Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!ucsd!orion.cf.uci.edu!oberon!sm.unisys.com!ucla-cs!wales From: wales@valeria.cs.ucla.edu Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Telix: initial reactions from a Procomm Plus user Message-ID: <19505@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> Date: 12 Jan 89 21:44:55 GMT Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU Reply-To: wales@CS.UCLA.EDU (Rich Wales) Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Lines: 131 I picked up a copy of Telix 3.11 the other day (via ARPA Internet anony- mous FTP from SIMTEL20), and have been spending my spare time trying to familiarize myself with it. So far, I have been using Procomm (first 2.4.2, then Procomm Plus). I'm not yet prepared to say I am finished evaluating Telix -- but from what I've seen up to this point, it looks very good and seems to be a clear "win" over Procomm Plus across the board. I will say that I've run across a few misfeatures (and even outright bugs) in Telix. However, none of these appear to me to be showstoppers. (Obviously, if there *are* any "showstoppers", I would like to find them before putting on my "good shareware citizen" :-} hat and sending in my US$35 contribution / license fee / conscience balm!) Here is a list of my reactions so far. I would welcome any comments. GOOD POINTS: ==> Built-in ZMODEM support. ==> Telix's scrollback buffer size can be set to up to 64K bytes -- much larger than PROCOMM PLUS's 10K bytes. (I find I do a lot of scroll- ing back, so this is a very welcome feature in my book.) ==> The SALT programming language is *much* more flexible than Procomm Plus's ASPECT language. One feature which looks very promising -- though I haven't tried it yet -- is the "track" facility, which lets you look for multiple chracter strings from the input concurrently. BAD POINTS: ==> Bug in ANSI/VT102 emulation: "^[[@" (insert character) is treated as a no-op. However, "^[[1@" (with an explicit count) works -- and since I've been using an individually customized, private "termcap" entry with Procomm Plus anyway, making up another one for Telix is no big problem for me. ==> Bug in dialing directory editing: Parity is always reset by default to NONE if you pass through the existing setting via RETURN -- even if the entry already has some other value. This is serious: if you aren't careful, you could easily end up with an "N71" terminal mode (which generally won't work *at all*). ==> Bug in setting default initial terminal mode: If you try to set the default mode to be 7 bits with parity, the parity will be forgotten and will always change back to NONE the next time you run Telix. The only workaround seems to be to set an 8-bit default mode (N81). Since I do almost all of my dialing out of the dialing directory (where a terminal mode can be specified for each entry) -- and since modem initialization with an "N81" mode works perfectly fine -- this is not a serious problem for me. People who do lots of manual dial- ing might regret not being able to set a default of "S71" or "E71". This bug does *not* apply to entries in dialing directories. If you give a parity setting in a dialing directory entry, it does stay -- provided you don't accidentally wipe it out the next time you edit the entry (see the previous bug). ==> Misfeature in dialing directory editing: There is no way to go back to change a previous parameter in a dialing directory entry. (I.e., there should be a key that moves opposite to RETURN.) As it is now, you just have to hit RETURNs to step all the way through to the end of the entry -- then edit it again from the beginning. ==> Misfeature with BREAK: There is no global setting for default BREAK length (though whatever you get when you press ctrl-END seems to work fine on the systems I talk to). Also, it is painful to have to specify the BREAK length in *every* "send_brk" call in SALT scripts. ==> Misfeature with date/time display: Although the SALT language lets you change display formats for time (12 vs. 24 hour mode) and date (MM/DD/YY, DD/MM/YY, YY/MM/DD), there is no way provided to change these settings from the keyboard. If, for example, you want 24-hour time display mode as a default, the only way to do it seems to be to run a SALT script with "_time_format = 1;" every time you use Telix. This deficiency is especially annoying when you realize that Telix's default time display format uses 12-hour mode (with no accompanying "AM" or "PM" indication). If the authors can't or won't add a way to change the default date/time display format, they should at least change the time display default to 24-hour mode. ==> "Underlined" text on color displays: Some people have reported that Telix shows underlined text with a blue background (making it hard to see with certain color combinations). Since I have a monochrome display right now, I haven't noticed this problem myself. I assume it can be worked around by either selecting different screen colors or making a customized "termcap" entry (with some other display attributes for the "us" and/or "so" parameters). WISH LIST: ==> Dialing directory: There should be a way to copy an existing entry to a new slot, in case two or more entries are almost identical. ==> Dialing directory: There should be a way to refer to entries sym- bolically (instead of just by number). This is especially critical with SALT scripts: as things now stand, if you do "dial" calls from scripts, you will have to recompile all these scripts if you ever insert or delete entries from the middle of your dialing directory. A reasonable workaround for this problem is to put each phone number which you are going to dial from a script into a separate dialing directory. Then, the script can select the dialing directory (by name) and just dial entry #1. ==> Dialing directory: A dialing directory file name without an exten- sion should be automatically augmented with an extension of ".FON". The Telix authors apparently thought they were adding flexibility by not enforcing a standard filename extension for dialing directories, but in the DOS world I think it is better to add default extensions when none are specified by the user. ==> Dialing directory: Current dialing directory file name should be converted to all capitals for display on the screen (e.g., in the alt-Z status display, as well as the "load new dialing directory" screen). All in all, Telix looks like a good product so far. I will continue to follow the net discussion; if anyone knows of other bugs or misfeatures, or can correct any misunderstanding on my part pertaining to the things I have mentioned here, I would very much like to hear from you. And, yes, I do plan to send these comments to Exis Inc. -- Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 (213) 825-5683 3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA wales@CS.UCLA.EDU ...!(uunet,ucbvax,rutgers)!cs.ucla.edu!wales "Now, if you do see me again today, I want you to report it to me immediately."