FilePro from Linux xterm or other terminal?

[Bill Campbell]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010, Bruce Easton wrote:
>On 7/28/10 3:23 PM, Bill Campbell wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010, Walter Vaughan wrote:
>>    
>>> Bill Campbell wrote:
>>>
>>>      
>>>> What do people do who want to run FilePro from Linux desktops?
>>>> The xterm termcaps don't seem really workable with crazy colors
>>>> and key support (or perhaps I don't know what I'm doing :-).
>>>>
>>>> I know that Ericom's PowerTerm is available for Linux.  Are there
>>>> any other terminal programs what work well with FP?
>>>>
>>>> Bill
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        
>>> Putty works just fine. Use same settings you would for
>>> windows client.
>>>      
>> Putty for Linux?  I had forgetten that was available.
>>
>> Not being a Windows user, I don't know what settings to use, but
>> I can play with it a bit.
>>
...
>I think one setting that I have always have had to have set for filepro 
>is under 'Window', then 'Translation' in putty.  The top select box 
>should be set to CP437.  I use Snow Leopard's default 'Terminal' app for 
>connecting to various *nix boxes running filepro, and I think that 
>setting in the Terminal app is called 'Latin-US (DOS)'  (or at least 
>that seems to give similar behavior for fp needs).  There are some other 
>tweaks I had to do for the mac terminal short-cuts that I made (like 
>giving me back F9-F12 for fp use), but I don't think those have any 
>correlation to putty.

OK, I have been working on this for a while now, trying putty,
gnome-terminal, and xterm with mixed results.

I have eliminated putty, largely because it seems quite limited
in the font selection, resulting in a tiny window that I find
difficult to use even on a relatively small 19in monitor at
1024x768 resolution.  It's also somewhat more difficult to use
compared to xterm and gnome-terminal which can invoke commands in
the startup using things like ``xterm -e ssh user at system''.

I find the gnome-terminal somewhat better in that it provides
larger fonts, but they're still somewhat limited compared to what
I can get using an xterm, and I can also set foreground and
background colors easily on the command line with xterms with
options like ``-bg LightSkyBlue''.  Perhaps one can do the same
thing with gnome-terminal, but I don't know how (yet).

I am adding an xterm-linux entry to a local copy of the fptermcap
file to be sure that FPtech updates don't nuke my changes, and
putting a slightly hacked version of the ``pf'' startup script in
/usr/local/bin which looks at then environment to set the
environment variable TERM=xterm-linux where appropriate.


The things I'm doing with the xterm-linux entries include:

  1.  Eliminating the terminal initialization string which sets the wierd
      colors, leaving the xterm window with whatever foreground and
      background colors the user selects.  This also eliminates the need to
      reset the xterm after exiting FilePro to get the screen colors back
      to the user's definition of normal.

  2.  Add ``GZ=~'' to the termcap so that the field ending drawing
      character is a tiny dot instead of a question mark.

  3.  Fix the function key mappings so the F1->F4 key codes are interpreted
      properly instead of using the ancient PF key codes as found on the
      old Wyse and VT100 terminals which only had 4 function keys.

  4.  Eliminate the use of function keys > F7 to avoid conflicts with the
      Mac OS X use of these keys, using control key sequences in their
      place.

One thing I have not been able to figure out is why FilePro seems
to be ignoring the ``LY=Ctrl-C'' entry in the termcap, but says
to hit the ``DEL'' key to exit various functions.

BTW:  I'm testing here on FP 5.6.

Bill
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