Touch someone—with your computer

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 53

Touch someone —with your computer

A new communications programme from the Australian company Netcomm, due for launch very early next year, would appear to be the best communications program for computers in the history of the civilised world as we know it. Communications programs have always been notoriously hard to handle. Anyone who started using communications packages prior to XTalk, up until recently one of the industry standards, soon wished they had taken up something more restful, less bile inducing. Like crocodile wrestling. Communications between computers themselves are complex enough. When you overlay on that a uservicious programme written by a hacker with no regard for the level of skill of the poor mug punter, the results are brain damaging. And off putting. It is a sad but real truth that computer users who are perfectly willing to hammer their way through a complex spreadsheet, or are willing to master the Byzantine complexities of Word Star, pale at the thought of attempting computer communications. Which is why, in this age of electronic communications, messenger services thrive and prosper. Some respite came with the shareware programme, Telix, which is currently the programme of choice with all serious communications hackers. It is a programme which is fast and elegant, if still something of a worry for absolute beginners. Now we will soon have V 3 from Netcomm and to quote my offsider and communicatiosn freak, Matt Whelan, “It blows Telix away.” We have been testing an advanced beta version of the programme from a hotel bedroom in Singapore. Matt is heavily involved in bulletin boards. I am lightly involved — more a concerned bystander and snapper up of unconsidered trifles than an active combatant. In Singapore, bulletin board usage is beyond belief — 500 or more on the island, lots more in Malaysia over the Causeway — and Matt and I have spent happy hours accessing them and finding out how they run, what they contain, how heavily they are used. On the evidence in front of us, Singapore must be one of the most computer literate nations in the world. We have also been hammering away, sending and receiving messages from around the world using Fido Net And accessing our own computers at home in Sydney to keep up with the news. ,

Ask not what our telephone bill might be. And, yes, we could have done it quite easily with Telix. But it was easier still by an order of magnitude with V 3. First of all, Netcomm programmers have gone out of the way to see'that V 3 is, in that awful phrase of the computer industry, user friendly. Indeed, set up properly it is almost as easy to use as a fax machine. Than which greater praise cannot be given. The programme has pull-down menus and the way in which it works is highly reminiscent of one of the better desktop publishing programs on the Macintosh. It operates with a mouse and, although this is not essential, it makes the program much more pleasant to use. Setting up the program in the first place is available at two levels. Absolute beginners are guided through an automatic installation routine: communications buffs can set it up themselves to suit their equipment with great precision. For those out there on the cutting edge, the language which the programme is built around, C2L (stands for Cybersoft Communications Language), is readily accessible. It bears some considerable resemblance to Pascal, which makes the tailoring of communications applications relatively — in computer cmmunications everything is relative — easy. Where the program shines is in disguising from the normal user the mind-numbing complexities of communications. Instead of having to worry about stop bits, parities, log-on scripts, function key macros, default handshaking and all the other nonsense that so bedevils computer communications, you set up a script, once. This is relatively easy to do, although I can envisage many of these programs being installed with modems with the scripts pre-written. Once the scripts are in place, all you need do is select the appropriate entry in the dialling directory — preferably using the mouse — and the program does the rest. It dials up, connects the two computers, sorts out problems of handshaking and protocols, sends down any log-on signals that are needed and generally takes care of the housekeeping. You do nothing except select the service you want, point and click. Reaching out and touching someone with your computer.