Hi,

What telnet clients do you guys use on linux? I find the default telnet client does an awful job with ANSI (especially max's full screen editor). Even with Western (IBM850) encoding the characters are all wrong. I miss the days of Telix and Procomm Plus. Is there anything that can properly render ANSI in linux? Hyper Terminal in Windows does an absolutely perfect job. I haven't seen one mistake, and it does ZModem. I'd love to find a linux telnet client that is usable for bbsing.


Thanks,
Ryan


--- Maximus 3.01
* Origin: The Dog House * Orillia ON Canada * bbs.doghousebbs.com (1:229/1394)

What telnet clients do you guys use on linux? I find

I've got it!! I did a few things to get the almost perfect setup:

1) Install modemu and minicom packages
2) Run the following command:

modemu -c "minicom -o -l -c on -p %s"

This starts up the modem emulator (for using telnet), runs minicom and tells it
to use the fake modem, turns on color, disables the AT init string, and tells minicom not to convert high ascii to low ascii.

3) Once the program is running, change your terminal window's character encoding to Western (IBM850) so that high ascii renders almost right. It's not 100% perfect (some gaps between lines). Ideally CP437 should be used but I can't figure out how to get that working, even after installing new fonts etc...

4) Use the phone book in minicom to add all your favourite bbs's. In the phone
number field put the address between double quotes such as "bbs.doghousebbs.com". Also make sure to set terminal emulation to ANSI.


Now tell it to dial the bbs and enjoy. This is so exciting for me, I have never had a good terminal in linux that gives me nearly 100% proper ANSI graphics and rendering. So far everything renders right, just the character encoding isn't perfect. Even the maximus full screen editor works properly.

Minicom supports ZModem, though I'm not sure why it doesn't seem to be working for me..

I created a sript called 'bbs' that runs that long command for me. I just have
to remember to change my terminal encoding before "dialing". I might try one more thing. Use the putty terminal to ssh into my box, then run the bbs script. In one of putty's config screens you can enable cp437 for perfect ANSI.


Ryan

--- Maximus 3.01
* Origin: The Dog House * Orillia ON Canada * bbs.doghousebbs.com (1:229/1394)

terminal encoding before "dialing". I might try one
more thing. Use the putty terminal to ssh into my
box, then run the bbs script. In one of putty's
config screens you can enable cp437 for perfect ANSI.

Well that wasn't too good. I ran putty in Gnome, set translation to CP437, ssh'd to localhost and ran my bbs script. I logged into my bbs and it was almost right.. the gaps between lines were gone, but most high ascii characters
were now just a shaded block.

When I ran putty from a Windows computer with CP437 translation, ssh'd into my linux box and ran the script everything looks 100% perfect. I still suspect a font issue on Linux?

When I use putty to telnet directly into my bbs, I find it does a terrible job with many of my screens. Some entire screens render on only a few lines, some doors are unusable, etc... I am surprised that using putty to run minicom solves this problem?

Anyway, if anyone has suggestions to fix my font issues in linux please let me know. I have tried installing some fonts like a vga font, terminus-dos, etc.. I
ran a couple commands to make X know about the right away, but could not see these fonts in font dialogs (gedit, and my terminal window). Even after rebooting.


Thanks,
Ryan


--- Maximus 3.01
* Origin: The Dog House * Orillia ON Canada * bbs.doghousebbs.com (1:229/1394)

Hyper Terminal in Windows does an absolutely perfect
job. I haven't seen one mistake, and it does ZModem.

Man HyperTerminal sucks.

Use mTelnet, which supports doorway mode.

I'd love to find a linux telnet client that is usable
for bbsing.

Yeah. It's called SyncTerm. It'll do what you want.

There's a precompiled Solaris/SPARC binary + source.

http://syncterm.bbsdev.net.


--- Maximus/2 3.01
* Origin: Top Hat 2 BBS (1:343/41)

Hello Ryan.

22 Apr 07 00:21, you wrote to all:

What telnet clients do you guys use on linux? I find the default
telnet client does an awful job with ANSI (especially max's full
screen editor). Even with Western (IBM850) encoding the characters
are all wrong. I miss the days of Telix and Procomm Plus. Is there anything that can properly render ANSI in linux? Hyper Terminal in
Windows does an absolutely perfect job. I haven't seen one mistake,
and it does ZModem. I'd love to find a linux telnet client that is usable for bbsing.

Syncterm is a great little term program

http://syncterm.bbsdev.net/



Stephen

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5
* Origin: -:--- Dragon's Lair BBS ---:- Telnet: bbs.vk3heg.net (3:633/280)

Re: ANSI telnet client for linux?
By: Ryan de Laplante to All on Sun Apr 22 2007 12:21 am

Hi,

What telnet clients do you guys use on linux? I find the default telnet clie does an awful job with ANSI (especially max's full screen editor). Even wit Western (IBM850) encoding the characters are all wrong. I miss the days of Telix and Procomm Plus. Is there anything that can properly render ANSI in linux? Hyper Terminal in Windows does an absolutely perfect job. I haven't seen one mistake, and it does ZModem. I'd love to find a linux telnet clie that is usable for bbsing.

Here ya go:
http://syncterm.bbsdev.net/

digital man (xbox-live: digitlman)

Snapple "Real Fact" #107:
You burn more calories sleeping than watching TV.
Norco, CA WX: 66.9°F, 48% humidity, 11 mph SSE wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs

Syncterm is a great little term program

http://syncterm.bbsdev.net/

Thank you. I've just download it and gave it a try. The first thing I realized is that I have to tell the gnome terminal to use IBM850 character encoding otherwise the high ascii characters on the BBS show as weird symbols.
I was surprised because while using the syncterm menus I did not have to change
the character encoding to see what the developer intended I see.

While connected to my bbs I noticed that there are certain block and shaded block characters that are rendered as a #. My menus make heavy use of those characters so it doesn't look so hot in Syncterm... though Syncterm does do a good job rendering screens. These same characters are rendered properly using minicom. I had my menus designed by a professional ANSI artist way back in the
day, so I'm not changing them.

I noticed when using the full screen editor in Maximus you have to press ctrl-k
then ctrl-r. Press ctrl-c several times until you get to the block you want then press ctrl-k then ctrl-c to quote. When you press ctrl-c in syncterm the program exits. When you do that in minicom it does what I want.

I ran doorway then opened the DOS edit program. I was unable to use the ALT or
arrow keys in doorway using syncterm. I have not tried with minicom. I very rarely use doorway.

I was also unsure how to disconnect from the BBS without closing the program? Or how to get to some menus without closing the program.

Despite those issues syncterm seems to be a good terminal program. If ctrl-c didn't kill the program and it rendered the block characters the way I want, I would use it. Instead I will stick with minicom, and Hyper Terminal on Windows. Hyper Terminal rocks!!!!!!! (that was for Mvan :) I have mTelnet or whatever it's called and it is a great terminal. But since Hyper Terminal does
a 100% flawless job rendering ANSI, using with ZModem, and it is on every windows computer I sit down at, I got in the habbit of using it instead.


Thanks,
Ryan

--- Maximus 3.01
* Origin: The Dog House * Orillia ON Canada * bbs.doghousebbs.com (1:229/1394)

Thank you. I've just download it and gave it a try.
The first thing I realized is that I have to tell the
gnome terminal to use IBM850 character encoding
otherwise the high ascii characters on the BBS show as
weird symbols. I was surprised because while using
the syncterm menus I did not have to change the
character encoding to see what the developer intended

....

It turns out that Ubuntu has some missing symlinks that are needed by SyncTERM.
I could not find out exactly which links to create, but did find that installing the libsdl-console-dev package on Ubuntu with all of its dependencies has solved the problem. SyncTERM renders 100% correctly, CTRL-C is no longer an issue, and I love it. Thanks for pointing me to this program. I don't even need to change the character encoding in my console window to use it.

Actually I do have one complaint. When I press CTRL+ALT+F2 to go full screen and run SyncTERM for a true BBS experience, nothing renders right. The screens
are all mis-aligned etc... Oh well, I'll just have to keep running it in a window.


Ryan


--- Maximus 3.01
* Origin: The Dog House * Orillia ON Canada * bbs.doghousebbs.com (1:229/1394)

Actually I do have one complaint. When I press
CTRL+ALT+F2 to go full screen and run SyncTERM for a
true BBS experience, nothing renders right. The
screens are all mis-aligned etc... Oh well, I'll just
have to keep running it in a window.

I decided to try pressing ALT+ENTER just to see if SyncTERM might go full screen and it did! Everything renders perfectly still. When I CTRL+ALT+F2 then
run SyncTERM I still have problems, but ALT+ENTER from a window environment works great. Wow, I think it's been almost 10 years since I've had a full screen BBS experience :)

Now if we could only get Maximus for Linux supporting DOS door games... ;)


Thanks,
Ryan


--- Maximus 3.01
* Origin: The Dog House * Orillia ON Canada * bbs.doghousebbs.com (1:229/1394)

Hello Ryan.

27 Apr 07 22:47, you wrote to you:

I decided to try pressing ALT+ENTER just to see if SyncTERM might go

[...]

Now if we could only get Maximus for Linux supporting DOS door
games... ;)

Great to here that you got it going. I'm using it to test my bbs. The bbs is MBSE running on linux, but my personal pc is using FreeBSD. Have onl'y used it in a terminal though.


Stephen

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5
* Origin: -:--- Dragon's Lair BBS ---:- Telnet: bbs.vk3heg.net (3:633/280)