please do not take my comments as being obnoxious or antagonizing toward
you or your person...

> so it is nothing more than a renamed file_id.diz then?? why is this
> new and or necessary since file_id.diz has been around since forever?

 DC> xml format for easy parsing goodness unlike file_id.diz.  

parsing? whatever for? the things are made only to be stuffed into the BBS'
file description area... nothing more... if an author wants to put his
name, company, eula, life expectancy, smoking habits, etc in there, he
can... that's his choice... as long as the total fits into the allocated
description area ;)

 DC> SO you get stuff tags like  and whatever so the bbs could
 DC> possible search  for files made by that person.  

are you saying that your bbs doesn't support a normal bayesian search of
textual data and that it requires some sort of database oriented search
stuffings?? i find it much easier to simply run thru a simple text file or
simple filebase format of descriptions :P

 DC> If you run down the list at say, 
 DC> http://archives.thebbs.org/ra91c.htm you dont see a lot of author 
 DC> names in the file_id.diz.

really, though... thebbs.org isn't all that great, ya know? i've never been
able to find what i was after there or if i just happened to stumble on it,
i was never able to download it... :shrug:

 DC> They have a rather huge example at the PAD website.
 DC> http://www.asp-software.org/padinfo/padgen.xml

the ASP is involved with these PAD files? first i've heard of it in all
these years...

 DC> I imagine that fact that ASP wants all the fields completed turn
 DC> people off, like posting your entire EULA in the file.

sometimes things can go quite wrong or at least differently than desired...
depending on who reads the text written ;)

)\/(ark