How to use MindTerm as an applet

This document explores some issues which applies when one tries to run
MindTerm as an applet.


  The applet should be signed
  ===========================
The security model of Java requires applets to be signed if they are
going to perform certain operations. Operations which require signing
include accessing the local file-system, opening local tcp-ports for
listening and connecting to other machines than the one the applet was
downloaded from.

If you bought a commercial copy of MindTerm you should have received a
signed version of the applet. But if you are using the free version, or
have done modifications, you must sign it yourself. Fortunately there
are lots of tutorials on the web on how to do this. For example see
the list of tutorials at http://mindprod.com/jgloss/signedapplets.html

MindTerm does not yet use any of the never (1.2 or later) security
models.


  Files needed on the server
  ==========================
The Sub Java Plugin expects to find a mindter.jar-file specified in
the ARCHIVE attribute. So in the vast majority of cases this is all
that is needed.

The MS Java Plugin does not user jar-file but instead expects to find a
cabinets paremeter which points to mindterm.cab. The commercial
distribution includes a signed mindterm.cab. It is also pretty easy to
just unpack the jarfile and repack it as a cab-file with jar and
cabarc. But this might not even be needed since the MS Java Plugin is
obsolete and not distributed anymore. So it shoudl only be encountered
on old machine.


  Webpage
  =======
To actually use MindTerm one needs to place it on a webpage. One this
page you place code which actually launches the applet. This code may
look like this:

  <APPLET CODE="com.mindbright.application.MindTerm.class"
          ARCHIVE="mindterm.jar" WIDTH=0 HEIGHT=0>
    <PARAM NAME="cabinets" VALUE="mindterm.cab">
    <PARAM NAME="sepframe" value="true">
    <PARAM NAME="debug" value="true">
  </APPLET>

The first three lines of this are used to specify the applet
files. The Sun Java Plugin will use the ARCHIVE version and the MS
Java (which is obsolete) will use the specified cabinet file. After
that one can add an arbitrary number of parameters to MindTerm. This
example sets 'sepframe' to true (to launch the applet in a separate
frame) and enables debugging. For a complete list of parameters see
Settings.txt.


  Connectivity
  ============
The applet will always run in the users browser. This means that
all network connections will originate from the users client
machine. So a site wishing to provide SSH access via MindTerm must
both make the applet available via http and open up the ssh port.