Latest news
In the last 7 years I didn't have resources to test the patches to vt100
sent to me by several kind souls. I doubt I'll have time
to integrate them any time soon, but I'll list them here
as they came in. (Unfortunately, so far I only found one.)
Emails of the patch submitters inside, so if you have any questions,
contact the authors directly.
- A patch by Frederick Lee (Apr
2002), adding PalmOS SDK 4.0 compatibility, enhanced baud rates
selection, configurable keymaps,
persistent settings database to store settings, key maps and screen across
sessions
But maybe one day I'll get back and integrate things anyway. Stay tuned...
VT100 Terminal for Pilot
Contents
- About
- Using Pilot VT100
- Work progress
- Pilot VT100 graphics snapshots
Pilot VT100 is a simple terminal emulator for the
3Com / USR Pilot PDA.
It uses a very small fixed-sized font (3x5 character cells) and provides
a 40x25 character screen. Buttons for escape (ESC) and control (CTL) allow
the use of escape (ascii 27) and control a-z (ascii 1-27). To use control
characters, tap the CTL button and write a lower-case letter. Applications
that successfully run on Pilot VT100 include
The software is released without any charge for the use.
However, you must read and understand the
exact terms of the use!
Share and Enjoy.
The Pilot software development community seems to have a leaning towards
ShareWare as a distribution/licensing model. We
personally do not plan on
ever distributing a ShareWare pilot appliction.
Pilot VT100 was developed using a UNIX based
development environment and many excellent free development tools.
We write pilot software because we
enjoy doing so, and because it allows us to give something back to the
community of developers who have spent so much time on the many excellent free
tools and pilot applications. Perhaps we're spoiled by being a part of a
larger UNIX community where many small and large applications are available
freely.
- Brian J. Swetland (the original application author,
worked on the application until Alpha 7, including)
- Vassilii Khachaturov (joined since Alpha 6, current
mantainer)
Note: Check out the copying terms
before you proceed.
You may also get the sources bundle from the
releases repository. A CVSWeb frontend will be
established soon.
If you do changes to the sources, you are encouraged (but not
obliged) to submit them back to Vassilii Khachaturov, for merging in the main
codebase. Please consult the To Do List if you wish
to contribute.
Install the PRC in the usual way. If you have any previous version of
Pilot VT100 installed on your PDA, it will be automatically
overwritten.
An excerpt from my /etc/inittab
:
s0:B:once:/sbin/agetty 19200 pilot vt100-nam
(On my system /dev/pilot
is a link to
/dev/cua0
,
where the pilot cradle is actually attached. Hence the s0
in the begining.) So whenever I want to
login from the pilot, I
run Pilot VT100 on it,
select the baudrate 19200 via the menu (Options/Comm.),
push the line button, and then
I do telinit B
as root on the Linux box.
Then I get the login
prompt on the pilot screen.
The first command I issue upon login
is stty cols 40 rows 25
;
a termcap/terminfo entry derived from vt100-nam could be used
as well.
- Alpha 1: initial release
- Alpha 2: scrolling bugfix, cursor refresh fix
- Alpha 3: okay. scrolling is much happier.
- Alpha 4: ctl/esc conflict bug fixed. baud rate is settable.
- Alpha 5: Sends ASCII 13 for CR, fixes some glitching where < 0x20
- Alpha 6: Tons of changes, thanks to Vassilii Khachaturov:
- 'U' is now more distinguishable from 'V'
- Comms dialog added, better parameter control
- 4kb serial buffer elimates most overrun problems at higher speeds
- Buttons dialog added, but doesn't do anything yet. Hard buttons are
now hard-coded as:
- hard1 (Date Book)
- ctrl+C
- hard2 (Address)
- left
- PgUp
- up
- PgDn
- down
- hard3 (To Do List)
- right
- hard4 (Memo Pad)
- enter
- HotSync
- ctrl+L
- Alpha 7:
- software flow control implemented, making connection at
19200 baud usable
- Added an option (default) to reset the inactivity timer on tty
I/O, useful for using pilot for a log scroll watching
- The CTL button is now a toggle (double CTL==none); when active,
the button remains selected
- Alpha 8:
- META button added
- GRAFFITISTATEINDICATOR added to the main form, added graffiti
help inteface
- Sending a 300ms serial break signal is now possible via a BRK
button
- The former "OnLine" checkbox replaced with a smaller button
"line"
- The controls at the bottom of the main form shrinked so that an
extra (25th) line is now available!
- 1.0:
- Packaging, version numbers, and addresses update
- Released after 1 year of beta-testing by thousands of users
You can read the list of features
that we consider worth implementing somewhen
in the future. Please consult it
before submitting a feature request.
In case you care, here's the log
of the changes made to the application, these Web pages
and the development environment (since we
started to bother to log these changes).
enlarged
(4x)
and
actual size.
These are screen grabs from xcopilot-0.4, blown up 2 times the size
of an actual pilot screen.
Contact the developers:
swetland@frotz.net,
vassilii@tarunz.org.