BitchX displaying the *CORRECT* ansi/ascii chars.

[kataikub]

Okay guys, I was just wondering if anyone has gotten BitchX to actually *look* like the way its supposed to. From what I can gather, everyone running bX under OS X fails to realize that the ansi/ascii charecters that are being displayed are the wrong ones. Haven't any of you actually seen old ANSI's from BBS days? They are supposed to look like things, just no coloured jibrish. I've actually used MacSSH PPC and SSH'd into my OS X box with my old powerbook and used bX on that with a font set to ANSI/PC and it looks *fabulous*, but i come back to my OS X machine and I don't even want to touch it.

So my question is, is there a ANSI/PC font available for OS X that I can use with Terminal to display BitchX properly? OR do I have to install a third party term to do this?

thanks. [img]images/icons/grin.gif"%20border="0[/img]

[orange1]

i know it helped mine a lot when i set my terminal to us ascii string encoding, rather than the unicode it started out at.
as for fonts, damned if i know, but i've been led to believe that os x can use pretty much any type of font [bitmapped, true type, post script, et cetera]. if you can find a good font site, i'm sure they'll have something that works.

[kataikub]

Okay guys, just a follow up on this topic -- I've gotten this to work.

What I had to do :

Step 1. Download and install BitchX
Step 2. Download and install xDarwin
Step 3. Download and install rxvt
Step 4. Download and install the vga11x19 font.

After you've completed these steps, you launch rxvt with the command:

rxvt -fg white -bg black -fn vga11x19

if you would like to view what BitchX is supposed to look like, here are some screen shots:





I am also going to write a full tutorial on this procedure step by step since i've been tearing my hair out for the past 2 weeks trying to figure it out. [img]images/icons/blush.gif"%20border="0[/img] )

[apex]

It would be nice to get such nice output in Terminal.app. To make it a little better edit your terminal preferences:

Terminal->Preferences->Shell->String Encoding->Mac OS Roman.

You can experiment and try the others, but thats what i use.

[<Fahrvergnuugen>]

Can someone help me with this?



I downloaded the binary and ran it using ./BitchX and that's what it looks like. Anybody know why?

-Paul

[kataikub]

Have you installed ncurses >= 5.2??
if not, you have several options. You can install ncurses using fink --
(http://fink.sourceforge.net), or you can do the following:

open up a terminal window and login is a root.

# su - root

once you're root, type the following to retrieve the ncurses archive from the gnu ftp site.

root:~#: ftp ftp.gnu.org
login: anonymous
pass: youremail@host.com

ftp> cd pub/gnu//ncurses
ftp> bin
ftp> get ncurses-5.2.tar.gz

when the transfer finishes type :

ftp> quit

the following commands will decompress, configure, make and install ncurses.

root:~#: gzip -d ncurses-5.2.tar.gz
root:~#: tar -vxf ncurses-5.2.tar.gz
root:~#: cd ncurses-5.2
root:~#: ./configure --enable-symlinks
root:~#: make;make install

Also, be sure that you are using the most current version of BitchX ported to MacOS X. the most recent version is BitchX-1.0c18. You can download the latest version on the newest version of fink, or you can do a general web search using Yahoo or something. I found it pretty difficult to find it via websearch, so you may just want to use fink. [img]images/icons/grin.gif"%20border="0[/img]

[kataikub]

sorry... i messed up one little thing :

the directory that ncurses is in is :

ftp> cd pub/gnu/ncurses

(i had a double slash there in my last post)..

[<Fahrvergnuugen>]

I downloaded the ncurses installer from macosx.forked.net version 5.2

I downloaded the BitchX binary from www.bitchx.com version 1.0c19

[kataikub]

The problem is that you're not using a version of BitchX ported to MacOS X. The binary you've downloaded is for other OS's. Try downloaded the one that was ported to MacOS X.

[<Fahrvergnuugen>]

I downloaded the binary from www.bitchx.com that was built for OSX.

ftp://ftp.bitchx.org/pub/BitchX/binaries/./BitchX-1.0c19-MacOS-X-PPC.tar.gz

[<ilo>]

Built everything, but still it's not 'exactly' correct. Is it supposed to be this way? Tried all the encodings, with Latin1 giving the best results so far.
Still, it would be nice if my ansi characters display immaculately.
Also tried the precompiled binaries on this site. (Thanks!)
Any clues?

[kataikub]

If you're using Terminal, it won't display the ansi charecters correctly. if you're using XDarwin, you need to download fonts that will display ansi charecters.

some fonts can be found at the following url :
X Ansi Fonts

the page includes directions on how to install the fonts. remember, you have to run /usr/X11R6/bin/mkfontdir as root. when you're done, you're going to run the xserver rehash command as the user you are logged in as. (for instance, my login is 'enos', and if i executed xdarwin with enos, i'd have to run the rehash as enos, it won't work as root).

when you're all done installing the fonts, if you're using rxvt as i do for your terminal program, you'd use the command :

rxvt -bg black -fg white -fn <fontname>
example :
rxvt -bg black -fg white -fn vga
or
rxvt -bg black -fg white -fn nexus

you can also compile rxvt to have the default background as black and the default foreground as white.

[img]images/icons/blush.gif"%20border="0[/img] )

hope i was a little helpful.

[apex]

GLterm 1.2 now has 8 bits clean support, Latin-1 translation keyboard input and rendering (ANSI & ISO8855-1 fonts supported). This renders the BitchX ANSI graphics perfectly. (Use the Sabvga 6X13 ANSI Font in the Appearance Preferences tab).

http://www.pollet.net/GLterm/GLterm.dmg.gz

[pac]

My only complaint with GLTerm so far is having to use Ctrl+Backspace(Delete) in order to backspace. Don't have to do while not in BitchX in GLTerm, or anytime in Terminal.app.

[<entheon>]

here... download this/these

http://www.vlaadworld.net/fontHow.php

you want the fonts.tar.gz

this place also has good ones

http://bitz.ca/fonts/

anyway, if you do a search for "vga.pcf" that should turn up most of what you want