Subj : New Abstraction Layer
To   : deon
From : Digital Man
Date : Sun Sep 28 2025 01:58 am

 Re: New Abstraction Layer
 By: deon to Digital Man on Sun Sep 28 2025 09:26 am

> Hey Rob,
>
> I've been out of the scene for a while (busy on life), but at some time a
> few months ago, I updated Sync to 3.21 - which if I recall from the chatter
> that it has a new output layer (aka abstraction layer)?

Deuce rewrote the terminal emulation code, abstracting it to support more terminal types.

> (I'm thinking that the problem below is related to that, because I worked on
> my viewdata.js for a year or more, but I did upgrade from 3.19 a few months
> ago.)

Unfortunately, Deuce doesn't read DOVE-Net, but you can reach him usually (recently) in #synchronet at irc.synchro.net.

> Today, I connected to my viewdata port (port 516) to see how its working,
> and I've noticed that the page is completly messed up - I think because of
> two reasons.
>
> (In my viewdata processing, I've been using write_raw() to send data to the
> terminal. I'm assuming this will sent data as is to the terminal?)

Yes, but write_raw() also performs Telnet escaping when appropriate.

> 1) There is extra output sent to the screen with the page data (looks like
> 13 x spaces 0x20). This normally wouldnt be an issue, because a HOME command
> would get me to the top left corner and I would overwrite it anyway.
>
> (At some point I'd like to figure out this extra data and surpress it.)

Deuce changed js_write_raw() to call some new high level "term_out" function rather than "putcom" as it used to. I'll commit a change back to the old behavior but Deuce might object for some reason. Please test it out and see if that fixes the issue you're having.

> 2) It seems my 0x1e is not being sent (viewdata home).

Let me know if that recent commit fixes this issue too.

> So could this be a cause of the new abstraction layer work?

Yes.

> Is write_raw() the right method to bypass any internal processing and send
> binary data to the terminal?

Yes.
https://wiki.synchro.net/custom:javascript#output
--
                                           digital man (rob)

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