Re: Missing DEC VT100 graphics characters

From: Markus Kuhn (Markus.Kuhn@cl.cam.ac.uk)
Date: Sun Sep 27 1998 - 19:27:03 EDT


Frank da Cruz wrote on 1998-09-27 21:41 UTC:
> This question comes up often enough that perhaps it deserves greater
> attention. While most Unicoders like to think that terminal emulation is
> is a relic of the past, there are numerous terminal emulators on the market
> and in active development, and millions of people who use them for
> applications ranging from software development, to email, to transaction
> processing, to system administration. The branding of these applications
> as "legacy" in mass-market trade publications is a ruse that I hope does not
> cloud the vision of readers of this mailing list.

I can't agree more! It would certainly be convenient to be able to
use a Unicode font for an IBM 3270 or Siemens BS2000 terminal emulator,
or an ITU videotext decoder, without having to fall back to special
purpose fonts. I have over the past few days drawn hundreds of silly
Unicode blockgraphics symbols, and considering the effort, it is quite
a bit frustrating that I still can't support with my new ISO 10646
extended X11 fixed font the needs of many terminal emulators without
having to make private incompatible extensions.

> Terminal emulation will be with us for years -- probably decades -- to come.

Definitely decades!

Markus

-- 
Markus G. Kuhn, Security Group, Computer Lab, Cambridge University, UK
email: mkuhn at acm.org,  home page: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>



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