Kermit books and manuals were published in English and
several other languages between 1987 and 1997. This page features
the final editions of each of the English-language books, which,
although out of print, are still available from Amazon, Alibris,
and other booksellers.
Using C-Kermit
Frank da Cruz and Christine M. Gianone,
Using C-Kermit,
Second Edition, Digital
Press / Butterworth-Heinemann, Woburn, MA, 1997, 622 pages, ISBN
1-55558-164-1. Still recommended for serious users
of C-Kermit (for Unix and VMS) and of Kermit 95 (for Microsoft Windows) (casual users can find
online tutorials HERE and HERE). The book explains all the basics of Kermit's
operation and command language, including the syntax of the block structured
scripting language that was introduced with
C-Kermit 6.0 and is the form still used today. It's full of tables (notably
of 8-bit Roman, Cyrillic, and Hebrew character sets), tutorials (notably
serial data communications), and all sorts of reference material, plus an
extensive index. In its present form, C-Kermit supports serial-port and
modem connections as well as Internet Telnet and FTP protocols (both secure
and non-secure), plus SSH connections. It is the only full-function Kermit
program still in development, and is mainly used on UNIX (which these days
is mostly Linux and its derivatives) but originally it was portable to about
eight different operating systems, including VMS, AOS/VS, VOS, OS-9, Plan 9,
etc.
Also published in German.
The second edition is current for C-Kermit 6.0;
the new features of C-Kermit 7.0 are described in
the C-Kermit 7.0 Update Notes;
the new features of C-Kermit 8.0 are described in
the C-Kermit 8.0 Update Notes;
new features of C-Kermit 9.0 are described in
the C-Kermit 9.0 Update Notes.
Kermit:
A File Transfer Protocol, Frank da Cruz, Digital Press (1987).
The original Kermit book, 1987, in print for 15 years - includes Kermit
protocol specification complete with C-language source code, as well as a
minimal implementation in BASIC for bootstrapping a real Kermit program onto
a PC through its serial port (from the days when PCs were still delivered
with ROM BASIC). Foreword
by Donald Knuth;
illustrated by George Ulrich.
MS-DOS Kermit was, by far, our most popular
Kermit software from 1981 until the late 1990s when Windows 95 and its
successors eclipsed DOS. An amazingly feature-full yet compact program
written by the Kermit Project at Columbia University and further developed
by professor Joe Doupnik at Utah State University. It runs on all versions
of DOS, including on many of the non-IBM compatibles from DOS's early days
(DEC Rainbow, Heath/Zenith 100, Victor 9000, NEC APC, etc) and includes
a script programming language and its own built-in TCP/IP stack.
Using
MS-DOS Kermit, written by Kermit Project business manager Christine
Gianone, saw two editions. The second edition, shown here, documents MS-DOS
Kermit 3.14. The book was a best-seller and received excellent reviews. It
was also published in French and German, plus
a Japanese volume about the NEC pc9801 version of MS-DOS Kermit. The
book includes the software itself on a 3.5-inch diskette.
The Kermit 95 manual was published in 1995 along with
Kermit 95 itself,
and packaged in a big box with the software diskettes and a copy of
Using C-Kermit, first edition, total weight several pounds. The
cover of the Kermit 95 book is, well, horrible. Our sketch for a design was
given to a designer who evidently favored Hot Wheels and Dungeons and
Dragons. We were thinking more VW Beetle or Mini Cooper, exploring a
friendlier landscape, not the Mountains of Doom (after the first release
of K95, the manual was
online only). Authors rarely get approval
of book covers, and worse, even of the titles. The title of the first
Kermit book should have been The Kermit File Transfer Protocol but
the designer changed it for, well, design reasons. By the way, the cover of
that book shows
an IBM
PC/AT on the left, connected to a DEC VAX, which is accessed by
a DEC
Rainbow, which was DEC's answer to the IBM PC.
The English-language Kermit books (except the K95 one) were published by
Digital Press, the publishing house
of Digital
Equipment Corporation (DEC). After DEC disappeared, the Digital Press
imprint passed to Butterworth-Heinemann and from there to Reed-Elsevier, or
simply Elsevier. The production quality is high, with thorough peer review,
copy editing, and professional design. Translations were published in
Germany and France, licensed from Digital Press to Verlag Heinz Heise and
Heinz Schiefer & cie. The English versions were typeset by
the authors using
the Scribe
documentation preparation system, a remarkable improvement over its
successors (as Mark
Crispin might say), and input using
the EMACS text editor (both
before and after it became GNU EMACS) on the DECSYSTEM-20 and later on
various Unix platforms.
Kermit Manuals / Columbia University /
kermit@columbia.edu /
2011-03-11 / Updated: Fri Aug 20 19:49:15 2021
