Subject: Wyse terminals, again

From: [email-masked] (Charles G Waldman)
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 96 23:42:13 EDT

I know this is a FAQ, but after searching through the archives
I see that it is also a SAQ (Seldom Answered Question).

The problem:  Bad behavior on Wyse-50 terminals.  I was assigned
the task of giving email access to about 75 users on our net, with
a wide variety of levels of expertise and a wide variety of terminals.
I installed Pine, thinking it would do the job.  However (no surprise)
the people running on Wyse-50's are really unhappy.  I don't care if
the arrow keys don't work, but the screens are garbled, the highligting
is all over the screen, etc.  I read the FAQ's which said "Some problems
can be fixed with a proper TERMCAP entry", but of course they don't say
exactly WHAT the proper termcap entry for a Wyse-50 is.  Anybody have
any suggestions?  I've looked at every TERMCAP file I could lay my
hands on, to no avail.

Two more questions on the same topic:

What would it take to *fix* Pine to handle the older terminal types?
I would gladly donate some labor to this task.  Does anybody have a
clear idea what would need to be changed to fix this problem?

Failing that, are there any other easy-to-use email client programs
with a menu-structure and online help, which can actually deal with
Wyse terminals?

Again, sorry for bringing this old, old, topic up again.

I would be extremely grateful for any replies.

Charles G. Waldman
Senior Software Engineer
Princeton Gamma-Tech, Inc.

[email-masked]

---

From: Richard Gering <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 15:18:07 +0100 (WET)

> I see that it is also a SAQ (Seldom Answered Question).

Well, to me this is starting to become a Frequently Answered Question :-)

To try to determine what your problems are, it is essential to know 
what your environment looks like. So, could you please tell:

- What version of Pine you are using
- For which system you are building it

This could answer if you are using terminfo instead of termcap, in which
case another Wyse 50 tic source might help. 

Also, Pine versions 3.92 and up do have keyboard support for Wyse like
terminals with a proper termcap / terminfo (ahem..), but this does require
a configuration change prior to building it.

I'll be happy to try to help you, but please supply some more info first.

> Princeton Gamma-Tech, Inc.

Regards,

- Richard Gering.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Richard Gering ([email-masked]) | Let me make one thing perfectly clear:  |
| CI International B.V. Netherlands | I never explain anything! (Mary Poppins)| 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

---

From: [email-masked] (Aaron M. Scarisbrick)
Date: 4 Jun 1996 16:49:59 GMT

Charles G Waldman ([email-masked]) wrote:
: I know this is a FAQ, but after searching through the archives
: I see that it is also a SAQ (Seldom Answered Question).
: 
: The problem:  Bad behavior on Wyse-50 terminals.  I was assigned

Funny you should ask, as I just had to do this.  The fix to my problem was
two things:

1) In pine/makefile.xxx and pico/makefile.xxx (where xxx is sv4 or whatever
your system is) on the STDCFLAGS line add -DTERMCAP_WINS and this will make
the arrow keys work on the Wyse terminals.  Be advised that they will have
to use the "Delete" key for deleting characters because "Backspace" is the
exact same control sequence as the left arrow key.  Also, because ^K is the
up arrow key, you will have to use the Esc-Esc-K equivalent for "Cut Text".
My makefile line looked like:

STDCFLAGS=      -Dsv4 -DPOSIX -DJOB_CONTROL -DTERMCAP_WINS

2) I also had weird (what looked like) termcap problems, but what it turned
out to be was that pine & pico were swallowing the XON/XOFF characters, and
thus screwing up the display to varying degrees. What I had to do to fix it
was in /usr/local/lib/pine.conf I added to the "feature-list" line the
preserve-start-stop-characters and assume-slow-link options, and that fixed
up the Wyse terminals nicely. My pine.conf line looked like:

feature-list= preserve-start-stop-characters, assume-slow-link

After re-building with the new makefile options, and the new options in the
pine.conf file, everything now works great!  As a final sidebar, if you are
trying to build pine3.93 on a pyramid running dcosx, make sure you have the
latest cc from pyramid (4.0 I think), otherwise you're in for SEGV city ;-)

FWIW,

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aaron M. Scarisbrick                    "Yes, this is correct." -Larry Wall
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[email-masked]                           http://www.xmission.com/~aaron
---------------------------------------------------------------------------