Richard Gambrell writes:

> Mike McCallum wrote:
>
>  > Incidentally, pretty much all of the users employ Minisoft to connect to
>  > the HP3000 and emulate an HP 2392A terminal.
>
>  You're not going to get too far with character terminals displaying graphic
>  images.  You'll need PCs on a network with Powerhouse Client for Windows
(if
>  you want a powerhouse solution).

This sounds like as good a time as any to lay out our plans for QCTerm.

A number of people have asked me recently when we're going to put file
transfer and scripting capabilities into QCTerm. The answer I've been giving,
which has shocked some, has been: "They're both relatively low on our current
priority list."

The rationale for that answer is that if you need those capabilities (and most
people don't), then you already have a solution in hand, although of course
you're having to pay for it. Because we're not putting QCTerm together for
competitive, revenue-generating reasons, there's not nearly as much impetus
for us to put those features in immediately, although they will eventually
come.

Rather, what we've been working on -- and what will appear sometime in the
next year -- will be a version of QCTerm that will be able to handle graphic
images, as well as a greatly enhanced forms entry terminal, that will be
completely compatible with all prior usage.

Clearly, the first thing we need to do to get to this point is get QCTerm
completely, 100% compatible with all current usage as an HP700/92 terminal
emulator. That's what we're working on now. But it has always been our
internal plans to push on and make the terminal interface enormously more
pleasant to look at.

For the last year, I've been experimenting with putting graphic images into
QCTerm, both as background wallpaper and as fixed-position images. Indeed, as
everyone of you that happens to wander in here knows, it is a mandatory part
of the visit that you sit through a question-and-answer period, saying what
you like and what you don't.

The "wallpaper", at the moment, resides behind the terminal's characters and
stays fixed in position as the text scrolls by. I've created a number of
different kinds of wallpaper, but the two images that have seemed to draw the
most attention are images of stars and a picture of Pamela Lee, sans
everything other than a few beads. However, I expect more likely forms of
corporate wallpaper to be low-contrast images of linen paper, granite or the
like. Whatever the wallpaper is, you will have complete control over its
creation and selection.

The second form of image will be a "floating", fixed row-column image, of
specified size, that scrolls with the text. Such an image would be good for
signatures, logos, ID pictures, etc. The image's position would be specified
by a more-or-less HP terminal-standard escape sequence (yet to be devised), no
differently done than text positions are specified now.

Both forms of images would be locally cached and time-stamped on your PC to
prevent repeated downloadings.

We will also write a small HP3000-based image-server program so that only a
file name need be supplied to direct a desired image to the terminal, on
demand. This server program will obviously be quite compatible with using just
filenames in an IMAGE database.

All of this is part of the reason that I asked a bit of time ago about what
size PC's you all were running. As you would expect, the image processing
requires a bit more horsepower than a minimal terminal emulator would.
Nonetheless, I have been able to get efficiencies up sufficiently recently so
that a 100MHz Pentium works satisifactorily quickly enough to satisfy me (and
I'm as impatient as anyone you're likely to meet).

We're also working on a much improved forms entry structure (with images
present in both foreground and background) that will be compatible with all
existing VPLUS forms, but also extensible to create even nicer forms yet, with
picklists and the like.

And we're working on allowing you to have (at least a few) different fonts on
the screen at the same time, in different colors. The color assignment is
easy; changing fonts on the fly is not as easily done. (As an aside, normal
Windows font processing is an enormously more CPU consumptive process than
image processing, so we're going to have to go to a lot of work here to make
it virtually indistinguishable in load to what you see now. We know how to do
this, but the downside is that you're not going to get a large font range --
given I'm the person who has to program all of these fonts up :-).

All of this should be done sometime next year, working of course under the
standard Atmarian calendar. And it will all be free to whomever wishes to use
it. However, don't make any business plans based on what I've said here. Until
we finish these features, they're just vaporware.

Wirt Atmar