Visionware XVision's VT320 emulator


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Visionware XVision's VT320 emulator

I was wrong, and I'm glad I was wrong.

1. A correction

First I would like to start with a correction. My assumption that XVision versions prior to Eclipse only provided basic VT52 emulation was–I'm glad to say–wrong.

I had assumed that something like TermVision or PC-Connect would be required to be installed in order to have better terminal support, and I was wrong. In fact, I cannot run TermVision from the SCO Vision Family evaluation CD-ROM due to license issues.

The XVision Desktop component provides VT100, VT220, and VT320 emulation, and it is quite good.

2. Setting it up

In order to make use of the VT320 terminal emulation, we first need to ensure that XVision Desktop knows about the remote host we wish to connect to.

This will not be a complete guide to XVision Desktop, but I will show enough of how it works in order to make use of the VT320 emulation.

2.1. Adding a host

Before we can connect to a host, XVision Desktop must know about it and how to connect to it. So, let's add a host to the Hosts group.

Hosts group

Simply right-click in the group and select New Item and then Host….

New Host

This will present a dialog window in which details of the remote host are input.From here, we can input the host's name, and authentication details. We then need to press Advanced >> and ensure that the Terminal Connection service is set to Telnet. You can use Rlogin if you have that service enabled if you wish.

Host details

Once we've mashed Ok, the new host should now be listed in the Hosts group. This host is now ready to be used.

2.2. Adding a VT320 connection.

I have a group specifically for terminal connections. You might have the same if you entered some hosts during the setup process. If not–and if you want one–here's a quick guide to getting that done.

2.2.1. Add a VT320 group

Simply head to the Desk menu and select New Window. A new MDI window should open named <Untitled>. Here we can right-click within the window and select Presentation and change the title to "VT320" and the icon to whatever we desire. Boom, we have a group to keep all our terminal sessions nice and neat.

2.2.2. Adding a connection

Inside our VT320 group, we can right-click and select New Item and then VT320 Application…

New VT320 Application

This will then present a dialog that asks for Host and Command:

Option Description
Host The remote host to which we wish to connect.
Command A command, if any, that we wish to execute within the terminal.

We can select which host we wish to use by either typing its name or selecting one from the drop-down list.

For just a terminal connection, leave Command empty.

Connection settings

2.2.3. Configuring the connection

Let's change the icon to something… nicer. We can do that by right-clicking on our new VT320 Application icon and selecting Presentation. Feel free to rename it to something better–though bear in mind that the hostname prefix will always be present. I simply rename mine to the type of terminal emulation I use, e.g. "VT220", "VT320" etc.

You can press Browse… and select an icon source (such as vwhosts.dll).

Once you've made it as pretty as you want, we can now configure the actual terminal emulation.

Right-click on it and select Terminal…. We can set various emulation options here.

Terminal settings

Option Description
Cursor Configure the terminal's text cursor.
Printer Configure printing from the terminal.
Keyboard Configure various keyboard options.
Identity Change the terminal type features.

To change the emulation type, we can use Identity to change between VT100, VT220, VT320 et al. For older hosts, I use VT220 with compatibility set to VT100.

You can also use the Key Map File option to change key maps if you want.

If you wish to change font settings, you can right-click on the item and select Window… to change various settings there. Using Fixed with a specific font size is probably advisable.

Now we're ready to connect.

3. Connecting

Now we can simply double-click on the icon, or right-click and select Open and admire a lovely login banner.

Pretty login banner

4. Features

Let's see what my vttest script makes of this terminal.

Pretty decent emulation

This is pretty decent. There are terminals with more features, but if you don't have any installed, XVision Desktop's VT320 is pretty usable.

In fact, I created this blog post whilst using the VT320 emulator.

Editing the blog

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