Subj : Once apon a time...
To   : All
From : bcw142
Date : Sat May 22 2021 05:51 pm

That last post of mine was thinking about hyjinx's question while typing 
out loud so to type ;) Hmm, doesn't sound like a story...

Once upon a time I had two mystic based bbs up and two nodespy windows
that had the same titles so I couldn't tell them apart. I did as I suggested
in that last post and hacked my titles MysticPI and AlphaTest in to
nodespy on those systems and kept doing that through a number of Alphas.
Then I asked g00r00, who I knew would have the same issue, to add it to
nodespy and he added it to a nodespy.ini.

Thinking about hyjinx's question I looked for the screen and ini files for 
the message index reader and came up with msg_index.ans, msg_index_help.ans,
and msg_index.ini. I knew if the L, ESC, & Q weren't hard coded then they'd 
be in the .ini. Long ago g00r00 had been putting such things in .dat files 
in mystic/data. More recently he had been putting them in .ini files.
OK. it's a very short story ;) 

The point is, it gives you the places to look for all such questions. If 
it's not hard-coded it's in a .dat or .ini for key bindings and .ans for 
screens. Basically the .ini are .dat written out. Where the .dat is 
basically a binary .ini file. He can comment the .ini files to show where 
things are, you can't do that as easily with binary .dat files. That's 
why the switch to .ini's.

Why do I know? Years of hacking and coding. 'In my day there were no 
Operating Systems, we had to code our own...Both ways uphill ;)
You learn a thing or two doing that, it's like riding a bicycle, you
don't tend to forget it.

....Dory: Follow the shells. Follow the shells...

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/05/17 (Raspberry Pi/32)
 * Origin: Mystic Pi BBS bcw142.zapto.org (21:1/145)

.