-> The ANSI codes on your main menu may have some bugs.

-> It looks OK in hyperterminal, but not in putty. I don't know how
-> hyperterminal gets it right.  Maybe it has bugs that match the bugs
-> in the ANSI codes.

I dumped your main menu into a capture file and started looking at the
ANSI codes.  At first, they didn't look right.  And putty agreed.  But I
kept staring at them, wondering how hyperterminal could get it right.

After hours of frustration, it finally hit me.

Hyperterminal takes a simple approach to colors and reverse video; any
change to color or reverse video updates the same variable.

OTOH, putty, and my telnet client, use two independent variables for
color and reverse video.  When reverse video is changed, it's layered
onto a copy of the color variable, not the color itself.  That way, the
color can be changed independently, and reverse video can be re-layered
onto a refreshed copy of the color variable.

To me, that seems better.  And whoever wrote putty agreed, because putty
rendered your ANSI main menu the same way my client did.

In any case, after understanding the problem, I devised a solution. I
built a "quirks" mode into my client that unifies the two variables, so
they behave as one.  In that mode, my client renders your main menu the
same way hyperterminal does.

In my ANSI client, your main menu looks right now.  But some clients,
like putty, render it badly.  Perhaps the ANSI tool used to create it,
is not compatible with all clients.

--- PCBoard (R) v15.4/M 250 Beta