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MAXHELP.DOC
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1992-03-07
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Here are some hints for using DoveMail with the Maximus BBS. Sorry I can't
help with all BBS's, but most of us only run one at a time!
Maximus 2.00 lets you declare a message area as Local, Matrix, EchoMail, or
Conference. The latter option does not add a tear line or SEENBY lines to a
message, and that is what you want to use for newsgroup areas.
Obviously, you won't be able to used the squished message format for
newsgroup messages. I wish you could too, but whoever wrote the interface
for squished message bases should try their hand at cryptography. Of course,
it might help if they didn't assume that every programmer in the world writes
in 'C'. If you find a document that explains how to manipulate messages in a
squished message base that's written in plain English, please let me know.
In the meantime, just keep your newsgroup message bases in *.msg format (at
least Maximus lets you use both types interchangeably!). If you really need
the extra space, you can always buy a program like Stacker, or DR_DOS 6.0
which I am told comes with a program similar to Stacker. This will squeeze
everything including your *.msg bases.
In this archive you'll find four files: CONF.BBS and CONF.MEC, and MAIL.BBS
and MAIL.MEC. After looking them over, I suggest you copy these to the
subdir containing your Maximus help files.
The CONF.BBS and CONF.MEC will only be displayed when a user asks for help
while in a "conference" area (as defined in Maximus 2.00). As distributed
there is no help file for conference areas, and therefore no menu selection.
You can fix that by going into your MENUS.CTL file, under the "Menu MESSAGE"
section, and finding the following lines:
Local Display_File D:\Opus\Hlp\Msg Twit "?help"
Matrix Display_File D:\Opus\Hlp\Mail Twit "?help"
Echo Display_File D:\Opus\Hlp\Echo Twit "?help"
Conf Display_File D:\Opus\Hlp\Conf Twit "?help"
The paths may vary on your system, but chances are the last line shown is
missing. Add it to your MENUS.CTL, recompile using SILT and you should be
pretty much all set.
One final thing regarding renumbering. If you use an external renumbering
program like RENUM, you shouldn't have any problem. However, if you use the
MR program supplied with Maximus 2.0, it makes the assumption that there is
no "high water mark" in 1.msg in a Conference area, which is WRONG in this
case. The only way I have found around this problem is to declare each area
TWICE in AREAS.CTL (or whatever you call it on your system), like this:
Area 14
MsgAccess Disgrace
MsgInfo misc.consumers - Consumer interests, product reviews, etc.
MsgName misc.consumers
Conference D:\Msg\M_CONSUM\
Public Only
End Area
Area MCONS
MsgAccess Hidden
MsgName misc.consumers
EchoMail D:\Msg\M_CONSUM\
Renum Days 15
Renum Max 99
End Area
Note that both declarations refer to the same message subdirectory, but the
second is "hidden" so it won't appear on the message menu that you or callers
see. In the "hidden" declaration, we call the area "EchoMail" so that MR
will leave 2.msg alone, and we put out "Renum" statements here. Callers, on
the other hand, see only "Area 14" which is a "Conference" area, meaning that
if they enter a message Maximus won't add a tear line or SEENBY's. This is
kludgey as all get out, but it works.
If you have any other hints for using DoveMail with Maximus, or would like to
prepare a package similar to this one for use with your favorite BBS, please
feel free to contact me about it.
Jack