MS-DOS Kermit 3.16 Beta

Current Level: Beta.07 4 May 1999.

MS-DOS Kermit communications software is for DOS and Windows 3.x.

The following is a brief description of the changes since version 3.15.

• Separate DISABLE FINISH and DISABLE BYE (this required sacrificing DISABLE SPACE, which is still accepted as a command but does nothing).

• Write the extra Line Feed to the session log when SET TERMINAL CR-DISPLAY is CR/LF (CR arrives, act as if CR/LF had arrived).

• Correct bug in IF statements within SWITCH statements that read too many bytes for the IF statement command and hence confused SWITCH too.

• Correct bug in command SWITCH which resulted in loss of \%1..\%9.

• Stop a memory leak with keyboard macros.

• Correct bug whereby command REMOTE QUERY KERMIT would not permit \%char variables to be replaced with their definition in the command argument.

• Add command REMOTE SET TRANSFER MODE {AUTOMATIC, MANUAL}.

• Correct a serious problem of sending incomplete Kermit packets over a serial port connection.

• Add display of optional message on the QUIT and EXIT commands.

• Correct bug in IP intruder detection (conflicting IP addresses).

• Correct bug which times out active TCP/IP Listen connections.

• Correct bug which disabled use of macro on_exit.

• Add TCP delayed ACKs to reduce network traffic on busy links. The delay is nominally 50ms. This heuristic may be removed later.

• Extend TCP reply timeout to several minutes, for especially slow links.

• Turn off Kermit packet level timing during file transfers over internal TCP/IP. This heuristic is subject to modification later.

• Add granularity to command SET TCP DEBUG {OFF, STATUS, TIMING, ON}. ARP packets and round trip timing appears only with TIMING and ON. TCP states and normal operating messages appear with STATUS and ON. ON means both STATUS and TIMING.

• Add an 8KB autocache for reading disk files during file transfers.

• Add fast block-mode byte transfers while reading Kermit packet data field bytes, as a speed improvement on fast comms links.

• Allow binary 0 to appear as an unprefixed code in Kermit packets.

• Enforce prefixing of codes 127, 255, packet start of header (normally 1, Control-A), packet end of line (normally 13, Carriage Return), and 3 (Control-C).

• Revise SHOW CONTROL-PREFIXING to display both prefixed and unprefixed control codes.

• Add Kermit protocol streaming mode. SET STREAMING {ON, OFF}, default is OFF. Works in conjunction with C-Kermit 7.0, or later, Kermit 95 1.1.16 or later, or MS-DOS Kermit 3.16 itself. Heuristics are still being adjusted. STATISTICS command has a new field saying streaming was used on last file transfer. Formatted file transfer screens show streaming rather than windowing information. Fastest transfers use SET DISPLAY QUIET (reduces per-packet overhead) and the file sender uses SET CONTROL UNPREFIX on as many codes as the comms channel will support (but always prefix Control-C (3) and packet start (1) and end (13) codes and their high-bit-set counterparts, plus Telnet 127 and 255. In short form: set control unprefix all, set control prefix 1, 3, 13, 127, 129, 131, 141, 255).

• Remove command SET RECEIVED IGNORE-CHAR for being obsolete and awkward.

• Add command SET TRANSFER CRC {ON, OFF}, default is off, and variable \v(crc). This calculates the CCITT-16-CRC checksum across all files sent or received in a group.

• Add new options /RECURSIVE and /NONRECURSIVE to the SEND and GET commands to send or request files from directory trees. Works in conjunction with C-Kermit 7.0 or later, Kermit 95 1.1.16 or later, or MS-DOS Kermit 3.16 itself. Default is /NONRECURSIVE. MS-DOS Kermit Server mode also supports recursive requests. Directories are created as needed. Recursive requests can be rooted or relative to the current location depending on the filename pattern given. The syntax is SEND /RECURSIVE filespec and so on; the /RECURSIVE switch is optional.

• Add functions \frdirectories() and \frfiles() to support recursive tree walking. \frdirectories(pattern) yields the number of directory names in the tree fitting the pattern, and \frfiles(pattern) does the same for filenames. Function \fnextfile() remembers whether the recursive or plain file counting functions, \frfiles() or \ffiles(), were invoked and it produces a new filename accordingly on each call.

• Add variables \v(day) and \v(nday)