February 23, 2008
I discovered an awesome project on SourceForge: Turbo Vision! The
last couple weeks I've refactored the VT100/LINUX emulation code into
a QTerminal window class that runs easily under a Turbo Vision
application. It's quite slick: I can run Qodem-inside-QTerminal and
it works nicely. Since this version has only a few Unixy things, I'm
looking later this spring at porting it to Win32 too.
I'm hoping that the Turbo Vision maintainers might be interested in
getting this into their project.
September 10, 2007
Found two bugs in Synchronet's Zmodem implementation: 1) it doesn't do
ZCHALLENGE; 2) it doesn't do ZSKIP. They are both rather serious,
I'll see if I can report them...
September 6, 2007
I found a bug in shorten_string() that caused a segfault, fixed that,
added a check in save_form() to prompt for overwriting a file, and ...
...I just published the 0.1.2 release! Code size: 46683 lines.
September 5, 2007
Finally got around to checking out Xmodem and Ymodem vs. Qmodem(tm),
and also finished support for the -G protocols. Xmodem with
Qmodem(tm) works fine, Ymodem receive works OK, but Ymodem send (from
Qmodem to Qmodem(tm)) is broken. Qmodem gives up immediately, and
provides no clues as to why.
I'll try them out against ZOC and HyperTerminal, but won't spend much
more time on them. They are buggy protocols and implemented in
several other places (not just lrzsz) so other people have recourse if
they need their own code. Zmodem OTOH seems to be much more rare, and
despite its flaws it IS capable of sending files across without hosing
their contents on 8-bit-clean channels so there is some real value in
keeping it reliable.
But, assuming that I am nearly finished, I can just about wrap the
0.1.2 release next week. That would be very nice indeed as it fixes
so many bugs from 0.1.1.
September 4, 2007
Found two bugs in HyperTerminal's Zmodem receive implementation. Both
are now noted in the README.
Also found a SERIOUS bug in parse_packet() that would core qodem badly
when Zmodem'ing with QmodemPro. And a bug in ZOC (it does not
understand ZCRC) and one in Qmodem/QmodemPro (they both compute ZCRC
incorrectly). But as of now Qodem can do Zmodem upload and download
with rz/sz, Qmodem, QmodemPro, ZOC, and HyperTerminal.
August 31, 2007
Qodem can now send and receive to itself with no errors, which is a
major victory for it. Now to test it against ZOC...
Testing against Hyperterm and ZOC, basic transfers work but there are
some oddball corner cases, in particular Hyperterm's "Skip" button on
receive sends a ZRPOS that equals file size which my code thought was
a violation of the protocol and also (I think) a 1024-byte file that
Qodem didn't end the transfer the right way with. I found both issues
in the code and fixed them, and a bug in the input bytes buffer
handling in qodem.c that left a bunch of garbage onscreen after a file
transfer, and also the bug that entering DEBUG emulation didn't print
the header right away. So now those are all fixed now in CVS.
August 30, 2007
Whew! All day today has been Zmodem vs lrzsz. I found another "bug"
in the protocol: you can't actually escape out additional characters
so it won't be possible to protect users from getting kicked out if
they upload the rsh/ssh/rlogin/telnet disconnect sequences. I also
found half a dozen bugs in Qodem. But it seems a lot more stable on
uploads now, and uses a heck of a lot less CPU with the new streaming
arrangement. I have null modem cable at work I'll be able to use to
test Qodem vs Qodem on Zmodem uploads and downloads, and then I'll
need to test against ZOC on Windows to see how it behaves.
I still have some "glitches" around the file handling as one user
noticed, and I've got that whole Xmodem and Ymodem debugging cycle to
get through (sigh). But I have hopes that when that is done I'll have
the -G protocols and will cut a new release. Maybe (cross fingers) by
Halloween.
June 29, 2007
Spent all day reorganizing the way file transfers move data in
process_incoming_data(). Still working on getting XYZmodem working
again...not fun. The lrzsz version of sx SUCKS to debug against.
October 11, 2006
Just found the bug that caused my TradeWars macros to crash:
substitute_string() had all sorts of errors if it had to do more than
1 replacement. Fixed in CVS, will eventually roll out to 0.1.2.
July 20, 2006
Removed the last use of perror() and random printw().
Forked the code on my dev box to 0.1.x (patches) and main trunk. I'm
not sure how to tag CVS appropriately, so we're stuck with the
latest-and-greatest on Sourceforge.
July 19, 2006
I added a quick section in qodem.c to set ESCDELAY to 20 milliseconds
(if it isn't already set by the user). This makes vi much more
responsive. :)
Now I'm starting to encapsulate the zmodem code into 'qrzsz', a
separate program to be a drop-in replacement for the public domain
rzsz. I'm doing this because it will force me to clean-up the API to
zmodem so I can more easily add it to other programs, and also to pave
the way for the Unix HS/Link port.
July 15, 2006
I'm trying to find the "keyboard editor doesn't load keys" bug and am
stymied so far. There! Got it, have to switch emulation, THEN hit
Alt-J and see nothing. OR, connect localhost ANSI, then hit Alt-J.
Looks like if I hit Alt-J from the first everything works OK.
Found it! I was calling reset_function_key_editor_textboxes() AFTER
switch_current_keyboard(). I honestly don't know how it worked the
first time. (I *really* need to re-factor switch_current_keyboard()
someday.)
Packaging up for 0.1.1 release. Code size: 45237 lines.
July 13, 2005
Down to one major bug before the 0.1.1 release (unless another crops
up of course). The disappearing cursor bug actually only appeared
with the serial port stuff because all the other callers to
notify_form() and notify_prompt_form() knew what to do afterwards.
Nice.
July 12, 2005
I added a wrapper to beep() so that we can play Linux console music
:-) . It also gives us the ability to later surface beeps through a
real sound system if that's available.
Also, ANSI "animates" a little better at the price of performance.
Online it looks fine, but local full-screen apps have noticeable lag
drawing the screen. So I've exposed it as an option, with the default
to NOT animate.
Three more critical defects to nail, then I'll probably cut 0.1.1.
I *think* I got the screen resizing problems fixed. There were a lot
of small issues that arise when HEIGHT and WIDTH change suddenly, but
now it behaves a lot like xterm which makes me happy.
July 5, 2005
Found rendering problems in Avatar and ANSI emulation thanks to
Doghouse BBS. Avatar wasn't handling cursor position ( ^V ^H row col)
correctly, and ANSI wasn't resetting cursor position (CSI u)
correctly. With both fixes in, BRE looks good. :)
June 27, 2005
Just found an oversight: reset_emulation() wasn't being called until a
connection was made, meaning the emulation-dependent variables in
q_status weren't being set right off. It was exposed when I added the
compose_key() function, which I'd kind of like someday to put
everywhere in the program, so you could "compose key" a high-ASCII
name into the phonebook for instance.
June 24, 2005
Tried that download again and landed on a "telnet>" prompt. Now
THAT'S weird! I added escaping of "~" and "^]" to zmodem so maybe we
won't accidentally do it during a file transfer, but it's very odd
that I got the prompt at all.
I've added wrapping on column 80 to ANSI, Avatar, and TTY emulations,
currently as an option in qodemrc. I might expose it as a toggle at
some point.
Just fixed a slight rendering bug that was affecting my TradeWars 2002
game. :) Control characters that were meant to be glyphs weren't
being printed.
June 23, 2005
Doh! A long Zmodem download from a Maximus board caused lots of
*strange* behavior right as it ended. I think Qodem responded to
something by trying to re-send the ZFIN, which did weird things to the
BBS session. I'll have to run a download again in debug mode to see
what I missed.
Just added a check to hangup so we're not always talking about a
"modem". Now Qodem feels to me like a telnet/ssh client that can also
do modem, not the other way around.
June 20, 2005
I put most of the important bugs/features on the Sourceforge bug
tracker so any users I end up getting will feel more confident about
reporting them. Also fixed the Avatar crash bug and made it so Qodem
won't try to create directories just to emit a usage screen.
June 12, 2005
Got the modem to dial correctly and actually used a Maximus BBS!
Woohoo! Exposed some problems with Avatar -- I don't yet support the
commands in the May 1, 1989 addition to the AVT/0 text. Once I fix
those I'll be ready to cut.
Ok, got most of them in. I'm going to pass on the two scroll region
commands for this release because I haven't ever seen a BBS use them.
:)
I've re-numbered the TODO to reflect a new roadmap. Basically, THIS
release is the one I want to be known as "stable" for the next year or
so, yet I'll continue making patches as serious bugs emerge. So 0.0.8
becomes 0.1.0 and the first patch will be 0.1.1 etc. It's a good
release, way better than a lot of other 1.0's on Sourceforge and
generally one that I think many people can enjoy. I'll also get an
English-only version out in a few weeks so we don't have the
LANG=en_US irritant factor all the time.
After I get the scripting and Kermit support in along with some other
smaller features we'll have 1.0.0. That will be the "final"
milestone, all the things I've personally wanted/needed in my very own
terminal emulator. Other neat goodies and the Windows port are 2.0
and 3.0, respectively.
I just de-localized Qodem. It only took about 90 minutes, since I had
an "un_gettextize" perl script that created a sed. Then hand editing
the sed script, and viola! English-only Qodem that does NOT require
GNU gettext to run! It's going online now.
June 7, 2005
I finally found the one extant copy of Sam H. Smith's farewell HS/Link
post (SHSMITH.HTM) where he apparently has released the 1.21b7 source
to the public domain. I've got a question out on Usenet about it, and
I'll begin hosting the files myself on Sourceforge to see if anyone
comes along with better information on the copyright status. But if
it really is free I'm going to incorporate it and spinoff a
command-line client for it so that we can at least one bidirectional
protocol under GPL. (The Hydra protocol source code is not licensed
in a GPL-compatible manner, even though its source is available.)
Also spent a couple hours poring over the last releases of a few DOS
terminals. Only one feature is going to find its way into Qodem:
"automated trigger macros" from ACECOMM. This would let a user define
immediate actions based on the incoming data stream, which could make
Qodem one hell of a MUD/MUSH client. :-) I'll spend some time crafting
it appropriately for the Qodem interface, but I think it will do a lot
to help users automate chores when online.
June 3, 2005
Screw RPM. Maybe it will re-appear in a future release, but for now I
say the rpmbuild system needs to get easier to use before I want to
spend any more hours on it. It took about two hours, total, to get
qodem packaged as a Debian .deb package, because they use standard
tools (ar, gzip) and have only an unusual filesystem layout to things.
RPM has already taken two hours and I've got almost nothing to show
for it. A .spec file that I can't use without creating
$HOME/.rpmmacros because RPM wasn't designed from the start with a
non-root user in mind.
So now we're down to only modem dialer before release.
June 2, 2005
Looks like Zmodem is basically complete now. It successfully does
error recovery on fast modem links. However, uploads are slow and I
know why: I'm not filling up the write buffer as fast as I could. Of
course, this only affects very fast (as in local) transfers, but I'd
like to eventually get it streaming full blast in both directions. Oh
wait, testing it again and I see the problem: it's the disk access
when DEBUG_ZMODEM is defined. Nevermind, we're seeing better than 1
megabyte/second on local transfers.
Now it's just testing the modem dialer and making an RPM target, then
we release 0.0.8.
June 1, 2005
Got Zmodem receive to do error recovery, now trying to get send to do
the same. Almost there, but it's pretty tricky.
May 23, 2005
I found a pretty serious bug in batch_entry_window() that would cause
it to drop core if the screen size was too small (like under xterm).
Now we ask xterm to resize to 80x25 if necessary, so that should
improve things a bit. Also, backspace was very odd. I ended up
querying the x location in the form so that I could ignore backspace
if I was at the beginning of the field. Sadly, no one seems to be
asking much about forms on Usenet.
Getting closer and closer to the 0.0.8 release. Right now it's just
bugfixes and pounding on Zmodem.
May 17, 2005
Fixed the rendering bugs (cross fingers) in EDT and LSE. Not only was
I ignoring a default value in decstbm(), I was mis-handling erasing
lines containing characters with A_REVERSE flag set -- except that
Linux console does that too and now it's expected behavior apparently.
Terminfo calls it "back color erase" (bce). I'll probably need to do
some work later to ensure it does what most users expect.
Did another survey of the terminal emulator round-up. Apparently
there is a project on Sourceforge.net for the Linux console, but the
code seems to be stagnant. I'm thinking (briefly) about asking if I
can add VT52 support to it, and at least get it through vttest. OTOH
it does handle LSE and EDT reasonably well, so it's not bad as a
VT100-ish emulator.
Other projects look neat but mostly they are focusing on X11-based
emulators. After our 0.0.11 beta release, I'm going to start
advertising like crazy. I really want people to use THIS code to play
their MUDs with. :-)
Long day. Heading home.
May 13, 2005
I finally tried to use EDT and LSE on VMS, and sure enough it broke my
VT102. I'm going to debug that use case again and get it working
before this next release.
May 4, 2005
Continuing in our run to a reasonable beta, I took out the strings
that referred to the non-existent help system, so users shouldn't be
trying to hit F1 and getting disappointed. Now I want to add the file
transfer event logging, and we'll be almost done.
For this release, I'm going to package as .deb, .rpm, and
Slackware-ish tarball in addition to the standard source tarball.
April 29, 2005
Removed an entire class of keyboard errors by wrapping most calls to
wgetch() through my own function. It's nice because it makes the
Linux console keyboard behave like an X (or DOS) keyboard: if you add
META/ALT to a key within a form, it's processed just like
Alt-keystroke, and most forms don't care about Alt. So if you hit
'Manual Dial' in the phonebook and hold down Alt you'll get the same
output as if you didn't hold down Alt. Can't believe I waited two
years to fix that.
I should be able to commit all this in about 14 hours. I'm going to
wait another week or two before cutting the 0.0.8 release though,
because I want to flush out any remaining memory leaks and bugs in the
file transfer protocols. I want to really shoot for an
almost-beta-quality release, something much better than my prior
releases.
April 28, 2005
Slogging through the VT220 emulation now. Other than "protected areas
(DECSCA)" the rest of it looks rather straightforward. Bringing VT220
into this release makes it the "big one", where there's enough
function in one place to start using it for real work. The only
features left after this are QSL scripting (huge work), Kermit, and a
handful of small-to-medium features.
VT220 is a LOT more complicated than VT100 though. To really do it
justice I should support a lot more character sets, which may mean
mapping them to Linux's UTF8 or ISO-8859-1. I'm still thinking about
that though, how far I want to take it.
Re-investigating the vt100.c and linux.c is good though. I removed a
lot of unneeded VT52 mode checks. I probably have quite a bit more
junk in linux.c that could be tossed.
[LATER]
Well, VT220 is almost passable at this point. Emacs, joe, and mc are
all happy, and most of vttest is too. But I wish I could do some of
the features it's got like soft fonts and user-defined function keys.
OK, I could do the function keys, but I think that would actually
hinder users who get used to Qodem-style keyboard macros.
I should be back on land in about 48 hours, then I can commit this in
and mothball it until I'm ready to implement the scripting.
Code size: 43457 lines.
Sleep time. G-night.
April 27, 2005
OUCH! I just ran both Qmodem(tm) 5.0 and QmodemPro(tm) for DOS 1.53
through vttest. OUCH! AAAAH! I now see why the Unix gurus in the
early 90's complained so loudly. Qmodem(tm)'s vt100 emulation is the
*worst* I've personally run through vttest; even worse, development
for QmodemPro(tm) had *2 years* to fix it, and they didn't do a damn
thing! Re-implement most of the UI in TurboVision, sure; but fix the
vt100 emulation to be usable, no way!
I'm embarrassed. Royally. I loved that program enough to clone it --
going on 1.1 megabytes of source now -- but that's *pathetic*. I
wouldn't be surprised if that's a large reason it couldn't stay
competitive with Procomm. They cut too many corners. Or maybe people
abandoned them because they flat-out lied:
"QMODEM 4.6 TEST DRIVE supports the standard VT100 functions;
half/full duplex, set/reset modes, scrolling region, keypad
application mode, special graphics character set, US & UK
character sets, full display attributes including ANSI color
extensions, programmable tabs and cursor control."
Bullshit. Scrolling region: broken. Keypad: broken. UK character
set: broken. C0/C1 control codes: broken.
HyperTerminal(tm) almost gets it right, even does double-width and
double-height. PuTTY's pretty darn close too (only one screen looked
off). minicom's is mostly OK for real-world use (VT52 broken though).
But Qmodem(tm)... it's real bad.
But you know what? Qodem mostly gets it right. I re-ran the tests
with line wrap both enabled and disabled: no change in screen
results.
HAPPY 2ND BIRTHDAY QODEM.
April 26, 2005
I now have technically all the features needed for the 0.0.8 release.
I now need to spend a lot of time fixing the memory leaks and testing
the file transfer protocols on fast noisy lines. If I get more time
on this trip I may bring the file post-processing feature into this
release.
Fixed some amusing bugs in music.c around the handling of '>' and
'<'. Fixed those, then I noticed that ZCRC *can* actually do a
real crash recovery (it takes filesize as an argument). lsz.c was too
spaghetti for me to see it, but lrz.c sets it up for that; so I
changed zmodem and now GC is saying that something (length 5) is
getting smashed. (Maybe it's the ZCHALLENGE value?) Something else
in the "fix before beta" category.
April 25, 2005
I just changed the splash screen (and fixed a bug in it). The old one
looks "better", but it's just *too* close to Qmodem(tm) 5.0 to keep as
is.
I finally had a chance to run Intellicomm for the first time. *sigh*
I'm really sad now. The author put SO MUCH work into Intellicomm, and
if I had had it circa 1990 I would have been lucky. It was designed
to automate 90% of the drudgery that was a BBS: get new files list,
exchange QWK messages, check email, store time in time bank, etc. You
could set it to do all of the automation in the call and then beep you
when done so you could play the door games. I would have had a lot
more time in the evenings after school, and I think a lot more fun.
"Watching TV.... Hmm, computer is beeping. Oh! Time for TradeWars."
But then the Neverending September rolled through and all those
functions are no longer required by practically everybody. File and
message BBSes (particularly the DOS- and OS/2-based ones: WWIV,
Telegard/TAG/Renegade, PC-Board, RBBS, Maximus, etc.) are almost
extinct now that we've got WWW and FTP everywhere. It's really
disheartening in a way. I only hope he got lots of registrations to
pay for it.
But now that I've seen "keyboard repeat buffer", I think I'll skip it
as a feature. Modern OS's have shells with history and readline.
[LATER]
Got most of dialing working now. I won't be able to test the connect
part until next week (life offshore, oh well). Made the phonebook
recognize the difference between a phone # and a network address. Got
manual dial "working" (as best it can without a real phone line :) ).
Just hope the boat doesn't go down, or I'll have a bitch of a time
re-doing all this. Code size: 41981 lines.
But you know what? I don't need minicom anymore. WOOHOOO!
April 24, 2005
Got minicom-style lockfiles and serial speeds up to 115200. Don't
have 230400 yet, but neither does minicom on my hardware, so it might
be kernel driver or setserial.
Gonna be a pain adding the serial parameters to the phonebook. Sigh.
I'm glad I waited until Qodem was functional in most other respects
before heading into the serial port stuff, I think I would have lost
patience.
I can talk to a modem now. Just need to put the stuff into the
phonebook and then get dialing working and we'll be set. Phonebook
now has the ability to set port settings.
Just realized that the modem is going to introduce some subtle
problems. For instance: if I have a phone BBS and an SSH host both
selected in the phonebook, which one should I "dial"? If I want to
integrate the SSH seamlessly in then I need to detect the lack of
password as a "busy signal" and keep dialing. OTOH I can put up a
message saying that automatic dial might not work well with a
non-serial connection tagged and ask the user if they want to remove
the non-serials from the list.
Taking a break, I realize that my initial impulse behind this project
has proven to be true: that we can make a decent terminal emulator a
hell of a lot faster with recent software tools than they could back
in the 80's. Sounds like "duh", but seriously: curses handles the
keyboard about 95% right and the screen about 100% right. (I'm quite
impressed that curses only emits what has to be changed on each call
to refresh().) POSIX I/O makes moving bytes between pty's, serial,
and the console a breeze, relatively speaking. By the time I get home
I'll probably have a reasonable beta (except for scripting) that could
compete with the original Qmodem(tm). That's in only about 4 months
of full-time coding (spaced out over two years in offtime).
Damn, long two days. Code size: 40972 lines.
April 23, 2005
Added the communications parameters form. Now to get control of the
serial port...
This is a huge break-off from Qmodem(tm) by the way. Qmodem(tm) was
serial-only (+ telnet only in QmodemPro 2.x for Windows). I need to
make sure the serial port behaves in a reasonable way. Should it
automatically open on startup, or only if we "dial" a serial number?
Should it close right after the call completes, or should it wait for
an explicit command? When the user uses a non-modem call, should it
also unlock for other applications?
Most programs just open the serial port and assume it's theirs, or
they take the other extreme and don't talk to it at all unless they
need it to dial out. I want to emulate a real DOS terminal though --
where the serial port is generally open unless it doesn't have to be.
Maybe.
Break time.
April 22, 2005
Well, work has sent me offshore. This should bode well for the 0.0.8
release, only because outside of my mandated 12-hour days I've got
nothing else to do. Yippee.
Well, I've got the modem configuration menu stubbed in. Now to get
the serial port stuff functional... It'll take a day to get it
right. I've peeked a bit at minicom (thanks to the GPL) and see I'll
have to do mark and space parity at the application layer.
April 21, 2005
I can't quite get my head around the "Keystroke/Command Buffer"
feature, I think it's going to be removed. I first saw it advertised
in the README.1ST file distributed with Intellicomm 2.01 and it
sounded neat, particularly if you need to configure a Cisco router,
but I can't quite visualize a good way to do the user interface for
it. I suppose I could run Intellicomm and see what they do, but for
now I'm just going to leave it be. I've got keyboard macros,
split-screen, and QuickLearn coming in that will probably cover most
people's itch I think.
If anyone out there knows how they would want to "edit typing errors
and/or re-send any of the last five BBS commands entered" please let
me know.
Fixed the leaks in keyboard.c and options.c. Pretty silly stuff, but
easy to see how I lost track of it. I am *so* glad the Hans-Boehm
garbage collector is out there.
April 20, 2005
Sheesh. Tired. Work took a lot out of me.
I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel on the first
real release. Once I get serial port and scripting support in, I'm
going to spend a long time exercising features and then cut a public
beta. From that point I'll see about packaging for distros and ports
to other Unix-like platforms. It'll be neat though when it happens.
I took a peek at some of the competition: minicom. The "bad news" for
me is that minicom is *really* small and a good mix of features for
most people. It doesn't actually uses (n)curses so it doesn't have as
much "bloat" as Qodem. However, its VT102 emulation is poor, even
compared to the raw Linux console. (To be fair, it was a whole lot
better than Qmodem(tm) and most other DOS-based emulators.) I'm even
more proud now of the work I put into beating the vttest scenarios.
Specifically, I was looking for the /var/lock/LCK..ttySx code -- I'm
probably going to do a more-or-less direct rip (with attribution of
course) so that we can share a modem properly with pppd.
April 14, 2005
Send is now working. All I need to do now is add timeout checks and
do a walkthru before 0.0.7 goes out. I'm hoping that's TODAY. :)
I got ZTerm to transfer a 1.5 meg file through a 3-wire serial link
(using a small Perl program to shunt characters from STDIN to
/dev/ttyS0). I'm reasonably confident now that my implementation will
talk to Zmodem's-other-than-lrzsz.
Sigh. There's GNU gettext FUCKING UP MY FUCKING TRANSLATION FILE
AGAIN. This time it was 'make dist' that corrupted en.po. I swear
the gettext "tool" chain is going away before I go to
"production/stable".
Released. Code size: 37501 lines.
I'm getting food now.
April 13, 2005
Zmodem send is really pissing me off. It *looks* like rz has bugs in
its CRC32 stuff. For example, it's trying to compute the CRC on a
binary header with 8 input bytes, and of course I've no idea just
where those 8 bytes are supposed to come from (since only 5 are used
by sz). When I switch to hex headers with 32-bit "sub-packets", I get
other problems. This is really irritating.
Yup, it IS a bug in rz. Namely, rz ASSUMES a CRC32 on ZSINIT *even if
the header is CRC16*. Blech.
Using the weird negate-the-crc-function-output I used for ZCRC and
suddenly it works again. This is really f'ed up.
April 11, 2005
Receive is now as complete is it's likely to ever get, barring bugs.
Stubbing in send, and a few minor cleanups (don't allow non-supported
protocols to be selected, etc.).
April 8, 2005
Receive is now mostly complete. I expect some most corner cases to
pop up, particularly in the almost-never-used options (ZCOMMAND et
al), but I can cd into a directory now and say "sz *" and everything
comes down, with crash recovery and skipping already-downloaded files.
Send should be significantly easier than receive now that I know what
to put on the wire.
I cleaned up the Alt-Z help menu (alphabetized each section) and put
in a system call to fire up the editor on Alt-N configuration. Much
nicer than hand-editing IMHO. Next week I hope to complete a passable
Zmodem send and then cut for release.
April 6, 2005
Work took some time today, but I managed to get receive ZSKIP mostly
functional.
April 5, 2005
Wrapping up Zmodem receive. ZCRC handling was a bitch to debug
though. I think the CRC32 function I've got doesn't match the one in
lrzsz -- like it does some weird negation thing in ZDATA that is
correct but is supposed to be handled at my layer, but then doesn't do
it for ZCRC. Or maybe ZCRC is just not well supported anywhere. What
I find hilarious is the fact lrz doesn't even implement ZCHALLENGE
even though it's part of the "spec". But anyway, now we're using
CRC32 by default and only three features away from a most decent
receive (ZSKIP, ZRPOS, and error handling).
April 4, 2005
Zmodem receive is working in a very rudimentary way. Need to fill in
a lot of gaps still...but my writer's block is finally over!
That's it for today. We can receive multiple files in sequence, so
long as the link is reliable already (i.e. TCP). Still need to do
crash recovery better and get all the small breaks closed -- it's way
too easy to make me drop core right now. But hey, receive is the hard
part, send will be a snap after this.
April 1, 2005
Progress! I finally figured out why I *hated* my original Zmodem
code. It was a direct rip of the X/Ymodem stuff that had this
godawful huge state machine with gobs of copied code between
sections. I just now refactored zmodem_receive() to call
sub-functions for each major state and poof! instant readability
improvement. Just gotta get the decode bytes function to handle the
crc part and we'll almost be back up to receiving files. OTOH I'm
moving and it may be a few more months....
March 8, 2005
I might get some time this spring to code on this project, at least I
hope so. I've been using Qodem at work for the scrollback and
keyboard macros functionality, it's been nice.
I finally outlined what I wanted the scripting language to look like,
after looking at Procomm, IntelliCom, Telemate, Terminate, Kermit,
Commo, and others I forgot. And Qmodem(tm) of course. It'll resemble
the most-critical subset of C that I use myself, but won't have
pointers or direct memory access. However, it will have one kind of
reference (structref) so I can add all the typical data structures
necessary for complex scripting. The VM is going to be very trivial
and stack-based; we won't be winning any speed contests with it.
January 1, 2005
AAAAARRRRGH. Zmodem is pissing me off. My main complaint is that Mr
Forsberg had no idea what he was doing when he put together the
"protocol". Basically, here's what I don't like about it:
1. The CAN escape character is used both for demarking data
boundaries (CRC escape) and encoding field data (control character
escape). Hence I cannot run all of the input data through a decode
function and then parse out fields. Control character escaping is
done inside the CRC check and header arguments too, so I have to make
this fugly hack job.
2. The CRC escape sequence uses the byte within the escape sequence
as part of the calculated CRC value. So when a file block comes in I
have to check the CRC and then magically remember to ignore the last
byte when I write data to disk.
3. The Unix file permissions mask included in the ZFILE data is not
encoded in a platform-independent manner so I can't use it.
4. He didn't bother documenting the fact that he was transmitting the
number of files in the batch and the total filesize in the batch, so I
can't use those either.
5. ZCOMMAND! What the *hell* was he smoking allowing one end of the
link to issue shell commands to the other side?
I sincerely hope that when I get to implementing Kermit I'll be able
to decode the data all-at-once before parsing for header information,
and that the CRC calculation doesn't require mucking with the file
data.
So I'm about 20% done with Zmodem, probably 50% done with receive. I
need to add a static buffer that I copy the incoming bytes to so I can
ensure each major stage has all the data it needs before I start
decoding things. Then get the handshaking right at the end of file
and add support for ZCHALLENGE and recovery.
THEN I need to get the send side working, and THEN I have to get these
options exposed in qodemrc. After all that I'll cut 0.0.7.
December 7, 2004
Found some redraw issues surrounding save_form() and
view_directory(). It's ugly...I may end up redoing the forms in a
future version because they don't know enough about how to redraw
themselves over each other.
December 6, 2004
ANSI Music is now in. What an abomination!
Almost there though...just Zmodem remaining in 0.0.7.
December 5, 2004
ANSI Music is about 60% stubbed in now. I can play tones through the
Linux console, and I can detect and partially parse a GWBASIC PLAY
string, but I still don't have the last bit done.
I've found a number of small usability defects in the console
(scrollback buffer handling, VT100, line wrap, etc.) I now "eat my
own dog food" and use Qodem as my primary interface at work. I think
this next release will really be a good one for most people. I still
need Zmodem finished out before I can cut it though. Work is sending
me on a trip and I might find some time to get it done then.
October 13, 2004
I'm putting in support for "ANSI music", a serious misnomer for a
PC-ROM BASIC hack to the ANSI.SYS driver. I've found a handful of
other tiny things to fix too before we go out on 0.0.7.
October 9, 2004
Stubbing in the Zmodem FSM now. The last time I looked at zmodem.c I
was buried in a mess of Xmodem and Ymodem implementation junk (which
still looks NASTY as hell) and was also using the lrzsz output parsing
junk -- that was back in July. Now I'm going for a real Zmodem
implementation to get the block size and stuff right.
September 30, 2004
Finished up the ASCII transfers (CR/LF handling). Also added a flag
to automatically enable doorway mode on connect -- really handy when
you connect to Unix boxes and want PgUp/PgDn to work right off.
September 29, 2004
Got ASCII upload and download working, but discovered some interesting
"problems" with the pty master/slave. I switched over to forkpty()
instead of the ripped-from-Eterm code and it behaves better by a bit.
However:
1) The default behavior of non-blocking causes write(q_child_tty_fd)
to hang indefinitely if the program on the other side isn't actually
reading. I had to make it non-blocking so the user can retain control
and cancel the ASCII upload.
2) vi sucks at reading fast, hanging if the buffer fills too
quickly. cat > filename works much better.
So now to plug in the ASCII translate table functions and ASCII
upload/download will be complete. Got the tables in, now to commit
changes...
Figured out how to get ssh to set the right lines and columns when it
connects to a remote system: TIOCGWINSZ. ('strace stty rows 100').
So that's fixed. Also figured out why arrows weren't making it
through in Linux emulation, so that's fixed. Commit and hang with the
wife now... ;-D
September 28, 2004
Figured out how to auto-detect the Linux console. ioctl(fd, GIO_FONT,
...) will return 0 only on a VGA VT; it returns EINVAL when run
against a PTY. So now we always look our best (cross fingers). :-)
September 27, 2004
I stubbed in the ASCII translation table editor. Now to plug it into
ASCII upload/download....
September 26, 2004
I got a full-time job in mid-July and that has taken all my time.
Today is the first day I actually looked at the Qodem code and got it
to compile again. I'm going to sweep through some old bugs for these
next few days and then work on Zmodem after.
Just fixed a bug in the keyboard file handling, and added ANSI
fallback support to Avatar emulation.
Added wildcard filter support to view_directory(). Committing it in.
July 1, 2004
Well, I'm back in Texas and resuming work on this project. I just
ripped out the code that glues Zmodem to lrzsz, so now Zmodem is
broken until I implement it. It's been a very slow morning, for some
reason I've just been DRAGGING along this week. I think I'm going to
take a nap and then start into the guts of real Zmodem.
May 29, 2004
That's it! We've got a couple bugs to iron out and I'll just let it
lie for now. You can load up default.key, put in $USERNAME^M and
$PASSWORD^M into a key, and then use that key on sites connected to
via phonebook.
Committing it in... We are now mothballed until I finish the move to
Texas and get settled in to a new routine.
For my future reference here is the 'wc' output:
1449 4656 34834 ansi.c
47 244 1675 ansi.h
419 1229 9994 avatar.c
45 235 1623 avatar.h
579 5566 32498 colors.c
126 619 4624 colors.h
362 1769 10456 config.h
1380 4004 38882 console.c
57 289 2136 console.h
214 799 5876 debug.c
46 238 1653 debug.h
264 819 7019 dialer.c
45 235 1607 dialer.h
619 1776 14680 emulation.c
120 505 3915 emulation.h
1105 3790 34087 forms.c
60 325 2241 forms.h
188 656 4550 getopt1.c
1055 4477 30212 getopt.c
169 903 5861 getopt.h
3440 8920 84533 keyboard.c
49 245 1787 keyboard.h
3680 11363 87768 linux.c
68 414 2727 linux.h
437 1497 13388 options.c
76 288 2341 options.h
2734 8119 76040 phonebook.c
105 393 3021 phonebook.h
1688 5442 53558 protocols.c
158 710 5556 protocols.h
1122 4008 32310 qodem.c
293 1046 7550 qodem.h
92 362 2689 screensaver.c
48 249 1757 screensaver.h
1634 5829 48005 scrollback.c
99 485 3855 scrollback.h
286 727 6825 states.c
91 428 3212 states.h
143 672 4472 status.h
6 14 92 test.c
138 686 4457 tty.c
43 227 1513 tty.h
3367 10261 80211 vt100.c
56 298 2058 vt100.h
548 1804 14542 vt52.c
49 256 1765 vt52.h
2270 8264 63144 xmodem.c
63 309 2147 xmodem.h
31132 106450 859746 total
May 28, 2004
Wow, four whole days with no entry. I've been slowly working through
the function key editor. Sucks that I've got to do every small
operation for about 75 keys, but OTOH C macros makes it much easier:
I've got about six functions that are just 1 macro for each key (copy
to/from disk, copy to/from editor, load terminfo keys, etc). What's
left is the actual using of the bound keystrokes in
keyboard_handler(). That should be a rather quick one, and then a
sweep for bugs. I notice that aborting an edit still leaves stale
data in the textboxes on the next load.
And once I have F9==username^M and F10==password^M working, THAT'S IT
until the end of the summer. (BTW I purchased a copy of Tim
Kientzle's The Working Programmer's Guide to Serial Protocols
and hope on the next development push to get Zmodem and Kermit
working. To Mr. Kientzle: I intend to write my own code rather than
incorporate the code provided with the book.)
May 24, 2004
I've been a little lax on the worklog, but I've actually gotten more
code working. Ymodem receive works now, but I notice 'sb' will use
128-byte blocks unless you explicitly ask for 1k blocks, AND 'sb' puts
an extraneous linefeed in the terminator block that's not part of the
spec so you always have one error count before the end.
Today I need to do some fixing up on the strings in xmodem.c and also
do dynamic re-calculation of the # of blocks when a 1k protocol sees a
128-byte block. Got the protocol cleaned up, I *think* it's fully
working now.
Added terminfo support for unknown key presses -- should be very handy
for ANSI mode because everyone disagrees what ANSI really means. (I
actually saw a BBS send DECAWM! I mean that's pretty ridiculous,
DECAWM is not at all in ANSI.SYS.)
Just added commandline support, so you can say "qodem ssh hostname"
or "qodem csh" and get a shell inside the qodem environment. Cool.
But ssh isn't passing LINES and COLUMNS correctly. Wonder why? I
just saw the -e none option to eliminate the escape character ~.
May 22, 2004
I'm re-factoring xmodem.c already. I don't like the way it morphed
into spaghetti code once I added all the cases for vanilla, CRC, 1K,
1K/G, Ymodem, and Ymogem/G! Timeouts aren't being checked in a
straightforward manner, it's manipulating q_transfer_stats directly,
etc. Ugh.
At least I know HOW the protocols work now. I'm fighting my way
through an Atkins diet weekend so it's slow going. (Any of you who
have actually been on Atkins or something similar (Atkins is only the
third person to discover that all-meat diets work) know the feeling of
tiredness that comes after being in it for a few weeks.)
May 21, 2004
Ymodem send is sorta working. I'm cleaning up small glitches in the
batch upload progress window. YMODEM.DOC, the "definitive" source for
the protocol, is ... ahem ... a bit lax. Other people who have
implemented their own have complained on Usenet about it, only to be
responded with "why don't you just se DSZ.EXE?" *sigh* I'm starting
to call some of this work "digital archeology" because I have to
determine what the designers intended by looking at the existing
artifacts rather than the specifications, and also (more importantly)
because even though we depend on XYZmodem almost daily there are NO
BOOKS whatsoever in the libraries and bookstores that really discuss
it. Hundreds of books on signalling, AppleTalk, OSI stack (which no
one actually uses), BGP/RIP routing protocols, but nothing on the good
old reliable file transfer protocols.
May 20, 2004
I've got an interesting crash. The _() macro (gettext()) is hanging
indefinitely with a smashed stack, after I've done a Xmodem-1K
download. Ooh, actually it's after ANY kind of Xmodem download. This
is good, believe it or not, because I can isolate it to
xmodem_receive(). Still, it's a very odd item... Let's rebuild and
see if it remains...still there. But at least it's a nice
reproducible bug. And it's not there when the transfer is aborted.
Got it! I was fclose()'ing the same file handle twice.
Got Xmodem send mostly working, at least in Xmodem normal and CRC
mode. I'm sure there's going to be a whole cycle for testing it
against various BBSes and versions of rx/sx before I can say they work
100%.
Now for Ymodem. Same idea, just bigger. Probably deal with it
tomorrow though. Since 0.0.6 I'm trying to keep an even keel on
things. My cat needs some more attention. :)
May 18, 2004
0.0.6 is out!
May 17, 2004
Got the phonebook Find Text and Find Again functions working. Zmodem
autostart also works. I tested VT102 against flash.c and resetting
the emulation and clearing the screen corrects the display.
It's starting to feel like a very usable program now. I can use vi
and joe from inside a local ANSI shell; the scrollback sometimes is
glitchy after some direct cursor addressing commands, but the visible
screen is 100% correct on my particular test load of mc, emacs, joe,
vi, and bash shell. I think with 0.0.6 I'll be ready to actually eat
my own dog food as they say.
Heehee. I just scp'd rz to a box, then ssh'd over to it, and sent sz
over Zmodem and finally used the remote sz to send rz back to me. And
it all worked.
(Doh! Spoke too soon. Emacs + ANSI = color problems. Again.)
I greyed out the 3 protocols and 1 emulation I don't yet support. You
can select them but who knows what will happen. *grin* I just have
phonebook Undo function and Xmodem/Ymodem to verify and then I'll
seriously be ready to cut.
May 16, 2004
Whew! (I say that a lot lately. :) ) I telnet'ed over to a couple
live BBSes to test the ANSI support and found a number of minor bugs
to fix. But I slogged through it, and noticed a few oddities out
there:
CSI Pn L (ANSI X3.64 Insert Line) is being used by Emacs with no parameter.
CSI Pn M (ANSI X3.64 Delete Line) is being used by Emacs with no parameter.
CSI Pn @ (ANSI X3.64 Insert Character) is being used by lynx.
CSI Pn P (ANSI X3.64 Delete Character) is being used by lynx.
CSI Pn G (ANSI X3.64 CHA) is being used by BBSes.
CSI Pn d (ANSI X3.64 VPA) is being used by BBSes.
CSI Pn b (ANSI X3.64 REP) is being used by lynx.
CSI ! _ is being used by BBSes to detect RIPscrip.
CSI Pr ; Pc f (ANSI X3.64 HVP) is seeing Pr=0 and Pc=0. The
standard specifies top-left as (1, 1).
So I got those added to ansi.c, along with a generic control character
handler for ANSI and AVATAR. Then I tested VT100 and LINUX against
mc, lynx, and emacs and saw that Insertion/Replacement mode had a
minor bug and fixed that. I *think* we've got all the emulators
running correctly now. (Certainly better than the DOS versions of
Qmodem(tm) and QmodemPro(tm).)
I'm going to divert tomorrow to phonebook stuff and finally get down
to the protocols. I think before this is over I'm going to have to
re-implement the protocols myself. lrzsz's code is pretty much
spaghetti on the inside (even the last maintainer commented on that
inside the source), and Qodem is completely dependent on the
English-only output of it. I see no need to implement CompuServe B+,
but IND$FILE might be handy later down the road.
Well, more immediately: I need to get about five features in the
phonebook, then verify AVATAR and get Xmodem and Ymodem working
through lrzsz. When those are done -- probably three more days -- I'm
going to wrap 0.0.6.
The version beyond that is going to be focused on wrapping the
keyboard mapping functions, stubbing in some scripting hooks, and
VT220. I don't expect to get started on that version until the end of
the summer: we're moving across the country and I need to get a new
job. So this week is my great push for a reasonably stable version I
can be proud of showing off.
[LATER] I just got two features in the phonebook: passwords are
covered up with *'s so casual onlookers won't see them, and the
PgUp/PgDn/Home/End navigation keys are working. (And there was a
serious bug: the phonebook couldn't handle multiple pages of entries.)
Finally, I noticed that all the recent activity has pushed Qodem up to
the second page on Sourceforge for projects in the "Terminal
Emulators" category. Go me! :)
Sleepy time. It's only 12:00am too!
May 15, 2004 pt 2
Whew. Finally got Linux function keys and colors working alright.
'mc' looks nice, but I still have a few ANSI cursor movement commands
to implement before it's really sharp. [LATER] Got it. Now I can run
Qodem from inside itself and still get colors. However, ACS_?ARROW
characters don't render for some reason.
Next up: protocols. I really need to debug what's going on with
Zmodem, and then get autostart working, and finally get Xmodem and
Ymodem up and running. It's pretty bad right now, this is rather old
(for this project) code that never got a decent sweep.
[REALLY LATER] Well, I slogged through the first compile on Solaris.
Yech. All I can say is at least it isn't AIX. The vt100 term doesn't
have all of the graphics glyphs defined, so windows have top and right
side and letters elsewhere. Whatever, it's 2:10am and I'm going to
sleep now.
May 15, 2004
Again, very sleepy: 1:44am. But I've been on a rather good roll so
far. I had this cool idea for DEBUG emulation and got that working in
only about an hour. Then I found some books circa 1985 from the
library that talked about "teleprocessing terminals" (TTY) and
"intelligent terminals" (VT52, IBM 3270). Heehee. It's so easy to
forget these days how much really ran on those machines. I remember
old Columbo mysteries where some of the "computers" didn't have
monitors.
But I recalled from the book that TTY is the evolved form of Baudot,
and those control codes were actually a semi-official standard before
ANSI X3.64 arrived. So I beefed up tty() to properly handle the
control codes. Then I remembered what it was like to use a real
typewriter, so for sheer perversity's sake I added underline support.
I'm actually a bit proud of the fact that my "dumb terminal" will
actually behave like a REAL non-intelligent terminal from the 1970's
would.
A few other nice touches: up-and-down arrow while browsing the
scrollback; ENQ support on all emulations.
Tomorrow ("today" after I sleep) I'm going to add color to the LINUX
emulation, and then add the application/numeric key bindings for VT52
and VT100/LINUX.
May 14, 2004
Got my first response to a query on comp.terminals! I've added some
emulations on the TODO. SCOANSI looks like it'll be a good
challenge...especially on the keyboard mapping.
It's been a busy night. I've got Linux console emulation separated
out, tomorrow I'll add the color changes. VT52 is now a "real" VT52
as in it's very limited, but I added ANSI colors (parameterized)
because 'ls' puts the colors out even though the termcap clearly does
not have them.
Sigh. I'm quite sleepy. I'll finish this update tomorrow.
May 12, 2004
What in the hell is a "fuzzy translation"? It all started with a
debian utilities update and FOUR HOURS LATER I could finally compile
the project again. I love GNU but DAMNIT this was a FUCKING WASTED
DAY because they stopped supporting their old way of doing things.
Naturally they say "read the documentation" except that the docs don't
have a section called "What we recently changed that probably broke
everything you're doing."
Then when it compiled again I was trying to see the unknown keycodes
on the numeric pad and the translated message wasn't being used! Huh?
More digging and I discovered the following:
1. msgmerge marks entries 'fuzzy' for no apparent reason. Then these
entries are NOT ACTUALLY USED at runtime! What the hell is that
about? I can't get msgmerge to really believe that a given string is
the right translation.
2. msgmerge marks entries 'obsolete' that aren't directly visibly
accessed in the code. Guess what? That means you can't have a
programmatic key string to do the lookup at the appropriate time later
or in a loop (like I do in options.c).
I am very seriously considering ripping out all the GNU build utils
and returning to a simple Makefile. This is pissing me off like you
wouldn't believe. I keep running into these productivity traps and
the documentation just gushes about how wonderful the "GNU Way" makes
life easier.
You know what makes life easy? Simplifying the project down so that
very little platform-specific code is in it, a 'make what' shows the
platforms supported and 'make XXXX' builds it.
[LATER]
Nah, I can keep this problem isolated to the po/ Makefile's. It's
just msgformat that is screwing up the en.po before it ever installs.
May 11, 2004
Version 0.0.5 is now released!
May 10, 2004
I was just going to take a "break" from the hard VT100 stuff for a
slick-ism: when run from a Linux console Qodem uses VGA glyphs, but
when run anywhere else it uses ACS_* characters. It's very subtle but
*damn nice*: "correct" drawing characters around the menus and such.
A "side effect" of this work is that the VT100 emulation now supports
multiple character sets. :-) So though I didn't plan it at all,
we've now got the most critical 2/3 of the special graphics character
set available, AND we have the British pound sterling symbol in the
right spot.
Quick line count recap:
658 1869 15007 ansi.c
45 235 1609 ansi.h
299 868 6811 avatar.c
45 235 1623 avatar.h
578 5564 32478 colors.c
126 622 4638 colors.h
276 1353 7837 config.h
1232 3588 35375 console.c
54 277 2050 console.h
252 805 6742 dialer.c
45 235 1607 dialer.h
369 1169 9947 emulation.c
103 446 3394 emulation.h
1093 3761 34846 forms.c
55 296 2045 forms.h
374 833 6909 keyboard.c
42 225 1537 keyboard.h
413 1404 12433 options.c
72 284 2245 options.h
2064 6339 59978 phonebook.c
99 370 2802 phonebook.h
1730 5880 55318 protocols.c
109 477 3663 protocols.h
923 3135 25320 qodem.c
210 772 5532 qodem.h
93 364 2709 screensaver.c
48 249 1757 screensaver.h
1544 5460 45335 scrollback.c
98 477 3732 scrollback.h
270 692 6540 states.c
88 415 3111 states.h
123 580 3883 status.h
124 635 4150 tty.c
43 227 1513 tty.h
3071 9278 71569 vt100.c
51 267 1828 vt100.h
464 1245 10594 vt52.c
45 235 1609 vt52.h
17328 61166 500076 total
VT100 is getting a bit large, but it effectively does everything now
except double-sized characters (never) and VT102 insert/delete
character/line codes.
There's a serious bug in the VT52 sub-mode that broke the test, but I
haven't dug into it. I had a chemical engineering final exam this
morning that took precedence. *grin*
May 9, 2004 part 2
Oops. Just broke the VT52 test when adding origin mode and scrolling
region stuff. Probably doing something wrong in the
scroll_up/scroll_down code in scrollback.c....
Well, I'm getting really darn close to wrapping 0.0.5. I've just
got to fix the VT52 tests, then add support for the VT102
insert/delete codes. I've got plenty other things I'd like to get in,
but I'm already better than QmodemPro(tm) was. I still need to test
the VT100 and ANSI support with mc, joe, emacs, vi, and lynx. Once
those are all happy with both emulations I'll call emulation work done
until 0.1.0.
Then comes (whew!) the Zmodem tests across long connection chains.
Once I've got that working -- which should just be figuring out the
command-line flags to pass to it -- the I'll close on 0.0.5 and start
fleshing out the remaining phonebook functions. I'm hoping to get
past the VT100/ANSI and Zmodem stuff in the next two weeks.
It's been fun though getting this working again.
May 9, 2004
Wow, look at that. Five solid months of inactivity. Ah well, we made
some good progress today. We've got cursor positioning, VT52
compatibility, and terminal reports supported in VTTEST. The really
big kahuna still remains: "screen features". And I'm definitely going
to have to make some compromises on that one. There's just no way to
draw the graphics glyphs with a curses-based program, nor is there
"smooth scroll". So I'll probably have to detect and "box" out the
glyphs that won't render correctly and prevent codepage changes.
Small price I suppose for my target audience: they should still have
good emulation on VMS systems and over ssh/telnet to typical
terminfo/termcap'd applications. I'll just make a note on it as a
known limitation and recommend xterm for those who really need
accurate-looking glyphs.
I still want to add a layer of codepage translation for Qodem itself,
so that for instance it can detect that it's running on a non-raw
console and then use the curses ACS_* characters instead of IBM VGA
glyphs. Ah well, I've been coding pretty much 100% for the last seven
hours, time for sleep.
January 1, 2004
First day of the new year. My resolutions to the wife are 1) to be
busy, and 2) to stop buying shit from eBay. :)
I had surgery December 19, and got laid off December 23 (it was
announced November 19). So now I've got more time to put into real
code and not the bullshit pay-bills code. Yay.
I could rant a bit about how bad corporate code is, but alas I can't
give any details because I signed a non-disclosure agreement about my
slave^H^H^H^H^Hemployment with IBM. (I AM allowed to say I worked for
IBM, but I can't name any customers who bought the junk, what I did
specifically for the company, or exactly who inside the organization
is running it into the ground.) Fortunately my open-source work is
nowhere near the domain that my one-year non-compete clause covers
("autonomic computing" and/or "web site analytics").
Regardless, I'm coming back up the curve to this code. I fixed the
tabulation set/clear so that vttest passes. I'm still working on the
big kahuna "cursor movement" test that even Linux console can't fully
pass.
November 16, 2003
vt100.c is now the largest source file. Go figure. :)
November 14, 2003
I got most of the VT100 functions stubbed into the state machine. The
remaining functions are tab stops (horizontal and vertical) and
scrolling regions. I just re-factored the functions into real
functions and suddenly VT100 doesn't look so bad. Complex for sure,
but thanks to http://vt100.net it's not too crazy.
In other news, I'm stuck at a meeting at work. It's VERY boring,
corporate junk, the kind of thing that naturally happens when managers
intersect programmers. They think that a new process will make up for
passionless clock-watchers who just happen to know a little Java. For
anyone actually reading this, stay away from anything with "Tivoli" in
its name. 'Nuff said.
October 31, 2003
I finally fixed a stupid bug in cursor_right() that made 'mc' look
like crap under ANSI emulation. Now mc looks good, so we've just
about got ANSI beyond what ANSI.SYS could do, so it should be suitable
for BBSes.
I also put the skeleton in for the VT100 state machine. It's going to
take a while to get right, and the testing effort will probably be a
bitch, but by God we're gonna have a solid VT100 before I switch the
project release state to alpha.
October 29, 2003
Been culling small bugs, it's very fun again. I verified that uploads
and downloads over ssh are working. Once I get the vt100 through
vttest and cut 0.0.5, I'll have matched the critical features of the
zssh project...that'll be cool. I'm sure zssh has better scripting
support right now, but that'll come to qodem eventually.
October 20, 2003
Just cut 0.0.4! Wee!
Integrated with the Hans Boehm garbage collector. Pushed the
remaining phonebook stuff to 0.0.6. Now it's vt100 and vttest.
October 16, 2003
Added the logic in for Q_STATE_UPLOAD and Q_STATE_BATCH_UPLOAD. No
idea if it works yet of course. :)
My Emacs learning curve is mostly complete. Lots more Ctrl keys to
mess with, but I do like the syntax highlighting and parenthesis
matching.
October 9, 2003
Got batch_entry_window() mostly stubbed in. The next major piece is
actually batch uploading.
October 6, 2003
Fixed view_directory() finally. That's an important screen before the
batch upload window.
October 5, 2003
I finally had time to write some non-Java code in a while. Life's
been busy as hell these last few months...got married August 1, took
three trips out of town (one to Texas for 10 days), etc. The Texas
trip was fun...besides all the great food I had a chance to setup
computers for my new in-laws and it was refreshing to be a geek
without the paycheck riding on it. It's fun coming up with analogies
to explain why computers have such illogical behavior ("Why
single-click here but double-click there? How come steering wheels
are round? It just came that way.")
The last few weeks I've been digging into alternative languages and
it's nice. Did you know Pascal is still alive and kicking out there?
I've also been looking at Python, D, Ada, and Smalltalk. And in the
office I had to do a bit of Perl. Then I read a bunch of "java sucks"
rants online.
The net result is I feel so much freer thinking about code again. I'm
curious now about how C++ templates work. I abandoned them in
ShiftyNet for the sake of portability, but then again it would be nice
to figure out how to get GCC to only create one implementation object
file.
But I digress. Qodem is alive again. I finally got around to fixing
the phonebook format to store attached notes to entries and cleared a
few bugs. The next big item is upload support.
August 13, 2003
Gotta switch back to emacs... Renamed "dirty" to "q_screen_dirty",
now all globals are prefixed with q_.
July 14, 2003
Meetings at work are wonderful opportunities for rote work on this
project. I'm about 80% complete on gettext-izing console.c, after
that it'll be phonebook.c and then I'll focus on fixing the known
bugs.
June 25, 2003
Emacs is proving to be...interesting. Like the default behavior of
untabify, NO! Gotta figure it out soon. I want END to be
end-of-line, not end-of-file, likewise HOME. We'll get there
eventually, in the meantime I got gettext working. Now, I'm going to
force EVERYTHING through the gettext layer. This will mean the binary
image of qodem won't work without the locale files (ooh, changes to
the .deb) but it'll put English on equal footing with every other
language.
June 24, 2003
Started gettext. Gonna begin switching to Emacs finally. (FYI my
editor for the last four years has been 'joe'.)
June 19, 2003
Got the phonebook load function working. Added "RAW" capture type,
about to add HTML. Gotta run to the auto insurance agent this
afternoon though...
Released this code as 0.0.3. Bumping to 0.0.4. This next release is
intended to close out some of the bugs and re-factor for a better
long-term future.
June 7, 2003
Split screen is partially functional. Now adding directory list.
Mostly functional now, just need to plug in the wildcard/regexp
support.
June 3, 2003
Got the sort in, hideously inefficient but who's looking? It works,
now I think it's split screen.
June 2, 2003
Started stubbing in the sort FON function. Got the call info working
yesterday. I've gotta get to 0.0.4 ASAP, because I'm interviewing for
positions at startups and as soon as I get an offer I'll be head down
into the paid-for work until January.
May 28, 2003
I'm moving most of these kind of entries to the ChangeLog now. Added
a debian package target.
May 27, 2003
Moved the carriage return and linefeed handling to emulation.c. That
opens the door for a full vt100 later.
May 21, 2003
Stubbing in the screensaver. Hmm...got a small "issue": the
screensaver won't know to kick in while blocking on keyboard input.
Simple workaround: if the screensaver is on then the keyboard will
never block. Not a big deal since the phone directory has most of the
keyboard-intensive input. Except for the forms functions
(notify_form(), save_form(), etc.). I'll open some bugs on
SourceForge.
Released 0.0.2.
Got automake to create Makefile.in from Makefile.am. Not bad.
Starting the debian package builder work.
May 20, 2003
Got the insert/delete working on the phonebook, along with pick lists
for the method and emulation. Added an idle disconnect. Screen saver
is the last feature before 0.0.2.
May 19, 2003
Got the phone entry revision screen in. Mostly works, except for
choosing emulation and method, but fonebook.txt can be manually
edited.
May 18, 2003
Stubbing in the phonebook screen now.
May 17, 2003
Added command-line support for the other connection methods, now we
can actually be used as a telnet or ssh client.
May 16, 2003
Cleaned up the capture and screen dump routines to make use of
open_workingdir_file(). Found some history regarding Qmodem(tm) from
the BBS timeline on www.textfiles.com, put it in the README.
May 15, 2003
Moved the state-switching stuff to states.c.
Moved the ANSI emulation code to ansi.c. This will help us get
VT52/VT100 later.
Alt-P Capture File now works.
May 14, 2003
Added a man page.
Alt-2 Backspace/Del now works.
Alt-3 Line Wrap now works.
Alt-4 Display NULL now works.
I was reading http://vt100.net and it looks like a "real" VT100 is
quite difficult to do right. So I'm going to dedicate an entire point
release to the VT100 emulation, maybe just going with the emulator
from PuTTY or xterm. I'll save it for nearly-last since it'll take
forever and a day to test.
May 13, 2003
Released 0.0.1. Feels nice, this is my first actual file release of
any open-source project.
Alt-M Mail reader now works. Alt-- Status Lines now works.
May 12, 2003
Got the download screen working for Zmodem receive. Added keyboard
emulation and beep support, so now bash shell works properly.
May 9, 2003
Stubbed in the download/upload window. Lunch, and then a quickie
parser for rz's output. Current 'wc' output:
523 5417 30848 colors.c
120 595 4383 colors.h
20 98 579 config.h
1003 3199 28323 console.c
56 286 2067 console.h
194 641 4688 dialer.c
55 262 1800 dialer.h
787 2188 17782 emulation.c
84 392 2853 emulation.h
330 1206 9547 forms.c
46 251 1716 forms.h
53 264 1743 messages.c
60 303 2104 messages.h
416 1532 12364 options.c
63 263 1949 options.h
744 2359 20814 protocols.c
94 367 2835 protocols.h
610 1900 15252 qodem.c
130 513 3809 qodem.h
402 1330 10810 scrollback.c
73 367 2644 scrollback.h
88 427 2826 status.h
123 629 4128 tty.c
43 227 1514 tty.h
6117 25016 187378 total
Hmmm...getting a segfault on a large file. Doesn't seem to be any
problems in the read()/write(), yet somehow memory is getting
corrupted...hmm... oh well weekend time. I'm shooting for a 0.0.1
file release by this time next week.
May 8, 2003
Protocols are close but no cigar yet. There, got it. rz expects
blocking stdin/stdout/stderr. I can transfer files successfully. Now
to get the success to finish out and commit... Yup, needed to catch
SIGPIPE and handle write() returning EPIPE when rz is gone.
May 7, 2003
Alt-C Clear screen.
Stubbed in the download/upload protocol stuff. I think I've figured
out how to do rz/sz but damnit if it isn't behaving correctly. When I
spawn the child process it freezes the main process and keyboard
handlers/menus and refreshers stop working. After the child exits
things are OK. Hmmm...maybe wait4() is blocking? Yup. So how can I
check if a child is still running without calling wait4()? According
to comp.unix.programming FAQ kill(pid,0) is the way to go. But
that'll be a tomorrow thing...as my girlfriend is demanding the rest
of the night. G'night.
May 6, 2003
Put in a simple notify screen for the mode switches. Alt-H works now,
via SIGHUP. Next biggie: dialing directory. Today's todo:
Unplug laptop from the wall outlet
Give my girlfriend some squeeze time :)
Got scrollback save and clear working. Sourceforge CVS is
down....grrr...
Alt-U Scrollback toggle.
May 5, 2003
Screen dump works. And forms.h has a terribly important piece of
missing documentation: form field data won't be visible until
form_driver(save_form, REQ_VALIDATION) has been called. Grrr! But
we've got a generic form that will be used for downloads and capture
too so I can't complain too much.
Did some other low-hanging fruit: linefeed on cr, 8th-bit strip,
half/full duplex, and some status line fixes. The list of deviations
from Qmodem(tm) is growing: good.
May 3, 2003
Got the ANSI color portion working, now putting in the cursor
repositioning. Ran into a bunch if crap with the curses COLOR_PAIR(0)
meaning white-on-black rather than black-on-black...grr...but I think
it works now.
More cleaning. WIDTH and HEIGHT are now globals. Also got
ansi_position() fixed so mc won't cause a core dump. Woo. Stubbed in
the options file functions.
May 2, 2003
Starting the ANSI emulation now. There, now it strips all the codes
it can recognize. (Just a subset of the full function but we can
easily add more later.) This weekend's TODO is to actually modify the
program variables so color comes in again.
OS shell works. Doorway works...sort of.
May 1, 2003
Scrollback buffer render is working, along with the info screen.
Yippee! Today's TODO is to figure out how to get proper 8-bit
characters from the child tty all the way through curses, then we can
start worrying about ANSI.
April 30, 2003
Only one hour into it and I've got bash showing me ls! Weehee! All
that's left of core function is scrollback, which I was thinking about
last night as I went to sleep. The render is pretty easy, but I'm
probably going to have to re-implement the storage at least twice.
For now I don't care, let's get something up. Today's TODO:
Be able to scroll the screen up one line when we are supposed to.
Wow. Got it running, took a bunch of stupid one-off errors, but
believe it or not rendering the entire screen each time (and using
printw() for EVERY character!) is still much faster on the console
than a "real" bash prompt! Heehee.
Put in a top-level call to terminal emulation. Soon we'll have basic
ANSI support. :) Time to commit...code size: 2169.
April 29, 2003
Got CVS access. Screwed up the initial import of course, lots of crap
in the attic. Grr, anyway...
Fixed up the program flow, got some screenshots. Today's todo:
Get the child TTY working
Put in the console help screen, with unimplemented features
in gray.
I'm about to call Santronics, the new owners of Mustang Software, to
see if we can copy the help text from Qmodem 4.6 test drive. :) Their
web site claims the # is 305-248-3204...dialing... press 2 for tech
support ... Well gosh. Looks like Santronics didn't acquire Qmodem,
that stayed with Mustang who got bought out by another company that
later went bankrupt. So Qmodem is officially in dead-product-land,
not legal to rip off the help screens. I'll need written permission
from whoever bought Mustang... Back to coding, let's get the help
screen in.
Done with the help screen. Let's play with TTYs now. I think I see
what Eterm is doing, pretty clever. Got it! Tonight when I get home
I'll get the execlp() call in and start dumping the child's output to
the console. Boo. Ya. :)
April 28, 2003
SourceForge accepted the project, now waiting for CVS to be alive and
well. Until then I've got the ALT- and ^Z/^C working, put in the
global state variables, and have the beginnings of the console state
working. Tomorrow I'll see about spawning a /bin/sh and piping its
output around, then we'll boot to DOS and get some screenshots of
Qmodem to model the menus after.
Patrick is listed as a developer, I'm really hoping he'll be
interested in creating the scripting support. I figure a Lex/Yacc
kind of thing would be in order, assuming it doesn't lead to huge code
bloat. But I've never enjoyed compilers and that seems more his
thing, so I'll defer design decisions if he does in fact come fully on
board.
April 27, 2003
Project started. Registered on SourceForge, awaiting approval. GPL.
Got autoconf working mostly, need to add the check for ncurses.
Initial window comes up, checks for keystrokes, exits on 'q'.
I don't think this will be an insanely difficult project. I suspect
it will be useful for work within a week or two. Once I have the
todos done below it'll just be adding the pluggable
telnet/ssh/etc. and then a bunch of UI work.
Immediate todos:
GNU gettext support (I18n)
Detect alt- and ctrl-
Signal handlers to detect ^Z and ^C
TTY handler
Allocate TTY
Fork child /bin/sh
Capture output