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It's not that gross, but I'll post some screen captures shortly. I know piebold will understand when I say this is all VT100 based. Works fine in putty.
Charlie Gilley
“Microsoft is the virus..."
"the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"
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You might find it worthwhile to read William Galitz, "Handbook of Screen Form Design". It's from that era, but his philosophy should translate to a world of text boxes, radio buttons, etc etc.
When we used his ideas back in the dark ages, it seemed to reduce "forehead meets keyboard" events among the users.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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It might not be a good idea to "upgrade" at all.
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This might in fact be true. We're now on the 3rd generation of developers/support people. I don't think it's going to 4.
Charlie Gilley
“Microsoft is the virus..."
"the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"
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Okay, some images. Basically the users whip through the menu processing and thundering into data entry. UI presentation 1 is I want to mimic this behavior.
https://ibb.co/FXCWY2m
https://ibb.co/rtTVt5S
https://ibb.co/rtTVt5S
Charlie Gilley
“Microsoft is the virus..."
"the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"
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Well, if they're used to using a thin client / mainframe like that over SSH and you don't want to lose that concept of thin client and/or the app is on the way out anyway, you really only have three options (ignoring MS's butchering of the term smart client in WPF, etc.).
1 Check out Ncurses. It's a 100% terminal based UI library and totally free. It's a C library but I'm sure you can find bindings for it just about any language. You can spice it up a little and lose zero of the thin client goodness and everything is 100% terminal based.
2 You can replace that old UI as a web page pretty easy, and you can make it look exactly the same. It's still considered thin client / mainframe as only the browser is required. There are tons of examples out there that mimic a console for the web.
3 As mentioned, if the app is going to die anyway... then just do nothing and let it die.
Jeremy Falcon
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But I want the money  .
I've had to deal with requests over the last 20 years that are simply not possible with the current system. They keep trying to replace it without talking to the people that use it and know it.
I'm just looking for something that will allow me to replicate the speed of the terminal environment. I'll check into the links.
Charlie Gilley
“Microsoft is the virus..."
"the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"
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"There are tons of examples out there that mimic a console for the web."
This is the phrase I was looking for. It's a console app. I'll look things up.
Charlie Gilley
“Microsoft is the virus..."
"the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"
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My article :: CommScript[^] :: is how I dealt with automating data entry via such a system about twenty years ago.
I doubt that will you in your endeavor.
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I am not certain I fully understand your intention but permit me to say I am looking forward to learning the GUI library "Dear ImGui" as it is impressively fast and am rather fond of its appearance.
modified 6hrs 5mins ago.
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First of all, you need to learn the communication protocol between the VT terminal and VAX. Only when you understand completely, how they talk between them, you can start your application design.
Since terminals from these old days where dumb devices, I suspect that this communication protocol is heavily based on the VT terminal features (only my guess). So, VAX knows exactly, which terminal it is talking with, and sends terminal-specific data to it.
Learning the VT terminal reference is another necessary step.
So, your task is to write VT terminal emulation. VAX should believe that it is talking with VT. End user may see an exact copy of the terminal or something else, like full-featured GUI application - this is less important. Finally, such tasks are usually solved by complete terminal emulation also for end user. Not surprising, this is a lot of work.
Make a Google search for "VT terminal emulation". You are not the first person, who needs to implement such functionality. Maybe some existing emulation can do something that you need. Long time ago I was working in the company, that made a great business developing an old terminals emulation - for similar purposes.
modified 8hrs 20mins ago.
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Nah, no need to know the protocol of anything. As Jeremy pointed out, it's a "simple" console app - well simple in terms of 200K lines of FORTRAN - that all runs on the VAX. It's a thin client all the way. The code itself does nothing fancy with sending certain special commands that you can use with a VT terminal (depending on it's model).
The entire point of maintaining the console interface is for not harassing the existing users. If it's not broke, don't fix it sort of thing. I will glance at your references. Thanks.
Charlie Gilley
“Microsoft is the virus..."
"the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"
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I fixed a bunch of bugs in terms of color byte order (I had switched from RGBA to ABGR) which I hoped would fix my SVG rendering, whose colors are off. After finding and squashing a bunch of bugs (and watching the colors change accordingly) the last bug I fixed put my output clear back where I started!
So that was my morning. 
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Have a colorful day! 
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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Why you switched from 'RGBA to ABGR'?
From what I remember, 'ABGR' is really a native Windows API thing, which has even corrected with wpf.
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It's not windows. (Well, it can be, but it's embedded/cross platform)
It's based on the fact that the plutosvg library I used uses argb and rgba but LITTLE ENDIAN overall.
The thing is, since shifts are reversed for big vs little endian in C/C++ big endian RGBA = little endian ABGR
My graphics library produces big endian footprints for pixels on little endian systems. The reason for that is almost all display hardware takes its frame buffer memory in big endian format.
I'd change plutovg to use big endian pixels but I don't understand this function:
static inline uint32_t BYTE_MUL(uint32_t x, uint32_t a)
{
uint32_t t = (x & 0xff00ff) * a;
t = (t + ((t >> 8) & 0xff00ff) + 0x800080) >> 8;
t &= 0xff00ff;
x = ((x >> 8) & 0xff00ff) * a;
x = (x + ((x >> 8) & 0xff00ff) + 0x800080);
x &= 0xff00ff00;
x |= t;
return x;
}
The exception would be things like a windows PC, * but * in that case it's 1 byte per pixel, making swapping them easy, whereas byte swapping a 16-bit RGB565 pixel is less straightforward.
So since plutovg is RGBA little endian, my vector pixel format is ABGR big endian. In my library, conversions between different pixel formats is transparent so it really doesn't impact the surface area of the API.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Got it, I think 
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Three lefts make a right.
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honey the codewitch wrote: the last bug I fixed put my output clear back where I started
Been there. Done that. 
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Hello all, does anyone here know of a reliable domain hosting company - I'm currently using Webhosting.uk.com who are proving to be unreliable ( been down twice this year for a few days )- my domain name is purely used for email purposes.
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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For my personal sites, I’ve been using Dreambost for years. Never had an outage with them. Not sure if they’re US only though.
https://www.dreamhost.com/
Pretty sure they’re Linux only though, but since I’ll never use a Windows server if given the choice… that’s cool.
If it’s for the enterprise, that’s a whole different story. But for personal stuff they’re awesome.
Jeremy Falcon
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Linux is good by me 
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Oh, I used IONOS in the past too. Like 15-20 years ago.
https://www.ionos.com/
They’re a lot more corporatey and do data tracking a lot more. Which is why I stopped using them, but the service itself is ok if you don’t mind being their pawn.
Jeremy Falcon
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I use them also. I have not had any problems so far. I use them mostly for email, but I also have a starter website on the service.
I use Thunderbird as my email client; my wife uses their web email client. I am not sure what interface my children use.
__________________
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now.
© 2009, Rex Hammock
“If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” - John Wooden
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