PE> Well I've never seen kludge lines except BEFORE and AFTER the message

 PE> text, so if you assume that that is the rule, then there's nothing wrong

 PE> with the Fido format after all, it's basically just like you propose.



Do the FTS specifications say that kludge lines can occur only before or
after the message text? If not, then your assumtion is invalid. That's
beside the point anyway. The fact remains that they are using a field for a
purpose it wasn't designed for. This leads to all sorts of problems and
generally makes life difficult for everyone.



 PE> I was going to store the messages using SQL, and a normal database format

 PE> (Access or whatever).  What's wrong with that, assuming I wrote a simple

 PE> message editor for me to use?  The only other utility I use is Squalid,

 PE> and you guys don't use that very often anyway, that I can manually add

 PE> you in whilst waiting for an SQL version of Squalid.



There's nothing wrong with it, in fact it has a lot of benefits. If you're
happy to write whatever software you need then there's no problem.



Squalid doesn't access the message base does it? I though it would only
need to access the Squish configuration file.



 PM>> All that's left in you program is a call to the DB2 interface routine

 PM>> saying to run the SQL that was on line 123 and in DBRM xyz.



 PE> The effect being identical!



The end result is the same, but what I was getting at is you can't just
preprocess you program and have a look at the generated code to figure out
how DB2 is going to retrieve you data and hence translate the calls to
msgapi.





Paul



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