[nos-bbs] the NOS PANIC keyboard issue

[George [ham] VerDuin]

HI...

On 01/28/2012 04:35 PM, Maiko Langelaar wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
>> We run JNOS is a screen session and the scenario you described is 
>> what we
>> see if the window is resized.
YUP -- rather than preserving the defined character layout [80x24]
    and increasing [decreasing] font size to fit the new window size,
the resize redefines the layout and preserves the font.

In most old tty applications this is no problem as we all know.
Lines fold and/or leave blanks on the right.
JNOS designers however chose to put the activity monitor strip [1,2,3 
lines] on top.
Multi-session also adds complication.
The software design depends on a fixed 80x24 display -- no alternative.
This design means the application jnos takes extraordinary measures for 
console output.
I guess on the DOS platform that's just improvement, on true OSs' pull hair.
When jnos discovers the OS has changed the layout, PANIC...

Scrolling, color, line wrap/truncate, becomes a real challenge to fit 
more than one protocol provided by the terminal hardware [like: wyse-50? 
and other mfg knockoffs of wyse].  Our workaround was to abandon the 
xterm in favor of the alternate console of Linux.  We loose advantage 
like scroll back but gain reliability.  None of that is news -- probably.

If the JNOS community would revise the console status bar to be handled 
in another way,
   and permit the console to scroll normally,
then JNOS could be significantly simplified and resize would become a 
non-problem.

We experienced one other [unrelated?] failure repeatably.
If we defined a TNC device on a port -- using it for a while,
   followed by abandoning the use without redefining the port,
   then jnos would lock up after a time [usually after we forgot about 
the change].
We believe it related to something like output FIFO overflow.
We never got a dump to point at the source of the problem.


>
> So really, there is nothing that can be done. The screen becomes unusable
> with the current JNOS code that is out there, so it has to die. Unless of
> course I can some how make the screen usuable again with some extra code.
Best of luck my friend.
Console output code looks [only to me] like what we used to call 
"spaghetti logic".
On the other hand, C is not my favorite...
My vote is to "live with it" [if I have a vote].


>
> Maiko
Cheers
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