🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <993@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM>, ngg@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM (Norman
Goodger) writes:
> In article <5792@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> wtj@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (william.t.jones,rd,) writes:
> >
> >Versaterm already supports the Communications Toolbox.
> >
> I have seen the latest version of Versaterm and I do not remember seeing
> anything in it that would allow it to interface to the CTB..course since
> the CTB is not released yet, perhaps the changed are not obvious to the
> casual observer...
> 

One thing that may be relevant to this discussion is that there are
several levels of "Comm. Toolbox compatibility," which take different
amounts of time to recode into an application:

 - The serial port registry

   This is the easiest, and what is/will be supported by people like SuperMac
   that make multi-port communications boards.  It lets an application find
   out how many serial ports (or things emulating serial ports at a very
   low level) there are currently installed, what their respective names
   are, and what the names of their respective drivers are.  Being compatible
   at this level is pretty easy (putting up a dialog instead of hardwiring
   ".Ain" and ".Aout"), and should drop into VersaTerm's alternate driver
   hook very easily.  In my opinion, *every* person doing anything using
   serial communications should be at least preparing to deal with this.

 - Connection Tools

   Connection tools give you what amount to bidirectional full-duplex
   streams (sort of one level up from a raw serial port).  This is the
   level where network drivers and multiple session support comes in.
   Anyone who's real serious about providing terminal emulation should
   also be looking real hard at this, since it will open up new physical
   media, and isn't all that much harder to code for that a simple serial
   port.

 - Terminal tools

   These are pretty nifty, but they don't "drop in" as easily, since they
   are predicated on a very "Macintosh-style" program flow--event driven,
   using code resources & whatnot.  For some of us, this is not a real
   problem, especially since anything that handles multiple simultaneous
   sessions already has a certain amount of the necessary framework in place,
   but any application that uses lots of globals, or knows deep in its heart
   that it's in control of all of the interaction, is going to have some
   tough going.

 - File transfer tools

   Pretty much the same issues as terminal tools, only for file transfer
   (surprise, eh?).

The more disciplined and generalized the code, the easier it will be to add
Comm. Toolbox support.

--
Amanda Walker <amanda@intercon.com>