Re: FTP or other internet protocols from MetaCard 2.1?

Scott Raney (raney@metacard.com)
Sat, 11 Jan 1997 11:41:21 -0700 (MST)

>
> 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)

(snip)

> 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.

Setting the "hideConsoleWindows" property on Windows system hides the
console window that is created when you start up a command-line
application with shell() or open process. Unfortunately, it also
hides the window of any GUI applications you start up, which is why
it's set to false by default (there is no way to distinguish the two
kinds of executables without actually looking at the .exe files,
yuck!)

But, as is the case on UNIX systems, you can't run "ftp" with open
process because it balks if it's not connected to a real tty
(disabling echo when you type in the password, I think). So, it looks
like you want either something like a Windows version of "xtp", or
some sort of command built-in to MetaCard.

Which begs the question: What are you trying to do? Would you want
something like ftp/http commands, or something lower level like raw
sockets? The latter could be used to build ftp/http handlers,
although this would be a non-trivial task. We're planning a to build
a 2.1.1 release in a month or two, and a including couple of little
features in this area might be possible. What do you need?
Regards,
Scott

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

-- 
***************************************************************
Scott Raney   raney@metacard.com   http://www.metacard.com
Tcl and ksh: syntactic gymnastics
MetaCard: it does what you think