Subj : "sad... especially in this day"
To   : August Abolins
From : Alan Ianson
Date : Tue Feb 11 2020 05:16:08

Hello August,

 AA> I've just learned that OXP is designed to process the diffs
 AA> automatically,  but not a fresh incoming full nodelist.  So, in
 AA> theory, I would imagine  that it could work if the daily nodelist had
 AA> a matching daily diff.

When I first joined Fidonet in 1995 those diff's were essential. The compressed
 nodelists were 1.5MB and I really didn't want to transfer that on the 2400
baud modem I had at the time.. :)

I don't process diff's anymore although I have software to do it if I needed
to.

Can OXP not skip processing the diff and just compile a new nodelist?

 AA> I guess that importing/compiling the full nodelist manually was a
 AA> concious  design decision. But, we'll never know the original reason
 AA> at this time.

It was a different time and place. I blew my nodelist away a couple of times
back then and had no choice but to go searching for a full nodelist somewhere
and hope I had enough online time to grab a new one.

It was not an easy thing to find just anywhere and my BBS was offline while I
got that done. Well, not offline but busy.. :)

 AA> Further to what is "sad... especially in this day", there are probably
 AA> far  more examples of FTN programs that are not going to get any
 AA> improvements  or fixes at all, yet they are accomodated without
 AA> incident, for now.

As long as those old programs work properly we are OK. Squish is one example of
 an old software that is still in use today at some nodes.

 AA> Y2K-broken programs have probably left the FTN scene gracefully.

I hope so.. but we do have pktdate should the need arise.. :)

 AA> And unless we all move to 64-bit OS/programs, will many 32-bit
 AA> programs  that rely on dates (like this OXP) expire on March 19 2038
 AA> 03:14:07 UTC?

I don't think they'll expire but the dates they display might be wonky. I think
 the OpenXP developers are still developing, or at least maintaining OXP so I
think OXP users will be OK. I'm not so sure about some other software.

There were 2020 problems in Mystic that were quickly fixed. These sorts of
niggles can show up unexpectedly.

 Ttyl :-),
         Al

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