August 16th, 1991 WHY NAPLPS? Dave Hughes Old Colorado City Communications I might as well ask back 'Why ASCII?' Without which there would be no general modem-based telecommunications. No BBS's, computer conferencing systems, Compuserve, MCI Mail or the ability of any microcomputer to exchange intelligable text with any other computer - or printer, or modem, or data base. ASCII is an ANSI standard for the encoding of the English alphabet, punctuation, and certain computer control codes. NAPLPS - the North American Presentation Protocol Syntax - is a joint ANSI-Canadian Standards Association standard for the encoding of animated graphics, symbols as graphics, and text. It was designed especially for telecommunications. For it is: a. Terminal independent - it doesn't matter whether you have an IBM PC with Hercules, CGA, EGA, or VGA, a black and white Mac Classic or a 256 color Mac LC, an Amiga, Atari, or a high end graphics work station. The standard permits work done on one to be viewed on any of the others. b. It is highly compact. No 200k bitmapped GIF, Group 3 fax, or TIFF files, compressed or not. A full page of color graphics and text will range from a few hundred bytes, 5k, to a big Naplps file that may be 20k. c. Its more than just static pictures. It's wait and blink functions permit continuous animation. Which supports not only sequential series, but also interactive action, and editable 'protected fields. d. It can be integrated into any ASCII based system (a Fido BBS, Unix network, dial-up commercial service, LAN, network). For it is a superset of ASCII, and its viewing terminal programs can be dual ASCII, NAPLPS - even Teletel - the mosaic's basis of French Minitel. e. Its DRCS function greatly broadens its ability to handle foreign languages, symbol sets created by the users - math, science, games. f. Its perfectly suited for INTERACTIVE online systems, and interconnected networks, such as the Internet, Bitnet, Usenet, Fidonet, even Frednet. It is especially suited to Fido BBS networks because Fido moves data in binary form between systems - and this can easily move Naplps 7 or 8 bit frames (and Naplps supports both) between systems. Why haven't I heard of it? You have, but didn't know it because up until now it almost excusively has been used as the basis of one-way graphics services called Videotext. Such as Canada's ALEX service, the NYNEX Gateway service (alas, no longer with us) and Prodigy. (now I'll duck). Yes, the 'lowest common denominator' graphics frames you see on Prodigy, deeply buried inside that bizzare software terminal program, linked to their kludgy central server computers running overdeveloped functions, is Naplps. Why? Because for all the billions IBM and Sears can spend programming and marketting a Videotext service for the masses, they selected Naplps because it was the only protocol that was (1) made for telecom and (2) could let a PC and MAC see the same graphics. But there is another more fundamental point. Videotext is little more than modem based television. I say 'little more' because one *can* send and recieve e-mail. But not *graphic* e- mail. In fact that is the issue I have long had with the whole 'Videotext' modem-mindset, and therefore mis-use of Naplps as a very neat protocol with unrealized potential. They missed the point that every user of a BBS learned by their second log in - that it is more fun to create and send a message or program, than to just read those put there by others. Ditto for graphics. The only service which was both profitable and creative on another failed Videotext service (1986) by AT&T and Knight-Ridder in Florida called Viewtron (also Naplps) was that users could summon up clip-art by Hallmark, assemble and send graphics greeting cards by e-mail! But what has held back the spread of online graphics on truely two-way dial up services, has been either (1) the big over-head of bit-mapped graphics inside any storage system, which also means the long download times that just about rule out 'real-time' rather than 'look-at-it-later' time graphics and (2) the lack of good low-end free ware or share-ware Naplps frame creation software as well as terminal programs. That situation just changed today. After my working on the minds of every Candian Naplps developer for years (all of whom have been more advanced in Naplps than US programers since the late 70's and who served only the Videotext market), and after experimenting with some quirky Naplps programs on my own Unix and Fido systems since 1984, the leader of the Naplps industry - Microstar of Canada, called me up and said I could announce TODAY at Fidocon-91 that his $1,000 professional MSDOS Frame Creation program MGE (Micro Graphics Editor), AND his $100 Naplps Terminal Program (Personality Plus III) could be distributed as Shareware!!!! (with a $50 and $25 registration price). That makes available to US BBS, and commercial service operators, for the first time, professional quality Naplps frame creation programs which can run on any PC with a mouse - from floppy disk CGA laptops to hard disk VGA 346's. And users can download the dual-ascii smart terminal program as shareware and view any Naplps frames on any system, before getting into the game of creating their own graphics, animated text, using a protocol based on an ANSI standard, upload it to any service, or add such graphics to their own system. Not only that, but one other Canadian company which is expert in Naplps graphics for education, (such as doing the Thai alphabet in DRCS tables in Naplps so that Thailand school kids can do distance learning by modem with MSDOS machines, and Naplps based wordprocessing and telecom), the Tayson company, just promised delivery of a single-monitor Naplps drawing program which INCLUDES the DRCS table-creation function (which MGE does not), and their Naplps Terminal program for under $200. And finally another company, Macgregor of Canada, who has the best MacIntosh monchrome-color Naplps terminal program - Tam Tam, and in the last stages of a powerful Mac frame creation program which can convert MacDraw and other formats to Naplps, dropped the price of its $135 terminal program to $50, will offer their drawing program for end-user (rather than studio-level) prices. And is working with me on an agreement to release their simplist Mac naplps Terminal program as a form of shareware within 60 days! So, together with an Amiga terminal program that already exists, still-pricey but dropping (as soon as the Microstar Shareware impact sinks in) naplps scanner, Group 3 fax, TIFF, and PCX software, and other tools - online graphics in ways GIF could never do is available, and can be put on every BBS in the world! But there is more. I have been so encouraged by the final 'waking-up' of Naplps developers to the much larger market for online graphics in the dial up modem BBS, Usenet Unix, Bitnet academic, Internet international, I have been busy too, hacking out an approach to handling naplps on interconnected (netted) systems in better ways than just Xmodeming the files around, or perpetuating the binary file-transfer 'net-specific' modes - Fido's compression and transfer techiques, the Internet's ftp transfers, the Unix to Unix UUCP one-hop copy protocol. There are several aspects to the problem. First on all each of these large 'domains' Fidonet, growing Frednet (school Apples), Usenet, Bitnet, and Internet there are perfectly good ways to transfer binary (naplps) files intact but only within each net. But just try to send a compiled binary program from Fido to the Internet, or Bitnet to a Usenet node. But they all talk ASCII! And ASCII files can be moved, as mail, through all these domains, tranparently! But Naplps has to be treated as a binary file. Uuencode and Uudecode - the conversion binary-to-ascii public protocol/programs which had their birth on Unix system - to the rescue! Not only are there plenty of public domain versions of these programs for MSDOS, Mac and Apples, they are the *only* protocol used on the large networks such as Bitnet and the Internet to move programs between programmers across the country. Even if they are done so by breaking up huge files - like several MB - into e-mail chunks under 65k per mail message. But Naplps files are *never* that large! You are lucky to see a 25k naplps file! Dinky by comparison. Nothing new here, right? So whats the big deal if I (1) draw a graphic, or type a mail message in Russian using a Naplps (DRCS table) word processor (2) uuencode it into pure ascii (3) load it into a service and address it as e-mail (4) the addressee saving it to a file upon receipt (5) running uudecode against it to turn the ascii back to naplps binary and (6) viewing it with a Naplps terminal program? Nothing really new or exiting here. Just a work-a-day convert, send, and convert back task. Taking many steps. But what, I asked myself - and you are reading here for the first time - if I put the uudecode tiny utility (752 bytes in one version) as a TSR in the RAM with the Naplps Terminal program, then using a modified fossil driver to detect the unique string which marks the beginning of a uuencoded binary, redirects it through the uudecode conversion routine, then redirects that i/o back to the Terminal program Naplps decoder where it display the graphic. Having been converted only in the naplps terminal program machine, on the fly, in Ram! So that (1) the end user doesn't have to do anything - download and convert (2) the Sysop of the host machine doesn't have to do anything either! Graphics by e-mail! Ah, but there is more. Since all Naplps terminal programs (remember they can be toggled into either plain 80 column ascii mode or Naplps graphics and 40 column text mode) can be automatically 'toggled' between modes by two escape chars Esc-A and Esc-@, then these can be imbedded at the beginning and end of a naplps frame. So that when the frame is 'decoded' the escapes will toggle the Terminal program automatic. See mom, no hands! And THAT means that one could COMBINE ascii text with naplps graphics inside a single piece of e-mail, or even a special echos on Fidos or in any Unix/Bitnet/Internet Newsgroup or computer conference. This work is not complete yet (integrating uudecode into the terminal program or ram with TSR). Maybe some Fido hackers can do it themselves. So no more need for 'just' static graphics sitting in the Files Directory for intermittent viewing (all one has to do to see a naplps frame set in a files directory is either to 'type' the file as an ascii output, or 'cat' the file in Unix.) Suddenly big and little graphics are part of the message stream - logos at the head of e-mail, a little cartoon in the middle of a wise-ass crack in a stiff conference, a fractal displaying along with the mathematic discussion of it, a chess or other game board popping up in e-mail, some of my immortal Word Dance visual-speech stories. Or as those Native-Americans on 5 Montana Reservations that we showed how to do original Indian Art on VGA PCs with MGE drawing programs, uploading by Xmodem to Cynthia Denton's Russell Country BBS in Hobson, MT ( a Remote Access with Doors to the 'gallery' inside, and the fine art pieces offered as "Share-Art" with the artists receiving checks for their works from those who 'download' their work - not just view it online) did, write 'Illustrated Narratives' of ancient Indian battles and rituals - in animated Naplps for the public. The imagination of what is possible stirs mightily. Telecom joins the video revolution, but goes beyond it by giving us interactive, user-created, text and graphics, on any dial up system, with a standard and highly efficient graphics protocol, with everybody participating through Shareware! Why Naplps? Why not? Dave Hughes The Cursor Cowboy Old Colorado City Electronic Cottage Colorado Springs, Colorado 719-636-2040 voice 632-2657 9600 baud 8N1 modem to the unix system 632-2658 2400 baud 8N1 to Fido 1/128/67 dave%oldcolo@csn.org P.S. The Indian Share Art can be seen on Russell Country BBS, Hobson Montana, 406-423-5433 to 9600 baud V32. Remote Access (Fido) 1/346/7. You can download a shareware MSDOS terminal program CTlink.exe to call back and view or download the files. Please respect their Share Art status - Native Americans who live on Montana Reservations with high unemployment created these quality naplps pieces of art, and narrative art. You can 'view' them online as many times as you wish, but if you download them for your use or posting on your system, it is ethical to pay something to the artist for your copy.