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┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ \/\/term (C)Copyright \/\/alter Cox 1990, 1991. │ │ All rights reserved. │ │ │ │ \/\/term DOCumentation │ │ │ │ Version 1.07 │ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Introduction WTERM is a bare bones comm program that should be adequate for use with most bulletin boards. Users with limited disk and/or memory may find it especially useful. There is no script language and no terminal emulation. There is no built-in ANSI support so you must load an ANSI driver in your CONFIG.SYS file. There is no scrollback buffer, however WTERM writes a file named WTERM.LOG and strips ANSI from it. You can use LIST to view this file and aside from the slight delay to load it, it works better than a scrollback buffer with search capabilities. The log can be toggled on and off if you desire. More on this later. No file transfer protocols are built-in. WTERM relies on external protocol drivers like DSZ (tm) and PCZ for file transfers. DSZ is shareware and PCZ is Public Domain. The Zmodem upload and download strings are detected automatically. The Zmodem driver you have configured is then called. A 16550AN UART is automatically detected and activated with the FIFO trigger level set for 8. An editor of your choice may be configured and loaded at the touch of a function key. A few good free editors are EDWIN, Turbo Powered Editor(TPE), and VDE. For a tiny free editor, you might want to take a look at TED by PC Magazine. Another fine shareware editor which many seem to be using is Qedit (tm). Setup WTERM has an internal setup utility. If no WTERM.CFG file exists when WTERM loads, it automatically loads setup and will not let you out of it until you write a setup file. When you wish to view or change the configuration, press ALT-S. Use the capital letter associated with any parameter to change that parameter. First press U and enter your name. This is the name that will be transmitted by WTERM when you press the F2 key. A line will appear in reverse video showing how many characters are allowed for this entry. Enter your name and press enter. An enter will be appended to the name automatically. In the next line, configure the drive, path and filename of the editor you wish to use. See the section below on line editing for an explaination of how the line editor works. Setup - Modem Port, Speed, pArity, Bits, and sTopbits are all toggles. Press the capital letter for a given entry to select the value you desire. Modem initialization string also uses the line editor. To send an enter (carriage return) use |. For a one second pause, use a ~. If you have been using another comm program, use the modem initialization string you used for it. The initialization string included in the example works with my modem but is mainly there to fill the space and give an example. There are too many modems out there to come up with one string that works for all and no attempt has been made to do so. Consult the manual that came with your modem for the proper commands. HST users NOTE: The HST has trouble loosing it's initialization after an ALT-H, so sending the initialization afterwards was added for it. A delay was also needed, so you may need to add one or two "~" in front of the initialization string. When a connection is made, WTERM looks at the CONNECT string returned and tries to switch to the speed of connection. Some users of fast modems wish to lock their comm port at a higher rate and let their modem switch to the speed of the line. Lockbaud set to on will prevent WTERM from changing the port speed. If set to no, it will set the port to the speed of the connect. You may configure a dialing prefix, the string WTERM will send to the modem before sending the number to dial. Users with Hayes compatible modems with touchtone phones will not have to change the default ATDT. If your line only supports pulse dial, change it to ATDP instead. You may add a | in front of the dialing prefix to make sure the command is seen by the modem as the first characters in a line. WTERM has both Xoff/Xon and hardware (RTS) flow control. The F key toggles from None, to Xoff/Xon, to Hardware, to both and back to none. Flow control works only one direction. It prevents the modem from overrunning it but doesn't pay attention to CTS to prevent overruning the modem. Since keyboard input isn't fast enough to overrun anything and ASCII transmits can use the pace character timing, it shouldn't be needed. Users of modems faster than 2400 baud should set hardware flow control. Setup - Protocols WTERM detects the start of a Zmodem download or upload and calls the protocol you have configured. If you chose to use a protocol other than Zmodem, you can turn this option off by setting autoZmodem to no. If this feature is desired, leave it at the default yes. The next option, asCii pace time, sets the number of msecs. between characters transmitted with an ALT-T transmit or with an ALT-M message upload. You can set this time between 0 (no delay) and 999 msec. - very extreme. Adjust this speed if the boards you use have difficulty with your speed of transmission. Options 1 and 3 set the drive and path for your default up and download directories. When you begin an upload, WTERM changes to the directory you enter in 1. For a download it switches to the drive and directory you have configured in 3. Using this option and the %S (speed) and %P (port), you can set up your protocol (such as PCZ) to up and download without using batch files. See the section on file transfers below for more information. Option 2 sets up the external protocol driver used for an upload. Enter the name of the program and any options needed. When WTERM detects the start of a Zmodem upload, it checks to see if the last filename it saw is in the upload directory. If it is, it does not prompt for a filename but immediately starts the upload. If you press PgUp before the upload starts, it prompts for a filename and adds the name of the last file seen as a default which you can edit, or just hit return to start the upload. The name of the default directory to be used is displayed in the filename prompt, the one configured in 1. It can be overridden by specifing the path. This of course assumes that you have not set autoZmodem to no. If your protocol driver is not in your path or in your upload directory, make sure you enter the drive and path as well. If you need to tell the driver the port and speed, use %P for port and WTERM will replace it with the port in use. Speed works the same way. Add %S and it will be replaced by the current speed. This allows the same string to work at multiple speeds. While you can use batch files to load the driver, hopefully you will not have to with the options available to you. The download string (4) works the same way the upload string works. It does not prompt for a filename since the sender sends the filename to the receiver (with Zmodem). NOTE: In early versions of WTERM, you needed to add a trailing backslash to the paths to the up and download directories. This backslash is no longer needed. Enter the drive and path exactly as you would if you were doing a CD (change directory). This is exactly what WTERM does before calling the drivers. PgUp will call up the driver configured as the upload protocol as though a Zmodem upload string had been detected. It prompts for a filename. PgDn calls up the download protocol and does not prompt. External protocol menu programs can be installed on one of the ALT-Function keys as a DOS command to give you a choice of protocols. One I used with ProComm was POE (Procomm Outside Environment) and it worked well on a WTERM function key. Thought was given to adding such a thing internally to WTERM but since some users (like me) use Zmodem exclusively, it was left out to make WTERM as small as possible. Setup - switching pages, Writing the configuration or quit. The bottom line of both setup pages displays a help line. The spacebar switches between the two pages of setup. W, Write, saves the current configuration to the configuration file WTERM was loaded with. Escape quits setup without saving the changes, although they are active for the current session. Setup - Page 2, Function keys Function keys F4 through F8 are strings you can enter that will be transmitted at the touch of the function key. As with the modem initialization string, a | will cause an enter to be transmitted and a ~ will generate a one second pause. Setup - DOS Commands Up to five DOS commands can be configured using ALT-F1 through ALT-F5. Enter the commands the way you would if you were at the DOS command line. Once configured, WTERM will run the command when that function key is pressed. After the command finishes, WTERM displays a "Pause...". Press any key when you wish to return to WTERM. The screen is then restored as it was before the command was run. Setup - Misc. WTERM can sound an alarm when a connection is made. Connect tone can be set to the tone that will be sounded. Setting it to 0 will disable the option. The tone you enter will be sounded five times. Start with something like 1100 and adjust the tone to your liking. The higher the tone, the higher the frequency sounded etc. BIOS writes can be enabled and disabled. If you run DV and have a bleed through problem or if you have CGA and have a snow problem, toggle this option to Y. Line Editor The line editor used in WTERM for the dialing directory entries and the setup strings, has several options. A ^K will Kill the current entry so that you can start over again. Left and right arrows work as you would expect, to position the cursor to the place you wish to make a change. You may insert and delete characters. When in insert mode, the cursor is made larger. Tab or Escape quits editing without any changes while enter saves the changes. The field you have to work in is black on white in the default color configuration but may be changed with the debug color scripts. If you change the colors, make sure the editing colors are noticeable with the colors you have selected. Note: Make sure you don't add extra spaces to the end of a string. WTERM will not remove them and they can cause you trouble in some fields. The End key will stop at the end of the string as will the right arrow key. Using multiple CFG and DIR files You can specify a drive and path for the .CFG and .DIR files that WTERM will use by using command line options. To specify a .CFG file in other than the default directory, use a command line option of: WTERM -C[drive][path]filename For a different phone directory use the -F option WTERM -F[drive][path]filename. Once in the dialing directory, you can load another directory with Alt-L. File Transfers The only provision for binary file transfers is through the use of external protocol drivers. Either DSZ (tm) or PCZ is recommended. Other protocols can be used as well but you should turn off the autozmodem option if you do. Set up the external protocol by doing an ALT-S from the terminal screen, as explained above. WTERM will pass the current speed an port settings. To pass the port, use %P; speed is %S. WTERM will expand the % variables to the proper value when executing the command line. A simple example of a Zmodem download using COM1 - COM4 could be written like so: DSZ port %p speed %s rz DSZ defaults to the correct speed so it is not necessary to use speed on the command line. You can also set an environment variable for the comm port - SET DSZPORT=2. Having done that, the above command line could be reduced to: DSZ rz PCZ however defaults to 2400 baud. To make the command line work at all available speeds, use of the %S parameter is necessary. PCZ 1 %s rz PCZ's command line looks much line DSZ except that the words "speed" and "port" are optional. You can hardcode the port as in the above example or use %p since your modem normally stays on the same port. You should be able to call most any protocol driver directly without the use of batch files, but batch files can be used if necessary. Much could be written on interfacing protocol drivers but that is beyond the scope of this DOC file. Read the DOC that comes with the protocol driver you are going to use and it should provide enough information to write the proper command lines. WTERM checks incomming data for valid filenames and saves the last filename found. If you are in autoZmodem mode and WTERM detects the Zmodem upload string, it checks the upload directory to see if the last filename seen exists. If it does, the filename prompt is skipped and an automatic upload started. This will cause problems with batch uploads since only the last filename will be uploaded. You can either turn off autoZmodem in setup or hit the PgUp key before receiving the Zmodem upload string. When this key is used, WTERM will pop up the filename prompt with the name of the last file seen. You can kill the filename with ^K if you want or hit enter if the correct filename was chosen. PgUp does not do auto uploading and gives you a chance to change the filename or add additional filenames if desired. ASCII Transfers The ALT-T (Transmit an ASCII file) and ALT-R (Receive an ASCII file) are intended for use in uploading and downloading messages. The ALT-T command strips linefeeds from the file and expands a blank line to a space carriage return. A small delay is built-in after sending a carriage return (about 3 msec.). This command can only be used online. I did this because I tried it offline and confused the heck out of my modem. The ALT-R receive a file is mainly intended for use with the ALT-M option explained below. It strips ANSI commands for incoming text. This mode is automatically turned off when the ALT-M command is executed. WTERM has pace character timing as an option. You can set the time between characters from 0 to 999 msec. When using the ALT-M option, a check will be made for carrier before doing the upload. If no carrier is detected, WTERM assumes you are not online and does not do the upload. Operation F1 displays a Help screen. Hit any key to resume and the screen will be restored. The following functions may be found on the help menu: ALT-X eXit WTERM back to DOS ALT-J Jump to DOS ALT-H Hangup ALT-C Clear the screen ALT-D Dialing directory ALT-N Exit the program leaving DTR and RTS high ALT-M Message reply online using your own editor ALT-R Receive an ASCII file to WTERM.MSG ALT-S Setup utility ALT-T Transmit an ASCII file PgUp Transmit a file using DSZ Zmodem PgDn Receive a file using DSZ Zmodem (in case Auto Zmodem dosn't work) F1 Help Menu F2 Transmit your name F3 Transmit your password F4-F8 Transmit string from .CFG file F9 Load LIST for file viewing F10 Load your Editor The Dialing Directory Press Alt-D from the terminal screen to enter the dialing directory. All 20 entries in a directory are displayed. Additional directories can be loaded with the Alt-L command. The box at the bottom of the screen is a help/status line. It will show you that you can scroll the scrollbar with the up and down arrow keys and get more help by using the left and right arrow keys. Once you dial, the line becomes a status line, showing you what board you are currently dialing and the seconds until redial. Add S7=45 to your modem initialization string to make it accurate. When you get a connect or a busy etc., the status line shows you the string returned by the modem such as CONNECT 2400 or BUSY. In the Que mode, it will countdown five seconds and dial another number. There is a clock at the lower right side of the screen. Here are the commands available to you in the dialing directory: Escape Escape will return you to the terminal mode. If you are dialing, escape will abort the dial. Up and down arrows Scroll the scrollbar to select an entry. Left and right arrows Scroll through the help lines in the help/status line. Home Move the scrollbar to the first entry. End Move the scrollbar to entry 20. Alt-P Toggle the display of Passwords on and off. The default is off. Alt-L Load another dialing directory. You will be prompted for the name of another directory to load. The name of the directory currently loaded will be displayed in the center of the line above the box. The size allowed for the filename will be displayed in white. Alt-E Edit an entry. The entry the scrollbar is on will be edited. Escape or tab will skip a field leaving it unchanged. Enter will clear the field. A white box (this can be changed with the color and mono batch files) will define the width of the field. 1 - 0 Hot keys to dial entry 1 through entry 10. Shift 1 - 0 Hot keys to dial entry 11 through 20. Q Que mode. Que and the number of queued entries will be displayed in the center of the line above the help/status line. An entry is queued by selecting it with the scrollbar and pressing the spacebar. To unque a single entry, press the spacebar again. Que mode is automatically turned off when making connection with the last entry on que. A checkmark is displayed beside the entry number for entries queued. Once a connection is made, if there are other entries queued, WTERM looks for NO CARRIER and the carrier detect signal to drop. When it sees this, it switches back to the dialing directory and starts the 5 second pause and then dials the next number in the que automatically. Once the que is built, you can go through the entire que without manually dialing again. C Clear all entries on que and quit que mode. Enter Dial the entry at the scrollbar or start que dialing. If you are in the que mode but no entries are queued, the current entry is queued. The default name for the dialing directory is WTERM.DIR. The parameter field should contain the speed, parity, bits per character and number of stop bits the entry should be dialed at. For 2400 baud, no parity, 8 data bits and 1 stop bit, you should enter 2400N81. Speeds through 19200 are supported. Once you have created the dialing directory, select an entry and hit enter to dial it. When you get to the name prompt, F2 will send your name as you have it in the configuration file. At the password prompt, F3 will send the password you have entered for that entry. Log file WTERM opens a log file when a connection is made. ANSI is stripped from the data written to the file. You may view the log at anytime if you have LIST configured by pressing ALT-L. The file will be saved until another connection is made, at which time it is reopened with the old contents destroyed. This keeps the log file from growing. You can toggle the log on and off with ALT-O. Just be aware that if you turn it off, you lose the ability to view text that has scrolled off your screen. Floppy users may want to turn it off and find a PD scrollback program. While there is no option in setup to save the On/Off status, it can be saved by going into setup and just saving it to disk. The next time you load Wterm, it will then remember weither to turn it on or off. Respond to messages and quote them using your own full screen editor locally The ALT-M command works in conjunction with ALT-R to allow you to quote a message and respond to it locally using your own full screen editor and then automatically upload the reply while still online. To use it, once you find a message to which you would like to respond and quote, type ALT-R. This will open a file named WTERM.MSG and any characters received are written to it. ANSI is stripped out. Display the message again so that it is captured to the file. Then hit ALT-R again. ALT-R is a toggle and hitting it the second time will close the file. At this point you start your reply just like you normally would. After entering to TO and the SUBJECT and get to the point you would start entering your message, hit ALT-M. WTERM then captures the timer tick interrupt and installs a program that keeps the board from timing out. It first sends a message to the sysop which the user will not see which says "Editing message offline. Please wait...". This lets the sysop know what is going on while you are in your editor. It then sends a space a half a second later and in another half second, a backspace. This is done the entire time you are in your editor. PCBoard(tm) will not time out with this routine (it would with the backspaces only as it use to be). After the space/backspace routine is installed it shells to DOS and bring up your editor editing WTERM.MSG. If you used ALT-R to copy the message into WTERM.MSG, you are ready to start editing your message - picking out what you wish to quote and writing your response. I not using ALT-R and using the .LOG file myself. If you do this, WTERM.MSG will be the last message you sent. Clear the editor and read in WTERM.LOG. Mark the start of the message and go to the end, then page back to the start of the message you wish to quote or respond to. Mark the start of that message and kill from that point back to the start of the file. Then go to the end of the message and kill from that point to the end and you are now ready to start your quotes and response. Reformat for line length and add the ">" to it. A editor that can do macros is useful here. Once you exit your editor, you are put back into WTERM, and the space/backspace routine is removed. There is a short delay while a string of backspaces is sent to remove the sysop message to keep it from becoming a part of your message. The screen is then restored and your message is automatically uploaded. If it gets garbled with noise, quit and start your reply again and then do an ALT-T and enter WTERM.MSG as the filename and upload it again. Jumping to DOS When you jump to DOS using ALT-J, the comm port remains active. Assuming the receive buffer doesn't overflow, when you return to the program, the screen will be restored and data received while in the shell will be displayed. While you are in the shell, the DOS prompt is changed to the current drive and path enclosed in curly brackets. The F1 key is reassigned using ANSI so that pressing it will cause it to send EXIT and you will be returned to WTERM. Of course you can also type EXIT to return. You don't have to change back to the directory WTERM is in before you type EXIT. WTERM always changes the default directory to it's own. If it is loaded from another drive it will change to its own drive and directory. Just add the WTERM directory to your path and you can load it from any drive and directory on your system. Exiting WTERM There are two ways to exit WTERM. By using ALT-X, you are returned prompted whether you really want to quit or not. Hit Y or enter to quit. N clears the prompt and leaves you in WTERM. When you exit, the comm port is reset and the controls are turned off. This will cause the modem to hangup if you are connected. To exit WTERM with the controls left high, use ALT-N. If you enter WTERM again while still connected, it detects carrier and will not send the modem init string. This allows you to exit to DOS and have all of your RAM to do with as you wish. Color Configuration WTERM colors can be configured using DEBUG scripts included in this package. MONO.SCR is included for users with monochrome monitors. While this is not the most convenient way of doing this, it does save space and programming and helps keep WTERM small. The following files have to do with colors: COLORS - gives the default colors, codes, and locations. WTCOLOR.BAT - a batch file to run DEBUG and take the script file COLOR.SCR as input. COLOR.SCR - the default color configuration that can be edited with an ASCII editor to colors of your own choice. COLORS gives information you will need to make your selections. WTMONO.BAT - a batch file to run DEBUG and take the script file MONO.SCR as input. MONO.SCR - a script file that sets the colors to black and GRAY or WHITE for use with monochrome monitors. Acknowledgement Acknowledgements After looking at several C source comm routines, I chose the one used from a file named COMM.ZIP by Mario Grannini. It was modified in several places but still retains a good bit of his work. It is a good example of C programming and was easily modified for use with WTERM. My thanks to Roland Brown, world famous author of Opus Message Kit (OMK) for his help and encouragement (nagging :-)), ideas, and beta testing. He got a chance to get back at me for my "help" with OMK here. WTERM Utilities PC Magazine published a program named SNIPPER. This program is a TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) program that allows you to mark off a block of text on your screen and save it to a buffer, to disk, or print it. Others have modified and improved upon it. It has proven to be useful for BBS use in quoting messages. The latest version I could find was version 2.2. I modified this version for was use in quoting with WTERM. It adds "> " to the start of each line and saves to a file with a default name of WTERM.MSG. The original version always appended to this file. I modified it to and gave the user the option of appending or of creating a new file with only the latest block of text. When used in the file mode, either Append or File, and saved to WTERM.MSG it is especially useful in writing messages using your own full screen editor (ALT-M option). Your editor is loaded with the text you have quoted already in it. For boards with editors fast enough to handle the speed, you can save to the buffer and do a Get when ready to insert the quote. On boards that can't handle the speed, you will have to use the ALT-M mode which does an ASCII upload. This program is named WT-QUOTE.ZIP and includes the ASM source code. PCZMOUSE PCZMOUSE is a Logitech (MS compatible) mouse menu for use with Wterm. PCZ is an external protocol driver that can add several protocols including Zmodem to any comm program and is PD. With this menu and PCZ, WTERM can have the following protocols: Xmodem, 1K-Xmodem, Ymodem, Zmodem, and Sealink. The source for this menu as well as Daryl's below is included so you can combine the two easily if you desire or use either or none. WTERM utilities by other authors Thanks to Daryl Martin, a mouse program is included. Daryl gave his permission to do so. I left his file exactly as I received it. UnZip it and give it a try if you have a mouse. Tom Collins wrote a program that makes setting the colors much easier. The name of the program is WTC105A.ZIP. While I am not sure it will save the status of BIOS writes and the log toggle, you should be able to use it and then get in WTERM, set the logger on or off, set BIOS writes to Y if you desire and save the configuration. Perhaps Tom will come out with a WTC106 now if it doesn't work. Legal Stuff DSZ mentioned above is shareware and is not free software. If you use it, you should register it and pay the reasonable $20 registration fee. LIST is free for personal use though the author does except contributions. Both programs are copyrighted by their authors. PCZ is public domain and copyrighted. SNIPPER is copyright PC Magazine. While a license is freely granted for use of this program, I do retain a copyright and reserve all rights to it. You may not charge for WTERM. The only exception to this is for computer clubs. They may charge up to $3.00 plus actual postage for a diskette containing WTERM. WTERM can not packaged with any product or sold by shareware disk dealers. No version of WTERM is to be distributed in modified form. Distribute it exactly as is. The only exception to this is that boards wishing to include their boards in the dialing directory may do so IF they do not remove the boards that are already in it. Those people helped with WTERM development and rightfully deserve to be there. Since this is a free program and I gain nothing from it, I also assume no responsibility should you decide to use it. Although it seems to work fine on my AT compatible, it may not work on your system. You assume all responsibility for ANYTHING that happens if you choose to run WTERM. By running it, you agree to these terms. Support None. If you feel you need support, look at some of the fine user supported software on the boards. The reason you do not see an address or phone number in this file is because I do not wish to support a free program. I certainly will not return long distance calls on my dime. If you happen to know me, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CALL ME AT WORK! My employer is paying for my time and I owe it to him. I will be less happy with you than he. For the most part you are on your own. Feel free to ask questions in the local BBS message areas where I can respond at my leisure. If you use it in your business, hire someone to support it. Don't expect me to do it for free. Sorry, but this is a hobbyist effort and I don't want it to go further than that. \/\/alter Cox