Re: [Mingw-users] Ttssh as a Terminal (?)

[Kai R. <kai...@lu...>]

"John van V." wrote:
> 
> I am wondering it we cant make it into a non-dos non-Xwin vt100-like tty
> (posix??) compliant terminal window.  Further development could convert it
> features into a pty.

 There was one implementation with even a 'sh' for Win16, the Troy Rollo's
'TKERN', a GPL'ed thing:

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		TKERN - Troy's Kernel For Windows
		=================================
		Copyright 1994 Troy Rollo

LICENSING

	This program is free software. Most of the files are under
	the GNU General Public License. See the file "COPYING.LIB"
	for details.

	Two files, "links.c" and "stdio.c" are in the public domain.

WARRANTY

	There is no warranty of any kind for TKERN. the file
	"COPYING.LIB" for details.

PURPOSE

	TKERN exists to fill a gap in the MS Windows 16 bit operating
	environment - that of text oriented input and output, and of
	sharing files between processes.

	Two well known approaches to the text oriented input and output
	problem already exist - EasyWin (by Borland) and QuickWin (by
	Microsoft). These approaches suffer by being proprietary and by
	the files that are opened in either of these systems cannot be
	passed on to child processes (tasks).

	It is envisaged that all text oriented programs for windows
	could reasonably be converted for use with tkern. To this
	end, use of TKERN for any project, including commercial
	projects, is strongly encouraged.

	Most of TKERN is under the GNU Library General Public License,
	with a limited number of files being public domain. The choice
	of licensing in the case of each file has been made in such
	a way that your own programs will be completely unencumbered,
	but any modifications to the kernel itself (TKERN.DLL) or
	to the file manager (TKFMANGR.EXE) will become free software.
------------------- clip -------------------------------------------------

Looking an equivalent thing for Win32 (especially one which would work also under
Win32s) has been quite vain --- perhaps people think that there is the console,
so why on earth a terminal window is needed...  Ok, Win32s hasn't any console...
Porting the TKERN to Win32 hit into a wall with the differences between Win16 and
Win32 process handling, it surely is possible but needs some digging into the
Win32 API... I'm not sure about the vt100/ANSI capabilities, for me a dumb tty
would be enough, to get the stdout/stderr somewhere (in Win32s).

Although I have succeeded to build several Insight/GDBs to Win32s, building any
Mingw/Win32s-hosted GCCs has been disabled by the missing console... Ok, the
DJGPP2-host is available and GCCs run nicely in the DOS-Box, but The MSVC/BCC-
like 'QuickWin'/'EasyWin' apps aren't possible.

The TKERN-sources should be available in Simtel (does this still exist?) or
somewhere if someone else needs a possible start point with the 'terminal window'
for Mingw...

Cheers, Kai