wales@valeria.cs.ucla.edu (01/13/89)
I picked up a copy of Telix 3.11 the other day (via ARPA Internet anony-
mous FTP from SIMTEL20), and have been spending my spare time trying to
familiarize myself with it.
So far, I have been using Procomm (first 2.4.2, then Procomm Plus). I'm
not yet prepared to say I am finished evaluating Telix -- but from what
I've seen up to this point, it looks very good and seems to be a clear
"win" over Procomm Plus across the board.
I will say that I've run across a few misfeatures (and even outright
bugs) in Telix. However, none of these appear to me to be showstoppers.
(Obviously, if there *are* any "showstoppers", I would like to find them
before putting on my "good shareware citizen" :-} hat and sending in my
US$35 contribution / license fee / conscience balm!)
Here is a list of my reactions so far. I would welcome any comments.
GOOD POINTS:
==> Built-in ZMODEM support.
==> Telix's scrollback buffer size can be set to up to 64K bytes -- much
larger than PROCOMM PLUS's 10K bytes. (I find I do a lot of scroll-
ing back, so this is a very welcome feature in my book.)
==> The SALT programming language is *much* more flexible than Procomm
Plus's ASPECT language. One feature which looks very promising --
though I haven't tried it yet -- is the "track" facility, which lets
you look for multiple chracter strings from the input concurrently.
BAD POINTS:
==> Bug in ANSI/VT102 emulation: "^[[@" (insert character) is treated
as a no-op. However, "^[[1@" (with an explicit count) works -- and
since I've been using an individually customized, private "termcap"
entry with Procomm Plus anyway, making up another one for Telix is
no big problem for me.
==> Bug in dialing directory editing: Parity is always reset by default
to NONE if you pass through the existing setting via RETURN -- even
if the entry already has some other value. This is serious: if you
aren't careful, you could easily end up with an "N71" terminal mode
(which generally won't work *at all*).
==> Bug in setting default initial terminal mode: If you try to set the
default mode to be 7 bits with parity, the parity will be forgotten
and will always change back to NONE the next time you run Telix.
The only workaround seems to be to set an 8-bit default mode (N81).
Since I do almost all of my dialing out of the dialing directory
(where a terminal mode can be specified for each entry) -- and since
modem initialization with an "N81" mode works perfectly fine -- this
is not a serious problem for me. People who do lots of manual dial-
ing might regret not being able to set a default of "S71" or "E71".
This bug does *not* apply to entries in dialing directories. If you
give a parity setting in a dialing directory entry, it does stay --
provided you don't accidentally wipe it out the next time you edit
the entry (see the previous bug).
==> Misfeature in dialing directory editing: There is no way to go back
to change a previous parameter in a dialing directory entry. (I.e.,
there should be a key that moves opposite to RETURN.) As it is now,
you just have to hit RETURNs to step all the way through to the end
of the entry -- then edit it again from the beginning.
==> Misfeature with BREAK: There is no global setting for default BREAK
length (though whatever you get when you press ctrl-END seems to
work fine on the systems I talk to). Also, it is painful to have to
specify the BREAK length in *every* "send_brk" call in SALT scripts.
==> Misfeature with date/time display: Although the SALT language lets
you change display formats for time (12 vs. 24 hour mode) and date
(MM/DD/YY, DD/MM/YY, YY/MM/DD), there is no way provided to change
these settings from the keyboard. If, for example, you want 24-hour
time display mode as a default, the only way to do it seems to be to
run a SALT script with "_time_format = 1;" every time you use Telix.
This deficiency is especially annoying when you realize that Telix's
default time display format uses 12-hour mode (with no accompanying
"AM" or "PM" indication). If the authors can't or won't add a way
to change the default date/time display format, they should at least
change the time display default to 24-hour mode.
==> "Underlined" text on color displays: Some people have reported that
Telix shows underlined text with a blue background (making it hard
to see with certain color combinations). Since I have a monochrome
display right now, I haven't noticed this problem myself. I assume
it can be worked around by either selecting different screen colors
or making a customized "termcap" entry (with some other display
attributes for the "us" and/or "so" parameters).
WISH LIST:
==> Dialing directory: There should be a way to copy an existing entry
to a new slot, in case two or more entries are almost identical.
==> Dialing directory: There should be a way to refer to entries sym-
bolically (instead of just by number). This is especially critical
with SALT scripts: as things now stand, if you do "dial" calls from
scripts, you will have to recompile all these scripts if you ever
insert or delete entries from the middle of your dialing directory.
A reasonable workaround for this problem is to put each phone number
which you are going to dial from a script into a separate dialing
directory. Then, the script can select the dialing directory (by
name) and just dial entry #1.
==> Dialing directory: A dialing directory file name without an exten-
sion should be automatically augmented with an extension of ".FON".
The Telix authors apparently thought they were adding flexibility by
not enforcing a standard filename extension for dialing directories,
but in the DOS world I think it is better to add default extensions
when none are specified by the user.
==> Dialing directory: Current dialing directory file name should be
converted to all capitals for display on the screen (e.g., in the
alt-Z status display, as well as the "load new dialing directory"
screen).
All in all, Telix looks like a good product so far. I will continue to
follow the net discussion; if anyone knows of other bugs or misfeatures,
or can correct any misunderstanding on my part pertaining to the things
I have mentioned here, I would very much like to hear from you.
And, yes, I do plan to send these comments to Exis Inc.
-- Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 (213) 825-5683
3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA
wales@CS.UCLA.EDU ...!(uunet,ucbvax,rutgers)!cs.ucla.edu!wales
"Now, if you do see me again today, I want you to report it to me immediately."wales@valeria.cs.ucla.edu (Rich Wales) (01/15/89)
A couple of clarifications, and a new bug.
In article <19505@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> I wrote:
Bug in dialing directory editing: Parity is always reset by
default to NONE if you pass through the existing setting via
RETURN -- even if the entry already has some other value. This
is serious: if you aren't careful, you could easily end up with
an "N71" terminal mode (which generally won't work *at all*).
Further investigation shows that this bug applies only if the existing
parity setting in the directory entry is SPACE. A setting of EVEN or
ODD will be retained -- but SPACE gets set back to NONE unless you
explicitly reaffirm it as you pass through the fields in the entry.
(I ran into the bug because I was trying to use an "S71" mode.)
Bug in setting default initial terminal mode: If you try to set
the default mode to be 7 bits with parity, the parity will be
forgotten and will always change back to NONE the next time you
run Telix. The only workaround seems to be to set an 8-bit
default mode (N81).
Similarly, this bug apparently occurs only when you try to set the
default parity to SPACE.
I found another bug/misfeature after sending my original message. If
you use "fgets" in a SALT script to read a line from a file -- and if
the last (or only) line doesn't end in CR-LF (quite possible if you use
COPY CON or some editors) -- when "fgets" reads this line it will put
it into the string variable with the ^Z (end-of-file marker) on the end.
Presumably, it would make much more sense for "fgets" to remove this ^Z,
just as it currently removes a CR-LF.
-- Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 (213) 825-5683
3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA
wales@CS.UCLA.EDU ...!(uunet,ucbvax,rutgers)!cs.ucla.edu!wales
"Now, if you do see me again today, I want you to report it to me immediately."joss@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Josh Sirota) (01/20/89)
In article <19505@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> wales@CS.UCLA.EDU (Rich Wales) writes: >So far, I have been using Procomm (first 2.4.2, then Procomm Plus). I'm >not yet prepared to say I am finished evaluating Telix -- but from what >I've seen up to this point, it looks very good and seems to be a clear >"win" over Procomm Plus across the board. I did the same thing recently (Check my review of terminal programs a few weeks ago) and found Telix to be fantastic except for one major flaw ... it's too damned slow to use at 9600 baud. For the few times that I use a modem, it's great. But most of the time I use a direct-connect line to the local Sun, and it's just far too slow. Josh -- Josh Sirota INTERNET: joss@uhura.cc.rochester.edu BITNET: joss_ss@uordbv.bitnet sirota@cs.rochester.edu UUCP: ...!rochester!sirota
allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) (01/20/89)
As quoted from <19505@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> by wales@valeria.cs.ucla.edu: +--------------- | ==> Bug in setting default initial terminal mode: If you try to set the | default mode to be 7 bits with parity, the parity will be forgotten | and will always change back to NONE the next time you run Telix. | The only workaround seems to be to set an 8-bit default mode (N81). +--------------- Telix 3.00 didn't save the backspace setting (destructive vs. non-); this was a show-stopper for me. It was added in 3.11. Maybe this will be fixed in the next version? +--------------- | ==> Misfeature in dialing directory editing: There is no way to go back | to change a previous parameter in a dialing directory entry. (I.e., | there should be a key that moves opposite to RETURN.) As it is now, | you just have to hit RETURNs to step all the way through to the end | of the entry -- then edit it again from the beginning. +--------------- Agreed. If they don't want to use arrows (since they're used in the pop-up menus), maybe they should use something like TAB (or shift-TAB)? +--------------- | these settings from the keyboard. If, for example, you want 24-hour | time display mode as a default, the only way to do it seems to be to | run a SALT script with "_time_format = 1;" every time you use Telix. +--------------- Which leads nicely into *my* suggestion: I'd like to have Telix automatically read some default script file (say, TELIX.SLC) upon startup unless overridden via a special command-line option. This would be in addition to the current command-line option for running scripts, to act as a sort of generic start-up file. +--------------- | ==> "Underlined" text on color displays: Some people have reported that | Telix shows underlined text with a blue background (making it hard | to see with certain color combinations). Since I have a monochrome | display right now, I haven't noticed this problem myself. I assume | it can be worked around by either selecting different screen colors | or making a customized "termcap" entry (with some other display | attributes for the "us" and/or "so" parameters). +--------------- Isn't this a holdover from CGA brain-damage? Not much that can be done about it in that case, except to provide a colors entry for attributes (which, I note, Procomm Plus doesn't do either). +--------------- | ==> Dialing directory: There should be a way to copy an existing entry | to a new slot, in case two or more entries are almost identical. +--------------- Agreed; my three entries for ncoast are a good example. +--------------- | ==> Dialing directory: A dialing directory file name without an exten- | sion should be automatically augmented with an extension of ".FON". | The Telix authors apparently thought they were adding flexibility by | not enforcing a standard filename extension for dialing directories, | but in the DOS world I think it is better to add default extensions | when none are specified by the user. +--------------- Why didn't they stick with the DOS convention that "FILENAME" gets an extension added, but "FILENAME." doesn't? Another suggestion for a new feature: Telix's "chat" mode is set up for two Telixes talking to each other; it adds linefeeds to received text. However, I use chat mode far more often to talk to Delphi conferences (equiv. CI$ or GEnie CB simulator, Unix "write" on systems sans "talk", etc.); in this case, chat mode double-linefeeds and is therefore useless. I'd like to see this become an option, perhaps on a per-dialing-drectory-entry basis. ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc allbery@ncoast.org (soon) uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery@hal.cwru.edu Send comp.sources.misc submissions to comp-sources-misc@<backbone> NCoast Public Access UN*X - (216) 781-6201, 300/1200/2400 baud, login: makeuser
shurr@cbnews.ATT.COM (Larry A. Shurr) (01/21/89)
[Note: Currently, R'eply does not reach me. Please mail to my sig address.] O.K. I'm curious. How do I get Telix? I cannot FTP but I can probably anonymous UUCP if you have that. regards, Larry -- Signed: Larry A. Shurr (att!cbnews!cbema!las or osu-cis!apr!las) Notice: 'R'eply WILL NOT reach me - try above addresses, OK? Thanks. Clever signature, Wonderful wit, Outdo the others, Be a big hit! - Burma Shave (With apologies to the real thing. Above represents my views only.)
malloy@nprdc.arpa (Sean Malloy) (01/25/89)
In article <13346@ncoast.UUCP> allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) writes: |As quoted from <19505@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> by wales@valeria.cs.ucla.edu: |+--------------- || ==> "Underlined" text on color displays: Some people have reported that || Telix shows underlined text with a blue background (making it hard || to see with certain color combinations). Since I have a monochrome || display right now, I haven't noticed this problem myself. I assume || it can be worked around by either selecting different screen colors || or making a customized "termcap" entry (with some other display || attributes for the "us" and/or "so" parameters). |+--------------- | |Isn't this a holdover from CGA brain-damage? Not much that can be done |about it in that case, except to provide a colors entry for attributes |(which, I note, Procomm Plus doesn't do either). Excuse me? I don't know about _your_ copy of Procomm+, but _mine_ has this section called 'Color Options' in the Setup area. One of the color sets is for the terminal screen, where you select foreground, background, and highlighted (underlined) colors (bold text comes out inverse video). That gives you color selection for the attributes. Admittedly, it's not well documented as to how the attributes map to highlight/inverse video for the various terminal emulations, but it does exist. Sean Malloy Navy Personnel Research & Development Center San Diego, CA 92152-6800 malloy@nprdc.arpa