Using Putty as a MM client

From MirrorMed

This guide was written by

Patrick E. Bennett

and posted to the Medical Managers user group. SynSeer has not tested this yet but since it features using FOSS software with Medical Manager we will be featuring here at MM2MM

Thanks Patrick!!

Here's the quick recipe for an experienced admin. I'm assuming putty on Windows here, and SCO Ansi / SCO Console terminal type.

• download and install the latest version of putty for windows (this example assumes v0.59): http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
• launch PuTTY and in "Session" enter the IP Address or host name of your The Medical Manager server, select the correct connection method (telnet/ssh/serial/etc) and enter a descriptive title for this connection in the Saved Sessions field (this tutorial will use the title "medman").

• continue working down the configuration tree on the left, making the following adjustments to the MM/SCO server profile:

1. in "Terminal->Keyboard" set The Backspace Key to "Ctrl-H" and The Function Keys and Keypad to "SCO"
2. in "Window" set Rows to "25", select Change the Font Size, and uncheck the Display scrollbar options (assuming you don't want the user to be able to scroll back in the history buffer)
3. in "Window->Translation" set Received data assumed to be in which character set: to "cp437" and select Font has XWindows encoding
4. in "Window->Behavior" set Windows Title to "The Medical Manager" (or whatever you like- this will appear in the title bar of the terminal window instead of "PuTTY")
5. if you experience unwanted disconnects, in "Connection" turn on Enable TCP keepalives and set interval in the Seconds between keepalives field (I suggest setting to 59 or 29)
6. in "Connection->Data" set Terminal-type string to "ansi", "scoansi", or "scoansi-old" as your system requires; you can also set other unix ENV variables and auto-login here, if desired

• go back to "Session" and hit the "Save" button

• create/modify a PuTTY shortcut in Windows and:

1. rename to "The Medical Manager"
2. in shortcut properties (right-click shortcut, select "properties" from context menu), append " -load medman" to the end of the "Target"- NOTE: this is appended outside the quotation marks as in:

"C:\Program Files\PuTTY\putty.exe" -load medman

Double-clicking this icon should now take you directly to a SCO login and after logging in you might even get a good looking MM screen with working function key shortcuts. If the screen does not look correct (eg. the line drawing characters are garbled), see step 6).

• If you did not get a nice looking The Medical Manager session or if you'd simply like to use a different style or size font by default, re-edit your PuTTY "medman" profile and use trial and error to perfect the font setting.

1. start PuTTY from the Windows start menu and Load the "medman" profile
2. in "Window->Appearance" use the Change button to select a font. Likely choices are "Courier", "Fixed", and "Terminal". You may experience trouble correctly displaying the line draw characters which are used heavily in The Medical Manager. First, remember that some The Medical Manager on SCO installations require the unix command "mapchan -n" to be executed before the "med" command. If you do not already have a font that works well, see the notes below for sources of free Windows fonts that correctly display the line drawing characters. It's important to do this step of selecting the font last because previous steps (specifically the "codepage" setting) affect the ability to use the line drawing characters. (HINT: an easy way to do the trial and error is to go ahead and connect and login to SCO, staying at The Medical Manager login screen without logging in, then right click on the PuTTY title bar and select Change Settings... and continue to fiddle with the font until you find one you like. Make a note of the font setting that worked, then start over at 6.a)
3. once you've found a font setting that is to your liking, go back to "Session" and hit the "Save" button

Notes: It's also possible to do this with pure xterm emulation by setting up the xterm emulation on the MM side properly in "install", but the above is the quick and dirty method.

If you want to easily save this profile and reuse it on many different workstations or for many different users, do "regedit" from the windows command line, go to HKEY_Current_User->Software->SimonTatham and export the key to a reg file. On the new machine/user, simply double-click this file to import into registry. If you are using a downloaded font, be sure to install it on the new machine too.

Font sources...

http://www.hassings.dk/lars/fonts.html has a few font possibilities. The font on this page in the lower right corner, "Screen 7x14" "terminal font 7x14 code page 850" is tested and works. It will appear in the Windows font selector as "Terminal" size 14. Lars C. Hassing is the author of these fonts and indicates on the webpage that "The fonts are free to use."

http://www.ank.com.ar/fonts/ is a site that has many "Linux Console Fonts" converted for use in Windows and licensed under the FOSS GPLv2 license. Several of them probably work; "10x20-iso8859-1" is tested and works.

If you need to you can read about How to install fonts on Windows.

Note for for using later versions of SCO...

For some newer versions of SCO a different TERM env variable is required. I have only seen this on SCO 5.0.7 systems, as I've not seen a v6.0 system in the field yet. Apparently SCO has (once again) tinkered with the terminal parameters. Setting the putty "terminal-type string" to "ansi" or "scoansi" may work for some things (eg. The Medical Manager), but for others (eg. "scoadmin") you will get garbage characters and a corrupted terminal. A solution that seems to be working is to set the PuTTY "terminal-type string" to "scoansi-old" (this is step 3.f above).

-Patrick

www.pebcomputing.com / patrick-AT-pebcomputing-DOT-com