The menus are useful but pretty basic. The File menu allows you to close the connection or get an About dialog. The Edit menu provides the normal Cut, Copy, Paste, and a couple of extra options useful for terminal emulators. The other two menus allow you to change the font size and the screen width. If the font and width adjustments cause the line length to exceed the width of the screen, the bold line turns into a slider that allows you to scroll back and forth. Unfortunately, there's no vertical text buffer or scroll bar.

There are also provisions to enter non-printable characters, particularly important for vi or emacs users. To use them, you have to know the corresponding control character (e.g., control-I is Tab), the C programming escape sequences (e.g., \r is carriage return) or some special escape sequences (e.g., \e is ESC). The Top Gun SSH FAQs on the home page address the details.

Wrapping up
I experienced occasional problems resolving the domain name. My regular monitoring indicates that the problem is either with my ISP or with Top Gun SSH, but I couldn't resolve it further. If you see similar problems, I recommend you simply try again. If the problem continues, then diagnose it or use an IP address.

Another feature that many SSH clients have that is missing in Top Gun SSH is SSH forwarding, a feature that allows normal unencrypted network traffic to piggyback on the encrypted SSH socket to make it secure. This is a limitation of the single-tasking nature of Palm OS and should not be seen as a deficiency in Top Gun SSH or any other Palm OS-based SSH client.

Yet another common feature of SSH clients is public key authentication. This allows you to establish a public-private key pair that can be used to automatically authenticate you instead of using a user name and password. I see this as an undesirable feature for a handheld, so I don't mind that it's not present. After all, do you really want anyone who possesses your PDA to have access to your secure network?

I hope you find a use for SSH on your handheld. As always, I'm interested in hearing about any new or unusual uses for these applications. If you've got something to say, email me at steve@vance.com.

Stephen Vance is a Contributing Editor for PalmPower Magazine and PalmPower's Enterprise Edition. Visit his Web site at http://www.vance.com. He can be reached at steve@vance.com.