RFC 386 (rfc386) - Page 2 of 5

Letter to TIP users-2

RFC # 386                                                     NIC #11358


input buffer will cause transmission when the buffer is almost full;
and a value of 0 for # will reset the terminal to its initial setting
-- TRANSMIT-ON-LINEFEED mode off, TRANSMIT ON MESSAGE- END mode off,
and transmitting every character. Thus, TRANSMIT EVERY 0 has the
effect of the removed @TRANSMIT ON NO CHARACTER command, and @TRANSMIT
EVERY 1 has the effect of the removed @TRANSMIT ON EVERY CHARACTER
command.

     There are two ways outside of letters and the telephone to
communicate your suggestions and complaints to us: log into BBN-TENEX
and SNDMSG to WALDEN or use the NIC Journal system to send a message
to DCW3. Dave likes letters best, incidentally.

     We are going to remove the "NEWS" herald from the TIP's HELLO
message. The problem is that we don't know when everybody has read the
latest news so that we can turn off the herald.  Therefore, we can't
turn it off. Therefore, it is useless.  Check the NEWS every time you
use the TIP. If once the news begins printing you discover you have
already seen it, you can stop it by typing @CLOSE _LF_ (on a 2741 hit
"attention" first).

     A new TIP message will have been added by the time you get this
letter, the message TIP GOING DOWN. This message will be printed on
every TIP terminal shortly before the TIP is taken down for preventive
maintenance, new software releases, etc. (see RFC #381 for further
discussion of this topic). When this message is printed, all TIP users
should cleanly stop what they are doing with a Host. Eventually, this
message will include information on how long until the TIP will go
down, for how long it will be down, and why.

     While we are on the subject of TIP messages, let us mention that
we will be adding a number of new messages which we believe will
remove some of the present confusion about what the TIP is doing.
Unfortunately, we don't have the space to store the message text
strings, so, we will use numbers for the new messages. The format of
these messages will probably be something like M46 for message 46.
Perhaps when the TIPs get more core we can replace the number-messages
by text-messages.

     We are thinking of changing all the TIP LOGIN commands to OPEN
commands which would be more opposite to the CLOSE commands and not so
liable to confusion with Host LOGIN.

     On page 12 of the TUG is a description of how Hosts can send
commands to a TIP terminal. Be warned, if you decide to use this
facility, that we are changing the TIP command language slowly and we
will not be constrained in these changes by the fact that some Hosts
are sending TIP commands.  Therefore, if a Host is going to send a