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1993-11-01
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7KB
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118 lines
From: STEVE POMERANTZ
Subject: RipTerm & ANSI Music 1/2
CM>Boardwatch for this month mentioned that they (Telegraphics) did not
CM>have the RIP II specification ready with should include photo-realistic
CM>JPEG images. Boardwatch then says they showed a videotape of what
Jack Rickard posted the full article on the Boardwatch BBS (printing
problems "did-in" the article...) I'll post the parts pertaining to
online graphics here. The full article is available from the Boardwatch
BBS as ONEBBSCN.TXT
-----
GRAPHICS
The big winner from the '92 convention was Remote Imaging Protocol or RIP.
In the past year, most of the BBS software developers and two major
terminal programs have incorporated some semblance of RIP into their
products. The three gents from TeleGrafix Communications, Inc. that
developed RIP received one of the John C. Dvorak Awards for Excellence in
Telecommunications Technology held on Friday evening in Broadmoor West.
RIP itself was represented by a booth with the boys from TeleGrafix. It
was a bit disappointing in that the much heralded RIP II specification,
which was to include photo-realistic JPEG images, just wasn't ready. They
showed a videotape of what it would look like if it were finished. And
there was some mumbling and rumbling among vendors that despite their
setting sail on the RIPship, RIP itself was "a little bit broken." The
main complaints centered around a lack of any error correction in the
protocol, and it's dependence on EGA graphics. All to be cured in RIP II
we are assured.
But there were some pretty interesting RIP applications on the floor.
deltaComm was showing their Telix for Windows with RIP in a really
attractive booth, and it did look very good. It isn't actually shipping
yet, but it looked great. Mustang Software, Inc. was selling their
QmodemPro terminal program with RIP support, and it looked like they sold
all of it they brought.
Searchlight Software was demoing their Searchlight BBS (SLBBS) with
several games like reversi and minesweep that we don't quite get why any
one would actually want to play online since they are in Windows, but they
did show off the graphics capabilities, the purpose for which they were
clearly intended. More importantly, Searchlight has gone whole hog for
RIP and had incorporated the technology to an amazingly integrated level
with their BBS package - down to clicking the mouse on characters in the
message editor as part of the editing process. It looked hot.
Two other items struck us on the RIP front. Bryant Software has a little
tiny application off in a corner for The Bread Board System titled
HyperMate. This is a text search program that incorporates RIP mouse
grunt/click controls to search text files for keywords. Not really a new
concept, but never done very well online and the addition of RIP to this
search engine was actually quite impressive. It was relatively fast, and
a moron could operate it - two big pluses in the online world. HyperMate
also works in non-RIP mode, but not nearly as impressively. This is a
glimpse of what we can do online in the future with faster modems and a
bit of graphics.
The other RIP application that blew us back a bit was also an application
for TBBS - a game of all things. First, it was produced by Jim Maxey,
operator of the Event Horizons BBS known primarily for breezy GIF images
of ladies unfettered by the valiant efforts of the Garment Workers of
America. But this was a game titled Escape from Langour that looked a LOT
like Apogee Software's shareware game, Escape from Castle Wolfenstein. We
played it a bit with a 9600 bps connection, and it PLAYED like Escape from
Castle Wolfenstein. The graphics were similar, the action good. Instead
of Nazis, it had some pretty goofy looking monsters - but it was really
unlike anything we've seen online and we kept checking cables to make sure
it WAS in fact working over a modem. This is why the online world needed
a graphics connection.
While RIP is clearly the hot number right now, there were several other
technologies showing a lot of life remaining. One that blew us entirely
away was a full BBS and terminal package titled RoboBoard FX - written by
an 18-year-old native of Quebec named Seth Hamilton. Seth and his father
have started this BBS software company and they aren't missing many of the
moves. RoboBoard already HAS JPEG photo-realistic images and a protocol
that incorporates ZMODEM for error correction in a pretty handsome way.
It's here, it works, and it will knock your eyes out. Technologically, I
would claim this RoboBoard stuff is about a light year ahead of RIP, but
because RIP is so easy to implement, the other BBS developers are unlikely
to even give RoboBoard FX a good looking over. For those with an ear to
hear and eye to doing things right, DON'T OVERLOOK THIS PRODUCT! It
wouldn't be the first superior technology to lose the standards wars in
computerville, but it would be a shame - again.
The other protocol that refuses to die is NAPLPS. Colonel Dave Hughes has
been working with some Russian programmers for nearly a year on a terminal
program called TROIKA. He showed up with the stuff in a box ready to sell
(pretty nice looking box actually) and it looks a lot like it works in
places. Particularly interesting, TROIKA will actually automatically
UUENCODE and UUDECODE graphics for transmission over the Internet. Unlike
RIP, NAPLPS is quite device independent and more favorably, supports
international character sets very well. JPEG and mouse are the weak
areas, and Colonel Dave says it's "in there" or will be soon. MOST
INTERESTINGLY, the Troika booth was gaining a LOT of attention from the
PRODIGY people who showed up at ONE BBSCON in force. Why? Well, Prodigy
is quite NAPLPS based, but rumor has it that they are making some SERIOUS
moves at opening up their connection. They are already beta testing their
own Prodigy Mail Manager for offline Prodigy mail. But rumor has it they
may be wanting to get some third party action going for utilities to deal
with Prodigy - possibly even to the point of publishing a specification in
a controlled fashion. Their two million callers, even after the dip in
users from their new pricing scheme, is not an inconsequential portion of
the online world. It all had Colonel Dave holding pretty enthusiastic
close order drill over at the Troika booth. The other group that seemed
quite interested in this product was the education sector.
A final graphics mention has to go to Durand Communications. These people
have married graphics with the database function for Galacticomm's Major
BBS in a way that has to be admired. You can create a database with
associated photo-realistic images that shows what the future is going to
look like online. Currently, they are tied to a single platform, and it's
not inconsequential to set something like this up. It all pinches and rubs
in places, but it's clearly where we are going. Very impressive.