Subj : soupgate and alternatives
To   : All
From : Oli
Date : Wed Jan 27 2021 19:13:04

Soupgate looked for 0000????.msg Soup files and couldn't open the 0000????.MSG Soup files. This problem was introduced when I changed the extension for Fidonet messages from ".MSG" to ".msg". It exposed a hidden bug, because Soupgate used the Fidonet .msg extension for Soup files instead of the Soup extension which is still defined as ".MSG".

Unfortunately the more I use soupgate the less I like it. It's simple to use, but it's approach to FTN<->Internet message gating is way to simplistic. No real charset conversions, no TZUTC support, dumping the complete RFC822 header into kludge lines (even multi-line fields), non-Gatebau compliant MSGID/Message-IDs. It's the worst case scenario for dupes: changed datetime, changed text body, changed MGSID, a bunch of weird kludges.

I wonder if it is best to look for better alternatives. I guess even a rewrite from scratch would be not much more work then extending and bugfixing Soupgate and Spoon.

I downloaded some of the Gatebau '94 and '97 documentation. Mostly in German, but the most important one is available in English too:
https://fidogate.sourceforge.net/msgid.html

Soupgate does it all wrong ;).

I don't mind doing a bit more bug fixing on Soupgate, but I don't think I want to dive into the "double free" Spoon code. I let Spoon connect to my JamNNTPd server. It didn't even try to login a user (username and password is in the config) and crashed the server and then itself. Isn't it possible to run vSoup in wine? Or is there some other Soup client that can be used on linux?

Btw, I just stumbled upon a Soupgate thread on LINUX_BBS from last year (30 Jun 20 "Soupgate / Spoon"). Same problems.

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 * Origin: . (21:3/102)

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