A1.5. dataComet Release Notes 4.1.2A - 4.30 _____________________________________________________________________________ dataComet documentation (Rev. 5/6/00): Copyright 1995, 1996 databeast, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This document has information on (select and use "Find..." to go to the section): Release Notes: 4.30 4.22B 4.2.1B 4.2.0B 4.1.9A 4.1.8A 4.1.7A 4.1.6A 4.1.5A 4.1.4A 4.1.3A 4.1.2A ___________________________________________________ 4.30 2/24/96 ___________________________________________________ Features: * dataComet now prompts the user to save or allow automatic deletion of a new dataComet document produced by dataComet-NCSA 4.30 or dataComet-Brown 4.30 (when those applications are configured to do so). For best performance of dataComet as a Telnet/TN3270 helper application, you should use these three applications at version 4.30 or higher; dataComet-NCSA and dataComet-Brown 4.30 have significant enhancements in their reliability and functionality over earlier versions. See "Network helper and GURL AppleEvent support" in the "Overview of dataComet" document. * There is now a "Match case" macro; there are also new macros to control Return key mapping for the ASCII emulators (see "Match case" and "Telnet commands" in the document on Macros). * The "Control Printing..." dialog now has an option to enable Color printing using the emulator's color map; dataComet now defaults to printing emulator screens in black and white to avoid color mapping problems. Bug fixes: * Sessions opened through GURL AppleEvents now have the name set to the host name rather than '@'. * The cursor is now set properly when WindowShade is used to hide a dataComet window. * Several memory leaks which could affect usability in low memory conditions were fixed. * You can now define key macros for a new edit window without causing a crash. You can also now save the configuration for a text-only document. * Edit windows now check for exactly 32767 characters rather than 32500 so they can display as much text as TextEdit can handle. * Each edit window now has a separate scrap; an Undo of a Cut or Undo operation now restores the text that was cut from the window rather than the current scrap. * Setting the Modem Port as the Serial Printing port in the "Control Printing..." dialog now selects the Modem port when the document is reopened rather than incorrectly opening the Printer Port. * Printing a page in the scrollback buffer prints correctly rather than showing incorrect bold, inverse, and other attributes. * Pastes with both the ASCII and IBM emulators work more reliably; using the Enter key to paste into a 3270 session now works; ASCII pastes now work when delays are set. * You can now use the Window menu items when a session is Miniaturized (iconified). * Labels now appear in the correct place in the popup list when there are empty labels preceding them. Pressing the '?' cursor-button now displays the labels when "Show status bar at top of window" is disabled. * When the MacTCP Domain Name Resolver returns 0 or -1 for an address, an alert is presented. * The "Set macro" dialogs now use the "Use Command Font" setting correctly; when it was off, macro actions such as PF entries were not being displayed correctly. ___________________________________________________ 4.22B 1/15/96 ___________________________________________________ Features: * You can now define key macros for text-only windows. * The Edit Selection menu item "Go to line..." now sets the cursor at the beginning of the line in edit windows. * You can now copy and paste the color array from one "Control Color..." dialog panel into another session's "Control Color..." dialog panel. * 16-color ANSI is now supported; hold down the Shift key when selecting the Control Color... dialog to set the Intense colors. * Documents: A new fedworld.gov Document provides a sample PC-ANSI configuration. The ALA sample has been enhanced to provide a better example of configuring dataComet for card catalog access. E.g., the single click now performs a copy/paste so the user can select items using only the mouse. Bug fixes: * PC-ANSI color displays now display properly (the default background color is now white rather than the same as the foreground in the default case!). * IBM screens no longer display "square boxes" instead of blanks when used with Monaco and some other fonts which use a "square box" as character 255, which dataComet is using to represent 3270 NULL characters. * Text is now always properly updated in edit windows after a "Find..." is performed. When the cursor moves outside the window, the selection is now displayed at the middle of the window rather than the top or bottom so that scrolling is easier to use. * Text window contents no longer "flicker" due to being drawn twice when a document is opened. * Telnet Terminal type negotiation has been fixed so that sessions with OpenVMS (and MultiNet) TCP/IP servers will open even though they perform incomplete negotiations (i.e., the negotiation sequence is not terminated by actual data transmission to fix the type: this can cause problems if the host expects a wholly different character set such as IBM EBCDIC). Keying is allowed when one second has elapsed since the last negotiation. * An incorrect alert stating "Can't delete macro resource" no longer appears when setting macros. * The single click macro or default cursor motion action is not executed if a double-click is performed. (Note this slows response down somewhat.) ___________________________________________________ 4.2.1B 12/18/95 ___________________________________________________ Features: * You can now perform a "Power Quit" (using Option-Quit) which closes dataComet without prompts to close windows or save documents. * You can now set the Option key to function as a meta-key for EMACS using the Control menu "Emulator" item "Option is Meta-Key". * The IBM 3270 PF/Action and ASCII Control key menus now stay up when an edit window is frontmost; in this case, these menus produce only a beep unless the Option key is held down, which causes the equivalent macro to be placed in the edit window at the cursor. * The Option key NO LONGER automatically produces Control characters except on Macs using Mac+ or previous keyboards, which lack a Control key. This allows the entry of standard Option-key characters (e.g., umlaut-U) in edit windows for better compatibility with the Keycaps * dataComet now sets the default creator type for downloaded 'TEXT' files to dataComet rather than TeachText. * The '!CB' shieldwindow macro command, which puts up a window to conceal the Finder and other applications, has been added to provide security when dataComet is used in a public kiosk. (See "Set Launch Macro" above). Bug fixes: * The MacTCP DNR code is no longer closed, released, and then called again without being properly opened (this very nasty bug has been present in all previous versions of dataComet; under some circumstances it could cause dataComet to crash and leave a damaged MacTCP file). * dataComet now updates window positions and fonts when a Quit is done. This formerly occurred only if the window was closed using the File menu "Close" command. * The IBM 3270 Action menu has been corrected so that the defined key-equivalents work with all 3270 keypad configurations. ___________________________________________________ 4.2.0B 12/14/95 ___________________________________________________ Features: * The Option key can now be set to function as a meta key in the "Control Emulator" dialog. * If a selection is made in an edit window, "Print..." will print the selection rather than the complete text in the window. (The "!Fq" macro was added also to support this function.) * Support has been added for disabling menu items, including the Finder menu (See "Menu Commands" in the document on "Macros"). Used with the "NoForceQuit" extension installed in the System Extensions and a dataComet "Set Launch Macro" which disables the menus, you can now set up a secure terminal kiosk for public access using dataComet. (And remember, with customizable macro buttons one can now set up a preconfigured document to simplify access for inexperienced users...). * Key Macros can now be defined in edit-only windows. * Fonts: A Comet-DEC-Multinational font is now provided in the dataComet release package. The PC-ANSI font has been fixed so the box characters align better and a 16-point version is now included. Bug fixes: * If serial printing is on and the serial port can't be opened, the copy of the data to be printed is released to avoid an endless loop. * The 3270 emulator now draws the screen correctly when inserting characters and performing "Erase field" commands. * Choosing the "File" menu item "Print page now" when using serial printing causes a form feed to be sent to the printer. * Edit windows now zoom correctly. * Type 4 (Zero Divide) system crashes caused by launching old Comet documents and documents made by dataComet-NCSA are now avoided. The PrDefault() system routine was crashing when it was called without being preceded by a PrOpen() call. * "Edit -> Selection" items to move the cursor now use the Shift key to extend the selection range and the Option key to move by words in order to comply better with Macintosh user interface standards. * The default macro queue size has been upped to 16K from 4K to handle large macros better. * The documentation on the Search macro has been corrected to accurately describe the macro. * The Latin-1 character y with an umlaut will now display rather than appearing as a blank. * Error warnings occurring when an edit window is frontmost are now displayed using a dialog rather than a timed window alert in order to avoid conditions which can cause crashes. * Using Option-Select button to set a button macro when the button labels are displayed no longer leaves the screen display partially blank. (This condition would persist until the window is closed and reopened.) * Using the "Enter" key to paste from an edit window into an emulator window now send the complete selection rather than sending only a portion of it. ___________________________________________________ 4.1.9A 11/8/95 ___________________________________________________ Bug fixes: * Version 4.1.8A was burned because the resource fork in the StuffIt archive was bad. * The 3270 emulator now resets the cursor to 0,0 when the screen is cleared (this affected only the display; the next character entered appeared in the correct position). ___________________________________________________ 4.1.8A 11/4/95 ___________________________________________________ Enhancements: * Copies of dataComet which have been registered can be shared (launched from AppleShare servers by multiple users). * The execute menu macro ("!\<3-digit menunum>\<3-digit itemnum>") has been extended so that the macro "!\<3-digit menunum>\<<3-digit itemnum> + 192>" disables the menu item so that it cannot be used until dataComet is launched again. * A new "Set Launch Macro..." dialog allows you to set up a macro which is executed on launch, prior to opening any sessions, so that dataComet can be easily configured to disable various commands. This allows dataComet to serve as a relatively user-proof kiosk terminal for library or other public access applications. * Macros were added to select the word and line at the current mouse cursor position, to delay a number of ticks ("!d\000"), and to send text and execute macros in an edit window ("!El", "!Ew", and "!EM" and "!Em"). * "Command-Enter" and "Command-Return" now send text to the host in a reliable fashion (whereas using the Enter key to execute a macro in 4.1.7A often resulted in a failure to send plain text due to '!'s in the text or an overrun of the macro buffer). Shifting these commands causes the text to be interpreted as a macro. * Menus and default key-equivalents have been rearranged to improve the interface. (Note that users can modify key-equivalents by editing the MENU resources in the application.) * Fonts are now packaged in a separate folder (rather than the application) to save disk space. dataComet now automatically opens resource files in the "Fonts" folder. * dataComet now negotiates sessions successfully with IBM mainframe hosts running SNS-TCP. * The "Save" command is now executed only if an edit window has been modified. The window's menu item is underlined to indicate that it has been modified. * Output can be redirected from an edit window to a host session by pressing Shift while selecting the target window. See the "Summary of special key-action combinations" in the "0. Overview of dataComet" document. * A "Control ASCII Emulator" dialog item, "Do CR-LF when LF received (newline mode)" has been added. Bug fixes: * An icon resource for the '3278' configuration type has been added so that host session document icons are displayed correctly in the Finder. This also caused some problems with Easy Open. * Macro recording of menu item selections now works reliably for all menu items. * The 3270 emulator now handles proportionally-spaced fonts correctly. * Drawing of selected text in VT100 emulator screens is now performed correctly for characters which have the Reverse attribute set. As a side effect of this fix, display of selected areas in all emulators is now smooth (no reblanking is performed when paging). * Macs with 9" screens no longer automatically go into fast drawing mode; the user must now select this option. * The "Save Configuration..." dialog now copies all resources from the old session document to the new session document when a new session name is entered, including macros. Previously one needed to duplicate the document in the Finder to copy the entire configuration to a new document. * The "Save" command is now uses different files to save the emulator and .edit window text. This avoids the unpleasant possibility of overwriting a .edit window by mistake. When the emulator selection is being saved, the menus change so the "Append" is the default for the "Command-S" Save key equivalent. * Text-only edit windows can now be miniaturized. If a session is selected in the "Window" menu, whichever window was up front previously (emualtor or .edit) is brought to the front rather than the emulator window. * Error messages are reported in a window when an edit window is frontmost. * The button labels on the left hand side are now drawn only when the emulator window is in front, and the default IBM labels no longer include ASCII options for buttons numbered above 24. * Printer port selection has been enabled. ___________________________________________________ 4.1.7A 9/14/95 ___________________________________________________ Enhancements: * The "Map Return to Newline" item in the "Control Ascii Emulator" dialog has been replaced by two items are used to set the mapping, "Return key sends [] CR followed by [] LF". If "Map Return to Newline" was true, it's taken to mean that return -> CR LF. Bug fixes: * MacTCP Read calls now rely on asynchronous completion routines rather than the MacTCP Notification routine. This enhances performance by replacing the kluge used in 4.1.6A for OT compatibility of occasionally performing a Read (which required 1 second to complete when no data was available) to catch the cases where the Notification routine failed to report data arrival correctly. * The selection scrolls properly now when the top of the buffer scrolls beyond the maximum scrollback buffer limit. When a copy is attempted the selection range is tested for being out of range and an error is reported if it is. * Undo resizes the scroll bars correctly. * The ASCII emulator drawing routines sometimes left lines blank which should have been drawn if the line was inverted and the line before it had blanks at the end. * VT100 character deletion now shifts the on-screen image a double rather than single width when characters are double-wide. * The VT100 PF4 key now works correctly (it was sometimes mapped to the cursor right key). * Command-key combinations which don't match menu items are now ignored. * To prevent confusion and possible mangling of macros, the key macro dialog item "Use Command Font" is disabled while a macro is being edited. * The Single-click macro is now interpreted if one has been set. * Labels for the macro buttons are now updated correctly and saved when the titles are changed. * The documentation on Macros was incomplete in 4.1.6A; it has now been updated to include more information. ___________________________________________________ 4.1.6A 8/31/95 ___________________________________________________ Bug fixes: * Control Global items have been added to control MacTCP status calls and optimization of the MacTCP resend timers. * dataComet 4.1.6A now works with OT. MacTCP (especially when emulated by OT) intermittently fails to notify applications that data is available. dataComet used to use MacTCP status calls to check this; it now works around this problem by occasionally performing a Read without notification. (You can tell when this is happening because of a lag in typing input...) * Old Comet documents which did not contain a Print Layout resource sometimes crashed when opened. * The notification window for sessions which have the status bar disabled is now retained between calls to ensure that it will be there if memory is low. This could cause a crash. * The labels displayed by the "?" control are now aligned properly. ___________________________________________________ 4.1.5A 8/13/95 ___________________________________________________ Enhancements: * "Option-Resize Window" now resizes the emulator screen and negotiates a Window Size (NAWS) Telnet option with Telnet hosts. * Pasting a sound resource ('snd ') into a dataComet window sets the window's beep to the sound and saves the resource automatically. Bug fixes: * The "Control Emulator" item "Answerback" now sets the Answerback message for ASCII emulators. * Button macros are now always posted to the correct session when they are executed. * When text windows are saved, the changed flag is set so that the user is not prompted unnecessarily when quitting dataComet. * The "!W>windowname\000" macro now works more reliably. Text windows now discard macro keys which can't be sent out on a connection, so connectionless text windows won't fail to post macros after a macro containing characters for a connection is executed. (This makes text windows more useful for running macros.) * Font sizes equal to zero are presumed to need a 9-pt font. (Some helper applications produced NCSA documents which passed on an invalid font size to dataComet-NCSA.) * Windows have a minimum window size enforced so that scrollbars and old Comet documents with bad window sizes will display correctly. ___________________________________________________ 4.1.4A 8/9/95 ___________________________________________________ Enhancements: * Support for GURL AppleEvents has been added. * The buttons at the top and left of the screen can now be associated with macros by holding down the Option key while clicking on them. Bug fixes: * The screen erase and scroll rectangle is now set correctly when a session is opened with a font size other than 9 pt. This caused seriously muddled screens! * Menus are now set correctly for the document which is frontmost. Sometimes the menus were set up for a text document rather than a session document and vice-versa. * dataComet no longer registers an NBP name on AppleTalk network. * When a text documents which is already open is opened again, the document is brought to the front rather than being opened again. * Text document window positions are now saved correctly. * Open Transport 1.0.5b4 reports an overlarge maximum segment size on Ethernet which caused dataComet to fail when creating a session. Sessions will now open even though the segment size is reported incorrectly. * When new documents are closed, the user is prompted to save them. ___________________________________________________ 4.1.3A 7/26/95 ___________________________________________________ Bug fixes: * The "Add page numbers at bottom of page" and "Add line feed after carriage return" were switched in the "Control Printing" dialog. * When windows are closed, the corresponding Window menu entry is disabled. Selecting a closed but not-disabled window caused crashes. * When "Show status bar at the top of the window" is disabled, the labels associated with the Macro status rectangle are no longer displayed. This caused crashes if the window was closed with the go-away box. * The Telnet Send menu item "Break" now sends a Telnet Break rather than a Telnet Interrupt Process. * The cursor now blinks in text-only windows. ___________________________________________________ 4.1.2A 7/21/95 ___________________________________________________ Enhancements: * Text windows. Using "New..." or "Open..." with the Shift key held down opens a document as a connectionless text-only document. This is a TextEdit document which has a 32K size limit. * GUI improvements. The Control Controls... dialog allows the user to configure the dataComet emulator window controls to suit individual preferences. The "About dataComet" menu brings up a text window containing the text. Documentation is contained in separate text files rather than within the application. * Selectable Fonts. You can now select fonts other than the dataComet fonts. ASCII emulators support the display of proportional fonts as well as fixed point fonts. * PC-ANSI support with 8 colors. * VT100 support now includes Print Streaming and the display of blinking and double-width and double-height characters. The dataComet fonts are automatically switched in for the display of characters > 127 when a different font is in use; this can be disabled in the Control Emulator dialog. Scrolling through the scrollback buffer is now much faster than it was in Comet. * If the Control Global dialog item "Enable Fast Drawing" is enabled and a session with the correct font/size is launched with Color mapping off, dataComet changes the Monitor mode to black-and-white automatically. * The Control "Printing..." dialog allows the use of non-QuickDraw serial printers which are connected to the Printer Port. Sessions can be configured to print all text off the top of the page automatically. * Enhanced text commands. "Undo" is now supported in edit windows, and the Edit menu "Selection" submenu offers commands for cursor motion, bracket matching, and text quoting. * Macros: "Record actions for macro" now has a delay built in so that the user no longer has to type slowly for the recording algorithm to work well. The "Define key macro..." dialog now offers "Ignore Caps Lock" (so that the Caps Lock key is ignored when matching key macros) and "Use Command Font" (so that the user can use the whole emulator font rather than the special command font which reinterprets ASCII characters > 127 and uses them as command buttons). "Dump key macros" now formats the macros in a nicer fashion. * The "Control Emulator" dialog for the 3270 now offers a new paste option which puts the pasted text into the same starting position as the first line pasted. * The "Control Session" dialog now allows you to set the Tab Threshold which is used when copying and the Edit menu item "Table mode for Copy and Save" is enabled. Bug fixes: * The 3270 now handles an EUA command correctly in all cases; this could cause fields not to be erased correctly if the previous field was protected. * Failed MacTCP close calls no longer cause crashes. * MacTCP receive buffers are now allocated to be (4 * MTU + 1K) with a 16K minimum so that dataComet performs better. * dataComet works on the Macintosh 9500 under Open Transport. For some reason OT failed when dataComet allocated large send buffers. _____________________________________________________________________________