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Net Standard Translators

  • NST: The NST library is the set of programs necessary to mesh efficiently with the code compiled at the user sites from the DEL programs it receives. The NST-DEL approach to NET interactive system communication is intended to operate over a broad spectrum.

The lowest level of NST-DEL usage is direct transmission to the server-host, information in the same format that user programs would receive at the user-host.

  • In this mode, the NST defaults to inaction. The DEL program does not receive universal hardware representation input but input in the normal fashion for the user-host.

  • And the DEL 1 program becomes merely a message builder and sender.

A more intermediate use of NST-DEL is to have echo tables for a TTY at the user-host.

  • In this mode, the DEL program would run a full duplex TTY for the user.

  • It would echo characters, translate them to the character set of the server-host, pack the translated characters in messages, and on appropriate break characters send the messages.

  • When messages come from the server-host, the DEL program would translate them to the user-host character set and print them on his TTY.

A more ambitious task for DEL is the operation of large, display-oriented systems from remote consoles over the NET.

  • Large interactive systems usually offer a lot of feedback to the user. The unusual nature of the feedback make it impossible to model with echo table, and thus a user program must be activated in a TSS each time a button state is changed.

    • This puts an unnecessarily large load on a TSS, and if the system is being run through the NET it could easily load two systems.

    • To avoid this double overloading of TSS, a DEL program will run on the user-host. It will handle all the immediate feedback, much like a complicated echo table. At appropriate button pushes, message will be sent to the server-host and display updates received in return.

  • One of the more difficult, and often neglected, problems is the effective simulation of one nonstandard console on another non-standard console.

    • We attempt to offer a means of solving this problem through the co-routine structure of DEL programs. For the complicated interactive systems, part of the DEL programs will be constructed by the server-host programmers. Interfaces between this program and the input stream may easily be inserted by programmers at the user-host site.