Subj : don't cry for me I have vi To : tony summerfelt From : Maurice Kinal Date : Tue Mar 29 2005 10:41 am Hey Tony! MK> internet or not. The internet didn't kill Fido, TS> oh i htink it's obvious it did...but Maybe the www but unlikely the internet itself. Saying the internet killed Fido is like saying the telephone killed ham radio. Not likely. MK> Fido was killed when the hobby/pioneering mentality was replaced with MK> an administration who believe they are the keepers and protectors of MK> this so-called hobby. TS> this certainly didn't help... I believe it to be the number one cause. Everything else just contributed to the demise given that accessabilty and desirability of the www increased prompting users to go elsewhere for their so-called needs. It was easier for them to hook into the www then to Fido and download their crap from there. BBS's didn't evolve and thus suffered the same fate as the whatever other extinct creature you wish to compare it to. TS> anyway, we need to route this back on topic :) Sure. I am all for it. I'd like to discuss how perl can be employed to convert FTN inbounds to a suitable archiving format that any format can be derived from. I suppose that to mean a basic message; "To", "From", probably "AREA:?????", and the actual message. What do you think? Doable? TS> what about using jam/nntpd. and reading all you fido TS> echoes/newsgroups/email/rss feeds with thunderbird? That is another option but I don't see the need for JAM unless the user wishes that format. If the user is doing "offline" with a news editor then convertion of a base message archive to that format seems more appropriate. If the user is using a FTN editor to do offline, say msged or golded, then JAM would be a good thing . TS> hd space isn't at the premium it used to so i know for myself, i have TS> more than one email program (one just for mailing lists), more than one TS> newgroup reader... Yes but from the server's or BBS's perspective (is there a difference?) then a well organized archive(s) where the structure is known would be a prudent methodology. Conversions would happen using those archives that contain the information condusive to whatever format any particular offline user would want. Given a Linux based BBS then the possibilities for both formatting and distribution are far less limited. The sky is the limit. What do you want? TS> i only have one msg reader thought...the last official release by odinn Right. Highly doable. Myself I vote for vim. Way simpler and an excellent all around editor. I use it for everything else, why not Fido? - Maurice --- Hacked v0.1b * Origin: Coffin Point (1:261/38.9) .