24 Jul 15 01:11, you wrote to me:

 ml>> you are thinking of FD and friends... they are File Attach mailers
 ml>> and they pack netmail messages in their netmail area on their own...
 ml>> binkd and friends cannot do that because they do not have any idea
 ml>> what a netmail area is... binkd and friends rely on the tosser to do
 ml>> the same job that FA mailers spoiled us with... the truth is that FA
 ml>> mailers do perform some tossing and scanning functions like a tosser
 ml>> but they are limited strictly to netmail in only one netmail area...

 MB> I never was really fond of arcmailattach because to cluttered my
 MB> netmail area. :-)

you fell into the same misunderstanding that many others also fell into... i
did for a long time, as well... then i wised up one day when i was rereading
some mailer and tosser documentation... the key is that the mailer's and
tosser's netmail areas are shared between them but the sysop's netmail area
should be elsewhere to keep his mail from being mixed in with that being
managed by the mailer and tosser... whether the sysop's netmail area is another
MSG area or some other message base format doesn't matter as long as the tosser
can import/export netmails to/from it to the software managed netmail area used
by the mailer and tosser... it may be that the sysop would place their netmail
in the same area as their BBS users' netmail instead of their own private
area... the thing is that it all comes down to how things are configured...

 MB> The only thing I did not like about BSO is that it sometimes left
 MB> trash (zero byte files) laying around - especially for removed links.

not sure what files you are talking about but if they are/were mail bundles,
they are left as zero bytes so the tosser can see that they've been sent and
can increment the extension... using a zero byte file on the drive keeps the
tosser from having to manage some sort of database with this information...

 MB> Nothing that was functionally wrong just felt dirty on system with
 MB> many links.

it is SOP with AM/FA mailers ;)

 MB> Filebox (with LFNs) is far better because one can simply
 MB> drop files into a directory whether system is busy or not.

true to a point... that point being that interfacing with hybrid systems using
both BSO and AM/FA mailers is somewhat more complicated...

 MB> A mailer can be made aware to send mail first, the archives, and
 MB> lastly .TIC files (so as not to trip bad tic).

most mailers do this after learning the hard lessons over the years ;)

 MB> If a developer wanted to get really creative could read tic files to
 MB> see which archive/tic pair should be sent.

true but that's a little much... just send the mail first, then the files and
finally the tics... there can be no problems with that ordering... or am i/we
missing something else?

 MB> Also made scripting one's own support for FTP driven fido way easier!

there is that... i do similar with my frontdoor/binkd hybrid setup... we use
fileboxes for all binkd links and a glue program or two to move things from the
AM/FA outbound to the fileboxes... inbound is all scripted in 4DOS/4OS2 .bat
file stuff... even checking BSO busy flags and the like... there is a way to
have frontdoor use fileboxes directly with its static queue but i don't use
that right now... i don't recall if fastecho understands FD's static queue to
that level and would know to place a system's outbound mail in its filebox as
indicated by the STQ... what i've got works but it is a real PITA to add a new
system because of the various config files that have to be adjusted... missing
one breaks things in an ugly way...

 ml>> BSO is more primitive than the other formats used by FA mailers...

 MB> Older yes.... primitive?  Not so sure.  I never felt limited by what I
 MB> could do with it.

definitely primitive... there's a difference between being primitive and
limited... but there are limits to BSO... it is where the max zone number of
4095 comes from... with 8.3 limitations, the zone of the outbound can only go
up to 0xfff ;) aside from that, BSO is pretty well defined and quite capable...
AM/FA changed things slightly in that they automaticall handle packing and
routing of netmail offering dynamic routing capabilities whereas BSO is
lovingly know as "black hole" because the tosser has to pack everything and any
rerouting changes mean that those packed messages have to be unpacked and
repacked to the new destination if the current mailer event adjusts the
routing... knowing what message(s) is in which PKT(s) destined to which
system(s) to validate proper routing is much harder with BSO... AM/FA also
allows for one single outbound instead of multiple ones... AM/FA mailers are
simply a more intelligent mailer... nothing wrong with either...

)\/(ark

...     Oh! Ms. Co-Moderator!
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