Quick Tutorial - Interactive from TTY keyboard

Overview

If you are operating Heavy Metal from a TTY keyboard, you should start the program with a special option that suppresses modal dialog boxes for errors and warnings.  To do this:

perl heavymetal.pl --remotemode 1

Operating Heavy Metal from the TTY keyboard requires fairly extensive use of the ".,.NAME" escape mechanism.  In general, you'll first type a .,.NAME command to initiate an action, which may prompt you for additional info.  To effectively use this mode, you will need to be familiar with the .,.NAME escapes, particularly:

bullet.,.LC    - Lowercase lock.  This is required for entering case-sensitive passwords, commands and filenames.
bullet.,.UC     - Turn off lowercase lock.
bullet.,.DEL    - Delete the current input line and start over.  Use this if you've messed up your response to an input prompt.
bullet.,.ABORT - Cancel an entire prompted operation.
bullet.,.END or "NNNN" - Terminate block entry mode (used for the body of email messages).

Note that a .,.NAME escape is terminated by either a return or a space.  If terminated by a space, that space is considered part of the ".,.NAME " escape.  For example, suppose you need to enter the following case-sensitive password:

12ABcd

From your Baudot TTY keyboard, you'd have to type:

<figs>12<ltrs>AB<figs>.,.<ltrs>LC CD

Now, that's a bit messy, but it does give you the flexibility to do most anything.  Note also that you can, if you choose, edit heavymetal.pl or the config file, heavymetal.cfg, to save your defaults for SMTP and POP mail servers, email From:, and passwords.

One more thing, when doing prompted entry, Heavy Metal will show you the current value of the thing it is prompting for.  If it's correct, just hit <return> and the current value will be used.

Action Codes

Here's the current list of supported action codes (note - be sure to do ".,.USAGE" after getting new releases of Heavy Metal to see new and changed action codes):

bullet.,.LC    - Turn on lowercase lock
bullet.,.UC    - Turn off losercase lock
bullet.,.EMAIL - Send email
bullet.,.BROWSE - Surf the web (needs Lynx browser)
bullet.,.TELNET - Telnet to a computer, exec 1 command and return
bullet.,.EXIT - Quit Heavy Metal
bullet.,.END - Terminate block input mode (i.e. done with email body)
bullet.,.ALBANY - Example showing Albany, NY weather report
bullet.,.SANJOSE - Example showing San Jose, CA weather report
bullet.,.GREENKEYS - Print out messages in your mailbox from GreenKeys teletype enthusiast mailing list
bullet.,.HEADERS - Print out headers from all email in your mailbox.
bullet.,.ALLMAIL - Print out all your email
bullet.,.QUOTE - Prompt for stock symbol and show quote
bullet.,.FULLQUOTE - Same, but with all available info
bullet.,.PORTFOLIO - Display sample stock portfolio (edit heavymetal.pl to create your own).
bullet.,.ABORT - Cancel current action (valid only in prompts).
bullet.,.FTP - Prompt for file to fetch using FTP
bullet.,.DEL - Delete current line of prompted data and retry.
bullet.,.HOSTCMD - Execute a command on the host computer
bullet.,.SLEEP - Put heavymetal to sleep
bullet.,.TOPNEWS - Print out AP top stories summary
bullet.,.NEWSWIRE - Print out all new news and summaries.
bullet.,.USAGE - Display list of ".,." escapes

Letter Codes

Here's the current list of support letter codes that can be used for code sets that don't include them:

bullet.,.AT - "@"
bullet.,.BANG - "!"
bullet.,.SPLAT - "#"
bullet.,.PC - "%"
bullet.,.TILDE - "~"
bullet.,.CARET - "^"
bullet.,.STAR - "*"
bullet.,.AND - "&"
bullet.,.PLUS - "+"
bullet.,.EQ - "="
bullet.,.LPAREN - "("
bullet.,.RPAREN - ")"
bullet.,.LT - "<"
bullet.,.GT - ">"
bullet.,.SQUOTE - "'"
bullet.,.QMARK - "?"
bullet.,.SLASH - "/"
bullet.,.BSLASH - "\"

 

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