telnet links

[JQ Johnson]

Bobert Rasmussen asked last week how to set up Netscape 4(Windows) to invoke
a telnet session at a nondefault port.  I don't have an elegant way to do it,
but there's a workaround that some people on this list may not be aware of. 
Suppose, for example, you want to invoke TeraTerm Pro, which wants a command
line such as
    c:\telnet\ttermpro.exe sunsite.berkeley.edu /p=25
(though why anyone would have a legitimate reason to telnet to the SMTP port
on sunsite is beyond me)

In Netscape 4, you can set preferences->netscape->applications for URL:Telnet
Protocol to contain the telnet program you want invoked.  But if you set the
application string to the above value it just plain doesn't work.  It appears
to be a bug in Netscape 4.

The workaround is to create a little batch file, say c:\telnet\telnet.bat,
containing
    @echo off
    c:\telnet\ttermpro.exe %1 /p=%2
then setting the telnet URL in Netscape to be
    c:\telnet\telnet.bat %1 %2
However, this has the unfortunate side effect of temporarily popping up a
useless DOS window for every telnet connection.

Brief experimentation with MSIE 4 and Windows Explorer seems to indicate that
this trick does not work there.

JQ Johnson                      office: 115F Knight Library
Academic Education Coordinator  e-mail: jqj at darkwing.uoregon.edu
1299 University of Oregon       voice: 1-541-346-1746
Eugene, OR  97403-1299          fax: 1-541-346-3485