Teletel

It’s 1997, and the Minitel is revolutionizing the way people connect. Since its launch in 1982, this pioneering device has already become a global sensation, offering fast and compact ways for people to access everything: telephone directories, video games, real-time communication with friends, family and even... well, let’s just say it’s versatile. As teletel becomes a standard and asserts its domination over the internet, it is a crucial time for developers
to create innovative applications that will shape the future. Enter teletel, a Rust library that opens up new possibilities for interacting with this device, enabling you to build powerful apps for this game-changing technology.

There’s no Git, Rust, GitHub or Markdown yet, somehow, you’re reading this. Magic? No, just the ✨Minitel✨

Getting started

You will need a Minitel device and some way to communicate with it. You can either make or buy a 5-pin DIN connector to USB cable specifically for the minitel. Connecting it directly through UART to an ESP32, Arduino or anything else is not yet supported.

First add the following to your Cargo.toml and change minitel2 to minitel1b if you have a Minitel 1B:

[dependencies]
teletel = { version = "???", features = ["minitel2", "serial"] }

Once you plugged the Minitel you can use the following code to send text to it:

#[macro_use]
extern crate teletel;

use std::error::Error;
use teletel::functions::{Clear, Foreground, Color, Repeat, SetCursor};
use teletel::terminal::SerialTerminal;

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> {
    //change path to match your setup, you can leave None for baudrate to scan for correct rate
    let mut port = SerialTerminal::new("/dev/ttyUSB0", None)?;

    send!(&mut port, [
        Clear,
        SetCursor(15, 11),
        "Hello",
        Foreground(Color::Gray90, "World"),
        Foreground(Color::Gray50, Repeat('!', 3)),
    ])?;

    Ok(())
}

If running the code above gives you a permission error, you can add your user to the dialout group with the following command, don't forget to log out and log back in after running it:

sudo adduser $USER dialout

Features

• minitel2 switches to compatibility mode for the Minitel 2. Enabled by default
• minitel1b switches to compatibility mode for the Minitel 1B, not strictly necessary to enable this feature, but it disables some features that are not available on the Minitel 1B and avoids trying to use them without knowing. Disabled by default
• colors when enabled, changes the Color enum variants to be the 8 colors available on the versions of Minitel that support colors instead of grayscale. Disabled by default
• serial enables communicating with the Minitel through a USB port. Disabled by default