Subj : MMTerm? To : Ben Carpenter From : Jim Hanoian Date : Sun Apr 15 2001 11:49 am -=> Ben Carpenter wrote to Jim Hanoian <=- JH> Why do you insist on QWK with its severe limitations? JH> No involved Fido person would consider using QWK, if they JH> chose to do offline mail reading in this manner at all. JH> It is much too limited, and could actually be considered JH> as "broken" with respect to many Fido standards. But I JH> suppose that Fido standards don't mean anything to you if JH> you're trying to build/promote software for Fido????? BC> I have been watching yours and Ed's comments and have to BC> mostly agree with you, but I do not totally agree with your BC> comments on QWK. Don't take me wrong I am not supporting BC> QWK as the only thing. In the beginning, Sparky invented QWK to be able to transfer messages in bulk from one PCBoard BBS to another one. A network developed, and QWK was the chosen standard. Blue Wave and Silver Xpress were developed to fix issues that BBSs in Fido experienced with trying to network using QWK. That's the short version of offline mail reader history. So, since QWK was basically a clone of the messagebase format of PCBoard version 12 (which was current back then), QWK did inherit many limitations. Quite a few QWK implementations still require header information in ALL CAPS. That riles a lot of folks, including those whose names get mangled (like McB...) when the software does not allow mixed case. Some QWK implementations require messages to be less than 100 lines long. This is why you see "split" messages.. which are quite unnatural. Responders have to basically send two return messages, even if the total new message is shorter than the limit... and threads get broken as a result. Some softwares sequentially number the parts differently than others creating more havoc, and some networks used to have trouble since the two parts might look like they were duplicates. Further, QWK is limited in all header fields to 25 characters, and that has forced different "work around" methods. Blue Wave and Silver Xpress don't have these limitations so you can have much longer From, To, Subject and Conference names. A lot of people don't realize that QWK does not support the kludge lines that Fido BBSs use... lines that Fido uses to support the foundation of the network. A quick check of the few messages in this BW packet showed kludge lines with keywords such as MSGID, PID, GID, REPLY, CHRS, SEENBY, and PATH. QWK lacks these entirely. Also, QWK does not understand or handle Fido netmail well at all, while both BW and SX do it just fine. So, an effort to "sell" QWK to Fido-involved individuals is doomed to failure. Yes, some BBS types do offer QWK for Fido mail, but that is only because individuals who had a QWK-only reader demanded it. OTOH, George added QWK to the Blue Wave reader and Hector added QWK to the Silver Xpress reader only because people whined and cried long enough so they could use their favorite reader on more BBSs. Neither wanted to do it, but both thought they had to in order to keep their product popular in the shareware arena. BC> First off different BBS software may support the same offline BC> mail formats in different ways or limit their support of that BC> format. The mail format I am using on this Wildcat system is BC> QWK. Yes, Wildcat has never supported Blue Wave. Primary on a WildCat BBS is Silver Xpress (Hector owns SX and WildCat, so is it any big surpise?) and secondary is QWK. Hector will not add Blue Wave to WildCat... there was entirely too much bad blood between Hector and George. They were competitors for so long, And while I can do SX on the WildCat BBS that I use, I much prefer to use QWK because there are no SX utilities for combining packets, etc. Further, I use that WildCat BBS exclusively for a particular QWK network, and so everybody there is "travelling" under the same limitations. BC> As I see it when connecting with a BBS you are at the mercy of BC> the SYSOP as to what you can do based on the software he uses and BC> also his setup. Pick any BBS software and call two different BBS's BC> using it and the setup and things you can do may be as different as BC> black and white. Yes, I agree with you on this if you're talking about QWK. Blue Wave is much more consistent because most BW products were developed by George initially. SX products are most consistent because the doors and the readers are all owned/produced by Hector. The only inconsistency are that the doors for different BBS types might have differences because of when they were developed (the later doors were more advanced than the earliers ones, and if the earlier ones didn't get updated or if the root BBS type didn't support the feature...) BC> Ok what I guess I was trying to say is that there were some BC> bad implementations of QWK but also some good ones. And when BC> you make a choice of BBS's to use you must weigh all the items BC> involved with that BBS and sometimes it will include QWK and BC> other times it will not. The QWK standard was not a standard until Sparky released 1stReader version 2.0 on July 20th, 1995. That's something like SEVEN YEARS from when QWK started. In the interim, everybody else relied on reverse engineered information, some better than others, and some programmers implementing the standard better than others. Heck, the standard provided for less than 256 conferences, and the standard had to be hacked to rob a couple of additional positions in the header so that the number of conferences could be expanded. BC> As for your comments on Telnet. I have not made a dial up BC> connection to a BBS in at least two or maybe even 3 years. BC> It has all been by Telnet. I have even heard that there BC> are BBS's out there that only support telnet connections. BC> Like you stated why pay the phone co to make a connection BC> that you can do over the internet for free. Exactly. I don't use my modem for anything except connecting to the internet... oops... my bank uses a proprietary software that insists on dialing out to make a secure connection. I'm seriously considering changing banks to one that works more like **I** do. BC> Telnet is used a lot for remote applications not connected BC> with BBS's so will be around if and when the BBS's are all BC> gone by the wayside. And a good point that I had not even considered! Yes, I have telnetted into routers and other equipment to configure them. .... Jim Hanoian, Augusta, Maine, USA .... Tradition: The art of making the same mistake over and over. --- MultiMail/Win32 v0.40 * Origin: COMM Port OS/2 juge.com 204.89.247.1 (281) 980-9671 (1:106/2000) .