Seymour J. Metz wrote:
>A few more notes on nomenclature. TN3270 and TN3270E (upper case)
>are protocols published by the IETF; programs implimenting those
>protocols are TN3270 clients, not TN3270 emulators. TN3270 clients
>are not 3270 emulators, because they do not support any of the link
>protocols that real 3270s do, e.g., BSC, CUT, DFT, SDLC.
I disagree with the last sentence, and IBM (among many others) does too,
evidently. You'll see "emulator" in the IBM Host On-Demand (HOD)
documentation, for example. I don't recall HOD ever communicating via BSC
or SDLC. "Emulator" has a different meaning than the word "clone," which
is the word you might have been looking for.
If you want to be pedantic about it, per Wikipedia "IBM 3270" refers to a
family of IBM terminals ("displays"), printers, and controllers (following
the IBM 2260 family) that IBM refined and improved over several years. All
modern "3270" terminal emulators are necessarily partial emulators in
certain respects, but practically all of them exceed the capabilities of
the last physical/classic 3270 family of products in certain respects,
too.
Anyway, if you want to describe various 3270 emulators as "partially"
emulating the IBM 3279 (for example), that makes sense to me. However, the
word "emulator(s)" is perfectly acceptable and appropriate in this context
-- in my view and with broad consensus agreement as far as I can tell.
"TN3270 emulator" (or "TN3270E emulator") is confusing and not generally
correct. If you're using TN3270(E) protocol then you're probably not
emulating it.
A TN3270(E) client need not be a 3270 terminal emulator. I think most
people would not describe an automated test tool that works via a
TN3270(E) connection as a "3270 emulator," for example. They'd probably
describe it as a "3270 test(ing) tool."
- - - - - - - - - -
Timothy Sipples
I.T. Architect Executive
Digital Asset & Other Industry Solutions
IBM Z & LinuxONE
- - - - - - - - - -
E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com
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