Re: JD...
  By: John Dailey to Mark Hoover on Thu Mar 18 2004 15:50:00

 >  MH> From what I understand of most of the people porting to *nix is that
 >  MH> they're not even doing comm port routines.  I'd get up with Stephen Hur
 >  MH> on this for more details, but last I heard they were just
 >  MH> writing/reading to/from standard input/output and letting the OS/BBS
 >  MH> take care of the comm routines so to speak.
 >  MH> Not sure if that makes life easier for you or not....
 > 
 > I hadn't even thought of that.  It's a lot like the old WWIV days when you'd
 > write just a stdio app and it'd reroute the output for you.
 > 
 > The only dilemma then becomes what to do with all the sysops not running a
 > BBS package that provides that.  Do I just move on and forget supporting
 > FOSSIL and serial communications altogether (man, would that be nice)?

*nix provides a full communications suite through it's ttys... generally, the
way they are accessed is via stdio.  Accessing them in any other way is silly
as using them for stdio is what they are DESIGNED for.  As far as I've seen,
the *only* BBS program for *nix which DOESn'T use stdio for everything is
Synchronet... but Synchronet fully supports stdio doors.

In fact, every door I've ported to date uses stdio... then HUP signals for
carrier detection.  I have added sockets support to OpenDoors, but I don't use
the stuff... there's no point.

In fact, *nix can be viewed as the worlds largest Door Kit.  Every feature you
can wish for in a door kit is available to stdio programs on *nix
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