ANNOUNCE: Ada Terminal Emulator 1.5

ANNOUNCE: Ada Terminal Emulator 1.5

[Ross Higson]

Version 1.5 of the Ada Terminal Emulator is now available. It can be 
downloaded from:

    http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/rosshigson/terminal

The emulator provides a set of terminal emulation capabilities 
implemented in Ada 95 to run under Windows 95/98/NT/2000, along with 
various demonstration and application programs.

All source code for the emulator is provided under the GNU General 
Public License. The package was developed using GNAT and GWindows.

Version 1.5 is a significant improvement over the initial release of 
this package. Modifications include bug fixes, improvements in the VTxxx 
and ANSI emulation capabilities, and improvements in the compatibility 
of the telnet application with various Win32, UNIX and VMS based telnet 
servers.

A summary of all changes is available at the above URL.

Special thanks to Simon Clubley for testing the emulator against several 
different VMS platfoms, and suggesting valuable improvements.

Ross Higson.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

In addition to providing simple "dumb" terminal emulation, the Ada 
Terminal Emulator provides full emulation of DEC VT52/VT100/VT102 
compatible terminals, including double height and double width 
characters, smooth scrolling, special graphics, display controls and 
national replacement character sets. The emulator also implements a 
substantial subset of VT220/VT320/VT420 and ISO 6429 capabilities.

The package consists of the following main components:

Terminal_Emulator:
------------------
An Ada package that provides facilities for creating, configuring and
interacting with terminal windows from an Ada program. Multiple terminal
windows can be created from the same program. Each window implements a
completely independent terminal emulator. Each can be separately 
configured as a simple dumb terminal, or emulate full DEC VTxxx 
capabilities.

Term_IO:
--------
An Ada package that can be used as a complete and transparent 
replacement for the standard Ada text-handling package Text_IO. In 
addition to supporting all the normal file handling capabilities of 
Text_IO, Term_IO replaces the default files (i.e. standard input, 
standard output and standard error) with one or more terminal windows. 
It also allows the creation and manipulation of user-defined terminal 
windows using only Text_IO syntax. Each terminal window can be 
configured to either strictly implement the semantics of Text_IO as
defined in the Ada 95 Language Reference Manual (LRM), or to implement 
relaxed semantics that allow the user to take advantage of the terminal 
capabilities in a more intuitive manner.

Redirect:
---------
A stand-alone program that allows existing text based applications 
(including non-Ada applications) to have their standard I/O (i.e. 
standard input, standard output and standard error) redirected through a 
terminal window - without recompiling or relinking. Redirect supports 
all the features of the Terminal_Emulator, and adds line editing, 
command and filename completion and command history. It can be used to 
create a sophisticated window-based command line interpreter with only a 
few dozen lines of programming. A complete Ada 95 example is included.

Comms:
------
A stand-alone program that allows the use of a communications port as 
input and output to a terminal window. This enables a PC to be used as a 
serial terminal. Multiple instances of comms can be started on different 
serial ports. Comms supports all the features of the Terminal_Emulator.

Telnet:
-------
A stand-alone program that allows the use of the Telnet protocol as 
input and output to a terminal window. This enables a PC to be used as a 
Network Virtual Terminal. When used as a client, multiple instances of 
telnet can be run, connected to multiple remote hosts. Telnet can also 
be used to implement a simple telnet server. Telnet supports all the 
features of the Terminal_Emulator.