krebizfan
Veteran Member
No, no no. Don't start using markup languages in the 70s. My entire career in the late 80s and early 90s was built around getting bad software to work with markup languages.
The former. Heck it doesn't matter today, anyway, what with script kiddies running the show. But early K&R really was full of pitfalls. I recall that on USEnet, I think it was Brian who would occasionally post a statement and ask "what does it do?" I still have a bunch of code I wrote from 1982--it looks like foreign dialect to me now.Are you referring to ANSI X3.159-1989 or ANSI X3.64?
The former. Heck it doesn't matter today, anyway, what with script kiddies running the show. But early K&R really was full of pitfalls. I recall that on USEnet, I think it was Brian who would occasionally post a statement and ask "what does it do?" I still have a bunch of code I wrote from 1982--it looks like foreign dialect to me now.
Are you talking about an MS-DOS machine or the IBM PC in particular? Huge difference, especially in its early years. I've got a machine running MS-DOS (8 MHz 80186) which does handle ANSI escape sequences in its BIOS, no additional software required (it can also do VT-52). It's not fast; the drawing speed is comparable to a serial terminal at 9600 bps.So the code from 1982 - in the alien language - hell, it may as well be Pascal - is there any way to make a Pascal etc program use ANSI escapes on a 4.77 MHz 8088 and be able to be fast enough (so that the user doesn't care - even if it is slower) to not require direct screen buffer manipulation?
Do you want it in 1985 or 2023? That's a relevant question.Assuming you're willing to change or bypass (by hooking an interrupt) the OS or replace ansi.sys and potentially change the C library too. In fact, that's another issue - I basically want a 16-bit msvcrt.dll rather than statically-linking the C library to every application.
I'm very sure that most systems could reach a similar or better drawing speed than the IBM PC using similar approaches. It's not an IBM exclusive feature - but the ubiquity of IBM PC (and its clones) was.I heard that there were computers competing with the IBM PC at the time that actually allowed even more than 640k, but the direct screen writes were what won the day for IBM. I can find the names if required. Rainbow? Olivetti? Just guessing.
Are you talking about an MS-DOS machine or the IBM PC in particular? Huge difference, especially in its early years. I've got a machine running MS-DOS (8 MHz 80186) which does handle ANSI escape sequences in its BIOS, no additional software required (it can also do VT-52). It's not fast; the drawing speed is comparable to a serial terminal at 9600 bps.
I know of a few ANSI.SYS replacements which access the hardware directly for speed. Obviously, they won't work on that system - and many don't do MDA, either.
Do you want it in 1985 or 2023? That's a relevant question.
Oh, and on a less technical note, you can actually answer to multiple posts in a single post; no need to post multiple replies separately. Just click on "Quote" for the relevant post, then "Insert quotes" in your answer window. Quite handy, and better for everyone.
Either you do direct hardware accesses (which is guaranteed to not be standard-compliant), or you use the libc functions (which is standard-compliant). The latter will handle ANSI if your underlying output stream supports ANSI. Which is not the case on IBM PCs without ANSI.SYS (or a replacement for it).I have only seen IBM PCs being used. I only got my XT in 1987 and that is when I saw people writing applications that didn't work on the Amiga. I was expecting a simple recompile of a (draft-standard-compliant) C program.
I don't see ANSI X3.64 a viable solution for an Amiga without giving up on the main advantages of the Amiga itself. Basically, you are trying to reduce all machines to the capabilities of a text-only terminal. Doesn't seem like a good idea.As early as possible I want to get people to switch to ANSI X3.64 in preparation for recompiling on the Amiga so that the Amiga is a viable alternative. And that means (at a minimum) ANSI X3.64 on an XT needs to be acceptable performance.
One single forum post can contain multiple quotes from different people, and each quote box lists who it is from. It's quite natural way to respond to multiple posts with a single post instead of having many short posts by the same person following each other. At least that is my opinion. Double posting used to be frowned upon.Do you want me to produce a single reply to messages from multiple people or just a single person? I don't think the former sounds very good.
Yeah, the 80s can wait. They've got plenty of time.Sorry for the delay in replying - other priorities.