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Nettle - Telnet and terminal emulation for RISC OS ================================================== Version : 0.2042r : April 4th, 2004. Nettle is *the* terminal emulator and telnet client for the RISC OS operating system. It utilises the ZapRedraw module for speedy display and is a fast, clean native implementation. Nettle's aim is to be the definitive terminal emulator and telnet client for RISC OS. A range of terminal emulation options will be supported, along with full colour and graphics. An ANSI task window is provided, so that ports of unix programs which provide ANSI output can be run on RISC OS in full colour and form. (Programs such as ncftp2, BitchX, nano, lynx). Other highlights include an optional line editor with history, hotlisting, multiple terminal support and URL launching. Eventually, Nettle will also contain Secure Shell (SSH) support. Requirements ============ Nettle uses the ZapRedraw module for display. If !Zap or !ZapFonts have been "seen" on your system (often by virtue of having !ZapFonts in the !Boot.Resources directory) then you will have a wide variety of fonts to choose from within Nettle. If Nettle cannot find any fonts, then it will fall back to using two contained inside its own structure. Nettle currently requires Wimp 3.50 or better. All versions of RISC OS can have at least Wimp 3.98 ("Nested Wimp") loaded, however, users of RISC OS 3.1 may not have this installed and see some reduction in functionality. Nettle makes use of menus with sprites - there is a known bug in WIMP versions prior to RISC OS Select 2i3 (RISC OS 4.33) which means that these menus may occasionally display incorrectly. In common with other RISC OS internet access software, to connect to other machines, then !Internet must be operational on your computer. The Acorn/ANT 'Resolver' module is also required. Nettle also makes use of the "SocketWatch" module for improved performance - an installer is provided. This module is not required if running Internet 5.42 or better (Select 2 or later) then you don't need to use the Socketwatch module as the functionality is provided by the OS (Socket pollwords). Also note that if you only wish to use the ANSI task window facilities of Nettle, then !Internet is not required. Finally, Nettle makes use of the ColourPicker module. This must be present in your system ROM or !System folder. "Dummies guide" to using Nettle =============================== Unpack !Nettle to your harddrive and doubleclick on it - an icon will appear on the right hand side of your iconbar. Clicking SELECT on this icon will open the connection window. Enter an internet host name in to the "Host" icon, optionally supplying a port number after a colon. Click to "Connect" button and a connection will be attempted - a larger terminal window will appear, showing connection status. If all goes will, you will be able to use the service you requested. Once finished, simply close the window. Using Nettle ============ Creating connections Clicking on the Nettle iconbar icon will display the connection dialog. From here you may choose the connection type (Telnet/SSH/ANSI task) and terminal emulation desired (vt100/vt102/vt220/xterm). The hostname and port ("host.name:port") can be entered below for telnet and ssh connections. For ssh and ANSI Task connections, the command icon will be available to supply a default command to run (eg "bash"). Using the terminal Once a connection is made, the terminal can be used as normal. If a line editor has been enabled (the initial default is "off") then the input will be line-buffered locally and up/down cursors will scroll through a history. This may be undesirable for interactive programs running via the terminal or for password entry. Nettle will print a message in the window when the session has ended. During use of the terminal, the mouse can be used to select areas of text in the usual RISC OS manner. An application menu (click the middle mouse button in the terminal window) will allow the selection to be cleared, transmitted via the terminal, or saved to disc in either plain text or full ANSI format. The menu also gives access to a resize dialog allowing the terminal size and scrollback to be changed. Note that when remote mousing is in operation (eg when running "pico -m") then local mouse operations will not function - selection and the session menu will be unavailable. Tailoring Nettle's defaults The default terminal size, font, colours, scrollback size and so on can all be modified from within Nettle: Choose the "Choices..." option from Nettle's iconbar menu and the main Choices window will appear. Choices are split in to several categories (Size/Colour/Hotlist...) and clicking on the radio buttons at the top right will display choices for that category. Update the choices as you desire, then click "Set" to set them for the current run only, or click "Save" to save them as defaults which are reloaded the next time Nettle is run. Hotlist Nettle has a hotlist feature, similar to most web browsers. Sites that you connect to regularly, and terminal settings for those sites, can be defined as a hotlist item and saved to disc for quick access. The hotlist editor can be seen by selecting the "hotlist" option in Nettle's choices window. From here a new hotlist item can be created, existing items may be edited or deleted, and the list can be reordered by dragging items around. To select an item for edit/delete/copy, just click on it. Dragging items will allow the list to be reordered to suit usage. Doubleclicking will go straight in to the item edit mode. The hotlist is saved to disc when you select "Save" from the Choices window and loaded when Nettle is loaded. You can access the hotlist by clicking ADJUST on the Nettle iconbar icon or from the "Hotlist" iconbar submenu. Main window All input to nettle is via the main connection windows of course. If a line editor has been enabled, then it will appear as a pane hanging below the window. Enter text in here as usual and hit ENTER to send it. The line editor has a "history" - use up and down cursor keys to access recently entered commands. This line editor is useful for slow connections - eg telnet over a modem or to a distant site. If the line editor type has been set to "Optional" then there will be a checkbox to the right of the window to allow it to be temporarily disbled (eg when you need raw mode input, or want to enter a password). If the line editor is set to "Permanent" then the line editor window will always be active, but clicking in the window will allow raw input - this is akin to the behaviour of apps such as ANTTerm. Try each option and see which suits you best. You can mark a selection of text in the main window in the usual RISC OS manner. This selection can then be saved by simply dragging it to a filer window or another app. Clicking menu will open the terminal menu where you can follow the "Selection ->" item and save via a standard save dialog. This also allows you to save out the full ANSI control code info too. The application menu also allows you to send the marked area back to the terminal. Nettle can launch URLs for you. Doubleclicking on any word in a terminal window will attempt to launch a RISC OS web browser for that text. Nettle supports all common URL launching mechanisms (Fresco/Oregano/Browse). Nettle supports the global clipboard via entries on the session menu and files can be dragged to a session window to transmit their contents. For systems that output ANSI graphics characters, you may intially see "top bit" characters (with accents) drawn. You should switch to a font which draws these as block graphics - eg "08x16.PC" font. This is seen when connecting to ArcadeBBS for example. ANSI task ========= Nettle provides a ANSI task, primarily to allow ported Unix programs which have ANSI output to be run on RISC OS. The task window operates slightly differently from other task window implementations (eg Zap/Edit) to allow for this ANSI emulation. Don't expect to run "normal" interactive RISC OS programs in here (e.g. BASIC, gos) because they will not function in the way you expect - ANSI terminal control is quite different to RISC OS. Programs which are intended to be run via Nettle's ANSI Task include nano (pico), tinyfugue, lynx, BitchX, ncftp2 and so on. Nettle is the only RISC OS program that we know of that provides this kind of functionality and allows these unix ports to be run at their best. Project background ================== Alex Macfarlane Smith started the project, initially writing a very well featured version of Nettle in BBC BASIC. Unfortunately, this was rather too slow to be really useful, so after some encouragement, the move was made to a C-language based development. This is when the other developers started work. Nettle currently supports vt100, vt102, vt220, linux and xterm terminal emulation. This is now fairly fully fledged and working well - support for other common terminal standards (vt320, vt52) is planned for later. Opensource development is managed via SourceForge - feel free to submit patches and bug reports via that system: http://nettle.sourceforge.net/ Report bugs and enhancements to mailto:archifishal@users.sourceforge.net Main developers (sourceforge id) ================================ Alex Macfarlane Smith ("archifishal") - project lead / telnet guru Peter Naulls ("pnaulls") - unixlib/gcc specialist Ian Jeffray ("ijeffray") - gui/ui/wimp/stubs Joseph Heenan ("jogu") - url/general os expert Justin Fletcher ("gerph") - risc os god Contributions, assistance and patches have also been received from David Thomas, Darren Salt, Ainsley Pereira and Jerome Mathevet. "To do" list - forthcoming features and ideas ============================================= We're still working on Nettle. Honest. Here's a roughly ordered list of things that will be added in future versions. Please feel free to submit new ideas: mailto:archifishal@users.sourceforge.net * ANSI commandline task shell for ANSI task window (ROSH) * VT 320/420/510 * rlogin * SSH Known issues / bugs =================== If you find a bug that isn't related to the list of unfinished items above, and isn't a known bug shown below, please let us know: mailto:archifishal@users.sourceforge.net * Terminal emulation incomplete - esoteric vt commands unimplemented * ANSI task cannot be used as a "regular" taskwindow. - It never will, because it interprets codes as ANSI - that's its whole point in life. This will be improved by "ROSH" Release History =============== 0.1306b : 1999 - 2001 Initial BASIC versions 0.2000r : September 1st, 2001 Features: Recoded in C Supports vt100, vt102, vt220, xterm emulations Telnet and ANSI task connections URL launching 0.2010r : September 16th 2001 New features: Remote mouse support (pico -m, mc, links etc work nicely now) Support basic telnet://hostname/ URL launching (no user/password yet) Inverse video emulation Session spooling (logging) Support X11 DISPLAY passing to remote Implemented save/resore cursors Support for blinking characters Accept telnet requests to suppress go ahead Global clipboard support File loading (dragging of files to session window) Changes/Improvements: 80/132 column switching doesn't change width on terminal reset now Better support ANT broadcast launching of URLs Improved recognition of URLs under double-click in terminal window Builds with new unixlib file structure Runs templheadr from a specified location Change menu wording ("Connect..." is now "New Session...") Much faster terminal drawing Hotlist editor gains "Copy" button - buttons grey-out at appropriate times Hotlist redraw cleaned up and made less flickery Hotlist items can now be dragged around to change the ordering Improve region scrolling behaviour Bugs fixed: Correctly turn off local echo (telnet to ArcadeBBS now works properly) Corrected hotlist editor tab ordering Hotlist editor couldn't create command for ANSItask Terminal speed reporting (and change reported speed to 38400) Selection saving fixes LINES/COLUMNS variables now correct (for use by ANSItask apps) Rare stack corruption solved Could sometimes continually swap cursor between two windows DNS lookup corrected 0.2020r : February 20th, 2002 New features: Iconised window naming Cope with and translate control characters when pasting Warn about open sessions on quit/shutdown Paste URL/URI files rather than launching them New choices section for 'miscellaneous' options (eg blinking) Versioned choices files Mouse support for Shift/Ctrl/Alt combinations Dynamic resizing of window -- optionally only when CTRL is held Accept user:pass@host format as a host entry for auto logon Handling of "telnet:user:pass@host:port" URL format Two types of terminal cursor : block or underline. Character underline support Display terminal size in scrollbar when dynamically resizing Changes/Improvements: Multitasking speed when pasting large amounts Optional line editor can now default to 'off' Don't unnecessarily add blank spaces to end of lines Allow pasting of HTML, ask user when pasting other types RISC OS 3.5+ style error categories Positioning of new terminal windows is more standardised Better cursor drawing and display of 'ghost' cursor Large memory savings -- smarter use of ZapRedraw Terminal reset Handle 'stop bold' command and use it in ANSI saving output Bugs fixed: 7bit/8bit VT escape sequences corrected Selection of rows when dragging selection a long way out of window Resizing on a mode change correctly Position cursor correctly when terminal resizes Hold on to selected area correctly when terminal resizes Fixed crashing on font change Ensure ZapRedraw at least 0.39 as we don't like earlier versions Double-clicking on IPs now does what you'd expect it to Swap top T bottom T around Corrected shutdown sequence so that desktop can be shutdown cleanly Some reasonably large internal cleanup and restructuring Read size of toolsprites from WIMP -- correctly position line editor Save as ANSI inserts proper ANSI sequences! 0.2032r : December 7th, 2002 New Features: French messages Ctrl-F2 closes disconnected sessions Added "linux" terminal type Changes/Improvements: Improved method for detecting URLs Menu ticks added Selection-pasting only adds newlines at line end Small change to selected-area highlight colouring Caret drawn in window when it first opens Bugs fixed: Corrected pasting of large amounts of text to ANSI tasks Various optimisations and speedups Data load ack now sent Country lookup fixed Terminal scrolling on NEL Fixed memory leak on URI loading Fix pasting of large files Don't report errors twice 0.2040r : December 7th, 2003 New Features: Updated to 32bit build. Runs on 26bit and 32bit RISC OS. Added "Reconnect" menu item to reconnect dead sessions Sprites11 highres icons added Local terminal Options setting (on terminal menu) Scroll to bottom of terminal on keypress option Utilise RISC OS Select socket pollwords (unrequire Sockwatch) Changes/Improvements: Moved to StubsG for everything. One sane build environment Ensure correct use of SocketWatch module Ensure correct use of ZapRedraw module. Ensure at least 0.39 used Don't gobble DA address space for ZapRedraw area Improved icons Better selection handling Keep to hires font in EY0 modes Works correctly with Internet 4.xx and 5.xx Updated French resources Reduced memory usage Bugs fixed: Shift-PageUp/Down are properly handled locally to move scrollbar Updates to French resources Correct pasting of line endings and chomping of multiples Handle inverted commas in ANSI task commands correctly Cope with insane scroll regions being requested Improved handling of linefeeds in scroll regions Terminal resizing bug solved Allow line editor size to be altered properly Other miscellaneous line editor fixes Correctly handle dragging of files to line editor Keep cursor-type menu open when choosing with Adjust Correctly reset resize window on Adjust-Cancel Correctly reset hotlist editor window on Adjust-Cancel Cope with long URLs Correctly implemented reverse tabulation command 0.2042r : April 4th, 2004 New Features: German messages (credit Stefan Bellon) Changes/Improvements: True probing detection of Internet pollword capability Better internal internationalisation handling Bugs fixed: Tabs are included in non-raw spool files Cope cleanly when no Internet module is present (C) Nettle developers.