SYNCTERM(1)

📦
version 1.6 · 2 versions
, in nixos 26.05

💖 NAME 💖

okay so you're looking at SYNCTERM(1) from the General Commands Manual bestie, and here's the whole vibe: syncterm is a BBS terminal program 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

syncterm [-46chqrts] [-blist] [-edelay] [-iinterface] [-llines]
[-nconfig] [URL]

syncterm -T

syncterm -v

like, that's the whole shape of it 💅

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

SyncTERM is a terminal program made specifically for connecting to a Bulletin Board System (BBS). that's the whole assignment. that's what it does. iconic behavior honestly 👑

🎀 Options 🎀

  • -4 — only resolve IPv4 addresses, no IPv6 shenanigans
  • -6 — only resolve IPv6 addresses, flip side of the same coin
  • -blist — use a different BBS list path than the usual one
  • -c — hides the status line. gone. invisible. ✨
  • -edelay — sets the "escape delay" in milliseconds for curses(3) mode. okay so here's the lore: curses uses the escape key for its own stuff, so if you wanna use escape for anything else, there has to be a timeout. too low a timeout and extended keystrokes like arrow keys get read as an escape keypress followed by random other characters 😭 too high a timeout and you're sitting there waiting forever after a single escape press. also if you ask for an escape delay under 10ms, it gets forced to 25ms. no negotiating.
  • -h — sets the default scheme for URL to ssh://
  • -iinterface — pick the interface to use. depending on compile options and what libraries you've got, not every interface will be available on every install. if -i isn't given, SyncTERM picks the "best" mode in this order: X11, GDI, SDL, Win32 Console, curses, ANSI. and ngl the SDL mode specifically can fail in ways the automatic fallback literally cannot detect (most notably with libGGI when it's enabled in SDL) — when that happens you gotta force a specific mode yourself.

when -i is specified, only that one mode gets attempted. no automatic fallback. it's that mode or nothing, bestie 💀

for the items marked [F|W], you can tack on an F or W to mean Fullscreen or Windowed mode respectively 🖥️

the possible values for iface are:

  • A — ANSI mode. this one, along with the curses modes, has Special caveats (go read TEXT MODE CAVEATS)
  • C — curses mode. special caveats listed in TEXT MODE CAVEATS
  • F — curses mode, and assumes the display in use will render Codepage 437 glyphs for characters above 127. special caveats listed in TEXT MODE CAVEATS
  • G[F|W] — Windows GDI output mode. uses the Win32 API directly.
  • I — curses mode, and forces ASCII only. special caveats listed in TEXT MODE CAVEATS
  • S[F|W] — requires SyncTERM to run in SDL mode. this requires SDL support to have been compiled in, and the library libSDL.so to be in the library search path.
  • W — run in Windows Console mode.
  • X — requires SyncTERM to run in X11 mode. this requires X11 support to have been compiled in, and the library libX11.so to be in the library search path.
  • -llines — sets the number of screen lines to lines. only specific values are allowed for lines, and they are: 14, 21, 25, 28, 43, 50, and 60. pick literally anything else and it just uses 50 instead. rude but fair 🙈
  • -nconfig — specify an alternative INI file
  • -q — Quiet mode. hides various popups during a connect. peace and quiet, we love to see it 🤫
  • -r — sets the default scheme for URL to rlogin://
  • -s — run in "safe mode" which disables the modification of local files such as the
(yes, the manpage really does just stop there mid-sentence. iconic of it honestly. that's verbatim what's written 🫠)
  • -t — sets the default scheme for URL to telnet://
  • -T — when this is the ONLY argument, dumps the terminfo entry to stdout and exits.
  • -v — when this is the ONLY argument, dumps version info to stdout and exits.

🦋 RUN-TIME LINKING 🦋

for some features — like SDL support and X11 support — run-time linking is employed using dlopen(). what that buys you is being able to build a version that'll use SDL and X11 if they're present, but won't fail to run if they're not. flexible queen behavior fr fr 💜

🧚 TEXT MODE CAVEATS 🧚

when you're running in one of the text modes like curses or ANSI, a bunch of the control functions get modified, because there's genuinely no reliable way to use extra modifier keys. as a result, CTRL-S and CTRL-Q can not be sent to the remote system. since those are the flow control characters, this shouldn't be a major usability issue, so like. breathe 😌

the escape character (ASCII 27) is used in curses and ANSI modes to begin a control sequence. so there's a delay while it figures out whether the next character continues the escape sequence or is just a base escape. because of that, there WILL be a perceptible delay when the escape key is used. you can adjust this delay with the -e parameter, but picking the "correct" value is a dark art, since any value is provably incorrect 🔮 no notes, that's just how it is.

also, the curses and ANSI modes aren't necessarily the right number of lines for a traditional screen mode. so filler gets added around the terminal screen. and for some display sizes, unpredictable results may occur 👀 consider yourself warned.

🌈 FILES 🌈

  • /nix/store/2ddn1vfbnpw6f2a2xi80zx19f013p6pr-syncterm-1.6/etc/syncterm.lst — the system wide dialing directory.
  • syncterm.lst — the users dialing directory. the location of this file varies by OS, and you can view it in SyncTERM under the "File Locations" option of the "SyncTERM Settings" menu 📁
  • syncterm.ini — the users SyncTERM configuration file. same deal, location varies by OS, and you can view it in SyncTERM under the "File Locations" option of the "SyncTERM Settings" menu 📂

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Stephen Hurd <shurd@sasktel.net> — thank you for your service 🫡

💀 BUGS 💀

None known at present. (slay?)

additional bugs should be reported at https://sf.net/p/syncterm/tickets/ — go be a good citizen and file them 🐛

bestie, that's the whole page 🎀 it came from SYNCTERM(1) and the version/date on the bottom was 2024-09-24, so that's your timestamp, mwah 💋 bye!! 🌸

📦 where this page comes from