#106 Three VT52 files don't display as expected

[Anonymous]

Yesterday I found several "new" old VT52 screens. These were unusual because they were created on Atari 8-bit computers and were meant to be transmitted/translated by the 8-bit Carina BBS software.

Because of this, they had some oddities that kept them from displaying in Hatari properly. For example, ASCII 155 CR instead of 13/10 CR/LF; or ASCII 160 instead of spaces in some spots.

Anyway, I edited the files to make them proper for the ST, and tested them in Hatari to make sure they all displayed correctly. They did. I'll attach screenshots below of what I saw in Hatari.

However, when I try to display these files on my BBS and view them in SyncTerm, they aren't displaying properly. The letters "b" or "c" from the color commands are being rendered as text. I don't understand why that's happening. I'll also attach a ZIP with the three .V52 files.

Is this just an issue with the format/structure of the files themselves, or does SyncTerm's VT52 emulation need tweaks to handle these cases?

[Anonymous]

Hmm, the screenshots fell off. Here they are again.

[Stephen James Hurd]

Those are actually using NUL as a parameter, which isn't even vaguely legal in a VT-52 emulator (NULs are supposed to be explicitly ignored). I've updated SyncTERM to allow it, but I would suggest replacing at least the NULs in those files with '0' instead. Really all the ESC sequences that use a control character as a parameter (ESC b and ESC c take one parameter) should have at least 32 added to the byte after the letter, so 0x00 (NUL) -> SPACE, 0x01 (SOH) -> !, 0x02 (STX) -> " and 0x03 (ETX) -> #

That would be the most correct, but I like to use the digits 0 to 3... so basically replace 0x00 with a literal 0 (0x30), 0x01 with a literal 1 (0x31) etc.