TOPS Terminal is a tool that helps you share information and processing power with other people and other computers without leaving your Macintosh.
TOPS Terminal provides two primary network powers, terminal emulation and file transfer. Terminal emulation is a very powerful but sometimes unfriendly way of interacting with another computer. Most computers provide general-purpose services that use terminal emulation as their medium. These services could be anything from a two-way "chat" session with another person to analyzing X-ray crystallography data on protein molecules; from reading messages others have left on an electronic "bulletin board" to playing games based on detective or fantasy fiction.
The basis of terminal emulation on the Mac is simple. You type commands to the other computer using the Mac keyboard, and the other computer makes your Mac screen show the result of your commands.
Because there is no standard group of commands for different computers to adhere to, you have to know some things about a computer's command structure to do complicated work on another computer with TOPS Terminal. However, TOPS Terminal remembers how to do many common operations, so you don't have to learn all the details of each other computer.
The Terminal Session command starts terminal emulation sessions with other computers. Before giving the Terminal Session command, you will most likely want to describe the other computer and your account, using the Settings menu. If you wish, however, you may use the "manual" accounts which bypass account and computer descriptions.
File transfer is the other primary power of TOPS Terminal. This is just what it sounds like: sending files from your computer to other computers, and retrieving files from other computers onto your Mac. An "error-correcting protocol" is used to make sure that the file gets transferred correctly. File transfer is invoked using three commands in the Network menu: Send File, Receive File, and Remote Edit. You will be asked for the names of the file or files you want to transfer, and the account on which you want to do the transfer. File transfer is carried out "in the background", meaning that you can use your Mac for other things while the transfer continues.
Terminal emulation and file transfer require a physical connection between your Mac and the other computer. Two kinds of physical connections are supported by TOPS Terminal, phones and TCP/IP. TCP/IP connections are error-free and fast, while phone connections are error-prone and relatively slow.
TCP/IP connections require that you have your Mac plugged into an Appletalk or Ethernet network at your business or school. Depending on conditions where you are, you may be able to reach an international group of TCP/IP computers called the Internet, or you may only be able to reach computers in your building or organization.
Phone connections use a digital computer phone called a "modem", talking to other computers over the ordinary phone system. Computer data are converted into sound and sent as a whistling, weirdly modulated voice. A modem at the other end of the connection converts this odd sound back into computer data.
Aside from terminal emulation and file transfer, TOPS Terminal incorporates a powerful and robust text editor, which follows the usual Mac model. If a terminal emulator is a software telephone, a text editor is a software typewriter. You can write messages, essays, memos, filth, or whatever you like. In fact, there may well be times you launch TOPS Terminal with no intentions of calling another computer, just of using the text editor.
Note that only a text editor is provided, not a word processor. Text can't be given font and style changes, there is no paragraph formatting, and only "text only" files can be edited.
One of the nice features of the text editor is that it lives in the real world. Different computers use different conventions for indicating the end of a line in text files, but most text editors insist on thinking that the standard on the editors' computer is universal. This makes it hard to deal with files from other computers, whether you are reaching these files by file transfer and TOPS Terminal, or the superior and more modern way using a file server like NFS or TOPS. TOPS Terminal solves this by intelligently reading text files and adapting to whatever convention they use, in a way that is completely transparent to you. This gives the editor unique powers when dealing with other computer's text files.
