======>>>> mark lewis, 1:3634/12 wrote:

 JW> Originally to: Jon Watson

 JW>> Can someone point me to a reference somewhere on the structure
 JW>> of a *.pkt file? I can find bits and pieces strewn about the
 JW>> Internet, but I haven't found any definitive source yet.

 JW> uh... what's wrong with the FTSC documents? /they/ are the
 JW> definitive documents
 JW> on FTN stuffs...


 JW> <<<====== end quote

argh! that quoting stuff just ain't working, man... i can't tell what you
wrote and what i wrote in your replies... the above make it look like
someone other than you wrote the first paragraph and that you wrote my
part... :((

that stuff /really/ needs to have >'s put on each line to conform with
what the rest of the network is doing... :(

 JW> Uh..what's wrong with them is that I haven't found them,
 JW> wasn't I clear on that? Can you point me to the FTSC
 JW> documents? That would be helpful.

lordy lordy, where to start...

  1. http://www.ftsc.org
  2. your *C
  3. most any well stocked fidonet site like mine

OB-)

======>>>> mark lewis, 1:3634/12 wrote:


 JW> those control lines are in there for a reason... some
 JW> of those control lines are what i was speaking of in
 JW> other conversations with you on this topic...

 JW> <<<====== end quote

 JW> So you don't have any bright ideas for me?

 JW> I'm not going to strip them out of anything leaving my system,

how can you if your system doesn't generate them?

 JW> I just don't see the point in storing them in my web forums
 JW> database.

i don't see why not... what's any different than storing them in a JAM,
SQUish, MSG, Hudson, EZYcomm, or other message base?

 JW> I know you don't fully understand what I'm doing so
 JW> just take my word for it that anything leaving my system will
 JW> be a properly formatted packet.

i do fully understand, dude... but something is getting lost in the
translation from me to you...

its not what you send out but what you do with what you receive... how can you link

  MSGID: 1:3634/12{at}fidonet 900a0e67
  REPLY: 1:134/703{at}fidonet 40d66fcb

back to

  MSGID: 1:134/703{at}fidonet 40d66fcb
  REPLY: 1:2800/18 314D5F0E

and that back to

  MSGID: 1:2800/18 314D5F0E
  REPLY: 1:2800/18 314CB451

if you don't store them somewhere??

additionally, how can your system display the message properly if it
doesn't recognise and use the CHRS and CODEPAGE control lines? and there's
also the TZUTC control line that carries the UTC offset so that the true
local time of the message's creation can be known... should i also mention
the REPLYTO and REPLYADDR control lines that tell who to address and where
to send private responses to public messages... and FWDFROM and FWDADDR and
such for forwarded messages so that a private response can be written back
to the original poster in addition to or instead of the person that did the
forwarding?

i dunno... maybe i just know too much about this stuff and how it ties
together to see just bitbucketing valid information that is needed at
times... i dunno... sorry 'bout that...

like i said before... this is one of the reasons why i'm not going to try
to fit FTN stuff into a message base format that simply can't handle it...

actually, though... it can in the same way that the Hudson format
does/did... they are stored with the message bodies and not displayed by
the code... then the system can make use of them for creating replies and
such and you could even have a setting that would display them if the user
turned on a/the switch to display them... hummm... guess i've been working
with JAM bases too long... i should have seen that option before... with
that in mind, i might just see about doing something with phpBB ;)

)\/(ark