Re: Overheard on the scanner

Howard S Shubs <howard@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> That's right.  I am using a DEC VT420 terminal.  It can display 24
>> lines and 80 columns of ISO-8859-1 (extended ASCII) characters, and
>> can display them normal, bold, underlined, inverse, or blinking.
>> It does not display any colors except amber and black.  It does not
>> display pictures.  It does not produce sounds, except a simple
>> beep.  What is so strange about that?

> It can do more than that.  IIRC, and I have one on top of my VAX in
> the next room, it can display up to 132x48 characters!

True.  But even at 80x24 I have to squint to distinguish certain
characters.  More useful to me is that it sup****ts two simultaneous
sessions.  I can have one to my ISP and another to my PC.  More often
I leave the PC powered off and use the second session as a scratchpad.
For instance when I'm replying to messages as I am now, I keep a list
of the next few messages to be replied to on that scratchpad.

> And line graphics.  Hasn't anyone written a GIF-to-VT line graphics
> converter yet?

The line graphics are all vertical or horizontal lines which have
to be centered in the character cells.  They are intended to be used
for forms entry.  They can also be used for things such as mazes,
pentominoes, or crude versions of Pacman or Tetris.  But not for
general graphics.

> That's not to include the SIXEL graphics issue, but even then, it
> could only display the two colors you mentioned.  Look up "loadable
> character set" for details.

I know.  About 15 years ago I impressed my boss by using them to
display the cor****ate logo in the corner of the screen.  I suppose
I could write code to display a gif or jpeg as a small monochrome
no-gray-scale image in the corner of the screen.  (I can't have a
full-screen image since the character set isn't big enough.)  It
would be a lot of work and it wouldn't look very good.
-- 
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html
before emailing me.