Date   : Tue, 27 Mar 1984 08:42:00 EST
From   : Bruce Hawkins <bhawkins%umass-cs.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Turbo Pascal Installation

       In contrast to Fred Brundick, who could not make changes to the
Turbo Pascal keyboard stick, I have been able to do that, though not all
changes are possible.  The only reason I can think of that his changes might
not have stuck is if he has made a copy of the Turbo.pas file under another
name as his working copy.  TINST makes modifications directly to the
TURBO.PAS file, rather than recording them in a separate data file as
many configuration programs do.

       The problems I have had appear to result from Turbo's assuming that
all keyboard signals will be control codes or special characters. My
Rainbow (VT-102, essentially) sends codes like <ESC>OP. Fine, that is what
you see, UNTIL you go out of TINST and go back in again. Then it has
strangely changed to <ESC>^O^P!  Apparently the editor does the same 
translation, though, so everything is fine ---

       UNTIL you try and assign keys that send a lower-case letter.
<ESC>Om gets turned into <ESC>O4 (some number, anyhow), and that DOESN'T
work.  Well even this can be worked around: if you send the characters one
by one to TINST as <ESC>OM, that gets understood by the editor. 

       Only trouble with that is that now you have two keypad keys sending
what the editor hears as the same code, because <ESC>OM and <ESC>Om are
attached to two different keys.  So there is a whole row of keypad
keys you can't use, very annoying!

       Furthermore, the manual says (I think, I don't have mine handy at
the moment) that you can have up to four bytes sent by a key.  But it
doesn't seem to accept my keys that send four bytes, and I couldn't find
a work-around.  And of course it doesn't understand the ones that send FIVE at
all.  So I have a whole raft of lovely keys looking at me begging.

       Apparently the designers were so WordStar oriented that they forgot
that there are those of us out here who dislike the WordStar way of doing
things.

                                               Bruce Hawkins
                                               Smith College


       By the way, I too amy very pleased with Turbo Pascal in general.