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RELEASE.DOC
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1996-07-14
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Telegard Bulletin Board Software, v3.02
RELEASE Documentation
Copyright (C) 1996 by Tim Strike
All Rights Reserved.
These are just notes that I have compiled over time with regards to
the many questions I get asked daily. This is not a F.A.Q., but
is a way of explaining how and why certain things work the way they
do with Telegard. It will be continually updated. New topics (from
release to release) will be marked with a "|" pipe character along
the left margin.
REFERENCE FILES AND DOCUMENTATION
* Telegard includes some small reference files in /notes/, all
with the extension of *.REF. These files cover various aspects
of the system, included ACS commands, COLOUR commands, MCI
codes, MENU commands, SCRIPT commands, SYSOP FUNCTION keys, TEXT
files and the command line options for Telegard.
* Telegard documentation has not been completed at the time of
the release of gamma-3. Our goal is to complete the
documentation for the final 3.0 release. In the mean time,
Kevin Watkins has done a fine job on the pre-release
documentation, which is distributed in it's current form as
TELEGARD.DOC.
UTILITIES
* INDEX.EXE was not designed to be run while a user is online;
this is for several reasons, but main reason is it modifies
files which the online user will access at some point. Indexing
should *ONLY* be run when a user is *NOT* online. This goes for
single or multinode setups.
* USERS.EXE allows you to pack away deleted users (unlike 2.7,
Telegard 3.0 does not automatically reuse deleted accounts).
USERS.EXE also allows sorting of the userbase -- first it sorts
by security level, and then it sorts by user name within each
security level echelon.
MAINTENANCE
* Telegard is, for the most part, self-maintaining. The index
files are designed to work without interruption and most of the
data files automatically handle packing and removal of unused
records.
That said, the Telegard index files do require some maintenance
to maintain top performance. It is recommended that you:
(i) Run INDEX SORT ALL on a nightly schedule
(ii) Run INDEX BUILD ALL on a weekly schedule, if not
every couple of days
LANGUAGES
* Telegard 3.0 no longer has an internal strings list. All
strings are stored in an external language file (the default of
which is ENGLISH.TXT in /language/). To change this file, use
a text editor which does *not* strip spaces from the end of a
line (Qedit with said option disabled works well). After
changing any language file, you must recompile it. From your
/language/ directory, run "C:\BBS\LANGUAGE\MAKELANG <language>"
and this will compile your new language strings.
* The language system is fairly extensive, and just about every
user-viewable string can be configured in any manner you like.
For more information, see the header in ENGLISH.TXT, and don't
forget about the *.REF files in /notes/.
MESSAGES
* Telegard uses JAM and Squish message bases because they are
standardized. Standardized formats allow external utilities to
easily work with Telegard, without the need of a conversion
program (/a la TELEMAIL). For these reasons as well, I have not
taken the time to develop a message base packer for Telegard --
it's development time that I just don't have.
There are several external packers available -- some with
freeware/evaluation packages, others with shareware packages:
Gecho 1.10+ Registered Only MBUTIL JAM
FastEcho 1.45a Shareware FEUTILS JAM
Fmail 1.02g Shareware FTOOLS JAM
Squish 1.11 Shareware SQPACK Squish
* File attaches are enabled in Telegard, but the popular JAM
tossers do not support or do not correctly support incoming
and outgoing messages. I suggest limiting attaches to local
bases *ONLY* for now.
* Editing of messages will *not* be added to Telegard. I have my
personal reasons, and while I realize that it is an often
requested feature, I refuse to submerge my values for others on
everything -- I will implement some features I don't agree with,
this won't be one of them!
Setup an external SysOp editor (TimEd, GoldEd, etc) to the
editing of messages if you so desire. Or export/capture the
message, delete the post, and resend it.
| * Message bases only update the lastread pointer if using the
| NEWSCAN option. This is done *on purpose*. Reading forwards
| through a base, or for that matter, reverse, would cause the
| highread to be set when it wasn't meant to be set. This is not
| a bug, and infact, is a rather useful and powerful feature
| (which I won't change now or in the future -- sorry).
* Internal full screen editing will *not* be added to Telegard in
the near future. My development time is limited to new features
-- since many FSE programs already exist, some with extended TG3
support, I refuse to re-invent the wheel while I have other
areas of concern.
* However, Telegard works quite well with external FSE programs!
Telegard 3.0 has been tested with IceEdit (v1.50, Ice
Technologies, 1:259/912), Gedit (v2.10, The Developers Network,
1:170/303) and QuickEd (v1.nn, Dror Tirosh). Other FSE programs
have not been tested, and may not work that well with Telegard
(i.e. TopEd and it's awkward multinode configuration/expectations)
PROTOCOLS AND ARCHIVERS (and for that matter, MODEMS)
* Telegard uses an advanced setup mechanism for protocols,
archivers and modems. We provide working setups which have been
tested for the most popular products, and allow you to quickly
import these setups and us as-is. Most of these setups do not
require any form of modification.
To import the release setups for protocols, archivers and
modems, goto the respective area, select the item to define,
select option (!)Definition Files, select (I)mport and select
the correct item to import. Telegard gamma-3 also prompts when
adding/deleting these items if you wish to import a pre-define
definition.
If at all possible, DO THIS. It will save you many headaches
when trying to setup these external programs on your system.
* LHA troubleshooting -- If you are using LHA/LZH on your system,
make sure you run a version which is compatible with extracting
to a specific path. I personally use LHA 2.05. If you have
problems unpacking mail/files from an LHA archive -- then try
changing ~AP to ~AP\ in the definition, and if it *still*
doesn't work, try removing ~AP entirely from the definition.
* RAR troubleshooting -- RAR encrypted archive handling (archives
w/ file pa