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- IS EXPROT FOR YOU?
-
- Exprot's philosophy is to serve as an extension of your terminal
- program's internal protocol table, giving you easy access to the
- most popular, fast new protocols, such as Zmodem, Puma and Lynx.
- It is meant to enable you to start transfers with these protocols
- with no hassles, virtually no preparation, and a minimal number
- of keypresses, just as you do when you use your internal
- protocols. It is also meant to give a much wider protocol choice
- to users of integrated packages such as First Choice, or of
- desktop comm modules, like PC-Tools' and SideKick Plus.
-
- EXPROT is NOT meant to give you total control over the protocols
- themselves. If you read the DSZ documentation, you will find a
- myriad options and possibilities with Zmodem. Yet, many if not
- most of users who prefer Telix over ProComm Plus, base their
- preference on the fact that Telix gives them Zmodem transfers
- with just a couple of keypresses. They don't know much about
- logging or ZOPT, nor do they care to know.
-
- EXPROT gives Commo and ProComm Plus users the look-and-feel of
- Telix as far as Zmodem is concerned, and adds Puma, Lynx, and
- Jmodem for good measure. Commo users also have SEAlink and
- Megalink, plus Xmodem, Ymodem, and 1k-Xmodem, all with a single
- macro.
-
- Other "liaison" programs offer more flexibility. But they also
- take four or five times the amount of disk space that EXPROT
- does, a lot more RAM, and considerably more technical savvy about
- the protocols themselves. They don't even write their own
- configuration files, but ask you to do it yourself, or to
- "customize" them with your editor. EXPROT asks you five simple,
- plain English questions the very first time it is loaded, and
- then writes its own configuration, into which you won't ever have
- to take as much as a peek.
-
- Also, these other programs duplicate features that are provided
- by the terminal programs, like viewing the download/upload
- directories. And, again, they do it at the expense of the ever
- shrinking space in your hard disk -- in this day and age of
- megabyte-length software -- and at the expense of a good chunk of
- your RAM.
-
- If you are a serious BBS'er who knows which protocols offer what
- and have well-defined preferences, yet like things simple and to
- the point, EXPROT is for you. But if you have the makings of a
- telecommunications engineer, you may have more fun -- and more
- options -- with Power Node or some other multifile, multicolored
- package. They really are fine and meritorious pieces of
- software, but make you pay a high price in Kb of RAM and space by
- going way beyond what a good external protocol interface is
- expected to, and should, do.
-
- Luis R. Cáceres, Jr.
- 8711 S.W. 20th Terrace
- MIAMI, FL
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-