Subj : Re: QWKE or BlueWave
To   : Matt Munson
From : William McBrine
Date : Thu Oct 26 2000 03:53 am

-=> Matt Munson wrote to All <=-

 MM> What should be added to a bbs software in this modern time?

Both. Blue Wave is the more capable format, but QWKE is mostly backwards-
compatible with QWK, does most of what BW does, and is easier to implement
if the system already includes QWK.

I don't know of many QWKE doors or readers that don't also do BW -- for
that matter, I don't know of that many that do QWKE at all -- but where
it's most useful is if you have an existing QWK program whose capabilities
you want to expand, without a thorough rewrite. Unless the program was
written with expansion in mind, QWKE is much easier to shoehorn in. I added
QWKE to my own QWK door, Valence, in a few hours; I'm not sure if it will
ever do BW.

On the other hand, if you're writing from scratch, BW will be more
meaningful to more readers. But you'll still want to include QWK, which is
far more widespread than BW; and as long as you're doing QWK -- and
especially if you're doing QWK _and_ BW -- you may as well take the few
extra steps needed for QWKE. (I say "especially if you're doing QWK _and_
BW" because many of the QWKE extensions seem based on, or at least similar
to, BW features, and some of the same code could cover both.)

There are elements of the QWKE spec whose design I dislike, which I've so
far declined to adopt: The methods for Netmail and Internet addressing
(even in the QWKE specs, these are marked as "suggested"), and the extra
CONTROLTYPE lines. (These should be reserved for actual control messages.)
The rest is pretty good.

Were it not for the sharp decline in active development in the BBS scene, I
expect most QWK software would've been upgraded to QWKE by now.

.... He does the work of 3 Men...Moe, Larry & Curly
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