.. One fine day, Rod waffled to Dieter..

 Hello Rod,

 RS> Fairly gross problem with TinyPoint, or more specifically MAKEMAIL.BAT
 
 DM> I don't think it was meant to be anything too fancy, but....

 RS> I still think its quite unacceptible to be doing no error checking at
 RS> all, particularly when the problem results in completely silent
 RS> deletion of a fucking great chunk of the mail. It wouldnt be quite so
 RS> bad if the result was a dud QWK which made it obvious that something
 RS> had gone wrong. 
 
 No, I fixed that. I don't delete the received mail packets until 
 the next polling session. So if there is a problem in the 
 archiver output or in the PKTJOIN, I just re-run MAKEMAIL.
 
 RS> chuck of mail goes straight into the bin forever.
 
 DM> I've had that problem once or twice, hence my requests from Paul for
 DM> back messages.

 RS> Wouldnt be surprising if its whats just bitten Frank either, what with
 RS> the problem turning up after a while away, hence a lot of PKTs, hence
 RS> a need for rather more free space than usual.
 
 Wouldn't surprise me either, but I'm under the impression he 
 messed around with TPOINT significantly, so who knows.

 DM> In the end, I've removed all the > NULL redirections, so at least
 DM> I can get an error message and reprocess the received mail packets
 DM> with MAKEMAIL.BAT.

 RS> Yeah, thats all I have done for now. Should really have added an
 RS> explicit check for the error status return from PKZip, only a tad more
 RS> effort. I'm planning a more comprehensive redo but am doing something
 RS> else at the moment.
 
 I was thing of a file exist on the final output, but that 
 wouldn't help if an incomplete packet was made.

 DM> Not the best solution, but passable.

 RS> The main problem with that is that people tend to go away from the
 RS> machine or the window when that boring stuff is going on, particularly
 RS> if you get decent sized QWKs and thats likely to not be noticed. I
 RS> think the PKZip error status check is a lot more viable.
 
 Good idea.

 DM> I wouldn't suggest the TPOINT package for a novice because of these
 DM> pitfalls though.

 RS> Yeah, thats the point I really didnt make clearly enough in my
 RS> original, the whole point of the TPOINT system is a minimal
 RS> understanding system for droids, the last thing a system like that
 RS> should be doing is just silently filing fucking great chunks of mail
 RS> straight into the bin. 
 
 And Paul wants me to massage it into better shape. He'd have 
 better luck teaching his grandmother to suck eggs, but I'm not 
 adverse to having a go though.
 
 Dieter
 

... Bad dog..leave that wire alone.....{at}$^**(^&%& NO TERRIER
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
@EOT:

---