Date: 19 Dec 1986 2150-EST
From: David L. Knoell, Basic American Food Company, Vacaville, CA 95696
Via: EIBEN@MARLBORO.DEC.COM
Subject: New Rainbow MS-DOS Kermit with VT-220 Emulation

My company uses multi-vaxen (clustered and DEC-neted) including 8600,780's
and mult-micro VAXens.  We also have many Rainbows and so have a vested
interest in their use as it relates to the VAX.  It seemed a shame that DEC's
firmware only emulated a VT102 even though the keyboard looks exactly like a
VT220.  For a while it didn't make much difference since VMS didn't know what
a VT220 was anyway.  Now we are using SEDT under VMS and it sure does know
what a VT220 is.  Well, one thing led to another and there were a few bugs in
MSXRB1 and also in the Rainbow's firmware which needed fixing and I've never
liked software which pre-empts any keys for its own selfish use without
giving the user a way to override, so...

New & Improved DEC Rainbow MS-Kermit Features:

1 o  Full VT220 Terminal emulation including User Defined Keys.
     All VT220 escape sequences are supported except the down-line
     loadable character stuff. Insert Characters (ICH) and Erase Characters
     (ECH) as well as Selective Erase in Line/Display are fully implemented.
     Enhancements such as "turn off" character attributes are also included.
     
2 o  Full VT102 printer port support as well as a VT240 "printer-to-Host" 
     loop-back enables Kermit to operate as a cheap "line-monitor".
     
3 o  Interactive (during Connect) "Hot-key" definition of any key.  Keys can 
     be assigned to ascii strings or to a "special-function).  These 
     assignments are temporary for a single connect session but do override
     all other key assignments except VT220 user defined keys.  Over 80 special
     functions are provided which include all ms-kermit standard functions
     such as "prev screen,prev line,next screen,dump screen,print screen etc".
     Many additional functions have been added which can be assigned either
     temporarily via "connect mode help" or with the standard ms-kermit
     SET KEY function.  This usage is upward compatible with the current 2.29
     release.
     
4 o  Kermit functions currently assigned to keys with "embedded code" can be 
     disabled so a user can customize his kermit via SET KEY in a mskermit.ini
     file.  An example  "ini" file is included which duplicates the current
     "hard coded" functions.
     
5 o  A "connect mode" interactive help section was added which
     contains all sorts of goodies.  In fact each of the functions selectable
     from the "Main Help Menu" are also available as "special functions" and
     can be assigned to any key. The current funtions include: Show All Keys;
     Set Key to Special Function; Set Key To Ascii String; Special Interactive
     Status; Show Kermit Internal; Set File Name.  Chars keyed are in reverse
     video, chars received in normal video.  Control chars and sequences as 
     well as escape sequences are brite.  In this mode most control/escape
     sequences are not actually done however there are some exceptions.
     Down-line loaded user defined key sequences are done as well as shift
     keys to application mode etc..
     
7 o  Improved scroll buffer management provides up to 20 screens of 132 chars
     each.  This is 480 lines of video memory and is allocated if enough free
     memory is available.  If not enough is available then less is allocated
     on a line by line basis.  The memory management has been improved so that
     it always reflects exactally what has been received.  All video attributes
     are supported including double wide/hi stuff.  If you scroll back and a 
     character is received to be put on the screen; then the scroll management 
     routines restore the screen before modifying video memory.  The dump to
     printer/disk routines also handle the character set shifts required to use
     the Rainbow's multi-national character set and VT100 graphics.
     
8 o  Source code has been re-organized along the same lines as the IBM version.

  Author: David L. Knoell
          Basic American Food Company
          PO Box 1140
          Vacaville Ca  95696

[Ed. - Many thanks!  The .BOO file, sample initialization file, and extensive
documentation have been installed in the Kermit distribution areas as
MSVRB2.* (to distinguish them from the "mainline" Rainbow version, MSVRB1.*).
The program identifies itself as "Rainbow + MS-Kermit V2.29.1 4 July 1986".
To turn on all the new functions, you have to TAKE the file MSVRB2.INI.
Unfortunately, we can't simply replace the old version, because the work done
by David duplicates -- incompatibly, of course -- much work that has already
been done on the next release of MS-Kermit by Joe Doupnik (yes, David and Joe
have now been put in touch with each other).  Since the VT-220 emulation and
other improvements are so useful, this version is being released as an
alternate, more or less dead-end, Rainbow MS-Kermit.  It seems to work as
advertised (tested on a Rainbow 100B), with one caveat: typing Ctrl-S (for
instance, to give a Search command to EMACS) freezes (XOFFs) the Rainbow
until a Ctrl-Q (XON) is typed.  The source code for this version has been
sent to Joe to see if it can be adapted to the new release.]