tn3270 Summary

From: J. Michael (Mike) Gerard, CERN-CN/CS <"J.>
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 11:41:48 +0200 (MET DST)

As the author of this software I am pleased to get feedback: I have some
comments to go with it.

The current offerings are indeed on dxcsftp.cern.ch:/pub/3270 but are

3270v4.1.tar.Z
3270v4.2.beta.tar.Z

Both are pretty solid (I think) : read the README to see if the additions
in version 4.2 interest you : they are


  New Features :
  ------------

  1. Rework completely the Makefile system. Henceforth the distribution
      includes two skeleton files
          Makefile.skeleton
          Makedebug.skeleton
      which should be transformed into a Makefile for the particular type
      of system required by using any text editor. The explanations of
      what to do are in these skeleton Makefiles and also in README_MAKEFILE.
      There are also more options for specifying how to print a screen
      dump file or to e-mail it to a specified address.

  2. Implement the "erase input" function (which erases all non-protected
      fields and sends the cursor to the start of the first unprotected
      field). The map3270 function for this is "einp" and is normally ^w.

  3. Possibility to send "attention" and "system request" functions to
      the IBM. The key sequence must be defined in the map3270 file as
      "attn" and "sysreq" respectively: I have provisionally chosen
      Esc A and Esc S, so that the map3270 entries look like
          attn = '\EA'; # Attention
          sysreq = '\ES'; # System Request

  4. A direct exit function, which breaks off communication with the IBM.
      Has to be in map3270 as "exit": I have chosen Esc q or Esc Q.
      Note, of course, that if you are deep inside IBM processes you may
      get a funny state next time you login!

  5. Double cursor move left or right, in map3270 as "ldub" or "rdub",
      provisionally set as Esc z ans ESC x (because on my keyboard the
      z and x keys are at the bottom left!).


  Bug corrections:
  ---------------

  1. Cater for a bug in the colour version of xterm (colxterm) which
      sometimes made colours go wrong.

  2. Inclusion of code to handle the IBM "Read Modified All". However,
      I have never heard of this being used (it seems to be SNA), so the
      code is untested!

  3. Be careful not to try to use various symbols (such as signal
      definitions like SIGILL etc., or tty/termio/termios symbols
      like VDSUSP etc.) if they are not defined in the headers.

  4. Fix a bug in the code for changing the status line on screens with
      a host-writeable status line (like a VT300) to prevent the status
      line from sometimes blinking.

  5. Make sure any field position is a plain blank, not the characteristics
      of the field.


3270v4.1.tar.Z does contain the file Makefile.alpha, which I thought
should only need modifying if you want to put things into different
places (program, map3270 file etc)! I also thought that a simple
"make install" would do everything, including the man page and the
map3270 file. Am I wrong?

3270v4.2.beta.tar.Z contains a single generic Makefile, plus the very
simple instructions for modifying it for an Alpha (I got fed up with
having separate Makefiles for all the different sorts of Unix system).
There is still a "make install" which should do everything, plus some
partial makes :-

"make newprog" for a new version of the compiled program.
"make newman" for a new version of the man pages.
"make newmap" for a new version of the map3270 mapping file.
"make newdirs" for re-defining the directories for saved user options
               or screen image dump files.
"make newhelp" for any changes in the on-line help files.

because some people want personalised versions of mapping file.

Because of the confusion as to which one was used I don't understand
some of the problems.

> I would like to thank everybody who responded to my question regarding
> tn3270 on the Alpha. I found that "tn3270" would not compile, so I was
> pointed to 3270_4.1 ty Richard Jackson. Richard sent me some wonderful,
> pretty painless instructions:
>
> ftp from dxcsftp.cern.ch:/pub/3270/3270v4.1.beta.tar.Z
> 1. cd /sys1/src/3270_4.1
> 2. cp Makefile.alpha Makefile

or cp Makefile.skeleton Makefile

> 3. modify Makefile
> 4. make >& make.log
>
> NOTE: My system returned the error "make.log: bad number" at this point.
> (Step 4) I had to replace this line with make > make.log 2>&1
> and it worked fine.
>
> 5. make install >& make.install
>
> NOTE: Again, my system didn't like this command. It was replaced with
> make install 2>&1 make.install and it worked fine.
>
> 6. cd /usr/local/bin
> 7. strip mset 3270

Tight for space?

> 8. cd /usr/local/man/man1
>
> NOTE: after step 8 the files tn3270.map and tn3270.1 were not in
> /usr/local/man/man1. I had to find them and put them there before continuing.

Because I thought that the files went into /usr/local/man/manl (the letter
'l', not the digit '1' at the end. If I am wrong then that is why the
man pages did not get there.

> One of the readme
> files has more information on tn3270.map. It has to be in the right
> place in order for the keyboard to map properly.

By default it goes into /usr/local/etc/map3270 : wrong?

> 9. ln -s 3270.1 tn3270.1

Comes from the above error.

> 10. cd /usr/local/bin
> 11. ln -s 3270 tn3270

or modify the value of PROG in the Makefile!

> It works just fine!!! Thanks again to Richard Jackson for the wonderfule
> instructions.
>
> Mary Aplin
> Loyola University, New Orleans

Now just hope it all works!

-- 
 _ _  o |            __                    |    jmg_at_dxcoms.cern.ch
| | |   |     _     /  \  _   __  _   __  _|    gerard_at_cernvm.cern.ch
| | | | |_)  /_)    |  __/_) | (___\ | (_/ |  J. M. Gerard, Div. CN, CERN,
| | |_|_| \_/\___   \__/ \___|   (_|_|   \_|_ 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland
Received on Wed Jun 07 1995 - 12:34:25 NZST

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