# Chat Window

There are 3 modes ASCII, HEX and VT100
You can switch between the 3 modes with reasonable ease.

ASCII mode is the standard mode and the best choice for general use.
Type commands to send to the Maximite in single line text box and press (Send) to send the text to the Maximite. The text in the command line is sent followed by a ‘CR’
Output from the Maximite appears in the large text window.
You can optionally suppress VT escape sequences while in ASCII mode.
The command line has a 30 line buffer to allow you to scroll back through commands sent using the up and down arrows.

HEX mode is handy when you want to debug the output of your program.

VT mode emulates a VT100 terminal and is used for Editing on the Maximite.

Only a small subset of the VT100 commands is implemented.

It is VERY slow and suffers from buffer overflow unless you are a very slow typist.
The coloured box to the right of the Macro buttons signifies an overflow condition.
Orange appears regularly as is not a critical condition, just an indication that the program is busy processing.
A red box indicates that an overflow is likely and data integrity is not guaranteed. If the red box appears too often, it it time to switch to Teraterm.

To help the VT100 terminal cope, switch off colour mode both on the Terminal and on the device's editor. (Not all devices have a colour syntax option in the editor)
The default set of colours were chosen to match Teraterm. They can be altered so suit by editing the preferences file.

The ASCII window is the best choice unless you are using VT100 commands. In VT mode, some of the buttons are disabled.
MM Edit is OK for testing but if your program has a lot of output with screen positioning commands, it is preferably to use TeraTerm for your terminal program.

When Pasting code, any leading spaces are removed. The Maximite does auto indenting so any leading spaces will confuse the issue. Pasting is very slow.

Last edited: 03 November, 2020