Subj : Re: sending to a fido address in thunder
To   : Atreyu
From : Digital Man
Date : Mon Oct 24 2022 14:40:30

  Re: Re: sending to a fido address in thunder
  By: Atreyu to Digital Man on Mon Oct 24 2022 04:30 pm

 > On 24 Oct 22  11:53:27, Digital Man said the following to Spectre:
 >
 > DM> Synchronet "Real Fact" #50:
 > DM> JAM and Squish were considered before developing Synchronet Message Base
 > DM> fo
 >
 > I suspect there were good reasons for SBBS to use its own, either breaking
 > DOS barriers or because you said to hell with the convoluted mess that is
 > both.

I actually thought the JAM format had some good ideas, and I borrowed those, when I created SMB. But I also saw some pretty critical mistakes in the JAM format, in my opinion, so I did my own thing, but documented and released a public C library and SDK for it.

 > Jam and Squish make you jump through more hoops than a starving dolphin at
 > Marineland just to do one thing... write a new message.

I'm afraid SMB was no better in this regard, especially in the '90s. The SMBLIB/API has improved (become easier to do the "one thing") considerably in the 2000's however.

 > What a freaking mess. Oh its Jam alright. Sticks all over your project as a
 > royal pain. What a stupid format. What clueless moron thought it was a great
 > idea to store the kludge lines seperately. In what universe was it necessary
 > to do this. For what purpose... indexing kludges? The Fidonet police?

SMB stores header fields (including FTN kludge lines, PATHs, SEEN-BYs) separate from the message text too. This enables all kinds of performance and extensibility that would be impossible or very difficult to achieve otherwise.

 > Squish and its stupid frames. Frames this. Frames that. Index the frames.
 > Index the index. Don't forget the stupid squish logo/header. Index that too.
 >
 > Bah.

:-)

I don't remeber the details of the Squish format much, but I don't remember seeing any good ideas worth borrowing for the SMB format either.
-- 
                                            digital man (rob)

Synchronet/BBS Terminology Definition #78:
SyncTERM = The Synchronet Terminal Emulator/BBS-client program
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