Re: FTP or other internet protocols from MetaCard 2.1?

Phil Davis (phil_davis@MENTORG.COM)
Fri, 10 Jan 1997 21:04:36 GMT

On Jan 10, 1:53pm, Mr. Eddy Mcdaid wrote:
> Subject: Re: FTP or other internet protocols from MetaCard 2.1?
>
> On Fri, 10 Jan 1997, Phil Davis wrote:
>
> > Has anyone succeeded in conducting an ftp session as a MC process? Or maybe
> > you've conducted some other kind of connection? I'd like to know how.
>
> You could open a pipe to an ftp process and talk to it like you would
> with expect but an easier way is to use a utility called xtp (on unix)
> which is an ftp client that lets you specify all of the options on the
> command line. E.g. (from man page)
>
> To retrieve file display.tar.Z from host wizard.dupont.com, use:
>
> xtp -binary -retrieve display.tar.Z wizard.dupont.com
>
> To retrieve all the files from directory public/documents
> from host wizard.dupont.com, use:
>
> xtp -binary -retrieve documents/ wizard.dupont.com public
>
> You simply build up a command string in metatalk and issue a shell.
> E.g. (from memory)
>
> put "xtp -binary -retrieve" && filename && hostname into mycommand
> put shell(mycommand) into theResult
>
> I use an ancient copy of xtp that came (I think) as part of the
> imagemagic toolkit but it should be easy enough to find using archie or
> altavista.
>

This is wonderful - thank you. Now... what about from Windows 95/NT? I need to
do it from there too. Ideas, anyone?

I suppose there may be a way to use the DOS "ftp.exe" program but I don't know
if it can be run without showing a DOS window - that's what I need. No matter
what I wind up using, I need complete control over the visual appearance of the
session (on all platforms, not just Win32), even to the point of making it
invisible to the user.

Thanks in advance, folks.

-- 
Phil Davis
phild@infosynth.com
------------------------------
Information Synthesis, Inc.
A Knowledge Transfer Company
(503) 685-0306