manager menu. Works 
great. Printing of reports to the restaurant managers is via cups back 
to their local printer from our headquarters.

Finally the issue. Wherever the cursor sits in the field, if they arrow 
right to leave the field or press enter to leave the field -- no 
problem, but if they arrow up or arrow down to leave the field, wherever 
the cursor sits, it blanks out the character at that spot. So if in 
field x they enter 100.00 and press enter fine, but if for whatever 
reason they return to that field and then arrow up or down while sitting 
on one of the digits in that field, it blanks out (cosmetically only) 
the character or digit in that field.

That's the problem. It's an annoyance. If they had reason to move around 
a given field several times, leave it and return to it, more and more 
characters go blank (cosmetically).

I have tried a new version of Gnone terminal on a fedora core 6 box and 
on an Ubuntu box with the same results. I've tried Putty for linux but 
can't seem to get the termcap issues correct in terms of Fkeys, and 
other display issues. I like the old SCOansi keyboard for delete key, 
etc. If I remember I can get that with Putty but can't get all the Fkeys 
and the line at line 21 to show correctly "ln = repeat(chr("196"),"80"); 
show("21","1") ln"

I've tried Xterm too with incomplete results.

So that's it. Any ideas?

Thanks so much for listening.

Tom Aldridge