decterm issues

[John Tannahill]

I am a new user of the decterm application which I am running using X-Win32 on a PC, which gets me to an Alpha platform running OpenVMS 7.3-2. I have one major problem and a couple of more minor ones:
* The "<" & ">" keys are not mapped right, all I get is "," & "."? The rest of the keys seem to be fine.
* The numeric keypad is not mapped right when I try to use the edt editor; although I can use other editors (that don't utilize the numeric keypad), on occasion it would be nice if I had access to edt.
* Is there a way to not have to click on a decterm window to make it active? I would like to just have it become active when the pointer is in it.
* Is there a way to have the middle wheel button on the mouse scroll a decterm window?

Thanks,
John

[Hoff · Accepted solution]

Ok; realize that the keymapping happens on the X-Win32 package; on the local X Server. The applications running on OpenVMS -- including DECterm -- are clients of the X Windows server.

Various X Servers for Windows including eXcursion are set up for use with OpenVMS, and other platforms aren't necessarily mapped quite as well.

There are many discussions of X Windows key mapping around, and there are Freeware packages to assist with keymapping on various platforms. See decxterm and xterm packages on the Freeware V8.0 distro, and various previous discussions here in ITRC.

For the cursor-based window selection, yes, there's a way to enable that. It's called pointer focus. IIRC, it's determined in the DECW$MWM.DAT file, assuming no more recent version has sprouted a knob for it.

Here are the settings for inclusion in that file:

Mwm*keyboardFocusPolicy: pointer
-or-
Mwm*keyboardFocusPolicy: explicit

-and-
Mwm*focusAutoRaise: true

Run a few Google searches and you should turn up details here. I've not tried this stuff remotely; with an X Server running on another box as is the case here.

The mouse scroll wheel was first implemented on fairly recent releases, at least with direct DECwindows connections. This with more recent OpenVMS and more recent DECwindows.

[John Gillings]

John,

<> keys:
Look under options, find Keyboard. There's an option labelled something like ", sends <" which does what you want.

edt keypad
Sorry, you've reached the local EDT Nazi - please forget this long obselete and very klunky editor ever existed and learn EVE! If you really can't do without it there's probably some combination of settings on the PC - numlock? and the keyboard options which make it work. If you get desperate, I've got a program around somewhere that displays the escape sequences returned from the keyboard which may help.

window selection
This is a function of the X server on your PC. There is sometimes an alternative window selection option, either by clicking, or by placing the cursor within the window. Look around in the options of the X server itself.

scrolling
Possibly, again it would be a function of the X server, rather than the DECterm.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

In my X the numeric keyboard can be used but you have to press the gold key twice (gold=num lock).

And my X also doesn't give the "<" & ">".

My X is KEA!X.

fwiw

Wim

[John Tannahill]

I had four items that I was looking for help on, one critical and three more minor ones.

I got the critical one answered:

<> keys:
Look under options, find Keyboard. There's an option labeled something like ", sends <" which does what you want.

I got one of the other ones answered:

Here are the settings for inclusion in that file:

Mwm*keyboardFocusPolicy: pointer
-or-
Mwm*keyboardFocusPolicy: explicit

-and-
Mwm*focusAutoRaise: true

I am punting on the middle mouse wheel being able to scroll, not a big deal anyway.

I need to look into the last one a bit more, about getting the eve/edt numeric keypad to work.

Thanks,
John