Kermit News Number 6, March 1995

1. MS-DOS Kermit for DOS and Windows;
2. C-Kermit for UNIX, OS/2, OpenVMS, Stratus VOS, and several other operating systems;
3. IBM Mainframe Kermit for VM/CMS, MVS/TSO, CICS, and MUSIC.

These new versions offer:

To view a graph from an interactive SAS/GRAPH session, use this syntax at the beginning of your graphics program:

  GOPTIONS DEVICE=KRMTxxx;

For more information on these device drivers, contact SAS Institute Technical Support at +1 919 677-8008 and ask for the Graphics group.

To view sample full-color Kermit SAS graphics screens, point your graphics Web browser at URL:

Health care providers and insurers are turning to PCs and modems to eliminate costly paperwork in order to reduce health-care costs and speed up the reimbursement process. Claim forms are filled out on the computer screen in the doctor's office, hospital, or pharmacy, and submitted at the touch of a button to a medical claims clearinghouse or directly to the insurance company.

Over the years every insurer and clearinghouse developed proprietary and incompatible formats and software. The recent growth in electronic claims submission has spurred a movement towards standardization, allowing (for example) a doctor's office to submit different types of claims in a uniform manner. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) recently approved EDI formats for Insurance Claims Submission and Electronic Remittance, and this will only hasten the end of the "mountains-of-paper" system, with all its confusion and delays, and will enable not only a standardized method for electronic submission of claims, but also for their payment.

A similar movement is stirring in the consumer electronics market, where warranty claims can now be filed electronically. Likewise, companies that use computers to keep track of inventory can now refresh their stocks automatically when items run low, using software that sends orders to their suppliers by modem. Retail distributors of standardized parts and components can now have pricing updates loaded automatically into their business computer systems by their suppliers.

Much of this new software relies on MS-DOS Kermit to make the connections and transfer the data behind the scenes. Because of its unobtrusive user interface, MS-DOS Kermit can be invisible to the user, and because of its powerful script language, it can easily be programmed to do automatically anything that might be done interactively, such as dialing up, logging in, handling various error conditions, and (of course) transferring data swiftly and accurately.

According to Allen Firstenberg, XAP President, "through the development of information management technologies -- data collection, hard-copy printing, multimedia interactive information display, database management, and electronic data exchange -- XAP Company is making the task of filling out complex forms simple for students and their parents and also more efficient to process.

"Over 2 million students annually are expected to utilize XAP's software by 1996, submitting their completed applications electronically. As the availability of modems for students continues to increase, XAP Company is planning to receive the predominance of its applications via EDI."

Embedded within the XAP software will be MS-DOS Kermit "Lite," the special small-size version for PCs, chosen for its flexible scripting capabilities, ease of use, and high file-transfer efficiency. When modem transmission is elected, Kermit Lite, driven by a custom script program, dials to the XAP facility and, acting as the EDI transport, submits the completed applications automatically and reliably.

According to an article in Bank Systems Technology, October 1994, this system not only replaces the burdensome and "notoriously lengthy and complicated" paper-based financial aid disbursement process with a more streamlined and efficient one, but, through the newly formed Educational Loan Management (ELM) Resources, aims to create a universal standard for all students, schools, and banks that will vastly simplify the financial aid process.

Frank da Cruz

Version 5A(190) of C-Kermit, the world's most portable communications software program, was released in October 1994 for:

• UNIX, all varieties
• IBM OS/2 and Warp
• Digital VMS and OpenVMS
• Stratus VOS (new! -- see p.0)
• Data General AOS/VS
• Microware OS-9
• The Commodore Amiga

The short list of new features is:

UNIX C-Kermit 5A(190) runs on 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit architectures under 2.xBSD, 4.2-4.4BSD; AT&T UNIX System III and System V R2, 3, and 4; POSIX; OSF/1. Plus many and varied releases and incarnations of: 386BSD; AT&T 3Bx systems and UNIX PCs and workstations; Amdahl UTS; Apple A/UX; BSDI; COHERENT; Convex/OS; Cray UNICOS and CSOS; Data General DG/UX; DEC OSF/1 and ULTRIX; ESIX; Encore UMAX; FreeBSD; Harris CX/UX; Hewlett Packard HP-UX (all versions); IBM AIX on RS/6000, PC RT, 370 mainframe, and PS/2; ICL DRS/NX; Interactive UNIX; Intergraph CLIX; Linux; Lynx; MIPS RISC/OS; Motorola System V/68 R3 and System V/88; NCR UNIX; NeXTSTEP; NetBSD; Olivetti X/OS; Pyramid OSx; QNX; SCO ODT, UNIX, and XENIX; Sequent DYNIX and DYNIX/ptx; Silicon Graphics IRIX; Sun Solaris and SunOS; Sony NEWS-OS; Stratus FTX; Tandy XENIX; Trusted XENIX; UnixWare; and many more.

In addition to file transfer recovery and auto up- and download, version 5A(190) includes lots of UNIX-specific improvements too: a faster CONNECT mode, more reliable signal handling, an option for a system-wide initialization file, TELNET screen-size negotiation. Hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) support, since it is so important for using today's high-speed modems, has been added to many of the UNIX versions, and so has support for higher serial speeds.

David Lane, Stratus Computer Inc

Stratus Computer, Inc. (NYSE SRA) is the second-largest provider of fault-tolerant hardware systems. VOS is the proprietary operating system for Stratus hardware. Stratus systems are designed to reach (and often attain!) uptimes greater than 99.99%. They are used for applications where downtime is extremely costly, such as stock exchanges, banking, and airline reservations; and where downtime can be deadly, such as public safety systems.

Because of the markets into which Stratus sells, VOS is primarily optimized for transaction-processing, rather than for general terminal users (The mention of Stratus in Tom Clancey's Debt of Honor notwithstanding!). This means that, unlike UNIX, VOS does not come with a dial-out program, though some can be found. There are several programs available, but they either require specific software at the remote end to perform file transfers, do not perform file transfers at all, or are quite costly.

I had previously developed a small communications program for our support group to use to dial out to our customers for remote maintainance. I had been getting many requests to add file transfer capability to this program. However, I wanted to have a better program than what I was prepared to write from scratch, so I started to look around at what was available and soon discovered a "portable, full-featured implementation of Kermit written in C."

It only took several evenings to get the basic sources compiled under the VOS C compiler, even though it was, at the time, not an ANSI compiler. Great care has been taken by all the people involved with C-Kermit to allow it to work with older compilers. Even though the VOS compiler at the time had many ANSI features, if C-Kermit had required a full ANSI-compliant compiler, I would have had a great deal of trouble getting it to work on VOS. After the portable pieces of the C-Kermit code compiled, it took several months of evenings and weekends to fill in the system dependent modules of C-Kermit which perform serial and file I/O.

As a side benefit, C-Kermit supports X.25 and TCP/IP connections, similar to the VOS CALL_THRU and TELNET commands. There was file transfer support for X.25 on VOS, but only with modifications to a system server (x25_exchange.pm) and with unsupported software from Stratus. Of course, TCP/IP file transfers can use FTP, but using FTP through a corporate firewall or proxy server can be difficult to automate.

Having the X.25 and TELNET support within C-Kermit has also helped to debug the option setting on remote connections, because we can have a single method that allows us to see the options for both X.25 and TCP/IP, rather than having different methods for each; and C-Kermit doesn't require privilege to debug it's own connections! Using the ACCESS macros in C-Kermit is much easier than using different commands for each type of remote host connection, and it greatly simplifies the use of proxy servers.

So now we have a full-featured C-Kermit implementation for Stratus VOS that fills a need in this area of critical computing.

Other Recent Releases

This program runs under RT-11 from V4 and TSX from V5. A special minimum version for floppy-disk-based systems is included, especially handy on systems having no line time clock, or for getting files from small systems often found in older image-processing equipment. File creation date, time (TSX only), protection, and length attributes are now supported and work with C-Kermit and MS-DOS Kermit. And: smaller program size, bigger packets, improved communications and modem control, faster CONNECT sessions, and command-line arguments are now supported. September 1993. Tape B.

PLUS . . .

Alpha Micro

From Bob Rubendunst, V2.0 of Alpha Micro Kermit, replacing version 1.0 from Feb 1985, for AMOS/L 1.3 and above and AMOS/32 systems. New features include 8-bit terminal support, autosend/receive, batch sends with random file bypass, parity checking, CRC error-checking, statistics, AM3000 compatibility. March 94. Tape C.

Burroughs (UNISYS) B6800

Written in Algol by Tony Appelget, Plymouth, MN. September 94. Tape D.

HP-3000 MPE

Two versions from Tony Appelget, one in SPL and one in C. September 94. Tape D.

Nicolet 80

A brand-new Kermit program for the British Nicolet 80 series of laboratory computers from Peter McClintock, University of Lancaster, UK. July 94. Tape C.

Frank da Cruz

The problem is not confined to modem connections, either. Internet users know only too well the heartbreak of the broken ftp connection, especially that excruciatingly slow trans-oceanic one. Connections break--all kinds of connections--and the laws of the eponymous Murphy dictate this will happen at the worst possible time; for example, when you are 9.8 megabytes into a 10-megabyte transfer on a sloooooow connection.

Our three new Kermit releases to the rescue: MS-DOS Kermit 3.14, IBM Mainframe Kermit 4.3.1, and C-Kermit 5A(190). From now on, no more worries about broken connections, at least not during binary-mode file transfers, on all of the following platforms:

• DOS (MS, PC, DR, etc)
• Microsoft Windows
• IBM OS/2
• UNIX (all varieties)
• Digital VMS and OpenVMS
• IBM Mainframe VM/CMS, MVS/TSO, CICS, MUSIC
• Stratus VOS
• Data General AOS/VS
• Commodore Amiga
• Microware OS-9

When a file is transferred in binary mode, its size does not change; it is sent literally, without any kind of format or character-set conversion. Thus, if a file is partially transferred, we know exactly where in the original file to resume the transmission.

For the new round of releases, the Kermit programs were changed to keep partially received files by default, rather than discard them (which was the default action previously), and the Kermit protocol was extended to support recovery of binary-mode transfers. When a recovery operation is requested, the two Kermit programs negotiate this capability; if successful, the file receiver tells the sender the position in the source file from which to start sending, and then the receiver appends the new material to the end of the partially received file. Only one new command is needed:

  RESEND filename

The same file can be recovered in this way more than once; for example, if the phone connection is broken several times.

Another interesting property of the RESEND feature is that it can also be used to recover interrupted non-Kermit transfers, such as with Ymodem-G or FTP. As long as you have a partial file that was transferred in binary mode, by whatever means, you can continue the transfer from the point of failure using Kermit's new RESEND feature.

When you combine Kermit's automation features with its new recovery ability, you can create script programs (like the one opposite) that are virtually guaranteed to transfer a file, even under the worst conditions, by automatically redialing and RESENDing each time there is a failure, until the file is completely transferred. Once started, such a script can run totally unattended; read the newspaper, go out to dinner, take a nap -- relax, don't worry -- barring total failure of the telephone network or destruction of one of the computers, the file will get through.

What about text-mode transfers? These can't be recovered automatically because there is no reliable correspondence between the original file and the transferred file: many operating mark lines of text differently: CR (carriage return) and LF (linefeed) at the end, as in DOS; LF-only as in UNIX; CR-only as on the Mac; via length fields or other mechanisms on record-oriented file systems, and so on.

But all is not lost. Here is a useful hint: if you are transferring text files between computers that have like file systems (e.g. DOS to OS/2, or HP-UX to Solaris), and you don't need character-set conversion, then use binary mode. This is somewhat more efficient than text mode because all conversions are skipped, and you can recover interrupted transfers.

Even when a text-mode transfer is interrupted, it's now possible to recovery "manually" by telling MS-DOS Kermit or C-Kermit to "PSEND" (partially send) the file from the point of interruption (which you must determine by inspection), and to tell the receiving Kermit program to append the incoming partial file to the existing file, via SET FILE COLLISION APPEND if it is supported. If not, you can receive the partial file into a separate file and then join the two afterwards. In any case, the part that was successfully transferred need not be transferred again.

File Transfer Recovery Demonstration Script

ask \%u { username: }
askq \%p { \%u's password: }

; Settings for entire session.
;
define \%s 20             ; Seconds to pause between each try
define \%n 7654321        ; Phone number
set port com1             ; Communication port
set modem pp14400         ; Modem type (dial with PP14400.SCR)

set file type binary      ; File transfer mode must be binary
set input timeout quit    ; (to keep the script program short)
set count 50              ; Try up to 50 times to send the file
goto nomsg                ; Skip message the first time

:LOOP                     ; Come here to redial
hangup                    ; Give the phone line a rest
echo CONNECTION BROKEN.
echo Pausing for \%s seconds...
sleep \%s
Echo redialing...

:NOMSG
dial \%n                  ; Dial the phone number
if fail goto AGAIN        ; Keep trying...
output \13                ; Answered, send carriage return
input 15 login:           ; Get UNIX login prompt
output \%u\13             ; Send user ID
input 8 Password:         ; Get UNIX password prompt
output \%p\13             ; Send password
input 60 {$ }             ; Get UNIX system prompt
cd \budget                ; CD to desired local directory
output cd budget\13       ; and remote destination directory
input 8 {$ }              ; Get system prompt
out kermit -r\13          ; kermit -r(eceive) on remote system
input 10 KERMIT READY     ; Wait for READY message
pause 1                   ; Plus a second for safety
resend fy9495.wks         ; RESEND the file
if success goto done      ; = file is completely transferred

:AGAIN
if count goto LOOP        ; Otherwise, try again.
Stop 1 Too many tries.    ; Too many tries, give up.

:DONE
echo File transferred OK  ; Success, give message
output exit\13            ; Log out from remote computer
pause 5                   ; Give it time...
hangup                    ; Hang up
stop 0 Script succeeded   ; Finished, the end.

(This MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 script dials into a UNIX host and assumes UNIX prompts and other conventions. It can easily be modified to run under C-Kermit and/or to access non-UNIX host computers. A copy of this script can be found on the MS-DOS Kermit diskette as RECOVER.SCR in the UTILS subdirectory.)

<ESC>_string<ESC>\

When the terminal emulator is a Kermit program, the string can be any Kermit command, even a list of commands separated by commas, for example:

<ESC>_set file typ bin, s oofa.zip<ESC>\

APC All Around

  A:  Local      B:  Remote                 
  MS-DOS Kermit  MS-DOS Kermit
  OS/2 C-Kermit  UNIX C-Kermit
  UNIX C-Kermit  VMS  C-Kermit
  VMS  C-Kermit  OS-9 C-Kermit
  OS-9 C-Kermit  IBM Mainframe Kermit

The ability of the remote application to initiate file transfers automatically in either direction is a big step forward in the ease-of-use department, especially when the host application is menu-driven. Since it is so easy to hide Kermit software behind menus, it's only a matter of time until "one-touch" file transfer becomes the norm in Kermit land.

Frank da Cruz

It's practically compulsory nowadays to "surf the Information Superhighway" using high-powered graphical navigation tools, but once you leave the confines of your own country, or -- more often -- attempt to access information that is not written in English, you are very likely to run into trouble. A quick tour of the World Wide Web (WWW) using NCSA Mosaic on a Hewlett Packard workstation turned up only garbage in place of accented or non-Roman characters when trying to access Web pages in just about every country we visited: Costa Rica, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Norway, Poland, Russia, ...

Much time was wasted trying to rectify the problem, involving adding hundreds of cryptic lines to the .Xresources file, repeatedly shutting down and reloading the X Windows system, logging out and back in, all to no avail. German still came out looking like Icelandic; Russian and Hebrew were hopeless. (A solution was found eventually, but it only works for the Western European "Latin-1" languages; HyperText Markup Language, or HTML, the language of the Web, does not allow for any other writing systems.)

Similar problems occur when using graphical newsreaders like NewsGrazer and the ones built in to Mosaic and Netscape; they don't give you easy (or any) control over character sets.

MS-DOS Kermit might not be a WWW navigator or newsreader, but it has a distinct advantage: it can handle a wide variety of character sets and writing systems simply and easily. MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 comes with all the pieces you need -- fonts, keyboard drivers, key mappings, instructions, and macros for quick switching -- for five important writing systems: West European, East European, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Japanese. And, by a stroke of good luck, Chinese too (Japanese and Chinese require special versions of DOS; more about that later).

The Cyrillic Alphabet

Approximately 1100 years later, in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere, several encodings were devised for computer representation of Cyrillic letters, each one incompatible with the others: KOI-8, KOI-7 (Short KOI), DKOI, ISO 8859-5 Latin/Cyrillic, Alternative Cyrillic, PC Code Page 866, Mainframe Code Page 880, and so on.

Although MS-DOS Kermit has been capable of Cyrillic text-file transfer since version 3.11, version 3.14 is the first to also incorporate a complete Cyrillic terminal emulation package, including a font that everybody can use, keyboard drivers, and complete key and screen mappings for accessing host-based applications using KOI-8, Short KOI, or Latin/ Cyrillic.

As a quick demonstration, if you have the rn or trn newsreader on your UNIX host, or similar programs on other hosts, you can use MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 (under DOS, not Windows) to read the Russian relcom.* newsgroups, such as relcom.ads, relcom.commerce, or relcom.currency. Just type:

  MS-Kermit> cyrillic

If you also want to write in Russian during your terminal session (or, for that matter, in DOS on your PC), you must load a Russian keyboard driver, two of which are provided on your Kermit diskette. The term "Russian" is used advisedly here, since these drivers do not support the special characters unique to Serbocroation, Macedonian, Ukranian, and Bielorussian. One driver conforms to the USSR-model PC keyboard layout, the other assigns Cyrillic characters to Roman letter keys "by sound" for easy use by QWERTY typists; pick the one that is most natural for you. In both cases, a hot key switches the keyboard between English and Roman modes.

For e-mail, which is predominantly 7-bit, you should use Short KOI, which is understood by most Russian computer users:

  MS-Kermit> cyrillic shortkoi

  MS-Kermit> cyrillic latinc

Here again we have the classic problem -- different computers use different encodings for Hebrew letters: 7-bit "Hebrew-7", ISO Latin/Hebrew; IBM PC Code Page 862; IBM Mainframe CECP 424; each incompatible with the others. Confounding the situation further is the intrinsically bidirectional nature of the Hebrew writing system: Hebrew letters right to left, digits and Roman letters left to right.

Since version 3.13, MS-DOS Kermit has included full Hebrew character-set translation as well as Hebrew VT terminal emulation at the VT420 level (which includes host-directed screen-writing direction). Version 3.14, however, is the first release to come with a complete Hebrew package: a Hebrew font that anybody can load (under DOS, not Windows), a key map for entering Hebrew letters on the keyboard, hot keys for switching the keyboard between English and Hebrew modes -- all you need for accessing Hebrew applications online. The HEBREW macro sets it all up for you. Just type "hebrew" at the MS-Kermit> prompt and off you go.

David de Leeuw, Head of Computing Services at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Faculty of Health Sciences says, "Our range of computers and applications is very wide. To complicate things even more, many of our applications run in a variety of Hebrew setups -- three different character sets and various concepts of screen orientation (mixed left-to-right and right-to-left). The only communications software I know of that handles all this smoothly is Kermit. The new 3.14 release even takes care of automatic translation between different character-sets when transferring text files from one system to the other. Our users working on PC's accessing UNIX, VAX, and IBM Mainframe can't tell the difference between different `code-pages' and now they don't have to!"

The Japanese fonts are combined into Code Page 982, also known as Shift-JIS, supplied with DOS/V along with the Japanese keyboard input driver. CP982 includes "half-width" Roman, a 7-bit character set identical to ASCII except in two positions; "half-width" (Hankaku) Katakana, a 7-bit phonetic character set, and then a double-byte "full- width" Kanji set consisting of thousands of symbols. Shifting among these three character sets, which are all essential in Japanese writing, is a challenge for the terminal emulator during both keyboard input and screen display, but MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 does it all.

It is now commonplace in Japan to make use of all Kermit's Kanji features: compose long documents "offline" in the native PC environment, transfer them with Kermit to a UNIX host, translating them in the process from Shift-JIS to JIS X 0208 or other encoding for printing or e-mail; read and send e-mail and netnews online in Japanese, and finally download new material from UNIX to the PC, translating back to Shift-JIS.

You can also use text-based Web browsers such as Lynx-2.3jp (the Japanese version from Chiba University) to access Japanese information on the World Wide Web; no matter whether the Japanese Web server uses JIS7, EUC, or Shift-JIS, MS-DOS Kermit can display the Kanji text correctly.

If you are on the World Wide Web and have a Web viewer that can display GIF (graphics) files, you can view an illustration of MS-DOS Kermit's Kanji capacity in:

• ZWDOS -- GB 2312-80 encoding (Peoples Republic of China), shareware (free to students) by Ya-Gui Wei, Eden Prairie, MN.
• KCDOS -- Big5 encoding (Republic of China), Kuo Chiau Business Computer Company Ltd, Taiwan.

Fernando Cabral, CEO PADRÃO iX Sistemas Abertos, Brasília, Brazil

To cope with this task, the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (Superior Electoral Court), or TSE, a specialized court of law dedicated to supervising all elections in the country, decided to take on the challenge of automating the process as much as possible, and to do it with a single stroke.

Introducing automation into a nationwide election in a huge country like Brazil, the same size as the continental USA, was fraught with hazards and obstacles. First, long-established regional oligarchies of conservative landowners would resist automation as a threat to their previous control over elections; second, the state data processing bureaus, which usually operate in the black only during election years, would be open to automation only if the bureaus could provide--and profit from--the automation instead of the TSE; and finally, the TSE staff's own lack of experience and know-how could threaten the success of the project.

Numbers

VOTING IS MANDATORY in Brazil for everyone aged 18 to 65. 96 million votors, starting at age 16, elect their government officials directly, not through an electoral college as in the USA. The widely-anticipated election involved 27 states, the Federal District, 300,000 ballot boxes, eight presidential candidates, 231 Federal Senate candidates, 3164 candidates for seats in the Federal House of Representatives, 7977 to a seat in one of the 600 seats in 27 states plus the federal district; and 134 candidates for 28 governorships. Altogether we are talking of 501,456,916 votes in the first round alone. And all of them, checked and double-checked, were transferred with Kermit software.

The chairman judge in charge of the TSE, Minister Sepulveda Pertence, and the court's director-general, Alysson Mitraud, did not take these numbers lightly. Despite the risks of failure and the uncertainty of gaining widespread support for their decision, the two officials decided to proceed with the automation. The single most important factor to the venture's success was close and effective partnerships with software and hardware vendors.

Among the software providers were Kermit developer Frank da Cruz of Columbia University, and his collaborator, Joe Doupnik of Utah State University, who both worked with the TSE to make everything run as smoothly as possible.

Old-Style Elections

Not until the early 1930s did a modified constitution give women the right to vote. Unfortunately, a dictatorship quickly took control of Brazil and no elections were held until after World War II. So in fact, women voted for the first time in 1945. However, only in 1988 did the right to vote become truly universal. Gender, property, literacy, and other excluding criteria were eliminated and the minimum voting age was lowered to sixteen.

Brazilian elections prior to 1994 were susceptible to many different kinds of manipulation and fraud. Most have become parts of Brazilian folklore and have revealing names like the "tip-of-the-pen vote," where the result desired by the local landowner was simply recorded on the document listing the tabulation of each ballot box. There was also the "lunchbox vote" where the local plantation coronel ...

[In Brazil, originally a title of honor which could be awarded by -- or bought from -- the federal government. Eventually the title took a derogatory meaning when used to identify landowners, industry barons, and other rich and powerful people who used their money and influence to force common people and lesser politicians to do what they wanted. When refering to elections, the term always means the rich, influential, and conservative persons who use their power and money to allure or coerce poor voters.]

The 1989 Election

New times, new ways to commit fraud. The computer introduced new potential and real ways to manipulate election results, such as a variation on the the "tip-of-the pen" scheme: simply alter the numbers during the transcription of the official ballot box results from paper to computer. The easiest way to do this without attracting too much attention is to turn blank or invalidated ballots into "valid" ballots.

The 1994 Election

The Electoral Network

The RISC servers installed at each regional electoral court ran HP-UX, Oracle database software (supplied by Oracle's Brazilian distributor, UNIMIX), Gauntlet security software from TIS, and Columbia University's C-Kermit communications software. Each machine was responsible for tallying all state ballots, including those for state and federal representatives and senators, and for transferring the results of the presidential race from each tabulating station to the Superior Electoral Court in Brasilia, and at the same time, offered any interested party, particularly the press, all information concerning the election, especially the numbers coming out of the ballots boxes.

Meanwhile 3,800 Digital Equipment Corporation DECpc personal computers with modems, special data entry software, and Columbia University's MS-DOS Kermit software were installed at 2,000 data entry and transmission sites in all parts of Brazil, some of them so remote that they could only be reached by boat or small plane.

Thus Kermit software linked together the two worlds: the world outside the network and the world inside it. In more than one sense Kermit was the bridge connecting the external, unprotected world to the internal, Gauntlet-protected world.

Election Day

The next morning, dozens of tabulating teams, under the close scrutiny of the political parties' representatives, break open the ballot boxes one by one and check the reported numbers of voters against the ballot count for the box. If there are discrepancies, or if there is any indication of tampering, the ballot box is declared invalid. If everything checks out, the tabulation proceeds.

The white and yellow ballots are separated into two piles. First the votes for the presidency and the federal senate are counted; then the votes for governor and federal and state representatives. This is a time-consuming process since each name or number has to be checked against a long list of valid numbers, names, nicknames, etc. After all the ballots are counted, an official statement is issued and signed by the committee, the parties' representatives, and the judge in charge of the regional electoral court.

Then this official statement is transcribed to the PC. This is the point where most of the fraud occurred; blank and invalidated ballots were "transferred" to a chosen candidate. Cross-checking can't prevent this type of fraud; only an attentive monitor can spot it. After the transcription, a computer report is printed and checked against the original statement. If the numbers are equal, the file can be transferred.

Enter Kermit

Once the connection is established, the TIS software, Gauntlet, sends a challenge to the calling machine. Using her "Digital Pathways' SecureNet Keys" (token generator), the user types in her PIN and then the challenge. The generator produces a number that is sent as an answer to the server. If all is OK, the Gauntlet firewall opens and the file is transferred.

Once at the regional machine, the federal (white) votes are dispatched for tabulation at the TSE, while the state (yellow) votes are tabulated locally. Small numbers flow in, big numbers flow out. The results of each ballot box are added to the total as they arrive. An exact copy of each individual box's result is kept so if any fraud eventually turns up in any ballot box, its votes can be deducted easily from the total.

Newspapers, TV and radio stations, poll takers, and other interested parties could access partial results using a number of methods. Here again, TIS's Gauntlet ensured that only cleared information flows out and no tampering is possible. And Kermit was there too, ensuring that the information that flowed in piece by piece can now flow out in aggregate.

Kermit's update feature allowed any user with read privileges to dial in and download the latest numbers without tying up valuable telephone lines unnecessarily if no updates had occurred since last time. Kermit's flexible scripting language eliminated the end-user contact with the file transfer mechanism: after automatically dialing, Kermit would check whether the remote file was newer than the local one, and transfer it only if it was. In any case the local application would proceed. This way no file was ever transferred twice, and no user had to control anything: Kermit took care of all this automatically.

Using Kermit's powerful scripting language, the results of each ballot box, as well as the aggregated results, were easily transferred from end to end--all complexities were hidden under Kermit's well-thought-out user interface.

Why Kermit Was Chosen

1. Columbia University's Kermit software and protocol are robust enough to work dependably even when using the poorest telephone lines--and in Brazil THERE ARE poor-quality telephone lines!
2. Kermit software was available for both MS-DOS and HP-UX.
3. Kermit's powerful scripting language could be used to automate most of the logon/transfer/logoff process. This was an important concern since 11,000 people would be using PCs, modems, and communication software for the first time in their lives. It was not realistic to expect them to understand and learn how to transfer files.
4. Kermit can also use TCP/IP, allowing its use in different communication environments with the same interface (and TSE would not be forced to teach FTP to some people and Kermit to others).
5. According to different local conditions, the line used could be dial-up, leased, or X.25 PAD. When an X.25 PAD comes into play, NO PROTOCOL BUT KERMIT does the job.
6. The Kermit team could be counted on to help out if the need arose. And it did. TSE needed screens with messages in Portuguese so any Brazilian operator could understand them. Joe Doupnik and Frank da Cruz inserted a Portuguese translation and delivered it within a day. Then, when the new Digital Equipment Corporation PCs arrived, they behaved strangely when the COMx ports were manipulated; Digital rushed a sample PC to Joe, who quickly updated MS-DOS Kermit for these new machines. The updated Kermit software was transferred to Brazil using Kermit itself via long-distance phone call. Too good to be true. Without this instant response, all the election automation could have been compromised.

People may wonder why didn't the TSE try other protocols like ZMODEM, YMODEM and akin beasts. Simple to answer in a nutshell (the long answer has been provided above): Kermit can be used with 7- or 8-bit lines, with leased, dial-up or PAD lines; the scripting language can be used to automate even the most complex operation; smooth operation in MS- DOS, MS-Windows, and HP-UX environments; and superb, unbeatable performance in all kinds of connections and line conditions. Finally, if anything bad happened, prompt and expert help was just a phone call or an e-mail away.

The Results

But despite minor disturbances and a few major troubles, the election was considered a huge success. President-Elect Fernando Henrique Cardoso is recognized as a prudent person, an intellectual who has written dozens of books and taught sociology in the USA, England, France, and Chile. As the Economy Minister he reduced inflation from 48% per month to about 3% in less than five months. Since his election as President, inflation has dropped to under one percent per month, and the Real has gained value against the US dollar, which not even the wildest dreamer could have predicted a year ago. 85% of Brazilians are optimistic about the future and the economy is growing by leaps and bounds.

The Future

About the Author

Postal Bar Codes

In many of the P&DCs (and eventually all of them), the rejected pieces are routed to a Remote Bar Code System (RBCS), where the electronic image of the front of the mail piece appears on a video display terminal, an operator keys in the ZIP Code, and then the bar code is applied. Thus all mail pieces leave these facilities with bar codes.

The Problem

It is at the destination post office that the automation process returns to manual handling of the mail. Mail carriers still have to sort mail into bins and cubbyholes, a labor-intensive and time-consuming process, before they can embark on their routes. The ever-increasing volume of mail adds to the workload of the mail carriers, and the manual sorting step can no longer keep pace.

The Solution

Pat Molloy, Operations Director,
NOP Research Group Limited Tower House,
Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HN, England

Naturally we required a cost-effective and reliable method for transferring data to and from these machines. It must be borne in mind that the typical market research interviewer is no PC expert and so a further prime requirement was that the system had to be pretty well idiot- and bomb-proof.

We looked at a number of commercial offerings which, as well as being expensive, also did not give us the required functionality. We decided early on that the prospect of managing a rack of fifty or so modems filled us with dread and therefore looked towards a service provider giving us a number of dial-up Points of Presence (PoPs) all over the country. Not only did this mean that the modems were avoided, but it also offered us the potential to significantly reduce our telecommunications costs.

We settled on a system called GNS (Global Network Systems) by British Telecom. It is an X.25 Packet Switching service, available all over the world, but importantly for us, with a hundred PoPs in the UK, from which 93% of our field force is just a local (i.e. cheap) phone call away.

Kermit was selected as the communications software of choice -- it is extremely robust, cheap, and provides us with the all the scripting functions required. Kermit 3.12 is currently in use at the PC end, and Kermit 5A(190) on a Sun SPARCstation host at head office, running SunOS 4.1. We tried a number of other protocols, X-, Y-, and Zmodem for example, but because field agents are actually dialing into an X.25 PAD, we found that these did not work to our complete satisfaction.

Each PC in the field is associated with an interviewer who has a five-digit interviewer ID. We maintain a database on the SPARCstation that contains information concerning the interviewer, their location, various passwords, and the phone number of the local PoP. When a machine is sent into the field for the first time and booted, the boot process asks the interviewer for their ID number, and then Kermit places a call to a known PoP. Having established a link to the PoP, Kermit then initiates a transfer of the configuration file from the host to the PC. Thereafter the PC is "configured," that is, it contains a file which has pointers to the local PoP.

As far security is concerned, once the call has been made to the PAD the process is entirely automated and the user cannot "escape" to gain access either to the PAD or the SPARCstation. The autocall facility on the PAD is set to call only a single host, our SPARCstation in London. Once the call arrives at the host, a modified login process takes the call and fires up Kermit in a restricted shell, from which the end user cannot escape.

At the head office, the SPARCstation joins the GNS network via four 64K digital links, which automatically load- share and perform hand-offs to other circuits if any should fail. This gives us an inbound capacity of 256K/second, handled by SunLink X.25.

There is a single menu option available to the interviewer to "transfer data to head office". In all cases, a single ZIP'd file is sent from the PC to the Sun and another back from the Sun to the PC. (Actually there are other hidden menu options to put Kermit into "verbose" mode for error trapping).

A long (500+ lines) Kermit script file handles the entire communications process. It reads data from the configuration file and sets up a call to the local PoP. Because there are over 70 ways in which the process can fail there is extensive error checking and reporting in the script file. Having set the call up to the PoP, Kermit logs in and the PoP automatically and sets up an X.25 call to the Sun here in London (this is the GNS autocall feature). Kermit then logs into the Sun host, does some authentication and then starts C-Kermit on the Sun in server mode. The PC file is uploaded first and then, if it exists, the Sun file is downloaded.

At any failure or exception, an external program is called to beep and display an appropriate flashing error message. Otherwise the communication session terminates normally and the machine is returned to the main menu.

We'll be upgrading to Kermit 3.14 soon to take advantage of the the new performance and recovery features which will greatly improve the overall system. We experience around 10% failure rates on the UK phone system which can be frustrating if you are 250K into a 300K transfer. We've already lab tested this feature to death and have found it to be extremely successful and will be deploying it following some more small-scale field trials with agents dotted around the country.

Since February 1994, we have transferred over 50,000 files of about 250K each on average -- 12.5Gbytes roughly. Kermit has performed magnificently and the sophistication of the scripting and error reporting has meant that even when things have gone wrong the support team has easily been able to spot the problems (most often the modem not switched on!). We've taken advantage of both large packets and sliding windows to enhance performance of the file transfers -- we have also disabled compression on the modems themselves, since that process was actually leading to significantly slower transfers of the ZIP files (some 20%).

The move away from traditional data collection techniques (pen and paper, primarily) has been a sea change for the market research industry. As well as the considerable technical challenge, we have faced a number of difficult management issues -- scaling down our print department, elimination of our key-to-disk department, the changed lines of communication within the business itself.

Putting on a green hat, we've eliminated seven million sheets of paper a year already -- we expect this to rise to a savings of twenty million within two years. Then of course there was the huge challenge of training 600 people, most of whom had never used a PC before!

Kermit has been central to the success of the project thus far, and with the continuing developments such as the newly introduced recovery facility, it is certain to remain a cornerstone of the system.

Alan Cantor
West Toronto, Ontario

A screen reader transforms an ordinary PC into a talking computer. The voice is heard through a headphone or the system speaker. The screen reader pronounces keystrokes or words as they are typed. Keystroke commands allow the user to "read" individual characters, words, lines, sentences, and paragraphs. Some screen reader systems use Alt- and Control-key combinations for their reading functions; others use a separate keypad. All screen reading systems allow the user to customize and save vocal characteristics such as reading speed, inflection and pronunciation.

The original screen readers were intended for persons who are blind or who have low-vision. In recent years it has become clear that other constituencies benefit from the technology too. For example, persons who have a learning disability that interferes with their ability to read, but not to write, successfully use screen readers.

Screen reading technology has made previously inaccessible documents available to persons with print handicaps. Because almost all books, newspapers, and journals begin as computer files, the potential exists, for the first time, for persons who have print-handicaps to read any printed document.

Virtually all DOS, VMS and Unix applications are "screen reader friendly." Screen reading technology enables users to run most DOS applications, access Bulletin boards, communicate by e-mail, and transfer files and other information using Internet services like GOPHER and FTP. The ability to use computers effectively has opened doors to new educational and employment opportunities for persons who have print-handicaps.

The Threat of the GUI

  Save Document? Yes (No)_

The same consistencies let print-handicapped users navigate through complex programs without having to see the screen. In WordPerfect 5.1, line 25 of the document always displays the status line and lines 24 and 25 of the "List Files" screen always display a list of options (1 Retrieve; 2 Delete, etc.). A person with a print handicap can easily "get lost" in an unfamiliar program. By pressing the key that reads Line 25, the WordPerfect user can usually become reoriented.

Such consistencies do not exist in GUI environments. A Windows screen consists of a riot of icons, scroll bars, pull-down menus, dialogue boxes, and cascading windows. A window can assume different shapes and sizes. The active window may be minimized or maximized; shrunk or expanded; placed above, below, to the side, behind, in front of, or overlapping another window. Although keyboard shortcuts exist, many functions were intended to be done by positioning the screen pointer and clicking the mouse. The mouse was designed to be guided by eye. Controlling a mouse is awkward -- if not impossible -- if you cannot see the screen.

Efforts to develop screen reading programs for GUI environments have been underway for several years. Screen readers for GUIs are now available, but the graphic user interface itself remains relatively inaccessible. Windows access is especially problematic because many Windows applications write information to the screen in non-standard ways, making automatic detection of screen updates difficult.

The graphical user interface problem is compounded by the proliferation of "pseudo-GUIs" -- character-based programs that emulate the look and feel of GUI software. Pseudo-GUIs are sometimes even less "screen reader friendly" than true-GUIs. The boundaries of a window in a real GUI application can at least be defined; determining the position of a pseudo-window in a pseudo-GUI with a character-based screen reader is problematic. The latest DOS-based screen readers can, however, handle some of the idiosyncrasies of some pseudo-GUIs applications.

There are many horror stories about persons who rely on screen readers being fired or denied promotion because of their difficulties coping with GUIs. In 1993 blind students and staff at the University of Toronto were effectively barred from using the on-line library catalogue when a new "Windows-like" interface was introduced. Students with disabilities and their advocates pressured the library for more than a year before the old command-line system was reinstated. Interestingly, now that both systems are readily available, many able-bodied students say they prefer the old command-line interface.

Many DOS-based communication programs are pseudo-GUIs, a development that has perilous consequences for blind computer users. Because these software packages feature dialogue boxes, pull-down menus and graphical file transfer "thermometers," they are inherently more difficult to access by screen reader than text-based communication programs.

Kermit and Screen Readers