Paul Walker on 08 Apr 99 in NET_DEV

Hello Paul

 PW> The moderator hath spoken, so we land on NET_DEV. Briefly.



 SA>>>> The ability to inherit settings from existing tossers. No way
 PW>>> Meep. Far too many to do that with, sorry. You could write a
 SA>> Noted, and yep - I spect I could do a third party widget for at
 SA>> least Fastecho. Maybe even Fmail too, but you'd have to test that
 PW> I could probably write one for fmail, if I wanted. :) I'm looking at
 PW> fidoconfig at the moment, though (sort of generic config thingy). If I
 PW> can ever get the damn thing to compile, I'll look a little more
 PW> seriously.

Not seen that. It makes sense though, since much of the sysops time is 
spent re-entering system details in various utils where a common 
pool would be much nicer. Any chance of a look-see?

 PW> I think I've got most of the basic ones. The rest can be added with
 PW> reasonable ease.

F'sure. Once the basics are done, the rest is mostly goodies. Although
that said, it's often the goodies that persuade people to change.

 PW>>> Squish would involve me looking through the API to try and
 PW>>> extract the specs. Not pretty.
 SA>> I actually found it a lot easier than the JAM api to work with.
 PW> Spaghetti is easier to work with than the JAM api; extracting a usable
 PW> set of structures and explanations of what the elements do is another
 PW> matter entirely.

BTDTGTTS. Still not got a /reliable/ routine to read JAMbases. (Can write
fine!)

 PW> If anyone has the equivalent of the JAM API for Squish handy, by the
 PW> way, the email address is below... ;)

SMAPI - didn't I say that already?

 SA>>>> 'Standard' output files. areas.bbs, echolist.na, etc.
 PW>>> Oops.
 SA>> Ha!
 PW> Still haven't done those. What's the format for echolist.na?

Something like: (And anyone feel free to correct me)

B5_UK                UK chat about Babylon 5
BABYLON5             Babylon 5 Discussions.
BAHAI                The Baha'i International Echo
BAMA                 Odyssey Fringe Science Research Echo
BARDROOM             BardRoom Authors' and Poets' virtual Get-Together
BASSGTR              Bass Guitar Echo
BATPOWER             Batch Language Programming

Some implementations I've seen vary the offset of the description. And also
some introduce leading whitespace before the echotag. Best bet is probably,
when reading, to skip leading whitespace. Read all non-WS as the echotag. 
Skip until non-WS and read the rest as the description.
Writing is easier obviously, but it would be nice if anyone could butt
in and let us know if there /is/ a definative offset for the description.

--
Simon

--- Digital Dilemma