TommCHAT Revision History: 1.00: First release. Kicks ass on most chat programs already. Buggier than a double feature of Arachnophobia and Attack of the Killer Bees, but we like it anyway ;-) 1.01: Fixed a number of bugs: The first person to enter TommCHAT no longer vanishes. ANSi 3-D effects fixed. Linefeeds now trapped, so that users of inferior terminal software do not experience apparent long delays in getting commands recognized. Help files no longer erroneously refer to TommCHAT as being in alpha: it wasn't in 1.00 and it definitely isn't now. Added four more actions: Bark (like a dog), Woof (like Arsenio), Zzz (take a nap), and Hurl (like Garth). 1.03: Fixed some more bugs. Under certain very exotic conditions, TommCHAT and all other Whirlwind Software doors (by Gerald Albion) used to crash when just the wrong combination of interrupts went off at once. This problem which has proved very inconvenient for some, has (we believe) been exterminated. New versions of Rancho Nevada, Hi-Q, Purity, Bluevote and Q-Pid are now also available which include this important fix! 1.05: Many additional path checks, defaults, and overrides mean that TommCHAT should work much more smoothly out-of-the-box even with the most exotic batch files and pathing situations... The "runtime error 100" which sometimes occurred while running actions has been (hopefully) fixed. I have also fixed some picky logic dealing with how user access levels are passed... There is also a new /D command line switch which lets you pass the directory path of your DORINFO1.DEF (or other door file), to accommodate BBSes which can only write these files to one preset path. 1.05c: Mea culpa! 1.05 was released with "new" bugs which weren't adequately tested for. Hopefully this release will fix things. 1.06: I have added support for non-FOSSIL systems - if you run a BBS without a FOSSIL driver, read the docs on how to set up non-FOSSIL com ports, even with non-standard port parameters! Also added a "meow" (like a puddy-tat) action. My cat likes it, hope you do too... 1.06d: This release contains numerous bug fixes, and a couple of actions (rose and impure) have been cleaned up - they actually make sense now. There's also a new "socks" action (as in, remove them and stink up the room), and a new "drag" action (from a cigarette - no politically-correct-person, I!). The docs now contain a warning about a situation which could cause a runtime error, and how to fix it yourself. In order to use the fixed Actions, you must copy the ACTIONS.CTL file to your TommCHAT directory and run COMPACT! The structures are now included. If you develop a utility for TC (I'd like to see a slick external user editor, for one) please upload it to my BBS. Similarly, I'd like to build a library of user-written Actions. If you have written some unique or humourous actions for TC, please send them to me! 1.07: This is both a "maintenance" release and a "new feature" release. I have fixed some IPC collision related bugs thanks to some excellent information provided by TommCHAT sysops. Thankz loadz dudez! I have also responded to user requests for one-key access to quit and help functions. Just typing ? by itself on a line (followed by return) will call up the help file, and either q or x will get the user out (similar to Galacticomm's MajorBBS). Further to one of the first feature requests I received over a year ago, I have also made SmartActions available without the /a. You can use just a / and the action, e.g.: /kickass tommy does the same as /a kickass tommy (but please don't, I'm sore enough already =) Also, I have -greatly- improved the intelligence of the action-by-name code. Now, even if a user has embedded colours or hard-to-key characters in his or her handle, these codes are ignored in the name comparison, and a partial name will do. Example: Say my handle is stored as "~ET~Mo~Gm~Om~Py". It looks like gibberish but it displays as "Tommy" in five colours thanks to the embeddeds. However, a user can still make me the recipient of her action if she types /rose Tommy, or /grin tom, or /re ommy. All three use either the entirety or a substring of my stripped-down pseudo "Tommy", and are therefore legal. Of course, you can still reference the victims of your actions by their node number if you so desire. 1.10 I have added some real support for the "languagefile" concept in that ALL the user-visible text (excepting shareware nag stuff, sorry) is now changeable in TOMMCHAT.TXT. You can even change the keys for the common "Yes/No" prompts so that users can respond "Yes" or "No" with the right letter for their language (e.g. "Ja", "Oui", "Si", "Da" etc.) Of course, I have included the Action pronouns in the language file for completeness, and in doing so I have expanded the available pronouns to 20. There are now 12 default pronouns (better variety than the 9 in previous versions!) so you can add different pronouns without having to modify the existing actions! I have also fixed another bug which no-one reported but which surely SOMEONE must have seen: for several versions now (at least) the /sm "member list" feature had not worked at all! This is now fixed. I have also finished some "under construction" code which has raised some questions since first release. The /ke user editor actually displays "Yes" and "No" and "Male" and "Female" instead of cryptic numbers for user attributes. This can simply be ascribed to the fact that I started on the online user editor and never really quite finished it.. Some additional bugs involving DORINFO1.DEF and FOSSIL locking have been reported and nailed. Many thanks to Detlef Pleiss for his valuable input! 1.11 A few oversights in the language file have been corrected. "secretly" (used in the actions) is probably the most obvious. A few things have been sped up quite a bit. TC should be smoother and less prone to crashing overall now. 1.12 More language configurability! You can now configure several commands as well as virtually every string in TommCHAT! A "Censor" has been added. You can now prevent users from swearing or using other undesirable words in public (or, for fascists, in private) and you can also prevent users from /h'ing to undesirable handles like ALL or SYSOP. You can now also disable the /h function altogether. The /A command line switch now overrides the access level database. You can now erase user records with the /kz sysop command. 1.13 I have fortified the comm support a bit. If you've had trouble getting TC to run on some com ports, this version might solve your problem. Mostly that's all that's new about this version. 1.14 The WinSlice config option has been added which may improve performance under Windows 3.x. Also, TommCHAT will now only give up a timeslice if the user has not typed a character in more than one second. This is to prevent the possibility of over-zealous timeslicing. 1.15 Some enhancements to the SmartActions that went into NanoChat have been imported into TommCHAT 1.15. In addition, several sysmsgs in TOMMCHAT.TXT have been updated. But, perhaps the most important reason for this release is that TCL, the TommCHAT Language compiler, is now MUCH faster. 1.2 This is a major update consisting of two big improvements. First, multi-user performance and reliability is enhanced - the likelihood of TommCHAT skipping a message is now virtually zero. Second, many of the exciting enhancements that have been added to NanoCHAT (The version of TommCHAT that comes built into NanoBBS) have now been added to TommCHAT - read the help file for more information. To put it simply, this release is just a far better product than 1.15 was. One other thing worth noting: the /NA command line option didn't use to work, now it does. 1.21 I have fixed a couple of things. First, some sysops reported problems getting TommCHAT to work locally from a door drop. I think I have fixed this - I duplicated the fault and put in code that appears to me to have eliminated it, but your mileage may vary - contact me if you still have this problem. Also, some BBSes have an annoying habit of insisting on putting a trailing space in the user's name if it's a one word handle. TommCHAT now strips this prior to looking the user up in its own userlog. 1.22 I have developed a new file sharing system which I am implementing in all my doors. It's really quite ingenious, if I do say so myself. This is a very minor maintenance release that incorporates this new code. Oh yeah, and I noticed a few redundant global variables, I eliminated them, saving about the same amount of data segment space as the new file sharing code takes up. 1.3 In response to a bug report, I have fixed the /m and /i messages. In addition, the problem of missing messages is finally, once and for all, eliminated. And, in response to a long standing demand, I have added support for private and locked channels! Plus the pricing has again been flattened. TommCHAT costs $25 period now, no extra fees for extra nodes. Everyone gets a 255 node key. Anyone who's already registered TommCHAT can get upgraded to a 255 node key by email for nothing, or by snailmail for $3 US (to cover disk, postage etc). Note: I will respond to further bug requests, but 1.3 is probably the final major version of TommCHAT. Please don't ask me for more features.