[Coco] NITROS9 internal question on serial output control

[Neal Crook]

Bill,
thanks for your comments. It sounds as though my best approach for L1 is to
create a MINTED-derivative that uses ANSI/VT100 codes. Based on a quick
inspection of the source code, this will be a straight-forward and
satisfying project. You mention SCRED for L2. I note that SCRED is
documented on the NitrOS9 WIKI and has a level2/sys/scred.hp help file, but
it is not part of the NitrOS9 mercurial repository. Is SCRED freely
available or closed/commercial?
thanks
Neal.

On 1 November 2015 at 21:08, Bill Nobel <b_nobel at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Hey Niel,  to get terminal codes to work correctly on Nitros9, the Coco3
> Level 2 term codes will have to be ignored or dropped from the editor, they
> are built for the windowing system in Nitros9.  I have used the Level 2
> Scred utility that uses the Termcap file for the screen codes.  If the
> utility you are using uses a Termcap type file then you are laughing.
>
> Bill Nobel
>
> > On Nov 1, 2015, at 3:01 PM, Neal Crook <foofoobedoo at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I have Nitros9 Level 1 ported and running on my Multicomp FPGA-based 6809
> > system.
> >
> > I am trying to understand what I need to do in order to get a
> screen-based
> > editor like MINTED to work on this system.
> >
> > My current understanding is as follows. Corrections and other
> elucidations
> > welcome..
> >
> > 1. minted does cursor control (ie, draws characters at arbitrary points
> on
> > the screen) using
> > control codes like this:
> >
> > curoff       fcb        $05,$20
> > curon        fcb        $05,$21
> > clrlin       fcb        $0b
> > cls          fcb        $0c
> > home         fcb        $01
> > insline      fcb        $1f,$30
> > delline      fcb        $1f,$31
> >
> > 2. the complete set of these control codes is documented in "The NitrOS-9
> > Level 2 Windowing System" chapter 5, "text commands"
> >
> > 3. if I was running on a coco with a VDU, I might use term_vtg as my i/o
> > device, and the output from minted would be interpreted by eg vtio.dr and
> > covdg.io. Within those modules. the control codes are interpreted and
> used
> > to control the output to a memory-mapped screen.
> >
> > 4. if I was running on a coco and communicating across a serial port, I
> > might use t1_scbbt as my i/o device and output from minted would be
> > interpreted by scbbt.asm. Here is where my confusion starts. By
> inspection,
> > I don't see  scbbt.asm do any conversion of the output codes. Therefore,
> if
> > I connected to that serial port using a terminal emulator, would it
> > understand the control codes listed above (ie, are they a "known"
> standard,
> > if so what standard?)
> >
> > 5. or, is there some conversion capability in SCF (a termcap-like
> facility)
> > in which case, how s it controlled and is there some documentation that
> > I've missed?
> >
> > 6. if I want to talk to a VT100 (ie, ANSI standard escape codes) do I
> need
> > to modify the serial driver to detect the NitrOS-9 control codes and
> > convert them to ANSI codes?
> >
> > 7. in my particular case, I am not actually using scbbt.asm on my
> system, I
> > am using a 6850 driver that I wrote (well, "wrote" is rather a polite
> term;
> > it's currently an atrocious hack of  sc6551.asm). The principle is the
> same
> > though: sc6551.asm does not do any output conversion of the byte stream
> and
> > neither does my 6850 driver
> >
> > 8. if I wanted to use the same driver to talk to a dw4 server, I assume
> > that I would want to transfer literal byte streams with no output
> > conversions. Is there an existing flag I can use in the driver to
> > enable/disable conversion (ie so I can have some device descriptors that
> > use conversion and some device descriptors that do not, but all share the
> > same device driver
> >
> > thanks in advance for any explanations..
> >
> > Neal.
> >
> > --
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> > Coco at maltedmedia.com
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>
>
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