Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ginosko!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!intercon!amanda@intercon.com From: amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Comm Toolbox (was: 11 New Features) Message-ID: <1508@intercon.com> Date: 24 Oct 89 21:53:31 GMT References: <311@6sigma.UUCP> <5792@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> <993@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM> Sender: news@intercon.com Reply-To: amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker) Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation Lines: 59 In article <993@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM>, ngg@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM (Norman Goodger) writes: > In article <5792@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> wtj@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (william.t.jones,rd,) writes: > > > >Versaterm already supports the Communications Toolbox. > > > I have seen the latest version of Versaterm and I do not remember seeing > anything in it that would allow it to interface to the CTB..course since > the CTB is not released yet, perhaps the changed are not obvious to the > casual observer... > One thing that may be relevant to this discussion is that there are several levels of "Comm. Toolbox compatibility," which take different amounts of time to recode into an application: - The serial port registry This is the easiest, and what is/will be supported by people like SuperMac that make multi-port communications boards. It lets an application find out how many serial ports (or things emulating serial ports at a very low level) there are currently installed, what their respective names are, and what the names of their respective drivers are. Being compatible at this level is pretty easy (putting up a dialog instead of hardwiring ".Ain" and ".Aout"), and should drop into VersaTerm's alternate driver hook very easily. In my opinion, *every* person doing anything using serial communications should be at least preparing to deal with this. - Connection Tools Connection tools give you what amount to bidirectional full-duplex streams (sort of one level up from a raw serial port). This is the level where network drivers and multiple session support comes in. Anyone who's real serious about providing terminal emulation should also be looking real hard at this, since it will open up new physical media, and isn't all that much harder to code for that a simple serial port. - Terminal tools These are pretty nifty, but they don't "drop in" as easily, since they are predicated on a very "Macintosh-style" program flow--event driven, using code resources & whatnot. For some of us, this is not a real problem, especially since anything that handles multiple simultaneous sessions already has a certain amount of the necessary framework in place, but any application that uses lots of globals, or knows deep in its heart that it's in control of all of the interaction, is going to have some tough going. - File transfer tools Pretty much the same issues as terminal tools, only for file transfer (surprise, eh?). The more disciplined and generalized the code, the easier it will be to add Comm. Toolbox support. -- Amanda Walker