User's Guide to VTLOCK, by Black Cat

1-  Introduction

VTLOCK was a program conceived when I saw the ever popular "TERMLOCK" being
used by my best friend.  She let me play with it, and I started finding bugs
and holes in it, and was not impressed by it as a whole.  So, armed with a copy 
of The C Programming Language and ready access to Bookreader, I decided to try
to make a better mousetrap...  errr...  screen locking program. :)

I am always open to suggestions to make this program friendlier and more
useable.  So if anyone has ideas, or comments, or bugs to report, please feel
free to do so.  This is _your_ program.  It is based on the deficiencies of
other terminal locking programs, as observed by others and myself.

2-  Credits

There are a number of people who have given me ideas, sparked my interest, and
been all around good friends while I've been working on this.  The list of
names with their contributions follows:

DSF5454 (Dan Foster) - General VAX God, debugger, code breaker, etc.  Suggested 
using a logical to point to the VTLOCK.INI files and letting the user put in
their own password when the program runs.

HBB4773 (Commander Morg) - Found that the program doesn't like receiving msgs
and responding to them when he's using terminal forwarding on the labbie
terminals.  Also suggested having an option on the end menu to display the
messages, delete them, and quit, all in one shot.  Found that HITMAN kicks
VTLOCK off the system every 30 minutes.

JNE5873 (Jared) - Logging all messages to a file periodically so they don't get 
lost if something happens to the program.  Display a status mesage for the
number of messages received.

KMG5610 (Kozy Katz) - Being a general pain, a wonderful friend, and an all
around good influence.

MDW1900 (Powers) - Noted that the random screen saver wasn't random.  Found
that the screen saver didn't start back up if no password was entered.

PBM4855 (Speedster) - Found that the program got kicked off the system by
HITMAN due to insufficient activity.

RJB9983 (Jeff) - F6 on a vt320 will kill the program.  The random character
screen saver was his idea.  Found that the "Restart" option wouldn't let any
more messages be logged to the file.

3-  Instructions

The first thing you must do to get the most use out of the program is to create 
a symbol in your login.com that looks something like this:

        LOCK :== "$ USER:[PAH5543.PUBLIC]VTLOCK.EXE"
        
Don't forget to do an "@login" or log out and back in to make this symbol work.
The next step is to run the program once.  You will note that it works fine,
but the screen is totally blank until you actually receive a message, or press
a key to get the password screen up.  After you exit the program, you will also 
note that there is one or two new files in your home directory.

VTLOCK creates a file called "VTLOCK.INI", which contains all of the default
values and behaviors of the program.  You may also see a file called
VTLOCK.MSG.  You can safely delete this file if there aren't any messages in it 
that you want to keep.

In the VTLOCK.INI file, you should see one or two lines which have a "#" as the 
first character, and then a line that doesn't.  The lines with the #'s are
comments to tell you what the line immediately following the comment is
supposed to do.  Each one of the non-comment lines may be modified to change
some behavior or function within the VTLOCK program.  Although there are
comments for each one, I will review them here, perhaps with a better (longer)
explanation.

    Version Header - The version number is maintained internally in the
    program.  Any time I make a modification that affects the VTLOCK.INI file,
    I will change the version number.  This will force the program to write a
    new INI file with the new/updated information.  This keeps me from having
    to notify you of corrections and additions all the time, and makes the INI
    file a little more idiot proof :)  Do not delete this line.  If it is not
    the first non-comment line in the file, then you will suddenly find a new
    file with all of the parameters set back to their default values.
    
    ECHOKEY - This parameter tells the program whether or not you want a
    question mark "?" echoed for every key you type as you are entering your
    password.  0 means no, 1 means yes.  It defaults to "no" because having
    characters echo back is considered a security risk.  This is a "use at your 
    own risk" option.
    
    NOLOCK - Again, 0 means no, 1 means yes.  If this option is enabled, then
    you won't have to type in the password to view your messages and end the
    program.  This is mostly meant to be used if you are alone, and you need to 
    step out for a moment or just don't feel like dealing with people messaging 
    you.  Normally you have to hit a key on the keyboard to get the password
    screen up.  If the NOLOCk option is being used, you will simply bypass that 
    screen.
    
    PRCNAM - When VTLOCK is running, it changes your process name so other
    people know that you're not right there.  You can change this process name
    to anything you want.  just remember that there is a 15 character limit on
    the length.
    
    RESPONSE - This is the message that gets bounced back to a user who tries
    to message you.  There is an 80 character (1 line) limit on the length, but 
    within that limit you can have anything sent back to the other users.
    
    USERNAME - On the password screen, the prompt "Username: " is on the top
    line of the display, with your username next to it.  You can change the
    prompt to whatever you want.
    
    PASSWORD - Same idea as the USERNAME parameter.  you can change the
    "Password: " prompt to anything you like.
    
    INFO - This is the status line about halfway down on the password entry
    screen.  It gives you instructions so you know what the program wants you
    to do.
    
    VALIDATE - Sometimes when the VAX is running really slow, it takes a few
    seconds to validate your password.  Under the "Password: " prompt, the text 
    from this argument appears while the password is being checked by VMS.
    
    INVALID - This text appears under the "Password: " prompt if you mistype
    the password, or if someone tries to crack it.
    
    MODE - The screen saver you'd like to use.  Currently there are only three
    choices for this:
    
            blank       blank screen, pretty boring.
            message     makes "Terminal is Locked" appear randomly.
            random      makes random characters clutter up your screen.
            
    I plan to make some more in the future, but I need ideas.  If there's
    anything you'd like to see as a text based screen saver, let me know, and
    I'll try to code it.
    
All of these options can be changed directly in the VTLOCK.INI file with your
favorite editor.  If you want to over-ride any one or more of them, you can
also specify them on the command line.  For example, if the default process
name is "AwayFromDesk..." and the default screen saver is "blank", you could
change them to "Plz Leave A Msg" and use the "random" screnn saver, you can
type in the following command line:

    lock -prcnam "Plz Leave A Msg" -mode random
    
                        or
                        
    lock /prcnam "Plz Leave A Msg" /mode random

Please note that if you want to include spaces and upper & lower case
characters, you must surround the argument in quotation marks, like in the
process name example above.  In the VTLOCK.INI file this is not necessary.


4-  Closing

That's about it.  If you have any questions, bug to report, or ideas you'd like 
to see incoporated into this program, feel free to e-mail me at
pah5543@rit.edu.  I intend to support the program while I'm in college, and if
I can find someone else to maintain it after I graduate, then it will continue
to be a fully supported program.

Enjoy!

                                        -Paul A. Howes
                                         aka:  Black Cat