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Centurion InfoMail 1.00 An Information-by-Netmail Utility by Damian Walker Centurion, Fidonet 2:2502/666 Centurion InfoMail 1.00 CONTENTS 1. WHAT IS INFOMAIL? 1.1. Program Description 1.2. Program Requirements 1.3. Disclaimer 1.4. Acknowledgements 2. SETTING UP INFOMAIL 2.1. Unpacking InfoMail 2.2. General Setup Parameters 2.3. Setting up Information Packs 3. USING INFOMAIL 3.1. Running InfoMail on Your Mailer 3.2. Addressing InfoMail 4. REFERENCE 4.1. Command Line Switches 4.2. Version History 5. DEVELOPER'S GUIDE Contents 2 Centurion InfoMail 1.00 1. WHAT IS INFOMAIL? 1.1. Program Description InfoMail is a small utility which responds automatically to requests for information via routed netmail. It runs on just about any MS-DOS based PC, and interfaces with FrontDoor and compatible front-end mailers. The idea behind this program to allow anyone linked to the Fidonet mail network to offer information about themselves, the services they offer, or general information about a subject they are interested in. Possible uses for this are descriptions and adverts for BBS's and other Fidonet systems, echo descriptions and rules, small FAQ files and software information. These are by no means the only uses that this software may be put to; its use is limited only by the imagination. InfoMail will respond to netmails sent to 'InfoMail', or another name defined by you, at an address defined by you (usually your own Fidonet address), and will use the subject line of the incoming message as the details of which information pack is required (InfoMail can keep track of up to 32767 information packs). 1.2. System Requirements This program will run under MSDOS or 100% compatible operating system. Although the slowest machine tested was a 386/16, it should run on any PC with more than 128k of memory. The program has been tested on MS-DOS 6.0, but the author sees no reason why it should not work on MS-DOS 3.0 or above, and possibly even MS-DOS 2.0. The program is also designed to interface with the FrontDoor 2.12 mailer. Thus it is useless without this mailer or a compatible mailer/mail processor combination. This includes all mailers which store their inbound and outbound netmail in *.MSG format, complete with zone and point information. 1.3. Disclaimer **** IMPORTANT **** No warranty or guarantee is provided with this program. While the author has attempted to ensure that the program is fully operational and bug-free, no responsibilty can be taken by the author in the event that damage or inconvenience is caused by the program. Run InfoMail at your own risk. What is InfoMail? 3 Centurion InfoMail 1.00 1.4. Acknowledgements Thanks go to the following people for help in the development of InfoMail: Bill Birrell, 2:2504/200, for beta testing, and for many invaluable messages and snippets of code in the C_ECHO, without which the author would have had much more difficulty progressing to the level of proficiency required to produce this program. Bill Welch (2:254/222), for beta testing. Steven Holme (2:2503/216), Kelvin Phillips (2:2502/666.4), Peter Barley (2:2502/666.15), and Andy Altoft (2:2502/666.2107), for beta testing. The following people helped in the development without even knowing it: Joaquim Homrighausen, 2:270/17, for writing FrontDoor. Randy Bush, 1:105/6, for the document FTS-0001. Anyone who ever wrote 'send an email to info@x.y.z for information' or similar, as such references are what provided the idea for this program. What is InfoMail? 4 Centurion InfoMail 1.00 2. SETTING UP INFOMAIL 2.1. Unpacking InfoMail InfoMail will be supplied as a standard ZIP or ARJ file, or perhaps compressed with some other archiver. It has no subdirectories, so to unpack it you just have to create a directory and unpack the files into the directory using the appropriate archiver. 2.2. General Setup Parameters After unpacking InfoMail, it must be set up with a few global parameters before it will operate. To set up InfoMail in this way, call it up with the following command line: INFOMAIL -S You can use a slash ("/") instead of a hyphen ("-") if you prefer. InfoMail is case insensitive throughout, so all command line switches and text strings may be supplied in upper, lower or mixed case without affecting the outcome of searches and comparisons. Upon running InfoMail's setup utility you should be presented with a window containing the following: ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Netmail .\ │ │ Name InfoMail │ │ Address 2:2502/666.0 │ │ Kill No │ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ As you can see, some default values are set up for you. These are unlikely to be to your satisfaction, unless you run the utility from your netmail directory and take over the running of the author's node. So, you will have to change the values as follows. Netmail: This is your netmail directory. Typically, you will change this to something like \FD\MAIL. InfoMail will capitalise this for you, and it will add a trailing backslash if you have not done this yourself. It will not, however, add a drive letter. If you prefer, you can use Unix-style slashes in your pathname, although you will have to add the trailing slash yourself otherwise InfoMail will add a DOS-style backslash to the end, which in all probability is not what you want. Name: Currently set at InfoMail, and it is suggested that you leave this as it is in order to standardise the use of InfoMail. This is the name by which your InfoMail server will be known; messages are sent to this name (and replied to from this name). Setting up InfoMail 5 Centurion InfoMail 1.00 If you changed it, for instance, to InfoServer, then users would have to write their messages to InfoServer at your address, instead of InfoMail. Address: This is your Fidonet address, or perhaps a point AKA if so desired. Messages must be sent to this address if InfoMail is expected to respond to them, and replies will also be sent from this address. Kill: Setting this to Yes will cause outbound messages from InfoMail to carry the Kill flag. This will delete the messages when they leave your system. Setting this field to No prevents the Kill flag from being used, in which case sent messages will just be marked with the 'sent' flag once they depart your system. In this case, your mail processor can shift the sent messages to your Sent Netmail area as with other locally written netmails. This is currently all there is to setting up InfoMail's standard parameters. However, you will have to define some InfoMail documents, or Information Packs, before the program becomes at all useful. 2.3. Setting up Information Packs You can set up any number of Information packs from zero to 32,767. Of course, if you set up no information packs, there is little point to running the InfoMail program at all. To enter the appropriate section of the program, use the command line INFOMAIL -L (L for list) replacing the hyphen for a slash if you prefer, as with the -S option discussed earlier. A window similar to the following will appear. ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Document Filename │ │ ____________________________________________________________ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ The underscore characters represent a bar highlighting a currently empty entry. To edit this entry, press ENTER. You will be asked for two fields, as follows. Setting up InfoMail 6 Centurion InfoMail 1.00 Document: This is a document name by which InfoMail users will know each information pack you offer. It will be used on the subject line of their messages to identify the information pack they wish to receive. As with everything in InfoMail, this is case insensitive, so you can use mixed case without inconveniencing the users. Filename: This is the text file which InfoMail is to send on receipt of a request for this information pack. This entry will be capitalised for you if necessary. You may use Unix-style slashes ("/") instead of backslashes ("\") in the pathname if you prefer. InfoMail will not check at this time whether a given file exists on the disk; it was thought to be more convenient this way, as you can then be allowed to create the documents themselves afterwards without having to respond to irritating error messages. Should you forget to create a text file, and it is requested, the user will be sent a message explaining the problem, along with a request to let you know of your oversight. To remove an entry from the list, highlight its entry and press DEL. An asterisk will appear in the entry, next to the name. Pressing DEL again at this point will remove the asterisk, in effect 'undoing' the delete. All entries thus marked will be removed from the file once you exit the utility. The text files can be produced with any normal text editor, or any program which generates standard ASCII text files. You can use InfoMail in conjunction with other programs to create regularly updated requestable bulletins. However, one point to note is that InfoMail limits documents to just under 8k (7.75k to be exact), and will truncate any longer document when it is requested. This refers to the posted document, not the text file on your system. This limit is imposed to discourage the sending of large volumes of text via routed netmail, which could place an unnecessary burden on your uplinks' systems. Setting up InfoMail 7 Centurion InfoMail 1.00 3. USING INFOMAIL 3.1. Running InfoMail on your Mailer InfoMail is simple to run on points, mailer nodes and BBS's, by simply calling it in one of your normal batch files. No command line parameters are necessary if you call InfoMail from within its own directory. You can call InfoMail from outside its own directory using the -P (for Path) switch, as in the following example: C:\TOOLS\INFOMAIL -PC:\TOOLS which would run InfoMail from any directory or drive, and still allow InfoMail to find its data files. You can add a trailing backslash to the path on the -P switch if you wish, and, as with other options, Unix-style slashes are supported. It is recommended that you run InfoMail after each mail call. If your netmail arrives in compressed form, then you must run InfoMail after an unpacking utility (InfoMail cannot access ARCmail files!) If you import your netmail to your message base then you must run InfoMail _before_ the software which does the importing; InfoMail cannot access a message base, only an inbound-outbound netmail directory. If you receive netmail in compressed form *and* you import it to your message base, then you may have a problem, especially if your mail processor unpacks compressed netmail and imports it with a single command. You may have to investigate your mail processor to see if you can restrict netmail importing to users listed in your user database; this way InfoMail netmails would remain in the netmail directory where InfoMail can find them. Another way of getting around this problem is to create a point address for InfoMail. This is especially useful if you only want to run InfoMail in your nightly maintenance. Another positive side effect in such cases is that FrontDoor will not flash the 'Mail' indicator when incoming InfoMail netmails are waiting in your netmail directory to be processed. 3.2. Addressing InfoMail Addressing messages to InfoMail is an easy matter. All netmails to InfoMail must be in the following format: ================================================================ By: <username>, <useraddress> To: InfoMail, <youraddress> Re: <document> ---------------------------------------------------------------- <message body ignored> ================================================================ Using InfoMail 8 Centurion InfoMail 1.00 <username> and <useraddress> are the user's name and network address as present in all netmails. If you have substituted another name for InfoMail in the setup utility, then this must be used in place of InfoMail in the message To: field. <youraddress> is the netmail address you have defined for InfoMail. <document> is the name of a document as set up in the information pack list utility. InfoMail will respond with one of three things. If <document> is a valid document name, and the corresponding file exists, the file will be sent as the body of a netmail to <username> at <useraddress>. If <document> is a valid document name and the corresponding file does not exist, a message will be sent to the user explaining this fact, and also requesting that they get in touch with you (as discussed in an earlier section). If <document> is not present in your information pack list, the user will be sent a message explaining this, and the user will also be provided with a list of documents which are available. This is useful in the event of a typo, spelling error or other mistake, as the user may verify that the document they want is, or is not, present. Using InfoMail 9 Centurion InfoMail 1.00 4. REFERENCE 4.1. Command Line Switches The following command line switches are available in the current version of InfoMail: -L Loads the information pack list utility, allowing information packs (or documents) to be defined. The text files are created elsewhere using a standard text editor, or any program which generates an ASCII file of suitable size. -P Specifies an alternative path for InfoMail's data files. This allows InfoMail to be run from outside its own directory. The pathname must follow the -P, without an intervening space. Unix-style "/" characters may be used in place of their DOS counterparts. The -P switch can be combined with other switches, namely -S and -L. -S Loads the setup utility, allowing changes to be made to InfoMail's global parameters. The first time this is run, a file will be created with some default settings. -? Requests a concise help screen reminding you of these switches. The slash ("/") can be used for command line switches also, meaning that the above switches can be specified as /L, /P, /S and /?. If these characters are used, you need not use a space after the /L or /S switches. However, due to the fact that Unix-style pathnames are supported, you will need a space after the pathname in a /P or -P switch. 4.2. Version History Version 0.00/1.00 This is the initial version. During development, the following bugs and oversights were spotted by the beta testers: Lack of MSGID, substitution of -C for the -P switch in the help screen and provisional documentation (thanks to Bill Birrell). Truncation of messages when used with Terminate, and a nonsense 'Reading netmail #x' counter when the netmail directory was empty (thanks to Peter Barley). The following improvements were made during development: "/" character allowed for switches, support for the kill/sent flag (both suggested by Bill Birrell), incoming messages deleted (suggested by Steven Holme), and the addition of an assortment of prompts and error messages. Reference 10 Centurion InfoMail 1.00 DEVELOPER'S GUIDE It may seem a little over-the-top to include a developer's guide for such a simple utility, as it is unlikely that anyone will want to write any add-on utilities to service InfoMail and its data files. However, it was decided to include such a section in any case, for the sake of completeness. File Included in the Archive The INFOMAIL.H file has been included for C programmers, so that the setup file and data files may be examined and modified by third-party programs without having to resort to such methods as reverse-engineering. Feel free to include this header file in your own programs. The Setup File The file INFOMAIL.CFG contains the global setup information, and is modified by the setup utility called using INFOMAIL -S. The fields it includes are explained below. Netmail Directory: A 64-byte null-terminated character string. This corresponds to the Netmail field in the setup utility. This field as stored should *always* have a trailing slash or backslash, unless it consists of only a drive letter. InfoMail Name: A 36-character null-terminated character string, corresponding to the Name field in the setup utility. Zone, Net, Node and Point: These are 16-bit integers forming various parts of the netmail address corresponding to the 'Address' field in the setup utility. Kill: A 16-bit integer corresponding to the Kill field in the setup utility. A non-zero value corresponds to a 'Yes,' while a zero value corresponds to 'No.' The Information List File The file INFOMAIL.DAT contains zero or more records, each containing a single entry in the information list editor, usually accessed using INFOMAIL -L. There are two fields, and these are discussed below. Deleted: This is a 16-bit integer, whose value should always be zero, the reason being that 'deleted' records are removed from the info list file on leaving the info list editor. A non-zero value in this field in any record is probably the result of a machine crash or reset after records have been marked for deletion, but before the info list editor was exited properly. Name: The name of the document is a 9-byte null-terminated character string; thus the maximum length of a document name is 8 characters. Developer's Guide 11 Centurion InfoMail 1.00 File: A 64-character null-terminated character string, containing the full path and file name of the information pack referred to by this record. Messages Generated by InfoMail Netmails generated by InfoMail will contain the following kludge lines. ^AINTL: The ^AINTL kludge will always be present. ^AFMPT: Present when the origating address contains a point number other than 0. ^ATOPT: Present when the destination address contains a point number other than 0. ^APID: The program ID. The exact text of the line should be similar to the following: ^APID: InfoMail x.xx where x.xx refers to the version number of the program in use. ^AMSGID: Always present. Developer's Guide 12