The message was still in my private outbox, so here is another copy of it...
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I left a message on your cell phone, but in case we don't connect, here are a few comments.
I think there may be some confusion about what PolyShell is. It is simply a mechanism for accessing multiple sessions from one terminal. (You may have been familiar with Flip under Metropolis, or Multi, under AMOS, which are similar.) You define a hot key or two, and use them to switch between the different sessions. Prior to the world of telnet, this was the only convenient way to access multiple sessions from one terminal. But with telnet, there is nothing stopping you from opening up as many sessions as you like. So, that has reduced the demand for tools like PolyShell.
Even with telnet, some operating systems (like AIX) used to charge (and may still charge, for all I know) by the number of connections. So in that environment, PolyShell was a way to save money, since it allowed each user to have only one foreground connection (counted against the OS license), but effectively switch between many sessions (which weren't counted against either the A-Shell or OS license count.) I'm not sure whether this is an issue any more with AIX or not. It certainly is not for LINUX.
Even so, some people, like Frank, use PolyShell because they like the way it forces the user to focus on one session at a time, instead of accumulating a bunch of telnet sessions which they then forget about. Plus, they like the simplicity of the same mechanism for both serial (!!!) and telnet connections.
One could also make an argument that 100 PolyShell connections, each with 3 sessions, is more efficient than 300 telnet sessions (less overhead on the OS), but with the power available in processors, and the low price of memory these days, I'm not sure that's much of a consideration either.
So, if you don't have any particular attachment to using a hot key to switch between sessions, you probably could just drop PolyShell and use multiple telnet connections.
As for AlphaLAN vs. ZTERM vs. ATE, this choice is independent of PolyShell, and for the most part, of A-Shell too. There's no particular problem with having a mixture of telnet clients according to personal preference. (The only issue would be if you were building extensions into your code to access features that were specific to one emulator or another.) In the case of ZTERM, there are the "Developer ESC sequences" to access functions like file transfer and launching a program on the PC. (The #1 feature of this type is to generate a CSV on the server, then transfer it to the PC, then launch it as a spreadsheet, which users seem to love.) I believe AlphaLAN has similar capabilities, and may even support some of the same ESC sequences (since they copied a number of features from ZTERM). But I'm not that knowledgeable about AlphaLAN to say for sure.
I'm not trying to sell you on one terminal emulator or another, but as long as we are on the subject, ATE (A-Shell Terminal Emulator) offers the ability to tap into the entire A-Shell/Windows GUI capabilities, even when running over telnet on UNIX. Of course, if you were to really take advantage of it, you would end up creating a dependency on ATE, because neither ZTERM nor AlphaLAN has anything like those features. ATE also has a couple of features designed to make it easier to manage the licensing (like the ability to get the license from the server, eliminating the need for all the hassles of individual PC-based licensing.)
I appreciate your frankness about the issues, and am happy to have the opportunity to discuss how to accommodate the needs / desires / concerns of CompuPay, and all of the options you've suggested are doable. But as I mentioned previously, it would probably be worthwhile for us to chat for a few minutes to make sure we're considering all the factors. So feel free to contact me on my cell at 818-370-8140, or office at 818-710-8437 x114.
Jack
