EasyTerm is (c) Copyright 1997, P. Lutus. All Rights Reserved.
EasyTerm is CareWare. Please visit the CareWare Home Page at http://www.arachnoid.com/careware, and the EasyTerm Home Page at http://www.arachnoid.com/easyterm.
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EasyTerm is an advanced terminal emulator for Windows 95/NT. It supports the DEC VT100 protocol and ANSI colors, keyboard macros, logging, and variable-size display. EasyTerm remembers all your choices between sessions, including 26 keyboard macros.
EasyTerm supports the standard Telnet protocol, and also permits sessions with many other protocols for system support work. EasyTerm's performance has been verified with all standard UNIX terminal applications.
These instructions assume you have installed TCP/IP capabilities on the machine that will host EasyTerm. TCP/IP installation is beyond the scope of this document, please see your network administrator for assistance with this.
--- INSTALLATION ---
Download the EasyTerm ZIP file, unZIP it, and install it in a convenient directory. Make sure this help file is included in that directory.
If EasyTerm will not run, it is usually because of the absence of one or more DLL (Dynamic Linking Library) files. Here are two particular DLL files required by EasyTerm that may not be on your system:
MFC42.DLL
WININET.DLL
These files can be obtained at the EasyTerm Home Page http://www.arachnoid.com/easyterm.
--- OPERATION ---
These instructions assume your system has network access and TCP/IP sockets services installed. If your system has a working Web browser and/or you can visit the Internet, then these conditions have been met.
VERY IMPORTANT: If you find the EasyTerm display hard for you to read, simply maximize the application. EasyTerm's display stretches to accommodate the available space -- maximizing the application allows for a large, easy-to-read display. Also you can change the display's number of rows and columns to increase readability or increase the amount of data displayed in one screen (more about this below).
Connecting is very simple. Run EasyTerm and press the leftmost toolbar button (or select Connect ... New Connection from the menu). In the "Host" location, type the name of a site that supports telnet. In "Port," choose a protocol. In most cases, the default Telnet port is correct, but you may use the drop-down list to select another, or you may type in a numerical port for nonstandard port numbers.
Here is an example. Suppose you want an up-to-date weather forecast. The University of Michigan has an excellent weather service, both on the Web and by way of Telnet. In this example, we will get local weather.
Click the "Connect" toolbar button (at the far left) or select menu item Connect ... New Connection. For "Host," type "madlab.sprl.umich.edu" and for "port", type in the number 3000 (this service uses a nonstandard port number).
Click "OK" and (assuming your system has Internet access) you will see the University of Michigan weather screen (this example was conducted in October 1997):
Press Return for menu, or enter 3 letter forecast city code:
At this point, if you know the three-letter code for the airport nearest you, you can type it in and you will see a current weather report.
-- What is ECHO? --
In this example, you may notice that you cannot see the characters you are typing. This is because the service does not "echo" your typed characters back to your terminal. To solve this problem, simply click the ear symbol on the toolbar. Notice that the status bar (bottom of the application display) shows "Local Echo ON." You can turn echo off and on by pressing the echo button repeatedly -- try it.
Sometimes you will see two of each character you type - this is because the service is echoing your characters and you have selected local echo as well. For this case, turn off local echo by pressing the ear symbol.
After you have typed in a host and port, it is saved for you on a menu list for fast access. Simply choose menu item "Connect" and select your host from the list. If you connect to a particular host on more than one port, each connection is saved separately.
-- Copying and Saving -
There are many ways to copy your EasyTerm data to other Windows programs. You can simply copy the screen contents to the Windows clipboard using the toolbar button or the menu command Edit ... Copy Screen (but don't use Ctrl+C - this key has a special meaning to UNIX systems and therefore is reserved for this in EasyTerm).
You can save a file containing the displayed screen contents - simply press the "Save Screen as File" toolbar button or menu command. You can also record your entire session in a log file - choose the "Session Logging" toolbar button or menu command.
-- Session Logging --
In Session Logging, you choose a file name and decide whether to overwrite a file or append new information to its contents. You can pause while recording or stop the recording. The Session Logging dialog may be left on display as the session progresses - it will provide status information and the number of characters recorded. The "traffic light" in the dialog shows the logging status at a glance. Red means the log file is closed, green means the file is open and recording is taking place, and yellow means a recording has been paused.
If you have space on your display, you may choose to leave the dialog open and refer to it. If you don't have room, simply close the dialog. When you need it, just press the toolbar button to make it visible and check the status.
EasyTerm will remember the location you choose for your log file between uses of the program, and will warn you if you are about to overwrite an earlier log.
-- Printing -
EasyTerm will preview and print the current screen contents. This is just a convenience, for quickly making a record of the display. Simply select File ... Print Preview or File ... Print.
Remember to switch display colors to black letters on a white background in order to print (unless you like stressing your printer and using lots of ink). You switch colors by pressing the "Reverse Colors" toolbar button.
-- Keyboard Macros --
EasyTerm will remember 26 keyboard macros, accessible with the keys Alt-A to Alt-Z. To invoke the macro editor, choose Edit ... Keyboard Macros or the toolbar button.
To choose a macro, use the dropdown list to select a letter between A and Z. Type in your macro using these rules:
1. To add a carriage return to your entry, type Ctrl-Enter, or type \r.
2. You can add many kinds of non-printing characters to your text such as tabs, formfeeds, and others. Here is a complete list:
String Meaning
\a Bell
\b Backspace
\f Formfeed
\n Linefeed
\r Carriage Return
\t Horizontal Tab
\v Vertical Tab
\nnn Character number in octal notation
\xnn Character number in Hexadecimal notation
The "nnn" in the list above are to be replaced with the appropriate numerical digits.
Finally, if you want to use the reverse-slash character itself, simply type it twice - "\\".
Remember this when typing in macros and testing them: if you are not logged on you must turn on local echo in order to see the macros on the display. Local echo is toggled with the "ear" toolbar button.
Also, when you are done typing your macros, you must click the main terminal display to test and use them. You can leave the macro editor on display, but you must "change focus" to the main window to see the result.
The macro list is saved for you between program sessions, and can be edited at any time.
-- Program Setup -
Click the "Setup" toolbar button to see a display of properties. All your property choices are saved between program uses. Here is a description of each:
Local Echo enables and disables a local display of transmitted characters, just like the toolbar button.
Bold Text changes from standard weight to Bold. Bold may be desirable to increase display readability, but on some low-end systems it distorts the font presentation. In general, it works better on large displays.
Wrap to Screen causes a local wrap to screen. This option is not usually needed, because the host Telnet server usually inquires about screen size and then prevents characters from exceeding the screen size.
Reverse Color switches the basic screen colors. This control does not affect the ANSI color display, only the foreground and background colors. There is a toolbar button for this purpose also.
Line endings - pretty much self-explanatory. In some cases a host may require pairs of LF/CR, sometimes not. And the local program may not receive the linefeed/carriage return pair it requires from some sources.
Delete key. The two standard delete keys are available here (you would think they would finally decide which one to use). One of these two keys is mapped to the "Backspace" keyboard key.
Display size. This is a powerful feature that increases or decreases the number of rows and columns in the display without increasing its size. Also, EasyTerm's display window automatically adjusts itself as you increase or decrease the size of the Windows window. These two properties are independent.
Connection Timeout. Using this property, you can increase or decrease the amount of time EasyTerm waits to get a connection.
-- Use of services other than Telnet --
EasyTerm is an easy way to learn a lot about TCP/IP protocols, because in principle, it supports them all.
In some cases you will have to remember about local echo and adding a local Linefeed character. An example is "Whois," the Internet's master database of site operators and addresses. For "Whois, you should use local echo and add a carriage return to incoming lines. You might as well also turn on logging, because a typical Whois entry will exceed the size of the display.
"Whois" does not prompt you for an entry - you simply log on to "rs.internic.net" (for non-military hosts) and type the name of the host you are interested in. Also, "Whois" delivers one search result and then logs off - you must log back on for each inquiry.
You may also find it interesting to try SMTP and POP3, the routing and user-interface mail servers on most host systems. Understanding these protocols can solve any number of e-mail mysteries.
-- Invoking EasyTerm from the Command Line or a Shortcut --
EasyTerm may be invoked from a DOS shell or a shortcut, with a specified host and protocol on the command line. On program activation, the specified connection is made. The protocol may be specified as a port number or name. In these examples --
easyterm hostname
easyterm hostname:telnet
easyterm hostname:23
-- all three invocations would produce the same result, because if you omit a protocol, telnet is assumed. You may use any port number or any of the port names specified in EasyTerm.
These two examples --
easyterm hostname:smtp
easyterm hostname:25
also produce the same result.
-- Transferring prorgam data --
EasyTerm keeps its program data in a file named "easyterm.ini" located in the application directory. If you transfer this file to another machine, that copy of EasyTerm will have all the settings and macros of the original. This makes cloning EasyTerm as easy as such a thing would be under Linux/Unix.
-- Using EasyTerm with a proxy server --
To use EasyTerm with a proxy server, simply enter the name of the desired host followed by the required proxy port:
easyterm hostname:proxyport.
For the number of your system's proxy port, see your network administrator.
