Hi Tobias,


Tobias Ernst wrote to Sean Rima:
TE> Hallo!
TE> 
TE>  SR> The one thing that I am curious about is why in JAM it uses 
TE>  SR> areatag.sql 
TE>  SR> instead of areatag.jlr. If I read using Golded+ and I exit and 
TE>  SR> try then to 
TE>  SR> use Msged, then it doesn't see my lastread.
TE> 
TE> Because the stupid programmer did not think of this ... I have now fixed 
TE> this as well. This means I have fixed it to use ".jlr"
instead of ".sql", 
TE> but in fact I have no information on how the .jlr file should look like. 

TE> guess that it has the same format as .sql, but who knows ... so when 
TE> testing the new version be careful, it might screw up your lastread 
TE> altogether. :-)

Here it is:

========

    The .JLR file is used to maintain a user's position within a message
    area. The layout of the "lastread" record follows. One record per
    user is required.

    LastRead:
        ulong   UserCRC;         // CRC-32 of user name (lowercase)   (1)
        ulong   UserID;          // Unique UserID
        ulong   LastReadMsg;     // Last read message number
        ulong   HighReadMsg;     // Highest read message number
    end;

    (1) The functions to convert a string to lowercase characters that
        are provided in the API will only convert characters A-Z (into
        a-z). It is required that this convention is followed by all
        applications.

    The UserID field is a unique number for each user. If the "lastread"
    record is deleted, UserCRC and UserID are both set to -1
    (ffffffffH). An application may not depend on any specific order in
    the .JLR file. A user's "lastread" record may appear anywhere in the
    file and must be searched for when retrieving it and when storing an
    updated record.

======


For use on a system as sysop which most will do, it is safe to fill the
UserID with 1. 

The ulong is in fact unsigned long (32 bit).

If there is only one user using MsgED, then there is only one lastread
record per area, that's why the UserID is 1. I think some bbs systems use it
to lookup the user in the userbase, in my opinion this is useless because of
the differences in userbase formats.




    Greetings, Michiel Broek

Email:   mbse{at}mbse.dds.nl
Fidonet: Michiel Broek at 2:280/2802

... Do the joke. Get the laugh. Move on.

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