ARM Club 3/TheARMClub_PDCD3.iso/hensa/comms/streamer/streamerdoc/Manual_txt

Text File | 1995-04-13 | 24KB | 683 lines

Streamer User Guide

Contents

    • Introduction − What is Streamer?

    • Features

    • Start up

    • Streamer windows

        • Tnc stream windows

        • New view windows

        • Dump stream window

        • Logger window

        • Streamer file views

    • Configuring your tnc

        • Single stream operation

        • Multiple stream operation

    • Configuring Streamer

        • Setup dialogues...

            • Serial

            • Terminal

            • Colours

            • Log book

            • Save setup

    • Streamer in use

        • Basic operations

        • Using more than one stream

    • The Stream window menu

        • Saving stream data

        • Spooling stream data

        • Saving to a buffer

        • Clearing all data from a stream

        • Client submenu

        • Operations on selected text

        • Operations on buffers

        • Miscellaneous operations

            • Highlight...

            • Fn keys...

    • Acknowledgements


Introduction − What is Streamer?

Streamer is a packet radio tnc (terminal node controller) terminal program.
The task of the program is to control the flow of data between the computer
and the tnc. User input is taken from the keyboard, and text generated by the
tnc is displayed on the VDU. This is a description of a simple terminal
emulation. Such a program is not able to make convenient use of the more
sophisticated facilities offered by most tnc's. The foremost of these is the
ability to connect to more than one station at a time, on different streams.
It is possible to use more than one stream with a simple terminal program,
but the display soon becomes cluttered. Streamer uses the stream switching
facilities of the tnc to direct input and output from and to separate stream
windows, greatly enhancing the interface between user and tnc.

Features

    •    Fully multitasking

    •    Multiple streams, each with its own window

    •    More than one view of each window possible

    •    Scroll-back limited only by memory

    •    User control of colours

    •    Automatic highlighting of words

    •    TX and RX text distinguished by colour

    •    Up to 32 upload buffers with queued uploading

    •    Automatic log keeping

    •    Monitored text sent to a separate window whilst
        connected

    •    Special file format which can be viewed from
        Streamer, with TX and RX portions still distinct

    •    Stream text can be saved to a file, spooled as data
        arrives (intelligent buffering system) or a selection can be
        saved

    •    Streams are tnc mode-aware − no need to manually switch
        between command and converse modes

    •    Cooperates with other users of the serial port

    •    Uses block drivers

Start up

Run Streamer by double-clicking the !Streamer icon. The Streamer icon should
now appear on the iconbar. If the icon is greyed-out it means that another
task is using the serial port, and will not relinquish it. Streamer will
attempt to claim the port if its icon is clicked with adjust.

Depending on the stored configuration one or more stream windows might have
appeared at this stage. Any active windows may be opened from the iconbar
menu. Click the middle mouse button over the iconbar icon and click on the
entry for the stream you want in the Open submenu.

Streamer windows

Tnc stream windows

There are several types of Streamer window. The tnc stream windows are your
means of communicating with the tnc. Depending upon the terminal setup, there
might be just one available stream (single stream operation) or several
(multiple stream operation). Clicking with select on the iconbar icon will
display the next stream out of those not already shown, or you can select one
from the iconbar menu.

Tnc stream windows have two parts − an input (TX) and an output (RX) area.
Text entered in the input area is sent to the tnc when the return key is
pressed. Text from the tnc is displayed in the output area.

New view windows

New views of any window can be created from the new view option on the stream
window menu. These have no input area. All user input must be provided in the
input area of the parent window.

Dump stream window

Depending upon the terminal switching mode in use there can be a separate
stream window for dumped data. In RXBlock mode, data other than received text
are sent to the dump stream rather than a connected stream in converse or
transparent mode. Thus you can set your tnc to monitor the channel even
whilst connected (mcon on). Monitored packets will be displayed in the dump
window.

Logger window

Streamer provides a log keeping facility. When operational (see logger setup)
log entries are displayed in the log window. This has no input area. All
input is provided by Streamer itself.

Streamer file views

Data received / sent by Streamer may be saved as Streamer files. These
contain extra information, such as whether text is received or sent, and will
not display correctly in a normal editor. However, Streamer files can be
viewed with Streamer. Simply drag the file's icon onto Streamer or double
click on it. The file's contents are displayed in a Streamer window with no
input area − you cannot change the text in a Streamer file view window.

Configuring your tnc

single stream operation

In single stream mode Streamer behaves just like an ordinary split screen
terminal emulator. You can use whatever tnc settings you like. If you usually
set your tnc to echo user input you might prefer to set echo off. Streamer
can be configured to display user input itself, in which case it can be
coloured differently to distinguish it from received data.

Multiple stream operation

Tnc configuration for multiple stream operation is critical. You should set
the following parameters or their equivalent on your tnc:

streamcall on

users 0 (or as many as it can cope with)

echo off (or on, but you won't get coloured tx data)

You can set your line end sequence to be a CR only, LF only, CR + LF or
LF + CR. Streamer will accept any of these automatically.

If your tnc has the RXBlock command (Pac-Comm for example) set it on and
configure Streamer appropriately.

When using multiple streams, Streamer keeps a track of the mode (cmd, conv or
trans) of each. This means that you do not need to change modes manually (to
change the mode for a stream use the Stream−>Client menu). For this to work
you must set nomode on. This stops the tnc from changing mode automatically
on a connect or disconnect. Instead, Streamer will set the mode itself, and
thus is sure to know what mode the tnc is in at any time. Also, this method
can at times reduce the amount of switching between modes. You might be used
to operating with nomode off and newmode on, in which case the tnc will go
into conv mode as soon as you request a connect. With this version of
Streamer the tnc will remain in cmd mode until the connexion is established.

If you prefer to use manual mode switching deselect Auto mode from the
Stream−>Client menu. The stream title will always claim to be in cmd mode,
but you can ignore this.

If you intend to use binary transfer or RXBlock mode you should set your tnc
for 8-bit communications.

Configuring Streamer

You may access Streamer's setup functions from the Setup submenu off the
iconbar icon. Each of these will display a dialogue box with various setup
parameters. Choose your setup requirements for each dialogue box and click
its OK button. When you are completely satisfied, choose Save setup from the
Setup submenu.



Setup dialogues...

Serial

This dialogue box controls Streamer's serial port parameters. It has two
groups of settings; block driver and setup.

This version uses the block drivers system. "Internal" and "InternalPC"
drivers are provided within Streamer, which will be used if Streamer is not
able to find a block drivers application. These are the drivers for the
internal serial port, either for Archimedes wired or PC wired serial cables
respectively. Select the required driver from the popup menu at the top of
the dialogue box. Some serial interfaces have more than one port. Set the
port number using the arrow icons.

The setup area controls the baud rate, word length parity and stop bits
setting. Make your choices from the popup menus. The XON/XOFF option controls
whether or not XON/XOFF software hand-shaking is employed in place of
hardware hand-shaking (which is preferable).

When you have made all your choices click on OK. A click on Cancel will cause
all of your settings to revert back to their status the last time OK was
clicked.





Terminal

This controls the way Streamer talks to the tnc. There are three groups of
entries; Streams, Terminal and Beeps.

Streams sets the width, wordwrap and input lines variables for the stream
windows. Display input should be selected if you have your tnc configured not
to echo your input. Streamer will then add your input to the RX area of the
stream window, in a colour of your choice.

The switch entry, chosen from the popup menu, sets the way Streamer controls
flow between the various stream windows and the signal channel communication
port to the tnc. Choices are:

    None

        No stream switching

    Simple

        Simple stream switching as in earlier versions of Streamer

    RXBlock

        This uses the RXBlock facility offered by some tnc's to
        filter out monitored traffic, etc, from connected streams

    cmd:

        This is the same as Simple but attempts to stop extraneous
        cmd: prompts from going to connected streams




The max streams entry should be the same as the Users setting on your tnc
(except Users 0 => Max streams 10). The Stream switch setting should be the
same as the Streamswitch setting on your tnc. Use the &xx form to enter the
ASCII code for control keys.

The Terminal area controls details of the terminal emulation. Characters in
Send ctrl are sent to the tnc immediately, if typed as control characters.
The Sent line end entry (chosen from the popup menu) is the end of line
sequence. 8th bit strip should be left unset if using binary transfer. It
must be clear if RXBlock is in use. The Break time entry sets the length of
break signals sent to escape from transparent mode, in centi- seconds.

The final area, Beeps, sets which of the four kinds of beep (or bell sound)
are used. Ctrl G refers to bell characters received from the tnc. These can
become annoying, especially if you are monitoring binary traffic, so you can
deselect this option if you like. The Connect, Disconnect and Node beep
options produce beeps of different pitch for connections, disconnections and
connections to a node. They work independently of the Ctrl G setting.

Click on OK to confirm your choices or Cancel to revert to your original
choices.

Colours

From the popup colour menus you may set the colours used for:

    •    RX area foreground

    •    RX area background

    •    TX area foreground

    •    TX area foreground

    •    highlighting

    •    the caret



The colours used for the TX area foreground and background are also used for TX text displayed in the RX area.

Log book

This controls the automatic log keeping functions of Streamer. The Logging
option turns automatic logging on or off. There are two other groups of
icons; Format and File.




Format

This sets the format used for log entries. Each time Streamer is run, the
Heading and 2nd line entries are written to the log window, as typed. The
Entries setting controls the format of subsequent entries added to the log.
The format is written in C strftime style, with extensions for station
details.

Ordinary characters are copied to the log entry unchanged. The % character is
used to indicate the presence of special tag values. The normal strftime tags
are:

    •    %a the local abbreviated weekday name.

    •    %A the local full weekday name.

    •    %b the local abbreviated month name

    •    %B the local full month name

    •    %c the local appropriate date and time representation

    •    %d the day of the month as a decimal number (01-31)

    •    %H the hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number (00-23)

    •    %I the hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number (01-12)

    •    %j the day of the year as a decimal number (001-366)

    •    %m the month as a decimal number (01-12)

    •    %M the minute as a decimal number (00-59)

    •    %p the local equivalent of either AM or PM designation
        associated with a 12-hour clock

    •    %S the second as a decimal number (00-61)

    •    %U the week number of the year (Sunday as the first day of
        week 1) as a decimal number (00-53)

    •    %w the weekday as a decimal number (0(Sunday) - 6)

    •    %W the week number of the year (Monday as the first day of
        week 1) as a decimal number (00-53)

    •    %x the local appropriate date representation

    •    %X the local appropriate time representation

    •    %y the year without century as a decimal number (00-99)

    •    %Y the year with century as a decimal number

    •    %Z the timezone name or abbreviation, or by no characters if
        no time zone is determinable

    •    %% %

The extensions for log entries are:

    •    %n the stream name

    •    %t the entry type - connect / disconnect

    •    %C the callsign

    •    %f the frequency - from the Freq. entry

    •    %e the emission class - from the Mode entry

    •    %P the power - from the Power entry

A number before the tag letter gives a field width. A preceding ‘-’ indicates
that the entry should be right-justified within the field.

The Freq., Mode and Power entries set the text used for %f, %e and %P entries
in the Entries format.

Click OK to confirm your choices or Cancel to revert to your old settings.

File

These icons reproduce the spool dialogue box from the log book stream window
and are independent of the OK and Cancel buttons. You may type-in a name and
drag the filer icon to a filer window. If the filename entry contains a full
pathname you may click Save to start spooling log entries to it. Click Cancel
to stop. You may also reverse drag filer icons onto the window. This will
enter the full pathname for the file. If you drag a directory icon, it will
set the directory path for the file, replacing any path already present.

Save setup

When you have made all your changes to the setup click on Save setup at the
bottom of the Setup iconbar submenu. This will save the state of all the
setup dialogues, plus the spool status of your stream windows.

Streamer in use

Basic operations

Once you have Streamer and your tnc set up satisfactorily you can start
communicating. Bring up a view of a tnc stream. It might already be on
screen. If not, pick the stream from the Open submenu off the iconbar. If the
stream window is open but hidden behind other windows, using the open submenu
will bring it to the front. Now click with select in the window − the caret
will appear in the input area of that window (if the window has no input area
you are trying to use one of the non-tnc-stream windows, or an extra view of
a tnc stream − make sure you have the right kind of window).



Starting with the tnc in cmd mode (if it is not, force it into cmd mode
manually using Ctrl-C, or Streamer will get confused) attempt to connect to a
station by entering the appropriate command sequence in the input window.
After you hit <return> you will see your command string in the output window.
If you have set Streamer to display input your command sequence will appear
in your chosen colours. If you see two copies of your command sequence you
must have set the tnc to echo on whilst Streamer is set to display input. If
you see neither, you must have both settings off. You will have to change
either the tnc or Streamer's configuration.

Assuming you have configured Streamer and your tnc for automatic mode
switching, as described above, the tnc will at this stage still be in command
mode. You may force the stream into conv or trans mode straight away if you
wish, using the Stream−>Client submenu.

Once a connexion is established Streamer will set the stream for conv mode
and change the title bar to reflect the connexion status. You may now start
entering the text you want sent to the connected station. There is no need to
manually change the mode.

If the station you connected to is a node, you may instruct it to connect to
another station. Upon receiving notification of the connexion, Streamer will
again update the title bar. showing the name of the new station. At present
this will not work if you connected to a KA-Node, as they do not give the
name of the new station when they say "###LINK MADE".

Should you wish to disconnect from the station, or go into cmd mode for some
other reason, select cmd mode from the Stream−>Client submenu. There is no
need to enter Ctrl-C. Streamer will handle any mode changing for you, even if
you were in transparent mode.

Expressions may be entered between curly brackets, and will be expanded when
sent to the tnc. If the expression is invalid or contains spaces it will not
be replaced.

Examples of allowed expressions are:

    •    {xxx} which sends the ascii code xxx, e.g {3} sends a ctrl-C

    •    {system variable} which becomes the value of the variable,
        e.g {sys$time} sends the current time

Using more than one stream

To use another stream open its stream window as described above. You may
enter commands in its input area to connect to a station, etc, as for the
first stream. Stream switching and mode changing should all be handled
automatically.

Caveat − If you are using the simple switching mode you may find that when
Streamer switches streams spurious "cmd:" prompts can sometimes appear in
windows not set for command mode. This is a problem with tnc firmware. Try
using the "cmd:" switch mode, which should alleviate this problem.

The Stream window menu

Each stream window has a menu attached to it. The facilities provided by the
stream window menu are as outlined below, starting with the operation of the
Stream ‘x’ submenu.

Saving stream data

You may save the text from a stream at any time. Follow the arrow off the
Stream−>Save submenu to reveal a popup save box. The save icon may be dragged
to a filer window in the usual manner.



You may also drag a filer icon onto the save box to set the destination in
the reverse sense. To do this though, you must click on the save entry rather
than follow the arrow to the save box, as otherwise the save box would vanish
as soon as you clicked outside it. If the filer icon you drag to the save box
is a file, its full name will be copied to the filename entry. Click on OK to
save to that file. If the filer icon is a directory, the path to the
directory will be entered in the save box, replacing any previous path.

If the selected destination file already existed you will be warned, and
given the option to overwrite,  append or cancel.

Three different save formats are allowed:

    Processed

    This saves normal ascii text, stripping control codes and using LF at
    the end of each line, replacing whichever end of line sequence your
    tnc uses.

    Raw

    Saves the raw data, as received from the tnc.

    Streamer

    Saves the stream data in Streamer format, preserving TX data / RX
    data identification. Streamer data files may be re-loaded into
    Streamer for later viewing.

With Processed and Raw formats you have the option of saving the TX data as
well as the RX data. Both TX and RX data are saved automatically (and
distinctly) in Streamer format files.

Spooling stream data

You may save to a spool file using the Stream−>Spool submenu, as described
above for Stream−>Save. When a spool is started, no data will be sent to the
file until new data are received from the tnc. As data are received, they are
buffered and sent to the file when appropriate. Between file operations the
file is closed. This means that even whilst still spooling you may load the
spool file into a text editor, etc, for examination. If you want to stop
spooling click on the cancel button in the spool save box.

Saving to a buffer

Streamer uses a system of internal buffers, held in memory, for uploading
blocks of data to the tnc. It is possible to save data to a buffer rather to
a file. This is done with the Stream−>To buffer submenu. The Resulting
dialogue box gives a choice of format similar to that for saving to a file.
In this case you may choose from either ascii or raw data, with or without
the TX data.



Clearing all data from a stream

To delete the whole contents of a stream choose Stream−>Clear. Be warned that
this cannot be undone. If a new view or Streamer file view window is cleared
the window itself will be removed from the list of active windows. In the
case of a new view, you may create another new view; the parent stream window
is unaffected. Clearing a Streamer file view window does not affect the file
on disc.

Client submenu

This submenu can have different functions depending of the type of window.
For tnc stream windows it governs the changing of tnc mode. You may select
cmd:, conv or trans mode. Also there is an entry to select / deselect
automatic mode changing.



Operations on selected text

You may select text from a stream window using the adjust key. Only complete
lines may be selected. Facilities for saving selected text to a buffer or a
file are available from the Select submenu. The saving procedure and
available options are as for saving the whole stream. You may also clear the
selection (Unselect) or delete it (Remove). There is just one selection per
stream. Selections made in a parent stream will appear identically in new
views, and vice versa.



Operations on buffers

Text from a stream may be saved to a buffer in memory. Also, when a file
other than a Streamer data file is dropped onto Streamer it will be copied to
a buffer, ready for uploading. Operations on buffers are provided through the
Buffers entry on any stream window. This will pop up the Buffers window,
shows the name, size and upload status of all the loaded buffers in a
scrollable pane. To upload a buffer to a tnc stream first click on its entry
to select it. Choose a stream from the popup menu next to the Upload button.
This sets the destination for the next buffer to be uploaded. Initiate the
upload by clicking on Upload. If Streamer is busy uploading a buffer already
your upload request will be queued. To remove the selected buffer click on
Remove buffer. To stop a buffer from being uploaded if it is in the queue,
select it and click Cancel. Cancel all cancels all queued uploads. To abort
the current upload use Abort. Pause pauses the current upload. The button
will then change to Resume. Unless you want to upload a buffer more than once
you should select  Remove after upload.

Miscellaneous operations

The Misc submenu provides access to two more setup areas. These are
Highlight... and Fn keys.... There is also a Send break entry. This sends a
break signal to the tnc. The duration of the break signal is set in the
terminal setup area.



Highlight...

Streamer provides a mechanism by which words of interest in the output area
of a stream window may be highlighted. The highlighting colour is set in the
colours setup. The Misc−>Highlight... menu entry reveals the highlighting
control area. This has a scrolling list of names that will be highlighted.
The list can be extended by entering new words in the lower left icon and
clicking on Add. If you select an entry from the list by clicking on it you
may choose Delete to remove it from the list or Update entry to replace it
with a new one. Clicking on Save stores your list in Streamers setup area on
disc.

Fn keys...

Text may be assigned to three sets of function keys − Fn key + shift, Fn key
+ Ctrl and Fn key + Shift + Ctrl. When a stream window has the caret and a
function key combination is pressed, the assigned text will be sent to the
tnc, being expanded as necessary. The Misc−>Fn keys... menu entry gives
access to the function key definition area. Choose which function key set to
edit from the radio icons to the bottom of the dialogue box.

The definition may contain expressions between curly brackets. These will be
expanded in the same way as text entered in the TX area. To embed ctrl codes
you may also use the ‘|x’ convention, e.g |M to send a new line character.

Acknowledgements

Streamer was developed originally by Ben Summers, G0SOQ.

This version of Streamer is by Simon Melhuish, G4TJC,

[e-mail]
[e-mail]
G4TJC@GB7CHS (subject to change)

This document was produced using Computer Concepts’ Impression Publisher. The
HTML version was created from the Impression document using Ben Summers’ HTML
saver.