Subj : Who is dumping fsx posts into dovenet? To : Oli From : Al Date : Wed Jan 11 2023 19:24:44 >> I just took a quick look back in the FSX_NET area and every message I >> looked at had a REPLY kludge. > View it in a threaded reader and FSX_NET is a mess. Fidonet and Usenet from > the 90s as I know it was way better. But in Europe QWK was not that popular > and most people used real FTN (point) software. I don't see much QWK in fsxNet, and when I do it hasn't been a problem. > Yes and no. Of course it can be done, but for some reason it regularly > breaks. It might be the horrible format that makes your brain hurt or lack > of good documentation. Yes, lack of documentation can be an issue. If there is no documentaion there can be no understanding of how to make it work. >Look at SOUP. That's a simple/understable and well designed. QWK is stuff like Back when regular folks like me had no internet connection I used to dial into the library in Vancouver. They were running a community net. I had three choices on the menu, lynx (I still have lynx close by today) to look around the net, Pine to read/write email and an option to download email and news in soup format. I used that in those days for email but I have never seen soup format in the BBS world. > Header Field > Position Length Description > -------- ------ ---------------------------------------- > 22 25 Uppercase name of person message is TO > 47 25 Uppercase name of person message is FROM > 72 25 Subject of message > [...] > 117 6 Number of 128-byte chunks in the actual > message (includes header and is coded in > ASCII) > Start Field > Byte Length Description > ---- ------ -------------------------------------------- > 1 4 This is a floating point number in the MSBIN > format. This number is the record number of > the message header in MESSAGES.DAT that > corresponds to this message. > 5 1 This byte is the conferece number of this > message. This byte can (and should) be > ignored as it is duplicated in the message > header in MESSAGES.DAT. This is especially > important for conferences numbered higher > than 255. Yes, that's why I say we would do it differently today! > Let's stray just a moment to talk about the MSBIN floating > point format. This is the format used by the older Microsoft > Basic compilers and interpreters. Most compiler manufacturers > have switched to the more efficient IEEE floating point > format. Therefore, we must have a method of converting to and > from MSBIN format. Included at the end of this article are > two routines in C that accomplish this quite easily. You've lost me, I don't know what this is about. > And then there have to be some extensions to work around the limitations > (e.g. 25 chars fields). Were is this documented? Is this the "standard" > everyone should be using? > http://wiki.synchro.net/ref:qwk That is how QWK is implemented in Synchronet. Rob put that out there for others if they are interested. > Do we have a list of good QWK readers? (= long name/subject fields, reply-id, > ...) I don't think there are readers that implement things like headers.dat. They could if they choose to do that. When I am downloading QWK packets for personal use I use the QWKE format when it is available. If not I get uppercase names and short description fields. > How are other charsets than CP437 (and UTF-8) are transmitted? I am not sure. When online with Synchronet it's ascii, if CP437 is encountered it's CP437, if UTF-8 is encountered it's set to UTF-8. I am not sure if that happens with offline mail packets. > Is there other software than Synchronet which supports all these HEADER.DAT > extensions? Not that I know of although the information is available to others to use if they choose to do that. If someone needed clarification they'd have to contact Rob. Rob can often be found idling in IRC on irc.synchro.net so you could talk to him in real time. > It's easy to network within the monoculture of Synchronet's QWK, but how > reliable does it work with other BBS software? The only other software I have experience with is Mystic. Mystic doesn't support headers.dat (as far as I know) so I have Mystic's qwkpoll utility set to send and receive QWKE packets. The result is the same. There are no upper case names or short subjects. Reading qwk nets is quite comfortable with either Synchronet or Mystic. >> I'm not sure how it happened. I suspect someone used area number 3002 >> when they meant 2002. Those area numbers are important. Area 2002 is just >> as unique and the area tag ASIAN_LINK, if you enter it wrong something >> wrong will happen. > Tada! > Conference numbers were a bad design decision. It might be okay for > downloading QWK packages by users, but for networking it's a recipe for > exactly that kind of errors and mistakes (and I wouldn't be surprised if it > often enough breaks with offline reading too). Yes, it can happen but if you are careful with your filenames on disk and be sure to use the correct area numbers it works well. In my experience anyway. --- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-6 * Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106) .