dcw@athena.mit.edu (David C. Whitney) (09/12/89)
I sent out the new Z-link at about 1:00 am liast night, and I was far too tired to start describing changes. So... Bug fixes --------- vt100 works even better than before. As you well know, vt100 is hard to make work properly. It may still even be buggy. Graphics chars aren't implemented yet, but that's coming. If you find a bug, let me know. (By the way, just about every release of Z-Link fixes the vt100 somehow. Therefore, things *are* better than the version you may already have) The file transfer section has been cleaned up. I finally tracked down a bug involving EOF, and killed it. Ymodem batch receiving from a system that does on-the-fly translations to the file (ie, 'sb -a file') does the right thing now. (The sednding side sends a file length of 0 for files it's going to translate. Z-Link will not coerce the file length to 0 anymore.) New Features ------------ I've written a standardized menu manager and a standard getfile manager. The getfile manager is very similar to Andy's in ShrinkIT. The menu manager allows the user a standard way of making choices (all menus have been changed, but I know a lot of you are used to the old fashion of making choices - you can still choose things the old way). DOS commands have been implemented. You can now Delete, Rename, and Create subdirs. A CATALOG command is pointless, due to the nature of the getfile dialog. The serial driver now uses the firmware on the GS if you're using one of the internal serial ports. Control panel settings are ignored, except for the slot assignment (ie, you have to have slot 2 set to Modem Port if you want to use the modem port). //e and //c users still have the regular drivers I've used before. WHAT THIS MEANS: Z-Link is friendly to other modem programs. You can run Z-Link before or after you run other modem programs, and everything should be fine. The configuration file format has radically changed. This means that once again, you must go through the somewhat painful process of updating your existing configuration files. The new design is *very* modular, and you will no longer need to run the MACRO.UPDATE utility on settings files created by this or later versions of Z-Link (isn't that nice!). Future versions of Z-Link will be able to load the current settings files, and save them out in the new format (should things change even more). Now that the file format has standardized, I've sent the layout to Apple // DTS. I've got a filetype - $5A/$8003. Check it out in some future release of File Type Notes. GS users- because the settings file type has changed from a VAR file to a 'configuration' file (that's type $5A), the icon for Z-Link has changed. You must put the new icon in your ICONS folder if you want the right thing to happen. The macro editor has been changed to allow use of the new settings file format. I will port the editor to assembler at some time in the future. The new editor will allow editing of all the fields in the settings file - which includes the macros, the terminal emulation, command keys, control-character filter, default pathnames (which you can do within Z-Link), and whatever else is there (frankly, I forget). The new editor will inherit fragments of Z-Link's core to allow the same interface to menus, windows, etc. The manual has been updated to describe the new features in detail. The manual is not in it's final version. I'll be sending out a new manual before January, 1990. The current manual should be just fine, short of a few typos and grammar errors. I noticed all the traffic for the modem program of the gods, I hope this can partially live up to your satisfaction (ie, it doesn't have Zmodem). Enjoy. Dave Whitney A junior (well, a senior) in Computer Science at MIT dcw@athena.mit.edu ...!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!dcw dcw@goldilocks.mit.edu I wrote Z-Link & BinSCII. Send me bug reports. I use a //GS. Send me Tech Info. "This is MIT. Collect and 3rd party calls will not be accepted at this number."