Developers

The KTA can be used as a basis for thin client applications by integrating custom plugins. The KTA uses a bus architecture, along which a stream of bytes can flow. Plugins attach to the bus and read the bytes passing through, and may also listen to or broadcast events.

For most applications, the first plugin on the bus will be the Socket (which opens a connection to a TCP socket) and the final plugin will be the Sink (which continuosly reads bytes from the bus until the connection is dropped) or Terminal (which acts as a Sink but displays the bytes in a vt320 terminal window). By placing other plugins between these two, received data can be parsed and acted upon. For example, the following plugin list (utilizing plugins that come with the default KTA distribution) will display a normal telnet terminal window:

plugins=Socket,Telnet,Terminal

The Socket plugin will make a connection to a server and port number, the Telnet plugin will parse telnet protocol messages and the Terminal plugin will present an interactive terminal application to the user. Examples of plugins that could be created to enhance this setup may be a login plugin that would parse the login prompt and respond to it before allowing data through to the Terminal, a printer plugin that listened for ANSI printer codes and opened a PrintJob before passing data through to the Terminal, etc. At the highest level, the entire Terminal could be done away with and replaced by a graphical application that parsed all the data coming through the telnet connection.

Each of the plugins may be configured using the config file. More information is available on that file here. Information regarding some of the plugins themselves is available here.