One of the most important features in terminal program is its scroll back buffer. This allows you to look back at words that zipped by on your screen a few minutes ago. It should be simple, unobtrusive and fast. ZTerm will save lines that are pushed off the screen by a line feed or a clear screen. It will not put more than two blank lines in a row in the buffer. This means if it receives a clear screen code and there are only two lines of information, you will NOT get 22 blank lines in the scroll back buffer (what a waste). The buffer is stored in memory and when the buffer fills up, ZTerm will try to allocate more memory for the buffer. If it cannot get more memory, ZTerm will remove lines from the top of the buffer (the oldest lines). The scroll back buffer does not store any character attributes like bold or colors – it only stores the text.
You can scroll around in the buffer while data is coming in, while a file transfer is in progress and when ZTerm is dialing. If you have the Extended keyboard, you can use Home, End, Page Up and Page Down to move around in the scroll buffer. However, if the VT100 Keypad option is turned on in Terminal Settings, you will need to hold down the Shift (or Option) key when you use these keys.
The Find command in the Edit menu allows you to search the scroll back buffer for a sequence of characters. Any changes to the search string will reset the search position to the top of the buffer (the oldest line). Clicking in the terminal window will set the search position to the line you clicked on. After you have found an occurrence, if you click the Find button again (or use the Find Again command) it will find the next occurrence. If it beeps, the string could not be found.
When you select text in the scroll back buffer, you can Cut, Copy or Clear it, and you can save it to a text file (Save Selection), or append it to an existing text file. Cut and Clear will not remove text from the last 24 lines because it is not in the scroll back buffer yet. If the clipboard has text on it, Paste will start sending the text as if you were typing it, using the options selected in Text Pacing. Command-Period will cancel a Paste command.
Append Selection to a File
Many people will store messages that they see in a file on their Mac, in case they want to refer to it later. For example, I store lots of messages that I see about ZTerm. For each of the services that I frequent, I have a folder and in it I have a file for every month that holds the messages I saved that month. When you use the Append to... command, it will add the selected text to the end of the file you pick. It will also change the “last append file” to that file. The name of this file will appear in the next menu. When you see another message you want to save, you can append it to this file by using this second append command (or use Command-Shift-N).
Uploading a Composed Message
Many times when you want to post a message or a reply on a bulletin board, you might want to compose the message when you are offline. This is especially true if you are going to post the message on a service that charges per minute. So you type your message using your word processor or text editor and save it in TEXT format. Some editors always use TEXT format (like TeachText, BBEdit or Alpha). Most word processors have their own file format that includes lots of formatting information in addition to the text. But most will let you save a file in a TEXT only format. Some give this option in the Save As dialog (like Word 4, with full menus on). Others have a separate menu command; MS Works has the Export command, which saves the file in a TEXT format.
When you select the Send Text command and choose a text file to send, ZTerm will send the text in the file like you are typing it. When you are typing or sending a message to a service or BBS, some want you to hit return when you get near the right margin. Others will automatically wrap text to the next line, just like most word processors do. When you are composing a message for a service without auto-wrap, you will need to break the lines yourself by entering a return at the end of each line.
Text Pacing
When you are sending a composed message with the Send Text command, ZTerm can send the text a lot faster than most people could type. Some services can’t handle receiving the text at such a high rate and could lose characters. In these cases, you need to use Text /Pacing, which is a means to slow down the rate that the text is sent.
The first option in Text Pacing Options is Wait for char echo. This is the slowest and most conservative option. When ZTerm sends a character from your text file, it will wait until that character is echoed back before it sends the next one. This will only work with services that echo what you type. Most do; GEnie is one that does not. If you don’t use wait for echo, you can use the remaining options to slow things down. When the line prompt character is filled in, ZTerm will wait until that character is received (after a line has been sent), before it starts sending the next line. The last two options let you set a delay after each character and after each line. The values are in sixtieths (1/60) of a second, so a value of 30 would be one half second. If you use a delay between characters, it normally would be small, say between 1 and 5. Typical values for the delay between lines would be between 10 and 60, but could go even higher.
If you leave all these options blank or off, ZTerm will send the text as fast as it can. Many BBS’s run on personal computers will be able to handle this if the computer is handling only one line and is not doing any other processing.
Person to Person Modem Connection
There are times when you may want to connect to a friend’s Mac (or PC), usually to transfer some files. The easiest way is for one side to enable auto answer and have the other person call. For example, I could enable the auto answer feature in my modem and tell my friend to dial me through his modem. The modem command “ATS0=1” (that’s a zero, not the letter O) will enable auto answer on most Hayes compatible modems. This command tells the modem to set register zero to a value of 1. The zero register selects how many rings before the modem will answer the phone and try to establish a connection. You can even add an entry to your dialing directory called “Auto Answer On” and set the phone number to “ATS0=1”.
For a person to person connection, you usually want to turn on Local Echo so you can see what you are typing. When I connect like this, I always exchange a hello, etc, to make sure that the connection is OK. Then if I am sending a file to him, I use ZModem so that he will not have to do anything to start the transfer (because ZModem has the autodownload feature).
If the person you are calling is using a program that does not support ZModem, then try XModem. The sender can type something like "OK, I'll send it now." Then he would select the Send XModem command and choose the file. The person that will be receiving the file should wait about 15 seconds (to give the sender time to select the file), then use the Receive XModem command. If he is not using ZTerm, he may have to give a name for the received file. You should start seeing progress in the transfer status window within 10 or 20 seconds.
Keyboard Buffer
The keyboard buffer is most useful for online conferences (for example, on GEnie or CompuServe). Selecting this command will bring up a keyboard buffer window and you can type into this window and perform any editing. When you hit RETURN, the contents of the buffer are sent out. If you have ever tried sending a message during a conference without a keyboard buffer, you know how confusing it can get. If other users send messages while you are typing your message, the characters of your message can get mixed in with the other messages and get spread over several lines. With the Keyboard Buffer, you type your entire sentence locally (and edit it if needed) and its all sent out when you hit return.
Dialing Directory
ZTerm uses the ZPhoneList file to hold setups for the various services or BBS’s that you like to call. Each setup will appear in the Dial menu and in the Dialing Directory window. Each Dial setup will save all of the settings from the Settings menu above the dividing line. The ZPhoneList file also contains some global settings that apply to all setups. You can have multiple phone list files. If you open ZTerm, it will look for ZPhoneList in the same folder and if its not there it will create it. However, you can double click on a phone list file and ZTerm will use it. You can create different phone files by renaming or duplicating one that ZTerm has created.
The Dialing Directory window is where you do all your maintenance of the phone list. You add a new service with the New button. Delete will let you remove the highlighted service. You can edit the connection settings by highlighting the service and using the Connection button (or double click on the service). You can rename an entry by changing the name in the Connection settings window. The Manual button lets you enter a number to dial without adding it as a new service. The Set button will load the settings of the highlighted service without dialing it.
Queue Dialing
If there are several busy BBS's that you would like to connect to, you can mark them for Queue dialing and ZTerm will call each one, round robin, until you connect to one (or Cancel the dialing). Setups can be marked or unmarked in the Dialing directory, by using the Mark and Unmark buttons, or clicking in the leftmost column of an entry. They can also by marked by selecting the service in the Dial menu with the Shift key held down. ZTerm will automatically mark an entry when a dial attempt fails, and will unmark an entry when a connection is made.
ANSI Graphics
The emulation that I call “PC ANSI-BBS” is called many things by many people. Two things make up this emulation: a font that is used by PC’s, which include a lot of line and box drawing characters; and handling the escape sequences that most PC BBS’s use. These sequences are pretty much the VT100 sequences (based on the ANSI X3.64 specification), with additional sequences to change foreground and background colors. If any of the services you call are BBS’s run on a PC, you should set the emulation for that BBS to PC ANSI-BBS in the Terminal Settings.
Call Waiting
Call Waiting is an option available from many telephone companies that can cause problems with modem communication. With this option, when you are using the phone and someone tries to call you, you will hear a short beep. This is fine when you are talking, but when it’s your modem using the phone, the beep can get the modem real confused. You will probably get some garbage characters received or the modem could hang up. Most modem users with call waiting disable this feature when making a modem call. If you have Touch Tone service, you dial *70, wait for a second dial tone then dial the number. For rotary service, you would dial 1170 then the number. These codes are the most common, but your telephone company may use other codes to disable call waiting.
So in the connection settings, you would put “*70,xxx-xxxx” for the phone number. The comma adds a short delay for the phone company to handle the disable function. If the comma delay is not long enough for your phone company, you can use two commas, or the ‘w’ dial option if your modem supports it. On many newer modems, you can include a ‘w’ in the dial command to wait for a dial tone. So you could use “*70w xxx-xxxx” to wait for the new dial tone after the code to disable call waiting. Another way would be to set one of the dial substitution strings, say •1, to “*70,” in the Modem Preferences. Then you can put •1 in front of each phone number, like “•1 xxx-xxxx”. If you ever wanted to have call waiting enabled during a call, you could go to Modem Preferences and change •1 to be empty.
