BJ> You understand how Squish works.  You don't understand how the older
 BJ> software (CONFMAIL) worked, which squish claimed 
 BJ> to be compatible with
 BJ> when it first came out.....

 MT> So howzabout explaining to me what I don't understand?  I'm game.

Ok.  I'll try.  If my explation doesn't make sense, please ask.  But I may
need a third part to help interpret at times.....

 MT> Confmail =was= before my time, and Max & Squish 1.x 
 MT> caught my interest before I ever got networked with 
 MT> Opus 1.03 and OMMM.  

Ok....

 MT> Did it handle both Arcmail and  Binkley outbounds?  

CONFMAIL handled Binkley style outbounds, including the arc compressed mail
packets.  [I will need to go back to old documentation to make sure I have
the proper definition of Arcmail....]  I'm trying to remember if the
original FIDO and FIDONET software (Tom Jenning's original fidonet
software) also used what we currently term binkley sytel outbound.  Opus
could use binkley style outbound.

 MT> Did it only allow one routing 
 MT> statement to touch a given piece of mail?  

YES!  CONFMAIL would match the FIRST line in route.cfg that it hit, and
then stop processing the route.cfg file for a given mail bundle.

 MT> What would 
 MT> be the result of "Route Harry's mail to Fred as NORMAL" 
 MT> and then "Crash Fred's mail to Fred".  One crash bundle 
 MT> and one normal bundle destined for Fred?

Hmmmm....  I believe CONFMAIL would do it that way on the intial processing
(first run).  If I remember correctly, on subsequent runs the packets would
be left alone by CONFMAIL, while squish would have placed everyting in a
crash mail packet by the end of the first run. 

So, with confmail, you could set up to be one of a number of local  network
hubs by routing your downlink nodes directly and then defaulting all
remaining nodes to the network's master hub.  The following is a more
complex example:

====  Sample routing within local net (1:343) that fails with squish ====
====  but works with CONFMAIL (and OMMM?)

=== Handle nodes under the local hub ===
send normal noarc 1:343/1
send normai 1:343/127
send normal noarc 1:343/43
send crash 1:343/32
send hold 1:343/36

=== Handle nodes under other local hubs === 
route crash 1:343/100 1:343/5 1:343/8 1:343/55
route crash 1:343/200 1:343/49 1:343/91
route crash 1:343/300 1:343/90 1:343/89 1:343/6 1:343/4
route crash 1:343/400 1:343/119 1:343/121

=== handle nodes not specified above... ===
route crash 1:343/0 1:343/*
route crash 1:343/300 1:* 2:* 3:* 4:* 5:* 6:*

===

Back when the local net had a lot more nodes, we had about five hubs in the
net with 20 to 30 downlinks each, with a master hub above that.  And of
course, the /0 (NC) for netmail handling of special cases.  

With the above type of route.cfg file, using confmail or ommm, you could
directly route net and echo mail to your downlinks, route mail to the hubs
for nodes under other hubs and send the odd-ball netmail to the NC for
nodes that you haven't had a chance to add to your control files yet.  And
things worked.  If you play this game with squish, some of your down links'
echo and netmail ends up getting packed for the NC's system.  :(

Note:  The above example is made up, but contains the ideas that were in
use when our local net was a lot larger.  I haven't looked up the proper
symbol for putting in the comment lines.....


Fun, fun, fun......

With fidonet shrinking, this is no longer a real problem......  But at one
time I did hit this.....  And it took a bit to figure out what was going
wrong.

Take care.....

Bob Jones, 1:343/41

--- Maximus/2 3.01