Subj : MMTerm? To : William McBrine From : Jim Hanoian Date : Thu Apr 19 2001 08:51 am -=> William McBrine wrote to Jim Hanoian <=- JH> initial root of the all caps header. Also, PCBoard messages had JH> a size limit of 64k (I think it was) which was later "updated" to JH> permit messages of a liberal 100 lines. WM> 64K is much more than 100 lines, actually -- figure 80 chars WM> (ignoring that most lines are slightly shorter) * number of WM> lines = 8K for 100 lines. Again, maybe my memory is playing tricks on me. There was some limit that was originally set by size, that was expanded to the 100 lines. Later, as hard drive space became more affordable, the limit was lifted. This change was before my time, and I can remember buying my first hard drive for my first XT computer. It was a 20meg drive and I got it *used* for only $200. JH> I remember TomCat, and WildCat still uses the "T" command to get into JH> mail, doesn't it? WM> Indeed. They took away the TomCat name, but kept the key for WM> the benefit people who were already in the habit, and made up a WM> new string to fit it ("Transfer QWK mail", or something like WM> that). Didn't want to break any scripts, eh? My problem with switching from a PCBoard BBS to a WildCat BBS was the use of the "N" key. On PCB it means "NO" as in no more of this list, but on WC it means "NONSTOP" as in let the list rip with no pauses. JH> [OPX doors are] Much more consistent that the ways that different QWK JH> doors worked with different BBS types, right? WM> In some ways; but overall, not really. Take the line endings WM> (please) -- in QWK, every line ends with character 0xE3. This WM> is unambigious. In Blue Wave, they're defined as CRs to WM> terminate each paragraph, with LFs to be ignored if present. In WM> OPX, I discovered that they can be either LF, CR, CRLF, or even WM> a misused "soft CR", depending on the door. It's psychotic. Does that have anything to do with the base BBS the door is being used for? I was under the impression that Fido prefered to allow the reader or the user to reflow paragraphs (something like what is done with HTML today) to fit their particular screen and/or machine, and that forced line length ala QWK is frowned upon. WM> Then there's the EXTAREAS.DAT file. In some doors, this is used WM> to list any areas after the first 256. But it's not actually WM> necessary, because other doors just add those areas to WM> BRDINFO.DAT along with the first 256. WM> I could go on and on with this. There's also the internal WM> inconsistency found in every implementation, because it's part WM> of the spec: there's a mix of C and Pascal-style strings, for WM> example. (It's mostly Pascal-style, but the message headers are WM> lifted whole from the Fido specs, which use C.) QWK has the same kind of mixed language and types, doesn't it? .... Jim Hanoian, Augusta, Maine, USA .... Marriage requires commitment, but so does insanity. --- MultiMail/Win32 v0.40 * Origin: COMM Port OS/2 juge.com 204.89.247.1 (281) 980-9671 (1:106/2000) .