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- DDE Specification for WinPack V6.2
- ----------------------------------
-
- (You must know something about DDE to understand this!)
-
- Server Name: Packet
-
- Topic Name: WinpDDE
-
- Item Names: txtDDE
- labDDE2 (not supported before V6.2)
- labDDEStatus (not supported before V6.2)
-
- txtDDE is retained to maintain compatibility with the DDE support in
- WinPack before V6.2. It is recommended that any new applications
- using DDE links should use labDDE2 and labDDEStatus.
-
- Item Usage
- ----------
- Links can be established to all three items to allow your program to
- be notified when the data in the items changes. You can use
- automatic, notify or manual links.
-
- txtDDE
- ------
- This item receives all monitored data when WinPack is not connected
- and all connected data. If WinPack is in BPQ mode or host mode,
- monitored data is not sent whilst a connection is in progress, even
- though it is available. Data is not sent if WinPack is either
- involved in a Yapp transfer or uploading/downloading compressed
- mail. The item is cleared before it is updated, so your program will
- see two transactions - one with an empty string - each time txtDDE
- is updated. This is done because if the item is updated with
- identical data, VB does not trigger a DDE transaction, so if an
- ASCII file transfer was occurring in which two successive lines were
- identical, the client application might only see one line.
-
- labDDE2
- -------
- This item behaves exactly like txtDDE, except that the problem of
- making sure the client sees every update is handled differently. The
- first character of the data is alternately '0' or '1'. You should
- discard the first byte when the data is received.
-
- labDDEStatus
- ------------
- Every time WinPack's connected status changes, this item is updated
- with the connected status information - see below.
-
- Link Execute
- ------------
- If an execute transaction is sent to the server, the command string
- is normally sent to the TNC. There are two exceptions:-
-
- If the command string is "<ESC>[STATUS]" then txtDDE is updated with
- connected status information.
-
- If the command string is "<ESC>[STATUS2]" then labDDEStatus is
- updated with connected status information. This is only needed when
- an application first starts, because once WinPack has some DDE
- clients, labDDEStatus is automatically updated whenever the
- connected state changes.
-
- In the above, <ESC> means the character 1B hex.
-
- Connected Status Information
- ----------------------------
- This consists of a few lines of text.
-
- Line 1: "<ESC>[STATUS]" or "<ESC>[STATUS2]" according to which item is
- being used.
-
- Line 2: "*** CONNECTED to a_callsign" e.g. "*** CONNECTED to G4IDE",
- or "*** DISCONNECTED".
-
- Line 3: "CTS=state".
-
- Line 4: "DSR=state".
-
- Line 5: "DCD=state".
-
- Line 6: "DDE link count=number_of_current_DDE_links".
-
- In the above, state can be "TRUE", "FALSE", "NULL" (DCD only), or,
- if you are using BPQ or host mode, it is the first five characters
- of the name of the mode in use, e.g. "BPQ" or "TF2.7".
-
-
- Roger Barker, G4IDE
- February 1997
-
-