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From: chesley@goofy.apple.com (Harry Chesley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: Problem with MacTCP Toolkit V 1.0
Message-ID: <4877@internal.Apple.COM>
Date: 24 Oct 89 20:53:29 GMT
References: <12536425863029@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu>
Sender: usenet@Apple.COM
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
Lines: 48

In article <12536425863029@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu> 
SALTER-J@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu (John Salter) writes:
> I have a problem with MacTCP Toolkit V 1.0 with the Hypercard
> interface when trying to connect (telnet) to one of our TCP/IP hosts.

I know of two things that can keep a host from receiving MacTCP Toolkit 
sends. I think the first is probably your problem, but I'll mention them 
both just in case anyone else is having similar difficulties:

(1) The Toolkit supports TCP, not Telnet. Although Telnet doesn't add much 
on top of the reliable byte-stream of TCP, it does add some. It has an 
option negotiation protocol that sets up things like local or remote echo, 
terminal type, etc., etc. In theory, your application needs to be able to 
talk this protocol, at least to the extent of saying "no, I don't support 
that option" to any queries from the other side. Most hosts will talk to 
you even if you don't play the option game, but some hosts (I've run into 
it on our Cray and on a PDP-10) just refuse to talk until you answer their 
option negotiation queries. NCSA Telnet, being a Telnet program, supports 
the option protocol.

The protocol is described in the Telnet documentation. It's quite simple. 
However, if there's interest, I can try and modify the example stack to 
handle this negotiation and post the revised HyperTalk scripts here.

(2) Secondly, the MacTCP Toolkit XCMDs were designed to handle text, not 
random binary data. Because of this, and because of the way HyperCard 
stores strings internally, if you include a null in a string to be sent 
(i.e., do something like "abc" & numToChar(0) & "def"), only the 
characters before the null will be sent. Similarly, input is also 
truncated at nulls.

In article <12536425863029@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu> 
SALTER-J@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu (John Salter) writes:
> Is there a good source of documentation on TCP/IP communications 
programming?

There's the DDN Protocol Handbook, which is the definitive description of 
the protocols, available in three volumes from the DDN Network Information 
Center at SRI International, Menlo Park, CA.

In article <12536425863029@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu> 
SALTER-J@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu (John Salter) writes:
> I am new to Mac system programming.  Who do I address these questions?

This newsgroup is a pretty good place. Some Apple employees (like me) scan 
the group periodically and answer questions. But even better, there are a 
lot of people outside Apple with a lot of real-world experience whore more 
than happy to answer questions here.