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PECHO.TXT Thursday, October 11, 1990 Page 1
Pecho
Point Echo Maintenance
Copy Right 1990 by Herbert E. Brown, Jr.
All Rights Reserved
ShareWare Edition
PECHO.TXT Thursday, October 11, 1990 Page 2
Table of Contents
Licesense Agreement.................................ii
Introduction........................................1
Getting Started.....................................1
Configuring Pecho...................................2
Daily Chores........................................4
Sample Session......................................4
Summary.............................................6
Registration Info...................................7
PECHO.TXT Thursday, October 11, 1990 Page 3
LICENSE AGREEMENT
PEcho software product is NOT "Public Domain" and it is NOT
"Freeware". PEcho is a copyrighted software product
developed and owned by Herbert E. Brown Jr. located in
Metairie, Louisiana U. S. A. Herbert E. Brown Jr. grants you
without charge the right to reproduce, distribute and use
copies of this version of my Pecho shareware software
product, subject to the limitations specified below, and on
the express condition that you do not receive any payment,
commercial benefit, or other consideration for such
reproduction or distribution, or change this license
agreement or the following copyright notice which appears in
the software, documentation, user interface, menus and
magnetic media: (C) Copyright 1990 All rights reserved
worldwide.
Limitations: You may make and keep one (1)back-up copy of
the software for your personal use, provided that (i) you
copy all the copyright, trademark, and other information
indicated on the initial screen display (or on the diskette
label, for the registered version disk) onto your backup
diskette label, and (ii) you have registered. Also you may
distribute copies to other persons, but solely for their
evaluation (i.e., to decide whether to continue using the
product and therefore register) and solely for evaluation by
such other persons during that thirty (30) day period. PEcho
must NOT be sold without expressed written consent from
Herbert E. Brown Jr.
The rights to receive any such financial or other benefit,
and to modify the product or employ its components in any
kind of derivative work, are reserved exclusively by Herbert
E. Brown Jr. Support from users enables me to develop
additional features and future versions of the PEcho
product.
Also, please feel free to contribute your ideas regarding
desired additional product features and functionality.
THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED "AS IS" WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE,
PERFORMANCE, OR OTHERWISE; ALL WARRANTIES ARE EXPRESSLY
DISCLAIMED. BY USING THE PECHO PRODUCT, YOU AGREE THAT
NEITHER HERBERT E. BROWN JR. NOR ANY OFFICERS, DIRECTORS,
EMPLOYEES, SHAREHOLDERS, AFFILIATES, OWNERS, OR OTHER
RELATED PARTIES WILL BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY FOR
ANY USE OF (OR INABILITY TO USE) OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS
PRODUCT, OR FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER WHETHER BASED ON
CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE. EVEN IF WE ARE NOTIFIED OF SUCH
POSSIBILITY IN ADVANCE. (SOME STATES DO NOT ALLOW THE
EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES, SO THE FOREGOING LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.)
You may not reverse-engineer, disassemble, modify, decompile
or create derivative works of the product.
PECHO.TXT Thursday, October 11, 1990 Page 4
PEcho v1.0
Introduction
PEcho is a sharware utility designed to allow Fido-Net
Points that use the FTSC *.MSG format to add and delete echo
mail areas. It is designed to be easy to use and easy to
setup. It allows use of a "valid" echo listing to ensure
proper distribution of your echo mail when it is received
and relieves the user of possible errors associated with
creating the required directories and data files. This
release only supports single nodes. Future realeases will
support multiple node points.
Getting Started.
Once the distibution archive is un-compressed, place
Pecho.exe in your point home directory. I.e., if your point
is run from
c:\bbs, place this file there. Pecho.cfg should be placed
in the same directory.
There are a few things you must do in order to get PEcho to
work properly. You will need to double check a few things
to insure that PEcho and your system will work together.
Your Sub-directories.
PEcho makes one assumption about your AREAS file and that is
the length of the names of the sub-directories. PEcho will,
when in operation, use the fisrt 8 characters of the echo
name to create the sub-directory for that echo. This is
important because if you have any echos whose names are
longer than 8 charcaters, but, use less than 8 charcaters in
the sub-directory name, will cause PEcho to ignore your sub-
directory. You MUST check you sub-directories and insure
that they are the maximum length of the name allowed for
that echo. In example, if you are currently recieving an
echo entitled, MUSICIAN'S_SERVICES, which is 19 characters
long, and your sub-directory is called MUSIC for this echo,
you should rename the sub-directory to MUSICIAN. This is
important when it comes time for deleting the echos.
Configuring PEcho for your POINT.
PEcho's configuration file is well documeneted, but, some
explanation is needed here. First, and most important, is
that each line of the configuartion file has a comment line,
the configuartion constant, and a blank line seperating the
next comment line. PEcho is expecting this format and any
deviation will cause PEcho not to operate properly.
The first constant is the name of your point, enter the name
of your point as it is found in your origin line.
PECHO.TXT Thursday, October 11, 1990 Page 5
; Name of Point
Your Point Name
Enter your name as it is found in your AREAS file.
; Sysop of Point
Your Name
Enter your PRIVATE NET ADDRESS. This can be found in either
your message editor configuration file or your mailer
configuration file, such as BINKLEY.CFG.
; Your PrivateNet address
30000/10
Enter your boss's net/node address that you get your mail
from.
; Your Boss's net/node address
396/5
If your boss node is using AREAFIX or some other hub echo
manager, enter the password that is needed to access it.
; Your Password to your boss node
ghyjikl
Enter the path to your net-mail directory here. Do not add
a "\" at the end.
; Net-Mail message path
e:\bbs\msg\net
Enter the path to your AREAS file. Again, do not enter a
"\" at the end.
; Path to AREAS file
e:\bbs
Enter the name of the AREAS file that you use.
; Name of AREAS file
AREAS.BBS
Enter the name that allows you acces to your boss's hub echo
software.
; Pseudonym of boss
Areafix
Enter a path to the valid echo listing. Do not enter a "\"
at the end.
PECHO.TXT Thursday, October 11, 1990 Page 6
; Path to vaild echo listing
e:\bbs\txt
Enter the name of the file to use as the valid echo listing.
; Valid echo listing file name
AREAS.SS
Enter the string to use for your renumbering utility.
; Message utility default string
ReNum -d 3 -r
Enter the path to the message areas. Do not add a "\" at
the end.
; path to message areas
e:\bbs\msg
About your DAILY chores batch file. Normaly, without PEcho,
you would have your daily batch file renumber and delete old
messages in your echos. However, with the use of PEcho,
updating your daily file could be very tediuos. So, to
simplify things, PEcho writes a seperate batch file which
you should CALL from your daily batch file. In your daily
batch file, you should use a word processor and block out
the sections that renumber your messages and write this
block to a batch file called RE_NUM.BAT. Also, it is
important to know that PEcho in know way upadtes your net
mail area. So, you should have at least a call to renumber
this area, before you call the RE_NUM.BAT batch file that
renumbers your messages.. i.e..
daily.bat...
..
..
renum -d 3 -r e:\bbs\net
call re_num.bat
..
..
etc.
PECHO.TXT Thursday, October 11, 1990 Page 7
Using MREN.
PEcho partialy supports MREN. MREN does not need a line in
a batch file for every echo found. It also can imbed a
command word in your AREAS file to support varied
renumbering schemes. Therfore, if MREN is specified, PEcho
does not write a seperate batch file for renumbering your
echos. Instead, you should leave your daily batch routine
for this job. You may also imbed commands that MREN
supports in your AREAS, but, PEcho will ignore them, both
reading and writing to your AREAS file. This will be
remedied in future updates of PEcho.
A sample session
Start by typing PECHO at the DOS prompt. You will see the
opening screen and a message indicating the echo areas are
being loaded and sorted into memory. Once the listing is
loaded into memory, the main menu will appear. From here
you will be able to ADD, STOP, START, and REMOVE echos.
Start by selecting 1, ADD Echo.
PEcho works by allowing the you to choose from a list of
what echos you wish to add. Simply use the up and down
arrow keys, the page up or page down keys, or the home and
end keys to manuever through the listing. By hitting the
space bar on the highlighted selection, a user can mark the
echos to be added.
Once a choice is made, the echo name is placed in an "ADD"
window so that the you can make more selections if so desired.
Once you are happy with the selections, simply hit the "esc"
key once and a status line will appear on the bottom of the
screen. This status line gives you further instructions on
how to process the additions. If you have made an error in
a selection, i.e., an echo you don't want, simply hit the
space bar once and the main selection window will disappear.
The first entry in the "ADD" window will be highlighted and
you can then move to other selections and delete them by
pressing the space bar, if so desired. Once you are
satisified with your new selections, simply press the Enter
key and your selections will automaticaly be added to your
AREAS file and your message maintenance batch file will be
updated, as well. The necessary subdirectories will also be
created and the net-mail message will be placed in your net-
mail subdirectory for your boss node.
One added feature is if you accidently choose an echo you
already have, a window will pop up to the left of the
PECHO.TXT Thursday, October 11, 1990 Page 8
selections window and it will automaticaly highlight the
echo that is trying to be duplicated. Stopping and Starting
echos.
The menu choice Stop an echo was designed to stop echos
either permanently or temporarily. By selecting this menu
choice you will see a window on the left side of your screen
pop up. It will contain all your currently ACTIVE echos.
An ACTIVE echo is defined here as an echo that is currently
in your AREAS file. If an echo is not listed in your AREAS
file, it is considered in-active. As in adding an echo, you
may use any of the editing keys available, i.e., up cursor,
down cursor, etc., to move through this listing.
By pressing the space bar, you will mark the currently
highlighted echo for stopping. As before, once you are
happy with the selections, pressing ESC will bring up a
status line with more information. By hitting Space, you be
able to delete these selections from the listing, or by
pressing Enter, you will confirm your selections and the
echos will be stopped by a net-mail message to your boss
node. This DOES NOT DELETE THE ECHO! This simply gets "the
ball rolling" sort of speaking. The message must be sent to
your boss node AND you should wait until your boss node
responds with a message indicating the feed was stopped.
In most cases, you will be sent a message the very next time
you connect to your boss node. Once you have recieved the
message(s) indicating the feed was stopped, you may then
either re-start the echo at a later date, or, you may REMOVE
that echo by selecting menu choice number four from the main
menu.
Echos names that are stopped, for whatever reason, are kept
in a text database file residing in your home mail directory.
You could conceivable add to this file with a wordprocessor
if you wish, however, take care in insuring that data
integrity is maintained. I.e., if you add an echo to this
listing, make sure that an associated sub-directory exists
and that the name is either the whole or eight characters of
the name of the subdirectory, whichever is greater. In
other words, if the echo name is 20 charcters long, be sure
and use the first 8 characters of this name as the sub-
directory name. If you add to this file you will also have
to insure that the area exist in your AREAS file, as well.
When you remove an echo, your AREAS file will be updated, as
well as your message maintenance batch file.
PECHO.TXT Thursday, October 11, 1990 Page 9
* IMPORTANT! *
If you have any messages that you wish to keep, make copies,
backups, or whatever before choosing this option. ALL
message files and lastread pointer files will be deleted and
you will NOT be prompted to stop this.
In summary.
Check your sub-directory names and make sure that the
lengths of the names are as prescibed above.
There should be a name in your AREAS file and a coresponding
name in your AREAS file.
Set up the configuaration file to your needs.
If using RENUM, create a message maintenance batch file from
your daily chores file.
Also, if you make a mistake in setting up, adding an echo or
deleting an echo, etc., you should delete any messages that
are sent to your net mail area. Adjust your AREAS file
accordingly, and adjust your message maintenance batch file.
You may also need to create/delete sub-directories as
needed.
About the valid listing file. You may use any text file that
lists any or all the echos from your hub. As an example,
one is provided. By the time you get to this file, it may
be dated. The file requirements for this file is a plain
ASCII file with a carriage return after each name in the
file. One name per line.
PECHO.TXT Thursday, October 11, 1990 Page 10
Registration
This is a shareware product. If you find it usefull, please
register it. No part of this program is hindered in any
way. It is a fully functional program, as it stands.
Registered users will have preference in updates and new
releases, as well. The cost of registration is only $10.00
USA currency only.
Please send check or money orders only to:
Herbert Brown
616 Oriole Street
Metairie LA 70003
Please include your US Mailing address or other Snail Mail
address, Fido-net address, and a telephone number in cases
were technical support would be needed.
FidoNet is trademark of IFNA
AREAFIX is copy righted by Greg Dawson
Renum is copy righted by Bob Hartman and Spark Software
Mren is copy righted by David Nugent and Unique Computing P/L