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Text File | 1996-02-04 | 27.9 KB | 543 lines

▄█████▄ ▄█████▄ ▄█████▄ ▄████▄ ▄█████▄ ▄█████▄ ▄████▄ ▄▄▄ ▀███ ▄▄▄ ▀███ ▄▄▄ ▀███ ▄▄▄ ▀███ ▄▄▄ ██▀ ▄▄▄ ██▀ ▄▄▄ ▀▀▀ ███ ███ ███ ███ ███ ███ ███ ███ ██████▄ ██████▄ ▀████▄ ███ ███ ████████ ███ ███ ███▄ ███ ███ ███ ███ ███ ▄▄▄ ███ ███ ███ ███ ███ ███ ███ ▀████▀ ██████▀ ██████▀ ▀████▀ NanoBBS 1.16 Copyright 1993-1996 by Whirlwind Software All Rights Reserved Program and Documentation by Gerald Albion Additional Code by Mark Dignam and Mark May NanoBBS Public Information Release (Now listed in reverse chronological order) ---------------------------------------------------------------- February 3, 1996 (NANO116.ZIP) In this new version, I have completely rewritten the global newscan code, which should eliminate many nagging problems in navigating through global newscans, email checks, and even general message reading. A new feature has been added: you can now type the message number of a message you want to read directly at any read prompt. This way you can skip past large numbers of unwanted messages or quickly jump back or forward to a message whose number you know. Several new UFO tokens have been added - see UFO.DOC. The user editor's user flags editor has been further refined. It's much nicer now. The [harddownload] UFO token has been modified - files downloaded with it are automatically "free". This is because most of the time, it is used to download application forms, RIP icons, special terminals, and other things that the sysop would want to let users download regardless of their status. Perhaps the nicest new feature in 1.16 is the new three-level file database index. With it, you can find any file on the BBS in less than a second (on most BBSes). This feature has been included in file flagging, batch adding, and general downloading, as well as filename searching. The Description Search still takes as long as ever, though, because the BBS has to search the whole MASTER.FIL to find a particular description word. There is now code in place to free disused heap blocks (such as in-memory FILES.BBS lists) prior to memory-critical operations such as message entry and saving. This reduces overall real-world memory requirements and makes out-of-memory runtime errors much less likely. Override keys like the ones you can program for the canned main menu are now also available in the File Section. They work the same way, except that in the file section you can only have up to 30 of them, and the keyword in the config file is FOVRSTR instead of OVRSTR. Doors can now be addressed by their number instead of just the key. The prior limitation used to effectively restrict NanoBBS to just a few dozen doors; this was unsuitable for a dedicated gaming BBS. The canned door menu still uses single keys but this should still be more than enough for most BBSes; those that need a huge number of doors can now (and should!) build a UFO script to present an extended doors menu. The single-key syntax still works with the same UFO keyword, so that existing scripts are not broken. I have added NanoWATCH, which is an IPC watcher. Type BBS /A on an unused task on a busy multiline system and you'll soon see its usefulness. It provides an at-a-glance status report on the current activity of up to 20 nodes. I have added a "divider" feature to message and file area lists. When you do a file area list or a message area list (i.e. use the J and ? keys) you can now use dividers to break up the list, perhaps in categories of topic or of mail network affiliation. The syntax is explained in the sample MSGAREA.CTL and FILEAREA.CTL files. For faster speed you can use a preset sysmsg from the language file, or for greater flexibility you can specify an external filename for each divider. I have also added an "automatic area number" feature to MFB.EXE and MMB.EXE. By using the @NEXT keyword instead of an area number (e.g. filearea @next instead of filearea 650) you can have MFB or MMB automatically assign the area the number that comes after the area number of the previous area. You can also instruct MMB or MFB to automatically increment areas by amounts other than one. The dedication and vigilance of the NanoBBS beta testers has turned up many elusive and annoying bugs which have been eliminated in this version. The list of things that just plain work better than in 1.14 is long and distinguished. Suffice it to say that while NanoBBS 1.14 was a good stable product, 1.16 is far better. Many strings in ENGLISH.TXL have been updated, and several new ones have been added to service new features. Unless you've totally customized your English language file, I strongly recommend that you simply replace your old language files with the ones in this archive. Simply copy ENGLISH.UPD over the existing ENGLISH.TXL and ENGLISH.RPD over ENGLISH.RXL and recompile by typing NCOMP ENGLISH. For the benefit of third party utility developers, the structures are now included. ---------------------------------------------------------------- September 13, 1995 (NANO114.ZIP) Firstly, this version of NanoBBS has slightly different structures from 1.12 and previous versions. I was tempted to make this version 1.2 or even 2.0 because of the structure changes, but there really aren't enough new features to warrant such a big jump in version numbers. Anyway, to the point, you will have to delete *.DAT from your BBS directory and recompile everything. Just run NCOMP on all your node config files and everything should be fine. If you get a runtime error when you run the BBS after this, try again. If you still get the error, call me. Have the error number and address handy - the BBS will display these for you and may even log them if the error isn't a total catastrophe! If you upgrade your BBS using INSTALL.EXE, the install program should take care of all this for you. Secondly, [sysmsg 1192] has been changed and the UPDLNG program won't change it (that's not the language updater's function... yet!). So, you'll need to get a text editor, and cut & paste sysmsg 1192 from the .UPD and .RPD files to your .TXL and .RXL files and then recompile with NCOMP. This, of course, only applies to existing installations - if you have never installed NanoBBS before you don't need to worry about this. In other developments, the multi-node communication code has been strengthened for greater reliability. The BBS is now much less likely to exit with a runtime error when a file sharing collision occurs. Your callers might occasionally experience a pause of up to two seconds, especially in NanoCHAT - this is likely the new crash protection code doing its job! Also, the BBS now handles "free" files much better. They're now free in byte count as well as time, before this version only the time was free. Also, the BBS now hides the "/b" in FILES.BBS used to indicate a free file. UFO "labels" can now be up to 16 characters in length. Prior to version 1.14, UFO tokens had to be exactly 2 characters. This is a big improvement over [label BF] and [goto BF] - now you can put [label bigfat] or [goto bullfudge]. Labels are case insensitive. NanoBBS no longer updates lastreads when checking for personal email. The BBS no longer skips ratio checking on CD-ROM downloads. The BBS can now handle even more strange versions of FILES.BBS. For example, on some really wacky CDs, FILES.BBS includes file dates and sizes, with the file size working backward until it actually touches the filename, like this: SMALFILE.ZIP 50065 94-01-01 This is a smaller file. FILENAME.ZIP1678082 95-01-01 This is a file. Previously, NanoBBS would deem FILENAME.ZIP1678082 a "missing" file. Now, it detects this occurrence and splits it up, neatly displaying the file size (or not, if you have {correctly} specified the PCBSTYLE keyword in your filearea.ctl). There are several more CD-ROMs included in the example control files. The high speed file searches are totally rewritten. The file area file has a new structure so the file areas MUST be recompiled using the new MFB.EXE. Also run BBS /F after MFB has been run! The NANOBBS.HDX and NANOBBS.HXA files are obsolete and can be deleted now. The new MASTER.FIL generated by BBS /F is larger but it is a plain ASCII file and delivers comparable speed on new-file searches and filename searches, and VASTLY GREATER speed on description searches! This rewrite eliminates the remaining extended description display bugs and all runtime errors associated with description searches! And it's a whole lot smaller in code size too! If you experience weird wrapping problems with the extended descriptions in the file lists, add a ~, embedded keyword to the beginning of [sysmsg 603] and [sysmsg 604] in all your language files and then recompile them with NCOMP. ~, forces a carriage return if the cursor is not on the leftmost column already. If you are installing NanoBBS for the first time you need not concern yourself with this. There are two new NanoCHAT features: Paging and Telegrams. Additionally, many of the most recent bug fixes in the TommCHAT door have now been applied to NanoCHAT. If you have multinode enabled, I think your callers will really appreciate these new features - mine do! These features are available from within NanoCHAT, or from the [W]ho menu, or they can be inserted into UFO files. File Flagging is now much faster thanks to a last-200-files list buffer. Most of the time, users will no longer have to wait for NanoBBS to search the whole index file when flagging a file or adding it to the batch from the batch menu. The BBS will first search an in-memory list of up to 200 most recently listed files, and only if that fails to turn up anything will the BBS attempt a global search of MASTER.FIL. A new bug, where the Flagging option was absent from the More prompt in file lists and searches, is now fixed. Prior to this version, if a caller entered a message and then aborted it without saving, the BBS wouldn't resume the clock if you had POSTFREEZETIME active. Now it does. Finally, but not least, a bug wherein the BBS sometimes wouldn't translate the COMSPEC into %C properly (when running doors) has been fixed. Many more doors should now work properly than did before. ---------------------------------------------------------------- August 11, 1995 (NANO112A.ZIP) A minor bugfix: previously, if the /t command line switch was used with no parameter it would behave as if it had received /t0 (zero minutes remaining). Now, if there is no numeric parameter associated with this switch, the switch is ignored. Also an inconsistency in REGISTER.DOC has been clarified. NanoBBS is $60US for two nodes and $25US for each node above that (excepting the temporary price reduction from August 8 to October 31, 1995) ---------------------------------------------------------------- August 9, 1995 (NANO112.ZIP) After 14 public betas, we have eliminated a lot of elusive problems. All known bugs regarding global new scans are now fixed. File searches and listings are now much smoother. SysMsg 703 in the language files has been fixed - although the language updater won't update it. Use a text editor to cut & paste the fixed SysMsg 703 from the .UPD and .RPD files to your existing .TXL and .RXL files respectively. Several formerly mysterious file sharing error bugs are now fixed. A bug with /ks in NanoCHAT (the system info c0 command) where it reported -1 bytes free is now fixed. The line counter has been greatly improved and now accounts for unintentionally wrapped lines. Numerous very silly glitches in the distribution archive have been fixed. New features include: There are now 32 user "keys" or "flags" instead of 16. Additionally, the flags are edited and displayed much more nicely in the user editor than before. There is a new "Review New Users" feature in the user editor. This lets you examine new user accounts and elect to either promote them to a preset level, delete them, edit them, or skip them for later review. If your system gets a lot of new callers every day, you'll really appreciate this feature! New code has been added to accommodate a few non-standard FILES.BBS files I have encountered on several CD-ROMs. The new tokens in FILEAREA.CTL will allow you to run many CD-ROMs of questionable compatibility virtually straight out of the box! There are now five example include files illustrating the use of these tokens, and with only some paths to be changed you could use the examples directly with the CD's they are designed for (Night Owl 15 and 16, Monster Media 10, PC-Sig 14 and The Hacker Chronicles ][). There is now an INCLUDE directive in CONFIG.EXE, MMB.EXE and MFB.EXE configuration programs. This will make it much easier to rotate CD-ROMs and will allow you to create "global" configuration files to simplify setting up multi-node systems. There is now true support for non-disclosed gender. Assuming you have set gender as an optional user field, users may choose, during the new-user application process, to protect the privacy of that information by not disclosing the gender. Non-disclosure is treated by NanoBBS as a third gender. Thus, undisclosed users cannot access message areas that are restricted to women only or to men only. You may want to apprise your callers of this fact before they apply for access. The docs have also been overhauled. To be different (NOT to be politically correct!), all personal pronouns are now in the female gender (grin). I did a series of search-replace macros, so it's unlikely I missed anything, but if you notice any serious grammatical or spelling errors (NOT stylistic warts) let me know. The non-FOSSIL serial support has finally been fully implemented! So far, beta testing has been done only with a USR Sportster V.32bis internal modem, but the results are very solid. NanoBBS supports up to COM16 by itself; my alpha testing so far has encompassed COM1 and COM2 only. You can set non-standard addresses and IRQs for any of the 16 ports. If no port config has been set (i.e. if you're using a NODE1.CTL that came with an earlier version) NanoBBS will default to using settings that will work with virtually every COM1 and COM2 in the world and with many internal modems on COM3 and COM4 (assuming their IRQs mirror those of COM1 and COM2). See the docs and NODE1.CTL for configuration examples and information. And yes, by overwhelming popular demand, the entire installation process has been totally rewritten! You can now specify which directory to install NanoBBS to, and the installer program will even modify your NODE1.CTL and NODE2.CTL files to suit whichever path you choose for your BBS's "home" directory! Of course, it will still detect an existing copy of NanoBBS and take pains to upgrade it without overwriting your existing configuration and custom files. It will also detect pathing problems and offer suggestions if a problem occurs. There have been many more features and improvements since the last non-beta release - please read the .DOC files and have a look at the new configuration files to see all of them! ---------------------------------------------------------------- May 24, 1995 (NPTC110B.ZIP) This is a bug-fix patch for 1.10. Shortly after the release of 1.10 a few important bugs were reported; this set of replacement executables should alleviate these problems. If you've had strange lockups that never used to happen, or if you couldn't run doors, or if your user file exploded to 16 megs, you need this patch! ---------------------------------------------------------------- May 13, 1995 (NANO110.ZIP) This is a public general release of version 1.10. A freak hangup bug has been corrected. A new config token "HIDESYSOP" which refrains from including sysop logons in user-viewable logs, has been added. The docs have been updated. Some default textfiles have been changed (un-THC'd). The NNS files and bogus licence violations are toast - I've gone to a completely different, much more stable licence enforcement system! Also all of the cosmetic features (such as the $ info) which had been lost in the crash last month are now restored! ---------------------------------------------------------------- May 9, 1995 (NBETA045.ZIP) This beta is in response to a chronic problem reported by beta tester Don St. Germain. It seems there was a place in the QWK packer where it could possibly hang if the user got impatient and dropped carrier while the packet was assembling. (I hope) this is now fixed... Also, NanoBBS has a new feature - it can now automatically add the name of the uploader to an uploaded file so you and your users will know who uploaded it! To this end, a new CONFIG token has been added - SHOWUPLOADER, when active, will tell NanoBBS that, after a user uploads and describes a file, the user's username should be added to the end of the description, e.g. "Uploaded by: {UserName}". ---------------------------------------------------------------- May 2, 1995 (NBETA044.ZIP) NEd (NanoBBS Full Screen Editor) now has a Ctrl-A key which inserts a space into the current line at the cursor position. A runtime PagePlay and a bunch of page tunes are now included. PAGEPLAY.DOC explains how to create the tunes and use PAGEPLAY.EXE to test them without having to load up the whole BBS. PagePlay itself is a stand-alone utility which, in its full implementation, can also play and convert tunes for other BBS software. The two hardcoded tunes are PAGE.PPL (played when a user pages) and SOS.PPL (played when a fatal error occurs). Any other PagePlay tune can be played most anywhere through the use of the [pageplay] UFO keyword. TUNES.ZIP contains the tunes that come with PagePlay. Give them a try, some are very good, others are quite short and designed specifically to be used as sysop pages or error/warning messages. The UFO [ghostpost] and [ghostpostp] keywords are back! ---------------------------------------------------------------- April 30, 1995 (NBETA043.ZIP) There have been many improvements made since the release of 1.01a. Due to problems with the beta team, I have decided to go with a public beta process. Therefore NBETA043.ZIP is now available, fully functional. Among the improvements, Zmodem now tries multiple times to initiate a download instead of just once; the new-email scan problem is fixed once and for all; and several new UFO tokens have been added. --------------------------------------------------------------- January 20, 1995 Many little improvements have been made, with an impressive cumulative effect. Most areas of the BBS have been sped up and streamlined, RIP cosmetics are better now, terrific speed gains in displaying ASCII/ANSI/RIP files have been made (almost twice as fast as in NANO100C!), the QWK and new-email scans are much faster (and more resilient), much more intelligent extension searching is used on ASCII/ANSI/RIP files (see the docs!), and a few new system textfiles have been added - a NEWS file, and ULPOLICY and DLPOLICY which state your BBS's policies on uploading and downloading, as a reminder to users. There's also a new "S"earch command at the file menu. It is like the "F"ind command except that it also searches FILES.BBS descriptions (with a tradeoff in speed). ---------------------------------------------------------------- January 2, 1995 Additional path-checking code and general bulletproofing has been incorporated into today's release. Note: The config file has had three new options added. Because of this, the configuration record structure has been modified. This, incidentally, is why I haven't released the structures yet. However, YOU MUST RUN CONFIG AGAIN BEFORE YOU CAN RUN THE BBS. This is because the new structure is larger than the old one, and this will cause a "Runtime Error 100" UNLESS YOU RUN CONFIG FIRST! Here, as a reminder, are a few examples: CONFIG NODE1 CONFIG NODE2 CONFIG NODE5.CTL /Q Also, a new feature has been added. It is called "File Groups." File Groups are a feature that will make it easier for your users to find specific file areas if you have a lot of them. For example, on THC Freedom Online, the 240+ file areas had been a source of confusion for many users. The solution, of course, is to re-organize them into areas of general interest. That's just what file groups do. When a user gets a list of file areas (i.e. when s/he hits "?" after using the "J"ump File Area command) the BBS will first present a list of file GROUPS, instead of the full list of areas. The user can then select one of these groups, and when a group is selected, a list of file areas is presented which is limited to the areas in the group. So, for example, you could define a group called "Game Programs", and indicate that all of your file areas which have anything to do with games are part of the group. This group might have a dozen areas in it, but if you have hundreds of areas already, you'll have made it MUCH easier for the user to find all the games areas. To define groups, simply add a "FILEGROUP" definition to your FILEAREA.CTL file. There are several examples of this included in the FILEAREA.CTL that comes with this release of NanoBBS. To add a file area to a group, simply add the "GROUP" command to each file area definition in FILEAREA.CTL. For example, if you have a "Game Programs" group defined as group 2, then you would add the line GROUP 2 ... to areas like "Latest Game Releases", "Game Scenery", "Game Hints and Cheats", "Windows Games", "CD-ROM Games" etc. Make sure you run CONFIG or MFB after you've made changes to your FILEAREA.CTL, including adding or modifying File Groups. It is important to note that file groups are OPTIONAL - you have to add the statement "USES FILEGROUPS" to your NODE1.CTL file (and other node config files) in order for them to be used; otherwise NanoBBS will use the old fashioned all-areas listing. ---------------------------------------------------------------- December 18, 1994 New code has been added that was promised in the December 16th update. If the IPCPATH directory does not exist and NanoBBS cannot create it, then interprocess communications and all functions which use them are shut off. An attempt to perform IPC functions on a nonexistent directory would cause a runtime error 003. ---------------------------------------------------------------- December 17, 1994 A cosmetic bug has been corrected. If the user tries to change to a file area that exists but that s/he does not have access to, the error reported is "Specified MESSAGE area does not exist." It should read "Specified FILE area does not exist." This is now fixed. ---------------------------------------------------------------- December 16, 1994 It has come to my attention that some sysops are experiencing a RUNTIME ERROR 003 at logon. This is caused by NanoBBS trying to use an IPC directory that does not, or cannot, exist. IPCs are inter-process communications which are used in the NanoCHAT teleconferencing system. If you experience this error, there are two ways you can correct it. (1) If you are running a single node system or if you don't want to use NanoCHAT, comment out the "multiline" statement in NODE1.CTL (and all other node configuration files you may have). This will disable the code that causes the error. (2) Ensure that the IPCPATH directory points to a drive and directory that actually exists on your system. It should be a RAM disk. NanoBBS will try to create this directory at startup. If the IPCPATH directory exists and is valid, this error cannot occur. I shall add code in a future release which disables the multi-line chat features automatically if NanoBBS cannot find or create the IPC path. ---------------------------------------------------------------- If you have technical questions or comments on NanoBBS, please forward them to the author, Gerald Albion, through one of the following channels: Mail: Whirlwind Software P.O. Box 5874 Victoria, B.C. Canada V8R 6S8 email: ue075@freenet.victoria.bc.ca Fidonet: 1:340/26 BBS: +1 604 361 4549 (300-33600 bps, 24 hours) Voice: +1 604 361 1820