Some Debian packaging

[sympathy.git] / README

diff --git a/README b/README
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-#
-#
-# README:
-#
-# Copyright (c) 2008 James McKenzie <james@fishsoup.dhs.org>,
-# All rights reserved.
-#
-# $Id$
-#
-# $Log$
-# Revision 1.1  2008/02/03 16:20:23  james
-# *** empty log message ***
-#
-#
-#
+Copyright (c) 2008 James McKenzie <sympathy@madingley.org>,
+All rights reserved.
+
+$Id: README,v 1.2 2008/03/10 11:49:32 james Exp $
+
+       Sympathy is a replacement for screen(1), minicom(1) and consolidate(1).
+It  is  a VT52/VT100/ANSI terminal emulator with some special features.  In
+normal use sympathy would sit between a terminal  device  (a  serial port  or
+a  pseudo-tty)  and  the  user’s  usual terminal emulator (eg xterm(1)).
+Sympathy renders data from  the  terminal  device  into  an internal  frame
+buffer and then expresses changes in this frame buffer to the outer terminal
+emulator using a  small  subset  of  ANSI  escape codes.   Sympathy always
+generates valid escape codes to the outer ter- minal, and will reset the state
+of its internal terminal emulator  when it detects receive errors on the
+terminal device.
+
+       Sympathy, unlike screen(1), takes care to preserve the scroll-back fea-
+tures of the outer terminal emulator: lines that scroll off the top  of the
+internal frame buffer are scrolled off the top of the outer termi- nal
+emulator. When sympathy is used in client/server mode, some history is added to
+the outer terminal emulator when the client connects.
+
+       Sympathy also supports automatic baud-rate detection, and advanced log-
+ging features.  Sympathy logs whenever any of the modem  control  lines change
+state, receive errors, and the contents of any line on the frame buffer as the
+cursor moves off it.