Talk:Kermit (protocol)

message: Anyone object to me moving this somewhere and making a dab page for here?  Surely the frog is at least as famous.  Morwen - Talk 16:16, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Move

message: I would suggest Kermit should be a disambiguation, and this be moved somewhere - possibly to Kermit (protocol)? Articles for the dab page: Kermit the Frog (arguably the most famous), Kermit, Texas and Kermit, West Virginia. sjorford #£@%&$?! 10:00, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Requested move

message: This article currently asserts Kermit was named for the Kermit the Frog from the Muppets.  If this is so, there ought to be a reference to back it up.  
On the one hand, Kermit the Frog and the Muppets were on TV in the 1970s, and kermit the protocol was written in 1981-82 at Columbia University, so time-wise, it could be true.
On the other hand:
* The Free Online Dictionary of Computing (on which this article is based) says nothing about the origin of the name.
* I searched Columbia University's history of kermit, and found no mention of frog or Muppet.
* In old kermit source code, I found this:
MICRO COMPUTER FILE INTERCHANGE/KERMIT PROTOCOL.
THIS VERSION IS FOR USE UNDER NOS/BE.  IN CASE YOU ARE
WONDERING, KERMIT STANDS FOR (K)L10 (E)RROR-FREE (R)ECIPROCAL 
(M)ICROPROCESSOR (I)NTERCHANGE OVER (T)TY LINES.
I would say the preponderance of the evidence is against being named for Kermit the Frog.  Any other evidence?  Jedwards01 01:04, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin of the name "kermit"

message: The bootstrapping mentioned is not booting a computer.  It should be made more clear.  I cannot think of a good enough way to write it, so I'masking for assistance.--Jimktrains 19:43, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bootstrapping 

message: I don't think it was used only in the 1980's -- I was using it regularly through the mid-1990's, and SLIP/PPP wasn't included as a standard part of Windows until Windows 95.  It wasn't all that long ago that there were a still a fair number of funky computer and communications-line setups in various parts of the world, and Kermit was prepared to handle many of the situations where a computer running a GUI and connected to the Internet by TCP/IP was not necessarily too feasible... AnonMoos (talk) 09:19, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I would agree that its "mainstream" usage has probably been going downhill since about 1994; however, it was probably still going uphill in 1991-1992, and it didn't become positively antiquated in non-specialist use until the late 1990's, so saying that it was effectively confined to the 1980s is an unfortunate oversimplification... AnonMoos (talk) 15:06, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: 1980's?

message: I think the tone of the article is seriously misleading as it does
not in any way explain that modern computer users are extremely
unlikely to ever have anything to do with Kermit, directly or
indirectly. When reading the article one gets the impression that
it is cutting edge protocol that is seriously used for many
purposes even in the 2000s.
* Support, this article indicates that the KERMIT protocol is the 'de facto data communications standard' however I cannot find any resources that support this.
** Possible Bias: Two of the three sources on this page come from Columbia University the creator of KERMIT.
** Additionally the International Space Station implemented the Kermit Software Program (as stated in the referenced source) not the actual protocol, perhaps the two should be separated. J0514H (talk) 10:44, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree that the article could do more to establish the historical context, but here's an article which uses Kermit as an example of a de facto standard. The reference for the ISS use doesn't go into much technical detail, but it appears they used Kermit applications to allow the transfer of data between two incompatible computer systems - I'd be very surprised if this didn't involve using the Kermit protocol! Letdorf (talk) 19:33, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

text: I've now made a few tweaks to tone down the slightly non-NPOV phrases, use more of the past tense and add the above ref. Letdorf (talk) 20:25, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Tone of the Article needs improvement 

message: Mention needs to be made of Kermit's use as a simple way to move ASCII files to EBCDIC and vise versa and the use of Kermit as a terminal emulator on ASCII machines such as (CP/M), and IBM PC DOS and MS DOS PCs attached to IBM mainframes. -- PBS (talk) 22:35, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  ASCII and EBCDIC 

message: This edit on 30 October 2004 by an IP address introduced some paragraphs into the article and also the . But as the article already existed, I suggest that the paragraphs that were introduced with that edit are cited as coming from  Free On-line Dictionary of Computing and then the template is removed as most of the text does not come from that source. -- PBS (talk) 15:01, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: FOLDOC

message: The topic has "Terminal emulators" listed in the categories.  However, except for a one-line mention of Kermit 95, none of the topic deals with terminal emulators. TEDickey (talk) 12:47, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Classic Kermit implementations usually included some kind of terminal emulation - see here ("In addition, many Kermit programs also make connections over various communication media and act as a terminal"). Letdorf (talk) 16:41, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

text: That "act as a terminal" is referring to Kermit 95 and its predecessor (not discussed in this topic) MS-DOS Kermit.  My point is that if there's no substantial discussion in the topic of the terminal emulation features, it's confusing to the reader.  Particularly with the long-standing confusion on usenet regarding C-Kermit TEDickey (talk) 17:11, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Lots of microcomputer implementations (Kermit-80, Kermit-65, Mac Kermit etc) provided terminal emulation (typically VT52 or VT100). C-Kermit provided terminal functionality using the native local terminal type, in much the same way as the UNIX tip or cu commands. I agree the article could have a lot more detail on the various Kermit programs, and the typical features of them. Regards, Letdorf (talk) 23:17, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

text: If you're going to follow that line of argument, we'll have to add scp, sftp, ftp and the like as "terminal emulators", even though that's far from the usual sense of the term. Not all communications programs are what someone would recognize as a terminal interface TEDickey (talk) 23:29, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terminal emulator 

message: It would be interesting to know if this is the most ported user-level program? Family Guy Guy (talk) 20:45, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The most ported program?