The Apple menu has information about ZTerm and any desk accessories currently available.
About ZTerm… This brings up a dialog giving information about the program, the version number and registration information.
The File Menu
Start Capture… This is ASCII capture that will save all received characters to the selected file. When capture is active, the menu will read Stop Capture.
Send Text… After selecting a TEXT file, this will send the characters of the file. The transmission will be paced by options selected in the Text Pacing settings.
Close Window Closes the front window.
Receive File(s)… This menu has a sub-menu for the various protocol receive options.
Kermit Kermit is very common on minicomputers and mainframes. The Transfer Options settings let you select what type of error checking is requested (CRC or Checksum).
XModem XModem is one of the most common transfer protocols for personal computers. The Transfer Options settings let you select what type of error checking is requested (CRC or Checksum). ZTerm's XModem will accept 1024 or 128 byte blocks; the sender selects the size of blocks.
YModem YModem is based on XModem, but the sending program also sends the file name, the size and the date of the file. This protocol is often called YModem Batch because many files can be sent in a batch.
YModem-G YModem-G is a variation of YModem that is meant for error free connections like a direct connection. There is no wait at the end of a block for the receiver to Acknowledge. The receiver only signals if an error occurs, in which case the transfer is stopped.
ZModem This is normally not needed because ZTerm detects the sender starting a ZModem transfer and automatically starts a ZModem receive. This is called AutoDownload in ZModem parlance. Files are stored in the current receive volume and folder. For example, if you are connected to an Opus BBS, you can type "dz stuffit.sit" and Opus will start the transfer. ZTerm will detect this and receive the file.
(Default Receive) The item after “Receive Files” in the File menu is the default receive option for the current Setup. You should set the default to the normal method you use to receive files for each setup. Then you can just select this item (or Command-R) to receive a file. The default can be set in the Transfer Options dialog.
Send File(s)… This menu has a sub-menu for the various protocol file send options.
Kermit Send a file using the Kermit protocol.
XModem Send a file using the XModem protocol (with 128 byte blocks). The receiving program determines whether CRC or checksum is used for error detection; ZTerm will handle either.
XModem-1K Like XModem, above, but using 1024 byte blocks. Some communication software (including BBS's) mistakenly refer to this as YModem.
YModem-128 Send file(s) using the YModem protocol with 128 byte blocks. This is not normally used. You would usually want to use 1024 byte blocks whenever possible.
YModem-1K Send file(s) using the YModem protocol with 1024 byte blocks.
ZModem Send file(s) using the ZModem protocol. After the files are selected and Start is clicked, ZTerm will first send the characters set up in the ZModem Options dialog. This is usually needed to get the other computer ready to receive files using the ZModem protocol. After these characters are sent, the transfer will begin.
(Default Send) The next item in the File menu is the default send option for the current Setup. You should set the default to the normal method you use to send files for each setup. Then you can just select this item (or Command-S) to send a file. The default can be set in the Transfer Options dialog.
Transfer Convert This menu has a sub-menu to select the desired file transfer conversion option. You can set the default conversion for each setup by holding the Command key while you select the desired conversion option.
Smart MacBinary On receive, MacBinary files and text file are automatically detected and converted as appropriate. All other files are received as binary. On send, TEXT files are sent as text, files received as binary by ZTerm are sent as binary and all other files are sent as MacBinary II. This is the best option if you will be sending a mix of MacBinary files and other files.
Always MacBinary This option would be useful when connected to another Macintosh. All files are sent as MacBinary II, even text files. Receive uses the same detection of Text and MacBinary files used by Smart MacBinary.
Binary Data On receive, all files will be received as binary files with no conversion. On send, all files will be sent as binary and only the data fork will be sent.
Text Receive with this option is a little more lenient in its text detection than Smart MacBinary. On send, the data fork of a file is sent with appropriate text conversion.
Append to… Will append the selected text to a file you specify. It also will remember the file, so you can append addition text to the same file using the next command.
Append to <last> Will append the selected text to the last file that text was added to for this service.
Save Selection If there is a block of text selected in the scroll back buffer, this will put up the standard Save dialog to save the selection to disk.
Page Setup… Will present the standard page setup dialog, where you can select the paper orientation and other options. Note that margins and the print font can be set with Printer Preferences in the Settings menu.
Print Selection This will print the text selection to the printer.
Quit This will exit ZTerm. If the current setup has been changed, it will ask if the setup should be saved.
Edit Menu
Undo For use by desk accessories. Not used by ZTerm.
Cut Copy the selection to the clipboard and then remove it from the scroll back buffer.
Copy Copy the selection to the clipboard.
Paste Start sending the text that is on the clipboard. This can be stopped by pressing Command-period.
Clear This will remove the selection from the scroll back buffer.
Copy to Modem Copy the selection to the clipboard, then paste.
Select All Selects all the text in the buffer and the current screen.
Keyboard Buffer This will open the Keyboard Buffer window. You can enter a line here and when you hit RETURN, the whole line is sent out the serial channel. This is especially useful for online conferences.
Find… This will let you search the Scroll Back buffer. The search is case insensitive; searching for MAC will find Macintosh and Mac. The line that the match appears in will be selected (and highlighted). The search begins from the top of the buffer (the oldest line). Clicking on the Find button again will find the next occurrence. If you change the find string, it will reset the find position so that it will start again at the top of the buffer when you click Find again.
Find Again This will repeat the last search.
Clear Scroll Buffer… This command will clear all lines from the Scroll Back buffer. After you log off a service and have reviewed the buffer and printed or saved any portions that you want to preserve, you might want to clear the buffer before calling another service. If you hold down the Shift key it will also clear the current terminal screen. This item will prompt you to make sure you want to clear the buffer if the confirmation option is enabled.
Save Lines Off Top When this is checked, ZTerm will save lines to the scroll buffer when they are scrolled off by a line feed or clear screen sequence. This is normally checked, but there are a few situations where you might want to turn it off.
Dial Menu
Directory… This will display the Dialing Directory window, which lists all the current services in your phone list. You can add, delete or modify services from this window. The Manual button will ask you for a number and then will dial it (to try a number without adding it to your phone list).
Save Setup This will save the current settings to the current service.
Dial Marked This will start queued dialing of all marked entries in the Dial menu. If no entries are marked, it will mark the current service and just dial that one. Entries can be marked in the dialing directory or by holding down Shift and selecting the entry. An entry is automatically marked when a dial attempt returns a non-CONNECT response. Hold down Shift when you select this and it will mark all entries; hold down Shift-Option and it will unmark all entries.
Hang Up Will hang up the modem. An option in Modem Preferences lets you select hang up by pulsing the DTR line. Otherwise it will hang up by sending the command mode escape (+++) followed by the hangup command (ATH0). This item will prompt you to make sure you want to hang up if the confirmation option is enabled in General Preferences.
(dial entries) Selecting the name of a service will change the settings as they were saved for the service, then dial the phone number (if any) until a connection is made or the dialing is Canceled.
If you hold down Option when you select a service, it will load the settings, but won’t dial the phone number. If you hold down the Command key when you select a service, that service will become the default (and the menu item will be outlined). If you hold down Shift, the entry will be marked (or unmarked) for Queue Dialing.
Settings Menu
Connection… This will bring up the connection dialog. You can rename the service by changing the name here. This name will appear in the dialing directory and the Dial menu, so you don’t want a super long name. You can change the phone number for the service. Leave it blank if its a direct connection to another computer. You can put a modem command in the PreDial init field, which will be sent before dialing the service. You can put your account and password in these fields; the values can be accessed from a script.
The data rate and other communication settings are here. Choose 8 data bits and no parity, unless you know that another format is required. The most common alternative is 7 data bits with either even or odd parity. This is more common on mainframes; almost all bulletin boards that run on personal computers will accept 8 data bits, no parity. One stop bit will work in most situations.
Check the Local Echo option if the service does not echo what you type. Most BBSs do echo what you type, so in most cases you leave this unchecked. You can usually leave XOn/XOff checked because most services support it. If you have a high speed modem and a hardware handshake cable, check that option, and see the section on high speed modems.
Terminal… The terminal settings dialog lets you select various terminal emulation options. You can select the font to use in the terminal window. Selecting "Terminal Font" will use the default font for the selected emulation. You can select if extended characters should be displayed. Turning Auto Line Feed on will cause a line feed when a return is received. Line feeds are ignored when they directly follow a return. Leave the Auto Line Feed off if the service is a Unix or DEC machine. If VT100 keypad is turned off, it will just send the character marked on the key.
You can select if the Backspace key should produce a RUBOUT (or DELETE) character code, which many DEC systems expect. Enabling Destructive Backspace will cause the previous character to be erased when the backspace code is received. You can select VT100 or PC ANSI-BBS emulation.
Text Pacing… These options are used for ASCII send and Paste. Wait for character echo will wait for the host to echo the character. There is a five second timeout. If wait for echo is not selected, it will use the Delay between Characters and Delay between Lines (which is used after a return is sent).
If a Line Prompt Char is specified, it will wait for that character to be received after sending a Return. You can set this to a prompt character that your host uses when it is ready for the next line of text.
Transfer Options… The first two items set the default send and receive protocols for this service. These make it more convenient to start a transfer with each service. Command-R will start a file receive with the default protocol and Command-S will start a file send (default send protocol). Note that the B-Plus or Quick-B protocols used by CompuServe are not listed. This is because a B-Plus transfer on CompuServe is started by the CompuServe host by sending a special sequence. There is no menu in ZTerm to start a B-Plus transfer. If the service you are setting up is CompuServe, make sure you check the “CIS B+ / Quick-B Protocol” option.
For Kermit Error Checking, CRC is best but some systems may not support it. You can set the largest packet size used for Kermit transfers. Setting it high, like 1000, will make transfers more efficient, but can cause error recovery to take a little longer. The maximum is 9024.
For X/YModem Error Checking, the “Try CRC, fallback to Checksum” option is usually the best. Send CK for CRC-1K should be used for systems (like Second Sight) which use this popular XModem extension to allow the receiver to request 1k blocks. Use Checksum Only could be used with systems that don't support XModem CRC error checking. For the Sent Filenames option, the safest choice is “Remove funny characters.” If the service is a BBS running on an MS-DOS computer, you will want to select “MS-DOS (8.3) limits.”
ZModem Options… “Command to start receive at other end” lets you define the character sequence that will be sent to the other system when you want to start sending file(s) to it using ZModem. For Opus it should be “uz^M”. ZTerm will send this string when you start a ZModem file send.
The next part of the dialog lets you select the SubPacket length for ZModem file sends. The sending system always makes this choice. The “Auto” option will choose a size depending on the data rate. Window Limit can be used to enable ZModem’s sliding window mode when sending files. This can solve problems with buffer overruns. The value should be a multiple of 512; typical values are 2048 or 1024. When this field is blank, it will not use sliding window mode.
Escape Controls can be checked if any part of your transmission path chokes on control characters. ZModem always escapes ^P, ^Q, ^S, ^X and their high bit set counterparts. Escape controls will cause it to escape all control characters.
General Preferences.. The first item selects what application to use for TEXT files. When you save a text file in ZTerm, it will be marked as created by the selected application. The creator code is listed to the right; its a 4 character sequence that identifies an application program. This will affect the icon displayed for a text file created by ZTerm and also selects the application that should be opened if you double clicked on the text file. You can also set the creator and file types used for unrecognized binary files. The normal values are ????/????.
The logging of file transfers is enabled with the Log File Transfers option. You can enable a confirmation request before Quit, Hang Up or Clear Buffer is performed.
Terminal Preferences This dialog lets you select the type size for the terminal window (9 or 12 point will work best). You can set the cursor to an underline or a block, and whether it blinks. The Hide Terminal Window in background option can be used to reduce screen clutter with MultiFinder or System 7.
The Command Key item lets you redefine how the Command key is used. Normal lets you select key equivalents for menu commands, like Command-Q for Quit. Control lets you use the Command key to generate Control characters (for old keyboards without the Control key). Meta (8th bit) and Meta (ESC prefix) are useful with the EMACs editor on Unix machines.
Option for Control, which only appears if your keyboard does not have a control key, is another way to get control characters. When selected, it will use a modified KCHR resource. For System 7 or later, you must install the ZTerm Keyboard file into your System before this will work.
Capture Text by line will cause the capture function to write out the current line of text when a line feed is performed. This will strip out any escape sequences. If this is not checked, all received characters (except LF) are written to a capture file. The Ignore Bell option will tell ZTerm not to beep when a bell character is received.The duration of the break signal (and Shift Break) is set here, in 60ths of a second.
Printer Preferences… Here you select the font and size used by Print Selection. You can also turn off headers on the printout. You can also set the margins used for printing. Note that the right margin value is not used.
Modem Preferences.. The first item selects which serial port to use. The modem initialization string is sent when ZTerm starts up. The string is also sent by the Send Modem Init command in the Misc menu. The DeInitialize string is like the Initialization string, but it is sent when you quit ZTerm. You can usually leave this blank, but you may want to use it to disable something that you turned on in the init string. For example, if your init string turns on the auto answer feature of the modem, you may want to turn it off when you exit ZTerm.
The Dial Substitution strings can be used for things that could be common to several services. I have set •1 to “*70,” which will disable call waiting. Then I can put •1 in front of the phone number for a service, and it will dial the *70 first. The comma after the zero causes a pause in the dialing, usually one second. You could use one of the dial substitutions for your long distance numbers. You might normally set it to “1”, so it will use your normal long distance carrier, but if you wanted to try another, you could change the string to something like 10288, which will dial long distance using AT&T.
The Dial timeout is how many seconds ZTerm will wait for a response from the modem after sending a dial command. A value of 60 is pretty reasonable. You can select Pulse dialing with the check box. The Hardware Hangup option is an alternative (faster) way to tell a modem to hang up. The DTR line is only available on MacPlus and later machines. Your modem cable must be wired correctly for this to work, and your modem has to be set up correctly. Also, you can’t use hardware handshaking and Hardware Hangup — they both use the same line. (Some have a switch to ignore the DTR line.)
Color… This dialog lets you enable the use of color and make some color settings. The Text and Background Default Colors are used when no ANSI sequence sets the colors to something else. The defaults are also used when you view text in the scroll back buffer.
Receive Folder… This will let you select the folder for file transfers, where received files will be stored.
Macros Menu
Edit Macros… You can define the string that is sent for each macro key (Command-1 thru Command-0) and the label for each macro. The labels are used in the lower portion of the menu. Control characters can be entered with a ^ (caret) followed by the letter (^M for a return). If the string starts with ® (Option-R) then a file name, ZTerm will try to run that script file when you select that macro.
Macro Sets… This lets you create a new macro set, rename a set, delete a set or select the set to be used by the current service. Each set hold 10 macros, each with a label that appears in the menu.
Run a Script… This lets you manually start a script running. See the section on scripting for more information on scripts.
(macros) The labels of the current macro set are listed in the menu. Selecting one will cause that macro to be sent out.
Misc Menu
Clear Screen Need I say more?
Send Break This will send a break signal. If the Shift key is down, it will use a different duration. The durations are set in Terminal Preferences.
Help… This will display a dialog of ZTerm basics.
Support… This will display a dialog giving information on how to reach me.
Reset Terminal This function clears the screen, and resets many screen settings to a normal setting.
Send Modem Init This will send out the Modem Initialization string.
Show Controls This is primarily a diagnostic tool to let you see control characters and escape sequences. This does not affect what is already on the screen; it only affects the display of incoming characters. The characters of an escape sequence will be displayed, but the function will not be performed (except carriage return and line feed).
Purge Buffer This will purge any characters in the serial input buffer until there is two seconds of no data. It will timeout after 20 seconds of purging. If you hold down Option, it will write out a file with the contents of the serial input buffer (to help diagnose unusual problems). The file is named ZDump followed by a time/date stamp.
