PCTERM: A TERMINAL EMULATOR USING COMPRESSION.

Abstract

PCTERM is a terminal emulator consisting of two programs, one on a host and one on an IBM/PC, which communicate using a general data compression algorithm. The use of this algorithm results in an average reduction of a factor of 6 to 8 in the number of bytes that need to be transmitted from the host computer to the terminal. It also enables file upload and download to run concurrently with terminal emulation, and has a rudimentary programming language used for communicating with smart modems, and for individual tailoring of keyboard function. The use of cooperating, intelligent processes, one on the host and the other on the PC, has made several of these facilities more natural.