ml> what do you mean "imports and exports"?? are you talking about
 ml> something like a news server or something more in the backend area like
 ml> a tool that will pull the newsgroups into BAG files and then something
 ml> to convert those BAG files into fidonet PKTs so your tosser can toss
 ml> them with all the rest of the mail??

 ml> FWIW: this method doesn't care what format the message bases are in as
 ml> long as the tosser can access them ;)

 RW> Something that pulls news articles into PKT files and takes new 
 RW> articles from PKT files and posts them directory to the news 
 RW> server like Internet Rex is capable of.

without irex or some other consolidated "everything in one"
package, you are looking at something like souper or soupgate with an
associated tosser or other tool that can convert them to PKTs or toss them
directly from BAG files... at least as far as getting them into a format
that doesn't care about the message base format... even sbbsecho can toss
newsgroup messages packed in PKTs ;)

that's for inbound... outbound is a whole other story... in that case, you
need something that can send the messages to a convertor which can then
fling them back to a news server... i mentioned souper and soupgate
above... i don't know anything about soupgate but souper is inbound only...
in my setup, i use GIGO which converts both ways... souper to BAG and then
GIGO converts those to PKTs... on the outbound, the PKTs go to GIGO which
then sends them directly to the news server using portions of the GIGOSMTP
addon...

i think i got all that right... my configuration has been in place for
years and i might have forgotten a step or two... but i don't think so...
the big question is exactly what software are you using and how do you
really want or need to implement this gating stuff... it can be very tricky
because if done incorrectly, one can be inundated with spam based on your
transmission of news articles to the news server... my setup does use a
custom written tool which massages the outbound news articles so they
contain specific obfuscation of the FTN side poster's address...

BTW: did you get my netmails about the OS2 echo gating your system did the
other day? i haven't gotten any response from you via netmail :? 

)\/(ark

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