telnet links

[JQ Johnson]

--On Fri, Oct 31, 1997 1:28 PM -0800 web4lib at library.berkeley.edu wrote: 

> It is dangerous, of course, to change your practices to accommodate
software
> that doesn't deal with standards. And this IS a standard (I could look up
the
> RFC number if you're curious).

Unfortunately, the spec that describes the required behavior of telnet
applications is very old, and predates URLs.  It does not include any
requirement for the particular way that a telnet application should accept
configuration (such as destination) from the user, nor does it require that
the telnet application be invokable from a command-line interface.  As a
result, very few of the older telnet applications accept telnet URLs.  Many
features of the telnet spec are optional in telnet clients, so telnet
clients need not accept non-23 port numbers, need not implement the user
name login negotiation options, etc.

Support for telnet URLs IS something one should expect from browsers, but
not necessarily from telnet apps themselves.  Just as we can't expect FTP
clients to accept ftp URLs, or MUAs to accept mailto URLs.

Note, though, that most telnet apps DO in fact support non-default port
numbers, though they use a variety of operating system interfaces for
specifying them.  For example, many DOS and Unix telnet programs that can be
invoked from a command line interface expect a space-separated list of
arguments including destination host followed optionally by port number,
e.g.:
    telnet anzio.com 80
Some telnet programs use a switch, e.g.
    telnet/port=80 anzio.com
Read the documentation for your particular telnet program for details. 
Macintosh programs often accept a GURL Applescript message, which
essentially includes all of the information in a telnet URL.

If your PC telnet program accepts switches, you can customize your Netscape
or MSIE settings to pass switches (including port number) to the program in
the format it expects.  Details of how to set this up depend on browser
version.  Since I'm a Mac user at the moment, I'll defer to a PC person to
describe the setup for Netscape 4, which is somewhat obscure.


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