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omnibus2 user manual ==================== omnibus2 is a terminal program for the Atari ST with ANSI and VT100 terminal emulation. It is freeware and may not be sold. The program only runs in monochrome high resolution. Version 2.4v Beta test ---------------------- The version you have is a beta test. It was written in GFA Basic V. 2.0 and compiled with compiler V. 2.0. There will be no Version 2.4 up and no update. There are plans to migrate omnibus2 to GFA Basic 3.5. Die Language... --------------- omnibus2 war written in German. I quick & dirty translated the RSC file to make it understandable for English speaking users. I also quick & dirty translated what I think was most of the source code. Some alert boxes and messages may still be in German. HOW TO USE ========== Files: ------ These files are mandatory and must be in the same directory: OMNIBUS2.BIN OMNIBUS2.IBM OMNIBUS2.PRG OMNIBUS2.RSC You may want to call a text editor program (such as ME.TTP) from inside omnibus2. If so, all necessary files of such an editor program must also be in the same directory as the files above. You may from inside omnibus2 specify a pathname for a data directory anywhere in your system to store incoming and outgoing files. If you do so such a directory must be set up prior to start omnibus2. Start & setup ------------- Double click the OMNIBUS2.PRG icon to start the program. There may be an error message if there is not enough RAM or if omnibus doesn't find any of the mandatory files. Try remove ACCs from the memory then, and/or copy all necessary files in the same directory as OMNIBUS2.PRG. If all goes well you will see some beta test system messages and after that you enter the Main Menu. Main Menu --------- "RS232 & terminal set" Set RS232 and Terminal. Double click opens a menu to setup Speed, Parity, Data bits, Handshake, Stop bits, Local Echo and LF/CR setting. Additionally there are two icons named WordPlus Upload and Download. omnibus was first written as a 1stWord Desk Accessory. If you enable WordPlus Upload, omnibus2 will automatically transform 1stWord WP files into ASCII files. If you enable WordPlus Download, incoming ASCII files are transformed to 1stWord WP modus (such transformed files can be formatted using 1stWord's F10 key, ordinary ASCII files resist attempts to be formatted). There is one more icon "more". Click and you'll enter terminal settings. Besides ANSI and Digital Equipment Corporation VT100 emulation you may set omnibus2 to Teletype Atari or Teletype IBM. The latter will receive and send graphic characters of the enhanced IBM character set rather than the characters of the Atari character set. "Path" If you have set up a directory for storing your incoming and outgoing files you may enter that directory's path here. omnibus asks you, if you want to store your setting as a default after you press return. "F-Keys" You may store 10 key makros here. EDITOR Icon If you have copied a text editor program file such as ME.TTP in the same directory as the manatory omnibus2 files, you may call this editor from here. Below the EDITOR Icon the program file name of the editor is displayed. Double click let's you enter any other program file name. If you do so and enter return one more menu is presented. Please state if your editor needs mouse support and/or fileselect box or not. Also enter how much RAM should be reserved for your editor. Setting up an editor may be tricky. Some editors may conflict with omnibus. Setting up RAM may be a trial and error-process. The MicroEMACS ME.TTP Editor works fine. PRINT Icon You may print out any file from here. SAVE Icon If the Capture buffer is on during data transaction all incoming data is stored (see below). You may then save the Capture buffer from here. Double click on the SAVE Icon presents a fileselect box to do so. Just above the SAVE Icon there is the 1stWord storage flag. It is set to either ASCII or WP - indicating if the Capture buffer will be saved in either ASCII or 1st Word WP mode (see "RS232 & terminal setting"). QUIT Icon That does exactly that. "Phone Directory" omnibus2 has a built in phone directory to store phone numbers and RS232 as well as terminal settings for any BBS or service you want to call. One of the basic ideas of omnibus is, that there is one overall RS232 and terminal setting (as set under the "RS232 & terminal set" box from the main menu), which is overruled by the individual settings for various services stored in the phone directory. The overall setting may be useful if you want to go online without dialing from the dial directory (you may want to dial manually or use omnibus2 over a direct null-modem link). Storing numbers and settings in a phone directory is of course useful becaus it shields you away from having to set individual settings for each service. To enter phone numbers and settings click on an empty entry. To change numbers and/or settings click on the entry to be changed. You may save the phone directory after you're done. "Capture On/Off" The Capture buffer is a RAM area where all incoming traffic while online will be stored, provided it is set to "On". (This device works pretty much the same as in Flash, btw.). "Free:" Free has two functions: 1 it indicates how much RAM is still free to hold incoming data. omnibus detects how much RAM your computer has upon startup. It then reserves as much RAM as possible for storing incoming traffic. The amount of Capture RAM depends upon the type of your computer and the amount of RAM you reserved for your editor (see EDITOR Icon). 2 it clears the Caption buffer if you click on the "Free:" box. So be careful! "Log:" You may store incoming data on disk or hard disk. If you do so the "Log" indicator on the right hand of the "Log" box will present the word "open" (see below). "omnibus2" Logo Click on the omnibus2 Logo and be presented with the authors name and address. DIAL Icon You may from here dial any service or BBS stored in the phone directory (see above). Click on an entry will dial the service/BBS and go on line. TERMINAL Icon Go terminal mode. In terminal mode all you tpye from the keyboard will go to the RS232 port and all incoming data will be printed on the screen. (What does the hand mean? In a first version of omnibus2 this function was meant to be used for manual dialling when using an acoustic coppler. Modems were not allowed or awailable in some parts of Europe by then.) Terminal mode ------------- After you entered terminal mode everything you type on the keyboard is sent to the serial RS232 port and everything that comes in via the RS232 serial port will be sent to the screen. Additionally, when you have set local echo to "On" (see "RS232 & terminal set"; see also below) what you type will also be printed on screen (see below). The status line: - To the far left of the status line the omnibus2 logo is displayed. This will not change during the whole program session. - To the far right various messages will be displayed, informing you what the program is presently doing or in what state it is at a given moment. - Between those two five fields are presented with a number of information about terminal, program, RS232, buffer and log settings. They are (from left to right): * The Terminal setting (ANSI, VT100, TT Atari, TT IBM) * ELUD - The Echo, LF/CR and 1stWord WP Upload and Download settings, represented by the letters ELUD. When a letter is marked by a small "OK" sign, it is set to "On", except for the letter D, which is marked with a small double tilda, if the contents of the Capture buffer will be transformed into 1stWord WP mode when saved (there is no "OK" sign because this function is not actually "On" but only takes effect when the Capture buffers is saved). See also "RS232 & terminal setting" and Alternate key codes below to learn more about ELUD settings. * Baud (transmission speed), Data bits, Parity and Stop bits setting * Log - "OFF" while no incoming data is stored on disk, "ON" if omnibus2 does save incoming data (if so, you will notice a little arrow appear to the right of the word "ON" from time to time, indicating that omnibus2 acutally stores a dump of data to the disk). * CPT: "OFF" while no incoming data is stored in the Capture buffer. If data is stored, the percentage of RAM available is displayed to the right of the word "CPT:". You should close the Capture buffer if this value drops to below 20 or so percent. Alternate key and the mouse --------------------------- While in terminal mode a number of Alternate key combinations and the help key as well as the mouse may be used for various functions (please note that while the mouse keys have been set to meet ergonomical objects the Alternate key combinations are based upon German and may therefor seem illocial and weird; some are also taken from Procomm plus, however): Mouse right button: Back to main Menu Mouse left button: Send (upload) ASCII or 1stWord file Help key: Displays a help menu with all key and mosue settings Alt-W Dial from dial directory Alt-M F-Makros Alt-A Editor Alt-F File directory Alt-B Set data path Alt-S RS232 and terminal settings Alt-E Toggle local echo Alt-L Toggle CR/LF on/off Alt-U Toggle 1stWord WP upload transform Alt-D Toggle 1stWord WP capture buffer save transform Alt-F1 Toggle Log on/off Alt-F2 Toggle Capture buffer on/off Alt-F3 Clear screen Alt-F8 Upload Xmodem Alt-F9 Download Xmodem Alt-F10 Replay ANSI sequence; you may capture animated ANSI or VT100 files to disk when your log is open while they are received. Afterwards you may replay those files to your screen when off line. This may be fun but also of special interest if you are connected to a Digital Equipment Corporation VAX computer that sends its data in VT100 mode - which you could hardly read using a word processor or editor. While displaying an ANSI/VT100 sequence you may Toggle stop/start it with the Esc-key; End display and quit with the Undo-key; Make display faster or slower with the left and right arrow keys. Alt-Undo Quit omnibus2 Alt-Home Back to Main menu (same as right mouse button) Alt-Insert Upload ASCII file (same as left mouse button) Alt-H Save a screen dump to disk SOME PROGRAM INFORMATION ======================== One of the main problems with the Atari ST computer is its weird built in character set - it makes ANSI difficult to program, because the graphical characters of the IBM character set which are absolutely necessary for ANSI and VT100 emulation are missing. One could make use of GDOS and load a complete IBM font. I don't like GDOS, however and so I decided to try something else. I used the GET and PUT commands of GFA 2.0 to store the missing graphical characters as string variables and to display them as blocks of graphics at their proper positions. The string variables are stored in the OMNIBUS2.IBM file which is read in upon startup of the program (they could of course also be stored as DATA statements within the program code, but I wanted to keep the code as short as possible). The font characteristics of the ANSI standard, on the other hand, may be emulated relatively easy, using the TEXT instead of the PRINT command in GFA Basic. Only blinking characters cannot be emulated (not without heavy machine language coding). Writing an ANSI decoder is one other thing. I don't know who invented the ANSI sequence set, but he sure hated programmers. Because he on the one hand decided to let every sequence start the same - with an Escape character -, which makes it relatively easy to detect them. But on the other hand he left the termination of a sequence more or less open - it may end with anything like A, B, C, D, H, J, u or s - to name just a few. So you need to catch the whole of every single ANSI sequence, store it and analyze and parse it, all of what must be made while incoming 2400 baud data is waiting at the RS232... First I thought that it was impossible to write an ANSI decoder in Basic and never wanted to write one. After somebody else had told me, that it really was impossible to write an ANSI decoder in Basic and that also I (me!) couldn't write an ANSI decoder in Basic, I wanted to write one. So I did. I actually did it from scrap, with the help, in the end, of an article in the German magazine "c't" which dealt with optimizing GFA 2.0 code for compiling. Optimizing made some of the algorythms of the decoder real fast, but it also ran before that, even with 2400 baud speed in the interpreter mode. GEM programming under GFA 2.0 was made possible for me after I had read a book by Klaus Loeffelmann and Axel Plenge ("GFA Basic fuer Insider", Markt&Technik-Verlag) about that subject. Many of Klaus' and Axel's suggestions have made it into omnibus2. Another enormous help was Uwe Litzkendorf's book "Das grosse GFA Basic Buch" (Data Becker) especially for I/O functions and those great tricks with string handling. Finally, the Xmodem routines I used were tel quel taken from the file XMODEM.ARC in the communications library in the CompuServe Ataripro Forum uploaded 02-Apr-87. Thank you! The source code of omnibus2 is available and if someone wants it, drop me a note. It is heavily commented - in German! Zurich, 25.1.1991 Paul Batt, Kernstrasse 27, CH-8004 Zurich, Switzerland CIS ID: Paul Batt 73637,2156