Two more things:

1) When I try to do Command-Q to quit DOSBOX, DOSBOX just sends 'Q' to the DOS game (larn123, in this case) rather than quitting DOSBOX. Very minor problem.

2) Since I play larn123 at a very high difficulty level (7 or 😎, I lose a lot of games quickly before I get traction. To speed this up, I have a tiny BAT file that just runs larn123 over and over, giving me the opportunity to hit ^C each loop iteration to get out. But under DOSBOX, when I hit ^C the BAT file does not quit, it just runs another loop iteration and I cannot quit it unless I quit DOSBOX completely. Here is the entire text of the BAT file:

:top
larn123 -%1%
pause
goto top

The BAT file does pause correctly and wait for input, but ^C does not kill it.

ansi is supported, but not much actually uses it.
Is that game freeware or some shareware version available?
(one that exhibits the problem you describe).

ctrl-c is not supported in dosbox, but you could replace the
batch file with some tiny program that does the same looping
and exits on some key (say escape or whatever).

The game is freeware. I'm attaching the zip file. What you want to mount is the Program subdirectory, but first you'll want to add write permissions to that directory; otherwise the game complains that it can't write the score file. If you just move (using standard rogue movement keys) between the digits on the home level, you'll see the problem.

While the problem with the status line is as I reported, it is actually worse in effect than I first thought. If you are fighting a monster, the game wishes to say something like:

You miss the centaur;
the centaur hits you

All you see due to the NANSI (maybe curses?) related problem is:

the centaur hits you

So you can't see if you are hitting or missing the monster, so you don't know if you need to take more drastic action or not. Also, if your pack is full, instead of seeing:

You found a potion of see invisible;
you can't carry anything else

all you see is the latter, and the only way to determine what you've run across is to drop something and try to pick up the new thing again. If you're running from a pack of monsters in desperation and run across something that could save you, you'll never know it if your pack is already full (and larn allows you to read/quaff an item in-place without first putting it into your pack).

This one little problem renders the game essentially unplayable at higher difficultly levels, simply because every single interaction counts.

Thanks for any time you might spend on this![/quote]

One of the nansi escape sequences is missing, but it looks like this
one is not present in the regular ansi specs as well (the game claims
it works with ansi).
Seems to work when adding that functionality, at least the scrolling.

maybe undocumented one.

Regarding your batch file: Check the net for docs on the MS-DOS "choice" command. It is supported by dosbox.

Did you try simply loading nnansi.com before starting your game?

I doubt that works, as dosbox doesn't use the device chain. But never tried it...