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x3270 3.0 -- Update 1
===============================================================================
0. Introduction
x3270 3.0 is an IBM 3278 terminal emulator for X windows. It can be used to
communicate with any IBM host that supports 3270-style connections over TELNET.
It can also communcate with hosts that use line-by-line ASCII mode to do
initial login negotiation before switching to full-screen 3270 mode.
It uses its own special fonts to fully emulate the special symbols displayed on
a 3278. If you grow tired of using a graphical workstation to do an exact
emulation of the appearance of a dumb terminal, you can use any constant-width
X font.
0. History
x3270 3.0 is a heavy revision of Jeff Sparkes' x3270 1.2. It incorporates
almost all of the enhancements already available in other improved versions of
x3270 (cut and paste, hollowing cursor, etc.) and a number of significant
changes and improvements.
Thanks to --
Robert Viduya, for the original SunView 3270tool;
Jeff Sparkes, for the original X port and for inspiring so many of us to
improve on it;
Peter Johnston, for insisting that each new function he wanted was just an
itty bitty change, honest;
Thomas Vogler, for requesting the original ASCII functionality and helping
debug it;
Pekka Nikander, for helpful advice in internationalization and X trivia,
and yet more porting and debug help;
Distinguished bug hunters: David Summers, Ian Daniel, Kevin Murphy, George
Pallas;
and everyone else who has put up with my naive stumblings through X.
1. Enhancements from Release 1.2
1.1 Performance
Screen painting is faster. Much faster.
1.2 Connect/Disconnect
You do not need to specify a hostname on the command line.
x3270 no longer exits when the host disconnects.
You can put a list of common IBM host names in a file.
You can specify a string to be be sent to a host when you connect to it. This
string can include TABs to enter data into multiple fields, and ENTER keys
(newlines) to send an ENTER AID and wait for the keyboard to unlock.
1.3 Menu Bar
There is a menu bar with the following options:
Quit...
Disconnect break the current connection
Exit x3270 terminate the application
Options...
About x3270... friendly informational pop-up
---
Keypad (optional) pop up (or down) the 3270 keypad
---
Monocase
Blinking cursor
Show Timing display time between sending an AID and the
keyboard unlocking
Track Cursor show cursor position on status line
---
Trace 3270 DS trace 3270 data semi-readably on stdout
Trace TELNET trace TELNET negotiations and data on stdout
---
Underline Cursor
Block Cursor
---
3270 Font the original 3270 font (14-point)
3270-12 Font a smaller 3270 font (12-point)
Other Font... pop-up to enter another font name
---
Line Mode change TELNET modes (if ASCII)
Character Mode
---
Model 2 change 3270 model
Model 3
Model 4
Model 5
Connect...
(list of hosts)
Other... (popup window)
The menu bar is turned off with "*menuBar: false" or if the size of the
emulator font makes the window too small to hold it. The menus can also be
popped up with Ctrl and the mouse buttons.
1.4 Keypad
There is a mouse-clickable keypad containing all of the PF, PA, cursor control
and miscellaneous 3270 keys. It can be toggled on and off with a button in the
upper right of the window. The command-line option "-keypad" or the "*keypad"
resource determines where it goes:
right separate window, to the right of the main window (default)
bottom separate window, below the main window
integral integrated into the bottom of the main window
The keypad can be displayed at startup with "*keypadOn: true".
1.5 Fonts
The font used by x3270 is configurable with the command-line option "-efont" or
the resource "emulatorFont."
An additional 3270 font (3270-12) is provided.
Separate bold fonts are provided (3270bold and 3270-12bold) for speed.
x3270 can use any standard constant-spaced X font, but some of the cute stuff
on the status line might not look as nice.
Many perfectly good constant-spaced fonts are misconfigured and x3270 doesn't
like them; try a '!' in front of the name to override some of the checking.
The font can be changed at any time with a menu option or the SetFont action.
1.6 Cut/Paste
Xterm-like mouse selection is supported. The selection region is a rectangle,
rather than a continuous band on the screen, because this is more "3270-like."
The middle mouse button performs a "paste" action like xterm's.
The mouse can be configured to act more like OpenWindows with a keymap option.
1.7 ANSI Emulation
Placing "a:" in front of a host name causes x3270 to emulate an ANSI terminal
(more or less a VT100 or xterm) until the remote host negotiates 3270
emulation. Un-negotiating 3270 mode causes a disconnect.
Line mode / character mode is negotiable with a menu option.
1.8 Status Line
The cursor position is reported in the lower-right corner. The resource
"*cursorPos: false" or a menu option will turn it off.
The time between sending an AID key and the host unlocking the keyboard can be
displayed next to the cursor position. The resource "*timing: true" or a menu
option will turn it on. If the transaction takes more than 1 second, the
timing display is updated once a second.
1.9 Internationalization
This version of x3270 supports international EBCDIC character sets and
keyboards in a manner similar (but not quite identical) to version 1.3.
The "-charset" option or "*charset" resource specifies an alternative mapping
between EBCDIC codes and displayed graphics. Character sets supported include
"us" (the default), german, finnish, uk, norwegian and french. The character
set name "oldibm" is also supported to deal with older U.S. hosts that use
different EBCDIC codes for the square bracket characters.
Unlike version 1.3, specifying a "charset" does not modify your keyboard
mapping. Instead, the "-keymap" option and "*keymap" resource accept
modifiers, that is, they can be specified as a comma-separated list of keymap
names. The keymap modifiers "finnish7" and "norwegian7" are defined, as is the
modifier "ow", which swaps the middle and right mouse buttons to make them
operate more like OpenWindows. (For example, to speficy a Sun-4 keyboard with
7-bit Finnish key mappings and OpenWindows mouse buttons, speficy "-keymap
sun-k4,finnish7,ow".
Character sets and keymap modifiers are implemented entirely in resources, so
it is easy to add or correct definitions.
1.10 Icons
The icon can either be a cute bitmap or a miniature of the screen image. The
-activeicon switch or "*activeIcon: true" resource turns on active icons. The
default font for the icon (*iconFont) is nil2. Window manager dependencies
abound.
Twm doesn't label application-supplied icon windows. x3270 will supply its own
icon label if "*labelIcon" is true. The icon label font is controlled by
"*iconLabelFont".
1.11 Miscellany
The block cursor hollows out when the mouse cursor leaves the x3270 window.
The cursor can be made to blink with a resource (*blink: true) or a menu
option.
For debugging, the TELNET and 3270 data streams can be traced on standard
output.
The window and icon labels contain useful information.
The model number (screen size) may be changed while running, so long as you are
disconnected.
The PA3 and 3270 ATTN keys (from v1.3) are implemented.
2. Some Bugs Fixed
The last line of the display was not being refreshed on an expose event.
ERASE WRITE was not properly implemented (it is supposed to put the terminal in
24x80 mode until an ERASE WRITE ALTERNATE is received).
The "SYSTEM" wait condition on the status line was being displayed at
inappropriate times.
A TAB key on a screen with no unprotected fields caused an infinite loop.
A field from which data had been deleted (with the DELETE key) was not marked
as modified.
If the 3270 font could not be found, x3270 used the wrong font and painted the
screen with garbage.
If there was a "*font" entry in the user's .Xdefaults, x3270 would find that
font instead of its own font, with similarly unpleasant results.
If the host sent an invalid 3270 command, x3270 crashed silently.
If the host was not an IBM host, x3270 would either hang or fail cryptically.
Screen updates on ordinary field input were jerky and slow.
The 3270 READ MODIFIED command returned incorrect values for attribute bytes,
causing all fields to appear to be nondisplayed.
Characters that changed attributes (but not character codes) were not always
redisplayed properly.
The shift-key display was wrong if the mouse entered or left the window with
a shift key pressed.
3. Incompatibilities
This code cannot use the 3270 font supplied with the v2.65beta release (nor can
any of the other versions of x3270; I disagree with v2.65's author's decision
to re-order the 3270 font). It can use the fonts supplied with 1.2 and 1.3
BETA, or any constant-width X font.
The APL keyboard mappings supplied with the "apl" keymap modifier are somewhat
different from those supplied with v2.65beta. However, they are defined
entirely with resources, so you can modify them easily.
The x3270 app-defaults file must be updated in order to run this version. The
new app-defaults file is not compatible with any other release.
4. Build Hints
4.1. HP
To build on HP boxes, you may need to uncomment the following in Imakefile:
EXTRA_DEFINES = -D_HPUX_SOURCE
4.2 nil2 Font
If for some reason you are missing the font alias for the "nil2" font, you can
uncomment the following in X3270.ad:
x3270.iconFont: -misc-nil-medium-r-normal--2-20-75-75-c-10-misc-fontspecific
4.3 SunOS Undefined Symbols
If you are building for Sun Solaris 1, you may get the following undefineds:
_sin
_cos
_pow
_floor
These can be fixed by adding the following line to the top of the Imakefile:
EXTRA_LOAD_FLAGS = -lm
If you are building for Sun Solaris 2, you may get the additional undefineds:
inet_addr
socket
setsockopt
gethostbyname
shutdown
getservbyname
connect
These can be fixed by adding the following line to the top of the Imakefile:
EXTRA_LOAD_FLAGS = -lm -lnsl -lsocket
Finally, if you are building for Sun OpenWindows Version 4, you may get the
following undefineds:
_get_wmShellWidgetClass
_get_applicationShellWidgetClass
This is a bug in Sun's X11 libraries, and can be corrected by obtaining patches
100512-02 and 100573-03 from Sun. As a short-term workaround, you can add the
following to the top of the Imakefile, forcing x3270 to be statically linked:
CCOPTIONS = -Bstatic
4.4 memmove
If your C library includes the memmove() function, you can add the following to
top if the Imakefile to take advantage of it:
EXTRA_DEFINES = -DMEMORY_MOVE=memmove
5. Bugs Fixed and Enhancements Since v3.0
5.1 APL Support (!)
Prerequisite #1: Extended the special 3270 fonts to include all of the
characters in the IBM U.S. EBCDIC character set (and the ISO Latin-1 set).
Prerequisite #2: Added support for composite characters, e.g., pressing and
releasing Compose, then C, then comma, produces a C-cedilla.
Finally: Added support for APL through an additional font that replaces
accented letters and special characters with APL characters, and with an
additional keymap modifier and composite definitions.
5.2 Cut/Paste
Cut and paste were not supported correctly. The insert-selection() action
would paste each selection it was told to use, rather than just the first one
found.
The end-selection() action paid no attention to its parameters (it just used
PRIMARY), so the selection type could not be modified in the app-defaults
file. It also neglected to relinquish the selection when the text was
unhighlighted on the screen.
The "ow" (OpenWindows) modifier in the app-defaults file has also been modified
to use the OpenWindows CLIPBOARD selection.
5.3 Telnet Port
Added the ability to specify a numeric port number (e.g., x3270 -port 23).
5.4 memcpy Fix
Shortly before release, all references to bcopy() were changed to memcpy().
Alas, memcpy() does not behave well with overlapping buffers.
5.5 Miscellany
Fixed some minor problems with missing bold fonts.
The DELETE key, when pressed on a 1-character-wide field, caused fireworks.
Implemented DeleteWord (^W) and DeleteField (^U) actions. Restored the
MoveCursor action and gave up on the notion of combining it with select-start.
Note that this is an incompatibility with v3.0 -- MoveCursor is now
Shift<Btn1Down>, rather than some unpredictable side-effect of cut-and-paste on
plain <Btn1Down>. I hope no one got used to the old functionality.
Fixed a misnamed function key in the HP keymap.
Fixed a Home key problem that had already been fixed in v2.65.
Fixed a problem in the implementation of auto-skip fields.
=====
Keep those cards and letters coming...
Paul Mattes
pdm@cnt.com (note new e-mail address)