Subj : FSP-10xx-1: BBSID Kludge Specification
To   : Michiel van der Vlist
From : Rob Swindell
Date : Fri Dec 29 2023 16:15:15

  Re: FSP-10xx-1: BBSID Kludge Specification
  By: Michiel van der Vlist to Rob Swindell on Fri Dec 29 2023 02:31 pm

 > Hello Rob,
 >
 > On Wednesday December 27 2023 18:50, you wrote to me:
 >
 >  >> 2) What exactly do you mean by "monocased"?
 >  >>    A) Upper case only.
 >  >>    B) Either case but the same case for all characters in the string.
 >  >>    C) Any case but case will be ignored when processing.
 >  >>    D) Something else.
 >
 >  RS> A.
 >
 > Then I suggest you call it just that: "upper case". Using exotic synonims
 > may benefit poets and novel writers but technical documentation should be as
 > clear and unambigues as possible. Especially when part of the intended
 > audience has a different native languange than the author. I have never come
 > across "monocased" and even Google can not help me.

I didn't invent the term "monocase". e.g. pg 259 of K&R's C Programming Language.

 >  >> 4) But why all these restrictions?
 >
 >  RS> QWK software is largely MS-DOS software, sor for a BBS ID to be
 >  RS> QWK-compatible, it generally needs a MS-DOS-compatible base filename.
 >
 > Backward compatibility has pros and cons. In the beginning of a transition
 > process it can be usefull but later in the transition process the pros erode
 > and the cons get stronger. It gets in the way of the new. Your BBSID
 > proposal is presented as a means to facilitate the use of Avatars in
 > messages. For this use the maximum of 8 upper case ASCII characters is a
 > serious and needless limitation. So why insist on backward compatibility
 > with QWK. QWK is not even a Fidonet standard!

I suppose no good reason. For this purpose, any string would actually do.

 >  RS> I'm not saying it should be. I'm just documenting this new kludge that
 >  RS> you and other FTN nodes will find on their networks now (and over the
 >  RS> past few years).
 >
 > For things that are not strictly within Fidonet but that are usefull to be
 > documented anyway, there is the reference library.

Sure, that'd work fine. Worst case, I'll just put this on my wiki.

 >  >> 6) As a side note I would like to add that the idea is not entirely
 >  >> new.
 >
 >  RS> This is in actual use and has been for years now. It's not just an
 >  RS> idea.
 >
 > Henk Wever's GIF kludge was not just an idea either. It has been in actual
 > use for several years.

I've never seen the "GIF kludge" in actual use. <shrug>

But in any case (I can't seem to find the FTSC doc that describes that kludge), my recollection was that other Avatar/Gif thing provided a link to an image file to be used as an avatar. Not the same thing as a correlatable system ID (what I'm doing).
-- 
                                            digital man (rob)

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