Not long ago, I upgraded my old version (I forget which one) to version 3.50. My year of free upgrades had expired and I liked the product well enough, so I paid my money to upgrade to 3.50. So far so good. I run Win98 and have an icon on my desktop pointing to a .tnt file. I dial into my ISP with a PPP connection and fire up Absolute Telnet from that .tnt file in order to telnet into my (Linux) shell account on my ISP. Yesterday when I started the product I got a notice that there was a new version out, 3.63. I downloaded it yesterday but did not install it until today. However, I notice that the installation executable for 3.63 is about 1 meg *smaller* than the installation executable for 3.50. This seems very odd to me for a product upgrade. The installation of 3.63 went in with only a minor glitch. When I went to click on the license.trg file it complained that my license file was out of date or corrupted. Nevertheless, when I started 3.63 and went to Help, it shows the product (3.63) as registered to me. I had to re-edit some of my keymap, but it seems to be working OK now as I have been accustomed to. (I have not given it a full shakedown yet.) But things did seem a little odd, and I wanted to check on them.
[size=1][ January 05, 2005, 06:35 PM: Message edited by: Brian T. Pence ][/size]
Paul,
Very observant of you!!! The reduction in size does *NOT* mean a reduction in features. I switched from the installer I had been using for years (InstallShield) to a new one (Inno Setup). The benefits of the switch were:
1. Reduced size (as you noticed)
2. Faster installs
3. Inno setup is fully 32-bit which avoids some issues the InstallShield 16-bit installer encountered.
4. Inno setup is free.
I released 3.63 as a maintenance update to 3.50. It shortened terms, the release date inside the app is the same as the one in 3.50 (October 29, 2004) and any license that works with 3.50 *should* work with 3.63 as well. If you're getting an error message with 3.63 and not 3.50 when you try to use your license, you could help me identify the problem by mailing me a copy of your license.
Also, I'm curious what keymaps you had to edit. Are they non-standard modifications or fixes to something that could make it back into the standard distribution?
Cheers....
Brian
I just downloaded and installed 3.63 as well. While it now seems to work, it does take a bit of resetting to get everything back the way it was.
For the keymap, I learned the last time that the upgrade overwrites the customized keymap file, so now I save a copy in the same directory and just go copy it over the top.
None of the options on the global tab were saved, nor was the location of the .tnt files for my various connections. Also, the color scheme was set to default, not the one defined for the connection and the connection had moved from 8 bit to 7 bit. It took me a couple of tries to get the old font sizes to stick.
Since I started the thread a few hours ago, I have had a chance to use v3.63 some more on my shell account, and a lot of things have gone just plain wacko!
As for the license file, I will email it to you separately. However, as I mentioned, when I start the product and go to Help/About, it does say that is is registered to me, and I don't get any indication that it is a trial version.
Regarding the keymap. I telnet into a Linux shell account using vt100 emulation. I had set up most of the Alt-n keys to issue various commands to the shell. For most (not all) of these I had the keymap set to issue the command followed by a newline, so that the shell would execute the command. I originally had them set up as (no quotes) "some_text\\x0d0a". However, with the installation of v3.63, I had to change these to "some_text\\x0d\\x0a". That was only a minor glitch.
More important, however, is that the arrow keys seem to be sending goofy stuff to the shell that keeps changing. I open the Pine mail and news reader on the shell account. First the arrow keys are sending the correct codes. The next moment they are sending God knows what, which Pine is trying to interpret as commands such as "delete the open folder"(!) and other such nonsense. (Fortunately, confirmation is required.) The keypresses are not even consistent within the session. If this keeps up, I am going to have to deinstall 3.63 and go back to 3.50. For the record, I always start A.T. from the icon pointing to the .tnt file.
Incidentally, the installation of 3.63 did not go without any hitches at all. First I tried to install it directly from the installation executable. It said that it would try to install it into the "C:\\Program FIles\\Absolute Telnet" folder, but first it tried to deinstall the existing version (3.50). There was an error message that the deinstallation failed and that I should reboot. I did so. Then the installaion proceeded correctly.
Ok, as far as the keymaps go, they will always be overwritten upon installation. If you want, you can define the mapped keys within the .tnt file via the 'Option->Properties->VT Options->Edit Keymap' option. This embeds the keymap within the .tntfile and will remain even after a reinstall. Of course, then the keymap is only in the one .tnt file, while direct edits of the keymap files will be available to ALL sessions.
As for global options, file locations, default color schemes, etc... These things are stored in the registry and are normally *NOT* removed when you install a new version. The exception to this rule is the install for version 3.63. 3.63 uses a new installer (Inno Setup) and must remove the version put in by the old installer (InstallShield) before it can continue. The InstallShield uninstall will remove the user-specific registry settings and they must be reset. Sorry about that, it won't happen again after 3.63.
The text mapping issue "\\x0d0a" to "\\x0d\\x0a" is a necessary evil to force the string to be recognized as two separate bytes instead of one two-byte unicode character.
The cursor key issue is one I haven't heard yet. I use pine *every* day as my primary e-mail client and I've never had this happen. Is there a particular place in pine where this seems to happen or is it random?
Here's what would help:
1. What is the version of Pine you are using?
2. What is the version of Windows you are using?
3. Do the cursor keys malfunction at random or do the work for awhile and then just quit working?
4. Once malfunctioning, do they ever return to a functioning mode?
5. What are you doing in pine when the problem occurs?
Brian
I thought I had 3.63 restabilized, but I guess I was mistaken. I've gotten a particular connection all set up again as it was, but periodically strange things happen. The screen font goes from 11 point to 7 point, it loses track of the font I have designated on the screen (still there in options), it reverts to ANSI instead of connection colors, it goes from 80x25 fixed to 80x24 fixed. I thought this was coming from a shell script issuing a tput is2, which is defined as is2=\\E[?3l\\E[?7h\\E>\\E[?1l\\E[?4l\\E)0, but now it seems to happen every time a new prompt is displayed.
PS1='\\[\\033[1;7;34m\\]\\u\\[\\033[1;7;34m\\]@\\h:\\[\\033[1;7;34m\\]\\w\\[\\033[0m\\] '
What's up? This is really dysfunctional!
Further experimentation reveals that
PS1='\\[\\033[1;7;34m\\]\\u' is sufficient to produce the effect.
In response to Brian Pence's questions:
1. Version of Pine in use? 4.58. That has not changed since the time I was using A.T.3.50. (Incidentally, Pine is running on a Linux system I telnet into.)
2. Version of Windows? 98 SP 1.
3. Do the arrow keys malfunction at random? No, they now malfuntion *all* the time. Once, when I first fired up 3.63, they worked briefly, sending the correct codes to the shell account and to Pine. However, that seemed to last only a few keystrokes. Now they malfunction all the time. Under the circumstances, it is difficult to tell just what codes the arrow keys are sending to Linux via A.T. Under previous versions of A.T., I did not have to do anything that I recall for the arrow keys to work correctly. (Again, I am using vt100 emulation, which is the same as before.) Also, I use the joe editor on the shell account, and the arrow keys are not working correctly for it, either. It would seem that A.T. is sending bad codes up the pipe to everything.
4. Do the arrow codes ever return to correct funtioning? No.
5. What am I doing when the malfunctions occur? Now, anything, whether in Pine, in joe, or at the tcsh prompt.
The only thing that is saving my butt is that both Pine and joe can use Control codes to maneuver. Sadly, this "maintenance upgrade" seems to be a degrade instead. It is rather a pain.
Thomas,
I'm looking into this today.
Paul,
Could you send me a copy of the .tnt file you are using for the connection in addition to any keymaps you may have manually modified? The standard install for 3.63 should not have any trouble on Win98, so I need to try to replicate your environment as close as I can.
Brian
I can do that provided that there is no personal security information in it. The file is binary, so it is kind of hard to tell. I only check this forum once a day, so email me at bartlett@smart.net with a response (you can post it here, too), and if there is nothing personal in the .tnt, I can zip it and email it to you.
There's only personal info in it if you choose 'remember my password'. If you've done that, make sure you go to Options->Properties->Connection->ssh2 and hit the 'clear authentication' button.
Remember to mail me your modified keymaps as well.
Thomas,
Can you open another forum article so we can address these issues separately?
Thanks,
Brian
Paul,
I've identified the problem with your license. There's an extra newline in there at the end that's causing it problems. To fix it, I've stripped the newline out. Future versions of Absolute will look for this.
As for the arrow key problems, I'm hoping that it has something to do with your modified keymaps. I'm waiting to receive those via e-mail.
Brian
I will send the .tnt file by email in a zip archive. As for any keymap file as such, I have not done anything with any such file by deliberate effort. So far as I know, everything is supposed to be in the .tnt file. However, in the keymaps directory there is a file "user" with a timestamp on it two days ago. But I have not in any way edited this file manually. I will include it.
Ok,
I get it now. Your keymap was in the .tnt file, which you had to modify because the interpreting of it was slightly different with the new version.
It was Thomas' post the referenced the new install overwriting a keymap file that he had manually tweaked.
Anyway, I'm hoping the .tnt file will yield some info that will help me identify the problem. Could you also create a new vanilla .tnt file without keymapping to try with your host (using pine, etc) to see if that fixes the problem as well?
Thanks,
Brian
