These demonstration files show off terminal emulator support of the MS Kermit terminal emulator program circa 1990 which was VT320 compatible with some VT340 extensions. Of particular interest to us are the TEK 4010 and sixel graphics. (Note that there are no REGIS tests as, unlike a true VT340, Kermit did not support Regis graphics.)
Most of the demo files can just be cated to the screen. The one
exception is tek.c which generates tek.tst (which gets cated).
Combination of tek and sixel drawing created by WordPerfect. Does not work on a genuine VT340.
Note that this file appears to be using sixels within TEK mode, which should not work since The VT340 manual states that "The terminal ignores any other escape sequences received in [4010/4014] mode." Oddly, Kermit appears to be trying to be compatible with WordPerfect 5.0 (VMS/Ultrix) which used the VT340's graphics capabilities to preview figures and pages. Is it possible some other DEC terminal did allow mixing and TEK and escape sequences? Or was this file created just for Kermit?
by Joe Doupnik » Tue, 09 Jan 1990 09:52:43
In a week or so, +/-, Columbia Univ will announce MS Kermit 3.0 whichhas support for WordPerfect/VMS/Ultrix 5.0, especially providing figure and page previewing in full graphics mode on the IBM PC machine. While the terminal emulator is listed as a VT320 it has the Sixel material of VT340's and is designed to work smoothly with WP/5. That means one can run WP on the VAX and let users do all the normal things from their PC, and use the standard PC template for WP. There is an accompanying file, named WP30.INI, which sets up the keyboard for WP and has extensive comments about what it does and how to change it. MSK 3.0 also can dump a graphics screen in TIFF 5 format for importation into WP and the standard D.T.Pub. programs. This version of Kermit is in beta test now and will surface formally within two weeks. Expect the usual crunch on Bitnet channels when this happens. Joe D.
A version of DEMO.TEK modified by hackerb9 to only contain sixel graphics, no TEK commands.
Note that the original Kermit demo presumes
DECSDM
(Sixel Display Mode) is on, which is always true for MS Kermit. The
escape sequence to enable (Esc [ ? 80 h) and disable
(Esc [ ? 80 l) DECSDM have been added at the beginning and end
of the file.
Also, the demo presumes that pixels are always square, which is not
actually the default for sixels. For that reason, the previously
omitted Macro parameter in each sixel header was changed to "9"
to select 1:1 pixels (Esc P 9 ; 1 ; q).
Note that this file is a good example of the persistence of the sixel palette. There are technically 16 sixel images in this file and the palette is set in the first, used in the the next 14, then changed in the last which updates the colors previously drawn.
Show all character sets available on this terminal. (Including "Technical")
This file originally started with Esc c, but that causes a genuine
VT340 to reboot, so they have been replaced with Esc [ H Esc [ J
which clears the screen.
Test ANSI colors which works with Kermit, but shows up as black and white on a genuine VT340.
Joe Smith's VT100 series text torture test. Double-width, double-height, blinking, underlining, box drawing chars. This doesn't work very well on Kermit, but works perfectly on the VT340.
Starts out with a slow, smooth scroll of text that most terminal emulators blaze past faster than the eye can see.
A vector map of the USA. The original file did not start with turning
on Tektronix mode, so that has been added: Esc [ ? 38 h. Note that this
file switches out of Tektronix mode at the end, so the map will be
erased as soon as it finishes drawing.
A C program that generates a TEK file that does some basic line drawing tests. Nothing terribly complicated.
The original tek.c wrote to the file
tek.tst, but that was inconvenient. Hackerb9 modified tek.c so that it
outputs the TEK file directly to stdout. Additionally, if given the -P
option, it uses the Tektronix hardcopy command (Esc ^W) to send the
graphics to the printer port in sixel format. By connecting the
VT340's printer port to another serial port on the host, the file can
be capture for a screenshot. tek.six
gcc tek.c -lm && ./a.out -P
This program shows some differences between the way Kermit implemented Tek 4010/4014 emulation and the way DEC did.
-
According to the Kermit document TEKEMU.TXT, in addition to using DEC private mode #38 to enter Tek mode, Kermit recognizes the Tek clear screen command,
Esc ^L. That explains why this program did not work initially on a VT340 and just dumped a bunch of ASCII gobbledygook on the screen. Hackerb9 had to addEsc [ ? 38 hto enter Tek mode at the beginning andEsc [ ? 38 lto exit at the end. -
Note that the ANSI color codes Kermit is using do not work on a VT340. This appears to be a Kermit extension. As mentioned above for DEMO.TEK, the VT340's Tek mode is wholly separate from normal operation and the terminal (mostly) ignores any non-Tek escape sequences received. The exception is when in Tek's "Alpha mode" (
Esc ^_) in which the alphanumeric portion of any non-Tek escape sequence is printed to the screen literally. This is why ";33m" shows up after the words "shallow fan" on a VT340. -
The appear to be an extraneous line before the first fan and a dot before the words "The end." That is likely due to the ANSI color codes.
Kermit's .HGR files are not useful for VT340 testing as they are for Heathkit H19 emulation. Nevertheless, they may be of interest, so here are the two HEATH demonstration files that were in the Kermit source code.
[These] are demo files for various features found in MS-Kermit 3.0 and later, like Heath graphics, TEK4010 graphics, and VT320 emulation. [...]
For example, USA.TEK will show off MS-Kermit's Tektronix 4010 capabilities. To view the demo, start MS-DOS Kermit and put it in the right frame of mind via SET TERM ...; then REPLAY the file just created. E.g.,
SET TERM TEK REPLAY USA.TEKA list of demo files as of 1 March, 1990, follows:
Network name True name SET TERM ... MSDCAS.BOO CASTLE.HGR HEATH MSDPAT.BOO PATTERN.HGR HEATH MSDCHA.BOO CHARDEMO.VT VT320 MSDCOL.BOO COLORS.VT VT320 MSDFEA.BOO FEATURES.VT VT320 MSDEMO.BOO DEMO.TEK TEK MSDUSA.BOO USA.TEK TEKMore demo files welcome!