PM>> They would also need to remove the restrictions on what can go in the

 PM>> message text. For example I should be able to enter a message with AREA

 PM>> in the first column. I actually did this in my original reply to you but

 PM>> golded kept swollowing it and I had to change it to MSGAREA. The

 PM>> same applies to SEEN BYs, origin lines and tear lines. Why should I have

 PM>> to be aware of these things when I'm entering a message?



 PE> You wouldn't believe how much hassle I have had trying to get this

 PE> implemented. You wouldn't believe how many people think it is perferctly

 PE> natural to stop people entering various bits of ASCII text in their text

 PE> message.



When it comes to Fidonet, I'd believe just about anything.



 PE> I have a proposal FSC-XXXX.000 here which is on its way to help

 PE> solve the problem (it introduces two kludges SOT and EOT).



Yeah, I saw this proposal before I dropped NET_DEV.



 PE> You may notice that Brenton's messages have those kludges in it.



Yes, I noticed.



 PE> You also wouldn't believe how much hassle I have had when reporting bugs

 PE> in date formats! You'd think developers would appreciate being informed

 PE> about bugs in their software, but apparently not.  Anyway, I've given up

 PE> arguing the toss, and now just automatically generate messages informing

 PE> people that my system rejected their message because it was out-of-spec.



One of the guys at work runs an Amiga BBS (Ron Verstagen of 3:711/438) and
has received several messages about this from you. He was whingeing about
it to me today. Not really much he can do about it since he didn't write
the software and doesn't know how to contact the author.



 PE> I have learnt a good lesson out of all this though.  DON'T WRITE SOFTWARE

 PE> WHERE YOU DON'T HAVE CONTROL OVER YOUR DATA.



So you're going to give up programming then :-)



 PE> BTW, I notice I'm the only person still hooked into NET_DEV here!  :-)

 PE> BFN.



After reading the echo for a while, I came to the conclusion that if these
were the guys developing Fidonet software, it's no wonder things are in
such a mess :-)





Paul



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