I have decided to finally do some much-needed work on AT_Telnet... it began last night. For those who don't know, AT_Telnet was originally developed by Tom Hunt in and around 2000 and I took it over about this time. It is a PC-based terminal client for accessing ATASCII BBSes on the internet from your PC. It is my primary terminal program.
I will be renaming the program AT_Connect - The ATASCII Terminal Client and upgrading the version to v3.oo. This change is about 85% complete as of right now. Telnet was never a part of this program... it was simply the name that was used back in 2000 when this began.
Swatted five minor bugs that have been around for 10 years or thereabouts.
Plan to address what I call the 1 major bug in the screen processing section of the code. Currently the Ctrl-Del key is not processed correctly. I have prevented it from shutting down the program by simply ignoring the key (or incoming char as the case may be) however, I do want to get this fixed. I may need some help.
Plan to update the 'Help' system. Also started on this last night.
Plan to get a better handle on the implicit changes to the system caused by the way the UAC system in newer versions of Windows interacts with the older VB6 programs..
At least one new major feature to be added... more on this later.
No plans to upgrade from vb6 to a newer version of VB. This cannot be done due to THE major component of AT_Connect no longer existing in VB.
What else??? I am open to suggestions.
I have another issue which is not a new thing but one that annoys me to no end... see the image below.
This is the login to NiteLite BBS. I entered my handle using an AT_Connect Macro. Notice that there is a heart (null) between each char of my handle but on the next line, NiteLite corrected it by dropping the hearts. I also use macros on the next two lines of the login form and they are perfect... normal login takes place. I think Nitelite is pretty smart about this.
Some of the other BBSes are not so forgiving about the hearts in the macros.
First some clarification... there are no hearts in the macros.
I believe the different BBSes put them there but I don't know how or why... I only know on the BBSes that don't process them correctly, the macros appear to be twice as long as they should be (I am guessing the hearts are there) and they don't work for login. Could it be that each char is 2 bytes instead of 1 byte? I vaguely remember something about this back in the early days of Windows.
BBSes that process the macros correctly:
BF2K+, Southern Amis, Forem XE, Forem XEP, AMIS 86, Alcatraz, Mousenet and NiteLite w/disclaimer shown above.
BBSes that do not process them at all
Basement, PartTime, Carina
I am hoping that someone smarter than me can explain what is going on here.
Rob? JP? 😁