Columbia Kermit/kermit.zip/e/newsn6.txt

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KERMIT NEWS Number 6, March 1995

  NOTE: This is a plain-text ASCII rendering of the printed
  journal, KERMIT NEWS.  The cover, the typesetting effects,
  illustrations, special characters, internal cross references,
  pagination and page numbers, etc, are lost and/or incorrect.


CONTENTS

Editor's Notes  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    1

New Releases
  MS-DOS Kermit 3.14  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    3
    and BBSs .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    4
    and Business Communication .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    5
  C-Kermit 5A(190) .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    6
    for UNIX .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    6
    for VMS  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    7
    for OS/2 .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    7
    for Stratus VOS   .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   10
  IBM Mainframe Kermit-370 4.3.1  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   11
  Digital PDP-11 Kermit-11 3.62-8 .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   11
  Other New Kermit Releases .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   11

New Features
  File Transfer Recovery .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   12
  Auto-Upload, Auto-Download, Auto-Anything   .  .  .  .  .   14
  Character Sets: Circumnavigating the Web with MS-DOS Kermit 15

People and Places
  Cover Story: Kermit in the Brazilian Elections .  .  .  .   19
  Kermit Helps Automate Mail Delivery   .  .  .  .  .  .  .   23
  Kermit and Market Research in the UK  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   24
  Computer Access for Persons with Print-Handicaps  .  .  .   25

Down to Business
  Ordering Information.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   (*)
  Kermit Version List .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   (*)
  Order Form .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   (*)


(*) Omitted from this file; please refer to current catalog.

                    Kermit News (ISSN 0899-9309) is published periodically
                    free of charge by Kermit Development and Distribution,
                    Columbia University Academic Information Systems, 612 West
                    115th Street, New York, NY 10025, USA.  Contributed
                    articles are welcome.

                      Editor: Christine M. Gianone
                      E-Mail: [e-mail]

                    Copyright (C) 1995, Trustees of Columbia University in
                    the City of New York.  Material in Kermit News may be
                    quoted or reproduced in other publications without
                    permission, but with proper attribution.

                    The Kermit file transfer protocol is named after Kermit
                    the Frog, star of the television series The Muppet Show,
                    used by permission of Henson Associates, Inc.

                    Cover:  Brazilian Presidential Election, October 1994.
                    Using computers to count votes, Rio de Janeiro.  Photo:
                    Jorge William, Agencia O Globo.


EDITOR'S NOTES

Welcome to Kermit News Number 6.  This issue announces new releases of our
three most popular communications software programs:

   1. MS-DOS Kermit for DOS and Windows;

   2. C-Kermit for UNIX, OS/2, OpenVMS, Stratus VOS, and several other
      operating systems;

   3. IBM Mainframe Kermit for VM/CMS, MVS/TSO, CICS, and MUSIC.

These new versions offer:

   - File transfer failure recovery for DOS, Windows, UNIX, VMS, OS/2,
     OS-9, AOS/VS, VOS, Amiga, and IBM mainframes (see the article on
     page 9).

   - Auto-download/upload/configuration via APC mechanism (article on
     p.11).

   - General improvements in performance, script programming,
     client/server protocol, terminal emulation, character sets, dialing,
     and much more.

New and full-featured C-Kermit programs are available for QNX and Stratus VOS.
And there also is new support for recent OS releases in the ever-changing UNIX
market (article on p.5).

Kermit software today is a powerful, consistent, and fully interopable
communications solution for the industry's most popular computers.

In the December 1994 issue of DEC Professional magazine, Kevin Barkes writes
in his column, "The newest MS-Kermit and C-Kermit programs have features and
speeds rivaling the leading commercial software packages."  Of Kermit's role
in the 1994 Brazilian elections (see our article on page 14), he says "If
Kermit can work in a difficult situation like this, you can imagine what it
can do in your shop."

A Word to Our Sponsors

The Kermit project is entirely self-supporting, funded by book sales, mail
orders, and commercial licenses.  Since our last issue, there has been an
explosion in the popularity of the Internet.  Our Internet ftp site,
KERMIT.COLUMBIA.EDU, always a popular Internet resource, is now playing host
to thousands of file transfer requests each day.

The increased accessibility of Kermit software via network is good...  and bad
too.  While we're delighted with its increased visibility and popularity, mail
orders are down and our support burden is up.

To keep pace, we must increase our mail-order sales and the use of our
documentation.  Our manuals teach users, even complete novices, how to use
Kermit software effectively, and are also excellent reference works for
seasoned professionals and everyone in between.  Please keep in mind:

   - The manuals reduce the load on our help desk -- and yours!

   - Sales of the manuals are the primary source of funding for the
     Kermit project.

Second, we look to those large organizations that save huge amounts of money
on software licensing and support by distributing Kermit software internally,
to purchase manuals from us in bulk (at quantity discounts) and to consider
making contributions to the Kermit effort so we may continue to produce and
support the software that saves them so much money.

Third, we must reemphasize our policy towards commercial distribution of
Kermit software.  Remember, most Kermit software is not in the public domain;
the copyright is held by Columbia University, and forbids redistribution by
commercial enterprises without our written permission, even when not done
directly for profit, and even on "free software" or "shareware" CD-ROMs (or
other media).  If your company wishes to distribute Kermit software to its
customers or clients, please contact us -- the advantages are many, our terms
are easy.  You can read about several successful new cooperative ventures in
this issue.

   While Surfing the Internet . . .

   Be sure to visit our new World Wide Web home page:

     http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/

   Here you will find our new illustrated catalog, MS-DOS Kermit graphic
   screen shots, and a whole new approach (for us) to software
   distribution.  But please do remember to purchase the relevant manuals
   if you haven't already done so.

   And for a unique international perspective on the Internet, be sure to
   read Circumnavigating the Web on page 12.



                             BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS

Digital Press Changes Hands

Digital Press, publisher of our English-language Kermit books, has been
transferred from Digital Equipment Corporation to:

  DIGITAL PRESS
  Butterworth-Heinemann
  225 Wildwood Street
  Woburn, MA  01801, USA
  Voice: [phone], Fax: [phone]

(a member of the Reed Elsevier group).

Kermit books can, as always, be obtained directly from Columbia University
(see our order form), but orders to the publisher (e.g. from bookstores) must
now go to Butterworth-Heinemann.

Overseas offices of Butterworth-Heinemann can be reached at the following
telephone numbers:

  [phone]  Rushden, England office for Europe
  [phone]   Chatswood, NSW office for Australia and New Zealand
  [phone]     Singapore office for Asia
  [phone]   Durban office for South Africa

The new arrangement has been in effect for more than a year so all the
wrinkles should be ironed out.  But if your bookstore is having difficulty
obtaining English-language Kermit books, please refer them to the new
publisher.

Und immer noch ein neues Buch!

Always again another book! Using C-Kermit, the C-Kermit 5A user manual
published by Digital Press, has been translated into German by our good
friend, Gisbert W. Selke of the WIdO (Wissenschaftliches Institut der
Ortskrankenkassen) in Bonn (a small University town in Germany), and published
in deluxe hardcover edition by Verlag Heinz Heise of Hannover.  The proper
citation is:

  Frank da Cruz and Christine M. Gianone, C-Kermit -- Einfuehrung und
  Referenz (1994), ISBN 3-88229-023-4.  Deutsch von Gisbert W. Selke.
  Price:  DM 88,00.  Verlag Heinz Heise GmbH & Co. KG, Helstorfer Strasse 7,
  D-30625 Hannover, Germany.
  Tel. [phone], Fax. [phone].

Readers may recall that Gisbert also translated, and Heise also published, a
German edition of Using MS-DOS Kermit for German-speaking Kermit users.

& en Francais?

The French translation of Using MS-DOS Kermit, by another good friend, Jean
Dutertre of Digital France, remains available not only in France, but can also
be ordered from us on our order form, as a special convenience to Francophones
outside France:

  Christine M. Gianone, Kermit MS-DOS mode d'emploi (1993), ISBN
  2-901143-20-2.  Adaption francaise: Jean Dutertre.  Heinz Schiefer & Cie.,
  45 rue Henri de Regnier, F-78000 Versailles.  Tel. [phone],
  Fax. [phone].

Our neighbors to the north are heartily encouraged to indulge their bilingual
inclinations by keeping both French and English editions close by at all
times!  (We also hope that French authorities will kindly overlook the
comments on page 46...)

Here's Proof !

  James Huggins
  Department of EE and CS
  University of Michigan
  Ann Arbor, MI, USA

In his preface to Frank da Cruz's book Kermit: A File Transfer Protocol, Don
Knuth wrote:

  I hope that many readers of this book will be challenged to find
  high-level concepts and invariant relations by which various versions of
  the Kermit protocol can be proved correct in a mathematical sense.

I'm pleased to announce that such a proof has recently been completed.  It
shows that Kermit is both safe (if you receive a file using Kermit, it will be
the same one that was sent) and live (if you send a file using Kermit, and the
network doesn't behave hideously, it will eventually get to the recipient).

The proof appears in Kermit: Specification and Verification, to be published
in the Oxford University Press book "Specification and Validation Methods,"
edited by Egon Borger, due in April 1995.  After publication, an electronic
version of the paper will be placed on the Kermit archives at Columbia.

If you're interested in a preprint, or if you have questions or comments about
the paper, feel free to contact me at [e-mail].


ANNOUNCING MS-DOS KERMIT 3.14

Yes, another new Kermit for your PC!

The PC marketplace grows and changes constantly, and MS-DOS Kermit is changing
with it.  MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 for PCs with DOS or Windows was released in
January 1995.  It was prepared by Professor Joe R. Doupnik of the Center for
Atmospheric and Space Sciences and Department of Electrical Engineering of
Utah State University in Logan, Utah, USA, in cooperation with Columbia
University in New York City and Dr. Hirofumi Fujii of the Japan National
Laboratory for High Energy Physics.

The new release includes an incredible number of enhancements in every area
designed to keep MS-DOS Kermit up-to-date with new PC, modem, and networking
technology.  The big ones are:

   - File transfer recovery allows interrupted binary-mode transfers to
     be continued from the point of failure, for use with C-Kermit
     5A(190) and IBM Mainframe Kermit 4.3.1 (see article on page 9).

   - ANSI and Wyse-50 terminal emulation add two popular terminal types
     to MS-DOS Kermit's repertoire.  ANSI emulation is ideal for
     accessing BBSs.

   - The greatest Kermit protocol implementation is now available for
     BBSs themselves (see article on page 3).

   - The new Kermit diskette includes complete packages for Hebrew and
     Cyrillic terminal emulation, including fonts and keyboard drivers.
     Read those Russian newsgroups!  Access online Hebrew databases!

   - Japanese Kanji and Chinese terminal emulations are now fully
     supported, even on ordinary US-model IBM PCs and compatibles.  See
     article on page 12.

   - The script programming language now includes built-in functions just
     like C-Kermit's.

   - New smaller versions are provided for those who don't need (or can't
     fit) all the features of the full version, and for use as an
     external protocol or script execution engine in BBSs and other
     applications.

The New MS-DOS Kermit Diskette

MS-DOS Kermit now comes on a high-density 1.44-MB 3.5-inch DOS-format
directory-structured diskette that contains everything you need, including
three different executables: the full-functioned version, a smaller "Medium"
version, and a tiny "Lite" version.  The medium version can be used on PCs
with small memories, e.g. on old XTs, where the full-featured version might
not fit.  It can also be used if you simply do not need Kermit's networking or
graphics terminal emulation capabilities; this lets you run bigger programs
"under" Kermit in the extra free conventional memory.

The "Lite" version has no network support or terminal emulation at all,
including no CONNECT command.  It still includes serial communications, the
full Kermit protocol implementation, and the complete script programming
language.  Weighing in at only 105K, it is perfect for use as an external
protocol and script execution engine in BBSs, in embedded applications, and
behind custom menus.

Diskette subdirectories include:

   - Dialing scripts for many types of modems.
   - Network shims, drivers, and documentation.
   - Key mapping setups and keyboard drivers.
   - File transfer and printer utilities.
   - Windows files.
   - PC fonts and utilities.
   - A complete Cyrillic support package.
   - A complete Hebrew support package.

All the utilities you need are on this disk, so there is no longer a separate
"utilities" disk.  Our deepest thanks, as always, to Joe Doupnik for bringing
another new version of MS-DOS Kermit to us, and special thanks to Dr. Fujii
for his work on the Kanji features, and to Yossi Gil at the Technion in Israel
for the fonts, to Dimitri Vulis in Brooklyn for the Cyrillic keyboard drivers,
and to many others (too numerous to list) for testing and other contributions.

MS-DOS Kermit and SAS/GRAPH

Users of SAS/GRAPH(R) can now view Sixel-based color graphics with MS-DOS
Kermit.  Starting with release 6.10 of SAS software, which is available now on
several popular UNIX platforms, two new device drivers can be used to generate
color graphics directly on your Kermit display.

To view a graph from an interactive SAS/GRAPH session, use this syntax at the
beginning of your graphics program:

  GOPTIONS DEVICE=KRMTxxx;

where xxx is VGA or AUTO, corresponding to Kermit's SET TERMINAL GRAPHICS
setting.

For more information on these device drivers, contact SAS Institute Technical
Support at [phone] and ask for the Graphics group.

To view sample full-color Kermit SAS graphics screens, point your graphics Web
browser at URL:

http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/shots.html


MS-DOS KERMIT MEETS THE BBS

Most Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) today either lack support for Kermit
protocol, or supply a poor implementation.  Now BBSs can use the "Real" MS-DOS
Kermit itself, as an external protocol.  Why should a BBS add or upgrade
Kermit file transfer?

   1. To make your BBS accessible to Kermit software programs.  The new
      releases of MS-DOS Kermit and OS/2 C-Kermit include ANSI terminal
      emulation, required for accessing BBSs.

   2. Kermit file transfer is robust.  It works well even when
      connections are noisy.  And, properly implemented and configured,
      it is just as fast or faster than other protocols (see benchmarks
      in Kermit News #5).

   3. Kermit protocol survives 7-bit connections; most other protocols do
      not.  This is important when callers arrive over public data
      networks and other non-direct paths.  In most cases, Kermit can
      even sense 7-bit connections automatically.

   4. Kermit protocol can be used by Internet-accessible BBSs and other
      services.  It works well over TELNET connections, even 7-bit ones,
      and Kermit TELNET clients are available for most popular operating
      systems: DOS, Windows, OS/2, UNIX, VMS, VOS, etc.

   5. Only Kermit protocol is capable of converting from one text
      character set to another during text-file transfer.  This is vital
      as the BBS world becomes more international, and BBS clients more
      diverse.  Remember, not all computers use IBM Code Pages to to
      represent non-English text!

   6. MS-DOS Kermit can "autoconfigure" callers for maximum performance,
      and can initiate "autoupload" and "autodownload" operations without
      user intervention, provided the client software is MS-DOS Kermit
      3.13 or later, or C-Kermit 5A(190) or later for UNIX, OS/2, VMS, or
      OS-9 (see article on page 11).

New features ideal for use in BBS systems:

   - Support for "Fossil drivers" used on BBSs.

   - Support for high interface speeds (up to 115200 bps) and hardware
     flow control for use with high-speed data-compressing modems.

   - Ability to release the connection immediately when the carrier
     signal drops.

   - File transfer operations may be logged to a file.

   - Uploads can be restricted to a particular directory.

   - Downloads can be driven by a file list.

The new "Kermit Lite" program, KERLITE.EXE, developed in part with the
financial support of XAP Company (see page 4), is especially suited to BBSs.
Features not needed on BBSs (such as a terminal emulator and a TCP/IP network
stack) are stripped away to minimize its disk footprint and its memory
requirements, so it can easily coexist in conventional memory with your BBS
program.

The KERMIT.UPD file that comes with MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 includes a new BBS
Operators Guide to show you how it's done.

Bob Mahoney, President of Exec-PC, Inc., the World's largest BBS ("The
Business Knowledge Exchange, serving the business community since 1983"), says
"we had not supported Kermit since 1989 when our old version of PC-Kermit
became obsolete when it was unable to support the higher DTE speeds of the new
modems.  We took Kermit offline and have been looking for a replacement ever
since.  We finally came across KERLITE -- just what we were looking for.  It
is now installed on Exec-PC and has proven to be very popular on our Telnet-in
nodes of the BBS that are available via our Internet connection.  The other
protocols we have online were troublesome for many of the Telnet users.
Kermit has done a good job on fixing the download problems for many of them."

Mike Robertson in Sweden says, "We have been using the KERLITE program to
provide an external Kermit protocol under the MBBS system (a BBS system found
mostly in Scandinavia).  ...  We run two of the BBS lines as direct connect to
a Portmaster box acting as a Telnet server to let people get to the BBS over
the Internet (our address is bbs.gar.no for those who'd like to try it).
Because the Telnet server only gives us a short carrier interruption before
it's ready to accept a new login, it's very important that external protocols
terminate quickly when carrier is dropped so that the BBS can sense the drop.
KERLITE fulfils this requirement.  Other options set here make sure that
Kermit tidies up after failed uploads, and also forbids access to files other
than those specified by the BBS in the command line, both of which are
important requirements for a BBS.  Experience so far has shown KERLITE to be
extremely reliable as an external protocol."

MS-DOS Kermit may be used by BBS operators without any special arrangements.
Simply order it, install it according to the instructions in the BBS Operators
section of the KERMIT.UPD file, and then announce it to your users.

Makers and vendors of BBS software packages may contact us if they would like
to make arrangements to package MS-DOS Kermit with their products.


MS-DOS KERMIT MEANS BUSINESS

In recent years, MS-DOS Kermit has seen increasing use within business
software as a communications and scripting program and/or file transfer
engine.  This phenonenon is especially evident in electronic claims submission
and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) applications.

Health care providers and insurers are turning to PCs and modems to eliminate
costly paperwork in order to reduce health-care costs and speed up the
reimbursement process.  Claim forms are filled out on the computer screen in
the doctor's office, hospital, or pharmacy, and submitted at the touch of a
button to a medical claims clearinghouse or directly to the insurance company.

Over the years every insurer and clearinghouse developed proprietary and
incompatible formats and software.  The recent growth in electronic claims
submission has spurred a movement towards standardization, allowing (for
example) a doctor's office to submit different types of claims in a uniform
manner.  The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) recently approved
EDI formats for Insurance Claims Submission and Electronic Remittance, and
this will only hasten the end of the "mountains-of-paper" system, with all its
confusion and delays, and will enable not only a standardized method for
electronic submission of claims, but also for their payment.

A similar movement is stirring in the consumer electronics market, where
warranty claims can now be filed electronically.  Likewise, companies that use
computers to keep track of inventory can now refresh their stocks
automatically when items run low, using software that sends orders to their
suppliers by modem.  Retail distributors of standardized parts and components
can now have pricing updates loaded automatically into their business computer
systems by their suppliers.

Much of this new software relies on MS-DOS Kermit to make the connections and
transfer the data behind the scenes.  Because of its unobtrusive user
interface, MS-DOS Kermit can be invisible to the user, and because of its
powerful script language, it can easily be programmed to do automatically
anything that might be done interactively, such as dialing up, logging in,
handling various error conditions, and (of course) transferring data swiftly
and accurately.

Student Financial Aid by Modem

XAP Company of Los Angeles, California, is putting together a package to allow
admissions and financial aid applications for higher education institutions
throughout the United States to be created on PCs and then submitted either on
diskette or by modem.

According to Allen Firstenberg, XAP President, "through the development of
information management technologies -- data collection, hard-copy printing,
multimedia interactive information display, database management, and
electronic data exchange -- XAP Company is making the task of filling out
complex forms simple for students and their parents and also more efficient to
process.

"Over 2 million students annually are expected to utilize XAP's software by
1996, submitting their completed applications electronically.  As the
availability of modems for students continues to increase, XAP Company is
planning to receive the predominance of its applications via EDI."

Embedded within the XAP software will be MS-DOS Kermit "Lite," the special
small-size version for PCs, chosen for its flexible scripting capabilities,
ease of use, and high file-transfer efficiency.  When modem transmission is
elected, Kermit Lite, driven by a custom script program, dials to the XAP
facility and, acting as the EDI transport, submits the completed applications
automatically and reliably.

According to an article in Bank Systems Technology, October 1994, this system
not only replaces the burdensome and "notoriously lengthy and complicated"
paper-based financial aid disbursement process with a more streamlined and
efficient one, but, through the newly formed Educational Loan Management (ELM)
Resources, aims to create a universal standard for all students, schools, and
banks that will vastly simplify the financial aid process.


C-KERMIT 5A(190) FOR UNIX, VMS, OS/2, VOS, . . .

  Frank da Cruz

Version 5A(190) of C-Kermit, the world's most portable communications software
program, was released in October 1994 for:

   - UNIX, all varieties
   - IBM OS/2 and Warp
   - Digital VMS and OpenVMS
   - Stratus VOS (new! -- see p.7)
   - Data General AOS/VS
   - Microware OS-9
   - The Commodore Amiga

The short list of new features is:

   - File-transfer recovery from point of failure (binary-mode transfers
     only): UNIX, VMS, OS/2, AOS/VS, VOS, OS-9, Amiga (see article on
     p.9).

   - Auto-upload/download/configuration/anything-else via APC mechanism:
     UNIX, VMS, OS/2, OS-9 (see the article on p.11).

   - Command history, recall, retry, and typeahead.

   - Automatic directory creation for incoming files (UNIX, OS/2, VMS,
     OS-9, ...)

   - New, faster initialization file, containing many new macros,
     including a FAST macro to let you set up and try all the performance
     features conveniently.

   - Massive improvements for OS/2 (see page 5).

   - The fullscreen file transfer display now includes a "percent done"
     thermometer and continuous display of the transfer rate in
     characters per second.

   - Support for many new OS releases: Solaris 2.3 and 2.4, AIX 4.1,
     Unixware 1.1, IRIX 5.3, new releases of Linux, {Free,Net,etc}BSD,
     OpenVMS 6.x, etc...

   - Numerous improvements in performance, error recovery, script
     programming, client/ server protocol, character sets, dialing, etc,
     and over twenty new commands and numerous new built-in variables and
     functions.  The full list of changes since the previous release
     would include about 400 entries.

UNIX C-Kermit

As the role of UNIX-based servers becomes ever more important in all spheres
of the economy, so does communication with the outside world, whether by
dialup or network.  Even when your UNIX system is on the Internet, C-Kermit
offers features lacking from traditional Internet applications, particularly
automation via script programming and conversion of incompatible character
sets.

UNIX C-Kermit 5A(190) runs on 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit architectures under
2.xBSD, 4.2-4.4BSD; AT&T UNIX System III and System V R2, 3, and 4; POSIX;
OSF/1.  Plus many and varied releases and incarnations of:  386BSD; AT&T 3Bx
systems and UNIX PCs and workstations; Amdahl UTS; Apple A/UX; BSDI; COHERENT;
Convex/OS; Cray UNICOS and CSOS; Data General DG/UX; DEC OSF/1 and ULTRIX;
ESIX; Encore UMAX; FreeBSD; Harris CX/UX; Hewlett Packard HP-UX (all
versions); IBM AIX on RS/6000, PC RT, 370 mainframe, and PS/2; ICL DRS/NX;
Interactive UNIX; Intergraph CLIX; Linux; Lynx; MIPS RISC/OS; Motorola System
V/68 R3 and System V/88; NCR UNIX; NeXTSTEP; NetBSD; Olivetti X/OS; Pyramid
OSx; QNX; SCO ODT, UNIX, and XENIX; Sequent DYNIX and DYNIX/ptx; Silicon
Graphics IRIX; Sun Solaris and SunOS; Sony NEWS-OS; Stratus FTX; Tandy XENIX;
Trusted XENIX; UnixWare; and many more.

In addition to file transfer recovery and auto up- and download, version
5A(190) includes lots of UNIX-specific improvements too: a faster CONNECT
mode, more reliable signal handling, an option for a system-wide
initialization file, TELNET screen-size negotiation.  Hardware flow control
(RTS/CTS) support, since it is so important for using today's high-speed
modems, has been added to many of the UNIX versions, and so has support for
higher serial speeds.

C-Kermit for HP-UX 10.0

We are pleased to announce that Hewlett Packard Company has chosen
C-Kermit 5A(190) as a standard component of the HP-UX 10.0 operating
system, supporting both serial and TCP/IP connections.  In partnership
with HP, Columbia University developed, tested, and documented the new
HP-UX 10.0 version, which is fully aware of the new HP-UX file system,
device names and locking conventions, serial speeds and flow-control
options, and so on.  After you install your HP-UX 10.0 package or
upgrade, just type "kermit" to start the program, or "man kermit" for
further information.  And if you don't already have the manual, Using
C-Kermit, please be sure to fill out and send in the order form that
came in your HP-UX 10.0 box.

C-Kermit for QNX 4.21

As part of the US Postal Service Carrier Sequence Bar Code Sorter project (see
article on page 16), Columbia University, with assistance from QNX Software
Systems, Ltd., Kanata, Ontario, prepared an entirely new, full-featured
implementation of C-Kermit for the QNX operating system, which plays a vital
role in that project.  Supporting both TCP/IP and high-speed serial
connections, QNX C-Kermit is an important addition to the QNX software
toolbox, and is available in binary form, ready to run, on the QNX C-Kermit
diskette on our order form.  In case you have not heard of QNX before, here's
a product profile:

"With hundreds of thousands of installations worldwide, QNX is the leading
realtime operating system for the PC.  You'll find this POSIX-certified OS at
work in everything from process-control applications to financial systems,
point-of-sale systems, communications, and medical instrumentation.

"QNX consists of a team of optional cooperating processes that interact with
each other through a tiny microkernel, just 10K.  As a result, QNX can be
scaled down for embedded systems, scaled up for large development workstations
running X and TCP/IP, or scaled out for vast fault-tolerant networks.  QNX's
networking facility integrates the entire network into a single, logical
computer.  So, for example, an embedded system can inherit the disk, database,
and other resources of the entire network, and the rest of the network can
communicate with processes on the embedded system."

As Dan Hildebrand, Senior R&D Staff Member at QNX Software Systems Ltd., says,
"The QNX network transparently supports several standard protocols while
simultaneously carrying its own high-speed FTL protocol.  Kermit extends QNX's
connectivity by providing a broad-spectrum communications solution that lets
users make connections to, and transfer files with, virtually any other kind
of computer, over either serial connections or TCP/IP."

For more info on QNX, phone QNX Software Systems at [phone] or +1 613
591-0931.  Internet: [e-mail].

VMS C-Kermit

Like UNIX C-Kermit, the (Open)VMS version of C-Kermit 5A(190) for Digital
Equipment Corporation VAX and Alpha AXP computers incorporates major new
features like file transfer recovery and auto up- and download during CONNECT
mode, described in separate articles, as well as (user-controllable) automatic
directory creation for incoming files that include directory names.

However, of even greater interest to some VMS shops might be the fact that the
new release is able to run in batch jobs and when SPAWNed from other programs
such as ALL-IN-ONE or VMS MAIL.  This was our number-one wish-list item from
VMS users for the new release.

Other important new features include support for the CMU/Tektronix TCP/IP
package and new, automatic compensation for small system buffers during file
transfer: now long packets can generally be used even when big buffers have
not been installed in VMS at SYSGEN time.

VMS C-Kermit binaries are available for all combinations of VAX and Alpha AXP
hardware with the following TCP/IP products: Digital (UCX); TGV MultiNet;
Wollongong WIN/TCP or PathWay; Process Software TCPware; and (VAX only)
CMU/Tek.  And, of course, no TCP/IP at all.  A VAX binary is also available
for VMS version 4.4.  The TK50 BACKUP-format distribution now includes .EXE
files for all of these.  The 9-track ANSI C-Kermit tapes include them all in
"hex" format.

Thanks to Mark Berryman, Terry Kennedy, William Bader, James Sturdevant, Mike
O'Malley, Hunter Goatley, and Tarjei Jensen for assistance with the new
release of VMS C-Kermit.

OS/2 C-Kermit, Take One

With the announcement of Warp in October 1994, OS/2 suddenly became a
formidable combatant in the desktop operating system wars -- if it wasn't
already.  C-Kermit 5A(190) for OS/2 was released simultaneously with Warp, and
bears about as much resemblence to earlier OS/2 C-Kermit releases as Warp does
to OS/2 1.0.  Among the many big improvements, you will find:

   - Certification by IBM for OS/2 and for LAN Server.

   - VT220 and ANSI terminal emulation added, along with numerous other
     terminal-emulation improvements.

   - File transfer recovery (see article on p.9)

   - A new file-transfer mode that transfers OS/2 files along with all
     their attributes and extended attributes, either directly to another
     OS/2 system, or for archival on a non-OS/2 system, plus the ability
     to transfer and replicate entire directory trees between two OS/2
     systems.

   - A REXX interface, so C-Kermit scripts can contain REXX commands, and
     REXX programs executed from within C-Kermit may contain C-Kermit
     commands.

   - NETBIOS and Named Pipe task-to-task communication support, for
     peer-to-peer local area networking.

   - Support for several TCP/IP packages in addition to IBM's: FTP
     Software, Essex Systems, and IP-Switch.

   - Improved Digital PATHWORKS networking support.

OS/2 C-Kermit's comprehensive array of communications methods is rivaled only
by MS-DOS Kermit's, and it illustrates one of the greatest advantages of
Kermit software: it is a single, common solution for many communications
needs.  You don't have to learn one application for dialing up BBSs, another
one for dialing up your corporate mainframe, yet another one for the Internet,
and still another one for peer-to-peer LAN connections.  C-Kermit does it all,
in a uniform, consistent way.  You only have to learn one application, not a
big pile of them.  You only need one compact application on your disk,
occupying about a megabyte, not three or four using up tens of megabytes.
This saves you not only lots of disk space, but money too.

When you learn C-Kermit's script programming language, you can use it to make
all kinds of connections, not just serial ones.  You can also use the same
script programs (with minor alterations, e.g. for device or directory names)
on other operating systems where C-Kermit runs: UNIX, VMS, and so on.  You can
even make the same scripts portable to DOS and Windows, since MS-DOS Kermit's
script programming language is very similar to C-Kermit's.

This is a significant leveraging of our most precious asset:  people-time --
time spent in training, studying, figuring things out.  Make the investment
once, rather than over and over again.  Even afterwards, once you've become an
expert, you can benefit from not having to retrain your fingers every time you
access a different host or service -- you can set up consistent key maps for
all your online connections.

Terminal Emulation

Let's take a quick look at some of the improvements OS/2 C-Kermit's terminal
emulator.  First, there is VT220 emulation, which allows us to take advantage
of many host-based applications, or features of them, primarily on the VMS and
UNIX operating systems, that were not accessible to us before.  The new
emulation includes a complete repertoire of "keyboard verbs" that can be
assigned to the keys of your choice, and which are compatible with those of
MS-DOS Kermit.  These represent not only the common program-control actions
(reset emulator, send BREAK, hang up, return to prompt, etc), but also all of
the keys of the VT220 terminal, including arrow, function, keypad, and editing
keys, which faithfully follow the host-directed "modes" for these keys.

Then there is ANSI terminal emulation for full-color access to BBSs with all
their special effects.  Hopefully (see page 3) more BBSs will be offering a
good Kermit protocol from now on, but even when they don't, OS/2 C-Kermit is
set up to let you run external protocols easily.

In all types of terminal emulation, there are new options for screen rollback,
as well as increased capacity -- up to about two million lines!

There is also Hebrew terminal emulation for use with host-based Hebrew
applications such as ALEPH software (see article on page 12).

The new terminal emulator also supports auto-download and auto-upload --
automatic switching to file transfer mode, as well as automatic configuration
by the host (see article on p.11).

You can now use the mouse during terminal emulation: copy and paste to and
from other applications; use the mouse to move the cursor by simulating
arrow-key strokes.  The latter is useful with full-screen host applications
that support arrow keys -- one touch of the mouse button sends the arrow-key
codes necessary to move the cursor from its present location to wherever the
mouse pointer is.

When using a Western European language in your online session, you now have a
special Compose Key (Alt-c) for composing accented and special characters
mnemonically; for example, Alt-c, ^, and u sends u (u-circumflex), just as in
MS-DOS Kermit, and as on a real VT220 terminal.

All sorts of improvements have been made to the on-screen helpers and
prompters -- the status line indicates exactly what is going on;
context-sensitive pop-up help screens are available in all different modes:
online, rolled-back, compose-key sequences, and so on.  There are no sacred
keys in C-Kermit's terminal emulator; all functions can be remapped to other
keys, and the help screens and status line keep track automatically.  And of
course you have total control over the colors used in all types of screen
elements: the status line, the pop-up screens, the terminal screen, and so on.

Printer functions are expanded and improved -- host-directed and
user-initiated printing of online screens and sessions is now available, as
well as redirection of printer material to a file or device.

Finally, a powerful session-debugging capability has been added, similar to a
professional-quality, expensive line monitor.  It shows control characters,
eight-bit characters, escape sequences, and even TELNET option negotiations
symbolically, but readably, in different colors and renditions for easy
problem diagnosis and, perhaps more importantly, to help you with your INPUT
and OUTPUT commands when you are constructing script programs, so you can see
exactly what the host is sending.

File Transfer Improvements

File transfer recovery is discussed on page 9.  Automatic directory creation
is available for incoming files.  Automatic parity detection during file
transfer was also added in this version, and along with it the ability to
transfer files with IBM mainframes thru non-transparent 3270 protocol
converters (the "Doomsday Kermit" protocol discussed in Kermit News #5).

In addition, some exciting new OS/2-specific features were added.  OS/2
C-Kermit has always supported the long file names of the High Performance File
System (HPFS), and has always been able to distinguish between FAT (DOS-like)
and HPFS volumes for the purposes of file access and creation.  In version
5A(190), however, OS/2 C-Kermit is able to preserve an incoming file's
original long name, even when creating the file on a FAT volume, by storing
the long name in the file's Extended Attributes.  A file, thus created, can
later be copied to an HPFS system and its long name will magically reappear.

Of even greater significance is a new method for transferring OS/2 files along
with all of their regular and extended attributes, including desktop
information, icons, and so on.  We call this "labeled" file transfer;
previously it was available only in VMS C-Kermit.  Labeled transfers can be
done directly between two OS/2 systems, in which case each file will arrive at
its destination with all of its attributes intact.  Labeled transfers can also
take place between an OS/2 system and some other kind of system, in which case
the file will be "archived" together with its attributes, for later restoral
to (perhaps another) OS/2 system, again with all its attributes intact.

Finally, OS/2 C-Kermit comes with a procedure for sending entire directory
trees and their contents, preserving the directory structure.  When used in
conjunction with labeled mode, this lets entire directory trees, and even
entire file systems, be cloned from one OS/2 system to another.  In
non-labeled mode, it also facilitates the movement of directory trees between
PCs running similar, but different, systems such as OS/2 and DOS or Windows.

And beyond finally: OS/2 C-Kermit 5A(190) comes with a complete repertoire of
macros for easy access to external protocols, for the hopefully rare occasions
when you must transfer files with a host or service that does not support
Kermit protocol.

Documentation

All the new features of version 5A(190) are documented in the accompanying
CKERMIT.INF file, an online supplement to (but not a substitute for) Using
C-Kermit.  You can browse the CKERMIT.INF file with the OS/2 VIEW program;
this is an indexed, hypertext document that you can click your way through,
search for particular material, and so on, just like the regular OS/2 help
facility, and very similar to using a World Wide Web browser.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Jeff Altman for massive contributions to the OS/2-specific
portions of OS/2 C-Kermit 5A(190), to Kai Uwe Rommel for his sage advice, and
to the OS/2 Developers and Testers group for cheerfully fielding an endless
barrage of Alphas and Betas.

OS/2 C-Kermit, Take Two Already!

But we didn't stop there.  C-Kermit 5A(191) -- an OS/2-only C-Kermit release
(5A(190) is still current for UNIX, VMS, et al) -- adds the following
improvements and new features:

   - The terminal emulator is about 500 percent faster than before,
     scrolling text (even in an OS/2 Window) at about 200 full-width
     lines per second.  On TELNET connections, it is about four times
     faster than the system TELNET program.  With speeds like this,
     screen updates and scrolling will never be a bottleneck on serial
     connections, not even the fastest ones.

   - 132-column mode is available in Full Screen sessions on video
     adapters that support it.  Under Warp, arbitrary screen dimensions
     are supported in an OS/2 Window.  Terminal emulation screen width
     and height can be set by new C-Kermit commands, and TELNET screen
     size negotiations (NAWS) are now supported, as well as host-directed
     80/132 column-mode switching.

   - Hebrew and Cyrillic EGA/VGA/SVGA fonts are supplied and can be
     loaded in a Full Screen session.  This means that you can have
     Hebrew and Cyrillic terminal sessions without having to install
     special National Language Support versions of OS/2.

   - C-Kermit can now be used to make SLIP connections, coordinating with
     the SLIP driver over ownership of the port, and replacing the
     system's SLIPTERM program, which has limited emulation and scripting
     capabilities.

   - System Sounds are now used when installed.  C-Kermit uses the
     "Information," "Warning," and "Error" sounds.  If System Sounds are
     not enabled, the regular beep is used.

   - Incoming TCP/IP connections are now supported for Kermit protocol
     operations and for "chat mode."

Version 5A(191) is 32-bit only and works only on OS/2 2.00 and above.  The
16-bit version of OS/2 C-Kermit (for OS/2 1.x) is frozen at 5A(190).  Thanks
to Jeff Altman for all of the work that went into OS/2 C-Kermit 5A(191).

C-Kermit for Stratus VOS

  David Lane, Stratus Computer Inc

Stratus Computer, Inc. (NYSE SRA) is the second-largest provider of
fault-tolerant hardware systems.  VOS is the proprietary operating system for
Stratus hardware.  Stratus systems are designed to reach (and often attain!)
uptimes greater than 99.99%.  They are used for applications where downtime is
extremely costly, such as stock exchanges, banking, and airline reservations;
and where downtime can be deadly, such as public safety systems.

Because of the markets into which Stratus sells, VOS is primarily optimized
for transaction-processing, rather than for general terminal users(The mention
of Stratus in Tom Clancey's Debt of Honor notwithstanding!).  This means that,
unlike UNIX, VOS does not come with a dial-out program, though some can be
found.  There are several programs available, but they either require specific
software at the remote end to perform file transfers, do not perform file
transfers at all, or are quite costly.

I had previously developed a small communications program for our support
group to use to dial out to our customers for remote maintainance.  I had been
getting many requests to add file transfer capability to this program.
However, I wanted to have a better program than what I was prepared to write
from scratch, so I started to look around at what was available and soon
discovered a "portable, full-featured implementation of Kermit written in C."

It only took several evenings to get the basic sources compiled under the VOS
C compiler, even though it was, at the time, not an ANSI compiler.  Great care
has been taken by all the people involved with C-Kermit to allow it to work
with older compilers.  Even though the VOS compiler at the time had many ANSI
features, if C-Kermit had required a full ANSI-compliant compiler, I would
have had a great deal of trouble getting it to work on VOS.  After the
portable pieces of the C-Kermit code compiled, it took several months of
evenings and weekends to fill in the system dependent modules of C-Kermit
which perform serial and file I/O.

As a side benefit, C-Kermit supports X.25 and TCP/IP connections, similar to
the VOS CALL_THRU and TELNET commands.  There was file transfer support for
X.25 on VOS, but only with modifications to a system server (x25_exchange.pm)
and with unsupported software from Stratus.  Of course, TCP/IP file transfers
can use FTP, but using FTP through a corporate firewall or proxy server can be
difficult to automate.

Having the X.25 and TELNET support within C-Kermit has also helped to debug
the option setting on remote connections, because we can have a single method
that allows us to see the options for both X.25 and TCP/IP, rather than having
different methods for each; and C-Kermit doesn't require privilege to debug
it's own connections!  Using the ACCESS macros in C-Kermit is much easier than
using different commands for each type of remote host connection, and it
greatly simplifies the use of proxy servers.

So now we have a full-featured C-Kermit implementation for Stratus VOS that
fills a need in this area of critical computing.


OTHER RECENT RELEASES

IBM MAINFRAME KERMIT 4.3.1

Kermit-370 version 4.3.1 for IBM mainframes with CICS, CMS, MUSIC, and TSO
(and TSO's friend, ROSCOE) is now available.  Its major new feature is the
ability to recover interrupted Kermit transfers, when used in conjunction with
MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 or C-Kermit 5A(190), described in detail in the article on
page 9.  Any interrupted binary-mode file transfer (even a non-Kermit one) can
be restarted with this facility, and the resulting file will be identical to
what would have been received in a single transfer.

Its other major new feature is the ability to initiate automatic file
transfers with MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 or C-Kermit 5A(190) by sending Application
Program Command (APC) escape sequences (see article on page 11).  Also, the
CMS and CICS variants can now set the date/time stamp for a received file to
match that of the original, and the MUSIC variant has newly-added support for
long names and now allows arbitrary MUSIC commands to be executed from within
Kermit.

Kermit-370 4.3.1 has been verified to transfer both text and binary files
flawlessly with the new 3270 terminal emulator supplied with Cisco terminal
server software release 10.3, even with performance features such as long
packets and 8-bit transparency enabled.  This is welcome news for the many
sites where Ciscos provide dialup access to the mainframe.

Thanks, as always, to John Chandler of the Harvard / Smithsonian Astronomical
Observatory for the new release!  January 1995, Tape B.

EMACS (Yes, EMACS)

An implementation of Kermit was written (on a dare) in EMACS Lisp by Bob
Manson of MIT and Ben Mesander of the US Geographical Survey in June 1994.  It
works with GNU EMACS versions 18 and 19.  It's a bare-bones implementation
that should be portable to any machine where EMACS runs (UNIX, VMS, etc).  It
lets you transfer files in text or binary mode into and out of an EMACS buffer
; for example, when using MS-DOS Kermit as a terminal emulator into a UNIX or
VMS system where you are editing with EMACS.  Tape B.

DIGITAL PDP-11 RT-11 AND TSX+

Version V03.62-8 of Kermit-11 for the Digital PDP-11 with the RT-11 or
TSX-Plus operating system, and for Pro-350/380 systems with Pro/RT or TSX-Plus
was contributed by Billy Youdelman on behalf of DECUS, the Digital Equipment
Computer Users Society.

This program runs under RT-11 from V4 and TSX from V5.  A special minimum
version for floppy-disk-based systems is included, especially handy on systems
having no line time clock, or for getting files from small systems often found
in older image-processing equipment.  File creation date, time (TSX only),
protection, and length attributes are now supported and work with C-Kermit and
MS-DOS Kermit.  And: smaller program size, bigger packets, improved
communications and modem control, faster CONNECT sessions, and command-line
arguments are now supported.  September 1993.  Tape B.

Apple Macintosh

No significant progress has been on Macintosh Kermit since Kermit News #5
(volunteers?).  Except! The bug that was causing Mac Kermit to crash during
downloads under System 7.1 or later has been fixed.  Mac Kermit 0.991(190) has
the fix.

PLUS . . .

Alpha Micro      From Bob Rubendunst, V2.0 of Alpha Micro Kermit, replacing
                version 1.0 from Feb 1985, for AMOS/L 1.3 and above and
                AMOS/32 systems.  New features include 8-bit terminal support,
                autosend/receive, batch sends with random file bypass, parity
                checking, CRC error-checking, statistics, AM3000
                compatibility.  March 94.  Tape C.

Burroughs (UNISYS) B6800
                Written in Algol by Tony Appelget, Plymouth, MN.  September
                94.  Tape D.

HP-3000 MPE      Two versions from Tony Appelget, one in SPL and one in
                C. September 94.  Tape D.

Nicolet 80       A brand-new Kermit program for the British Nicolet 80 series
                of laboratory computers from Peter McClintock, University of
                Lancaster, UK.  July 94.  Tape C.


FILE TRANSFER RECOVERY

  Frank da Cruz

Seasoned modem users know well the aggravation of long file transfers
interrupted by broken phone connections: The screams of agony, the torn-out
clumps of hair, the rent garments ... only to relive those awful moments when
the monthly phone bill arrives.

The problem is not confined to modem connections, either.  Internet users know
only too well the heartbreak of the broken ftp connection, especially that
excruciatingly slow trans-oceanic one.  Connections break--all kinds of
connections--and the laws of the eponymous Murphy dictate this will happen at
the worst possible time; for example, when you are 9.8 megabytes into a
10-megabyte transfer on a sloooooow connection.

Our three new Kermit releases to the rescue: MS-DOS Kermit 3.14, IBM Mainframe
Kermit 4.3.1, and C-Kermit 5A(190).  From now on, no more worries about broken
connections, at least not during binary-mode file transfers, on all of the
following platforms:

   - DOS (MS, PC, DR, etc)
   - Microsoft Windows
   - IBM OS/2
   - UNIX (all varieties)
   - Digital VMS and OpenVMS
   - IBM Mainframe VM/CMS, MVS/TSO, CICS, MUSIC
   - Stratus VOS
   - Data General AOS/VS
   - Commodore Amiga
   - Microware OS-9

When a file is transferred in binary mode, its size does not change; it is
sent literally, without any kind of format or character-set conversion.  Thus,
if a file is partially transferred, we know exactly where in the original file
to resume the transmission.

For the new round of releases, the Kermit programs were changed to keep
partially received files by default, rather than discard them (which was the
default action previously), and the Kermit protocol was extended to support
recovery of binary-mode transfers.  When a recovery operation is requested,
the two Kermit programs negotiate this capability; if successful, the file
receiver tells the sender the position in the source file from which to start
sending, and then the receiver appends the new material to the end of the
partially received file.  Only one new command is needed:

  RESEND filename

The same file can be recovered in this way more than once; for example, if the
phone connection is broken several times.

Another interesting property of the RESEND feature is that it can also be used
to recover interrupted non-Kermit transfers, such as with Ymodem-G or FTP.  As
long as you have a partial file that was transferred in binary mode, by
whatever means, you can continue the transfer from the point of failure using
Kermit's new RESEND feature.

When you combine Kermit's automation features with its new recovery ability,
you can create script programs (like the one opposite) that are virtually
guaranteed to transfer a file, even under the worst conditions, by
automatically redialing and RESENDing each time there is a failure, until the
file is completely transferred.  Once started, such a script can run totally
unattended; read the newspaper, go out to dinner, take a nap -- relax, don't
worry -- barring total failure of the telephone network or destruction of one
of the computers, the file will get through.

What about text-mode transfers?  These can't be recovered automatically
because there is no reliable correspondence between the original file and the
transferred file: many operating mark lines of text differently: CR (carriage
return) and LF (linefeed) at the end, as in DOS; LF-only as in UNIX; CR-only
as on the Mac; via length fields or other mechanisms on record-oriented file
systems, and so on.

But all is not lost.  Here is a useful hint: if you are transferring text
files between computers that have like file systems (e.g. DOS to OS/2, or
HP-UX to Solaris), and you don't need character-set conversion, then use
binary mode.  This is somewhat more efficient than text mode because all
conversions are skipped, and you can recover interrupted transfers.

Even when a text-mode transfer is interrupted, it's now possible to recovery
"manually" by telling MS-DOS Kermit or C-Kermit to "PSEND" (partially send)
the file from the point of interruption (which you must determine by
inspection), and to tell the receiving Kermit program to append the incoming
partial file to the existing file, via SET FILE COLLISION APPEND if it is
supported.  If not, you can receive the partial file into a separate file and
then join the two afterwards.  In any case, the part that was successfully
transferred need not be transferred again.
File Transfer Recovery Demonstration Script

  ask \%u { username: }
  askq \%p { \%u's password: }

  ; Settings for entire session.
  ;
  define \%s 20             ; Seconds to pause between each try
  define \%n 7654321        ; Phone number
  set port com1             ; Communication port
  set modem pp14400         ; Modem type (dial with PP14400.SCR)

  set file type binary      ; File transfer mode must be binary
  set input timeout quit    ; This is just to keep the script program short...
  set count 50              ; Try up to 50 times to send the file
  goto nomsg                ; Skip message the first time

  :LOOP                     ; Come here to redial
  hangup                    ; Give the phone line a rest
  echo CONNECTION BROKEN.
  echo Pausing for \%s seconds...
  sleep \%s
  Echo redialing...

  :NOMSG
  dial \%n                  ; Dial the phone number
  if fail goto AGAIN        ; Keep trying...
  output \13                ; System answered, send a carriage return
  input 15 login:           ; Get UNIX login prompt
  output \%u\13             ; Send user ID
  input 8 Password:         ; Get UNIX password prompt
  output \%p\13             ; Send password
  input 60 {$ }             ; Get UNIX system prompt
  cd \budget                ; CD to desired local source directory
  output cd budget\13       ; and remote destination directory
  input 8 {$ }              ; Get system prompt
  out kermit -r\13          ; kermit -r(eceive) on remote system
  input 10 KERMIT READY     ; Wait for READY message
  pause 1                   ; Plus a second for safety
  resend fy9495.wks         ; RESEND the file
  if success goto done      ; Success means file is completely transferred

  :AGAIN
  if count goto LOOP        ; Otherwise, try again.
  Stop 1 Too many tries.    ; Too many tries, give up.

  :DONE
  echo File transferred OK  ; Success, give message
  output exit\13            ; Log out from remote computer
  pause 5                   ; Give it time...
  hangup                    ; Hang up
  stop 0 Script succeeded   ; Finished, the end.

(This MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 script dials into a UNIX host and assumes UNIX
prompts and other conventions.  It can easily be modified to run under
C-Kermit and/or to access non-UNIX host computers.  A copy of this script can
be found on the MS-DOS Kermit diskette as RECOVER.SCR in the UTILS
subdirectory.)


AUTO-UPLOAD, AUTO-DOWNLOAD, AUTO-ANYTHING

Kermit users often ask, "Why is it so hard to transfer files?  Why are there
so many steps?  Why do I have to escape back, give a SEND or RECEIVE command,
and then give another CONNECT command?  If I give a file transfer command to
one Kermit program, why can't it just take care of everything itself?"

Stop asking so many questions!  You wanted it to be easier, now it can be.
MS-DOS Kermit 3.13 (announced in our last issue) added a new capability called
"APC", which stands for Application Program Command (see box).

   Box: What Is an APC?

   An APC is an escape sequence defined for VT320 terminals, which allows
   the host to pass a command (in the form of a text string) to a terminal
   emulator; the string is embedded inside the escape sequence, like so:

   <ESC>_string<ESC>\

   where "<ESC>" is the ASCII control character, Escape (27).

   When the terminal emulator is a Kermit program, the string can be any
   Kermit command, even a list of commands separated by commas, for
   example:

   <ESC>_set file typ bin, s oofa.zip<ESC>\

When an APC-capable Kermit program receives an APC while in CONNECT mode, it
executes the commands contained in the APC and then returns automatically to
the CONNECT screen.  This allows the host application to initiate file
transfers in either direction (auto-upload and -download).

It also lets the host application operate and configure Kermit in all sorts of
other ways, such as setting protocol and file parameters, or loading custom
keymaps.  This makes it easy for administrators of central corporate
computers, dialup information services, and BBSs to create canned procedures
for their user communities, especially novices.

Security

Kermit's APC feature is disabled by default (that is, unless you tell it
otherwise).  This is because we want each user to read about the potential
risks and the corresponding safeguards, and then turn it on.  The command is:

  SET TERMINAL APC { OFF, ON, UNCHECKED }

Turning it ON enables operations that are nominally safe, such as file
transfer, protocol settings, and so on, without opening up operations that are
intrinsically dangerous, such as system access or deleting files.  Please read
the APC section of the update notes carefully, and then put:

  SET TERMINAL APC ON

in your Kermit startup file.

It's So Easy

C-Kermit comes with an APC command for sending APCs and some predefined macros
that you can use at the C-Kermit prompt:

PCSEND filespec   Send a file or files to the PC
PCGET filespec    Get a file or files from the PC

PCSEND is a single command that takes the place of:

   1. Give a SEND filename command to C-Kermit.
   2. Escape back to the MS-DOS Kermit prompt.
   3. Tell MS-DOS Kermit to RECEIVE.
   4. When the transfer is complete, tell MS-DOS Kermit to CONNECT again.

Now, steps 2-4 happen automatically.  The same is true in the reverse
direction with PCGET.

APC All Around

The new release of C-Kermit (OS/2, UNIX, VMS, and OS-9 versions) can not only
send APCs but also respond to them while in CONNECT mode, and the new MS-DOS
Kermit can not only respond to them but also send them.  The new Kermit-370
can send them too.  So now you can choose "one from column A and one from
column B" and start automating!

  A:  Local      B:  Remote
  MS-DOS Kermit  MS-DOS Kermit
  OS/2 C-Kermit  UNIX C-Kermit
  UNIX C-Kermit  VMS  C-Kermit
  VMS  C-Kermit  OS-9 C-Kermit
  OS-9 C-Kermit  IBM Mainframe Kermit

The ability of the remote application to initiate file transfers automatically
in either direction is a big step forward in the ease-of-use department,
especially when the host application is menu-driven.  Since it is so easy to
hide Kermit software behind menus, it's only a matter of time until
"one-touch" file transfer becomes the norm in Kermit land.


CIRCUMNAVIGATING THE WEB WITH MS-DOS KERMIT

  Frank da Cruz

It's practically compulsory nowadays to "surf the Information Superhighway"
using high-powered graphical navigation tools, but once you leave the confines
of your own country, or -- more often -- attempt to access information that is
not written in English, you are very likely to run into trouble.  A quick tour
of the World Wide Web (WWW) using NCSA Mosaic on a Hewlett Packard workstation
turned up only garbage in place of accented or non-Roman characters when
trying to access Web pages in just about every country we visited: Costa Rica,
Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Italy,
Norway, Poland, Russia, ...

Much time was wasted trying to rectify the problem, involving adding hundreds
of cryptic lines to the .Xresources file, repeatedly shutting down and
reloading the X Windows system, logging out and back in, all to no avail.
German still came out looking like Icelandic; Russian and Hebrew were
hopeless.  (A solution was found eventually, but it only works for the Western
European "Latin-1" languages; HyperText Markup Language, or HTML, the language
of the Web, does not allow for any other writing systems.)

Similar problems occur when using graphical newsreaders like NewsGrazer and
the ones built in to Mosaic and Netscape; they don't give you easy (or any)
control over character sets.

MS-DOS Kermit might not be a WWW navigator or newsreader, but it has a
distinct advantage: it can handle a wide variety of character sets and writing
systems simply and easily.  MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 comes with all the pieces you
need -- fonts, keyboard drivers, key mappings, instructions, and macros for
quick switching -- for five important writing systems: West European, East
European, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Japanese.  And, by a stroke of good luck,
Chinese too (Japanese and Chinese require special versions of DOS; more about
that later).

The Cyrillic Alphabet

Languages like Russian, Bielorussian, Ukranian, and Bulgarian are written in
the Cyrillic alphabet, named for Saint Cyril (827-868, Feast Day February 14),
Apostle (with his brother Saint Methodius) to the Slavs.  Saints Cyril and
Methodius were Greek missionaries to Moravia, a powerful empire in the ninth
century and now part of the Czech Republic, where they and their followers
adapted the Greek alphabet to the Slavic languages, dropping some Greek
letters and adding some new, unique ones.

Approximately 1100 years later, in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere,
several encodings were devised for computer representation of Cyrillic
letters, each one incompatible with the others: KOI-8, KOI-7 (Short KOI),
DKOI, ISO 8859-5 Latin/Cyrillic, Alternative Cyrillic, PC Code Page 866,
Mainframe Code Page 880, and so on.

Although MS-DOS Kermit has been capable of Cyrillic text-file transfer since
version 3.11, version 3.14 is the first to also incorporate a complete
Cyrillic terminal emulation package, including a font that everybody can use,
keyboard drivers, and complete key and screen mappings for accessing
host-based applications using KOI-8, Short KOI, or Latin/Cyrillic.

As a quick demonstration, if you have the rn or trn newsreader on your UNIX
host, or similar programs on other hosts, you can use MS-DOS Kermit 3.14
(under DOS, not Windows) to read the Russian relcom.* newsgroups, such as
relcom.ads, relcom.commerce, or relcom.currency.  Just type:

  MS-Kermit> cyrillic

beforehand to load the Cyrillic font (code page 866) into your PC and set up
the translations between CP866 and the KOI8 encoding used in the newsgroups.
Now you can get the latest news on Russian business, commodities, investment
opportunities, and currency.

If you also want to write in Russian during your terminal session (or, for
that matter, in DOS on your PC), you must load a Russian keyboard driver, two
of which are provided on your Kermit diskette.  The term "Russian" is used
advisedly here, since these drivers do not support the special characters
unique to Serbocroation, Macedonian, Ukranian, and Bielorussian.  One driver
conforms to the USSR-model PC keyboard layout, the other assigns Cyrillic
characters to Roman letter keys "by sound" for easy use by QWERTY typists;
pick the one that is most natural for you.  In both cases, a hot key switches
the keyboard between English and Roman modes.

For e-mail, which is predominantly 7-bit, you should use Short KOI, which is
understood by most Russian computer users:

  MS-Kermit> cyrillic shortkoi

Some applications might also require the new 8-bit ISO standard:

  MS-Kermit> cyrillic latinc

As always, you can also transfer Cyrillic text files between your PC and any
computer that is running C-Kermit 5A or IBM Mainframe Kermit 4.2 or later,
with full character-set translation, as explained in the appropriate Kermit
manuals.

Now back to the World Wide Web...  Switching to a text-based Web browser, Lynx
from the University of Kansas, on a UNIX host, and using MS-DOS Kermit as your
terminal emulator, you can surf the Russian Web in Russian -- for example,
starting at URL http : / / www. ac . msk . su.

Roman Alphabet

For West European languages using the Roman alphabet but with accented letters
and sometimes a few special letters (like German ss), a wide variety of
character sets -- both 7-bit and 8-bit -- is in use.  Most of the 8-bit sets
are proprietary (HP Roman8, Data General, etc); the standard is ISO 8859-1
Latin Alphabet 1.  The 7-bit sets come from the older ISO 646 standards, one
for each language (or country), in which certain ASCII characters, normally:

  [ \ ] { | } ~ `

are sacrificed for the special characters needed in a particular language;
thus each ISO 646 version is incompatible with all the others.  ISO 646 sets
are commonly used in e-mail, a predominantly 7-bit medium.

For example, when you receive e-mail from "H}kan Sj|berg" in Sweden, it is
probably from Hakan Sjoberg (fictitious name), encoded in ISO 646.  Tell
Kermit to SET TERMINAL CHARACTER-SET SWEDISH and it will look right.  On the
other hand, if the same person's return address looks like "Hekan Sjvberg", it
was probably encoded originally in 8-bit Latin-1 and had its 8th bit chopped
off on its way to you, an irritating trait of many e-mail systems.

Newsgroups, on the other hand, use an 8-bit transport and one can often find
Latin-1 encoding in them.  In one newsgroup recently, swnet.svenska, there was
a debate (in Swedish) over the relative merits of Swedish ISO 646 and ISO
Latin-1, with the encoding of each message reflecting the preference of its
author.  This was handled quite nicely by setting up "hot keys" in MS-DOS
Kermit to switch between the two character sets without leaving CONNECT mode:

  def swedish set term char swedish, c
  def latin1 set term char latin1, c
  set key \315 {\Kswedish}
  set key \316 {\Klatin1}

Here we assign one macro to F1 and the other to F2.  When a message comes up
that is not readable, we push the "other" hot key and then ask our newsreader
to redisplay the message.

Hunting through the newsgroups that we receive locally, we find Latin-1 in use
on Norwegian groups such as no.film and no.sport.diverse and on German groups
like de.etc.finanz.boerse (daily listings from the Frankfurt and Berlin
financial markets) and de.rec.motorrad (motorcycles).  But in other European
newsgroups (French, Dutch, etc) we found only ASCII -- no true accented
letters in any encoding at all.  We suspect the Finnish newsgroups, such as:

  finet.freenet.oppimiskeskus.-
  akvaariokoulut.opetussuunnitelma

(line continued due to lack of horizontal space) use Latin-1 in line with the
other Scandinavian countries, but alas, the Finnish groups are not delivered
here (possibly due to some kind of buffer overflow...).

Some newsgroups we would have liked to look at were the Brazilian groups in
Portuguese, and the pl.* groups from Poland, in Polish, but these feeds do not
arrive here either.  If these newsgroups use Latin-1 and Latin-2,
respectively, Kermit would handle them just fine: MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 comes
with ROMAN and EASTERN macros which load Western and Eastern European fonts,
respectively, and support character-set conversion for all major Western and
Eastern European languages.

Not only that, for Western European languages, we also provide a Compose Key
for entering accented letters "mnemonically", with complete independence from
the character sets used on the PC and on the host.  For example, no matter
what code page is loaded on your PC or what character-set is used on the host,
you can always enter u-circumflex the same way: Alt-c (for Compose), then
circumflex (^), then u.

Hebrew

In Israel, of course, as well as up the street at the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America (JTSA) -- and elsewhere -- people need to access Hebrew
applications on the host: text editors such as HEDT on VMS and vi.iv or Mule
or Hebrew Pico on UNIX, Hebrew Pine and other e-mail, and especially Hebrew
University's ALEPH library catalog software, which runs at all major
universities in Israel as well as at JTSA, and which accepts Hebrew queries
and also can display the results in Hebrew.

Here again we have the classic problem -- different computers use different
encodings for Hebrew letters: 7-bit "Hebrew-7", ISO Latin/Hebrew; IBM PC Code
Page 862; IBM Mainframe CECP 424; each incompatible with the others.
Confounding the situation further is the intrinsically bidirectional nature of
the Hebrew writing system: Hebrew letters right to left, digits and Roman
letters left to right.

Since version 3.13, MS-DOS Kermit has included full Hebrew character-set
translation as well as Hebrew VT terminal emulation at the VT420 level (which
includes host-directed screen-writing direction).  Version 3.14, however, is
the first release to come with a complete Hebrew package: a Hebrew font that
anybody can load (under DOS, not Windows), a key map for entering Hebrew
letters on the keyboard, hot keys for switching the keyboard between English
and Hebrew modes -- all you need for accessing Hebrew applications online.
The HEBREW macro sets it all up for you.  Just type "hebrew" at the MS-Kermit>
prompt and off you go.

David de Leeuw, Head of Computing Services at Ben Gurion University of the
Negev, Faculty of Health Sciences says, "Our range of computers and
applications is very wide. To complicate things even more, many of our
applications run in a variety of Hebrew setups -- three different character
sets and various concepts of screen orientation (mixed left-to-right and
right-to-left).  The only communications software I know of that handles all
this smoothly is Kermit.  The new 3.14 release even takes care of automatic
translation between different character-sets when transferring text files from
one system to the other.  Our users working on PC's accessing UNIX, VAX, and
IBM Mainframe can't tell the difference between different `code-pages' and now
they don't have to!"

Japanese

MS-DOS Kermit has been capable of converting Japanese character sets during
file transfer since version 3.12.  Version 3.14 adds Japanese terminal
emulation for ordinary IBM PCs and compatibles running the DOS/V operating
system -- no special hardware is required.  Now you can use MS-DOS Kermit for
Japanese e-mail, for the Japanese fj.* newsgroups (such as fj.kermit), and for
accessing the Nikkei Telecom Database, a comprehensive online service offering
full text of most articles appearing in all major Japanese newspapers, plus
Japanese equivalents of Readers Guide to Periodical Literature and Books in
Print, patent registrations, and all sorts of financial and corporate data.
Many Nikkei Telecom users prefer MS-DOS Kermit over the Nikkei-supplied access
software because Kermit offers additional essential capabilities such as
session logging, screen capture, and scripting.

The Japanese fonts are combined into Code Page 982, also known as Shift-JIS,
supplied with DOS/V along with the Japanese keyboard input driver.  CP982
includes "half-width" Roman, a 7-bit character set identical to ASCII except
in two positions; "half-width" (Hankaku) Katakana, a 7-bit phonetic character
set, and then a double-byte "full-width" Kanji set consisting of thousands of
symbols.  Shifting among these three character sets, which are all essential
in Japanese writing, is a challenge for the terminal emulator during both
keyboard input and screen display, but MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 does it all.

It is now commonplace in Japan to make use of all Kermit's Kanji features:
compose long documents "offline" in the native PC environment, transfer them
with Kermit to a UNIX host, translating them in the process from Shift-JIS to
JIS X 0208 or other encoding for printing or e-mail; read and send e-mail and
netnews online in Japanese, and finally download new material from UNIX to the
PC, translating back to Shift-JIS.

You can also use text-based Web browsers such as Lynx-2.3jp (the Japanese
version from Chiba University) to access Japanese information on the World
Wide Web; no matter whether the Japanese Web server uses JIS7, EUC, or
Shift-JIS, MS-DOS Kermit can display the Kanji text correctly.

If you are on the World Wide Web and have a Web viewer that can display GIF
(graphics) files, you can view an illustration of MS-DOS Kermit's Kanji
capacity in:

http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/kanji.http/

Chinese

MS-DOS Kermit can be used on regular IBM PCs and compatibles equipped with USA
keyboard and VGA video adapter, running special Chinese extensions to DOS, two
of which are available via anonymous ftp from host cnd.org (China News
Digest):

   - ZWDOS -- GB 2312-80 encoding (Peoples Republic of China), shareware
     (free to students) by Ya-Gui Wei, Eden Prairie, MN.
   - KCDOS -- Big5 encoding (Republic of China), Kuo Chiau Business
     Computer Company Ltd, Taiwan.

or from ftp.ifcss.org (Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars
in the US).  Other versions of Chinese DOS are available elsewhere, which fit
these models, such as CC-DOS (described in Kermit News Number 5), ETen, and
others.

These two encodings, GB and Big5, are used on most Chinese host computers and
services.  So you would run the appropriate DOS extension or version, and then
simply tell Kermit to:

  set parity none
  set terminal bytesize 8
  set term character-set transparent

This allows Chinese characters to be received, viewed, typed, and transmitted
during terminal emulation.  No translation is necessary because the PC and the
host are using the same codes.  Input is according to the input method
supplied in the particular DOS version or extension: BoPoMoFo, Chang-Jie, etc.
In this way, MS-DOS Kermit can be used as a terminal to (say) a UNIX host,
where Lynx is used to view Chinese newsgroups (such as alt.chinese.text and
tw.*) or to access Chinese Web servers.

Adding Other Languages

Cyrillic terminal emulation is done externally to Kermit via keyboard and
screen translation tables (such as in the KOI8.INI file) and by loading a
font, which is supplied on the Kermit diskette.  Other languages that have
8-bit single-byte character sets can be done in exactly the same way: Greek,
Armenian, Georgian, etc, using readily available fonts, and constructing the
necessary mappings in the same way that the Cyrillic ones were done -- a
series of SET TRANSLATION INPUT and SET KEY commands collected into a Kermit
command file.

Webbing with C-Kermit

MS-DOS Kermit is not the only Kermit program that can handle character sets.
C-Kermit (all versions), IBM mainframe Kermit (all versions) can also convert
among diverse encodings for Roman-alphabet and Cyrillic-alphabet languages,
Hebrew, Japanese, and other languages as an integral part of text-file
transfer.  This is a unique capability of Kermit protocol and software.

Most C-Kermit implementations can also handle character-set conversion during
CONNECT mode, just as MS-DOS Kermit does (IBM Mainframe Kermit does not have a
CONNECT mode).  The difference is that most C-Kermit programs do not contain
actual terminal emulators, but instead provide a semi-transparent "pipe" to a
terminal, terminal window, or terminal emulator.  Thus, loading of fonts and
so on must be accomplished outside of C-Kermit.

An exception is version 5A(191) of OS/2 C-Kermit.  It has a terminal emulator
and it comes with Cyrillic, Hebrew, and other fonts that can be loaded when
C-Kermit is running in a fullscreen session (the fonts can't be loaded in an
OS/2 window because then Kermit does not have access to the video adapter).

This lets you use OS/2 C-Kermit to access Hebrew applications (such as ALEPH)
just as you would with MS-DOS Kermit, and to read Russian and East European
newsgoups, and (most of) the rest.

Now, since most versions of C-Kermit (OS/2, UNIX, VMS, VOS), like MS-DOS
Kermit itself, are full-fledged TELNET clients as well as serial communication
programs, poof ! -- you've got international Web access from home and office.

Thanks to the Internet, the world is becoming smaller every day, and it
becomes increasingly necessary for us in the USA to dust off our high-school
Spanish, German, Italian, French, or Russian (etc) if we want to partake fully
in the information revolution -- just as it is becoming increasingly necessary
for business communications to take place in many languages.

Those who can read the German, Japanese, and Russian financial notices will
have a definite edge.  Those who can respond have a sharper edge still.


KERMIT IN THE BRAZILIAN ELECTIONS

  Fernando Cabral, CEO
  PADRAO iX Sistemas Abertos, Brasilia, Brazil

KERMIT SOFTWARE PLAYED A CRUCIAL ROLE in Brazil's general election of October
3, 1994, almost certainly the world's largest and most complex election ever.
At stake in this country of 180 million were the presidency, all of the 28
state governorships, two-thirds (or 56) of the Federal Senate seats, and
almost 600 Federal and 1000 State Representatives.

To cope with this task, the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (Superior Electoral
Court), or TSE, a specialized court of law dedicated to supervising all
elections in the country, decided to take on the challenge of automating the
process as much as possible, and to do it with a single stroke.

Introducing automation into a nationwide election in a huge country like
Brazil, the same size as the continental USA, was fraught with hazards and
obstacles.  First, long-established regional oligarchies of conservative
landowners would resist automation as a threat to their previous control over
elections; second, the state data processing bureaus, which usually operate in
the black only during election years, would be open to automation only if the
bureaus could provide--and profit from--the automation instead of the TSE; and
finally, the TSE staff's own lack of experience and know-how could threaten
the success of the project.

Numbers

While China, the USA, Russia, and India have electorates comparable to
Brazil's, none of them ever had to cope with an election involving such large
numbers, either because their elections are conducted differently or because
their legislative and executive elections on both the state and federal level
do not coincide as they did in Brazil in 1994.

VOTING IS MANDATORY in Brazil for everyone aged 18 to 65.  96 million votors,
starting at age 16, elect their government officials directly, not through an
electoral college as in the USA.  The widely-anticipated election involved 27
states, the Federal District, 300,000 ballot boxes, eight presidential
candidates, 231 Federal Senate candidates, 3164 candidates for seats in the
Federal House of Representatives, 7977 to a seat in one of the 600 seats in 27
states plus the federal district; and 134 candidates for 28 governorships.
Altogether we are talking of 501,456,916 votes in the first round alone.  And
all of them, checked and double-checked, were transferred with Kermit
software.

The chairman judge in charge of the TSE, Minister Sepulveda Pertence, and the
court's director-general, Alysson Mitraud, did not take these numbers lightly.
Despite the risks of failure and the uncertainty of gaining widespread support
for their decision, the two officials decided to proceed with the automation.
The single most important factor to the venture's success was close and
effective partnerships with software and hardware vendors.

Among the software providers were Kermit developer Frank da Cruz of Columbia
University, and his collaborator, Joe Doupnik of Utah State University, who
both worked with the TSE to make everything run as smoothly as possible.

Old-Style Elections

The Brazilian electorate has evolved since the country's first election in the
mid-19th century.  At that time, only the richest could vote.  The richest
men, that is -- women could not vote.  Eventually the standard for elegible
voters was "universalized."  This meant that every man could vote, as long as
he could read and write amd was older that 21.

Not until the early 1930s did a modified constitution give women the right to
vote.  Unfortunately, a dictatorship quickly took control of Brazil and no
elections were held until after World War II.  So in fact, women voted for the
first time in 1945.  However, only in 1988 did the right to vote become truly
universal.  Gender, property, literacy, and other excluding criteria were
eliminated and the minimum voting age was lowered to sixteen.

Brazilian elections prior to 1994 were susceptible to many different kinds of
manipulation and fraud.  Most have become parts of Brazilian folklore and have
revealing names like the "tip-of-the-pen vote," where the result desired by
the local landowner was simply recorded on the document listing the tabulation
of each ballot box.  There was also the "lunchbox vote" where the local
plantation coronel[In Brazil, originally a title of honor which could be
awarded by -- or bought from -- the federal government.  Eventually the title
took a derogatory meaning when used to identify landowners, industry barons,
and other rich and powerful people who used their money and influence to force
common people and lesser politicians to do what they wanted.  When refering to
elections, the term always means the rich, influential, and conservative
persons who use their power and money to allure or coerce poor voters.] would
fill out the ballots before delivering them to the awaiting voters in a
closed, or "lunch," box.  Not even the voters knew who they were voting for.
The term "corral vote" means that the landowner kept his workers in his own
corral, like cattle, and told them who to vote for.  Like cattle, they obeyed.
Not to be forgotten is the "phantom vote," when the dead arose to cast their
ballots.  Of course, these ghosts existed in name only -- on their voter ID
cards, their polling site signatures, and on their tombstones.

The 1989 Election

In October of 1960, a military coup and subsequent military dictatorships
postponed Brazil's democracy and elections for 30 years.  In 1989, Brazil held
its first presidential election after three decades of opression.  This was
the first election after the adoption of a new constitution in 1988, the first
to have a second runoff election for close races, the first to have television
coverage, the first to have candidates use computers to handle huge amounts of
information, and the first to broadcast live debates.  And it was also the
first time the electoral courts would try their hands at automation.

Cautiously, the TSE opted not to dive directly into automation.  Instead, they
contracted state-owned data processing bureaus to do the data entry of each
state's votes.  Then in Brasilia, SERPRO, the federal data processing bureau,
was contracted and regally paid to tabulate this data.  It was a timid but
important first step into the realm of automation, and there was no turning
back.

New times, new ways to commit fraud.  The computer introduced new potential
and real ways to manipulate election results, such as a variation on the the
"tip-of-the pen" scheme: simply alter the numbers during the transcription of
the official ballot box results from paper to computer.  The easiest way to do
this without attracting too much attention is to turn blank or invalidated
ballots into "valid" ballots.

The 1994 Election

For the 1994 election, the TSE was ready to fully accept any challenge posed
by total automation -- it wanted to take computer automation as far as
possible.  This included automating the voter and candidate registry and
verification, data transfer among regional election courts supervising the
elections and tabulating stations, public access to voting regulations, and
dissemination of the results.  The only phase not automated was the tabulation
of individual ballot boxes--not surprisingly, the only phase to suffer fraud
in the 1994 election, primarily in Rio.

The elements of election automation include hardware, operating system,
networking software, database software, transmission lines, security software,
terminal emulation and file transfer software.  For each of these elements,
the Electoral Court found a working partner.  Hewlett Packard Company (and its
Brazilian distributor Mito), for example, supplied servers, operating system,
and networking software.  Trusted Information Systems (TIS) and PADRAO iX
supplied security software and consulting services.  And Columbia University
furnished Kermit for terminal emulation and file transfers.

The Electoral Network

The electoral computer network was composed of 33 HP RISC servers whose size
varies from state to state according to population.  Each machine runs HP-UX
and includes both TCP/IP and X.25 networking.  TCP/IP would suffice save that
the only public network available in Brazil, RENPAC, is X.25-based.  In fact,
it is only the bare bones of a network, providing no services, not even
transport.  So having TCP/IP and being able to make it run on top of X.25 was
a distinct advantage.  The available X.25 infrastructure permitted TSE to
build a virtual network connecting all the regional courts within just a few
weeks, embodying functionality that TCP/IP users were familiar with.

The RISC servers installed at each regional electoral court ran HP-UX, Oracle
database software (supplied by Oracle's Brazilian distributor, UNIMIX),
Gauntlet security software from TIS, and Columbia University's C-Kermit
communications software.  Each machine was responsible for tallying all state
ballots, including those for state and federal representatives and senators,
and for transferring the results of the presidential race from each tabulating
station to the Superior Electoral Court in Brasilia, and at the same time,
offered any interested party, particularly the press, all information
concerning the election, especially the numbers coming out of the ballots
boxes.

Meanwhile 3,800 Digital Equipment Corporation DECpc personal computers with
modems, special data entry software, and Columbia University's MS-DOS Kermit
software were installed at 2,000 data entry and transmission sites in all
parts of Brazil, some of them so remote that they could only be reached by
boat or small plane.

Thus Kermit software linked together the two worlds: the world outside the
network and the world inside it.  In more than one sense Kermit was the bridge
connecting the external, unprotected world to the internal, Gauntlet-protected
world.

Election Day

On Election Day, the one and only day all Brazilians are equal -- they each
have one vote -- the polls are open from 8am to 5pm.  Because of the numerous
races involved, the voting was conducted in two parts; the state and federal
races each had a separate ballot.  First the voter shows personal and voter
identification and receives a white ballot.  Then behind a screen, the voter
chooses one presidential candidate and two federal senators, and then drops
the folded ballot into the ballot box in view of the recipient committee,
which includes common citizens as well as representatives of the political
parties.  Then the voter receives a second ballot for state races, this time
yellow, and marks it behind a paper screen suspended over a counter, folds it,
and deposits it in the ballot box in front of the committee.  When the polls
close, the ballot boxes are sealed and sent to the tabulating stations, along
with an official report stating the number of people voting at that site.

The next morning, dozens of tabulating teams, under the close scrutiny of the
political parties' representatives, break open the ballot boxes one by one and
check the reported numbers of voters against the ballot count for the box.  If
there are discrepancies, or if there is any indication of tampering, the
ballot box is declared invalid.  If everything checks out, the tabulation
proceeds.

The white and yellow ballots are separated into two piles.  First the votes
for the presidency and the federal senate are counted; then the votes for
governor and federal and state representatives.  This is a time-consuming
process since each name or number has to be checked against a long list of
valid numbers, names, nicknames, etc.  After all the ballots are counted, an
official statement is issued and signed by the committee, the parties'
representatives, and the judge in charge of the regional electoral court.

Then this official statement is transcribed to the PC.  This is the point
where most of the fraud occurred; blank and invalidated ballots were
"transferred" to a chosen candidate.  Cross-checking can't prevent this type
of fraud; only an attentive monitor can spot it.  After the transcription, a
computer report is printed and checked against the original statement.  If the
numbers are equal, the file can be transferred.

Enter Kermit

Once the file transfer is authorized, the file is encrypted and compressed.
Then Kermit assumes control, making decisions about how to connect to the
remote server at the TRE (Regional Electoral Court): dial-up, TCP/IP, or an
X.25 connection with or without a PAD (Packet Assembler/Disassembler).

Once the connection is established, the TIS software, Gauntlet, sends a
challenge to the calling machine.  Using her "Digital Pathways' SecureNet
Keys" (token generator), the user types in her PIN and then the challenge.
The generator produces a number that is sent as an answer to the server.  If
all is OK, the Gauntlet firewall opens and the file is transferred.

Once at the regional machine, the federal (white) votes are dispatched for
tabulation at the TSE, while the state (yellow) votes are tabulated locally.
Small numbers flow in, big numbers flow out.  The results of each ballot box
are added to the total as they arrive.  An exact copy of each individual box's
result is kept so if any fraud eventually turns up in any ballot box, its
votes can be deducted easily from the total.

Newspapers, TV and radio stations, poll takers, and other interested parties
could access partial results using a number of methods.  Here again, TIS's
Gauntlet ensured that only cleared information flows out and no tampering is
possible.  And Kermit was there too, ensuring that the information that flowed
in piece by piece can now flow out in aggregate.

Kermit's update feature allowed any user with read privileges to dial in and
download the latest numbers without tying up valuable telephone lines
unnecessarily if no updates had occurred since last time.  Kermit's flexible
scripting language eliminated the end-user contact with the file transfer
mechanism: after automatically dialing, Kermit would check whether the remote
file was newer than the local one, and transfer it only if it was.  In any
case the local application would proceed.  This way no file was ever
transferred twice, and no user had to control anything: Kermit took care of
all this automatically.

Using Kermit's powerful scripting language, the results of each ballot box, as
well as the aggregated results, were easily transferred from end to end--all
complexities were hidden under Kermit's well-thought-out user interface.

Why Kermit Was Chosen

Kermit was chosen to connect the PCs at the tabulating stations to the
regional courts because:

   1. Columbia University's Kermit software and protocol are robust
      enough to work dependably even when using the poorest telephone
      lines--and in Brazil THERE ARE poor-quality telephone lines!

   2. Kermit software was available for both MS-DOS and HP-UX.

   3. Kermit's powerful scripting language could be used to automate most
      of the logon/transfer/logoff process.  This was an important
      concern since 11,000 people would be using PCs, modems, and
      communication software for the first time in their lives.  It was
      not realistic to expect them to understand and learn how to
      transfer files.

   4. Kermit can also use TCP/IP, allowing its use in different
      communication environments with the same interface (and TSE would
      not be forced to teach FTP to some people and Kermit to others).

   5. According to different local conditions, the line used could be
      dial-up, leased, or X.25 PAD.  When an X.25 PAD comes into play, NO
      PROTOCOL BUT KERMIT does the job.

   6. The Kermit team could be counted on to help out if the need arose.
      And it did.  TSE needed screens with messages in Portuguese so any
      Brazilian operator could understand them.  Joe Doupnik and Frank
      da Cruz inserted a Portuguese translation and delivered it within a
      day.  Then, when the new Digital Equipment Corporation PCs arrived,
      they behaved strangely when the COMx ports were manipulated;
      Digital rushed a sample PC to Joe, who quickly updated MS-DOS
      Kermit for these new machines.  The updated Kermit software was
      transferred to Brazil using Kermit itself via long-distance phone
      call.  Too good to be true.  Without this instant response, all the
      election automation could have been compromised.

People may wonder why didn't the TSE try other protocols like ZMODEM, YMODEM
and akin beasts.  Simple to answer in a nutshell (the long answer has been
provided above): Kermit can be used with 7- or 8-bit lines, with leased,
dial-up or PAD lines; the scripting language can be used to automate even the
most complex operation; smooth operation in MS-DOS, MS-Windows, and HP-UX
environments; and superb, unbeatable performance in all kinds of connections
and line conditions.  Finally, if anything bad happened, prompt and expert
help was just a phone call or an e-mail away.

The Results

The election was marred by widespread fraud in Rio de Janeiro.  But the
automation helped detect it, allowed its extent to be assessed, and prompted
measures to avoid it in round two.  The time saved by the network was more
than 75% in most states, the big exception being Rio, where bandits blocked
entry of votes into the system (where they could not be altered) until after
the ballots were forged.

But despite minor disturbances and a few major troubles, the election was
considered a huge success.  President-Elect Fernando Henrique Cardoso is
recognized as a prudent person, an intellectual who has written dozens of
books and taught sociology in the USA, England, France, and Chile.  As the
Economy Minister he reduced inflation from 48% per month to about 3% in less
than five months.  Since his election as President, inflation has dropped to
under one percent per month, and the Real has gained value against the US
dollar, which not even the wildest dreamer could have predicted a year ago.
85% of Brazilians are optimistic about the future and the economy is growing
by leaps and bounds.

The Future

Today Brazilians seem to be ready and eager to have the next election in 1996
completely automated.  The TSE conducted extensive studies not only of
computer technology, but also of the Brazilian public's reactions to these new
technologies to identify the right tools to provide a fully automated election
within two years.  In this upcoming election, when almost 5,000 mayors and
50,000 city representatives will be elected, 100 million Brazilians will touch
a screen, not mark a piece of paper.  There will be no transcription,
therefore there will be no fraud.  Unless we come to know some new kind of
"cyberfraud"...

About the Author
Fernando Cabral studied Philosophy, Psychology, and Mathematics but ended up
involved with C, UNIX, and networking.  Five years ago he founded PADRAO iX, a
consulting firm dedicated to connectivity and interoperability. He wears many
hats, often playing the agent provocateur among mainframers, COBOLers, and
MS-Windowers.


KERMIT HELPS AUTOMATE MAIL DELIVERY

Did you ever wonder how U.S. Mail is delivered?  Much of the process has been
automated in recent years, and soon, thanks in part to Kermit software, one of
the most tedious tasks will be on its way out.

Postal Bar Codes

Let's take a simplified look at how mail is delivered today.  When a piece of
mail enters the system at a local post office, it is sent to the nearest
Processing and Distribution Center (P & DC).  At each of the 270 P&DCs, mail
passes through an optical character recognition (OCR) device.  If the OCR
machine can read the address, it applies a POSTNET bar code (if there already
isn't one), representing the ZIP Code.  If the address is illegible, the mail
piece is rejected.

In many of the P&DCs (and eventually all of them), the rejected pieces are
routed to a Remote Bar Code System (RBCS), where the electronic image of the
front of the mail piece appears on a video display terminal, an operator keys
in the ZIP Code, and then the bar code is applied.  Thus all mail pieces leave
these facilities with bar codes.

The Problem

From the receiving P&DC the mail is routed, in many cases by a Delivery Bar
Code Sorter (DBCS) machine, either for local delivery or else to the
appropriate destination P&DC, from which it is sent to the appropriate local
post office for delivery by mail carriers.

It is at the destination post office that the automation process returns to
manual handling of the mail.  Mail carriers still have to sort mail into bins
and cubbyholes, a labor-intensive and time-consuming process, before they can
embark on their routes.  The ever-increasing volume of mail adds to the
workload of the mail carriers, and the manual sorting step can no longer keep
pace.

The Solution

Now bar codes will be used to eliminate the manual sorting step too, speeding
the delivery of mail directly to your door.  A major contract between the
United States Postal Service and Loral Federal Systems (formerly IBM Federal
Systems Company) of Owego, New York, calls for the installation of 3,144
Carrier Sequence Bar Code Sorter (CSBCS) machines in approximately 1,100 of
the larger local post offices.

Using technology licensed from AEG ElectroCom of Konstanz, Germany, the CSBCS
machines sequence bar-coded mail for each mail carrier at 36,000 pieces per
hour.  The mail is sorted by mail route, and within each route according to
the order in which the mail carrier visits each building.  Routes can be
customized on a daily basis; for example, to allow for buildings that are
closed on Saturdays.  By sorting mail in walk sequence without manual
handling, the new systems will cut costs and enable faster mail delivery, even
as volume goes up.

Both the DBCS and the CSBCS machines are partially controlled by PCs running
DOS or QNX.  QNX is a POSIX-compliant realtime version of UNIX from QNX
Software Systems, Ltd., Kanata, Ontario (see profile on page 5).  The PCs
provide the user interface and the link to the outside world.

Kermit's Role

Columbia University's Kermit software -- MS-DOS Kermit on DOS PCs, QNX
C-Kermit on the QNX PCs -- is a key component; it handles (according to the
specification) "transfer of End of Run reports, End of Period reports, density
analysis data, sort plans, and software configuration updates."

Each day, Kermit software dials up and sends machine usage, performance,
diagnostic, and other reports to a regional hub of the National Directory
Support System (NDSS) for postanalysis--fault detection, trend analysis, and
so on.  The regional hubs are equipped with Digital Equipment Corporation VAX
and Alpha AXP computers running the (Open)VMS operating system and Kermit
software.

Once a week, Kermit software is also used to load updated address information,
the data for the "sort plans," into each CSBCS(The DBCS receives the sort plan
data via TCP/IP, but is also equipped with Kermit software as a fallback in
case the network should fail.)  from the NDSS, which maintains a database of
every address in the region.  Thus each bar-code sorting system depends on
Kermit software in order to do its job: to sort the mail.


KERMIT AND MARKET RESEARCH IN THE UK

The Role of Kermit Software in our Computer-Assisted Personal
Interviewing System

  Pat Molloy, Operations Director, NOP Research Group Limited
  Tower House, Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HN, England

NOP is the third largest market research company in the UK.  Roughly 55% of
our interviewing is done face to face, conducted by some 1600 field staff
located all over the country.  In February 1994, we equipped 600 of our field
staff with small personal computers, with which to conduct this data gathering
exercise.

Naturally we required a cost-effective and reliable method for transferring
data to and from these machines.  It must be borne in mind that the typical
market research interviewer is no PC expert and so a further prime requirement
was that the system had to be pretty well idiot- and bomb-proof.

We looked at a number of commercial offerings which, as well as being
expensive, also did not give us the required functionality.  We decided early
on that the prospect of managing a rack of fifty or so modems filled us with
dread and therefore looked towards a service provider giving us a number of
dial-up Points of Presence (PoPs) all over the country.  Not only did this
mean that the modems were avoided, but it also offered us the potential to
significantly reduce our telecommunications costs.

We settled on a system called GNS (Global Network Systems) by British Telecom.
It is an X.25 Packet Switching service, available all over the world, but
importantly for us, with a hundred PoPs in the UK, from which 93% of our field
force is just a local (i.e. cheap) phone call away.

Kermit was selected as the communications software of choice -- it is
extremely robust, cheap, and provides us with the all the scripting functions
required.  Kermit 3.12 is currently in use at the PC end, and Kermit 5A(190)
on a Sun SPARCstation host at head office, running SunOS 4.1.  We tried a
number of other protocols, X-, Y-, and Zmodem for example, but because field
agents are actually dialing into an X.25 PAD, we found that these did not work
to our complete satisfaction.

Each PC in the field is associated with an interviewer who has a five-digit
interviewer ID.  We maintain a database on the SPARCstation that contains
information concerning the interviewer, their location, various passwords, and
the phone number of the local PoP.  When a machine is sent into the field for
the first time and booted, the boot process asks the interviewer for their ID
number, and then Kermit places a call to a known PoP.  Having established a
link to the PoP, Kermit then initiates a transfer of the configuration file
from the host to the PC.  Thereafter the PC is "configured," that is, it
contains a file which has pointers to the local PoP.

As far security is concerned, once the call has been made to the PAD the
process is entirely automated and the user cannot "escape" to gain access
either to the PAD or the SPARCstation.  The autocall facility on the PAD is
set to call only a single host, our SPARCstation in London.  Once the call
arrives at the host, a modified login process takes the call and fires up
Kermit in a restricted shell, from which the end user cannot escape.

At the head office, the SPARCstation joins the GNS network via four 64K
digital links, which automatically load-share and perform hand-offs to other
circuits if any should fail.  This gives us an inbound capacity of
256K/second, handled by SunLink X.25.

There is a single menu option available to the interviewer to "transfer data
to head office".  In all cases, a single ZIP'd file is sent from the PC to the
Sun and another back from the Sun to the PC.  (Actually there are other hidden
menu options to put Kermit into "verbose" mode for error trapping).

A long (500+ lines) Kermit script file handles the entire communications
process.  It reads data from the configuration file and sets up a call to the
local PoP.  Because there are over 70 ways in which the process can fail there
is extensive error checking and reporting in the script file.  Having set the
call up to the PoP, Kermit logs in and the PoP automatically and sets up an
X.25 call to the Sun here in London (this is the GNS autocall feature).
Kermit then logs into the Sun host, does some authentication and then starts
C-Kermit on the Sun in server mode.  The PC file is uploaded first and then,
if it exists, the Sun file is downloaded.

At any failure or exception, an external program is called to beep and display
an appropriate flashing error message.  Otherwise the communication session
terminates normally and the machine is returned to the main menu.

We'll be upgrading to Kermit 3.14 soon to take advantage of the the new
performance and recovery features which will greatly improve the overall
system.  We experience around 10% failure rates on the UK phone system which
can be frustrating if you are 250K into a 300K transfer. We've already lab
tested this feature to death and have found it to be extremely successful and
will be deploying it following some more small-scale field trials with agents
dotted around the country.

Since February 1994, we have transferred over 50,000 files of about 250K each
on average -- 12.5Gbytes roughly.  Kermit has performed magnificently and the
sophistication of the scripting and error reporting has meant that even when
things have gone wrong the support team has easily been able to spot the
problems (most often the modem not switched on!).  We've taken advantage of
both large packets and sliding windows to enhance performance of the file
transfers -- we have also disabled compression on the modems themselves, since
that process was actually leading to significantly slower transfers of the ZIP
files (some 20%).

The move away from traditional data collection techniques (pen and paper,
primarily) has been a sea change for the market research industry.  As well as
the considerable technical challenge, we have faced a number of difficult
management issues -- scaling down our print department, elimination of our
key-to-disk department, the changed lines of communication within the business
itself.

Putting on a green hat, we've eliminated seven million sheets of paper a year
already -- we expect this to rise to a savings of twenty million within two
years.  Then of course there was the huge challenge of training 600 people,
most of whom had never used a PC before!

Kermit has been central to the success of the project thus far, and with the
continuing developments such as the newly introduced recovery facility, it is
certain to remain a cornerstone of the system.
MS-DOS Kermit and Screen Reading Technology


COMPUTER ACCESS FOR PERSONS WITH PRINT HANDICAPS

  Alan Cantor
  West Toronto, Ontario

Personal computers equipped with adaptive technology are making it possible
for thousands of individuals with disabilities to pursue independently their
personal, vocational and educational goals.  Examples of adaptive technologies
include environmental control units; TDDs (Telecommunication Devices for the
Deaf); large keyboards; input devices actuated by infra-red pointers, eye
blinks, puffs of air, and head-sticks; voice recognition systems; optical
character recognition systems (OCR); reading machines; text enhancement
software; refreshable braille displays; and screen readers.  This article is
about screen readers, and why MS-DOS Kermit is an appropriate communication
program for use in conjunction with this class of adaptive technology.

A screen reader transforms an ordinary PC into a talking computer.  The voice
is heard through a headphone or the system speaker.  The screen reader
pronounces keystrokes or words as they are typed.  Keystroke commands allow
the user to "read" individual characters, words, lines, sentences, and
paragraphs.  Some screen reader systems use Alt- and Control-key combinations
for their reading functions; others use a separate keypad.  All screen reading
systems allow the user to customize and save vocal characteristics such as
reading speed, inflection and pronunciation.

The original screen readers were intended for persons who are blind or who
have low-vision.  In recent years it has become clear that other
constituencies benefit from the technology too.  For example, persons who have
a learning disability that interferes with their ability to read, but not to
write, successfully use screen readers.

Screen reading technology has made previously inaccessible documents available
to persons with print handicaps.  Because almost all books, newspapers, and
journals begin as computer files, the potential exists, for the first time,
for persons who have print-handicaps to read any printed document.

Virtually all DOS, VMS and Unix applications are "screen reader friendly."
Screen reading technology enables users to run most DOS applications, access
Bulletin boards, communicate by e-mail, and transfer files and other
information using Internet services like GOPHER and FTP.  The ability to use
computers effectively has opened doors to new educational and employment
opportunities for persons who have print-handicaps.

The Threat of the GUI

The proliferation of graphics-based computer environments threatens to wipe
out many of the gains made by persons who rely on screen reading technology.
DOS-based screen readers do not work with GUI (graphical user interface)
applications.  In character-based applications, information is written to the
screen in predictable ways.  The consistency of character-based applications
makes it easy to program a screen reader to zoom in on the most salient area
of the screen.  Pressing F7 in WordPerfect, for example, might cause a screen
reader to read line 25:

  Save Document? Yes (No)_

The same consistencies let print-handicapped users navigate through complex
programs without having to see the screen.  In WordPerfect 5.1, line 25 of the
document always displays the status line and lines 24 and 25 of the "List
Files" screen always display a list of options (1 Retrieve; 2 Delete, etc.).
A person with a print handicap can easily "get lost" in an unfamiliar program.
By pressing the key that reads Line 25, the WordPerfect user can usually
become reoriented.

Such consistencies do not exist in GUI environments.  A Windows screen
consists of a riot of icons, scroll bars, pull-down menus, dialogue boxes, and
cascading windows.  A window can assume different shapes and sizes.  The
active window may be minimized or maximized; shrunk or expanded; placed above,
below, to the side, behind, in front of, or overlapping another window.
Although keyboard shortcuts exist, many functions were intended to be done by
positioning the screen pointer and clicking the mouse.  The mouse was designed
to be guided by eye.  Controlling a mouse is awkward -- if not impossible --
if you cannot see the screen.

Efforts to develop screen reading programs for GUI environments have been
underway for several years.  Screen readers for GUIs are now available, but
the graphic user interface itself remains relatively inaccessible.  Windows
access is especially problematic because many Windows applications write
information to the screen in non-standard ways, making automatic detection of
screen updates difficult.

The graphical user interface problem is compounded by the proliferation of
"pseudo-GUIs" -- character-based programs that emulate the look and feel of
GUI software.  Pseudo-GUIs are sometimes even less "screen reader friendly"
than true-GUIs.  The boundaries of a window in a real GUI application can at
least be defined; determining the position of a pseudo-window in a pseudo-GUI
with a character-based screen reader is problematic.  The latest DOS-based
screen readers can, however, handle some of the idiosyncrasies of some
pseudo-GUIs applications.

There are many horror stories about persons who rely on screen readers being
fired or denied promotion because of their difficulties coping with GUIs.  In
1993 blind students and staff at the University of Toronto were effectively
barred from using the on-line library catalogue when a new "Windows-like"
interface was introduced.  Students with disabilities and their advocates
pressured the library for more than a year before the old command-line system
was reinstated.  Interestingly, now that both systems are readily available,
many able-bodied students say they prefer the old command-line interface.

Many DOS-based communication programs are pseudo-GUIs, a development that has
perilous consequences for blind computer users.  Because these software
packages feature dialogue boxes, pull-down menus and graphical file transfer
"thermometers," they are inherently more difficult to access by screen reader
than text-based communication programs.

Kermit and Screen Readers

I encourage my clients who use screen readers in conjunction with
communication software to try MS-DOS Kermit for the following reasons:

   1. Compatibility. Because MS-DOS Kermit is a command line processing
      application, it works beautifully with screen readers.  Kermit has
      no pull-down menus or dialog boxes.  Users type commands at the
      prompt, and during terminal emulation they perform special
      functions by pressing "hotkeys."  Screen reading programs
      configured for DOS can often be used with Kermit with little or no
      modification.

   2. Automation.  MS-DOS Kermit's rich macro language is an exceptional
      medium for writing robust dial-up, log-in, and special-purpose
      scripts.

   3. Simplicity. MS-DOS Kermit's macro language makes it possible to
      reduce a complex series of commands to a single macro or keystroke.
      For example, a script for uploading a file from a PC to a UNIX
      mainframe [included on the MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 diskette as
      UTILS\UPLOAD.SCR] was custom-designed for a blind doctoral student
      who had no interest in learning the complexities of using a
      computer.

   4. Special Commands.  MS-DOS Kermit features many special commands
      that make it a practical choice for use with screen readers, among
      those described in Chapter 15 of Using MS-DOS Kermit, 2nd Edition,
      by Christine M. Gianone.

An example Kermit's screen-reader-friendly commands is SET DISPLAY SERIAL,
which causes the status of the transfer to be written to the screen as a
series of dots and pluses instead of as a screen thermometer and columns of
continuously changing numbers.  When using a screen reader the default setting
(SET DISPLAY REGULAR) produces an "alphanumeric stream of consciousness."  SET
DISPLAY SERIAL transforms the cacophony into a useful gauge of file transfer
progress.

Other settings that I would usually recommend for use with screen readers
include SET TERMINAL MARGIN-BELL ON, SET INPUT ECHO OFF, SET MODE-LINE OFF,
SET TERMINAL VIDEO-WRITING BIOS.

Of particular utility is the SET KEY command.  With it, I can reassign
application keystrokes that conflict with screen reader commands, disable
online application keystrokes that have untoward effects, and bind
special-purpose macros and scripts to a key.  For example, UPLOAD.SCR might be
activated by Alt-u:

  define UPLOAD take upload.scr
  set key \2326 {\kUpload}

Also handy are CLEAR, which clears the INPUT/REINPUT command buffer and the
communication device buffer, and SET TERMINAL CLEAR-SCREEN for clearning the
terminal screen.  Together the two commands effectively wipe the display clean
during script operations so the screen reader does not read irrelevant,
out-of-date information.

These two commands have proven so indispensable that I have combined them into
a single macro:

  define ERASE-SCREEN clear,-
    set terminal clear-screen

Finally, a novel use for the SET PROMPT command, which changes MS-DOS Kermit's
interactive command prompt.  In some circumstances I have found it
advantageous to define macros with single-character names as a means to
streamline script and macro operations.  Then I modify the prompt to create an
audible "menu prompt:"

  define 1 {dial School}
  define 2 {dial Library}
  define 3 {dial Work}
  define e {echo Exiting, hangup, exit}
  set prompt -
   {1=School 2=Library 3=Work e=Exit> }

Conclusion

I have written MS-DOS Kermit scripts for a number of clients who use screen
readers.  Although I am not print-handicapped, I use virtually identical
scripts for my own purposes.  Many able-bodied friends and colleagues, having
seen my scripts in action, have been impressed enough to request copies.  This
has led to an ironic situation: more able-bodied people use my
"print-handicapped" scripts than people with print-handicaps!

The moral of this story is that improving accessibility for persons with
disabilities benefits everybody else too.  Kermit scripts that are suitable
for persons who rely on screen reader technology are good for able-bodied
computer users as well.

About the author

Alan Cantor, 171 Roxborough Street, West Toronto, Ontario M5R 1T9, Canada, is
a Workplace Accommodation Consultant with a special interest in improving
individuals' access to workplaces and schools.  His clients include the
Ontario Ministry of Labour, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and
Energy, the Office of the Employment Equity Commissioner for the Province of
Ontario, the Hugh MacMillan Rehabilitation Centre (Toronto), Services for
Students with Disabilities at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
(Toronto), and the Zimbabwe-Canada General Training Facility (Ottawa).  He is
an Associate of Advanced Work Design (Toronto), a Research Associate with
Employment Achievement Services (Scarborough), and a member of the Advisory
Group on Employment Equity for Persons with Disabilities.  His current project
is a program of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) awareness and prevention for
persons with disabilities who use assistive devices.  He will present a paper
on his work on RSI and disability at the 10th annual CSUN "Technology and
Persons with Disabilities" Conference in Los Angeles, 14-18 March 1995.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Professor Betsey Doane, Mr. Tim Noonan, Mr. John
O'Rouke, and Dr. Jim Thatcher for their thoughtful critiques of this article.