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				   nanoTerm 3.0
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In the beginning...

    Long ago I decided to write a terminal program in assembly.  I searched
everywhere for example source code on how to go about using devices in
assembly.  Unfortunately all I came up with was two or three terminal
programs written in assembly that busy-waited on the serial port (Ack!).

    Several months and many crashes later I had my first working prototype,
GeekTool.  GeekTool worked most of the time and rarely crashed so I added a
font requester and a couple of other features which made the already clumsy
code impossible to debug.  Despondant, I gave it up.

The new vision...

    A year later.  Disappointed that I never did anything with my terminal
program I took the old code back out and re-wrote the entire thing.  But
that wasn't enough.  There had to be somthing more I could do to it.  Then
one day it hit me.  I should edit it down so that the executable code was
smaller than 1k.  That was it.	Hahahahahaha.

    1 month later.  All of the features were gone.  All excess code was
removed while retaining the program's origional function as a terminal
program.  It was still 1134 bytes.  I was stumped.  I thought about getting
rid of the window.  I thought about leaving out all of the text strings in
the entire program.  In the end I never had to go to such extreme measures.
Instead I had to invent other extreme measures to go to...

    Still later.  It was over for me.  I was done, finished with nanoTerm
2.0 and ready to throw in the towel.  Even though the code size was 1010
bytes the executable was 1128 bytes.  Then two people sent me e-mail
suggesting new and better ways to optimize nanoTerm.  They gave me the
power to go beyond the 1k executable.  Many thanks to Daniele Forsi and
Joep Grooten.

Questions & Answers about nanoTerm

Q: How come when I "list nanoTerm" it says it's 1128 bytes?

A: That's because you still have the 2.0 version of nanoTerm. Go get the
3.0 version on aminet.


Q: How do I change any of the serial settings?

A: You can't do it from nanoTerm.  You have to quit, change the settings in
Prefs/Serial and then start nanoTerm again.


Q: Does nanoTerm share the serial port?

A: Yes.  So you can use it to connect up before starting some other
program.  The code is also "pure" so you can make it resident.


Q: How come you clear the serial buffer every time?

A: Because the serial.device doesn't null-terminate the strings it sends
you so my cheap way of null-terminating is to fill the buffer with nulls
before asking the serial.device for a string.


Q: Can I steal your nanoTerm code and use it in my own projects and never
give you credit?

A: Sure.  But you have to send me a copy of whatever nanoTerm code ends up
in.

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nanoTerm - an experement in frustration by Jason Fonseca.
Send Jason Fonseca email, job offers, useful information at:
jfonseca@math.uno.edu