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MAILSCAN: v1.01 by Stephen de Plater
27 July, 1991 GT Network Address 302/1
MAILSCAN
by Stephen de Plater
GT Network Address: 302/1
Voice: +61 2 976-2801
Data: +61 2 977-2013
======================================================================
0. REVISION LIST
======================================================================
VERSION: Release Date: Comments:
------- ------------ --------------------------------------
1.00 April 23, 1991 First Release.
1.01 July 27, 1991 Minor change to accomodate the new
GTMDIR format (groups).
DOCUMENTATION CHANGE: Note the new VOICE
number here at Kangaroo Korner. The BBS
number remains unchanged.
======================================================================
1. COPYRIGHT
======================================================================
MAILSCAN is not placed in the Public Domain. The copyright is retained
and the software is provided on licence:
You are free to use and make as many copies of this program as you
wish. You may also give it away to any nodelisted GT Sysop who wants
it, provided:
1. No fee is charged.
2. This archive is distributed intact.
3. You register the package with an OZNET registration
centre.
>> page 1 <<
MAILSCAN: v1.01 by Stephen de Plater
27 July, 1991 GT Network Address 302/1
Beta code should be treated exactly as full releases are treated.
That is, beta code may also be distributed to any nodelisted Sysop
without restriction. You should be aware of course, that beta code
may not be as refined as the full release versions would be, and what
you see there may change when the beta tag is removed.
======================================================================
REGISTRATION
======================================================================
A new registration scheme now applies to all OZNET software.
Regardless of any previous registration, this program now requires
individual installation for each BBS using it.
There is still NO fee involved at all. DO NOT send any money!
Registration simply involves obtaining from me a CRC code which
matches your BBS name. You may do this at any of the OZNET
registration centres:
Kangaroo Korner 302/001 Stephen de Plater
The Black Hole 302/003 Ken Thompson
Control Systems 071/001 Ed Cavender
Gidget's Domain 081/005 Jack Hazel
Fuzzy Logic 050/018 Phill Piddell
Geno's Place 044/003 Gene Newcomb
InfoStation 032/001 Perry Alexander
If you are in the nodelist then you will be able to register direct
online at any of those centres or via mail in the correct form to
OZRobot at any of those centres. See the included OZRobot document
for details. If you are not in the net you will need to apply via
private netmail or message to Sysop at any of the centres. Whatever
way you do it you will need to supply the full (case sensitive) name
to which you want the program registered.
You will also need to obtain the OZINSTAL program which performs the
actual installation. OZINSTAL is not included in this archive. You
should look for OZINST11.ZIP.
>> page 2 <<
MAILSCAN: v1.01 by Stephen de Plater
27 July, 1991 GT Network Address 302/1
======================================================================
3. PURPOSE
======================================================================
(Or what does this thing do anyway?)
MAILSCAN is a logon door program for GT Power BBS Systems. It
contains the mailscan code from GREETING, for those wishing to have
the mail scan feature but not running GREETING itself. Users are told
of exactly what mail is waiting for them. The mail area number and
description are shown, and for each message the message number, date,
sender, and topic are listed. A star "*" is used to flag private
mail.
======================================================================
4. USAGE
======================================================================
To use MAILSCAN install it as a logon door (GTLOGON.BAT) like this:
@echo off
gtdrwy
doorway [various params]mailscan [various params]
It is not necessary to place a PAUSE at the end, the program will wait
and the user to press any key to continue.
The parameters are optional and function as follows:
1. /M Force monochrome.
2. /G An alternate GTPATH. I can't see where this would be used,
but the code was around and it only took a couple of lines.
3. /J Force joins users to areas which they have not accessed but
have mail waiting for.
Default: OFF.
4. /N The access level at or below which the program runs. If you
don't want to run a mailscan at all for users at say, level
'9' or above, then you could use /NA. Of course you could
do the same thing by running chkacc in your batch file, but
this makes that simpler.
>> page 3 <<
MAILSCAN: v1.01 by Stephen de Plater
27 July, 1991 GT Network Address 302/1
Default: /N0
5. /S The access level at or above which a partial scan occurs.
The /Wstring parameter MUST be specified for this to work.
If say, /SG was specified then all users at or above access
level 'G' would get a partial scan. The /Wstring parameter
controls what "partial" means. See below.
Default: /Sz
6. /C The call number for the day at which a user (regardless of
the access level specified in /S above) is given a partial
scan. If this is say, /C2 then all users on their second or
later call in one day would be given a partial scan. Again,
see the /Wstring parameter below for what "partial" means.
Also again, the /Wstring parameter MUST be specified for
this to work.
Default: /C32767
NOTE: the relation between the /S and /C parameters is a
logical OR. That is, /SG /C2 would mean that a partial scan
would be performed when either the user was at access level
'G' or higher, OR was calling for at least the second time
in one day.
7. /W If a partial scan is a possibility then this field is
essential. If the 'string' (case independent!) is found
anywhere on a line in the GTMDIR.BBS, then that message area
will not be scanned in a partial scan.
EXAMPLE: At Kangaroo Korner the only mail areas which are set for
"public messages only" are the echo areas. They all have a
"^" symbol in the GTMDIR.BBS (to make them public only) and
they are the only ones which do have that here. Therefore I
can use that single character as the string to scan for. Of
course, if you always use the word "echo" in your echomail
descriptions then you could just as easily check for that.
Here, I turn the scan on for everyone (so I leave the /N at
the default of /N0), I give partial scans to those at level
'G' or above, (using /SG) and anyone who is on their second
or later call for the day is also given a partial scan (with
a /C2). I scan for the 'string' "^" to catch all the
echomail areas (with /W^).
>> page 4 <<
MAILSCAN: v1.01 by Stephen de Plater
27 July, 1991 GT Network Address 302/1
NOTES: With a full scan a lot of lines can be generated. With a
fast modem they can be gone quickly off the screen. If the
user has the NONSTOP flag set OFF (so that GT asks for
"More?" at the end of each screenful, then MAILSCAN will
also pause. The size of the screen will be determined by
what the user told GT it was when he joined as a new user.
If that field of his USER.CTL is blank (for those joining
before GT16), then MAILSCAN will assume a length of 24
lines.
TIMING: MAILSCAN is the thing which is REALLY going to show up the
differences in people's hardware! I know of one alpha test
site which was experiencing a scan lasting about three and a
half minutes with 125 mail areas being scanned. The
hardware was a turbo XT with a 4:1 interleave hard disk on
an 8 bit controller. Using a decent cache program will help
-- probably halving the scan times (in my experience). I
use Hyperdisk and highly recommend it.
On this machine (a 386/25 with a 1 MB cache, a 1:1
interleave disk with 25 msec access times, and an adaptec 16
bit RLL controller) running under DesqView with the BBS in
one partition and 4DOS in a second partition, the timings
worked out as below for 107 message areas:
cache ON cache OFF
6.54 seconds 16.97 seconds
These times are slightly better than the same code running
in GREETING because MAILSCAN being a smaller program has
more room left for a bigger buffer. Under the same
conditions GREETING returned times of:
cache ON cache OFF
8.40 seconds 18.40 seconds
The VERY best scan times I could get were obtained using
MAILSCAN program, dropping out of DesqView to single
tasking, and expanding the cache to 3 MBytes, for the same
107 mail areas, the scan took 1.74 seconds!
The command line options must be separated by white space, (i.e.:
"/M/N0" is not valid, but "/M /N0" is). They may be in either upper or
>> page 5 <<
MAILSCAN: v1.01 by Stephen de Plater
27 July, 1991 GT Network Address 302/1
lower case, and supplied in any order. Also, you may use the '-'
character as the command line parameter flag instead of '/'.
(i.e.: "-M" is fine.)
ERRORLEVEL EXITS:
MAILSCAN will exit with one of the following errorlevels. In this way
your batch files can check what MAILSCAN has discovered and take
appropriate action. The errorlevels which may be set are:
0 Normal termination, no mail waiting.
1 to 254 The number of unread messages waiting. If there
are more than 254 unread messages, 254 will be
returned. (It also means that you have a VERY
popular user <GRIN>!)
255 An error has occurred. This will generally be
flagged by a highlighted message asking the user
to contact the Sysop. The nature of the error is
shown in the message.
======================================================================
5. COLOURS
======================================================================
If the user has ansi graphics selected (and if you have not forced
monochrome mode with the /M command line parameter), MAILSCAN will run
in the colours of your BBS. If you don't like the colours you see,
don't blame me -- after all you chose them <grin>.
>> page 6 <<
MAILSCAN: v1.01 by Stephen de Plater
27 July, 1991 GT Network Address 302/1
======================================================================
6. DISCLAIMER
======================================================================
Q: What kind of guarantee comes with this software?
A: *** ABSOLUTELY NONE!!! ***
If you break it you get to keep both halves!
I take no responsibility at all for what this software may do on any
computer other than my own. If you use it you do so at your own risk.
All that I am prepared to say about it is that it works fine here (and
I can see no good reason why it should not also work fine everywhere
else also -- but ....)
By using this program you accept these conditions.
======================================================================
7. ENJOY!
======================================================================
At least, I hope you do!
Stephen
>> page 7 <<