"Comet" — The Cornell Macintosh Terminal Emulator, Copyright Cornell University 1991, MIT 1984. Emulates the DEC VT100, VT102, Heath-19, and IBM 3278-2, -3, and -5.
Cornell hereby grants permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this program for any purpose and without fee, provided that these copyright and permission notices appear on all copies and supporting documentation, the name of Cornell not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the program without specific prior permission, notice be given in supporting documentation that copying and distribution is by permission of Cornell, and that the provisions of M.I.T.'s notice, below, are complied with. CORNELL MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTEES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. By way of example, but not limitation, CORNELL MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE OR DOCUMENTATION WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY PATENTS, COPYRIGHTS, TRADEMARKS, OR OTHER RIGHTS. Cornell shall not be held liable for any liability with respect to any claim by the user or any other party arising from use of the program.
Some portions of this code are derived from M.I.T.'s PC-IP package:
M.I.T notice: Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this program for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that this copyright and permission notice appear on all copies and supporting documentation, the name of M.I.T. not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the program without specific prior permission, and notice be given in supporting documentation that copying and distribution is by permission of M.I.T. M.I.T. makes no representations about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
Developed by Kevin Eric Saunders, with contributions by John Lynn and Peter Hoyt, for Cornell Information Technologies under the general direction of Dick Cogger.
Thanks to Doug Hornig for the basic TextEdit code.
Thanks to Per Lindbergh for vttest.
Please send your bug reports and comments to:
comet-bugs@nmc.cit.cornell.edu
Comet Version 2.1.1 Known Bugs and Restrictions:
Fixes from 2.1:
* IBM 3278-3 & -5 emulations did not always correctly
report the status of the first field on the screen.
* Printing the emulator screen (as opposed to the .edit
window) no longer crashes on Macs (e.g., the Mac +)
without Color QuickDraw when using System versions
prior to 6.0.7.
Compatibility: This version of Comet has been tested with various models of the Macintosh, and is likely to work with models from the Mac+ or Classic Mac to the IIfx running Systems from 6.0.3 to 7.0. This version may work on the Mac 512KE and other systems running older versions of the Mac System, but you may experience problems.
System 7.0 notes: Color performance under System 7.0 is known to be very slow due to changes in QuickDraw under System 7.0. Using color under System 7.0 may also produce drawing outside the emulator screen area if the background color is not White. In addition, producing the keys Option-E, -I, -N, and -U will require additional keystrokes unless you install the 'KCHR' resource ID 1 contained in Comet in the System File using Resedit, since Apple has modified its key-mapping calls to ignore this resource unless it is installed in the System.
Some Macintosh configurations (such as those using an E-Machines display board) may "hang" soon after Comet opens its first session windows. This occurs due to incompatibility between the display adapter and the fast drawing mode. To fix this problem, you can reconfigure your Comet Default document by launching Comet, cancelling the initial Configure Session dialog, turning off "Enable fast drawing" in the Control Global... dialog, and pressing the Save button and then the OK button.
Nota Bene: The MacTCP driver interface can have asynchronous sends enabled; in this mode, Macs using MacTCP up to 1.0.2 on LocalTalk will be prone to crash (with the cursor frozen and the whole machine hung). You can configure this option in the Global Configuration dialog.
Those using Ethernet should enable asynchronous sends, because there is a major drawback to using synchronous sends: until the host acknowledges that it has received the data you have sent, the Mac will seem to "hang." Although the mouse cursor will move, the Mac will not respond to mouse button-downs or keystrokes until the acknowledgment is received; in the event of a communications problem with the host, this can leave you hanging for minutes! If this occurs, you should NOT reboot your Mac, but should wait for the send to either complete or abort.
(In general, it is desirable to have asynchronous MacTCP sends enabled, and to have the fast-drawing option enabled if your monitor runs in Black and White rather than Color or Greyscale mode, which is configured using the Monitors Control Panel device; due to the possibility of encountering the rather lethal problems discussed above, these options are disabled in the default configuration. When using the Configure Global dialog, "OK" the new configuration without pressing the "Save" button when you first try these options; you can "Save" the configuration later after verifying that it works correctly.)
Menu-key equivalents are superseded by macro keys, but the menus are not corrected.
The Print command, which uses QuickDraw printing, does not space characters correctly, and will not use the CUA fonts with Background Printing unless they are installed in the System. You can use the "!FD" macro to print using the Streaming Text routines, which align columns correctly but are no longer supported by Apple--see macro documentation below.
