PROJECT OVERVIEW

Nettle is the terminal emulator and telnet client for the RISC OS operating system. It utilises the ZapRedraw module for speedy display and is a fast, clean native implementation.

Nettle supports most common terminal types, including vt100, vt102, vt220 and xterm terminal emulation in full colour, along with some more exotic features which you might not expect from a terminal emulation program, such as URL launching - just double click on any URL that is displayed in a Nettle window and it will launch in to your browser. Nettle also has an ANSI Task task window feature, which allows unix programs such as ssh, lynx, BitchX, ncftp2 and nano with ANSI terminal interfaces to be run natively on RISC OS for the first time.

Example Nettle screenshot showing ANSI colouring
(A tiny font size was selected just for this webpage screenshot!)

DEVELOPMENT

Nettle was started by Alex Macfarlane Smith, initially writing a very well featured version of Nettle in BBC BASIC. Unfortunately, this was rather too slow to be really useful, so after some encouragement, the move was made to a C-language based development. This is when the other developers started work.

Nettle is built with the StubsG C libraries, to allow it to run unmodified on both 26bit and 32bit RISC OS variants. Development is mostly done on the latest release of RISC OS Select but we support everything from RISC OS 3.1 through to RISC OS 5 running Internet module verison 4.xx or 5.xx. Nettle is also supported and tested with VirtualRiscPC-SE. If you're not running Select 2,3 or Adjust then you'll also need the SocketWatch module.

Opensource development is managed via SourceForge - please submit any patches and bug reports via that system, or email [email protected]

RELEASES

A full historical changelog can be gleaned from cvs, but here is the digest version, taken from the !Help file:

0.2042r : April 4th 2004
� � New Features:
� � � German messages (credit Stefan Bellon)
� � �
� � Changes/Improvements:
� � � True probing detection of Internet pollword capability
� � � Better internal internationalisation handling
� � �
� � Bugs fixed:
� � � Tabs are included in non-raw spool files
� � � Cope cleanly when no Internet module is present
�
0.2040r : December 7th 2003
� � New Features:
� � � Updated to 32bit build. Runs on 26bit and 32bit RISC OS.
� � � Added "Reconnect" menu item to reconnect dead sessions
� � � Sprites11 highres icons added
� � � Local terminal Options setting (on terminal menu)
� � � Scroll to bottom of terminal on keypress option
� � � Utilise RISC OS Select socket pollwords (unrequire Sockwatch)
� � �
� � Changes/Improvements:
� � � Moved to StubsG for everything. One sane build environment
� � � Ensure correct use of SocketWatch module
� � � Ensure correct use of ZapRedraw module. Ensure at least 0.39 used
� � � Don't gobble DA address space for ZapRedraw area
� � � Improved icons
� � � Better selection handling
� � � Keep to hires font in EY0 modes
� � � Works correctly with Internet 4.xx and 5.xx
� � � Updated French resources
� � � Reduced memory usage
� � �
� � Bugs fixed:
� � � Shift-PageUp/Down are properly handled locally to move scrollbar
� � � Updates to French resources
� � � Correct pasting of line endings and chomping of multiples
� � � Handle inverted commas in ANSI task commands correctly
� � � Cope with insane scroll regions being requested
� � � Improved handling of linefeeds in scroll regions
� � � Terminal resizing bug solved
� � � Allow line editor size to be altered properly
� � � Other miscellaneous line editor fixes
� � � Correctly handle dragging of files to line editor
� � � Keep cursor-type menu open when choosing with Adjust
� � � Correctly reset resize window on Adjust-Cancel
� � � Correctly reset hotlist editor window on Adjust-Cancel
� � � Cope with long URLs
� � � Correctly implemented reverse tabulation command
�
0.2032r : December 7th 2002
� � New features:
� � � French messages
� � � Ctrl-F2 closes disconnected sessions
� � � Added "linux" terminal type
� � �
� � Changes/Improvements:
� � � Improved method for detecting URLs
� � � Menu ticks added
� � � Selection-pasting only adds newlines at line end
� � � Small change to selected-area highlight colouring
� � � Caret drawn in window when it first opens
� � �
� � Bugs fixed:
� � � Corrected pasting of large amounts of text to ANSI tasks
� � � Various optimisations and speedups
� � � Data load ack now sent
� � � Country lookup fixed
� � � Terminal scrolling on NEL
� � � Fixed memory leak on URI loading
� � � Fix pasting of large files
� � � Don't report errors twice
�
0.2020r : February 20th 2002
� � New features:
� � � Iconised window naming
� � � Cope with and translate control characters when pasting
� � � Warn about open sessions on quit/shutdown
� � � Paste URL/URI files rather than launching them
� � � New choices section for 'miscellaneous' options (eg blinking)
� � � Versioned choices files
� � � Mouse support for Shift/Ctrl/Alt combinations
� � � Dynamic resizing of window -- optionally only when CTRL is held
� � � Accept user:pass@host format as a host entry for auto logon
� � � Handling of "telnet:user:pass@host:port" URL format
� � � Two types of terminal cursor : block or underline.
� � � Character underline support
� � � Display terminal size in scrollbar when dynamically resizing
� � �
� � Changes/Improvements:
� � � Multitasking speed when pasting large amounts
� � � Optional line editor can now default to 'off'
� � � Don't unnecessarily add blank spaces to end of lines
� � � Allow pasting of HTML, ask user when pasting other types
� � � RISC OS 3.5+ style error categories
� � � Positioning of new terminal windows is more standardised
� � � Better cursor drawing and display of 'ghost' cursor
� � � Large memory savings -- smarter use of ZapRedraw
� � � Terminal reset
� � � Handle 'stop bold' command and use it in ANSI saving output
� � �
� � Bugs fixed:
� � � 7bit/8bit VT escape sequences corrected
� � � Selection of rows when dragging selection a long way out of window
� � � Resizing on a mode change correctly
� � � Position cursor correctly when terminal resizes
� � � Hold on to selected area correctly when terminal resizes
� � � Fixed crashing on font change
� � � Ensure ZapRedraw at least 0.39 as we don't like earlier versions
� � � Double-clicking on IPs now does what you'd expect it to
� � � Swap top T bottom T around
� � � Corrected shutdown sequence so that desktop can be shutdown cleanly
� � � Some reasonably large internal cleanup and restructuring
� � � Read size of toolsprites from WIMP -- correctly position line editor
� � � Save as ANSI inserts proper ANSI sequences!

0.2010r : September 16th 2001
� � New features:
� � � Remote mouse support (pico -m, mc, links etc work nicely now)
� � � Support basic telnet://hostname/ URL launching (no user/password yet)
� � � Inverse video emulation
� � � Session spooling (logging)
� � � Support X11 DISPLAY passing to remote
� � � Implemented save/resore cursors
� � � Support for blinking characters
� � � Accept telnet requests to suppress go ahead
� � � Global clipboard support
� � � File loading (dragging of files to session window)

� � Changes/Improvements:
� � � 80/132 column switching doesn't change width on terminal reset now
� � � Better support ANT broadcast launching of URLs
� � � Improved recognition of URLs under double-click in terminal window
� � � Builds with new unixlib file structure
� � � Runs templheadr from a specified location
� � � Change menu wording ("Connect..." is now "New Session...")
� � � Much faster terminal drawing
� � � Hotlist editor gains "Copy" button - buttons grey-out at appropriate times
� � � Hotlist redraw cleaned up and made less flickery
� � � Hotlist items can now be dragged around to change the ordering
� � � Improve region scrolling behaviour

� � Bugs fixed:
� � � Correctly turn off local echo (telnet to ArcadeBBS now works properly)
� � � Corrected hotlist editor tab ordering
� � � Hotlist editor couldn't create command for ANSItask
� � � Terminal speed reporting (and change reported speed to 38400)
� � � Selection saving fixes
� � � LINES/COLUMNS variables now correct (for use by ANSItask apps)
� � � Rare stack corruption solved
� � � Could sometimes continually swap cursor between two windows
� � � DNS lookup corrected

0.2000r : September 1st, 2001
� � Features:
� � � Recoded in C
� � � Supports vt100, vt102, vt220, xterm emulations
� � � Telnet and ANSI task connections
� � � URL launching

0.1306b : 1999 - 2001
� � Initial BASIC versions

� Nettle developers, April 4th 2004.