What is the practical value in better VT compatibility?
I'm not familiar with the history, but I guess this is essentially referring to a standard defined by hardware products from the 1970s? Why is that still relevant?
What i mean is, many other computer standards become obsolete and get replaced. What is so special about this standard from the 1970s that has given it so much staying power?
It is a software standard, influenced by hardware, which has outlasted nearly every other hardware and software standard of its time. Doesn't that strike anyone else as bizarre?
The VT standard is roughly to the application layer what RS232 is to the physical layer: open, easy to implement, and damn near ubiquitous. It makes a nice Schelling point for when you want to throw up a rudimentary UI.
Example: I once worked for a robotics firm that built its own custom batteries. The battery engineers wanted an easy way to monitor battery health and status. So they added code to the firmware to make the tiny microcontroller that monitored and controlled the battery to periodically spit out screenfuls of health information in VT standard. Then, all they had to do was attach a laptop to the battery over serial and start up Windows HyperTerminal, and they had a full (text mode) status display.
This could not be done so easily without a terminal standard that's nearly universally recognized.
That's a really interesting example. I think I'm having a hard time articulating my question, partly because I don't fully understand the entire stack of software and standards underlying a modern terminal app on a desktop. I feel like there is a lot of historical baggage in that stack, but I don't know where exactly, or why. I was using "the VT standard" as a sort of proxy for that historical baggage, but maybe that's not accurate.
I'm not familiar with the history, but I guess this is essentially referring to a standard defined by hardware products from the 1970s? Why is that still relevant?