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+----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | D I S C L A I M E R N O T I C E | | | | This document and/or portions of the material and data furnished | | herewith, was developed under sponsorship of the U.S. Government. | | Neither the U.S. nor the U.S.D.O.E., nor the Leland Stanford | | Junior University, nor their employees, nor their respective con- | | tractors, subcontractors, or their employees, makes any warranty, | | express or implied, or assumes any liability or responsibility for | | accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any information, appara- | | tus, product or process disclosed, or represents that its use will | | not infringe privately-owned rights. Mention of any product, its | | manufacturer, or suppliers shall not, nor is it intended to, imply | | approval, disapproval, or fitness for any particular use. The U.S. | | and the University at all times retain the right to use and dis- | | seminate same for any purpose whatsoever. | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Tektronix is a trademark of Tektronix, Inc. VT100 is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation. VLT 5.034 Additional Documentation ================================== (C) Copyright 1989, 1990, 1991 by W.G.J. Langeveld Stanford Linear Accelerator Center Introduction ============ All in all a lot of things changed in this version. Unfortunately, it is too much to be described in terms of a "manual update" (as in "change page so-and-so to say such-and-such") so intead I will revert to the more traditional "changes" file. This file assumes you have the SLAC report 370 and only discusses additions and modifications since VLT version 4.846. Hopefully, the manual will be updated sometime this summer. Willy Langeveld, 6 February 1991. Serial Device Handling ====================== Speed ----- The way VLT handles reading and writing of the serial device has been changed quite a bit. Reading the serial device has been optimized somewhat, but writing to the serial device is now double buffered. This should speed up file transfers using XPR's considerably. Particularly windowed transfers such as XPRzmodem should show great improvement. Menu options ------------ There are some new menu options in the Comm menu, and other have been rearranged. Among other things, VLT now supports transfer speeds up to 57.6 kbaud. "Reset" is a new menu option. It resets the serial device to the current settings, bringing it back from whichever state it was in. Normally this should not cause a disconnect from the host, but some modems are a little picky (though they usually can be set to ignore short drops of DTR). The "Close Device" option allows closing the serial device. The script command "serialdevice" has acquired an equivalent option: serialdevice none. Error checking -------------- There are new menu options to specify which serial device errors VLT should check for; previously, VLT always ignored all errors. Now, when VLT detects an error (and it is checked in the menu) it will post a message to that effect, and when the error is a read error, VLT will flush whatever else the serial device may think it has received. In case of a write error, VLT will only notify you of that fact. Xon/Xoff handling ----------------- Note that these errors are checked for in addition to the "spurious Xoff" checking. If you suffer from line noise, you may have found yourself more than once in the situation where one of the noise characters being sent to your Amiga is an "Xoff" character. Normally, this character is sent by the host to indicate that the Amiga should stop sending data. When your Amiga tries anyway, you are put on hold, until such a time as the host has time for you and sends you an Xon. Now, if such an Xoff character is due to noise on the line, it is obviously very unlikely that you will ever see a matching Xon. In that case, VLT used to put up a message like: "Serial Port Busy, type ctrl-Q to reset". This is no longer the case. Instead, when VLT thinks a particular write to the serial device is taking too long, you may now see a nice little requester in the top left corner, which says something like: "Temporarily unable to send data. Waiting...". If the serial device becomes "unstuck", the requester will go away by itself. If the wait takes too long, feel free to click on Retry or Reset. Retry causes the timer to be restarted, and if the device is still stuck, the requester will reappear - this is safe, no data will be lost. If you click on Reset, the serial device will be physically reset, just like with the new Reset option in the menu. This can potentially loose data, though data that you were about to send is sent again after the reset. You may see this requester more than you saw the previous message, because the timer setting is much closer to what the time really should be. However, as I said, in cases of legitimate Xoff's sent by the host, the situation will clear itself up now rather than aborting the write, so overall things should be much better. As a test I have sent a file at Midi speed from my A3000 to my A2000 using ZMODEM. My 2000 doesn't take kindly to that high a rate, but the file did arrive completely intact despite lots of requesters popping up and going away (flow control was enabled). With CTS/RTS handshaking, the timeout is 10 times as long as with just regular flow control. Since the minimum timeout for any send is 1 second for normal flow control, it is 10 seconds for CTS/RTS. The reason there is a timer for CTS/RTS is that I have noticed that it is entirely possible to lock up the serial port also with CTS/RTS, given a properly misbehaving modem (despite claims to the contrary). New Script Commands and Options =============================== Syntax enhancements, uninterruptable scripts -------------------------------------------- A convention was added to allow scripts to survive "cancel all" or the escape key. If the first label in a script starts with $, the script can not be cancelled, unless specified by name. This is handy when you want to cancel all scripts except the cursor blinker, and perhaps other scripts that are well debugged. A new syntax is now allowed to prevent VLT's script parser from parsing too much. One can now use >> or }} or ]] or )) as a "universal" quote: everything from there on to the end of the line (including any "comments"!) is taken as part of the string. This makes it easier to blindly send the contents of files to VLT for example. Example: address VLT "send >>"any_random_string New miscflags ------------- There are a few new "miscflags". Since the previous version had only one, we list the complete set here: Bit 0 ("1") This bit is as before for padded clip support. When set, clips saved from the review buffer will be padded to an even number of bytes. This is the IFF documented way, but some editors and utilities can't handle it. Bit 1 ("2") When set, VLT's screen will not be updated with any data, whether it comes from the serial device or elsewhere. Bit 2 ("4") When set, VLT will not display any message windows (including the file transfer status window). Bit 3 ("8") When set, VLT opens the serial port in shared mode. Note, that you must cause the serial port to be reopened before this takes effect. This can be accomplished with the "reset" menu option or with the Hangup option or script command. Bit 4 ("16") When displaying the cross hairs in Tektronix mode, the mouse pointer normally changes to a "target box". This bit, when set, turns this off and only the cross hairs are displayed. Bit 5 ("32") This bit causes capture to a file to be unbuffered. This works well with some pipes. But see Fifo support! WEDGE command change -------------------- The WEDGE command has been changed. It now has an additional number it sends out to the port specified, IADDRESS. So the message the receiving port gets now is of the form: KEYSTROKE <code> <qualifier> <iaddress> <character> For technical reasons the fix could not be made backwards compatible. A fixed version of Intercept.vlt is supplied. Also, I have put together two other interesting examples: MarginBell.vlt and AutoWrap.vlt. New command: WINDOW ------------------- There is a new script command: WINDOW, which allows you to size VLT's main window. The syntax is WINDOW <leftedge> <topedge> <width> <height> All arguments are optional. Specifying 0 for width and/or height will cause the window to open to the right and/or bottom edge of the physical display. Missing arguments default to 0, but the arguments must be given in this order (so you can't leave out <leftedge> if you need to specify <topedge>). Sanity checking is only done when the window is already open. If the window size is set with the window closed, subsequent opening of the window may fail if the sizes are not possible and a retry will most likely use a 640 x 200 size. The settings are *not* preserved in the config file: I consider this undesirable (you try to save some other setting and wind up with a funny window size too next time you run it). But the size *is* remembered if you close the window and reopen it, or when you go to a custom screen and back to the Workbench (during the same session). To start up VLT with a particular size window, you can use something like this: 1> run VLT -b +c "window 0 10; activate v" The -b causes the window to stay closed, and the +c is run, which first sets the window size and then opens the window. Of course, you can also use equivalent tooltypes when running from the Workbench or put this in a vlt.init. See later about the tool types. More programmable function keys ------------------------------- As noted elsewhere, the alt-ed and shift-alt-ed keypad and cursor keys can now be programmed. The script command "Function" was extended to allow programming these. The following is the sequence: ALT SHIFT ALT F 81 keypad 0 F 105 F 82 keypad 1 F 106 F 83 keypad 2 F 107 F 84 keypad 3 F 108 F 85 keypad 4 F 109 F 86 keypad 5 F 110 F 87 keypad 6 F 111 F 88 keypad 7 F 112 F 89 keypad 8 F 113 F 90 keypad 9 F 114 F 91 keypad Enter F 115 F 92 keypad - F 116 F 93 keypad ( F 117 F 94 keypad ) F 118 F 95 keypad / F 119 F 96 keypad * F 120 F 97 keypad + or help key F 121 F 98 keypad . F 122 F 99 up arrow F 123 F 100 down arrow F 124 F 101 right arrow F 125 F 102 left arrow F 126 F 103 reserved F 127 F 104 reserved F 128 New: Tektronix script commands ------------------------------ Yes! There are finally script commands for the graphics part of VLT. There are script options for saving iff, postscript, binary and command files, and for printing bitmaps. Also, there are commands for zooming and panning. The syntaxes are: TEKtronix SAVEas {ILBM <filename> | POStscript <filename> | BINary [<filename>] | COMmand <filename> } TEKtronix PRINT {MAXimum | SMALL | MEDIUM | FULL | LARGE} These commands do pretty much what the equivalent menu options do. The file name for SAVE BINARY is optional: the current display is saved to the same file as opened in a previous attempt, overwriting its contents. TEKtronix ZOOM [x1 [y1 [x2 [y2]]]] TEKtronix PAN [x1 [y1 [x2 [y2]]]] The zoom and pan features are especially nice when used in combination with the new programmable alt-ed and shift-alted cursor keys. For zoom, the coordinates specify the box (in screen coordinates) to zoom in on. If x2 and/or y2 are missing they are set to x1 and/or y1. If x1 and/or y1 are missing, they are set to zero. If the size of the box is zero (as in just ZOOM, no arguments), the action will be to zoom out to the full size. For pan, the coordinates represent a starting point and an ending point. The pan is made such that the ending point will wind up (if possible) in the same location as the starting point was before the pan. Again, the coordinates are in pixels. VLT to Provector translation ---------------------------- There are in fact more script commands. For example, there is a Tektronix MOVE and a Tektronix DRAW. Since these commands are very much a representation of the internal workings of the Tektronix emulator, they will not be documented at this time (some of them are quite strange). They are of interest mostly because there is a new menu option in the Tektronix part of VLT that allows you to write out the current graphics display as a VLT command file. An ARexx file called VLT2Provec.pvrx is provided that can translate VLT's commands into Provector ARexx instructions. Not everything VLT does is supported, but the most usual things (lines, colors, fills) are. Start it from Provector using Rexxecute. A requester will come up asking you for the VLT file name to import into Provector. By reading VLT2Provec.pvrx, you can pretty much figure out how these VLT Tek commands work. But don't expect the syntax to be cast in concrete! Note also that these files can be rather lengthy. Simple IF command ----------------- There now exists a simple "IF" command in the script language. Implemented are: IF TEKtronix "set of commands to run" IF VT100 "set of commands to run" If the condition is met, the set of commands is executed as if a "Schedule" command was used. If the condition is not met, then nothing happens, and no error is returned. This command comes in handy when you want to program the alt-ed cursor keys to do something different in Tek mode and in VT100 mode. Other items ----------- In general, the script scheduler was made a little smarter about handling lots of scripts at the same time. As described previously, there is a new option to the "serialdevice" command: "none". It closes the current device. Two other script commands are: fifo on/off and displaylfascrlf on/off. See the next section. Another new script command is CheckSerialError with syntax: CHeckserialerror { SERialdevicebusy | BAUdratemismatch | LINeerror | PARityerror | BUFferoverflow | NODsr | BREakreceived | ON | OFF | DECimal <error mask> } Any number of the options may be used in the same call. The particular error checking options will be switched on or off depending on the current default of the on/off switch. For example to switch Line-error and NoDSR checking on while switching Parity error checking off, the command might be: checkserialerror on line nodsr off parity The "Decimal" option can be used in conjunction with the Extract command for checkserialerror. The extract command returns a bit mask of the errors being checked for. A bitmask in the identical format can be used in the checkserialerror command using the "decimal" option. FIFO Pipes. How to Use VLT as a BBS =================================== Fifo pipes ---------- VLT now supports local as well as remote Fifo pipes. You need Matt Dillon's fifo.library and fifo-handler for this. This makes it very easy to write a BBS in ARexx with VLT as the engine. A sample BBS is included as FifoBBS.rexx. VLT has two kinds of pipes, local and remote. The local pipes are called <VLT-name>L and the remote pipes are called <VLT-name>R. Since VLT by default is called "VLT", the default pipe names are VLTL and VLTR. The local pipes go from VLT's "keyboard" (any text VLT sends out) to the receiver and from the sender to VLT's screen. The remote pipes go from the sender to the serial-device on to the host, while anything coming in from the host is routed through the pipe to the receiver. In order to get this to work, you have to do the following. 1. Install the fifo stuff (see fifodev2.lzh in BIX listings) 2. mount fifo: Play with the "remcli" program that comes with the Fifo distribution and make sure it works. You now have a good idea of what follows: 3. newcli fifo:VLTL/rwkecs You can use newwsh or whatever instead of newcli. 4. run VLT 5. Set VLT to no echo, close the serial device, set the "Display LF as CR/LF" option on. This is a new option in the Operation menu, that causes incoming linefeeds to be displayed as returns plus linefeeds, just like the Amiga console does. 6. Switch the VLT pipes on. For this purpose, VLT has a new menu option: "Fifo Pipes" in the VLT menu. 7. You should see the cli/shell prompt on VLT's screen. Type any command, such as dir, cd, info, avail etc. You should see the response on VLT's screen. Previewing Tektronix files -------------------------- VLT now basically acts the same way "remcli" does. Is this useful? Sure is: if you have some Tektronix files lying around, just type them (if you're using VLT, not VLTjr, and if you have switched "Graphics Lock" off). You can use VLT very easily to preview any Tektronix files that way. But wait! There's more! 8. If you have two Amigas, hook the serial ports up using a null modem. Repeat the above procedure on the remote Amiga, except: use VLTR (remote) in step 3. 9. Now, run a "normal" VLT on the local Amiga, but use no echo, and "Display LF as CR/LF". 10. You should now see the CLI prompt on your local Amiga, but the CLI runs on the remote Amiga! Voila, instant access to your remote Amiga using one screen and one keyboard! VLT as a BBS ------------ Of course, it is a little dangerous to let just anyone log onto your system when it is set up like this, because they can just type "Format DH0:....", so I wrote a little BBS program. It is called FifoBBS.rexx. It pretty much installs itself. All you need to do is create a single directory somewhere and assign FifoBBS: to it. FifoBBS does the rest, as is described in the header of FifoBBS.rexx. 11. Instead of step 3, run FifoBBS with either "remote" or "local" as an argument. The REMOTE argument is used if you want it to be a real BBS, i.e. people dial in from the outside. The LOCAL argument is used if you just want to log in to the BBS from the Amiga it is running on. Note, that if you omit the argument, it will run in the current CLI, without either VLT or "remcli" being active. There will be one account when FifoBBS is run the first time, that of SYSOP. Hit return to get to the FifoBBS Username: prompt. Log in as SYSOP and change your password. When you are logged on, type a return to see the list of supported commands. The ones with an asterisk are "SYSOP-only". Now, log on as someone else. Follow the instructions: log on as NEW, and register. Then try logging on again: you will find that you are not yet validated. Log on as SYSOP, and use the VALIDATE command to change the access code of the new user from 2 to 3. The new user can now log on but does not have access to the commands with a * in front of them. However, as SYSOP (or if you have access code 5 or larger) you can use the "SYSTEM" command. This will bring you to a $ prompt, from which you can type any system comamnd (dir, cd, list, info, avail, anything that produces text output). You can even run Ed! (Under AmigaDOS 2.0 with the WINDOW * and WIDTH and HEIGHT settings). There are some programs (like More) that "should" work but don't. You can type "RETURN" to get back into the BBS system. FifoBBS currently has a single listings section, a single message section, and private mail between everybody. It detects the "NO CARRIER" string sent by the modem, and if present will log the current user off, so that a next user can't intrude on someone elses account. Other New Features ================== Local printing -------------- The escape sequences <csi>5i and <csi>4i are now supported. All incoming characters are redirected to "prt:" between the two, in accordance with the VT220 standard. The display is not updated during that time. The feature is cancelled by the "CLear" option of the Screen menu and by any option that closes the serial device. Smooth Scroll ------------- The Amount of Prescroll menu option was renamed to "Scrolling Speed". One can now set prescroll numbers that are negative. Negative prescroll settings cause a smooth scroll of that amount of pixels at a time. Note that even numbers work better on interlaced screens. Transfer status window ---------------------- The transfer status window has finally acquired some gadgets. It now also listens to the escape key (but VLT's main window no longer does for file transfers). It activates itself, and it should all around be better. When a transfer is complete, a character typed in the status window causes the window to close. The character is sent on to the host (this is just like it used to be, except that the window now can be active at the time). When VLT's main window is not active, the transfer window will not activate either. This allows background uploads without the active window being pulled out from under you. Also there is now a gadget that is always accessible (though it may take till the end of the current packet being transferred) that puts VLT behind all other screens or windows, and brings the Workbench to the front. There are two other gadgets, "Cancel File" and "Cancel All". The latter just attempts to shut down any and all transfers as soon as possible. The "Cancel File" button signals that only the current file should be aborted in a multi-file transfer. Only the upcoming release of XPRKermit supports this feature at this time. Fonts ----- You can now select your favorite font from a menu option in the Screen menu. It must exist in both 8 and 11 point tall, and it must be monospaced and the width must be 8 points. VLT checks these attributes and won't change the fonts if it doesn't conform. This now removes the requirement of having to use SetFont or FF to use a different font in VLT. ToolTypes --------- You can now add tool types to VLT's icons and script icons for all the command line options. A few examples: CLI | ToolType ----------------------------------+------------------- -i | -i +s pty.device | +s=pty.device +c "send (foo); emit (foo)" | +c=send (foo); emit (foo) <script-name> | +=<script-name> etc. | etc. Note in particular the lack of quotes in the "+c" Tooltype example and the "+=" in the scriptname example. Compare also page 12-15 of the manual. In case multiple script files are used using extended selection, the tooltypes of the *first* selected script icon are used. Keypad and cursor keys ---------------------- All "ALT"-ed keypad keys are now programmable. However, for the programs to take effect, the keypad must be in "application" mode, not numeric. All "ALT"-ed cursor keys are now programmable. These are not dependend on any menu options. Similarly, All "SHIFT-ALT"-ed keypad and cursor keys are programmable. Console string -------------- In program mode, when you select the Open Console menu item, you can specify the string you'd like to use for the console. No more need to patch the VLT executable to replace CON: by CNC:. Other changes and additions =========================== - VLT's version string is now 2.0 compatible. You can use the "version" command on the VLT executable (under 2.0). - The review.library is probably a little faster in scrolling than the previous one. Otherwise no changes. - The Review Edit/Send command has now some delays built in in order to improve legibility when using with packet nets. - With the "Wrap" option in the Operation menu set to on, you can now wrap back to the end of the previous line when using arrow keys and/or backspace. I'm not sure that this is entirely compatible with the VT100 spec but it sure seems nice. - The Interlace setting now only affects VLT on its custom screen. I.e., if you switch from an interlaced custom screen to a non-interlaced Workbench and back, the screen will be interlaced. It used to acquire the interlace setting of the Workbench. - All known XPR protocols are now added as "External" options to the menu. They are not explicitly supported like XMODEM and Kermit, but at least you can select them straight from the menu. - The menu item texts now conform to the new Commodore style guide. This means that ... after a menu option means that selecting the option causes a window or requester to open up. Similarly, a » at the right edge of the menu box means that there is a submenu attached to that item. Also, since some menus are getting quite long, some options are now grouped using separating bars of dashes. VLT now has over 200 menu options. - The screen title (not to be confused with the screenshare name!) and window title (when on the Workbench) are now the same as the screenshare name (which is usually also the same as the ARexx port name). This helps in recognizing different VLT sessions on the same machine. - All new settings have been added to the Extract facility. There is a new extracttest.rexx. - A new menu option is "Display LF as CR/LF". This is needed because of the pipes described above: when you connect to another Amiga, you usually get linefeeds as line terminators. This option makes sure that VLT gets a return as well. The corresponding script command is displaylfascrlf. - All error messages that appear during the startup of VLT are now displayed for at least a second, to give you time to read them. - The handshake menu is a little more descriptive. Bugfixes ======== The following bugs and problems were fixed. - Some traps that were already removed could still be accessed. - VLT read location zero, when cancelling schedules without labels. - VLT read location zero in the code for adding traps. - The ZMODEM incredible shrinking window problem. - Ctrl-C's could cause problems in the console window. - <esc>[0m? now properly resets the background color as well. - <esc>c handling has a few more safeguards. - xpr_fread, xpr_fwrite can now handle buffers larger than 32k. One should now be able to set xprzmodem buffer size to larger than 32. (in fact, all xpr... support routines are now "32-bit safe"). - The "cancel' option in the review buffer "overwrite/append/cancel" requester used to "overwrite" rather than "cancel" - In color mode, it was possible that during a scroll too much real estate was scrolled away. - Turns out XPRHostMon never really worked too well. - There was a bug in the VT100 new-line mode. - ON commands could have their actions stack up indefinitely in some cases. ON's now work much more like traps (internally). - Doing a "wait" inside an "on" (which is nonsense anyway) is now disabled (would have caused trouble before) and will generate an error. - Goto, on, wait, trap, schedule, exit, pause, continue, cancel, and delay underwent changes in the process of fixing ON. - Any bugs with the User Menu should be fixed now. - A reported bug with xpr_sread timing out and not returning a partially completed read should be fixed (if it really was broken...). - VLT would allow you to set funny break times. Also, a bug could cause a funny time to be saved to the configuration file. The range of times is now restricted to 10 msec to 3 seconds. If a funny time is read in from the config file, it is reset to the default. - All requesters now come up on the visible part of the screen, even of the screen is autoscroll and not currently in its default position. - The "activate VT100" script command now activates the main window as it should. - VLT used to be incapable of opening a new serial device, if the previous attempt at opening a device failed. - If someone doesn't have a rexx: assignment, VLT will quietly look in s: instead. - The Edit/Send option had the undesired capability of getting the order of the selected lines confused. - A small bug in XPR support was fixed: one of them had to do with a possible change in xprzmodem to prevent the the **B0 characters appearing on your screen when XPRzmodem started an automatic download. However, afterwards, the change in xprzmodem was deemed to be too dangerous, so the fixed bug in VLT will not result in any visible changes. - A crash was found during xprzmodem downloads when the date command is used to change the date back some 10 days or so. This bug is in xprzmodem and is not immediately fixable. It falls in the category of "It hurts when I do this"/"Then don't do that"... - In Tektronix mode, an error message is now displayed when the user tries to print the bitmap or save an IFF when on the Workbench. - A very old bug was pointed out to me recently: the block cursor didn't line up with the font some of the time and was one pixel higher than the user set it. This is now fixed. For those with a 1 pixel cursor, it now really *is* one pixel and it looks thinner. - A scrolling problem was fixed when prescroll was set to a number that was larger than the number of lines fitting in the window. This would typically show up as text in the title bar of the VLT window when on the Workbench when the window was really small vertically. The end...