Re: color attribute problem

>
> 1.  Does tn5250 use ncurses "out of the box"?
>

Are you asking if TN5250 needs to be modified in order to use it with
ncurses?  The answer is: no.  TN5250 was designed to work with ncurses
from the ground up.

Are you asking if ncurses needs to be modified for use with TN5250?  AS
far as I know, it does not.  I've only used the versions of ncurses that
are distributed with FreeBSD and Linux, but I assume that they're normal
versions of ncurses (if they weren't, the problem would affect far more
than just tn5250!)


> 2.  Does it use ncurses exactly the same in console mode
>       or under xterm?

Pretty much the same, yes.  TN5250 does detect that it's running in an
xterm, but AFIAK, it only uses it to change fonts, it doesn't do anything
differently as far as display attributes.

>     ASIDE:  if so, why is it that under xterm, an underlined field
>              is underlined.  in console mode, only the portion which
>               has not been entered is underlined.  It seems something
>              graphical is going on here, unless ncurses is smart
>               enough to know its on X.

Because the text mode supported by VGA hardware does not display underlines.
TN5250 *does* send the underline attribute to ncurses, but it can't be
displayed.  However, xterm does support this attribute, so it's displayed.

The same is true of TELNET.  Try telnetting to your iSeries from console
mode (with the regular "telnet" command) and then try the same thing from
an xterm...  once again, the xterm displays an underline where console
mode does not.

You can add the config keyword +underscores to enable a workaround (though
it's not as nice as "real" underlines)

>
> 3.  Do you happen to know if ncurses supports a combo of
>       color/underline/blinking/bold.

I don't think blinking is supported, but I could be wrong.  Bold in tn5250
is just a color change...  underline is discussed above.

> 4.  Where in the source would i look for attributes from AS400 are
>       parsed and where they affect curses attributes.

All of the ncurses code is in cursesterm.c, since the user can
re-configure the color schemes, it's not as simple as mapping from curses
to 5250, but hopefully you can figure it out.