Re: Dump screen content into file....

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <32AD301A.41C6@cnam.fr>, BAMBA ISMAEL 19320 <bamba_i@cnam.fr> writes:

> Larry Kilgallen wrote:
>> 
>>........... 
>>  Or perhaps on some operating systems (like VMS) you might want to use
>> OS-specific calls to obtain larger buffers or asynchrouous
>> input from a single read, or read-with-prompt semantics.
>>
> Im using the VMS operating system on a VAX machine.do you or anybody
> know of those OS-specific calls?

For VMS you will find information about the calls in the I/O User's
Reference Manual, in particular the chapter on the Terminal Driver.
DEC writers have done a superb job of reducing that to less than
125 pages, so I am certainly not able to summarize it in a newsgroup
posting (pause for sigh of relief from the c.l.a. folk who care
about Ada but not VMS).  For the Ada bindings to all VMS System
Services, use the package Starlet which comes with DEC Ada.

>> The process of reading characters from a terminal screen
>> really has much more to do with the model of terminal
>> than with the programming language, so you might consider
>> a hardware-specific newsgroup.
> 
> Actually,what im trying to do is alternatively dump screen to file and
> file to screen from inside a Ada program .I know how to do it in a
> memory mapped terminal like a Pc( you know the video buffer's address)
> but the thing seems to be hasrsher on a  RS232 terminal.i'll flip
> through hardware-specific newsgroups.But please if anyone has the
> slightest idea,PLEASE e-mail me or post !

My "slightest idea" is that in general it is not possible because
terminal hardware is entirely different from bitmapped graphics
hardware.

That is why I suggested hardware groups.  There is no aspect of
this problem which seems to be dependent on Ada.  When you figure
out how you need to poke the hardware, Ada provides a reliable
basis for writing programs to do that. But like other languages,
Ada gives no assistance at all in narrowing down the problem
in the first place.

Larry Kilgallen