Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing

From	Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.user
Subject	Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing
Date	2024-01-26 06:50 +0100
Message-ID	<I0ngd-5Dys-1@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
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On Sun, Jan 21, 2024 at 10:44:35PM +0000, phoebus phoebus wrote:
> A filter in between that in response to escape-code-1 starts sending data to the serial port instead of the terminal application and switches back to the terminal application on receiving of escape-code-2.
> Development of a transparent and responsive intermediate filter to ensure a smooth user experience. This filter must handle incoming and outgoing commands without disruption.

This is old, old, old tech. The suggestion early on to use screen was
one reasonable answer, xterm is another. Solutions exist for this, the
main problem is dusting off documentation old enough to be aware this
functionality exists. (As seen by so many of the responses here, which
are apparently unaware that at one time an actual terminal--the hardware
device with a screen and a keyboard that a "terminal emulater"
emulates--had a serial connection to a server and could also have a
second serial connection to a printer, and escape sequences were used to
switch the server output from screen to printer and back.) This isn't
functionality that has to be developed, it was written long ago and
simply isn't used much anymore. You'll have to find old code, because
newer terminal emulators don't bother implementing this since not many
people are asking for it (and those that do, can simply use the old code
and probably aren't as interested in compositor transparency effects).

> Waiting for Returns: The filter remains attentive to returns of information coming from the serial printer. These returns may include information about the printing status, errors, or other relevant data.

This is where things go off the rails--"other...data". Most of the unix
terminal emulators use the ANSI escape sequences which, as far as I
know, had unidirectional printing. The datastream coming from the server
had escape sequences to change output from screen to printer, but the
printer had no way to interrupt that and talk back to the server. The
documentation about "passthrough printing" you've referenced several
times *does not* describe any capability for doing this. (In fact, the
capability described involves a pipe and can't possibly be
bidirectional.) There were escape sequences the server could use to
query specific things about the printer (like "printer ready"; and, as
far as I know, that was it). I have no idea whether any of the terminal
emulators do much or anything with the status sequence, as they mostly
expect to pipe output and aren't actually written to directly connect to
a serial printer and check its status lines. (In an actual
terminal/printer situation the query would report the status of DTR or
CTS or whatever the specific hardware was using to communicate printer
status.) In theory it would be a relatively trivial addition to tie the
"printer status" escape code to something that queries printer status,
if it's possible to do so and it's not already implemented in a terminal
emulator that does support printing. But that's still not communication
of arbitrary data.

Now VT100 wasn't the only terminal out there. For example, Wyse was a
big name in terminals, and they used a completely different set of
escape codes. One of theirs enabled a bidirectional mode, used for
things like connecting an optical barcode scanner at a library checkout
desk to the minicomputer in the back. I don't know of many open source
wyse emulators, and none that implement this. IBM had their own
proprietary terminals and control mechanisms, like the 3270 or 5250,
with another set of capabilities. Again, I don't know of many open
source emulators, and those that I am aware of had limited
functionality. If this is the sort of thing you're talking about, you'd
get much further searching for information about wyse terminal emulators
(or whatever terminal language your software uses--there were far more
than DEC VT or Wyse or IBM) rather than an open ended question about
printing. (In reality, the bidirectional peripheral control might have
been lumped into the printer escape sequences in terminal manuals and
might have connected via the port labeled "printer", but wasn't ever
really about printing because printing is unidirectional. This is
obviously confusing to people not aware of the jargon.) I would not
expect to find much open source software in this space because it's very
niche and basically requires expensive proprietary software to test
against if the goal is to run expensive proprietary software correctly.

This is literally tech from the 1970s, so without the right keywords
you're going to mostly find unrelated but newer and higher-ranked stuff
that's not what you're looking for.

Thread

Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-12 01:40 +0100
  Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2024-01-12 02:00 +0100
    Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-12 14:30 +0100
  Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Geert Stappers <stappers@stappers.nl> - 2024-01-12 07:30 +0100
    Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-13 02:00 +0100
      Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing John Hasler <john@sugarbit.com> - 2024-01-13 03:50 +0100
        Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-13 09:50 +0100
          Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing Trish Fraser <trish@thefrasers.org> - 2024-01-13 10:40 +0100
            Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-13 12:10 +0100
          Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing debian-user@howorth.org.uk - 2024-01-13 14:00 +0100
            Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-13 15:10 +0100
      Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-01-15 20:10 +0100
        Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2024-01-15 20:30 +0100
        Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-01-15 21:10 +0100
          Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-01-16 11:50 +0100
            Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2024-01-18 06:10 +0100
              Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-01-18 12:30 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-01-18 13:20 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing hw <hw@adminart.net> - 2024-01-18 15:30 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"Printing gene heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2024-01-21 02:00 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"Printing <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-01-21 07:50 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"Printing gene heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2024-01-21 13:50 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"Printing "Roy J. Tellason, Sr." <roy@rtellason.com> - 2024-01-21 19:40 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> - 2024-01-21 11:10 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-01-22 07:00 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> - 2024-01-22 16:10 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-01-22 16:30 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2024-01-22 16:40 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-01-22 18:50 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"Printing gene heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2024-01-23 04:00 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> - 2024-01-24 18:10 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> - 2024-01-23 18:10 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2024-01-23 18:20 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> - 2024-01-24 17:50 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2024-01-24 20:50 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2024-01-26 06:50 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2024-01-19 03:00 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-21 02:40 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-20 23:20 +0100
              Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-20 23:00 +0100
            Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-20 22:20 +0100
          Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-20 21:20 +0100
            Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing "tomas@tuxteam.de" <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-01-21 07:50 +0100
        Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-20 20:00 +0100
  Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2024-01-12 12:30 +0100
    Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Tixy <tixy@yxit.co.uk> - 2024-01-12 13:20 +0100
      Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-13 02:30 +0100
        Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-01-13 08:40 +0100
          Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-01-13 16:10 +0100
            Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Richard Hector <richard@walnut.gen.nz> - 2024-01-13 16:50 +0100
            Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing Charles Curley <charlescurley@charlescurley.com> - 2024-01-13 17:00 +0100
              Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-01-13 17:10 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing gene heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2024-01-13 19:20 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Larry Martell <larry.martell@gmail.com> - 2024-01-14 20:00 +0100
              Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing debian-user@howorth.org.uk - 2024-01-13 17:20 +0100
            Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing Charles Curley <charlescurley@charlescurley.com> - 2024-01-13 23:50 +0100
              Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-01-14 01:50 +0100
                Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing debian-user@howorth.org.uk - 2024-01-14 14:40 +0100
              Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2024-01-14 06:30 +0100
            Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-01-14 08:20 +0100
              Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing "tomas@tuxteam.de" <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-01-14 11:40 +0100
    Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-12 14:50 +0100
  Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Anssi Saari <anssi.saari@debian-user.mail.kapsi.fi> - 2024-01-12 15:00 +0100
    Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-12 17:10 +0100
  Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Loïc Grenié <loic.grenie@gmail.com> - 2024-01-15 11:20 +0100
    Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough"  Printing phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2024-01-15 18:20 +0100
      Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Loïc Grenié <loic.grenie@gmail.com> - 2024-01-15 23:20 +0100
  Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Eduardo M KALINOWSKI <eduardo@kalinowski.com.br> - 2024-01-22 14:20 +0100
    Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2024-01-22 15:00 +0100
      Re: Seeking a Terminal Emulator on Debian for "Passthrough" Printing Eduardo M KALINOWSKI <eduardo@kalinowski.com.br> - 2024-01-22 15:30 +0100

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