I intalled Zterm 2000 on a Windows Vista Business edition PC.
When I open my Alpha Basic application using my normal Zterm AM-62C color emulator, it does not display boxes correctly using the CALL WINDOW subroutine using INPSBR.RTN (which calls an external INFD.SBR from microsabio). The left and right sides of the boxes have disappeared. Any ideas on how to resolve that? It has worked fine with all previous versions of windows. Here is a link to a screen shot so you can see what I'm referring to. http://prelaunch.providerschoice.com/pages/misc/am_screen_shot.asp

Here is a snippet of the code that Calls the Window subroutine to draw the box.
ICTL = "05,18,15,59" : CALL WINDOW
The INPSBR.MAP and INPSBR.RTN are Included in the program for this to work.

Can we see the actual XCALL WINDOW statement? Also, perhaps the output of DIR/V WINDOW.SBR? I'm not sure what the relationship between INFLD.SBR and WINDOW.SBR is here. INFLD doesn't draw boxes, so I'm assuming that the issue is entirely with WINDOW.SBR, but I'd like to be sure of whether WINDOW.SBR is something that we distributed (as part of the original TRACKER package way back in the early 90's?) or ...?

Offhand, my guess is that there is some mismatch between the terminal emulation within ZTERM and the driver on the AMOS side (probably a field-vs-mode issue), but perhaps it is something else. (To confirm that, perhaps the output of .SET TERM and a picture of the Configuration..Emulation dialog?)

I don't think anyone has reported any anomalies like this with Vista, so I'm inclined to hope that Vista isn't really the issue, but it's hard to say without more information.

Here are the INPSBR.MAP variables:

! Parameter variables for INFLD.SBR (from Microsabio)
MAP 1 INFLD'PARMS
MAP2 CL,F
MAP2 EXCODE,F
MAP2 INXCTL,F
MAP2 DFAULT,F,,0
MAP2 RW,F
MAP2 TIMER,F,,0
MAP2 ENTRY,S,70,""
MAP1 I'CTLX
MAP2 IROW,S,2
MAP2 COM1,S,1
MAP2 ICOL,S,2
MAP2 COM2,S,1
MAP2 IMAX,S,2
MAP2 COM3,S,1
MAP2 IMIN,S,2
MAP2 COM4,S,1
MAP2 ITYP,S,24
MAP1 ICTL,S,36@I'CTLX

! VARAIBLES FOR WINDOW.SBR
MAP1 WERR,B,1
MAP1 WTLR,B,1
MAP1 WTLC,B,1
MAP1 WBRR,B,1
MAP1 WBRC,B,1

Here are the statements in INPSBR.RTN THAT XCALL WINDOW:

! Call To External INFLD.SBR For Data Input
! Draw A Box On The Screen

WINDOW:
WTLR = VAL(IROW) : WTLC = VAL(ICOL)
WBRR = VAL(IMAX) : WBRC = VAL(IMIN)
XCALL WINDOW,WERR,WTLR,WTLC,WBRR,WBRC
RETURN

Here is the output of .DIR/V WINDOW.SBR:

WINDOW SBR 2 1.0 DSK0:[7,6]

Here is the output of .SET TERM:

current terminal settings for TSKAAB are:

Terminal driver: AM62A
Baud rate: 19200
Terminal width: 80

I included a creen shot of the Zterm configuration/emulation dialpg at:
http://prelaunch.providerschoice.com/pages/misc/am_screen_shot.asp

I check my AMOS system for a copy of WINDOW.SBR and could find none, so I'm somewhat confident this is not a routine you got from MicroSabio (which also makes it hard to figure out what it is doing).

The only thing I notice in your screen shots and other info is that you are using the am62a driver (SET TERM shows AM62A) but you are using AM62C emulation within ZTERM. Your screen sample is monochrome, so my guess is that AM62A is the emulation you should be using. (In any case, you should try to match the ZTERM emulation with the driver on the AMOS side.) But I'm not sure that will solve the problem, since I think that the am62c emulation is a superset of the am62a.

If you want to send me the window.sbr utility, I'll try to figure out what it is doing, which is about the only way I can think of to get at what might be different in ZTERM under Vista than under XP (assuming of course that you have checked all the display configuration settings and they are the same ZTERM/Vista and ZTERM/XP).

It appears it is a font issue. I changed the Zterm Font Type settings on my Windows Vista PC from Bitmap Font to True-Type font and then the window draws correctly on the screen.

I was curious about this Zterm font issue, so I looked at my fonts on my XP SP2 PC and there was a ZTERM.FON bitmap font and a ztermprt.ttf true type font in the Windows/fonts directory that installed during my Zterm installation. However on my Windows Vista PC, after Zterm was installed, these 2 fonts are not in the Windows/Fonts directory.

Maybe the Zterm fonts get installed in a different location on Vista?? I thought I'd copy these 2 fonts from my XP PC fonts directory to me Vista PC fonts diectory, thinking I could then use the bitmap font in my Vista Zterm settings, however after I did this and changed my Vista Zterm settings back to Bitmap font, it drops the right and left windows box lines again on the screen. I only way I can make it work is to use a True Type font.

Good observation - I was beginning to wonder what happened there. Indeed, it seems that the fonts are not being installed properly by the installer. I need to investigate that further, as I'm not yet sure if it is just an installation problem or a more fundamental font incompatibility problem.

Did you try actually "installing" the font? (After copying the fon file to some directory, you need to go into the Fonts applet and use the File..Install New Font option.)

My Vista system is down at the moment or I would confirm this myself, but I will later and will update the Vista recipe as required.

As an aside, I don't know why you would want to use the bitmap font. Most people find the Lucida Console Truetype font to be preferable, and is much more flexible (in terms of scaling).

Yes, I used the install font option but that did not help.

OK, I've confirmed everything you've reported:

1. The ZTERM font does not get automatically installed by the installer, apparently due to an incompatibility between it and Vista. (A-Shell's installer has the same problem.)

2. You can install the font manually, by copying the ZTERM.FON file from another machine, then right-clicking on in and picking Install. (As an aside, if you do this from within the Control Panel, initially the font does not show in the list. But after exiting and re-starting the Fonts applet it does.)

3. Once installed, choosing the bitmap font choice within ZTERM does give you the font, but the font has the defect you describe, i.e., the graphic vertical line characters do not appear. I'm not sure how to explain that, other than there must be some conflict with font metrics or rendering or something that has changed in Vista. (Very few people, if any, use bitmap fonts in XP, much less in Vista, so it is not hard to imagine that a problem like this could go unnoticed and unfixed.) (As an aside, A-Shell's bitmap font MIAME Terminal does not seem to have the vertical line problem in A-Shell. But when I tried renaming/reinstalling it in place of the ZTERM.FON, ZTERM still had the same problem, so that doesn't appear to be any kind of workaround.)

So, my conclusion is that ZTERM does not work 100% correctly with the bitmap font option in Vista. Fortunately, the TrueType options seem to work fine. Of them, I think Lucida Console is the best.

Was there some other problem that switching to TrueType fonts caused for you?

I thought we had encountered a printing issue some years ago with a True Type font, so we began using Bitmap. Unfortunately I can't remember any more specifics but I'll let you know if we encounter any issues with the True Type font. Thanks for your help!

Just to clarify a possible misunderstanding: The choice of the bitmap (ZTERM.FON) or TrueType (e.g. New Courier, Lucida Console) shouldn't have any effect on printing. The ZTERM Printer (True Type) font only comes into play if you use the "Emulate 10/17 CPI Dot Matrix" option in the Printer configuration. Otherwise, for aux port printing, it just outputs raw ASCII characters to the printer, leaving the font selection to the printer itself.