How to use VTEDIT?

Warren Young

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Dec 14, 2016, 11:27:15 PM12/14/16

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I started playing around with VTEDIT from Rick Murphy's advent.rk05 disk pack tonight, but quickly got stuck trying to find any useful documentation.

The most useful thing I've found so far is the brief mention here: http://www.pdp8.net/os/os8/os8_cmd.shtml

From that, I've managed to start VTEDIT on a file:

.MUNG VTEDIT,MYFILE.PA

Is that the best way to start a VTEDIT session?

When I do that, I get this quasi-ANSI X3.64 reply on the terminal:

=[1;1H[JPEP001.PA(0A(B[1;10H

The only way I can see that doing nothing at all is if the simulator is somehow stripping the ESC character.

I've tried this under both an xterm type app locally and on my hardware terminal, the latter set in VT52, VT220-7 and ANSI.SYS modes.

I am experiencing acute clue deficiency here.

Rick Murphy

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Dec 15, 2016, 6:06:12 AM12/15/16

to Warren Young, PiDP-8

Sigh. This is one of the cases where the PiDP-8 setup choices have side effects.

Since the traditional ASR-33 type terminal does text only and upper case only, the default configuration is set up to case-fold and to drop many special characters. That causes OS/8 to not be able to send the appropriate escape sequences.

Add the following to your simh initialization file:

set tto 7b

That will fix it. And, incidentally, allows things like Adventure to print out mixed case. It looks much nicer that way.

To edit a file with TECO, just use the ".TECO file" command. If you have a date set (yes, you can't set a current date on OS/8), then the CCL will remember the last file edited so you can just type "TECO" to re-edit.

For documentation, well, normally the VTEDIT macro contains a keypad diagram, but that makes the macro too large to work on a PDP-8.

The VTEDIT macro is also derived from an earlier version than the current one, so it's missing several commands that you might find with a search for VTEDIT on the web. However, the basic layout is consistent.

Here's the keypad layout for OS/8:

+-------+-------+-------+-------+

| "PF1" | "PF2" | "PF3" | "PF4" |

+-------+-------+-------+-------+

All (*) | "7" | "8" | "9" | "-" |

arg as: +-------+-------+-------+-------+

ESC [-] | "4" | "5" | "6" | "," |

+-------+-------+-------+-------+

All (+) | "1" | "2" | "3" |"Enter"|

from Dot +-------+-------+-------| arg * | BK SP Go to end of line*

to Mark | "0" | "." | | DELETE Delete previous*

if Mark | Down line* |Search | | ESC ESC Repeat RED-key command*

is set | |again *| |

+-------+-------+-------+-------+

To Exit: ^C [or] ^Z Return to TECO

ESC ^Z Exit from TECO

ESC - ^Z Kill output, exit

Other info from the authors of the VT-52 version (note the keypad colors consistent with a -52):

VTEDIT.TEC v00.00 AUTHOR: Herb Jacobs & Mark Bramhall

MODIFIERS: Jim Roth & Stan Rabinowitz

Video Terminal Editor for TECO-8

This macro provides immediate mode support for the VT52 and VT100 video

terminals (updates occur as they are entered). This macro makes

editing with the VT52 extremely easy and accurate, but will initially

take some editing to get used to. This macro is very complete and

allows for almost any editing situation.

VTEDIT.TEC resides in q-register I.

It may be loaded by ERVTEDIT.TEC$YHXIHK$$. Whenever TECO

will accept a command MI$$ is used to enter VTEDIT.

A user can automatically cause VTEDIT to be loaded into Q-register I

by putting the appropriate commands into his initialization file, TECO.INI.

Any characters typed to VTEDIT are immediately put into the text

buffer at the current position of the text pointer, except for

the single character commands described below. Because the typed text

is immediately displayed in the text buffer VTEDIT stops terminal

echo.

VTEDIT uses all of the numeric Q-registers. Because of this, users

must not use Q-registers 0-9 while editing with VTEDIT.

The commands for VTEDIT.TEC are:

(named character commands are not on the keypad)

Keypad Teco

Character equivalent Description

-> C Move text pointer forward 1 character

<- R Move text pointer backward 1 character

0 L Move text pointer down 1 line

1 0J Move text pointer to begining of text

2 ZJ Move text pointer to end of text

3 0L Move text pointer to begining of current line

4 -L Move text pointer up 1 line

5 D Delete 1 character following the text pointer

6 Deletes string most recently found via a search,

search again, cut, or paste operation

7 Insert 1 blank line and position before it;

esthetically pleasing for inserting text lines

8 P Perform 1 page command

9 Read the next input character literally, not

as a command

Delete -D Delete 1 previous character

Backspace L2R Position the text pointer at the end of the line

Control-U 0K Delete the text from the begining of the line

to the text pointer

Control-K K Delete the text from the text pointer to the

end of the line.

Control-D Removes the text from the text pointer to the end of

the line.

Control-C Exit from this macro to normal TECO mode

The macro is started again by MI$$

Control-Z Same as Control-C

ENTER Accept a new search argument to be used in

conjunction with the keypad '.' key. This argument

may be edited with DELETE and Control-U and is

terminated with the keypad '.' key (or $$) which

performs the search.

The search string may not end with an altmode,

but may have embedded altmodes.

. Search for next occurence of ENTERed argument

If search fails, text pointer is moved to top of page

^(uparrow) Move the text pointer up 1 line to the same

column

v(downarrow) Move the text pointer down 1 line to the same

column

blue key Save 1 line of text for moving, each successive

key strike adds another line to movable portion; the

first line saved is from the cursor to the end of line

grey key Retrieve saved text (from blue key) at current text

pointer position

red key Enter extended command mode

Extended command mode allows any TECO command to be executed

directly while remaining in VTEDIT. The text buffer is not affected

except as the possible result of the executed TECO command. The TECO

command to be executed is displayed at the top of the VTEDIT screen and

allowed to be edited with the following commands:

Control-U Abort extended command mode, return to normal

insert mode. Nothing is executed.

Delete Delete previous character entered.

Escape Escape Execute the command just typed and then return

to normal insert mode. Commands are executed with

the text pointer at its last position in normal

insert mode. If the command causes an error, VTEDIT

has to be continued by executing MI$$ . Executing

another macro is O.K. as long as it doesn't destroy

any of the numeric Q-registers.

A numeric argument (of the form ESC number) may precede the following commands:

Paste, open line, page, quote, up, down, left, right,

up line, down line, delete char, search.

This argument makes the obvious modification to the command.

The "up line" and "down line" keys (keypad keys 4 and 0 respectively)

are much faster than the "up in column" and "down in column" keys

(up-arrow and down-arrow keys). Consequently, when scanning through

a portion of a file, the "up line" and "down line" functions are

preferred.

Note that TECO maintains a type-ahead buffer. It is possible for

you to type faster than VTEDIT can update the screen.

In such a case, VTEDIT will not lose your type-in, however, it will

stop updating the screen (to save time) until it has finished

processing all the commands that you have typed in.

Getting this onto the pack (as VTEDIT.DC) would be a good idea.

-Rick

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Rick Murphy, CISSP-ISSAP, K1MU/4, Annandale VA USA

Warren Young

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Dec 15, 2016, 7:57:37 AM12/15/16

to PiDP-8, tange...@gmail.com

On Thursday, December 15, 2016 at 4:06:12 AM UTC-7, Rick Murphy wrote:

Add the following to your simh initialization file:
set tto 7b

Is the only drawback to that that you then have to put the keyboard into caps lock mode most of the time, else you confuse things like CCL?

I am debating making this the default in the next release of the software, but won't do so if there are other drawbacks.

VTEDIT.TEC resides in q-register I.

It may be loaded by ERVTEDIT.TEC$YHXIHK$$.

Yyyyyeeessss...perfectly obvious. :rolleyes:

I see that your provided TECO.IN file bypasses the need for knowing this. Thank you for that.

Getting this onto the pack (as VTEDIT.DC) would be a good idea.

Done, and checked in. May I also add this tutorial to the software repository as a wiki article?

Rick Murphy

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Dec 15, 2016, 9:57:08 AM12/15/16

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On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 7:57 AM, Warren Young <tange...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thursday, December 15, 2016 at 4:06:12 AM UTC-7, Rick Murphy wrote:

Add the following to your simh initialization file:
set tto 7b

Is the only drawback to that that you then have to put the keyboard into caps lock mode most of the time, else you confuse things like CCL?

There's a pair of batch files on the disk - UCSYS.BI and LCSYS.BI.

LCSYS.BI patches the keyboard monitor and command decoder to case-wrap input.

I am debating making this the default in the next release of the software, but won't do so if there are other drawbacks.

VTEDIT.TEC resides in q-register I.
It may be loaded by ERVTEDIT.TEC$YHXIHK$$.

Yyyyyeeessss...perfectly obvious. :rolleyes:

TECO isn't for the faint of heart. :)

I see that your provided TECO.IN file bypasses the need for knowing this. Thank you for that.

Getting this onto the pack (as VTEDIT.DC) would be a good idea.

Done, and checked in. May I also add this tutorial to the software repository as a wiki article?

Yes, it's public information and you're welcome to add it to the wiki.

-Rick

Warren Young

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Dec 16, 2016, 5:07:54 AM12/16/16

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On Thursday, December 15, 2016 at 7:57:08 AM UTC-7, Rick Murphy wrote:

LCSYS.BI patches the keyboard monitor and command decoder to case-wrap input.

I've failed to make it do anything useful.

I think I've gotten the batch file to run, two different ways:

.R BATCH

*<LCSYS

and

.SUBMIT <LCSYS

Either way, both keyboard monitor and ADVENT still accept only upper-case commands.

William Cattey

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Jul 30, 2017, 12:50:02 AM7/30/17

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Hi Rick.

Sorry to bother you on this thread so many months later.

Does anyone have that patch in source form?

It looks like it not only upcases, but also does video terminal style rubout processing.

If no source is available, I may disassemble it myself. (But that means I'll also do a trial compile of the KBM and CM to look at where the patch registers in the old source.)

-Bill

Rick Murphy

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Jul 30, 2017, 8:06:25 AM7/30/17

to William Cattey, PiDP-8

Bill,

There's a few ways I can get this to you.

One, the TECOVT.MA source file.

Two, a zip file with the entire source set. (VTEDIT.TE changes as well)

Three, the SIMH disk image, which has MACREL installed along with the modified source. (http://www.rickmurphy.net/macrel.rk05)

Four, a diff of the original and new source.

What's your preference?
-Rick

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Bill Cattey

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Jul 30, 2017, 11:22:19 AM7/30/17

to Rick Murphy, PiDP-8

Hi Rick,

I apologize for not being clearer. At this time, I'm looking for the source changes to the OS/8 Keyboard Monitor and Command Decoder embodied in the UCSYS.BI and LCSYS.BI batch files.

I presume TECOVT.MA is a MACREL source for a fancy, new version of TECO.

In my researching how best to offer up a clean system image for the PiDP-8, I'm first stepping through the discussions of the lower level stuff. (I.E. preferred character set, and how we want to put in place
mechanism and documentation to help people "flip the switch" between paper TTY style interaction,
and video terminal interaction.

So I wanted to get a very clear and robust understanding of how those two batch files will be maintained going forward.

I think I will get to TECO and MACREL support in short order. I've actually found an archive with
DEC distribution dectapes that contain pristine distributions of the OS, the extensions, Fortran IV, and MACREL.

My plan is to create a new master RK05 image that is built from those tapes.
One image will be a runnable binary pack. Another image will be a source pack.

Rick Murphy

July 30, 2017 at 8:06 AM

Bill,
There's a few ways I can get this to you.
One, the TECOVT.MA source file.
Two, a zip file with the entire source set. (VTEDIT.TE changes as well)
Three, the SIMH disk image, which has MACREL installed along with the modified source. (http://www.rickmurphy.net/macrel.rk05)
Four, a diff of the original and new source.
What's your preference?
-Rick

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Rick Murphy, CISSP-ISSAP, K1MU/4, Annandale VA USA

William Cattey

July 30, 2017 at 12:50 AM

Hi Rick.

Sorry to bother you on this thread so many months later.

Does anyone have that patch in source form?

It looks like it not only upcases, but also does video terminal style rubout processing.

If no source is available, I may disassemble it myself. (But that means I'll also do a trial compile of the KBM and CM to look at where the patch registers in the old source.)

-Bill

On Thursday, December 15, 2016 at 9:57:08 AM UTC-5, Rick Murphy wrote:
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Rick Murphy

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Jul 30, 2017, 9:03:30 PM7/30/17

to Bill Cattey, PiDP-8

OK, now I understand.

The "LCSYS.BI" and "UCSYS.BI" are patches to the OS/8 keyboard monitor and command decoder.

I doubt that any source code for the underlying code was ever written. They're a mod to the existing code, probably based on a read of the OS/8 sources.

They're a hack to allow lowercase input to be folded, and only fix this for the KBM and CD.

Everything else (any other OS/8 program) is presented with mixed case and has to deal with it. which is why the default for the PiDP-8 SIMH config is to restrict lowercase.

-Rick

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clasystems

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Jul 31, 2017, 12:27:53 AM7/31/17

to PiDP-8, bill....@gmail.com

On Sunday, July 30, 2017 at 9:03:30 PM UTC-4, Rick Murphy wrote:

OK, now I understand.
The "LCSYS.BI" and "UCSYS.BI" are patches to the OS/8 keyboard monitor and command decoder.
I doubt that any source code for the underlying code was ever written. They're a mod to the existing code, probably based on a read of the OS/8 sources.
They're a hack to allow lowercase input to be folded, and only fix this for the KBM and CD.
Everything else (any other OS/8 program) is presented with mixed case and has to deal with it. which is why the default for the PiDP-8 SIMH config is to restrict lowercase.
-Rick

Despite all of the massive ruination in OS/278 V2, this was actually implemented in the release.

P/S/8 lacks this problem systemically due to a disciplined approach taken in all conforming programs. In SIMH, the console is set the other way and the O/S routines fold the code.

cjl

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