[RndTbl] Just because I'm pedantic...

[Adam Thompson]

Just because I'm pedantic about this sort of thing:

In the current ncurses master source file (which is used by at least 
OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, every Linux variant I know of & probably lots 
more, but I don't keep track now), I'm listed as the author of the vt320, 
vt320-nam, vt320-w, vt320-w-nam, z340, z340-nam, dt80-sas (formerly known 
as dtx-sas), and as the contributor of supporting information for the ifmr 
entry.  So that's technically eight entries, but really only two base 
definitions.

If you browse the source, you'll see that DEC's official vt320 entry 
consisted of "use=vt220".  Absolutely useless entry, especially since the 
keyboards on the vt220 and the vt320 weren't identical and therefore the 
function-key labels didn't quite all match up.  This made it almost 
impossible to use the official vt320 entry with any app that used function 
keys.

I also note that there existed two alternate vt320 implementations before 
mine, all substantially identical to each other - I believe mine was part 
of a comprehensive vt220/vt240/vt320/vt340/vt420 set I submitted, so it 
was constructed somewhat differently than the current version.  The 
Kermit-based entries didn't get the function keys right for a real vt320, 
either, IIRC.  And the version of ncurses installed on ccu at the time 
probably wasn't quite up-to-date; I'm fairly sure I hadn't seen either of 
the other two before writing my own.

On the previous subject of Wyse terminals, reading through the comments in 
terminfo.src reveals that Wyse couldn't really make a substantially 
bug-free terminal until the Wyse 370 or thereabouts.  This despite being 
the second-largest terminal mfgr in the world during the wy50/wy60 era.  I 
guess this would make them the hardware equivalent of Microsoft, just 10 
years earlier.

-Adam Thompson
 athompso at athompso.net