Back in the old days there wasnt just one type of VT100 terminal
and most of them offered choices.
The -am probably stands for auto-margin. the -bot-s probably stands
for status bar at the bottom of the screen.
The whole terminal naming thing is an experience in the hoary history
of terminals and where they came from. It used to be something to
brag about how Unix could handle just about any type of terminal.
Now, I don't think so many of us are as impressed.
at386 somehow got to be the System V Unix label for the console
(an Intel type Monitor). Be forewarned that Sun ("sun") and
SCO have their own. :)
A good place for hints is in the even older and Hoarier /etc/termcap
file, which happens to have some halfway decent descriptions. On
a system that was put together well, there will be a corresponding
entry in /usr/lib/terminfo/?/* and inside /etc/termcap.
Terminfo is an evolutionary step from termcap. So, if you can follow
the much more approachable termcap entries, you need only learn a
few things to keep up with terminfo.
The good side is that you can create one with your picked name and
tune it yourself to perfectly do what you want it to do. If not,
the best thing is to move as close to the generic vt100 as possible.
When you telnet out to other sites, you can only really expect vt100
term defs to be stable and correct. It is hit-or-miss otherwise.
Color can and does work. Most of the apps out there don't use it
because there is no standard and then you have to hand the user
a thick instruction book on how to make it work. ANSI color is
pretty well defined in the BBS world. Maybe you can make something
on the ANSI stuff that will work for a bunch of people. Of course
you can throw out any sense of making the vt100 people happy, or
you can do both at the same time.
>I am wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of determining
>what the above noted terminal drivers (files?) mean? Where in the docs
>I might find out what the difference between vt100 and vt100-bot-s and/
>or at386?? I dial into a UNIX system using a comm program emulating
>vt100. I am curious if I change that if I could introduce color into
>the screen display, etc . . .
>I've been through most (if not all) man pages on the system for UNIX
>and have not found any indication as to what all of the hundreds (thousands) of files might mean.
>Any information/help would be greatly appreciated.
>-Bill
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