by Craig Bruce -- for version 1.01 -- December 17, 1995.
1. INTRODUCTION
This is a simple VT-100 terminal-emulation program. To start it up, type:
term
at the command-line prompt. When it starts, it will bring up a screen with
24 display lines and a status line. (You will see slightly different things
depending on the number of display lines that the window you start the
terminal program in; an 27-row VDC screen gives the best results). The
status line will display the program name and version (the official name is
"ACEterm"), the baud rate, the parity (et al.) setting, the terminal
emulation type, and the capture buffer-size and modification status, the
amount of dynamic memory free, and which key to press for help.
The capture buffer, when active, stores every byte received from the serial
port verbatim (including escape sequences, etc.) and can grow to be as large
as the amount of free "dynamic" memory you have available. My system has
12.5 Megs of the stuff available, and that is how large my capture buffer
can get. The size of the capture buffer is reported in bytes on the status
line (as is the amount of dynamic memory free).
The capture buffer uses "dynamic memory" exclusively for storing data (it
doesn't use any memory in the program area for this), so you will not have
much luck trying to use this feature on an unexpanded C64, which will only
give you a little bit of dynamic memory to use (more if you disable the
Soft-80 display or decrease the program-area limit). Also, this feature
will drop lots of characters if your modem doesn't have RTS/CTS hardware
flow control. If your modem has hardware flow control but you lose
characters anyway, then try fiddling with the "RTS activation delay" field
in the system configuration. You can check if you are losing characters by
pressing Ctrl-O and checking the overrun count. The program currently has
only one capture buffer, but the design allows for multiple capture buffers
(if such a thing whould be useful). The capture buffer is the only real
"feature" of the terminal program, other than the VT-100 emulation.
There are three terminal-emulation modes supported: VT-100, GlassTTY, and
Verbatim. GlassTTY will not interpret any of the escape sequences that it
receives, and Verbatim mode will display every character that it receives
and will not even interpret control characters like carriage return. In
this mode, the characters will be shown in reverse according to the ASCII
character (printable characters will be translated as normal).
All of the important VT-100 escape sequence are supported (including the
Insert-Line and Delete-Line sequences of the VT-102), so you shouldn't have
too many problems. One thing to note: the scroll-region doesn't work
exactly like it does on a VT-100: if the cursor is moved outside of the
scroll region, then the scroll region will be reset to the entire screen.
(I don't know if this restriction is of any practical consequence; most
full-screen programs just use scroll regions temporarily to insert and
delete lines). This program has been tested and works perfectly with "vi",
"emacs", "pine", and "lynx".
In normal operation, you type characters on the keyboard and they are sent
to the modem, and the characters from the modem are displayed on the
screen. This is "full echoplex", and the program doesn't support "half
echoplex". The program also doesn't support menu-oriented auto-dialing/
etc. features, so you're going to have to send your own "AT" commands to
your modem by hand (which really isn't much of a bother if you have an
intelligent modem and it is set up properly (it doesn't take me very long to
type "atds")).
2. COMMAND KEYS
The following hot keys are supported ("Co-" means "Commodore-" and "Ct-"
means "Ctrl-"):
Co-A : decrease baud rate
Co-B : increase baud rate
Co-E : exit and save capture buffer if modified
Co-I : help information (also, the HELP key)
Co-N : name the capture buffer
Co-O : show operating status of modem driver
Co-P : change parity: 8N1/7E1
Co-Q : quit (won't work if buffer is modified)-+
Co-S : save the capture buffer |
Co-T : set terminal-emulation type |
Co-Z : pause terminal flow v
Co-\ : toggle capture-buffer modification status
Co-_ : compose ISO-8859-1 character
Co + and Co - : enable(+)/disable(-) the capture buffer
Ct-1 : clear the capture buffer
Ct-3 : enter hexadecimal ASCII character code
F1,F3,F5,F7,Ct-@ to Ct-_ : PF1,PF2,PF3,PF4, ASCII Ctrl codes
CLR : clear screen (nothing sent to modem)
DEL,HOME,BACKARROW : BS,DEL,_(128) / BS,DEL,ESC(64)
RVS,RVSOFF : reverse screen (128 VDC only)
STOP : nothing(128) / send TAB character(64)
The capture buffer is named "capturebuf" by default but you can change this
by using Commodore-N. You will be prompted to enter a filename on the
status line. This name can be a full pathname if you wish. If the filename
already exists, then the old file will automatically be overwritten when you
save the capture buffer.
If the capture buffer has unsaved characters in it, then an asterisk (*)
will be displayed before the "buf/BUF" field on the status line. When the
capture buffer is active, the field will be named "BUF" and when it is
inactive, "buf". The contents of the buffer will be retained between
activations and deactivations. To clear the capture buffer, use Ctrl-1.
You cannot clear the capture buffer nor exit from the terminal program if
the buffer has unsaved characters in it, so you can use Ctrl-\ (british
pound) to toggle the modification status (or save the buffer with Ctrl-S or
Ctrl-E).
The Ctrl-O "operating status" of the modem includes the number of characters
dropped, send, and received.
The Ctrl-Z key allows you to stop the flow of the display immediately. When
this key is pressed, ACEterm will stop pulling characters from the modem
device and will wait for you to press another key. If the receive buffer
for the modem fills up, then the device driver will assert hardware flow
control. If you have a hardware-flow-controlled connection all the way back
to your remote host, then no characters will be lost. For modern remote
hosts, this mechanism will give you much faster response than the
now-pretty-much-useless Ctrl-S / Ctrl-Q (Xoff/Xon) mechanism.
The keys DEL, HOME, BACKARROW, and STOP send special characters, depending
on whether you are using a C128 or C64 keyboard (extended or basic
keyboard). The DEL and HOME keys send BackSpace ($08) and Delete ($7f),
respectively on both keyboards. The BACKARROW sends an underscore and STOP
is ignored on a C128 while BACKARROW sends an Escape and STOP sends a Tab on
the C64. To get an underscore on a C64, you can press either
Shift-BACKARROW or Commodore-SPACE. These keys are not currently
user-definable (except by modifying and re-assembling the terminal
program--it is written for the ACE-assembler and the stuff to change is near
the bottom of the source file), so you'll have to live with these settings
for the time being.
3. CHARACTER COMPOSITION
ACEterm has two command keys for composing characters: Ctrl-3 (with the #
symbol on top) and Commodore-_ (BackArrow). After pressing the former, you
will be prompted to enter the two-digit hexadecimal number for the ASCII
code that you want to send. After entering the digits, the code will be
sent just as if you had typed it on the keyboard. For your convenience, a
table of all of the ASCII codes (including the ISO-8859-1 codes) is included
in Appendix A of this document.
Note that in order to display the ISO-8859-1 characters, you have to load
that characterset into the kernel. You can do this by either typing:
chrset acechr-iso8859-1
on the command line or by changing the "default character set" field in the
system configuration to be the string "acechr-iso8859-1". The factory-set
default is to use "acechr-commodore" for hysterical raisins (though I
personally use the ISO set at all times).
The Commodore-BackArrow command will prompt you for a special two-character
code that represents the ISO-8859-1 character that you want to send. For
example, if I wanted to enter Marko Makela's name in the proper way, I would
enter (angle brackets around keystrokes):
< ><"><">
The following character-composition sequences are accepted for generating
ISO-8859-1 characters. This table was derived from the VT-220 character-
composition table, but a few extensions are made because the VT-220 table
didn't include all of the ASCII codes between $A0 and $FF (plus, a couple
of VT characters are in different positions).
ASC SEQUENCE ASC SEQUENCE ASC SEQUENCE
--- --------------- --- -------- --- --------
$a0 $c0 `A $e0 `a
$a1 !! $c1 'A $e1 'a
$a2 C/ or C| $c2 ^A $e2 ^a
$a3 L- or L= $c3 ~A $e3 ~a
$a4 XO or X0 $c4 "A $e4 "a
$a5 Y- or Y $c5 *A $e5 *a
$a6 || $c6 AE $e6 ae
$a7 SO or S! or S0 $c7 C, $e7 c,
$a8 "" $c8 `E $e8 `e
$a9 CO or C0 $c9 'E $e9 'e
$aa A_ $ca ^E $ea ^e
$ab << $cb "E $eb "e
$ac ~~ $cc `I $ec `i
$ad -- $cd 'I $ed 'i
$ae RO or R0 $ce ^I $ee ^i
$af __ $cf "I $ef "i
$b0 0^ $d0 D- $f0 %o
$b1 +- $d1 ~N $f1 ~n
$b2 2^ $d2 `O $f2 `o
$b3 3^ $d3 'O $f3 'o
$b4 '' $d4 ^O $f4 ^o
$b5 /U $d5 ~O $f5 ~o
$b6 P! $d6 "O $f6 "o
$b7 .^ $d7 ** $f7 //
$b8 ,, $d8 O/ $f8 o/
$b9 1^ $d9 `U $f9 `u
$ba O_ $da 'U $fa 'u
$bb >> $db ^U $fb ^u
$bc 14 $dc "U $fc "u
$bd 12 $dd 'Y $fd 'y
$be 34 $de PP $fe pp
$bf ?? $df ss $ff "y
You don't have to worry about typing each of these sequences exactly as-is,
since four transformations are applied in trying to match a two-character
sequence to an ASCII code: (1) try to match as-is; (2) swap the order of the
two characters and try to match; (3) swap the order back and alter the case
of the two characters (letters) and try to match; and (4) swap the altered-
case characters into reverse order again and try to match. The first match
wins, and if no matches work then an error is displayed and nothing is sent
to the modem.
4. THE FUTURE
Future plans for this terminal program include fixing perfecting the
emulation implementing a scrollback viewer for the capture buffer, and
allowing the program to call external programs like the command shell, ZED,
and file-transfer programs. The intended file-transfer programs are:
Raw-Text transfer, FX, and Z-Modem.
The terminal program will be made to accept the following commands in its
configuration file, ".termrc" (currently no support exists):
- Implement some kind of user-configuration mechanism into ACEterm.
Functions: getline, getword, locaseWord, lookupWord.
- script ".termrc":
- key del $08
- key home $7f
- key backarrow $5f
- key stop null
- term vt-100
- baud 38400
- parm 8N1
- string 1 hello there how are you?
- readbuf 768
- chrset filename
- number 1 38400 8N1 886-1234 ccnga
- hangup ~~~ATH^m~~~
- dial ATDT
- call-external yes
- Extra features for ACEterm: send break, drop DTR, force flow control.
- Extend the configuration file to 512+ bytes and add new configuration
items, including the keymaps, a temporary directory, and a config
directory list for ".xxxxrc" files (or use exec path?). Type of C128
internal memory expansion, type of C64 internal memory expansion, type
of clock to initially set time from.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX A.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Craig's Handy ASCII Guide (ISO-8859-1)
0/00 ____NUL____ 64/40 _____@_____ 128/80 ___________ 192/c0 _A`_grave__
1/01 ____SOH____ 65/41 _____A_____ 129/81 ___________ 193/c1 _A'_acute__
2/02 ____STX____ 66/42 _____B_____ 130/82 ___________ 194/c2 _A^_circum_
3/03 ____ETX____ 67/43 _____C_____ 131/83 ___________ 195/c3 _A~_tilde__
4/04 ____EOT____ 68/44 _____D_____ 132/84 ___________ 196/c4 _A"_dieres_
5/05 ____ENQ____ 69/45 _____E_____ 133/85 ___________ 197/c5 _A__ring___
6/06 ____ACK____ 70/46 _____F_____ 134/86 ___________ 198/c6 _AE________
7/07 ____BEL____ 71/47 _____G_____ 135/87 ___________ 199/c7 _C,cedilla_
8/08 ____BS_____ 72/48 _____H_____ 136/88 ___________ 200/c8 _E`_grave__
9/09 ____TAB____ 73/49 _____I_____ 137/89 ___________ 201/c9 _E'_acute__
10/0a ____LF_____ 74/4a _____J_____ 138/8a ___________ 202/ca _E^_circum_
11/0b ____VT_____ 75/4b _____K_____ 139/8b ___________ 203/cb _E"_dieres_
12/0c ____FF_____ 76/4c _____L_____ 140/8c ___________ 204/cc _I`_grave__
13/0d ____CR_____ 77/4d _____M_____ 141/8d ___________ 205/cd _I'_acute__
14/0e ____SO_____ 78/4e _____N_____ 142/8e ___________ 206/ce _I^_circum_
15/0f ____SI_____ 79/4f _____O_____ 143/8f ___________ 207/cf _I"_dieres_
16/10 ____DLE____ 80/50 _____P_____ 144/90 ___________ 208/d0 _D-_Eth_lr_
17/11 ____DC1____ 81/51 _____Q_____ 145/91 ___________ 209/d1 _N~_tilde__
18/12 ____DC2____ 82/52 _____R_____ 146/92 ___________ 210/d2 _O`_grave__
19/13 ____DC3____ 83/53 _____S_____ 147/93 ___________ 211/d3 _O'_acute__
20/14 ____DC4____ 84/54 _____T_____ 148/94 ___________ 212/d4 _O^_circum_
21/15 ____NAK____ 85/55 _____U_____ 149/95 ___________ 213/d5 _O~_tilde__
22/16 ____SYN____ 86/56 _____V_____ 150/96 ___________ 214/d6 _O"_dieres_
23/17 ____ETB____ 87/57 _____W_____ 151/97 ___________ 215/d7 __multiply_
24/18 ____CAN____ 88/58 _____X_____ 152/98 ___________ 216/d8 _O/_slash__
25/19 ____EM_____ 89/59 _____Y_____ 153/99 ___________ 217/d9 _U`_grave__
26/1a ____SUB____ 90/5a _____Z_____ 154/9a ___________ 218/da _U'_acute__
27/1b ____ESC____ 91/5b _____[_____ 155/9b ___________ 219/db _U^_circum_
28/1c ____FS_____ 92/5c _____\_____ 156/9c ___________ 220/dc _U"_dieres_
29/1d ____GS_____ 93/5d _____]_____ 157/9d ___________ 221/dd _Y'_acute__
30/1e ____RS_____ 94/5e _____^_____ 158/9e ___________ 222/de _cap_thorn_
31/1f ____US_____ 95/5f _UNDERLINE_ 159/9f ___________ 223/df _Es-sed_B__
32/20 ___SPACE___ 96/60 _____`_____ 160/a0 _req space_ 224/e0 _a`_grave__
33/21 _____!_____ 97/61 _____a_____ 161/a1 _!_invertd_ 225/e1 _a'_acute__
34/22 _____"_____ 98/62 _____b_____ 162/a2 ___cent____ 226/e2 _a^_circum_
35/23 _____#_____ 99/63 _____c_____ 163/a3 ___pound___ 227/e3 _a~_tilde__
36/24 _____$_____ 100/64 _____d_____ 164/a4 __currency_ 228/e4 _a"_dieres_
37/25 _____%_____ 101/65 _____e_____ 165/a5 ____yen____ 229/e5 _a__ring___
38/26 _____&_____ 102/66 _____f_____ 166/a6 _|_broken__ 230/e6 _ae________
39/27 _____'_____ 103/67 _____g_____ 167/a7 __section__ 231/e7 _c,cedilla_
40/28 _____(_____ 104/68 _____h_____ 168/a8 __umulaut__ 232/e8 _e`_grave__
41/29 _____)_____ 105/69 _____i_____ 169/a9 _copyright_ 233/e9 _e'_acute__
42/2a _____*_____ 106/6a _____j_____ 170/aa __fem_ord__ 234/ea _e^_circum_
43/2b _____+_____ 107/6b _____k_____ 171/ab _l_ang_quo_ 235/eb _e"_dieres_
44/2c _____,_____ 108/6c _____l_____ 172/ac ____not____ 236/ec _i`_grave__
45/2d _____-_____ 109/6d _____m_____ 173/ad _syl_hyphn_ 237/ed _i'_acute__
46/2e _____._____ 110/6e _____n_____ 174/ae _registerd_ 238/ee _i^_circum_
47/2f _____/_____ 111/6f _____o_____ 175/af _overline__ 239/ef _i"_dieres_
48/30 _____0_____ 112/70 _____p_____ 176/b0 __degrees__ 240/f0 _o^x_Eth_s_
49/31 _____1_____ 113/71 _____q_____ 177/b1 ____+/-____ 241/f1 _n~_tilda__
50/32 _____2_____ 114/72 _____r_____ 178/b2 _2_supersc_ 242/f2 _o`_grave__
51/33 _____3_____ 115/73 _____s_____ 179/b3 _3_supersc_ 243/f3 _o'_acute__
52/34 _____4_____ 116/74 _____t_____ 180/b4 ___acute___ 244/f4 _o^_circum_
53/35 _____5_____ 117/75 _____u_____ 181/b5 ____mu_____ 245/f5 _o~_tilde__
54/36 _____6_____ 118/76 _____v_____ 182/b6 _paragraph_ 246/f6 _o"_dieres_
55/37 _____7_____ 119/77 _____w_____ 183/b7 __mid_dot__ 247/f7 __divide___
56/38 _____8_____ 120/78 _____x_____ 184/b8 __cedilla__ 248/f8 _o/_slash__
57/39 _____9_____ 121/79 _____y_____ 185/b9 _1_supersc_ 249/f9 _u`_grave__
58/3a _____:_____ 122/7a _____z_____ 186/ba __mas_ord__ 250/fa _u'_acute__
59/3b _____;_____ 123/7b _____{_____ 187/bb _r_ang_quo_ 251/fb _u^_circum_
60/3c _____<_____ 124/7c _____|_____ 188/bc ____1/4____ 252/fc _u"_dieres_
61/3d _____=_____ 125/7d _____}_____ 189/bd ____1/2____ 253/fd _y'_acute__
62/3e _____>_____ 126/7e _____~_____ 190/be ____3/4____ 254/fe _sm_thorn__
63/3f _____?_____ 127/7f ____DEL____ 191/bf _?_invertd_ 255/ff _y"_dieres_