PC-Online 1998 February

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___ ; ___-~''~~~~~------ ; /, / __"~~~~ ;;;;, ( -,~ \\ ~~~ _ ;/;;, ,,, \|~---, \ ``;/; _,'''~ .` ; `;';\|/ /,___--~~~--_ Copyright 1995-1997 Branislav L. Slantchev ; ; ;,;_~- :/;~'''- A Production of Silicon Creations, Inc. ; ; `;;'~ :/ |';`~ All Rights Reserved. ; : ;, :/ ;;;' : `' _;;;;' `_ `\______;;' ~-____,, ;,``` _____, ___, ____, __ _ __, _---' -''`.. ,`, (-| | | (-|_\_, (-| (-| (-\_/ '-/__)--' ``,_;, _| | |_, _| ) _|__, _|__, -- _/ \_, _, _- ( ( ( ( ( Version 3.0a (,~_) ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ [Topic] [Keyword] Overview ................................... /OVERVIEW Installation ............................... /INSTALL Command Line Options ....................... /OPTIONS MAILX.INI Reference ........................ /MAILX Usage and Sample ........................... /USAGE Caveat Emptor .............................. /DISCLAIMER Source Code ................................ /SOURCE Packing Slip ............................... /PACKING Registration ............................... /REGISTER Getting in Touch ........................... /CONTACT Greetings and Thank You's .................. /GREETINGS Copyrights, Trademarks, Etc. ............... /TRADEMARKS o v e r v i e w /OVERVIEW ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── This is yet another quality product of Silicon Creations, Inc. and a nice addition to your collection of ProBoard pexen. If you are not running the ProBoard BBS package, this program will not be useful to you, so you should probably discontiue wasting your time with this document. On the other hand, if you are a ProBoard sysop, read on. mail-x is the new incarnation of the popular Mail-X program. It offers most of the features of the previous versions, but with added flexibility. To summarize, the new revision was aimed strictly at visual appeal. There are virtually no hard-coded colors or layouts, everything can be configured with the MAILX.INI setup file. The program also uses a free-form background file which can be drawn in any software which supports text mode graphics. So, what is mail-x? It is a hybrid program which will enable your users to select the areas they want included in their scans for new mail, as well as the combined board processing. This pex completely replaces the built-in ProBoard functions. There is a very annoying feature of the BBS which sets all areas to ON for new mail scans when a new user logs on. Most callers are unaware of that and wonder why the scans take so long to complete. This program lets the callers control which areas will be checked for new mail. As an additional bonus, the Sysop can define forced areas which will be always set to ON regardless of the preferences of the users. This is done in order to make it easier for Sysops to ensure that certain areas will be checked for mail (like system announcement areas, for example). There is no such feature in ProBoard itself. The second mode of operation is more or less similar to the first one except users can manipulate the combined boards. You can setup mail-x to operate interactively, in which case the caller is presented with a full screen multi-colored selection menu. The program is very intuitive and easy to use, so there should be no confusion. In the transparent mode, mail-x lets you set or reset globally the areas. You can elect to set all boards to on or off, or simply enable the areas defined as forced. mail-x fully supports UserDoes and Doing for multiline systems. Also, if the caller does not have ANSI/AVATAR capabilities, mail-x will automatically run the appropriate internal ProBoard routines! i n s t a l l a t i o n /INSTALL ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Copy MAILX.PEX, MAILX.INI and MAILX.ANS to your PEX directory. Actually, the .ANS file (which is the background screen) does not have to go there. You can place it anywhere on your system and name it anything you want, just make sure you update the DisplayFile field in the MAILX.INI file so that the program can find it. The second step is to edit your menu setup. There are two ways in which you can install mail-x. On of them is to use the TOP menu with the transparent mode if you want to force areas on or off. You would simply use Function 60 (Execute SDK File) and the data will be on of the following lines (note the explanations or each one of them): MAILX /G ON ; this forces all areas to ON MAILX /G OFF ; this forces all areas to OFF MAILX /G FORCED ; turn on all areas defined as forced MAILX /C /G ON ; turn on all combined boards MAILX /C /G OFF ; turn off all combined boards MAILX /C /G FORCED ; turn on all forced combined areas (??) The last three command lines are not very useful, but some people find them necessary. The other way to install mail-x (and this is the recommended setup), is to have it as a separate menu item. The data line should be 'mailx' without any parameters. This will launch mail-x in its interactive full-screen mode. Note that your callers have to have either ANSI or AVATAR terminal emulation enabled. If mail-x detects a caller with an ASCII terminal, it will note this in your PROBOARD.LOG file and will then ProBoard's internal selector function (depending on the mode requested). This way you don't have to worry about ASCII users not getting what they need. Note that this only applies to the interactive mode. Terminal emulation does not matter for the transparent operation. Of course, only the areas to which the user has read access will be shown in the program. Also note that only the first 1,000 areas are available for use. This is a limitation of ProBoard which despite supporting 10,000 areas, can only store the information for the first 1,000. If, for some strange reason, mail-x does not seem to work and simply exits when run, check your PROBOARD.LOG file for possible errors. All error conditions will be logged there. c o m m a n d l i n e o p t i o n s /OPTIONS ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── If you want to use mail-x in its most common way, there are no command-line options to worry about, except possibly for one (/C). Note that the options are not case sensitive, and can be preceded by a dash ('-') or a forward slash ('/'). You should separate options with one or more blanks, but there should be no whitespace between the option switch and the letter. /C Combined boards mode of operation. By default, mail-x works on the new mail scan areas. This option is used to force mail-x to operate as a replacement for function 28. /G [ON|OFF|FORCED] Global mode. This turns off the interactive features and causes mail-x to run transparently. The user will not be notified of any action that takes place. You can use only on of the three option parameters: ON Turn all areas on in the user record OFF Turn all areas off in the user record (including forced) FORCED Turn on all areas marked as forced in the MAILX.INI file /D [USERDOES|DOING] Drop file. You can choose what kind of information file should mail-x use. This feature is useful for multinode systems where there exist programs which report the status of other nodes. You can choose the format of drop file depending on the program you have set up on your system: USERDOES UserDoes (DqP, Eddie Van Loon's program). This option creates a UserDoes.<node> file with a brief information about what the user is currently up to. DOING Creates a drop file compatible with Fe-line's Doing program. If the file already exists, the proper record will be updated. By default, mail-x does not create any information drop files. m a i l x . i n i r e f e r e n c e /MAILX ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Previous versions of mail-x used data stored in the mail-x domain in the SILICON.INI file. This version departs from this approach. The reason is speed. There are too many options that need to be loaded from the INI file and a bigger file means slower execution. Note that the .INI file must be placed in the same directory as the executable (usually, your ProBoard PEX directory) and must have the same name as the PEX (just a different extension .INI). This means that if you choose to rename the pex, you will have to rename the .INI file too. This file is a standard ASCII text file. There is a sample MAILX.INI which is included with the distribution. It is fully annotated, so please refer to it for more information. The keywords must begin in column 1 on each row. They are not case- sensitive. The keyword is followed by an equal ('=') sign which can be (optionally) surrounded by whitespace. The data for the keyword is after the equal sign. There are several boolean options. These you can set with the words 'True', 'False', with the numbers 0 (False) and 1 (True) or you can set the keyword to False by simply commenting it out. Colors are somewhat more complicated. Color attributes are specified with decimal numbers. Use the table below to obtain the values: Black = 0 Red = 4 Dark Gray = 8 Light Red = 12 Blue = 1 Magenta = 5 Light Blue = 9 Light Magenta = 13 Green = 2 Brown = 6 Light Green = 10 Yellow = 14 Cyan = 3 Gray = 7 Light Cyan = 11 White = 15 To get a color, use the number for the color. To get a combination of a foreground-background color, multiply the color you want for background by 16 and then add the foreground to it. Note that you can use only colors 0-7 for background. The values above will cause blinking (you can use that too if you like it :-) If you want to force blink, add 128 to the attribute you have selected: Yellow on Blue = 14 + 1 * 16 = 30 Blinking Black on Cyan = 0 + 3 * 16 + 128 = 176 LightCyan on Dark Grey = 11 + 8 * 16 = 139 (note that the result is NOT what you expected. This is because you cannot use colors greater than 7 for the background attribute) u s a g e a n d s a m p l e /USAGE ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── mail-x comes preconfigured with a sample MAILX.ANS file. The built-in settings are tailored for this particular background screen. It is very pretty and probably most Sysops will choose to stay with it. If not, there are several things you need to be aware of. First, the command-bar item strings are not definable. You can move the location of the command bar, but you cannot modify the text in it. This is a shortcoming that is easily rectified, but which (if implemented) would slow mail-x down considerably. I have debated whether to make it as configurable as it is now for the same reasons (not to mention bloating of the executable). Another feature (this is a nice one), is the background screen file. This need not be limited to ANSi format. Since mail-x does not use ProBoard's file display functions, it is not limited to the formats it can display. The built-in interpreter can handle ANSi, Avatar, PCBoard and Widlcat! format files. So, if you happend to have a picture you like in any of these formats, simply use it, there is no need for conversions! Here's the setup used at the Silicon Creations BBS. In the TOP menu, there are two entries, both are autoexecutable: MAILX /G OFF ; for maximum user level 100 (new users) ; entry which upgrades new users to security level 200 MAILX /G FORCED ; for all users Then, on the mail/message menu, there are two other items: MAILX /D DOING ; select mail areas for new mail scan (with Doing) MAILX /C /D DOING ; select combined boards (Doing suport) As you can see, mail-x is pretty versatile and easy to use. c a v e a t e m p t o r /DISCLAIMER ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── mail-x (all executables, documentation, source, and sample files) are Copyright (c) 1985-1997 Branislav L. Slantchev. A fine production of Silicon Creations, Inc. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program (the COPYING.DOC file); if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. s o u r c e c o d e /SOURCE ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── The complete C++ source code for mail-x is freely available. It is released in a separate archive in order to conserve space and to avoid burdening people with things they do not necessarily want. The name of the source code package is formed as MAILXnnS.RAR where 'nn' is the revision number. For example, for version 3.0, the file will be named MZILX30S.RAR. Note that you will need PB-Lib v3.0 or later in order to compile the pex. Since the source code uses PB-Lib exclusively, you can compile it to a regular MS-DOS(tm) executable (this is exactly how it was initially developed). The code has been tested with Borland C++ 3.1 and might not (although it should) work with different compilers. A makefile is provided for compiling the PEX version, and a project file for building the regular standard executable. The source code is subject to the terms and conditions outlined in the file Copying.Doc distributed with it. It is basically free for any use but it remains copyrighted by Branislav L. Slantchev. p a c k i n g s l i p /PACKING ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── The files in this archive has been compressed with RAR Version 2.0 with a security envelope. The reason for this format is quite simple - it compresses far better than ZIP (not as fast, though). When you unpack the files, you should see the following message at startup: Verifying authenticity information ... Ok and then (when the process is complete, you should see the following): Archive MAILX30X.RAR created at hh:mm:ss dd mmm yyyy by Silicon Creations, Inc. If you don't see these messages, the archive has most likely been tampered with and you should obtain a fresh copy. Note that I have had problems with people modifying the archives before and that is why I strongly suggest you take every precaution possible to prevent malicious "hackers" from wreaking havoc on your computer. For all those "hackers", I can feel nothing but pity... maybe some day they will learn how to do something on their own... something creative. Until that time, we must protect ourselves. r e g i s t r a t i o n /REGISTER ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Of course, no registration is necessary for this program. It is being distributed as freeware (meaning that I retain the copyright but you are allowed to use mail-x without paying me any money). Go figure. Since some people have expressed desire to contribute to Silicon Creations, I hereby officially notify everyone that donations are accepted. You can also request custom programs for a nominal fee. I reserve the right to refuse anything sent to me or any request made for programming. Priority will be given to projects that bring $$$. Ah, if you strongly feel like contributing but you are not able to afford sending money, it's ok. Send me a post card of your home town, I would really appreciate it. If you can't afford that... have a beer on my behalf :-) g e t t i n g i n t o u c h /CONTACT ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Due to the lengthy nature of the topic, it has been moved to a separate file. Read Support.Doc for details on how to get in touch with me. Also, read the file FAQ.Doc for some questions people frequently ask me and the answers to them. g r e e t i n g s /GREETINGS ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Greetings go to the following: Philippe Leybaert (what a novel idea!), Ruben Provoost (JMJ), Wim Jans, Olivier Debonne, Timothy Bryant, Arthur Stark, Chuck King, Tiago Pascoal, and many others whose names have slipped my mind while writing this document. Of course, special thanks goes to the faithful support and distribution sites all around the world. You have been great, guys and gals! We have done it once again. c o p y r i g h t s , t r a d e m a r k s , e t c . /TRADEMARKS ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── mail-x ............................. Branislav L. Slantchev PB-Lib ............................. Branislav L. Slantchev ProBoard ........................... Philippe Leybaert UserDoes ........................... Eddie Van Loon Doing .............................. Fe-line Software Borland C++ ........................ Borland International All other programs and products mentioned above are property of their respective owners. Mentioning them in this manual does not constitute endorsement. If you like them, good. If not, good. I don't care.