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From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: 11 New Features
Message-ID: <8769@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 21 Oct 89 20:55:07 GMT
References: <969@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM> <25744@santra.UUCP> <974@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM> <14138@well.UUCP> <979@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM> <25791@santra.UUCP>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Organization: Eclectic Software, Beirut
Lines: 34

As someone who has written two terminal emulators for the Mac and is
working in his spare time on a third, I agree with Juri Munkki.  Any
terminal emulator which does not use the Communications Toolbox is
obsolete.  There are simply too many user options in hardware and in
software which are excluded by failing to adhere to the new standard.
Juri did a good job of listing many of these, and there are plenty of
others.  Apple did a good job with the Toolbox and anyone who doesn't
use it is putting the shaft to their users in terms of future and even
present environments.

For instance, let's say your terminal emulator provides XMODEM (all
varieties) and ZMODEM.  Nifty.  Now suppose someone needs to use
Kermit, or something even more obscure like CompuServe B protocol.  If
you don't use Communications Toolbox, it doesn't matter that there's a
perfectly good public domain protocol implementation available as a
code resource; they are stuck with exactly the protocols you've given
them.  With the Toolbox, however, they can put together whatever they
need.  The same goes for terminal emulators.

Software in general is moving towards a more modular form, with smaller
pieces that can be mixed and matched, and if needs be replaced by the
user.  The new Toolbox gives this power to terminal emulators cleanly
and efficiently, and to deny its importance is merely inane.  Let's not
let the inertia-based arguments and not-invented-here syndrome of a few
communications developers cut us off from the wonderful new flexibility
and power of the Toolbox.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com

"He goes on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth.  It comes in one
 verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that there
 is a certain pleasure in contemplating the wailing and gnashing of
 teeth, or else it would not occur so often."
	-- Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not a Christian"