From: bjoerns@stud.cs.uit.no (Bjoern Stabell)
Subject: Re: Why doesn't the hpterm have resizable text?
Organization: University of Tromsoe, Norway
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 07:32:31 GMT
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Tapani Tarvainen (tt@tarzan.jyu.fi) wrote:
] In article <1992Nov16.183655.14131@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca> mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel) writes:
] 
] >	Perhaps I'm missing the point of this discussion but why aren't you
] >people just using the real xterm?  As far as I can tell
] 
] >	  a) hpterm doesn't do anything xterm doesn't.
] 
] * National language support: even though the 8.0 xterm finally
] supports 8-bit characters it still doesn't work right with non-US
] keyboards ...  (OK, I presume that's been patched by now, after
] everybody's gotten used to hpterm); when I occasionally need national
] 7-bit characters hpterm supports them easily, in xterm I need a hacked
] font (and 16-bit character support for xterm isn't even planned as far
] as I know).

Only thing I can think of using NLS for would be catalogues.  And it would
be a small fix to enable this for XTerm too.

Another gripe with HPterm is that it seems to hinder you from using a font
with a different encoding than roman8 (yes I know about the *roman8
resource, it's kludgy), maybe this is a feature with Motif, I'm not sure.
Why does it care about the encoding?

Also, hpterm let's you specify a keyboard language.  Well, it's nice but
shouldn't this kind of behaviour be in the X server?  xkeycaps and xmodmap
does everything I need.  (i.e. I can switch between a norwegian keyboard
and an american by pressing a key (runs xmodmap on a file generated by
xkeycaps), and it works for all applications).

HPterm has mouseblanking.  Same argument as above, it shouldn't be on a
client-basis, it should be for the entire display.  So, get 'unclutter', it
does mouseblanking in all windows (but let's you specify windows you don't
want mouseblanking in).

] * Softkey support (very nice in certain HP's programs).  Also, some
] HP programs don't understand arrow keys in xterm but do in hpterm
] (like elm -- yes, I know, I could junk HP's elm and get the PD one).

PD version is years ahead of the HP one.  Also, I think HP are teaching
their programs the ANSI VT100 codes now.  (For instance - according to
someone on this group, don't remember who, xdb will from 9.0 offer a proper
curses environment in xterm, like when you run it in hpterm)

] * I like the ability to scroll past pages with Prev/Next/arrow keys:
] I find it much easier than using the scrollbar.

Here are my XTerm translations, they do what you want (plus fix to a 'might
a be bug', the Home key didn't output the right escape sequence):

XTerm.vt100.translations:		#override			\
	<Key>Home		:	string("^[[H")			\n\
	~Shift<Key>Prior	:	scroll-back(1,halfpage)		\n\
	~Shift<Key>Next		:	scroll-forw(1,halfpage)		\n\
	Shift<Key>Prior		:	string("^[[5~")			\n\
	Shift<Key>Next		:	string("^[[6~")

Replace ^[ with ESC.  You have the normal Next/Prior behaviour on
Shift+Next/Prior.

] >	  b) xterm does many things that hpterm doesn't.
] 
] True enough.  Alas, you can't have everything.
] So, I use both according to the task at hand.

I agree, the perfect terminal emulator is yet to be discovered. :)

For me, there are five reasons why I use XTerm and not HPterm:

	- It's billions and billions times faster.
		- the scrolling is much faster
		- the executable is 4 times smaller than hpterm
		  (8 times with our MIT xterm)

	- XTerm let's you change the font any time.  All the fonts are
	  customizable (I believe someone said they were hardcoded) by
	  using the *font[123456] resources.

	- XTerm has *scrollTtyOutput and *scrollTtyInput.

	- XTerm doesn't clutter with your encoding/keycodes. (hpterm has
	  a roman8 resource, which let's you have iso8859-1 or roman8
	  encoding, but nothing more)

	- I can get the source to XTerm. :)


Kind regards,
--
                                             Bjrn Stabell
                                             University of Troms
                                             (+47) 83 44 053 / 83 75 164
                                             bjoerns@staff.cs.uit.n
Xref: sparky comp.sys.hp:13239 comp.periphs.scsi:5609