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1990-11-26
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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