OS/2 Shareware BBS: 16 Announce/16-Announce.zip/cko191.ann

Text File | 1995-06-01 | 14KB | 307 lines

This is to announce the release of OS/2 C-Kermit 5A(191).

If you have a Web browser, you are encouraged to read this notice in
hypertext format on the Web at the following URL, because there is a lot
more information in it (hypertext links):

  http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/cko191.html

If you are already familiar with OS/2 C-Kermit, feel free to skip past
the following fifty lines (about two 24-line screens).

OS/2 C-Kermit is Columbia University's full-function native communication
software package for OS/2 that works uniformly over:

 . Serial connections, direct or dialed, upto 230,400 bps.
 . TCP/IP network connections, including SLIP/PPP and SOCKS firewalls
   (IBM, FTP, Essex, and Ipswitch stacks supported.)
 . DECnet PATHWORKS LAT connections.
 . LAN and/or interprocess connections such as NETBIOS and Named Pipes.
 . Asynchronous communication servers.
 . Parallel port connections (when used with appropriate NDIS drivers).

Offering:

 . Faithful ANSI, VT220, VT102, VT100, and VT52 terminal emulations with
   all the expected add-ons -- rollback, key mapping, color control,
   printer control, Compose key, screen & session capture, etc.
 . A complete implementation of the Kermit file transfer protocol, including
   all the most advanced features for highest performance, the new recovery
   capability, as well as auto-uplodad and -download.
 . A powerful and portable script programming language.
 . A large repertoire of character-set translations.
 . Dialing and services directories.
 . Easy access to external protocols (e.g. P.EXE for X/Y/Zmodem).

And lots of OS/2-specific features, including:

 . Advanced user-customizable mouse operations.
 . Full compatibility with the OS/2 PM Clipboard.
 . Use of OS/2 System Sounds during command and terminal modes.
 . Work Place Shell integration through program objects.
 . Alternative REXX macro programming extensions.
 . Full support for HPFS and Extended Attributes during file transfers.
 . SLIPTERM compatibility.
 . Integration with IBM WebExplorer.
 . The ability to transfer entire directory trees from one OS/2
   system to another, with all file attributes preserved.
 . Multiple threads for efficient task scheduling and low CPU load.
 . Fast semaphores for intraprocess communication.

With its wide range of features and communication methods, OS/2 C-Kermit
is ideally suited to OS/2 users who:

 . Want to communicate with a diverse assortment of hosts and services.
 . Want to use the same application for serial and network connections,
   e.g. for home and office use.
 . Want a better TELNET (with rollback, key mapping, colors, scripting).
 . Want a TELNET that can also transfer files.
 . Want to communicate in languages other than English.
 . Want to write script programs that are portable to many platforms.

Space does not permit listing all the features of previous versions of
OS/2 C-Kermit, but if you want to know more, feel free to visit our Web
site starting at URL:

  http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/os2.html

C-Kermit Version 5A(191) is a brand-new 32-bit release for OS/2 2.00
and later, including Warp.  It adds the following major new features:

 . Dramatic speed improvements
 . Sizeable terminal screens.
 . New and improved mouse functions.
 . Improved TELNET client functions.
 . Incoming TCP/IP connections.
 . SLIP dialing.
 . Cyrillic (Russian) terminal emulation.
 . Soft fonts for Hebrew, Cyrillic, and East European terminal emulation.
 . The new features that were added during the Beta test, listed just above.
 . Numerous fixes.

And many lesser ones.  In more detail:

SPEED IMPROVEMENTS

CONNECT mode -- terminal emulation -- is now incredibly snappy on both
serial and network connections, in both window and fullscreen sessions.

C-Kermit 5A(191) processes incoming data in parallel with screen updating.
Furthermore, the screen is now updated far more efficiently than before.
To give an idea of the speed improvement, we used a ripple-test benchmark
that scrolls 1000 80-column lines of text, obtaining the following display
timings for various TELNET clients attached to a 10 Mb/sec Ethernet
network running on the same PC in a fullscreen session:

  C-Kermit 5A(190)    24 sec
  IBM Telnet          22 sec  (TCP/IP 1.2.1)
  MS-DOS Kermit       12 sec  (v3.14 under DOS, not under OS/2)
  C-Kermit 5A(191)     5 sec

In an OS/2 window, the same test takes only 7 seconds, compared to 55
seconds in the previous release -- about an 800% improvement.

The new display management model has also been used to accomplish several
other astounding feats:

 . Terminal sessions remain active behind popup help screens.
 . Incoming material is processed even when screen is rolled back.
 . Copy-and-paste can span multiple screens (more about this below).

Meanwhile, serial port handling is now far more efficient, putting less load
on the CPU, allowing serial-port intput/output to take place at high speeds
without seriously impacting the rest of the system.

SIZEABLE TERMINAL SCREENS

You asked for VT100 132-column mode, now you've got it and a lot more too.

In Warp window sessions, C-Kermit now supports any combination of screen
height and width, up to 255 columns and 254 rows with a maximum screen
area of 8192 characters.

In fullscreen sessions the terminal screen can now use 40, 80, or 132
columns and 24, 42, 49, or 59 rows.  Not all combinations are supported by
all video hardware.  Warp is not required.

Host-directed screen-width switching in VT100, VT102, and VT220 emulation
is now implemented for 80-column and 132-column modes when the video
adapter supports it.  Screen dimensions are automatically reported to the
host on TELNET connections if the TELNET server supports (and uses) the
"NAWS" option.

SOFT FONTS

C-Kermit 5A knows a lot of character sets and translates between any
pair of them.  But in OS/2, we have another problem: how to see the right
characters on the screen.  For example, in version 5A(190) we added
support for Hebrew terminal emulation, which works very nicely if you
happen to have a Hebrew version of OS/2 (which you can only get in
Israel), but is useless otherwise -- e.g. to Hebrew and Yiddish scholars
in the USA, because, until now there was no way to get a Hebrew code page
onto a US version of OS/2.

The new version of OS/2 C-Kermit comes with the following soft fonts that
you can load in a fullscreen session, for use in the terminal window:

  CP437 - Original PC code page
  CP850 - "Multilingual" (West Europe) code page
  CP852 - East Europe Roman Alphabet code page (for Czech, Polish, etc)
  CP862 - Hebrew code page
  CP866 - Cyrillic (Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian) code page

So now, no matter what OS/2 National Language version you have, you can
use OS/2 C-Kermit to conduct terminal sessions in at least the following
languages:

  Albanian, Belorussian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch,
  English, Faeroese, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian,
  Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Ladino, Latin, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish,
  Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish,
  Swedish, Swiss, Ukrainian, and Yiddish.

Thanks to Joseph (Yossi (Yogi)) Gil at the Technion in Haifa, Israel, for
furnishing these public-domain fonts.

CYRILLIC TERMINAL EMULATION

OK, we added a Cyrillic font, so now you can read those Russian newsgroups
and Web pages.  But if you don't have a Russian (or Ukrainian, or
Belorussian) keyboard, how do you TYPE Russian characters?  The new
C-Kermit release adds a Russian keyboard mode that includes:

 . The Microsoft Russian DOS keyboard layout.
 . Hot-key switching between Russian and English modes.
 . Automatic translation to the host character-set (KOI, ISO, etc).

This is in addition to the keyboard methods that were already available
in earlier releases:

 . A Compose key for Latin-1-like character sets (for Western European
   languages like Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, German, French, etc).

 . A Hebrew keyboard mode for Hebrew and Yiddish.

THE MOUSE AND MARK MODE

Copy-and-paste capability, as well as mouse-directed terminal cursor
steering, were introduced in the previous release.  In version 5A(191):

 . Text selection can now span the entire virtual screen,
   scrollback buffer included.
 . You can reassign these functions to different mouse events.
 . You can assign them to keys.
 . You can assign keyboard verbs, macros, or text to mouse events.
 . Copy-and-paste works consistently between C-Kermit and other apps.

To get a quick idea of the power of the new "mark mode": after installing
the new version, starting it up, and accumulating a bunch of screens in
the rollback buffer:

 . Hold down the left mouse button.
 . Drag the mouse towards the top of screen, watch text being selected.
 . Now drag it PAST the top of the screen -- watch what happens.
 . Push the Arrow, Page Up/Down, or Home/End keys while dragging.

Any text that you select this way can be copied to the PM clipboard,
printed on your printer, copied to a file, or pasted directly into your
terminal session.

TCP/IP IMPROVEMENTS

TELNET connections are about 500% faster than before.  Several TELNET
protocol problems were fixed, most notably the ones relating to
"firewalls".  Connections are now attempted to multiple IP addresses when
provided by the name server, until success is achieved.  TELNET NAWS
(Negotiate About Window Size) capability has been added.

Incoming TCP/IP connections are now accepted -- you can TELNET to OS/2
C-Kermit on a pre-arranged socket and have a "chat" session or execute
Kermit server functions.

OS/2 C-Kermit can now dial your Warp IAK SLIP connections for you, using
a special technique to "borrow" the serial port from the SLIP driver.
This gives you a lot more flexibility than you get with SLIPTERM.

There are new controls for TELNET NVT/binary mode and CRLF mapping, since
these areas are so problematic with the proliferation of incompatible
(and often confused) TELNET servers:

  SET TELNET { NVT, BINARY } NEWLINE-MODE { ON, OFF, RAW }
  SET TELNET BINARY-MODE { ACCEPTED, REFUSED, REQUESTED }

SOCKS support added for TELNET'ing through firewalls.

OS/2 C-Kermit gives you all the convenience features of a serial
communications program integrated with its own internal TELNET protocol
implementation.  If you do a lot of TELNET'ing to diverse services,
especially on non-TELNET ports, you'll begin to appreciate what this
means.

OTHER CHANGES

 ...include:

 . ISO 2022 character-set designation and invocation in VT220 emulation.
 . Protected fields in VT220 emulation.
 . Host-initiated autoprint now supported (separate from transparent print).
 . Improved context-sensitive help screens, status lines, and messages.
 . More key combinations are recognized for SET KEY.
 . System Sounds can now be used to differentiate "Information",
   "Warning", and "Error" events.
 . MOVE and MMOVE commands added = SEND and MSEND, then delete.
 . REMOTE RENAME and REMOTE COPY (both ends) added.
 . New and improved hypertext Updates documentation.
 . Various other new commands, bug fixes, cleanups, etc.

NOTE: 5A(191) is an OS/2-only release of C-Kermit.

Thanks to Jeff Altman for 99% of the work that went into this new release.

DOCUMENTATION

C-Kermit 5A is  comprehensively  and  professionally documented in   the
book, "Using C-Kermit", supplemented  by the hypertext CKERMIT.INF file,
which covers recent additions up to and including edit 191.

  If you will be using OS/2 C-Kermit and you have not already purchased
  this book, please purchase it.  It will answer your questions, it will
  show you how to get the most out of the software, and book sales are
  the primary source of funding for the Kermit effort.

Ordering information for the book is included in the CKERMIT.INF file,
which may be accessed from the C-Kermit> prompt with the UPDATES
command.

HOW TO GET IT

OS/2 C-Kermit 5A(191) may be obtained from kermit.columbia.edu via
anonymous ftp, directory kermit/archives, file cko191.zip.  Transfer it in
binary mode (every step of the way), unzip it on your OS/2 system into a
spare directory, then run the INSTALL script.

You may also order the new version on diskette from Columbia University.
If you already have a copy of "Using C-Kermit", use the tear-out form in
back to order the diskette only.  If you don't have the book, then order
the book+diskette package from us:

    Kermit Development and Distribution
    Columbia University Academic Information Systems
    612 West 115th Street
    New York, NY  10025-7721
    USA
    Telephone: [phone]
    Fax:       [phone]

  Domestic and overseas orders accepted.
    Book only: US $36.95 (US, Canada, and Mexico), US $47 elsewhere.
    Book + OS/2 C-Kermit: US $45.00 (US, Canada, Mexico), $55 elsewhere.
  Orders may be paid by MasterCard or Visa, or PREPAID by check in US dollars.
  Add US $35 bank fee for checks not drawn on a US bank.  Price includes
  shipping.  Do not include sales tax.  Inquire about quantity discounts.

Please note that C-Kermit is copyrighted software, and it may not be
redistributed by commercial enterprises (including makers of CD-ROMs)
without written permission of the Office of Kermit Development and
Distribution, Columbia University, at the address above.