#111 Support downloading telesoftware in videotex mode

[Nigel Reed]

Telesoftware is a way for users to download programs that are stored in videotex pages. Adding a download protocol "telesoftware" would nicely round out the support for videotex in SyncTerm. The spec wasn't difficult to implement on my side to create the frames so hopeful it'll be just as easy.

https://glasstty.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Prestel-Telesoft-Protocol_small.pdf

Not an easy read.

For a text, you login to endofthelinebbs.com port 6502 and use guest as the username, no password. Go to telesoftware and then select 1 and download the 3rd program.

F5 on most BBC Micro terminal programs triggers a telesoftware download.

A hexdump of the downloaded file should result in

00000000 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 4a 4b 4c 4d 4e 4f 50 |ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP|
00000010 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 5a 0a 61 62 63 64 65 |QRSTUVWXYZ.abcde|
00000020 66 67 68 69 6a 6b 6c 6d 6e 6f 70 71 72 73 74 75 |fghijklmnopqrstu|
00000030 76 77 78 79 7a 0a 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 30 |vwxyz.1234567890|
00000040 21 40 23 24 25 5e 26 2a 28 29 2d 5f 3d 2b 5b 5d |!@#$%^&*()-_=+[]|
00000050 0a c2 80 c2 81 c2 82 0a |........|

[Stephen James Hurd]

I've considered it (and have a better version of the document than that one). I just couldn't come up with any reason it's actually useful in SyncTERM.

It's really tightly tied to the Prestel frame concept, is very inefficient, and historically seems to have been used for programs that won't run on systems SyncTERM runs on.

[Stephen James Hurd]

CET Telesoftware downloads are now supported in Prestel mode.