YKH v1.2.2 Copyright (c)1993 Bryan McNett YKH comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. For details, read GNUGPL.TXT. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. Read the file GNUGPL.TXT for details. Thank you for taking a look at YKH, a freeware Japanese VT320 emulator for DOS! I hope that you find YKH as useful as I have. I am sorry that YKH does not have many of the features people have come to expect in terminal software, such as phonebooks or file transfers. I would like to implement these features, time permitting. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to write me (the author) at the following addresses: internet: u94_bmcnett@vaxc.stevens-tech.edu US Mail : Bryan McNett Box S-835 Castle Point Station Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA revision history: Version 1.2.2 properly displays kanji; version 1.2.1 did not. (sorry!) new command-line options and an .INI file also appear first in this version. Versions previous to 1.2.1 loaded the entire kanji font into unused video planes so that no kanji caching mechanism would be necessary. Well, this turned out to be a dumb idea. As soon as I installed MEMMAKER on my machine, YKH's kanji began to appear scrambled and broken up. So I spent a few hours rewriting the kanji display routines, and now they do use a cache, and do work with MEMMAKER. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- contents: YKH overview requirements how to install YKH the file YKH.INI command-line options dialing your modem from within YKH how to exit YKH how to enter kana into YKH how to switch between EUC and SJIS modes in YKH how to use YKH with host systems that garble Japanese text credits --------------------------------------------------------------------------- YKH overview YKH is a program for DOS that emulates a VT320 terminal while properly displaying Japanese text. It is able to connect via modem through comports 1 and 2, or over local-area networks using the DECNET LAT and DECNET CTERM network terminal protocols. Unlike most Japanese terminals, YKH is able to fix Japanese text that has been damaged by escape-code stripping. The terms of YKH's distribution are described in GNUGPL.TXT. --------- requirements YKH requires at least an 80286 CPU, the extended keyboard BIOS, a VGA graphics adapter, and about 128K of free RAM. --------- how to install YKH To install YKH, copy the files YKH.EXE, YKH.INI, and JIS.16 into one of the directories in your PATH. If the file JIS.16 is absent from the directory that YKH.EXE is in, YKH will run, but it will not be able to display Japanese text. Note that YKH runs much faster when not displaying Japanese text. --------- the file YKH.INI YKH.INI, like the .INI files used by Microsoft Windows applications, contains information and default values that remain the same between YKH sessions. When YKH is run, it searches in the current directory for YKH.INI, and if it cannot find it there, it searches in the directory where YKH.EXE resides. The structure of the YKH.INI file is as follows: [section] item=value item=value [section] item=value and here are the various sections and items currently in use by YKH: [Ports] port the port used to communicate with the host computer. can be com1, com2, lat, or cterm. lat and cterm are DECNET network terminal interfaces, and can be used to login to networked systems running DECNET. defaults to com1. service the DECNET node name of the system you intend to login to using the lat or cterm terminal interfaces. generally, a six-letter word. no default value. [Modem] baudrate the baudrate at which YKH should communicate with your modem. generally set to 300,1200,2400,4800, or 9600. defaults to 2400. databits the number of bits per byte used to hold information. defaults to 8. stopbits the number of bits per byte used as stop bits. defaults to 1. parity can be none, even or odd. defaults to none. [Kanji Fonts] font16 full pathname to file containing the shapes of kanji characters. If an incomplete pathname is specified, the current directory will be searched, and then the directory where the executable file YKH.EXE resides will be searched. YKH's kanji file is in the same format as JIS.16 used by the word processor NJSTAR, so it is possible to keep one copy of this file on your hard drive for both YKH and NJSTAR to use. defaults to JIS.16. --------- command-line options Most of the options that you can set in YKH.INI can be overridden if specified on the command-line. Here is a list of command-line options used by YKH: (any option may begin with either a - or a / character) -p[1|2|c|l] com port # or network terminal port name (l for lat, c for cterm) -sXXXXXX DECNET node name you wish to connect to -d# # databits -P[n|o|e] none, odd, or even parity -S# # stopbits -b# baudrate of # bps -h -? list command-line options --------- dialing your modem from within YKH Once you have run YKH with the correct settings, you must dial your modem manually with the keyboard. For most modems, this means typing ATDT, followed by the number you wish to dial, and then hitting the Enter key. For example, to dial the number 555-1212, you could type this line: ATDT5551212 Consult your modem's manual if this does not work. --------- how to exit YKH You can exit YKH at any time by pressing Ctrl+F10. --------- how to enter kana into YKH It is possible to enter kana directly into YKH, even though your keyboard does not have kana. YKH has three keyboard input modes: roumaji, hiragana, and katakana, which can be selected with the F5, F6, and F7 keys, respectively. When you are in roumaji mode, your terminal responds to your keystrokes in much the same way a VT320 would. When you are in hiragana or katakana mode, everything you type is converted from roumaji to kana, and then displayed on the top line of the screen. When you are finished typing a string of kana, hit the Enter key. This will send the kana string to the host computer in the "new-jis" format, and then return you to roumaji input mode. To abort sending the kana string you have just typed, hit the Esc key. You will be returned to roumaji input mode. This is a clumsy system that is not very useful. I wrote it into YKH only so that I could use Jim Breen's "xjdic" program on the workstation in my office from my dorm room. A future version of YKH will include kana->kanji lookup, which is arguably very useful when one is trying to enter Japanese text. --------- how to switch between EUC and SJIS modes in YKH Most of the Japanese text encountered on computers will be in the New-JIS or Old-JIS formats, which YKH is able to detect and display correctly in all circumstances. There are other Japanese text formats, however, that YKH is unable to distinguish between. The EUC and Shift-JIS formats overlap, so there is no simple way for YKH to determine if Japanese characters are in one or the other. For this reason, YKH allows you to choose which format you'd like to use. Pressing the F8 key switches between EUC mode, in which EUC and SJIS text is displayed as EUC text, and SJIS mode, in which EUC and SJIS text is displayed as SJIS text. An indicator at the upper left hand corner of the screen tells you which mode YKH is currently in. --------- how to use YKH with host systems that garble Japanese text If you are trying to look at what you have been told is Japanese text, and it looks something like this instead: $@F|K\8l(J chances are that the system you have connected to is not transmitting the escape codes that let most Japanese terminals know when to display Japanese text. "news" and the VMS operating system are common culprits. YKH provides a simple solution to this problem. Hitting the F4 key toggles "fix" mode, in which YKH inserts escape codes into garbled Japanese text in an attempt to display it correctly. When "fix" mode is on, a small "f" appears in the upper lefthand corner of the screen. Note that "fix" mode may not always display Japanese text correctly, since it is only a "best-guess" system- and that occasionally, it will display English text in Japanese. "fix" mode may work better with command-line interface programs than it does with full-screen programs that make heavy use of control codes. --------- credits Thanks to Douglas Webb, Erik Hall, and Virender Dayal, all students at the Stevens Institute of Technology, for teaching me programming principles necessary to write YKH. Special thanks to the teachers of JBC Language in Edgewater, New Jersey, whose patience and kindness make learning the Japanese language a joy.