Ted Ashton writes:

> and AICS is making excellent progress on having one.  QCTerm is worth
checking
>  out now, even at "40% done", and the price is right :-).

I thought that I would waste everyone's bandwidth and publicly answer a few
comments I received this morning. First, an expansion on Ted's comment above:

The terminal portion of QCTerm is actually about 85% complete. The pieces
remaining are DEC (VT100) escape sequence emulation, file transfer capability,
simple scripting capabilities, and a few minor items.

Otherwise, the reason that we're marking it currently 40% complete is that we
a great deal more planned that is beyond standard terminal emulation. Some of
that additional material will only be seen by our QueryCalc customers -- but
the remainder we plan on making quite public and usable by everyone (but you'd
have to kill me to get me to talk about it now :-), at no cost.


Other comments:

> if I connect [using Telnet], I cannot use Qedit's visual
>  edit.  I don't think that this is a QCTerm problem, as Minisoft's W92
>  exhibits identical behaviour.

You need to set Qedit's command settings to:

       Set IgnoreLF ON.

Qedit is looking for a LF character. Although we are sending the LF, MPE is
stripping it out before Qedit sees it when you're in Telnet mode. We can make
Qedit's visual mode work by sending instead either CR LF LF or CR NUL LF, but
that breaks other programs on other boxes (UNIX, Linux, etc.) if we were to
leave it in this state.

The right place to fix this behavior is in the Telnet client on the HP3000.


> a minor nit which will, I expect
>  be solved eventually, but I'm used to using the "Enter" key on my
>  numeric keypad as a true Enter key instead of a Return.

We haven't yet implemented the escape sequences to remap the Enter key. But,
because they are part of a standard HP terminal sequence, they will be in
QCTerm too.


> Also it would
>  be nice to be able to set QCTerm to go away when I logoff.

I'm not sure that we will ever implement such a feature, simply because of
practical reasons associated with the audience we're trying to reach. However,
personal enhancement requests are always gratefully accepted when accompanied
by large sums of cash :-).


> Is typeahead planned for sometime down the road or are we expected to
>  used the MPE typeahead?

Typeahead is easy enough to program into the terminal, but now that it's in
MPE, that's where is should be turned on. Too many processes performing too
many typeaheads will present a blurry version of the future.


> Still hoping and waiting for a [NS/]VT version.

Due to the improvements that we and HP have been able to make in Telnet, I
more and more seriously doubt that we will ever offer NS/VT. Telnet is now
nearly as efficient as NS/VT -- but ubiquituous across all machines in a way
that NS/VT is not. If what I say is true, then Telnet should gradually
displace NS/VT over the next several years.

Nonetheless, hope springs eternal. And never say never.


> I have a somewhat unusual request for qcterm -- at least when using
>  network connections.
>  Several people/companies have been seraching for some kind of training
>  software where a teacher
>  runs an app from his terminal, and all in the class can see it (maybe
>  interact as well) on their terminal.
>  Usually in the same room, but if internet complient, can be across the
>  world.

> Products like pcanywhere, NetOP, netmeeting are there and a bit pricey,
>  especially when you only need
>  a small client for customers and the evercapable host piece ran by the
>  consultant.

There are several ways to accomplish this, but the terminal isn't one of them
(other than using something like PCanywhere). If you're in the same room, a
video splitter is the right and proper thing to be using. The one we use is an
8-way splitter that costs only $300. An appropriate URL for more information
is:

     http://www.hallresearch.com/hall/splitter.htm

Otherwise, if you want to split an HP3000-based application into dozens of
recipients, especially if they are internet based, the right (and really only)
place to do that is on the host -- but that will require some significant
modifications to the FOS.


> After I unzipped, before I installed fonts, I tryied to run qc.exe and
>  got an info box:
>     QC  ! Invalid property value
>  I then installed fonts and it started.
>  ?? How about changing the info box, if it is applicable, to missing QC
>  fonts?

Unfortunately, Bill Gates sends out that (meager) message before we even get a
chance to see it. The only way we can prevent it is to run a preprocess to see
if the fonts are loaded.

Ultimately, the best thing to do is write installation scripts that reliably
recognizes the version of Windows on which the user is running and do all of
the font installation for you, invisibly, so that no manual or installation
instructions have to be read.


> 600 lines is documented.
>  ?? Will I in future be able to enlarge this? user selectable?

Probably not immediately, if ever (at least not without sending large bundles
of cash in small unmarked bills). But if the demand is there, we can do it.
Like all such matters, it's just SMOP (a small matter of programming).

Wirt Atmar