Subj : your OLR home page To : William McBrine From : Jim Hanoian Date : Fri May 25 2001 02:07 pm -=> William McBrine wrote to Jim Hanoian <=- AA> Consider posting a reminder about your Offline Readers page here every AA> once in a while. WM> Yeah... I remember when you used to post the entire QWK Product WM> List here in segments. Of course it was more active then. That was back when the "primary" list was still in text form and was published monthly as the QWKProducts listing. For quite some time I maintained both the text and HTML versions, making changes in both when new programs or updates were released. It has been a couple of years since I've maintained the text listing... it is only HTML now. There have been a lot of changes since then, too... such as filesizes, formats, etc. Maybe there's a tool that can take the HTML, strip the codes but leave the list in a column-oriented listing? I've be happy to try any programs that people send me (or just send me the name/URL). AA> And maybe re-title your site to indicate that you include listings of AA> point/fido software (such as WinPoint, FDapx, SemPoint) as well. WM> Hmm. I think this list (which grew out of the QWK Product List) WM> attempts to be fairly complete as far as traditional BBS WM> offline readers, while point readers are a whole other category WM> which I don't think it has been the mission of the list to WM> document. (Or am I wrong?) There aren't many entries without at WM> least a "Q". Where there are, at least one of them -- "MR/2 WM> ICE", which is listed as "MP" -- is an outgrowth of a reader WM> that _used_ to support QWK. As for the others, I dunno -- why WM> ARE there entries with just "MP"? That's effectively a whole WM> other category of software, much broader now than QWK and other WM> BBS formats were. You're quite right about most of that, William. The list did grow out of the QWK Product List, and I've done my best to un-QWK it. My concept of the list is to show products that can be used to (primarily) read BBS-based mail. You've mentioned one that has broken that mold (MR/2 ICE) but missed the other (SoMail). SoMail used to do QWK and a couple of other formats, if I remember correctly, but the author ended up dropping that support in favor of MP in the latest version (and even includes a mail server that can be used for a group of people, like a family or small business). Anyway, I believe that point programs do fit the BBS-based mail reading program category. Sure, there's a delivery component involved, but basically the user gets a packet of mail and reads it offline. As long as the packet type is specified, why couldn't it be included? WM> As for Point software, is there an authoritative list for that WM> elsewhere? Because I don't think this is really it... and I'm WM> not sure it should try to be. There's no Point list that I know of, and that was the most compelling reason for me to try to list them. I don't think it hurts the list itself and might actually help someone. So, as I have come across the programs I've tried to include them. Probably haven't done a very good job of it since I've never personally pointed. I think that soliciting program information (with URLs of course) would be a "good" thing to do. Ideally, the info submitted would be formatted just like my current list . With everybody's help, maybe this could be the point list, too. .... Jim Hanoian, Augusta, Maine, USA .... You're making progress if each mistake is a new one. --- MultiMail/Win32 v0.40 * Origin: COMM Port OS/2 juge.com 204.89.247.1 (281) 980-9671 (1:106/2000) .