Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac.comm:1250 comp.sys.mac.programmer:18277 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!visix!amanda From: amanda@visix.com (Amanda Walker) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm,comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: Communications Toolbox TCP Tool Needed Message-ID: Date: 15 Oct 90 16:29:32 GMT References: <12811@hoptoad.uucp> <12833@hoptoad.uucp> Organization: Visix Software Inc., Reston, VA Lines: 44 In article <12833@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes: >It's a clever solution, but it has its own problems. This is certainly true (for one, it makes the tool bigger than it "should" be, and breaks Apple's model of which modules implement which functions), but I found no other effective way to do it. I would much rather have been able to have the connection tell its caller to do things like go into and out of local echo, or binary mode, or local edit mode. However, the CTB has no mechanism to do this. Rather than write code that breaks when it talks to a smart Telnet server, we took the pragmatic approach of simulating what we needed, so that our users would be able to "plug it in and go." An approach I considered was to provide a "secondary channel" through which Telnet option negotiation would be reported to (and could be initiated by) the conenction's caller, but this would have required explicit cooperation on the part of the caller, which destroys the "plug and play"-ness of the tool. Given a choice, I opted for the approach that would be maximally invisible to the maximal number of users. If anyone wants to work with InterCon to work out a secondary channel protocol, though, feel free to give them a call. [minor note: I did also put in a checkbox to turn of Telnet processing completely, thus providing a raw TCP stream, over which a Telnet- aware program could do its own option negotiation.] >Apple has a strange habit of releasing supposedly general-purpose >software without actually implementing hard test cases which would >prove the software to be general. Well, I'd say it was more of a matter of having a smaller idea of "general" than the rest of us do :-). As much as I love Apple, they have an infuriating tendency to say things like "but why would you want to do that?" or "but we don't think that's a problem". Sigh. This seems *especially* true with networking. The CTB is a relatively mild example--look at AppleTalk Phase 2 or their bumbling efforts to cope with the idea of Wide Area AppleTalk over IP (or anything else, for that matter). Grumble, Grumble, Grumble. -- Amanda Walker amanda@visix.com Visix Software Inc. ...!uunet!visix!amanda -- All syllogisms have three parts; therefore, this is not a syllogism.