shithub: purgatorio

ref: 94443daf8e248e65afc8d3f17f26efea22748b51
dir: /man/1/miniterm/

View raw version
.TH MINITERM 1
.SH NAME
miniterm \- Minitel® emulator
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B wm/minitel/miniterm
[
.I address
]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I Miniterm
connects to the Minitel® service at the given
.IR address ,
by default the France Telecom Internet gateway
to its Minitel® service,
.BR tcp!pdc.minitelfr.com!513 .
The
.I address
can be any form acceptable to
.IR dial (2).
.I Miniterm
opens a new window that mimics a Minitel display.
An array of buttons on the right hand side (in 40 character mode)
or bottom (in 80 character mode) offer the special Minitel functions,
with French abbreviations.
Characters typed on the keyboard are sent to the server;
typing the return key acts as
.B Suite
or
.B Envoi
as required.
Clicking on a word with the mouse sends it to the server.
.PP
The France Telecom gateway offers a demonstration service
using ID
.B ZXNET1
with password
.BR DEMFTD .
Once connected, the services
.B PAGESM
(a directory of all Minitel services) and
.B FT
(France Telecom's information service)
are available without charge.
See
.B www.minitelfr.com
for further information.
.PP
On certain native Inferno hardware,
.I miniterm
can also connect directly via a modem connection, using
an address of the form
.BI modem! modeminit ! number,
which sends the string
.I modeminit
to the modem to initialise it,
then dials the given
.IR number .
For example:
.IP
.EX
wm/minitel/miniterm modem!F3!00133836431414
.EE
.PP
Here, the
.L F3
is a code that tells the modem to enable V.23, which must be used when
connecting to the France Telecom servers.
To use pulse dialing instead of tone dialing the phone number
can be prefixed with a
.LR P ,
as in:
.IP
.EX
wm/minitel/miniterm modem!F3!P3614
.EE
.PP
If the parameter specifies a network connection or a direct connection
with a phone number the software will attempt to connect immediately.
If the on-screen button
.B Cx/Fin
is used to disconnect and then re-connect,
.I miniterm
will use the
same address if it is a network connection but prompt for a new
phone number for a direct connection. When prompting
for a new number the top row of the screen is used to allow the user
to edit the last used number. Simple editing is available, and the minitel
keys do the obvious things.
.PP
The Minitel function keys are displayed on the right hand side of the screen
in 40 column mode on a network connection 
and can be swapped to the left hand side by hitting the
.L <-
key.
In direct dial mode and 80 column network mode the keys are
displayed at the bottom of the screen.
In network mode they are redisplayed as appropriate on 40 to 80
column mode changes.
.PP
.I Miniterm
provides a software keyboard, activated by the
.B Clavier
button, which understands some of
the Minitel keyboard mappings. For example, hitting
.RB ` A '
results
in a capital
.L A
on the screen in spite of the Videotex case mapping.
.SH FILES
.TF /fonts/minitel
.TP
.B /dev/modem
soft modem (no longer supported)
.TP
.B /dev/modemctl
.TP
.B /fonts/minitel
text and semigraphic characters
.SH SOURCE
.B /appl/wm/miniterm
.SH SEE ALSO
.IR charon (1),
.IR telnet (1)
.SH BUGS
There is no button to control use of error correction in direct dial mode;
it will be enabled only if the server requests it, but not all do.
Without it direct dial screens are occasionally corrupted.
.PP
The software keyboard is not AZERTY.
Worse, it does not always come to the top on a mode change.
.PP
Some screens look wrong in 80 column
mode.
.PP
On a network connection, choosing
.B USA
displays
.LR iC
at the bottom left hand
corner of the screen. The server really is sending this sequence.
Both the FT emulator and their explorer plug-in suffer from it too.