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__________ / /| / ___ __ _ ___ / | _ _ ___ __ / / | / | /| //_ / | /| /| / / / | / /___/ /__| / | / \ /___| / |/ | / / __ /__| / / \ / |/ |/ ___// |/ | / /___/ / | / / | // \\ // \X/ __________________________________________ TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Shareware FidoNet BBS Software for the Amiga Copyright (C) 1990, 1991 By Timothy Aston FidoNet 1:247/192.0 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED __________________________________________ TransAmiga User Manual Copyright (C) 1990, 1991 By Timothy Aston ALL RIGHTS RESERVED __________________________________________ TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page i Table of Contents P A R T I Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Welcome: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Canajan, eh: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 TransAmiga's Roots: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Philosophies Behind TransAmiga: . . . . . . . . . 2 System Requirements: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Features: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Registered vs. Unregistered: . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Notes to TransAmiga v1.0x Users: . . . . . . . . . 6 Back-Ups: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Setting Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The Modem: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Preparation: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Upgrading From TransAmiga v1.0x: . . . . . . . . . 8 Directories: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Copying Files: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 TransCfg: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Limits: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 P A R T I I Using TransAmiga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Running TransAmiga: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Troubleshooting: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Pull-Down Menus: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 TransAmiga Online: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Logging On: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 BBS Menus: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Entering Commands: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Text Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 BBS Text Editors: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 The Line Editor: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 The Full-Screen Editor: . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Local Editor: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Reply Quoting: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Access Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 User Access: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Access Flags: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 New Users: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Privileged Access: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 A Note on Users' Rights: . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 TrMaint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page ii User Maintenance: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Running TrMaint from CLI: . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Sample ARexx Macro: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 File Transfers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 File Listings: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Long Descriptions: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Types of Transfers: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 TrXPR: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 File Credit: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 P A R T I I I TransAmiga Multi-Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 About Multi-Line: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Setting Up Multi-Line: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Running a Local-Only Line: . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 P A R T I V Customizing the BBS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Introduction: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Changing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 The Command Files: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Disabling Commands: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Text Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Text Files in TransAmiga: . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 ANSI Graphics: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 More?: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Imbedded Control Sequences: . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Menus, Prompts & Help Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Menu Files: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Prompt Files: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Help Files: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Language Files: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 P A R T V FidoNet Explained . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Introduction: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 The Basics of FidoNet: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Topography: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Your Address: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 The Nodelist: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Joining FidoNet: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 FidoNet and TransAmiga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Introduction: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page iii Setting up FidoNet: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Events: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Exporting Mail: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Importing Mail: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Time Driven Events: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Advanced Usage: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Other Mailers: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 TrUMP: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 TrAL: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Renumbering: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Offline Message Readers: . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Using FidoNet: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 P A R T V I TransAmiga and ARexx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Introduction: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Using ARexx with TransAmiga: . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Writing ARexx Macros: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 TransAmiga v1.0x Doors: . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 ARexx Macro Ideas: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Command Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Introduction: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 ABBEREXX Commands: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 ABBEREXX Variables: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Commands Recognized with no Caller Online: . . . . 86 SkyLine/C-Net ARexx Emulation: . . . . . . . . . . 88 Example ARexx Macro: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 P A R T V I I Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Disclaimer: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 License: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Shareware: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 How to Register: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Support: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Conclusion: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Future: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Comments: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Acknowledgements: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 On Your Own: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 A P P E N D I C E S TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page iv Appendix I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Samples: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Sample TrapDoor Configuration: . . . . . . . . . . 101 Sample Welmat Configuration: . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Sample ConfMail Configuration: . . . . . . . . . . 106 Appendix II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 BBS Tools Reference: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 TransAmiga Access Lock: . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 TransAmiga BBS: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 TransAmiga BBS Line Activity Display: . . . . . . 109 TransAmiga Broadcaster: . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 TransAmiga Configuration Tool: . . . . . . . . . . 110 TransAmiga File Lister: . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 TransAmiga User Maintenance: . . . . . . . . . . . 110 TransAmiga DOS Shell: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 TransAmiga Update File Areas: . . . . . . . . . . 112 TransAmiga Update Message Pointers: . . . . . . . 112 Appendix III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Amiga ANSI Codes: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Colour Change Codes: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Style Controls: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Cursor Controls: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Miscellaneous Commands: . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 G L O S S A R Y Access Levels: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 ANSI Graphics: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Archive: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 ARexx: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Batch Transfer: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 BBS: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Door: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Download: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Echo: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 FidoNet: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Freeware: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 FTS-0001: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Intuition: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Kludge Lines: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Mailer: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Mail Processor: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Matrix Mail: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Message Header: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Multi-Line: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Netmail: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Path Name: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Public Domain: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page v Protocol: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Release 2: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Return Code: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Session Handler: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Shared Library: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Shareware: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Upload: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Upload:Download Ratio: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 XPR Protocols: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 1 P A R T I ---------- Introduction Welcome: Welcome to TransAmiga BBS. TransAmiga is a Shareware bulletin board system (BBS) for Amiga personal computers. TransAmiga attempts was to provide an easy to setup and use BBS programme for not-so-demanding tasks, and at the same time, incorporate flexibility and advanced features for more serious purposes, such as networking and multi-line. Please do not attempt to run TransAmiga without first reading this manual fully. TransAmiga is not at all the sort of programme that you can just run and experiment with. There are many crucial steps, so be sure to read and understand everything fully before proceeding. Please see PART VII near the end of this manual for the usage license. Some familiarity with AmigaDOS, ARexx and general BBS terms is assumed. Canajan, eh: TransAmiga BBS is a product of the beautiful and peaceful nation of Canada. It that big country north of the USA, where we like our hockey and speak French with a funny accent. As I'm a Canadian, I decided to write this manual in English, so United Statians may find some of my spellings a little wierd (programme, colour, etc). Hope I haven't confused you too much. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 2 TransAmiga's Roots: I started work on TransAmiga in December of 1989, just as a little something to do. But as I started doing more work on it, it I started to see that it had some potential to grow into something quite good. In the spring of 1990, I became a FidoNet point, and made the decision that I would add FidoNet support to TransAmiga, and make it the first shareware FidoNet BBS for the Amiga. At this point in time, it was still in AmigaBASIC, and extraordinarily slow. In the summer of 1990, I finally purchased HiSoft BASIC, and compiled TransAmiga. In early August 1990, Great Lakes Amiga Central went up as the first BBS running TransAmiga. In September, Chris' Amiga BBS went up, as my second test site. Finally, in late October, TransAmiga v1.0 was released to the public. The original v1.0 matured over a few months in v1.06. In November of 1990, work began on TransAmiga v1.1. My aim from the beginning was to make it a major upgrade, with several substantial new capabilities, but at that time I had no idea how powerful it would actually become. In May 1991, TransAmiga v1.1 entered its beta stage. Finally, with its release, Amiga users now can find real power in shareware BBS's, complete with FidoNet, ARexx, and multi-line. Philosophies Behind TransAmiga: When I wrote TransAmiga, I had only ever used BBS software from the caller's point of view. I had never run my own BBS, nor even looked at any BBS software from the SysOp's end. One of my primary objectives when I started it was to create an attractive user interface for the caller. Though much effort has also been made to include in TransAmiga a large array of powerful features for the SysOp, it is still my strong belief that the purpose of a BBS is to serve its callers - afterall, a BBS that doesn't get any callers isn't much fun. Another major philosophy behind TransAmiga is the belief that running a BBS should be fun. The world of Amiga BBS software has become awfully intense and competitive lately, and the prices of high-quality BBS software averages well over $100. Both these facts appear contradictory to the idea that running a BBS is supposed to be a hobby. With TransAmiga I hope to rekindle this spirit of fun that started the BBS world in the first place by not always TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 3 trying to be "one up everyone else", but by providing a good quality software package at a reasonable. Lastly, TransAmiga relies heavily on its user-base of SysOps. This entire package has been developed by only one person (myself of course), so contributions from TransAmiga users are valued highly. My first priority is enhancements to the BBS itself, and following close behind that is keeping in regular contact with my users. This unfortunately doesn't leave much time for things such as documentation, BBS support tools, etc. Luckily, TransAmiga SysOps have done an excellent job in picking up this slack, and I hope to see this trend continue in the future. System Requirements: TransAmiga BBS requires at least an Amiga 500 with 1 MB of RAM and two floppy disk drives running Release 1.2 of the operating system. Though the BBS will function fine in this environment, it was designed for more powerful systems. Additional memory and a hard drive of at least 20 MB are highly recommended. You will also find an accelerated CPU and Release 2 of the operating system advantageous to have when running TransAmiga. The following chart shows TransAmiga's minimum requirements, the kind of equipment that is recommended for good use of the BBS, and what you will find ideal for running TransAmiga: Item | Minimum | Recommended | Ideal System | Amiga 500 | Amiga 2000 | Amiga 3000 CPU | 68000 | 68000 | 68030 RAM | 1 MB | 1.5 MB | 2.5 MB or more O.S. | 1.2 | 1.3 | 2.0 Modem | 1200 baud | 2400 baud | DS-HST Serial Port | built-in port | built-in port | Multi-port card Drive Space | 2 floppies | 20 MB | 80 MB or more Features: Here is a brief listing of the features of TransAmiga BBS: General - * Configure size, depth, and font of TransAmiga's screen. * Full ARexx support with over 90 ARexx commands. ARexx TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 4 macros can be installed almost anywhere to provide maximum flexibility. * Can run many SkyLine ARexx macros with little modification. * Arbitrates access to all BBS files that allows several copies of the programme to be run concurrently without the risk of access collisions, allowing a multi-line BBS system to be run. * Simple "idiot-proof" setup programme. * ANSI colour graphics optional for each user, with local ANSI emulation (including both Amiga and IBM ANSI sequences, as well as full 16 colour ANSI). * Optional command stacking or hot keys, selected by each user. * When entering commands in the BBS, users have the full range of command line editing keys available, as well as command line history. * Intuitive user interface. File Libraries - * Multiple file areas, each with a minimum access level, defined by the SysOp. * File transfers using external protocols setup by the SysOp. * Optional upload:download ratio for each user. * Batch and non-batch protocols supported. * Files can have an optional long description. * When listing files, users have a choice of either viewing them a page at a time, or one file at a time. * Users can mark files for a batch download. Message Conferences - * Multiple SysOp defined message areas, each with a minimum access level. * Messages can be public to be viewed by all, or privileged to be read only by the addresser, the addressee, and those with privileged access. * User can check for mail addressed to him/her at logon. * Message area can be defined as either local, private, netmail, or echomail. FidoNet - * Able to read and write FidoNet messages according to the FTS-0001 standard. * Uses existing FidoNet software that has been time tested and proven reliable. Unlike other BBS programmes it does not require it's own custom FidoNet utilities, so no battling with bugs and unimplemented features. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 5 * Works with most popular Amiga FidoNet utilities, including ConfMail, TrapDoor, Foozle, Welmat, GCCHost, FastPoint, TrapToss, Areafix, AmigaTick, etc. * You can set a different 5-D address for each FidoNet message conference. * Able to read the Foozle message format. * Can create crashmail and file attaches. * Nodelist support. * Allows you to run mail processing software while users are online. * Supportive of 4-D mail processing software, and can be run in either a point or a node environment. SysOp Controls - * Optional daily time limit for each user. * User can leave a one line comment to the next user when logging off. * Bulletin menu for posting text files. Each bulletin requires a minimum access level to view. * Every command can be assigned to any key, and can be given any name. * Every command has a minimum access level. * Any command, file area, message area, or bulletin for which a user does not have sufficient access, is invisible to that user. * 256 different access levels plus a set of 8 access flags, for controlling access to almost every facet of the BBS. * SysOp can view and edit a user's stats from within the programme while the user is online. * Fully interactive remote shell. * Supports three different kinds of editor: a line-editor for ASCII callers, a full-screen editor for ANSI callers, and the editor of your choice for local calls. * User maintenance utility that can be from the BBS as a door or from the CLI. Configurability - * You set the key, access, flags, and text for every command in the BBS. * Add your own commands through ARexx. * You set the colours that should be used for text displays within the BBS, so the BBS looks like you want it to. * Through special control codes, text files can be made to display over 40 different pieces of system/user information. * Create your own custom menus and menu prompts, or have the BBS displays it's own default style menus. * Fully configurable screen setup including screen size, depth, font, mode, etc. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 6 Registered vs. Unregistered: TransAmiga is a shareware package, meaning you get to look at it free of charge, and once "evaluating" becomes "using", you are obliged to register. This method allows you to "try before you buy", to get a really close look at it before you decide to pay. You may use the unregistered version of TransAmiga for up to 20 days before you register. Near the end of this manual, full details are given on how to register, and what you get in return, so be sure to follow that carefully. If you have not registered TransAmiga yet then TransAmiga will still work fully, however, users will not be allowed online for more than 20 minutes in a day. When you register, you will get a small personalized key file that will remove this restriction from TransAmiga. The actual TransAmiga programme itself is always the same, it is the presence of the key file that determines the difference between unregistered and registered. Notes to TransAmiga v1.0x Users: Because of the enormous changes that TransAmiga has undergone in this new release, those that have setup previous versions of TransAmiga will not be able to simply "plug-in and go". Many of the file structures have changed, thus a certain amount of re-setting-up must be done. Read the section on upgrading for complete details on the steps you must take. Back-Ups: Before you even start, it is highly recommended that you backup all the TransAmiga files and use the backup as your work copy. It's unlikely that files get lost, but it is best to be safe. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 7 Setting Up The Modem: TransAmiga should be able to work with virtually any kind of modem, because you set all the modem commands by yourself. For TransAmiga to work properly with your modem, it must be set to include the baud rate on connection messages in the format CONNECT XXX, where XXX is the baud rate unless it is a 300 baud connection in which just CONNECT should be sent, eg. CONNECT 2400. On most Hayes compatible modems, this is the default action, but on some you must enter the command ATX4, which you would insert in you modem initialization string (read on for more info on your modem initialization string). Consult your modem manual for information on its commands. It is very important that your modem is set so that Carrier Detect (CD) and Data Terminal Ready (DTR) are not forced. On some modems, you will need to adjust some DIP switches. On modems with Non-volatile RAM, you may need to enter: AT&F AT&D2&C1&W from a terminal programme. Again, consult your modem manual to find out more about this. TransAmiga also requires a 7-wire serial cable to work (most serial cables are wired as such, this is rarely a problem). TransAmiga has been fully tested with Hayes compatible 1200 and 2400 baud modems and Courier HST modems, including the Dual-Standard HST. TransAmiga supports the ability to lock the serial port baud rate for maximum throughput. How to do this is explained later on. Preparation: The setup procedure for TransAmiga has been made as painless as possible, but setting up may still prove to be a slightly complex procedure. Please be sure to read this section over a few times before you start, and always have the manual by you as a reference when you actually go through with setup procedure. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 8 A lot of file moving and directory making will be involved in setting up TransAmiga. Thanks to the new Release 2 Workbench, this is relatively painless. If you do not yet have the Release 2 Workbench, a directory utility such as SID or CLImate is recommended. And of course if you prefer the shell, you may use that too. Here are the general steps that will be taken in the setup: 1. Creation of some directories and making some assignments. 2. Copy some directories from the TransAmiga distribution. 3. Use the TransCfg tool to perform the rest of the setting up, including the initializing of some general BBS settings, the setting up of file and message areas, etc. Upgrading From TransAmiga v1.0x: If you have already setup and are using v1.0x of TransAmiga (that is, any version from v1.0 to v1.07), it will still be necessary to follow a good deal of the setup procedure. If you do not have a v1.0x TransAmiga, skip to the next section on Directories. All of TransAmiga's configuration files have been changed in v1.1 from the config files used by the v1.0x versions, as have the command files. The .Exts files are gone too, replaced by the .Rx files for executing ARexx macros (see the section on ARexx for more details). The format of the user files, and the format of the file listings has also changed. The message conferences themselves are unchanged (except that you must now use a programme called TrUMP to update FidoNet areas, see the FidoNet section for details). You will be able to convert your user files and your file listing, but everything else should be deleted. This includes your old config files, your old command files, and your .Exts files. If you have not setup your directories as described below, then it is recommended that you change over to the suggested configuration. Directories: TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 9 The first step in the setup procedure is to create some directories. If you are using a hard drive system, you will need to create a unique directory for all the BBS files. It is suggested that you call this directory 'BBS', although any name is fine. Within this directory you should create one directory for all your message areas ('Mail' is the recommended name to give it) and one directory for all your file areas ('File' is the recommended name for that). In this manual, directory names and assignments will be somewhat standardized for the sake of clarity. If you do not wish to use the assignments suggested, that is fine. For example, because of the way your hard drives may be partitioned, you may wish to have file areas on different drives, which is perfectly acceptable. But it is recommended that for the most part you try to follow the suggestions so as to make setting up as straightforward as possible. For the main BBS directory you should make the assignment 'BBS:' point it. The assignment 'Mail:' should point to the message areas directory, and 'File:' should point to your file areas directory. This is done by using the Assign command, eg: Assign BBS: SYS:BBS Assign Mail: BBS:Mail Assign File: BBS:File If you are running off a floppy based system, you'll have to dedicate two whole disks to the BBS. The first disk should be a bootable disk called 'BBS'. Be sure all libraries, devices, commands and other files required for normal operation are present on it. On the second drive you will have the message areas. Call that disk 'Mail'. There will not be enough room for file areas. Within the BBS, File, and Mail directories, TransAmiga uses several other directories, as follows: * The system directory for keeping various general files for system upkeep. * A configurations directory for keeping the various files that say how the BBS is set up. * The users directory for keeping individual user files. * A text directory where all help files, menus, title screens, and other text files shown to users are kept. * The bulletins directory where file to be displayed at the bulletins menu are kept. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 10 * The extras directory for miscellaneous files created by online games, BBS utilities, and other external BBS related tools. * The ARexx macros directory, where the BBS looks for any ARexx macros. If you do not intend to run ARexx, then you will of course not have an ARexx directory. * One directory for each file and message area you choose to setup. These naturally contain all the messages and files for those areas. It is also suggested that you create a directory called 'Bin' to keep all the executable files for use with the BBS. This directory should be added to your search path, using the path command, eg: Path BBS:Bin ADD which you will probably want to add to your Startup- Sequence. These simple tree diagrams illustrates an example of how your directory structures may look with example file and message areas: BBS: | +--------+-------+-------+-------+--------+-------+ | | | | | | | System Configs Users Text Rexx Bulletins Extras File: | +----------+-----+-----+---------+ | | | | Telecomm Prog Games Utils Mail: | +----------+-----+-----+---------+ | | | | Personal General Computers Sports You don't have to create these directories that live in BBS:, Mail: and File: yourself, as they will be created automatically later on, you should just be aware that they do exist and have a general idea of what they are for. Copying Files: TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 11 Before you start setting up, a few of TransAmiga's files need to be copied. If you are a registered user, all these files will be on your registration disk. You will need to copy the 'Bin', 'Text' and 'Configs' directories into your BBS: directory. If you've got a directory utility, or are using the new Release 2 Workbench, this is simple enough. If you are using Shell, then you'd use a commands such as: Copy Bin BBS:Bin all Copy Configs BBS:Configs all Copy Text BBS:Text all You'll also need to copy the contents of Libs on the TransAmiga disk to your libs: directory. Next you will need to install the font you wish to use with TransAmiga. At least for the time being, it is recommended you use the provided TransIBM 8 point font. To install it from the shell, you'd use: Copy Fonts Fonts: all All other files required by TransAmiga should be fairly standard. For example, you will naturally need the serial device your modem uses (usually serial.device), the diskfont.library, some DOS commands, etc. The basic preparation stages are now complete. TransCfg: TransCfg is a utility used to help make setting up and maintaining the BBS easier. If you followed the above procedure, then it will be located in your BBS:Bin directory, although it doesn't particularly matter where you put it. TransCfg must be loaded from the Shell. Upon execution, it will ask you for the name of TransAmiga's master configuration file. The master system configuration file contains general information that is vital to the operation of the BBS. You can call this anything you want, but it is recommended that you call it TransAmiga.Cfg, and place it in your BBS:Configs directory. Therefore, you would enter 'BBS:Configs/TransAmiga.Cfg'. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 12 When you give TransCfg the name of your master configuration file, it will see that this is your first time setting up the BBS. What follows will be a series of questions that you must answer in order to get the BBS setup according to how you want it. Before each set of questions there is a brief paragraph explaining what you are being asked for. If you wish to set up a system running multiple lines, you'll have to be a bit patient. Just set up a single line for now, adding additional lines will be described later on. When entering information, default values will be shown just below, you may accept the default by just hitting RETURN, or you can enter your own. Default values will automatically be set for you. If you followed the suggestions for directory names and assignments given above, then you will be able to accept most of the defaults as they are. General - This is where you setup your master configuration file. There will be several questions covering a wide area that will be asked of you here. The first two questions are simple enough, simply enter your name, and the name you wish to call your board. You will need to enter the length of the idle timer. When an online user is idle for this length of time (i.e. hasn't entered any commands or other text), he/she will automatically be logged off. Then you must enter the names of the various directory that we discussed earlier. You should give the full pathnames of these directories with any drive/assignment specifiers. It is recommended that you accept the default values for all of these, as all the examples throughout this manual assume these values. If you wish, though, you can set them to anything you want. Those that do not have ARexx should need not worry where their ARexx directory points to, as it won't be used. It does not matter if you have not already made these directories yourself, as TransCfg will make them for you. You must, however, have made the BBS: assignment (or have a disk labelled that). The next questions deal with modem configuration. The maximum speed of your modem should be straightforward TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 13 enough. If your modem supports baud rate locking, enter the speed that you wish to lock the baud rate at. You must also enter the minimum baud rate you wish to support, callers connecting at a lower baud rate than this will be politely logged off. You will also be asked for the name of the serial.device and unit you wish to use. Usually, you would just select the defaults as this is for the Amiga's internal serial port. If you are using a third-party multi-port serial board, then you will need to refer to its documentation to find out what you need to enter here. Then you must enter a set of 4 modem commands. Refer to your modem user manual to learn more about what commands your modem accepts. The defaults should work with most 1200 and 2400 baud modems. The modem initialization string is the command TransAmiga sends to the modem when it starts up. This may vary a lot depending on your modem and your personal preferences, but it must turn auto-answer on. It could be something like 'ATZ|~~~ATX4M0S0=1|~' which will reset the modem, turn on long CONNECT messages, turn the speaker off, and turn auto-answer on with a standard Hayes compatible modem. The modem exit command is what TransAmiga sends to the modem when it quits. Usually a simple 'ATZ|' will suffice. The local logon and local log off commands are what is sent to the modem just before a local logon, and at the end of a local logon. You may wish to have the modem go off hook during a local logon so you would enter 'ATH1|~' and 'ATH0|~' respectively. Note that the pipe (|) is used to indicate to TransAmiga that it should send a carriage return at that point, and that the tilde (~) causes it to pause for a half second. Many modems will not respond properly to commands that are sent too quickly. Some require a pause after an AT, others requires pauses between commands. For this reason, you may have to use several ~ in your modem commands so that they get sent slow enough. A little experimentation may be required here. The next few questions have to do with user access. You may want to accept the defaults values for now and perhaps adjust them more to your liking later on. First comes the time limits, upload:download ratio, flags, and access level a user takes on right after filling in the new user questionnaire (i.e. a first time caller who has just joined the board, you have not got a chance to validate this user yet). The next question asks what access level shall be known as "Privileged" access. User's with privileged access can read privileged mail including private netmail, and can TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 14 see the "kludge" lines in FidoNet mail. Only the SysOp and assistant SysOps are meant to have this kind of access. For more information about how TransAmiga handles access controls, see the appropriate section later on in this manual. The last questions in the first section deal with aesthetic preferences. Here you set the size of TransAmiga's terminal window, the font and point size to be used, whether or not TransAmiga should open a custom screen or not, and if so that screen's depth, size and mode. When entering the screen size, you may enter 0 for either the width or height (or both) to have them default to the size of the Workbench screen. The defaults are for an 8 colour medium-resolution screen that is slightly overscanned so as to fit 80 columns and 23 rows. It also uses the TransIBM font so be sure that you have installed that in your Fonts: directory. Here you also set some colour preferences used by the BBS. To save the most memory, have TransAmiga use the Workbench screen without a sizing gadget. You also choose the three colours the BBS will use for text messages. The values must be 0-7 and correspond to the ANSI colour values. In general, your text input colour should be white (colour 7), your prompt colour bright (eg. colour 3 or 6) and your trim colour slightly darker (eg. colour 4 or 1). Some experimentation may be required to find a colour scheme you like. You will be asked whether you want input text fields to be displayed. What is meant by this, is if you wish a colour rectangle to be drawn for ANSI users to indicate where they will be entering text. This rectangle will be drawn in the trim colour you selected. You are given the option of enabling or disabling this as it will take a few instants to draw for callers at slow baud rates. You should experiment with it on and off to see which you prefer. If you choose to open TransAmiga on its own custom screen, you will have the option of having TransAmiga also display a blue backdrop behind the terminal and status windows. This is purely to add aesthetic appeal for those that configure their screen such that the terminal window does not cover the entire screen. For example, if you wish to configure your screen preferences to recreate the look of the original TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 15 version of TransAmiga, you would use this option. Beware that it does take up a significant amount of memory. The file you specified when you executed TransCfg will now be created with all the information you just entered in it. Messages - Next you will set up the message areas. The purpose of having separate message areas is so that completely different topics will be separated. You may setup as many message areas as you wish. The defaults are for just two simple message areas, one for private mail and one for public mail. The first few questions here deal with FidoNet, which will not be described just yet, so skip over these for now by hitting RETURN until you are asked how many message areas to setup. If you are interested in FidoNet, it will be covered in detail later on. For each message area, you must choose an appropriate name. Examples might be "Sports Talk", "Current Affairs", "Amiga Users", etc. Next, enter the full path to that message area's unique directory. If you haven't made the directory, TransCfg will make it for you, though any parent directories must already exist. It is recommended that you have your message directories within Mail:, but this is not essential. Spreading message areas over multiple drives is perfectly acceptable, albeit a little confusing. Now enter the type of message area. For the time being, enter 0 for a normal message area or 1 for an all-privileged message area (that is, all messages entered will automatically be assumed to be private), see the section on FidoNet later on in this manual for information on net and echo mail areas. Each area has a minimum access level, and also flags associated with it. Each area also has minimum access levels for reading and writing. These can be used to create read-only message areas, or to keep first time callers from entering messages in certain areas. For each area you must specify a quote lead-in line. When users are quoting lines from the message they are replying to, it is often desirable to have a simple intro line before the quotation so that people reading the message know what's going on. Simply enter the text for this line. You may TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 16 enter a few codes to have certain information substituted into the string: %n - the name of the user who wrote the message you are replying to %a - the name of the person that message was addressed to %d - the date the original was written %t - the time the original was written Some example quote lead-in lines: In a message sent <%d %t>, %n wrote to %a: %n uttered this gibberish at %t, %d to %a: You may decide whether or not you wish to allow users to post messages under their "handles" in each conference. If you say yes, users that have setup a handle for themselves will be prompted as to whether or not they wish to use it for the message they are posting. You shouldn't normally need to adjust the low and high message number, and for now leave them at zero. For all local message areas you must enter the maximum number of messages to keep in the area at one time. Once that limit has been exceeded, TransAmiga automatically deletes messages, starting at the oldest. Finally, you are prompted to reset the users' last read pointers. You must answer Yes to this option whenever you are first setting up an area, as this initializes the data file TransAmiga uses to keep track of users' last read messages. After setting up the individual areas, some other questions must be answered. You must enter the user name messages entered via the feedback command should go to, and to which area number they should be placed in. Finally, you will be asked for the external editor commands. Once again, there are some % codes you can use to substitute in information: %n - the number of the BBS line starting the editor %f - the filename of the file that should contain the message text to be saved. %q - the name of the file containing the quoted text when you are replying to a message. %b - the real (non-locked) baud rate of the online caller. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 17 The full-screen editor command is the programme that gets run when online callers invokes the full-screen editor (the different text editors are described in greater detail later on). You should use the provided TrEd programme for this (registered users only). The command need simply by: BBS:Bin/TrEd %f -q%f -n%n For the local editor command, you should give the command to start up your favourite text editor. Any editor should work, such as Ed, MEmacs, QEd, etc. For example, to use QEd as your text editor, you could use: Work:Tools/QEd %f Most other text editors should require similar command lines. Files - Like the message conferences, the files section is divided up into separated libraries. The defaults are quite simple, just two file areas. If you are using a dual floppy drive system, then you will not have enough space for file libraries, but you will still have to setup a "dummy" area. Just call this anything, have the directory as RAM:, and give it access 256 so no one can get there. Prior to setting up the libraries, you must specify what is considered to be a "full" drive. TransAmiga will refuse to allow uploads when less than the amount you specify is free. Generally it is desirable to set this to at least 50k so that the drive will not become full from messages being posted and other BBS operations. Setting up the actual file libraries setup to start with is quite similar to the message area setup. Each file library must have a name, a unique path, access, flags, and read and write access levels. It is recommended that all your file directories are somewhere within File:, but as with message directories, this is not essential. After this, you must setup the file transfer protocols. TransAmiga executes external AmigaDOS programmes to do file transfers. This has been done to allow for maximum flexibility when it comes to setting up file transfer protocols. For most of your protocols, it is recommended that you use the included TrXPR programme, as it was written with TransAmiga specifically in mind, and supports the TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 18 popular XPR libraries. The defaults will give you Zmodem batch and Xmodem-CRC protocols via TrXPR, but you should consult the TrXPR documentation for more information on using it. For each protocol, you must enter the name. Then you must say whether or not the protocol is capable of doing batch transfers (where multiple files can be sent in one session). Lastly, you enter the send and receive commands respectively. TransAmiga allows a few imbedded commands for automatically substituting values into the command line: %n - the number of the BBS line %d - name of the serial device %u - serial device unit %f - the file to be transferred (or directory in the case of a batch transfer) %l - the name of the file containing the list of files to transfer (created by the BBS for sends) %b - baud rate of the current caller (the real baud rate, not the locked one, so if you have the serial port locked, don't use this) For the time being, just accept TransCfg's defaults. More information about transfer protocols will be given later. After setting up the transfer protocols, you will be asked what formats you wish to support for archive viewing. TransAmiga allows users to view the contents of an archive in the file areas. You can support as many different archiving methods if you want. Even if you do not wish to support archive viewing, you must setup at least one dummy method. The default is just for viewing LHarc archives, but you can always allow for more, such as Zoo, Arc, etc. As an example, say you only wanted to support viewing of Zoo archives. The name of the archive type you would enter would be 'Zoo'. For the archive suffix, you would enter '.Zoo' because all Zoo files have that suffix, and that's how TransAmiga will recognize that a file is a Zoo archive. The command would be the full path name for Zoo on your disk plus an 'l', which is Zoo's command to look at the contents of an archive. It is also possible to use such programmes as Juergen Hermann's XArc.rexx, that automatically recognize the archive type. For these sorts of programmes, do not enter a file extension. Bulletins - You must set up at least one bulletin. Simply enter the file name of each of the text files you wish to display as a TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 19 bulletin. Do not enter the full path name, TransAmiga looks for all bulletins in your bulletins directory. The default is for one Bulletin called SystemInfo, where you could just say a few lines about what system is being used to run the BBS. Note that the file name of the bulletin doesn't necessarily have to be the title that the user sees. How to edit that is described later. You must be careful when setting up bulletins, because each bulletin you set up will require its own entry in the Bulletins.Cmds command file. See the section on customizing commands later on for more details. NOTE: The CallerLog bulletin created by previous versions of TransAmiga is gone. Resetting User File - After these files have been setup, you will see TransCfg's main menu. The last thing you must do is to reset the user file, and to create the first member of the BBS, the SysOp. You will be asked some questions about yourself in order to create the SysOp account, then the user file will be made. Converting v1.0x User Files and File Listing - The last two options on TransCfg are for converting the user files and file listings of TransAmiga v1.0x to the new format in TransAmiga v1.1. To convert the user files, enter the name of your System directory that you used with v1.0x when prompted. Since access flags did not exist in v1.0x, you must enter the flags that you wish each user to have. Once that is done, the conversion will take place automatically. NOTE: TransAmiga v1.1 keeps much more information about users than TransAmiga v1.0x, so some of the new fields will not necessarily have accurate values. For example, after the conversion, every user will be given a postal code of '??? ???', their netmail credit will be set to 0, and the full screen editor will be set as off. To convert a file listing, simply enter the path to the directory, and TransCfg will convert the old format Files.BBS file to the new format. All information here is preserved. None of the files will be given long descriptions, so if you would like a long description for a file, you will have to edit the .Desc file (see the section on file listings for details). TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 20 Limits: TransAmiga has few built in limitations. Theoretically, you should be able to set up 32 000 file areas, message areas, transfer protocols, archive viewing methods, ARexx commands per menu, and bulletins. The number of messages allowed in a message area is virtually unlimited, however, TransAmiga will not be able to keep accurate last read pointers for users that have read past message 32768. The number of files allowed in an area is limited only by disk space TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 21 P A R T I I ------------ Using TransAmiga Running TransAmiga: TransAmiga must be started from Shell or Workbench via the Release 2 Workbench Execute Cmd menu option. It Shell usage is: TransAmiga [-c<config file>] [-b<baud rate>] [-l<locked baud rate] [-t<max time>] [-n<line>] [-x] [-r] [-s] Parameters in [] are optional, and words in <> are descriptors for what you would put in there. Here is a description of the parameters: -c<config file> - This gives the name of the master system configuration file you want TransAmiga to use that TransCfg created. If it is not given, BBS:Configs/TransAmiga.Cfg will be used. TransAmiga will not start up if it cannot find all its configuration files. -b<baud rate> - This one is optional. If specified, TransAmiga will open up the serial port at the supplied baud rate and immediately go to the logon sequence. This parameter is used if there is already a caller online before TransAmiga is started. This parameter is only really useful in conjunction with the -x option. -l<locked baud rate> - This parameter is also optional, and tells TransAmiga to lock the serial port at the supplied baud rate and do not adjust it. This is useful for HST users, as locking the baud rate allows maximum throughput with those types of modems. When used in conjunction with the above parameter, it will over-ride that baud rate, but will use it as the "real" baud rate that the connection is actually at. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 22 -t<max time> - Again, an optional parameter. When this parameter is used, then the online time available of the next caller will be adjusted so that it is no more than this value. Also, no time bonus will be given after uploads. This parameter is only useful in conjunction with the -b and the -x options. -n<line> gives the BBS line number. If not given, TransAmiga assumes line number 0. This is only required when you wish to run TransAmiga several times simultaneously. Valid line numbers range from 0 to 99. -x - Tells TransAmiga to exit after then next caller. This useful as it allows you to perform system maintenance tasks between calls with out the BBS interfering. -r - Tells TransAmiga to wait on its ARexx port after starting up, and not logon any users. This is particularly useful when having a frontend mailer answering the phone, as it allows nearly instantaneous transition from the mailer to the BBS, instead of having to wait for the BBS to load for every caller. -s - Tells TransAmiga to open the status window as soon as it loads up. Normally you have to select an option from the pull-down menu to open up the status window. Opening the status window takes up a little more precious memory. The most simple way to start up TransAmiga is: TransAmiga If your configuration file is something other than BBS:Configs/TransAmiga.Cfg, then you will have to pass that: TransAmiga -cTransAmiga:Cfg/Main.Cfg In an automated environment, you will probably want the BBS to exit after every call so that you can check the time and see if any system events need to be run, then you'd use: TransAmiga -cBBS:Configs/TransAmiga.Cfg -x HST users will want to lock the baud rate of the serial port. So they would start the BBS up like: TransAmiga -cBBS:Configs/TransAmiga.Cfg -l19200 -x TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 23 Parameters can be provided in any order and are not sensitive to case. When TransAmiga is started, it will open its window on either the Workbench screen or a custom screen depending on how you set things up. This window is the Terminal window and all BBS I/O is displayed here. You can also open up the status window from either the pull-down menu or using the -s command line option, which is used to display information about the current online caller. Troubleshooting: If TransAmiga does not come up and say that it is waiting for a call when you try to start it up, something is set up wrong. TransAmiga will give you an error message which will hopefully be enough for you to figure out what is wrong. If it's a problem in either a config file or a command file, it will tell you which file has the problem, then you will have to either load the file up in TransCfg or in a text editor as the case may be. Probably the most common problem is not adding command entries to the Bulletin.Cmds file for bulletins that you created in TransCfg. If a requester or even worse, an alert appears, then there may be a more serious problem. Please check seek some support to figure out what the problem is. Pull-Down Menus: TransAmiga has two standard Amiga pull-down menus: "TransAmiga", and "User". The latter is only available when there is someone logged on, and many of the items from the former are disabled when users are online. Commands in the TransAmiga menu allow you to do a local (SysOp) logon, open or close the status window, enter a simple terminal mode, resend your modem initialization string, get some information about TransAmiga, and to quit the programme altogether. The User menu allows you to go into "chat" mode with an online user, edit a user's access and information, and to automatically log off an online user immediately. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 24 TransAmiga Online: After TransAmiga starts, it must do some initialization. It must load the config files, and the command files, etc. If you did not tell it to immediately try to log on a caller, then it will scan the message areas. If you did, TransAmiga does not scan the message areas until after a user logs on. Depending on how you started TransAmiga, it will either wait for a caller, wait for an ARexx message, or immediately attempt to logon an already online user. If it is either waiting for a call, or waiting for an ARexx message, you can logon yourself by selecting "Local Logon" from the menu strip. If you are unregistered, a requester will come up as soon as the BBS starts giving the copyright notice. After delay, you can just click the mouse button to make it disappear. Logging On: Before anything can be done, a user must logon. You can do this from the machine running TransAmiga but selecting the Local Logon item from the pull-down menu. The logon consists of first entering you user name. If this is your first time running TransAmiga, enter the SysOp user name and password that you set up with TransCfg. If a new user calls and wishes to logon to your system, he/she should enter their name at this prompt. TransAmiga will see that they do not have an account on the BBS, and will take them through the new user procedure. Users that have set a handle for themselves (if handles are allowed) may also use their handle to logon. After entering the user name, and if the user is not a first time caller, a password must be entered. You get three tries at the password, and what you type will be hidden so that onlookers will not be able to determine your password. BBS Menus: At last, the Main Menu is presented. As with most BBS's, in TransAmiga the user performs functions by making selections from menus. Sometimes making a selection from a menu will take you to another menu. In this way, the menu structure TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 25 is similar to a tree. Here's how the tree branches out in TransAmiga: Main Menu | +----------+----------+----------+----------+ | | | | | Messages File Bulletin Settings Extras Menu Menu Menu Menu Menu Here is a summary of all the menus in TransAmiga. To get a more detailed description of the commands available, look through the supplied Help files in the text directory. Main Menu - From here the user can get to the other menus available from the system. These menus are the Change Setup Menu, the Message Menu, the File Menu, the Bulletin Menu, and the Extras Menu. Message Menu - This is where users can read and write messages to and from other users. Message areas can be set up as either traditional local message areas, FidoNet matrix mail areas, or FidoNet echomail areas. Messages can be either public which can be viewed by all, or privileged which may only be read by the person who wrote the message, the person who the message is sent to, and those with special access. The Message Menu is divided up into multiple message areas. Each area is isolated from the others and requires a certain SysOp defined minimum access to get to. Files Menu - The file areas work in a fashion similar to the message areas in that each area is isolated from the others, and requires a certain minimum access. Here is where users can send and receive files to and from the BBS. Each user has his own Upload:Download ratio, which means that for every specified number of downloads the user must upload a file. If you do not wish to implement this, it can be side-stepped easily. Bulletins Menu - This menu is for posting text files that users can read. Things you might want to post include BBS listing for the area, rules of the BBS, online game high scores, etc. Settings Menu - This is where the user can enter information TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 26 about his/herself, and also adjust some global settings for BBS use, such as password, screen length, etc. Extras Menu - As it says, this is just an extra menu. You would use this to add ARexx commands to, such as online games. Entering Commands: TransAmiga gives users two modes of entering commands at menus: command-stacking and hotkeyed commands. Hotkeyed commands (or just hotkeys) means that the command is processed the second the user presses the corresponding key, RETURN does not have to be pressed. This of course cannot be the case when text the user is entering is of variable length, for example, a message conference number or their street address, so RETURN must be pressed at the end of the line. Command stacking allows the user to enter several commands on one line, one immediately after the other. For example, typing in "c?" at the Main Menu will bring take you to the Change Setup Menu (c) and display the available commands (?). You can stack as many commands as you want on a single line. In cases where you'd normally have to press RETURN, you can instead enter a space, eg. M12 N from the Main Menu will take you the Message Menu (M), go to conference 12 (12, followed by space because you would need to normally press RETURN at this point), and read new messages (N). TransAmiga offers special command line editing features to those with ANSI turned. You may use the backspace, the delete key, and the left and right cursor keys to edit the line you are entering, just like in the CLI Shell. Additionally, you may call back commands you've previously entered and edit them by pressing CTRL-K, and to simply clear any text you typed on the current line, press CTRL-X (NOTE: These last two work with ANSI turned off as well). TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 27 Text Editors BBS Text Editors: At various times when using the BBS, a user will wish to enter a relatively large amount of text, for example, when entering a message, or leaving a long description for a file. To make the entering of text as simple as possible, TransAmiga provides a variety of text editor options for users. There are actually three different sets of editors that can be used, depending on the circumstances: the built in line editor; the external ANSI full-screen editor, called TrEd; and a local editor of your choice. The Line Editor: The built in line editor, called TransEd is the simplest type of editor, included for mainly for those without ANSI graphics capabilities. A user enters text continually. At the end of a line there is no need to press RETURN as TransEd will wrap words automatically. In the line editor version of TransEd you can not cursor back to edit something you may have entered incorrectly, you must use the backspace key and delete everything you have entered since the mistake. You may only backspace as far as the beginning of your current line, you cannot go back to a previous line. Several commands are available in TransEd and are accessed by preceding them with the backslash '\' character and must be the first thing entered on a new line, followed by RETURN. Entering a \ by itself will take you to the edit menu where you will be able to get a menu of all the available commands. There are commands to view what you have entered so far, to save your text, to abort what you were doing, to change a string on a line of text, etc. The Full-Screen Editor: The full-screen editor, TrEd, provides much more power than the line editor. You can use the cursor keys to move all around the text being edited. Attempting to type where there is already text, causes everything on the line to be moved forward a space to make room for what you are typing. It acts much more like a conventional editor that you would TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 28 use. The added power comes at the cost of compatibility, as TrEd must rely heavily on ANSI control sequences, so only users that have ANSI terminals may use TrEd. Most commands understood by TrEd are combinations of either holding Control and pressing a key, or pressing Escape, then pressing another key. For example, to view the list of commands, press the Escape key, then press ?. To save what you are writing, hold Control and press Z. Care must be taken when using TrEd. First of all, it makes very extensive use of ANSI control sequences, and many terminals do not have all the necessary commands fully implemented. For example, certain MS-DOS terminal programmes have difficulties with some of the codes sent. Most Amiga terminals, however, will work just fine with TrEd. You should note that TrEd adjusts its display depending on the screen size of the caller. Therefore, if the current caller has his/her screen length set larger than what will fit in your terminal window, TrEd's display may not look right to you. Rest assured, that provided the user's screen length is set correctly, it will look fine for him/her. NOTE: A full-screen editor can only be used if you are a registered TransAmiga user. Local Editor: TransAmiga also allows you to set the editor to use in local mode. Unlike the line editor and the full-screen editor, this editor does not have to be designed for use over the serial port. All it needs to do is to save the finished text under the appropriate name, which can be passed using %f as a part of your editor command. If you wish to quote lines when replying, the quote buffer is held in the file passed using %q. Most editors have the ability to execute macros on startup, so you may wish to create a startup macro for use with TransAmiga that inserts the quote buffer at the top of the message text. Note that there are some problems with editors that auto- detach themselves from their parent CLI process (eg. CygnusEd Professional). TransAmiga will think that they have exited almost as soon as you run them, because they return immediately. Luckily, most editors that auto-detach like this have an option to over-ride this, so that they do TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 29 not return until they have exited. You will need to consult your editor's manual on this. Reply Quoting: When replying to a message TransAmiga allows anyone of the three editor types to insert quoted lines from the original message into the text. In the line editor, entering \V allows you to view the lines in the quote buffer, and \Q allows you to insert them. In the TrEd, you press CTRL-Q, which opens up the quote window. With the local editor, you may need to write some scripts or macros to load the quoted text into the editor. At the beginning of the quote buffer is always the quote lead-in line as you setup in TransCfg for that message area. It is usually good practice to insert this line into your message right before you quote any actual message text, as it tells people reading the message exactly what you are about to quote. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 30 Access Levels User Access: TransAmiga has 256 different access levels numbered from 0 to 255. Access levels are useful for a variety of purposes. For example, allowing assistant SysOps access to BBS maintenance functions, restricting new non-validated users, etc. Access Flags: Access flags are a second level of access control in TransAmiga. The BBS is designed such that the access level should be used as the primary means for controlling access, but access flags give an additional level of control. Access flags are a set of eight "flags". For a user to have access to, for example, a certain file area, he/she must have at least the same flags set as are required for that file area. For example, say the flags for that area are: X--XX---- (X's indicate the flag is set, -'s indicate it is unset) Now, a user with flags: X---X-X--- would not have access, because not all the necessary flags are set; the fact that he has another extra flag set is of no consequence in this situation. However, a user with flags: X--XX--X- would have access, since all the necessary flags are set. New Users: When a user logs on for the very first time, he/she is given access 0 which denotes a user who has just logged on. This user is known as a "Guest", one who has just logged on and is looking around. Therefore, generally speaking, the functions that a guest should have access too should be quite limited. You should never manually set a user's TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 31 access to 0, as this will be considered by TransAmiga to be a deleted user. 1 is the lowest access level. If the guest wishes to become a member of the BBS, he/she must select the command to join the BBS. Upon completion of this questionnaire, the user receives the new user access level, time limit, and upload download ratio. How much access is given to this kind of user depends on your own preferences. Remember it is still that person's first call and you have not had a chance to validate him/her. Some people like to run an open system and give first time callers full validated access, while others prefer to keep them restricted. Privileged Access: Privileged access is anything equal to or above what you defined as privileged access in TransCfg. You should be very careful whom you give privileged access to. Generally speaking, in addition to yourself there should only be one or two more people with privileged access. A Note on Users' Rights: Human rights granted to people differs in different countries. In most countries though, everyone must be granted access to your BBS, even if you wish to run a private system. You may not discriminate against a user because of race, sex, age, etc. nor may you limit any of their other rights. The law still applies in the BBS world! TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 32 TrMaint User Maintenance: Unlike other BBS packages (including TransAmiga v1.0x), TransAmiga v1.1 does not have a built in SysOp menu. Instead, it has a separate utility called TrMaint. This actually works better than having a built in SysOp menu, as it removes code from the main programme that is only actually used by one or two users of a BBS, thus saving memory and cutting loading time. It is also advantageous, as TrMaint can be run not only through the BBS as a door, but also from the AmigaDOS shell, thus providing a full- featured offline user maintenance utility. Running TrMaint as a Door: To install TrMaint as a door from within the BBS, you will have to create an ARexx macro that starts it up (see the section on ARexx on how to go about this). The sole purpose of this macro will be to send the appropriate command to AmigaDOS to start up TrMaint. This command is: TrMaint -c<config file> -n<line number> Where <config file> is the same one that you used to start TransAmiga with, and -n is the number identified with the current BBS line (this will always be 0 in a single line system). This last parameter must be provided, as it tells TrMaint that it will be running through the BBS and not through the CLI. Running TrMaint from CLI: This is done in much the same way as described above, except that you do not pass the BBS line number. Leaving this out tells TrMaint that it should use the current CLI. All of the same functions are available regardless of whether TrMaint is run from the CLI or through the BBS, except for the fact that TrMaint can only be "multi-line friendly" when being run from the BBS, so TrMaint should only be run from CLI when there are no users currently online. Sample ARexx Macro: TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 33 This is an example of the type of ARexx macro you would use for starting TrMaint as a door from the BBS. /* TrMaint.trans, starts TrMaint */ options results /* Find out what line we're coming from, and what config * file this line is using. */ SYSTEMINFO 8 ; bbsline=result SYSTEMINFO 9 ; cfgfile=result PRINT 'Entering the SysOp Maintenance module...' NEWLINE /* Start up TrMaint by sending the proper command */ address command 'BBS:Bin/TrMaint -c'cfgfile' -n'bbsline exit TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 34 File Transfers File Listings: TransAmiga keeps a file called Files.BBS in each file directory. This file contains all necessary information about each online file to display the file listing and file information. It is an ASCII text file. Each line contains one file entry. The first field is the name of the file. This is convenient because you can easily alphabetize your file listings using the AmigaDOS Sort command. When the file listing is being displayed from within the BBS, you may wish to have certain comments displayed with the file listing. To do this, using a text editor, simply type in the text you want to have displayed, but have as the first character on the line be a backslash (\). You can do this anywhere within Files.BBS and it will still work. When a user goes to list the files, all lines within Files.BBS that begin with a \ will be displayed as straight text. If this text contains ANSI sequence, TransAmiga will automatically strip them for callers without ANSI. Here's an example of what you could put in File.bbs: \ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ \ ++ AMIGA UTILITIES ++ \ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ \ \NOTE: All files have been compressed with LHA. These lines will be displayed as-is (without the backslashes) whenever the user gets a file listing for that area. Note the lone backslash on a line for displaying a blank line. Long Descriptions: In TransAmiga v1.1, users can optionally enter long descriptions of files they have uploaded. These files are stored in the file library directory under the name <filename>.Desc. For example, if the file LHA_1111.Run was uploaded, its long description would go in the file LHA_111.Run.Desc. Even if a user doesn't give the file a long description, a .Desc file will still be created. The TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 35 first line of every .Desc file contains the name of the user that uploaded it (or that user's handle, if he/she has one). Every subsequent line is part of the description text. This is basically like any ASCII text file so it can be edited outside of the BBS with a text editor. Types of Transfers: There are 3 kinds of file transfer modes in TransAmiga: batch, local and normal. A local transfer can be done only when you are logged on locally, and there is no such thing as a local download, only local upload. Batch transfers allow you to specify several files at once to transfer. With normal transfers you must specify one transfer at a time. Local uploads are done when the SysOp would like a file he/she has placed in a file area directory to appear in the file listing. Batch transfers are used by protocols such as Zmodem (see the section on TransCfg to find out how to designate a protocol as batch). Normal transfers are for all other protocols (Xmodem, Jmodem, etc.). TrXPR: TrXPR is an external programme that TransAmiga uses for performing file transfers. It uses the XPR transfer protocol libraries, which is a standardized way for implementing transfer protocols on the Amiga using shared- libraries. When you first setup TransAmiga, you were told to simply except TransCfg's default protocol commands. All of these used TrXPR and XPR libraries. TrXPR will now be explained in a little more detail, so that you will be able to further customize your file transfer commands. TrXPR has the following command line usage: TrXPR <line> <protocol> <init> R|S <filelist>|<files...> <line> indicates which BBS line number wants to perform the transfer. You should use %n here, so that TransAmiga substitutes the correct line number. <protocol> is the name of the protocol library to use minus the 'xpr' prefix and the '.library' suffix. So for a protocol that is to use the xprzmodem.library, you would just enter 'zmodem'. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 36 <init> is the library initialization string. The meaning of this is dependent on each library. Every library has it's own set of parameters that can be included here, so you will have to consult the library's documentation to find out what to put here. R|S tells where you want to do a Send or a Receive. <filelist> is the name of a file that contains a list of files to be sent. <files...> is the name of the files to be received. How this field is treated depends on the library. With most, it will just be interpreted as the filenames for files to be sent or received. However, some libraries treat it differently. For example, the xprzmodem.library ignores this field when doing a receive. TrXPR expects the <filelist> argument when the S option is used, and <files...> when the R option is used. TransCfg's defaults are for Xmodem and Zmodem protocols. There are other libraries available, which will allow you to set up Ymodem, Kermit, CIS B+, Jmodem, and other protocols. Using TrXPR, getting these to work with TransAmiga should be quite simple. File Credit: One option in TransAmiga is file upload:download ratio. That is, for every so many files the user downloads, he/she must upload one file and will not be allowed to download again until he/she has done so. This is the only limitation imposed on a user's file transfers. TransAmiga does keep track of the total amount of bytes a user has transferred, but TransAmiga does not use this. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 37 P A R T I I I -------------- TransAmiga Multi-Line About Multi-Line: A multi-line BBS system is simply a BBS that has modems hooked up to multiple phone lines, so that it can handle more than one caller at the same time. This is about where the simplicity of multi-line ends, as there are numerous complexities. What makes multi-line so complex is the fact that the BBS must some how arbitrate access to its resources, as inevitably two users on different lines will want to perform operations that conflict with each other. For example, trying to read a message that is currently being saved, and downloading a file that is still in the process of being uploaded. TransAmiga makes sure that when it wants access to something, that another copy of TransAmiga already running is not trying to access it at the same time. Setting Up Multi-Line: Multi-line is setup in TransAmiga simply by creating a separate master system configuration file for each line. All other files, including other configuration files, messages, bulletins, text files, etc. can be shared by multiple lines. So you do not have to configure the message areas for each line, you do not need a separate text directory for each line, etc. Only the master configuration files need be different. If however, you do want certain things to be different, you may. For example, perhaps you want one line of your BBS to serve MS-DOS users, and the other to serve Amiga users, you could have different file and message configurations for TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 38 each line. Or perhaps, if you wanted to require a fee for access to your additional lines, you would have a different users directory for only those users with access to that line. Usually, most of each of the master configuration files will end up being the same. Generally speaking, only the modem configuration will differ. Most likely the serial device name and/or the unit number will be different, and perhaps the baud rates and modem commands will need to be altered. Perhaps you may want your screen configurations to be a little different also. To actually run the other BBS lines, you just start up TransAmiga several times, specifying a different master configuration file each time, and also specifying a different number using the -n command line parameter. For example, if you ran two lines on your BBS, you might use these two commands to start up the two lines: TransAmiga -cBBS:Configs/TransAmiga_0.Cfg -n0 TransAmiga -cBBS:Configs/TransAmiga_1.Cfg -n1 Notice how a different configuration files was specified, and how the -n parameter was used to give the second invocation of TransAmiga a line number of 1. For each line you setup, you must be certain that these two things are unique. Remember also that TransAmiga is safe to be made resident. If you are regularly keeping more than one line running, it will save you more memory by first making TransAmiga resident. Running a Local-Only Line: TransAmiga has the useful ability to designate a separate line for local use only. Even though you may actually only have one line available for online callers, you can set up a second line that you can use locally, thus allowing you to log onto your board even if there is already a user online. All that needs to be done is to have the name of your serial device blank. All other modem related fields will be ignored, and that BBS line will not be able to accept callers. The only way to logon will be locally. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 39 Other Programmes and Multi-Line: Remember our discussion about conflicts that inevitably arise when running a multi-line system? TransAmiga has the arbitration capabilities built-in, but it cannot control what other external programmes do. You have to be very careful when running multi-line, that you only use doors that are "multi-line" friendly. For example, an online game that created a bulletin containing the scores of the various players, would have to some how ensure that another invocation of the same door isn't writing to that file at the same time. A simple solution for this is to just create a file of a different name for each line. Another possibility would be to have the programme to make it's presence known, and not allow multiple copies of itself to be running at the same time. A more elegant solution would to have a locking mechanisms (using the Amiga's semaphores is a very easy way of doing this) to lock access to certain resources when they are being used. Having doors that aren't multi-line friendly running simultaneously on multiple lines is extremely dangerous. In the worst instances, it could create corrupt files on your drive, so be careful. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 40 P A R T I V ------------ Customizing the BBS Introduction: Now that is has been explained how to use the BBS, it is time to go into how you can customize the BBS to look and act the way you want it to. TransAmiga allows you to do this in a number of ways. You can change the key, the access, and the text for every single command in the BBS; you can turn off commands that you don't want. You can make your own menus, with different ones for ASCII and ANSI users. And you can customize the BBS text files to give them the look you want. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 41 Changing Commands The Command Files: Each command in TransAmiga can be customized. You can assign your own command key, command text, and a minimum access level to each command. TransAmiga gets information about this from special command files for each menu. You edit these command files to customize the menus. Each menu has its own command file, these all have the suffix ".Cmds". You can edit these with any ordinary text editor. There are command files for all of TransAmiga's menus. The files are called: Main.Cmds - Main menu commands File.Cmds - Files menu commands Message.Cmds - Messages menu commands Bulletin.Cmds - bulletins menu commands Settings.Cmds - Settings menu commands Extra.Cmds - Extras menu commands All of them should reside in your configurations directory. Each file follows the same format. The first line contains the title of the menu. This is used in the default menu prompt, and the default menu command listing that users see. Next come the command entries, one for each on the menu. Each command entry takes up one line and consists of the key used for the command, the text associated with the command, the access level required for the command to be available to a user, and the flags required. TransAmiga expects the entries to be in a specific order, so do don't mix commands around. Leading spaces are stripped, and blank lines and lines beginning with a semi-colon (;) are ignored. This is an example of what Main.Cmds might look like: ; The is an example command file for the Main menu. ; The first line contains the title of the menu that will ; appear in the prompt: Main Menu ; After that comes the command entries themselves. First ; comes the key to be pressed for the command, then the ; name of the command, followed by the access required. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 42 ; Use the asterisks as a guide to the placement of the ; fields. ; ********************** *** ******** T Time 0 -------- B Bulletins 10 X------- Y Yell at Tim 0 X------- C Change Setup 10 X------- F File Areas 10 X------- G Good-Bye (Log off) 0 -------- H Help With Commands 0 X------- J Join TransAmiga 0 -------- M Message Areas 10 X------- U User List 10 X------- L Leave Feedback to Tim 0 -------- O Online Programmes 20 X------- V Version Info 0 -------- W Who's Online? 0 -------- ; THE END There are a few important things to note. First of all, the length of each field is fixed and must not be changed. If the spacing is altered, the BBS will probably fail when it tries to read the file. The number of entries in each command file is fixed, with the exception of the command file for the bulletins menu (Bulletin.Cmds). The number of entries in it depends on the number of bulletins you set up. It has three basic commands then one command for each bulletin. So if you have 7 bulletins, your Bulletin.Cmds file will need 10 entries. It is best to take the sample command files provided and edit them, to be sure you get the spacing right and the order of the commands right. Be sure to have a backup of the samples somewhere, so if you do mess up a command file, you can go back to the original. Disabling Commands: It is not necessary to for all commands to be available to users. Indeed many commands are intended only for the SysOp. Some commands you may wish to disable entirely (for example, if your board is for messages only, you will want to disable the command that takes you to the file libraries). To disable a command simply give it an access TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 43 level of 256, and a key that is not being used by any active command. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 44 Text Files Text Files in TransAmiga: At numerous points during its operation, TransAmiga will use standard ASCII text files to display things. You create and edit these yourself to give your BBS a customized look. The following is a list of all text files that TransAmiga will display at one point in time or another. All of them are optional, if TransAmiga can not find a text file, it will simply continue on with the next item of business. Additionally, whenever TransAmiga displays a text file of any kind, if there is currently a user online with ANSI graphics turned on, TransAmiga will first look for <filename>.ANSI (eg. Title.ANSI), and if it can't find that, fallback to the original filename. This allows you create separate files with ANSI graphics for ANSI users. You can also specify a language if you have changed the current language with the LOADLANGUAGE ARexx command, by adding a period then the language, eg. <filename>.<language> or <filename>.<language>.ANSI. If you have not changed your language, then there is obviously no point is specifying a language. Connected - As soon as a caller connects, this file is displayed. Generally, this file should just be a brief welcome message to the user, and not a fancy title screen. TransAmiga can detect if the caller is using an ANSI terminal, so an ANSI version of this file can be displayed, even though a user isn't logged on at the time, and the caller's ANSI setting is unknown. TooSlow - If a caller connects at a baud rate lower than what you have specified as your minimum rate, that caller will be shown this file and then be logged off. Title - This is the main title screen for the BBS, displayed after a user successfully logs on. Generally you try to make this an attractive screen telling users a little about your BBS. Guest - When a user logs on who isn't already a member, this file is displayed. You should use this to outline the purpose of TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 45 your BBS, instructions for gaining access, and the rules that they must follow. Access.XXX - This displays the file only to users with XXX access. Using this you can create completely different displays for users of different access levels. The access level must be three digits long, padded with zeros, eg. Access.025.ANSI, Access.010, Access.255.ANSI. News - This is the last file displayed in the logon process, right before the main menu is displayed. This is the place to put your news flash type information. Join - This file is shown when a user selects the command from the main menu to join the BBS. Usually this is just a brief outline of the requirements for gaining access, Paging - Once a user selects the page command from the main menu, they will see this file. This file could be used to say what hours the SysOp is likely to answer the page at, and also to warn off those that abuse the page command. Feedback - When a user issues the Feedback command from the main menu, this file will be displayed immediately before the user starts to enter the message. A good place to just thank the user for any comments he/she has about the BBS, etc. PreUpload - Users see this just before starting an upload. This is a good place to remind them of the rules of uploading, and perhaps a little thank you for their contribution. PreDownload - This is what users see right before downloading. This file is a good to remind users not to be file sponges, and if you have an upload:download ratio, to display that. Protocols - If present, this will replace the menu that is displayed to users when selecting transfer protocols. SendMsg - Whenever a user goes to enter a message (either through the Write Message command, through feedback, or when replying) TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 46 this text file will first be displayed. It is good for some quick instructions before writing a message (such as a reminder not to address messages to "SysOp" in echomail areas). ReadMode - If present, this will replace the menu that is displayed when a user goes to select the message reading mode. GoodBye - When a user has confirmed his/her desire to logoff, this file will be displayed. A "Thanks for calling" is usually appropriate here, and perhaps a brief listing of other boards worth calling You can use just about any text editor (Ed, MEmacs, QEd, etc.) to make these files appear in any way you wish. For ANSI files, you will need a special ANSI editor, such as Prism or LaDraw. You are encouraged to customize these as much as you wish. When displaying text files, TransAmiga will automatically convert End-of-Line to a Carriage Return & Linefeed. Most text displays in TransAmiga can be aborted by pressing the Space Bar or holding Control and pressing C, unless this has been disabled (see later on). Because of the relative slowness of floppy drives, when a text file is being displayed, slight pauses will be noticed as the drive steps. This can be avoided by setting up your text path to be in ram:, and then in your Startup-Sequence, creating a text directory in ram:, then copying all of the BBS's text files into that directory, i.e. Copy TransAmiga:Text ram:Text all ANSI Graphics: Files ending with .ANSI contain ANSI graphics escape codes. Anytime TransAmiga tries to display a text file to a colour with ANSI, it will automatically add the .ANSI suffix and first look for that file, and fall back to the original filename if that file is not present. ANSI is a graphics protocol often used in telecommunication for changing colours, moving the cursor, etc. These are displayed only when a user has the ANSI Graphics option on. The escape codes make these files rather cumbersome to edit TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 47 in a text editor, so you will probably want to get your hands on a special ANSI editor. One that will get the job done for you is called Prism. If you have access to an IBM clone with at least CGA graphics (almost all of them have that), you can use an MS-DOS ANSI editor, which in general tend to be much more powerful than their Amiga counterparts (the Amiga system has little use for ANSI graphics, they're used almost exclusively in telecommunications). Note that there are some differences between Amiga ANSI and IBM ANSI. IBM ANSI is more standard, and is capable of displaying 16 colours, while Amiga ANSI (handled by the console.device) only does up to 8 colours, but can display bold, underline and italics text. TransAmiga uses its own custom ANSI routines which can handle both Amiga and IBM ANSI codes (with the exception of IBM ANSI's flashing text and keyboard remapping). The fonts provided with TransAmiga have the upper set the same as the IBM character set - not like the Amiga's - so the IBM ANSI line drawing characters are available. More?: When a text file is being displayed, and it is about to scroll off the top of the screen, TransAmiga will prompt the user with something like "More [32%]? -Y/N/C-". TransAmiga is first telling the user how much of the text file he/she has viewed so far, and then prompting him/her to either continue (Y or RETURN), to stop viewing the file (N), or to view the file continuously with no more More? prompts (C). Imbedded Control Sequences: TransAmiga allows more than just straight text in text files. It supports a number of special control codes, that are interpreted by TransAmiga, and tell it to output certain information. These control sequences allow considerable flexibility. You can use them to cause a 'Press RETURN to continue.' prompt to come up, to display the name of the online, to pause for a few seconds, and a host of other things. The control sequences can appear anywhere in a text file, and the file can contain as many of them as you wish. Here is the complete listing of available control codes: TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 48 Key Function CTRL-A Prompt user to press RETURN CTRL-B Don't allow users to abort viewing CTRL-C Enable aborting CTRL-D Don't bring up More? prompts CTRL-E Enable More? prompts CTRL-F Display a piece of user information CTRL-K Display a piece of system information CTRL-W Pause for one second CTRL-F and CTRL-K have special meanings. The character following the CTRL-F or CTRL-K determines what piece of information TransAmiga displays. CTRL-F combinations are in general for displaying information about the current online caller: Key Function CTRL-F a Returns current caller's name CTRL-F b User's city, province CTRL-F c User's password (careful) CTRL-F d User's computer type CTRL-F e User's telephone number CTRL-F g User's flags (X is on, - is off) CTRL-F f Date of user's last call CTRL-F l User's netmail credit CTRL-F m Number of messages posted by user CTRL-F n User's last read in current conference CTRL-F o User's access level CTRL-F p Times the user has called the system CTRL-F q Number of files user has uploaded CTRL-F r Kilobytes user has uploaded CTRL-F s Number of files user has downloaded CTRL-F t Kilobytes user has downloaded CTRL-F u Total time user has been online today CTRL-F v User's screen length CTRL-F x ANSI status (ON or OFF) CTRL-F w User's first name only CTRL-F 0 User's full-screen editor status (ON or OFF) CTRL-F 1 User's command mode (either Expert or Novice) CTRL-F 2 User's hotkeys status (ON or OFF) CTRL-F 3 User's handle CTRL-F 4 Message read mode (All or Personal) CTRL-F 5 User's birthdate CTRL-F 7 User's upload:download ratio CTRL-F 8 User's street address CTRL-F 9 User's postal code TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 49 CTRL-K combinations return general information about the system: Key Function CTRL-K a Number of calls system has received CTRL-K b Last caller to system CTRL-K c Total number of messages on the system CTRL-K d Low message in current conference CTRL-K e High message in current conference CTRL-K h High user number on system CTRL-K i Current time CTRL-K j Current date CTRL-K m User's time remaining today CTRL-K q User's daily time limit CTRL-K r Baud rate of user CTRL-K y Current message conference CTRL-K z Current file library CTRL-K 0 Number of messages in current conference CTRL-K 1 Number of current conference CTRL-K 2 Number of current library CTRL-K 3 Current one-liner CTRL-K 4 Who the current one-liner is from CTRL-K 5 Commands available from current menu (command key of each command, separated by spaces) CTRL-K 6 Path to current message conference CTRL-K 7 Path to current file library CTRL-K 8 Number associated with this BBS line CTRL-K 9 Master configuration file this line is using. The uses for these control codes are almost unlimited. They are useful in any textfile, including menu and prompt files, and any other text files the BBS displays. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 50 Menus, Prompts & Help Files Menu Files: You actually setup up the BBS's menus when you created your command files. When the user presses ? to see a menu, the BBS constructs a list of commands for which the user has access to on the screen. This is quite useful as it displays only the commands the user has sufficient access to use. You may however wish to design your own menus. This is all a part of giving your BBS that "personal touch". To do this, you will need to create text files for each menu that you want to be customized, and place those files in your text directory. TransAmiga allows considerable flexibility when creating you own menus. You can create separate menus for specific access levels, or a default menu for all access levels. As with all text files, you can add the .ANSI suffix to create special versions for ANSI users. The filenaming conventions for menus are exactly the same as any other text file: <filename> or <filename>.ANSI or <filename>.<language> or <filename>.<language>.ANSI This creates a default menu that all users regardless of access will see when they press '?' at a menu prompt. If you'd like to have different menus displayed depending on the callers access level, then you can create a menu for specific access levels. The filenaming convention for doing that is: <filename>.XXX or <filename>.XXX.ANSI or <filename>.XXX.<language> or <filename>.XXX.<language>.ANSI Where the XXX is a the access level that this menu is to be displayed to. The access level must be three digits, padded with zeros. If a menu does not exist for the caller's access level, then the default menu is displayed, and if that is not available, then TransAmiga builds the menu display itself, showing only those commands that the user has access to. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 51 Now for the actual names of the menu files. Naturally, each menu within the BBS is going to need its own menu file: MainMenu - Main Menu MsgMenu - Message Conferences Menu BlltnMenu - Bulletins Menu ExtraMenu - Extras Menu FileMenu - File Libraries Menu SetMenu - Settings Menu MsgConfs - Menu Listing Available Message Conferences FileLibs - Menu Listing Available File Libraries Your finished menu files go into the text directory. Example menu names are: MainMenu.000, FileMenu.255.ANSI, BlltnMenu, ExtraMenu.ANSI, SetMenu.025.ANSI, etc. All the imbedded control sequences available in other text files are available in the menu files, as well as the prompt and help files. Prompt Files: Prompt files are much like the Menu files described above, except that instead of appearing whenever the user presses ? at a menu, the appear right away (they are menu prompts). Also unlike menu files, you can not have specific prompt files for an access level, users see the same prompt file regardless of access. The file names of the prompt files are as follows: MainPrompt - Main Menu MsgPrompt - Message Conferences FilePrompt - File Libraries BlltnPrompt - Bulletins Menu ExtrasPrompt - Extras Menu ReadPrompt - Read Messages Sub-menu ListPrompt - List Files Sub-menu ContinuePrompt - Press Continue Prompt And as with all text files in TransAmiga, you can add the .ANSI suffix to create special versions for users with ANSI turned on. If a prompt file isn't available then TransAmiga will display a default menu showing the name of the menu and the amount of online time the user has remaining. All Prompt files should be in your Text directory. Example file names are: MainPrompt, MsgPrompt.ANSI, ReadPrompt.ANSI, ReadPrompt, etc. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 52 The CTRL-K 5 imbedded control sequence is particularly useful in the prompt files, as it gives the user a quick listing of what commands he/she has available. Help Files: TransAmiga has provisions for providing online help to users of your BBS. Each menu has a Help command, and when selected by a user, TransAmiga will display a help text file for that menu. These files all end in Help and all reside in your text directory. The filenames for the help files are: MainHelp MsgHelp FileHelp ExtraHelp BlltnHelp SetHelp SysOpHelp (actually used by TrMaint, not TransAmiga) TransEdHelp As you can see there is a help file for each menu. Although you don't actually have to have these files around, it is highly recommended that you make them. For novice BBS users, getting around can be a little difficult, so you should try to help them out with information in the help files. And as with all text files in TransAmiga, you can add the .ANSI suffix to create special versions for users with ANSI turned on. If a prompt file isn't available then TransAmiga will display a default menu showing the name of the menu and the amount of online time the user has remaining. Language Files: Almost all of the text strings displayed by TransAmiga can be found in files in the Configs directory called language files. Language files can be identified by the .Lang file extension. Language files are actually just simple text files containing the various prompts and messages that the user will see. Things such as the 'Enter your full name:' and 'Privileged message?' prompts are in this file. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 53 When the BBS starts up, it loads a language file called Default.Lang. By editing the default language file, you can change the text that the user sees. If you have ARexx, you can use the LOADLANGUAGE ARexx command to switch between different language files. Each line of a language file contains one text string. The only way you can tell which prompt appears when in the BBS is from the text itself and from experience with using the BBS. When editing it, you must be extremely careful not to remove lines, or to shuffle lines around. You should also refrain from putting any control sequences, such as ANSI, in these prompts. And most importantly, be sure you have a copy of the original Default.Lang file backed up somewhere, so that you can revert to that should something go wrong. Editting language files is for advanced users only, do not alter language files unless you know what you are doing. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 54 P A R T V ---------- FidoNet Explained Introduction: The purpose of this section document is to give you all you need to set up TransAmiga as a fully operational node within FidoNet. Because of the tremendous depth of FidoNet, what is described here really only scratches the surface. As you become more experienced with FidoNet, you will become knowledgeable enough to do things on your own. The Basics of FidoNet: FidoNet (and other similar mail networks) is a group of bulletin board systems that can exchange messages and files through automated computer operations. With over 10,000 member "nodes" worldwide, FidoNet is the largest amateur mail network in the world. A "phonebook" or directory of all member systems, called the nodelist file, lists all currently active FidoNet systems. But what does FidoNet do? At the most basic level, FidoNet simply offers an organized protocol for systems to exchange files. Where the power lies is in the contents of those files. FidoNet has several major features. The first is netmail or matrix mail. Netmail allows you to send a privileged message to anyone in the world (that has access to a FidoNet system) for a small cost - usually less than that of a stamp. All you need to know is their name and their FidoNet address. The most commonly used feature is echomail. Echomail areas are large public message conferences where groups of users TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 55 can discuss almost anything (in the appropriate topic area of course). There are hundreds of different echoes available that cover just about every topic from Amiga music to back pain. Echomail differs from netmail in that it involves open conferences where multiple people will simultaneously be involved in several conversations. It's roughly equivalent to local message areas on most bulletin boards. Topography: FidoNet's method of organization is based on various levels of sub-divisions based mainly on geography. Here's a general overview of the hierarchy: Zones | Regions | Nets | Nodes | Points Where Zones at the top represent the largest geographical area, down to Nodes and Points which represent individual users. Each individual zone, region, etc., is identified by a number. There are five zones, each zone represents a continent. Zone 1 is North America, 2 is Europe, and 3 is Australia. Within each zone, there are regions. Regions are still reasonably large areas, most zones contain in the area of 10. For example, region 12 in zone 1 comprises most of the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. The next level down FidoNet is the net. A net usually covers an area code, or a large city, and they usually contain from 15 to 200 nodes. A node consists of one single system. Most node operators also run BBS's. These are the individuals that actually make up FidoNet. The numbering system for nets and nodes is a little different than zones and regions, in that net numbers can be repeated across different zones, and node numbers can be repeated across different nets. For example, there exists a net 247 in both zone 1 and zone 2, and several nets contain the node number TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 56 192. The simple fact that they are in different zones or nets is enough to distinguish between the two. There is one last level below the node, and that is the point. A point is also an individual user, but is actually a sort of "child" of a node, and is dependant on that node, its so-called bossnode. Usually points are run by people who like to simply read messages in the comfort of their own home, but do not want the greater responsibilities of operating a node, although some points do run BBS's. Also of note is that points do not get listed in the nodelist. This simply diagram illustrates the hierarchy within FidoNet: Zone 1 | +------+------+ | | Region 12 Region 13 | +----+----+ | | Net 163 Net 247 | +----+----+ | | 1:247/205.0 1:247/192.0 | +----+----+ | | 1:247/192.2 1:247/192.5 Your Address: Who and where you are in FidoNet is identified by your FidoNet address. Your address follows the format: zone:net/node.point Note that your region is not identified in your address. As an example, point 5 running off node 117 in net 247 in zone 1 would have an address of 1:247/117.5. If you are a node, you don't have a point number, and it is either written as 0 or left off completely. If the zone is left out, it is also usually safe to assume that the zone is the same as yours. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 57 Often you will here talk of 2-Dimensional addressing and 4- Dimensional addressing. A 2-D address means just the net/node numbers of FidoNet systems. 4-D addressing means the ability to deal with full zone:net/node.point addresses. In the old days, most programmes were only capable of 2-D addressing, so things got confusing when you the need arose to communicate with points and out-of-zone systems. Most new FidoNet programmes are capable of full 4-D addressing. Here are some more examples of FidoNet address: 1:247/202 1:163/109.1 2:247/4 3:113/202.0 The Nodelist: As has been mentioned, the nodelist is basically FidoNet's telephone directory. It lists all member nodes, who operates them, the city they are based in, and the phone number of the system. The nodelist file itself is very large, about one megabyte uncompressed. Because of the size of the nodelist, it becomes difficult to make any changes in it. Every week, several hundred changes have to be made as new nodes come up, and old nodes go down. Instead of getting a completely new nodelist file, special file are distributed containing the changes, called NodeDiff's. To actually make the changes to the nodelist, a nodelist processor is required. This not only processes the NodeDiff files, but also optimizes the nodelist for fast and easy access. Joining FidoNet: Before moving onto the mechanics of interfacing with FidoNet, we should perhaps mention how to join FidoNet. What you need to get is a node number. It doesn't cost anything to join FidoNet as a SysOp. Some nets have special files about becoming a member of their net, and most FidoNet SysOps will be glad to help you apply for a node number. Usually, you are required to send a netmail message (from your system) to the net co-ordinator of the network you wish to join to demonstrate that you support at least minimal TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 58 FidoNet functions. The Net Co-ordinator's node number will always be zone:net/0. When you send the message, set your node number as zone:net/9999. Include all the information you feel he/she will require, including your address, voice phone number, etc. After two weeks or so you should have a node number. Traditionally, FidoNet has been available only to MS-DOS users, and Amiga FidoNet software has only been developed in the last couple of years. Unfortunately, most FidoNet software is either expensive or only suitable for a single user point setup. TransAmiga bridges the gap between price and performance for Amiga FidoNet, by bringing you a low cost BBS that works fully in a FidoNet setup. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 59 FidoNet and TransAmiga Introduction: TransAmiga supports FidoNet as a point or a node. The difference between a node and a point is basically that a node is more independent. Not much time will be spent on using TransAmiga as a point, as it is not all that much difference, and the advantages of being a node are such that it is recommended that you become one. To actually have a complete running FidoNet setup, you'll need more than just TransAmiga, as it is only one component in a total FidoNet setup. Unlike other BBS software packages, TransAmiga does not attempt to "re-invent the wheel" by attempting to write equivalents of perfectly good FidoNet tools that already exist. History has shown that this leads to many compromises in both features and performance. So in addition to the BBS, a basic FidoNet setup with TransAmiga involves the following software: 1. The mailer (sometimes called a session handler or a frontend) 2. The mail processor (also called a mail packer, or mail tosser) 3. The message reader and editor. (Most complete setups will include more software. If you are feeding echomail conferences to points or other nodes, an AreaFix utility is needed. If you are handling file echoes, a Tick utility is needed. These kinds of setups are much more involved, and tend to be highly personalized, so it is beyond the scope of this document. We will just go into a basic setup.) The purpose of the message reader/editor is fairly obvious, but the mailer and mail processor require some explanation. As we said, FidoNet basically involves the transferring of files from system to system over the modem. This is what the mailer does. It makes calls and receives calls for the sending and receiving of files. The files can be anything but are usually packed messages. When your mailer connects with another mail system (either by you calling out, or the other system calling you), a handshaking protocol is performed, which basically involved telling each other who TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 60 you are. Then, one at a time, each end sends any files that are destined for the other. After each end has done this, the call has completed and they disconnect. Now the mail processor enters the scene. Every message you enter on your system in either an echomail conference or in netmail needs to be processed and packed into a "bundle" ready to be sent or picked up by another system. Conversely, you will receive all your mail in these bundles, which will need to be unpacked and placed into the appropriate areas. This is what the mail processor is for. There are two major mailers for the Amiga, Welmat by Russell McOrmand and Michael Richardson, and TrapDoor by Maximilian Hantsch and Martin Laubach. Both programmes have their strengths and weaknesses, and both are equally suited for use with TransAmiga, so you may use which ever you prefer. Be warned that you will need to register TrapDoor before you can use it properly in a node environment. Be sure that the version of Welmat you have is at least 0.44, and TrapDoor is at least 1.80. As far as mail processors go, you have a few more choices. There are several major ones, including: GCCHost, Foozle, TrapToss, and Conference Mail ("ConfMail" or just "CM" for short). Setting up FidoNet: The first step is to obtain the other programmes. TransAmiga's support board, Chris' Amiga BBS HST (716)289- 3351 has most of the above mentioned programmes if there is no where closer to you that has them. You will also need to obtain a copy of the nodelist. This is a rather big file (about 400k compressed, almost 1 MB uncompressed), but is essential in a FidoNet setup. This should be available from most FidoNet BBS's. TransAmiga uses a programme called TrNode to access the nodelist. Two versions of TrNode are provided, once called TrNode.tl and the other is called TrNode.nl. The former is for use with traplist.library (which you will be using if you use TrapDoor as your mailer), while the latter is used by nodelist.library (which you will be using if Welmat is your mailer). Rename the appropriate version to just TrNode, and place it somewhere in the default search path. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 61 Once you have obtained the necessary programmes, read the documentation thoroughly and attempt to setup the config files. You may wish to refer to the sample configurations provided in Appendix I. These examples assume that all your FidoNet message areas are in the logical device Mail:. If not, it is suggested that you assign Mail: to point to this area, otherwise you will have to adjust the examples slightly. Within Mail:, you'll need to create some directories that several of the FidoNet utilities will use. The first should be called 'Outbound', this is where programmes such as ConfMail will place all files that are to be sent out to other systems. The second is called 'Inbound', and as you might have guessed, this is where all files received from other systems go. You will also need to create a directory called 'Nodelist', which is where all the nodelist files will go. Some preparations within TransAmiga will also be necessary. To do this you must run TransCfg and edit your message configuration. You must fill in the questions about FidoNet. One of the first things you do is set up your FidoNet addresses. In TransAmiga you may have several addresses (for example, if you belong to more than one network, or if you hold a position such as Net Co-ordinator), though most people will only have one address. Network addresses in TransAmiga are 5-dimension, consisting not only of the normal zone, net, node and point, but also of an optional domain, which indicates the name of the network. Usually this is not needed unless you are several networks. You can also set a pointnet (also known as fakenet) to go with each address. Use this only if you are a point with a pointnet, nodes that have points should not use this. Also, if you are a point and your bossnode is running software that does not require a pointnet, you may enter a pointnet of zero, and TransAmiga will create the proper 3-dimensional PATH: kludge lines. The rest should be straightforward enough, you simply enter your address, then your inbound, outbound, and nodelist directories. Then all you have to do is setup the FidoNet areas. This is just like adding any other kind of message area, except you will need to say which one of your addresses to use (normally just number 1 if you have only setup one address), and give an origin line for echomail areas. When doing so, do not enter the '* Origin:' string, TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 62 or your address at the end, as this will be added automatically. Your mail directory tree may now look something like this: Mail: | +-------+-------+--------+---+--+------+------+--------+ | | | | | | | | Personal General Computers Matrix Echo Inbound NodeList Outbound | +---------+----+----+--------+ | | | | Amiga_Prog Amiga TransAmiga Amy_Point Events: The command used to start up the BBS requires some more indepth explanation. In TrapDoor, this is set using the BBSCOMMAND, and in Welmat using BBSExecute. At first, you may think that all that has to be done is to simply start the BBS in immediate logon mode at the baud rate of the call that Welmat or TrapDoor answers. But this is too rigid for our purposes, and does not accomplish all we need to. To run a fully-operational node, certain other things have to happen, called "events". For example, at some point in time you will have to call out to receive your mail bundles. Then you'll need to unpack those bundles, and you'll also have to create bundles of your own to send out. We will divide up the events into two categories: time driven events, and BBS driven events. Time driven events are things we want to happen at a certain time in the day. For instance, you usually want to have your system call out for mail during the night sometime. BBS driven events are things that need to be done due to something a user on the BBS has done, for example entering a netmail message, will would need to be packed up and sent off. Lets get a basic listing of actions that initiate the events, and how we want things to react when these events happen: Action: Reaction: - User enters a FidoNet - Tell mail processor to TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 63 message export - Mail is delivered - Tell mail processor to import - Zone Mail Hour - Tell mailer not to allow BBS callers or file requests - Time to poll for mail - Tell mail processor to export any remaining messages. Tell the mailer to call all nodes with waiting mail, and also the feed for our mail. Import any received mail bundles. Renumber message areas. This is just the basic set of events, once you get things running you will probably want more. Exporting Mail: The most simple event is exporting mail when a user has entered a FidoNet message. To do this, we must change the way the BBS gets started up. Instead of having the mailer run the BBS, the mailer should execute an AmigaDOS script, which would check the return value from the BBS to see if any netmail or echomail was entered (or both) and do an export. Keep in mind that the user will not actually be hung-up until control returns to the mailer, so any after BBS operations must be executed asynchronously (eg. using the DOS Run command). Importing Mail: Exporting would normally be handled by your control script, however if you are using TrapDoor, it has the ability to execute a command after every mail session, so it would be easiest to have your importing done there. Just have your AFTERSESSION command execute a script that call the mail processor to import mail. Time Driven Events: Now we must handle the other kind of event, one caused by a certain time of the day. To do this, we must first have a means of finding out when that time of day is. A type of programme called a "Cron" executes commands a certain time of day, which may be easiest for you. There are several of TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 64 these utilities available. Two of the more popular ones are DCron and TPTCron. All you have to do is set these to start up scripts to handle your various events at the correct time of day. Advanced Usage: There is an alternate way to have the mailer start the BBS, which is slightly more involved. It involves keeping TransAmiga running in memory at all times, waiting on it's ARexx port (using the -r command line option). When the mailer receives a human caller, it would send ARexx messages to TransAmiga telling it to log the caller on (see the ARexx command reference section). The advantage of doing things this way is that it provides nearly instantaneous transitions from mailer to BBS, and avoids the short loading time delay of the running the BBS for every caller. The disadvantages are that it consumes more memory as the mailer and the BBS will be running in memory, and it is more complicated to setup. Other Mailers: TrapDoor and Welmat or the only mailers currently available that are capable of supporting a BBS in a full-node environment. This may change however, and hopefully the design of TransAmiga is such that getting any new mailers to work with it won't cause a problem. TrUMP: TrUMP is a special utility for TransAmiga, it stands for TransAmiga Update Message Pointers. What it does is to save the high and low message numbers in a FidoNet message directory, so that TransAmiga does not have to perform a time consuming message base scan when users are online. TrUMP is intended only for FidoNet areas, as they will often be accessed by programmes other than the BBS, but it is also safe to use on local areas should they need to be rescanned for some reason. TrUMP needs to be run any time that the low and/or high message number in an area changes. It must also be run after the initial setup of any matrix or echo conference. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 65 Run TrUMP right after: importing, renumbering, deleting, and after messages have been added by some programme other than TransAmiga. If you do not run TrUMP on affected areas, TransAmiga will have incorrect values for the high and low message numbers, which could cause messages to be overwritten. TrUMP must be run from the CLI or shell as follows: TrUMP <mail dir 1> [<mailer dir n>...] All you do is give TrUMP a listing of the directories to be rescanned. Foozle users should note that there is an alternate usage form for TrUMP, see later on for more details. If you run TrUMP while TransAmiga is running, TransAmiga will not immediately become aware of the new message pointers (unless you use the RESCAN ARexx command, described later), however, TransAmiga will re-read the message pointer file before it adds any messages. Therefore it is perfectly safe to run TrUMP while TransAmiga is running (but see the important section below on TrAL). TrAL: As you become more advanced with your system, you may find times when it would be convenient to make changes to the message bases while the BBS is still running, and possibly, users are online. Usually, these sorts of practices are totally out-of-the-question because of the threat of your programme trying to access a file at the exact same time as the BBS does. For example, when running FidoNet, it is usually necessary to disallow humans from logging onto the BBS while the mail processor was running. TransAmiga offers a solution to this problem in TrAL, which allows you to temporarily tell TransAmiga to lock out writing to the message bases so that other programmes can access them safely even if there are users online. With the message areas locked, other programmes can then work with the message areas, doing things like importing messages, etc. It is not, however, safe to run any process that modifies existing messages when the message areas are locked, only things that add new messages. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 66 To use TrAL, you start it from the shell in the following manner: TrAL [L|U] Tral L tells TransAmiga that users are Locked from writing, and TrAL U Unlocks them. Be sure to match every TrAL L with a TrAL U, or users won't be able to write messages. Typically, scripts that call the mail processor should first do a TrAL L, go about their business, run TrUMP if necessary, then run TrAL U. Renumbering: Sooner or later, FidoNet areas will have to be renumbered. Many people like to do this on a regular basis, others wish to do this only once in a while. In order for individual users' last read pointers to remain accurate after a renumber, the tool you use for renumbering must update TransAmiga last read pointers, which are contained in files called LastRead.BBS in each message directory. At the time of writing, ConfMail v1.12 supports this (older versions of ConfMail did not), and support is planned for GCCHost. If you are using another mail processor, check the documentation to see whether or not it supports updating of TransAmiga's last read pointers. If it doesn't, tell the author he/she should fix that. For the time being you'll have to either use another programme to handle renumbering, or simply don't renumber at all. Although Foozle does not directly update TransAmiga last read pointers, TrUMP may be used in a special manner so that last read pointers are properly updated. To do this, you must use Foozle's FzI utility to edit your External commands. Set the after-renumber command to something like: BBS:Bin/TrUMP %r %d What you need to do is have Foozle execute TrUMP immediately after an area has been renumbered, passing it Foozle's special renumber area and the directory that has been renumbered. It is absolutely essential that you have Foozle setup in this manner, else lastread pointers will not be accurate after a renumber. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 67 NOTE 1: Every time you renumber, TransAmiga must rescan the message areas or it will have incorrect values for the high and low message number. For this reason, you should never renumber when users are online, even if the message areas have been locked with TrAL, wait until after a user has logged off and ensure that no one calls while the renumbering is taking place. If you exit then re-run TransAmiga after every call, the message areas will be scanned when it starts up; if you have TransAmiga waiting on its ARexx port, then you must send it the RESCAN command. Remember also to run TrUMP right after the renumbering NOTE 2: This only applies to actual renumbering of message, not just the deletion of older messages. Offline Message Readers: The message format used by TransAmiga conforms exactly to what is outlined in FTS-0001. Therefore, any message reader that uses this message format should be usable in a TransAmiga FidoNet environment, such as Chameleon, GCCHost, PointManager and RMB (the package Juliet uses its own message format which is completely incompatible with TransAmiga). TransAmiga also has special support for the Foozle Mail Manipulation System by Peer Hasselmeyer. Foozle is a super fast shareware integrated FidoNet message reader and mail processor. Foozle supports a custom message format that is a variant of the FTS-0001 format. TransAmiga will automatically recognize a Foozle message, and read in the extra header information that Foozle messages contain. TransAmiga still writes messages in the standard FTS-0001 format, so Foozle users will have to use its RESCAN command before it does anything else with the message areas, since Foozle will not automatically recognize FTS-0001 messages. Also, Foozle does not update the TransAmiga last read pointers, so the TrUMP utility described above must do this. This does not end up being any different than with other mail processors, as TrUMP has to be run anyway after a renumber. Using FidoNet: Using FidoNet simply involves reading and writing messages in FidoNet areas. This is basically the same as in local TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 68 and all-privileged areas, except that extra FidoNet specific information is inserted into the messages. When entering messages in a Matrix area, you will first be asked for the FidoNet address you wish to send the message to. When you enter a valid address, TransAmiga will automatically look up this address in the nodelist, and when entering the name of who you wish to send the message to, the default name will be the SysOp of that node (of course you can edit this). Netmail is by default sent routed. TransAmiga leaves the topic of netmail routing up to your mail processor (GCCHost and Foozle have routing capabilities built in, CM users will need to use oMMM to route netmail), however privileged users are given additional control. If you're privileged you will also be asked if you would like to send the message "Routed", "Crash Mail", "Hold" or to send a "File Attach". Most mail processors will look at their routing information to determine what happens to mail marked as routed, while crash mail will always be sent directly to its destination, and mail put on hold will not be delivered, but rather kept until the destination node contacts your system. File attaches sends a file of your choice along with the message and are always marked crash. Before a user can actually send the message, TransAmiga will check the cost of sending the message against the users netmail credit. The user will not be able to send a message if he/she does not have adequate credit. Remember, in order to keep track of costs correctly, the message cost for nodes that you route mail to should be set to zero in your nodelist processor configuration. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 69 P A R T V I ------------ TransAmiga and ARexx Introduction: Arexx is a very powerful macro language available for the Amiga. If you have Release 2, then you already have ARexx, otherwise you will need to purchase ARexx. If you do not have ARexx, then you are missing out on some of TransAmiga's most powerful features. Nonetheless, TransAmiga does make attempts to compensate for this and is still fully functional. However, it is highly recommended that you upgrade to Release 2 of the Amiga's operating system, which comes with ARexx. No lessons will be given in programming in ARexx, but for those not familiar with it, ARexx is an interpreted language that includes the ability to send commands to any other running programme that has opened a suitable ARexx port. With a little imagination, tremendous things can be done through ARexx. Using ARexx with TransAmiga: It is TransAmiga's extensive ARexx interface that makes the BBS so powerful. It allows you to easily programme in new functions in addition to the built in ones. You can change the way existing commands work, add new commands, and basically anything you want. It makes TransAmiga a completely programmable BBS. You will probably find that after setting up the BBS, ARexx will soon start to play a very important role in the running of your BBS. The ability to customize, and the ease with which you can customize, are so great that you will probably find yourself relying on ARexx to make the BBS act the way you want it. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 70 At first you may feel that having to use ARexx like this is too much work, and that the BBS should be able to handle more things without ARexx. However, in order to maximize the SysOp's ability to make his/her own decisions about the way his/her board appears, ARexx must be used, otherwise you would always be running into limitations of the BBS software. After writing a few ARexx macros yourself, once you get the hang of it, you will see the enormous potential the TransAmiga's ARexx interface offers. When TransAmiga starts up, it opens an ARexx port called 'TransAmiga.<line number>' where it can receive ARexx commands. TransAmiga sports over 90 ARexx commands that allow you to access virtually every single function of the BBS. By convention, all TransAmiga ARexx scripts should end with the '.trans' suffix so that they can easily be recognized as ARexx scripts for use with TransAmiga. All TransAmiga ARexx scripts must reside in your BBS ARexx directory. There are two ways to get TransAmiga to run ARexx macros. One way is as the cause of a user action. For example, after logging on, the ARexx macro 'Logon.trans' is run. The second way is by installing an ARexx macro as a command on a menu in TransAmiga using the special .Rx files in the TransAmiga configurations directory. The following ARexx macros are started because of user actions: Logon.trans - after displaying the Title text file. Join.trans - after the user has answered the questions for the Join command. File.trans - when a user tries to go to the file area. Message.trans - when a user tries to go to the message area. Editor.trans - immediately after the user exits the editor. The text entered can be found in t:Editor.Temp (for line 0) or t:Editor_<line number>.Temp (for line numbers other than 0). GoodBye.trans - after a user selects the good-bye command. LogOff.trans - after the user has actually been logged off. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 71 None of these are required, and TransAmiga will first check to see if they are present before trying to execute them. If they are not present, TransAmiga has some default actions that it will take. If the Logon.trans ARexx macro is not there, then the user will shown a list of new message posted since his/her last call, and also be prompted to search for new messages sent to him/her. If the File.trans or Message.trans macros are not found, then the user will be shown the list of available areas, and be prompted to select one. If the GoodBye.trans macro is not present, then the user will be asked if he/she wishes to change the one-line comment. To add an ARexx macro as a command from a menu, simply create an .Rx file for that menu. The format for these .Rx files is exactly the same as the .Cmds files use to set up commands, described earlier, and the filenames are the same too, except that they end in .Rx rather than .Cmds. It has the key used for the command, followed by the text string to be associated with the command, followed the access level required, followed by the flags. What makes the .Rx files different is one additional field that comes after the access level with a space inbetween. Here you put the name of the ARexx macro to be executed when a user selects this command from the menu. For example: ; Lines beginning with semi-colons are comments. ; Blank lines are ignored, all other lines are assumed ; to be ARexx command entries. ; ********************** *** ******** ******************* P Poker 10 X------- Poker.trans W Wheel of Fortune 10 X------- Wheel.trans Y Add to BBS Listing 10 X------- BBS_Lister.trans ; THE END Be sure that the ARexx macro you specify is indeed a valid ARexx macro in your BBS ARexx directory, otherwise the BBS could be hung waiting for ARexx messages coming from a macro that was never run. Writing ARexx Macros: Every single ARexx macro you write for TransAmiga must have the line 'options results', otherwise the macros will not function properly. This tells TransAmiga that it is OK for it to send return codes back to ARexx. As TransAmiga needs TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 72 to set return codes for many of its commands, this line must exist in each and every TransAmiga ARexx macro. Secondly, you must be able to handle unexpected user logoffs, due to either dropping carrier or an idle timeout. There are two ways to handle this: when a command returns something in the result variable, such as when querying the user for a string, TransAmiga will update the ARexx variable CARRIER. If the user is still online, it will hold the value of 1, otherwise, it will equal 0. All properly written ARexx macro must check this regularly and respond appropriately. TransAmiga ARexx macros need no 'address' line in them, as the port is set to TransAmiga's when the macro is started. ARexx macros started by TransAmiga do not need to, and should not, address TransAmiga's ARexx port, as TransAmiga sets this before the macro is started. However, if you start up an ARexx macro from another source (eg. the shell) that is to talk to TransAmiga, you will first need to address the name of TransAmiga's ARexx port. TransAmiga opens a different ARexx port for each line, called 'TransAmiga.#' where # is the line number, eg. line 1's ARexx port will be called 'TransAmiga.1'. Since ARexx converts all unquoted strings to upper-case, you must enclose the port name in quotation marks. From then on, all you have to know are the special ARexx commands that TransAmiga understands. As you will see, there is a very large variety. TransAmiga v1.0x Doors: The original versions of TransAmiga had only the most basic of door support, where a door was simply a DOS programme that was run, and no interaction between the door and TransAmiga could take place. Nonetheless, some doors were written, most notably PTA by James Stewart for running Paragon BBS doors. Doors in TransAmiga v1.0x were added as command to menus using the .Exts files, but they are now gone. Now, you must have an ARexx macro installed as a command which inturn starts the v1.0x door using the RUNDOOR ARexx command. TransAmiga v1.1 creates the old-style t:Door.Temp file for complete compatibility (new doors should no longer use the t:Door.Temp file, but should instead get information through TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 73 TransAmiga's ARexx port). Note also that the name of this file depends on which line starts the door. Here is a sample ARexx macro for starting a door via PTA: /* GlobalWar.trans, starts GlobalWar through PTA */ options results PRINT 'Loading Global War...' RUNDOOR 'BBS:PTA -s BBS:Extras/GlobalWar/GlobalWar' exit ARexx Macro Ideas: Because of the vastness of the commands available in TransAmiga through ARexx, you are virtually unlimited in what you can do. One of the most popular applications is online games, as these are quite popular with many BBS callers. TransAmiga's ARexx interface is ideally suited to easily writing games, but there is far more that you can do. Here are some ideas you may wish to think about: * A callback verification programme for auto-validating new users. * Personal file space for users, so that two users can exchange files privately. * Division of file and message areas into sub-groups (sometimes called SIGs). * A polling booths for users to create and vote on poll topics. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 74 Command Reference Introduction: This sections lists all the ARexx commands that TransAmiga understands. Many of them will return values of some sort. You ARexx macro can look at these values by evaluating the variable RESULT. TransAmiga's ARexx interface is divided into two sets of commands: The first set, used most often, is made up of the commands used when TransAmiga starts an ARexx macro when a user is online. The second set, which are only used for special situations such as running a FidoNet node, are ones that are only understood when TransAmiga has been started with the -r option and a user is not currently online. The online commands can be further divided into TransAmiga specific commands, and the ABBEREXX commands and variables. The ABBEREXX commands are actually a standardized set of commands used by several different BBS packages, allowing ARexx macros written for different systems to be run by TransAmiga. If you want your macros to be run by SysOps using other BBS packages, then you should restrict yourself to the ABBEREXX command and variable set. However, for most applications, you may find it desirable to make use of the multitude of additional TransAmiga specific commands that are available, with the consequence being that only TransAmiga systems will be able handle these macros. ABBEREXX Commands: These are the commands that TransAmiga supports as a part of the Amiga Bulletin Board External Rexx (ABBEREXX) interface command set. These commands should be used when portability to other ARexx supporting BBS's is desired. BBSIDENTIFY ABBEREXX BBS|EMULATION|NAME|SYSOP|TERM|USER - Returns certain information, depending on the <what> parameter. Possible values are: ABBEREXX: which returns the current version of the ABBEREXX implementation (at the moment, '1.0'). BBS: which returns the current version of TransAmiga is being used. EMULATION: indicates what type of terminal mode the caller has selected. It returns either 'ASCII' or 'ANSI'. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 75 NAME: returns the name you have set for the BBS. SYSOP: returns the name of the SysOp of the BBS. TERM: which returns a string of the format <baud> <rows> <columns> <line number>, eg. 2400 80 24 0. USER, which returns a string of the format "<username>" "<calling from>" <access>, where access is one of: GUEST (a first time caller, access 0), MEMBER (anyone with access greater than 0 and less than the privileged access level), CO-SYSOP (anyone with access equal to or greater than privileged access, but less than 255), or SYSOP (access 255). An example return string could be: "Tim Aston" "St. Catharines, Ont." MEMBER eg: BBSIDENTIFY ABBEREXX BBSIDENTIFY BBS BBSIDENTIFY EMULATION BBSIDENTIFY NAME BBSIDENTIFY SYSOP BBSIDENTIFY TERM BBSIDENTIFY USER CHECKABORT - Returns 1 if the user has pressed one of the abort keys (CTRL-C or the spacebar), otherwise 0. Takes no parameters. CLS - Sends the screen clearing code. Takes no parameters and returns nothing. GETCHAR - Waits for a single character from the user. It returns as soon as it gets something, and does not wait for the user to press RETURN. It takes no arguments, and the character received will be returned, or '###PANIC' if the user was unexpectedly logged off due to carrier loss, timeout, etc. HANGUP - Hangs the online caller up, and after the ARexx macro terminates, the logoff procedure will be initiated. Note, that if it is a local logon, nothing actually happens until the ARexx macro terminates. Takes no parameters and returns nothing. IREADY - If there is any input waiting in the serial buffer, this command returns 1, else 0. No input is retrieved though. It takes no parameters. MAYGETCHAR - TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 76 Checks if they user has entered a character, and returns immediately, with the result being either the key the user pressed or 'NOCHAR' if a key was not pressed. Takes no parameters. eg: MAYGETCHAR cmd=RESULT if cmd~='NOCHAR' then call do_cmd NEWLINE - Sends the newline code (a carriage return followed by a line feed). Takes no parameters and returns nothing. PRINT <string> - Sends the given string with a newline appended. It returns nothing. PROMPT <length> NORMAL|HIDE|YESNO|NOYES "<prompt>" - Prompts the user to enter text with the given length as the maximum. Three types of text input are currently supported: NORMAL: Normal line oriented input HIDE: As above, but hid user input behind dashes (-). Useful for passwords, etc. YESNO: A Yes or No response, with Yes as the default. NOYES: A Yes or No response, with No as the defalut. The prompt text must be enclosed in quotes, an din order for the BBS to "see" these quotes, they themselves must be quoted (see examples). This command returns the string entered in the cases of NORMAL and HIDE types, and either 'Y' or 'N' in the cases the YESNO and NOYES types. eg: PROMPT 30 'NORMAL' '"Enter your favourite colour: "' PROMPT 10 'HIDE' '"Where were YOU last night?'" PROMPT 1 'YESNO' '"Was it good for you?'" SEND <string> - Sends the given string exactly as is to the user, with no translation or screening done on the part of TransAmiga. It returns nothing. SENDFILE <filename> - Sends the given text file to the online user, the full pathname must be given. More? prompts will automatically be displayed as usual, and all TransAmiga imbedded control codes are available as usual. If the current user has ANSI turned on, it will first look for <filename>.ANSI, and fall TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 77 back to the original filename if that is not found. It returns nothing. eg: SENDFILE 'BBS:Text/Title' SETNODELOCATION <where> - This allows you to change the string that indicates what a user is doing that is displayed with the List Online Users command, or the TrBLAD programme. eg: SETNODELOCATION 'Playing "Kill the Capitalists"' SYSOPLOG <string> - Creates a log entry with the given string. The date and time will automatically be added infront. It will be appended to TransAmiga's log file. It returns nothing. eg: SYSOPLOG 'Lost all his/her money at poker' ABBEREXX Variables: Part of the ABBEREXX standard is the maintenance of three ARexx variables. These are: CARRIER, TIMEONLINE and TIMELEFT. CARRIER, as explained above, indicates whether or not there is a user online line, it contains the value 1 if a user is online, 0 otherwise. TIMEONLINE and TIMELEFT indicate, in minute, how much time the user has spent online today and how much time he/she has left for today respectively. eg: PRINT 'You've used' TIMEONLINE 'minutes today' QUERY 'How do you feel about that?' answer=RESULT if CARRIER=0 then do SYSOPLOG 'Carrier Drop!' exit 10 end if timeleft<=0 then do SYSOPLOG 'No more time!' exit 10 end Commands Recognized with a Caller Online: These are the commands that TransAmiga supports in addition to the ABBEREXX commands while there is a user online. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 78 BROWSEFILES <mode> - Allows you to select either browse or regular mode for listing files. A mode value of 0 indicates normal mode while a value of 1 switches to browse mode. Returns nothing. CHARSTACK - This checks if there is anything in the current character stack, i.e. whether or not the user has "stacked" one or more commands. Returns 1 if there is, otherwise 0. It takes no parameters. eg: CHARSTACK if RESULT=0 then SENDMENU 'BBS:Text/MyMenu' CHECKMSGS - Does a search of all new messages in all available areas for messages addressed to the user or to the user's handle (if he/she has one). Found messages will be marked. The search can be aborted at any time by pressing CTRL-C or the spacebar. CONTINUE - Brings up the "Press RETURN to continue." prompt and awaits a response from the user. It takes no arguments and returns nothing. ECHOMAIL - Returns 'TRUE' if echomail has been entered this call by the user, or 'FALSE' if not. eg: ECHOMAIL if RESULT='TRUE' then call export_echo FEEDBACK - Functionally identical to the function from the Main Menu. Takes no parameters and returns nothing. FILEAREA <area number> - Changes to the specified file area. If the change was successful, 1 is returned, otherwise 0, indicating that either in invalid area number was given or that the user did not have sufficient access. GETCARRIER - Checks to see whether carrier is present or not. Returns either TRUE of FALSE. It takes no arguments. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 79 GETCMD [<prompt>] - This command works in much the same way as GETCHAR, except that if the user does not have hotkeys selected, it will wait for the user to press RETURN. Any surplus characters entered by the user will be kept in his/her command stacking buffer. You can optionally supply a prompt string for it to display before waiting for the command. The command entered will be translated to uppercase automatically. It returns the character received or '###PANIC' in the case of unexpected logoff (due to carrier loss, timeout, etc). JOIN - Takes a user through the process of joining the board, in the exact same way as the Join command from the Main Menu. Takes no parameters and returns nothing. LISTFILEAREAS - This command lists all file areas the user has access to, two areas per line, with each area numbered. It returns nothing and takes no arguments. LISTFILES - Lists the files in the current file area, giving a total at the bottom. More? prompts will be brought up when necessary, and the user can abort the listing by pressing CTRL-C or SPACE. It takes no arguments and returns nothing. LISTMSGAREAS - Lists all message areas the user has access to, two per line with each area numbered. It takes no arguments and returns nothing. LISTONLINE - Displays the current BBS online activity. Takes no parameters and returns nothing. LISTPROTOCOLS - Displays the available file transfer protocols to the user along with their corresponding number. Takes no arguments and returns nothing. LISTUSERS - Functionally identical to the function from the Main Menu. Returns nothing and takes no parameters. LOADLANGUAGE <language> - Loads in a new language file, over-riding the current one. The language file is searched for in the configurations TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 80 directory, and the extension .Lang will automatically be added. Returns nothing. eg: LOADLANGUAGE "francais" MARKFILE <filename> - Marks the given filename if less than 10 have are currently marked. It will scan all file libraries available to the user for the file, it need not be in the current library. Returns the full path to the marked file, or 'FAIL' if the file could not be found. eg: QUERY 'Enter file to mark: ' ; file=RESULT if CARRIER=1 then do MARKFILE file if RESULT='FAIL' then PRINT 'Not found!' end MARKMSG <number> - Marks the given message number in the current conference. Returns nothing. MODEMCMD <string> - Sends the given string to the modem, and will expand the imbedded control code ~ to equal a half second pause, and | to equal a carriage return. eg: MODEMCMD '~~~+++~~~ATH|~~' MORE - Brings up the More -Y/N/C- prompt and waits for user input. TransAmiga does no checking on what the user enters, it is up to the ARexx macro to do this. It takes no arguments. MSGAREA <area number> - Changes to the specified message area. If the change was successful, 1 is returned, otherwise 0, indicating that either in invalid area number was given or that the user did not have sufficient access. NETMAIL - Returns 'TRUE' if netmail has been entered this call by the user, or 'FALSE' if not. eg: NETMAIL if RESULT='TRUE' then call export_matrix NEWMSGS - TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 81 Displays the number of new messages that have been posted in each area the user has access to since his/her last call. It takes no arguments and returns nothing. NEWFILES - Prompts the user at what date to start searching for new files from. It searches all areas and will display new files to the user. It takes no arguments and returns nothing. NOP - NO OPeration, a do nothing command. PAGESYSOP - Writes to the Status Window and the log that the user has paged, it will not beep. It takes no arguments and returns nothing. PROTOCOLSEND <files...> - Sends the given files using the current file transfer protocol. The full-path name of the file must be given, TransAmiga will not search for the file in the file areas. Note that although several files can be passed, some protocols are non-batch and will only send the first file. Also note that a user's current protocol may be unpredictable unless the SETPROTOCOL command has been used. QUERY [<prompt>][\\<default>] - This command waits for input from the user. The user may enter up to one line of text, and must terminate the line by pressing RETURN. If a prompt is supplied, this will be displayed immediately before waiting for input. A default for user input can be specified by having two backslashes (\\) immediately after the prompt text, followed by the desired default input. The default input will be displayed for the user to edit. The string entered is returned. eg: QUERY 'What planet do you live on: \\Earth' planet=RESULT QUERYY [<prompt>] - This will prompt the user for a Yes or No response, with the default being Yes. If a prompt is supplied, it will be displayed immediately before waiting for user input. TransAmiga translates user input to upper case, but does nothing else. The character entered by the user is returned. eg: QUERYY 'Are Amigas good computers?' TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 82 if RESULT='Y' then smart=1 else smart=0 QUERYN [<prompt>] - This is exactly the same as the above, except that the default response it No. eg: QUERYN 'Is the sky green?' if RESULT='N' then smart=1 else smart=0 READMODE <mode> - Selects the read mode for reading messages. Current defined modes are 0 for read all available messages, 1 for reading personal mail only, and 2 for reading marked messages only. The read mode is always set as 0 when the user logs on. Returns nothing. READMARKEDMSGS - This cycles through all message conferences that the user has access to and the marked messages. This can be useful as a means of immediately displaying messages to the user that have been found in some kind of search. READNEWMSGS - Starts reading new messages in the current area, equivalent to the command from the message menu. Takes no parameters and returns nothing. RESCAN - Rescan the message areas for the high and low message pointers. This should be used if your ARexx macro has run TrUMP to adjust the message pointers, this makes sure TransAmiga knows about these changes. RUNDOOR <cmd> - Starts a door using the given command. Before the door is saved, a TransAmiga v1.0x format door information file is saved in T:, the name of which can be passed using %f (see below). Several imbedded control codes are supported: %b - Baud rate of the caller %n - BBS line number %f - Name of door info temporary file %c - BBS master configuration file for this line The command's result code is returned, or '-1' if the command could not be executed. eg: RUNDOOR 'BBS:Extras/MyDoor/MyDoor -n%n -c%c' TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 83 NOTE: This command is only useful some doors, particularly older ones designed for TransAmiga v1.0x, and doors that make minimal use of transamiga.library. Most doors (such as TrMaint and TrShell) will need to be started up with the built-in ARexx command "address command <cmd>". For an example of starting doors this way, see the examples of starting TrMaint and TrShell from the BBS, and you should also look up "address command" in your ARexx documentation. Hopefully the door's documentation will clearly state how it should be started, but when in doubt, use the "address command" method. SAVEMSG <filename>\\<msg number> - This saves the indicated message number to the given file. Note that no checking is done to see if the user should be allowed to read this message. The filename must be immediately followed by two backslashes (\\) followed immediately by the message number. Both arguments are required, nothing is returned. SEARCHFILES <search string> - Searches all file areas that the user has access to for a file that has the given string in its filename or description, and displays those files to the terminal. Returns nothing. SENDMENU <filename> - This is very similar to the SENDFILE command. The only differences are: the file is assumed to be in the BBS text directory (therefore, you should not pass a full pathname); the file may be interrupted when it is being displayed by a the user pressing a key, which is taken to be a menu command. This command can then be retrieved using any input commands such as GETCHAR, GETCMD, etc.; and TransAmiga will also attempt to see if there is a menu for the user's access level, in exactly the same way as it does when displaying menu files. SETACCESS <access> - Changes the online user's access level to the given value. Returns nothing. SETALIAS <name> - Changes the online user's alias to the given value. Returns nothing. SETBIRTH <date> - TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 84 Changes the online user's birthdate to the given value, which must be in YYMMDD format. Returns nothing. SETCOMMENT <comment> - Changes the one-line comment to the given comment, and attributes it the current user (or to his/her handle if the user has one). Returns nothing. SETCITY <city> - Changes the online user's city to the given value. Returns nothings. SETCOMP <computer> - Changes the online user's computer type to the given value. Returns nothing. SETEDITOR <editor type> - Sets the type of editor for the online user. Values allowed currently are 0 for the internal line-editor, and 1 for the external full-screen editor. Note that TransAmiga does no checking here as to whether the user has ANSI active or not, so beware of this when setting people to the full-screen editor. Returns nothing. SETFLAGS <flags> - Changes the access flags of the online user. Should be eight characters long with an X indicating the flag is set and a - indicating it is unset. Returns nothing. SETGRAPHICS <graphics type> - Changes the graphics type of the online user. Values allowed currently are 0 for ASCII, and 1 for ANSI. Returns nothing. SETHOTKEYS <boolean> - Changes the status of hotkeys for the online user. 0 turns them off, 1 turns them on. Returns nothing. SETLASTREAD <number> - Changes the user's last read pointer in the current message area to the given number. Returns nothing. SETLENGTH <length> - Changes the screen length of the online user to the given value. Returns nothing. SETPHONE <tel. no.> - Changes the phone number of the online user to the given value. Returns nothing. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 85 SETPOSTAL <postal code> - Changes the postal (or Zip) code of the online user to the given value. Returns nothing. SETPROTOCOL <protocol number> - Changes the protocol of the online user to the given protocol number. Note that TransAmiga does not actually save the user's selected protocol, so their current protocol may be unpredictable before using this command. SETPROV <province> - Changes the province (or territory or state) of the online user to the given value. Returns nothing. SETPSWD <password> - Changes the password of the online user to the given value. Returns nothing. SETRATIO <max. downloads> - Changes the maximum number of files the user may download for each upload to the given value, which may be from 1 to 255. Returns nothing. SETSTREET <street> - Changes the street address of the online user to the given value. Returns nothing. SETTIME <minutes remaining> - Changes the amount of online time the online users has for today. Returns nothing SYSTEMINFO <character> - This returns the piece of system information corresponding to the given character. The characters available are the same for the system information imbedded control codes that area available in text files, and the same information will be returned. Use both this and the USERINFO command to find out information about the system setup and the current online user. An example of its usage would be to send 'SYSTEMINFO 7 ' to check the access of the current file area, to see if the user has access. eg: SYSTEMINFO b ; last_caller=RESULT TEXTEDIT - TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 86 Calls the appropriate editor, depending on the user's editor choice, and whether or not it is a local logon. It returns the name of the file that contains the text the user has entered, or '###ABORTED' if the user aborted the editor. Takes no parameters. eg: TEXTEDIT ; file=RESULT if file~='###ABORTED' then address command 'copy' file dir||'signature' USERINFO <character> - This returns the piece of user information corresponding to the given character. The characters available are the same for the user information imbedded control codes that area available in text files, and the same information will be returned. Use both this and the SYSTEMINFO command to find out information about the system setup and the current online user. An example of its usage would be to send 'USERINFO x' to check the ANSI status of the user, and set some ANSI variables accordingly. eg: USERINFO a ; name=RESULT USERINFO 0 ; acc_level=RESULT VERSIONINFO - Displays the version information to the user. It takes no arguments and returns nothing. VIEWMSG <number> - Displays the given message number, from the current message area. Last read pointers are not updated. Returns a non- zero value upon failure. YELL - Flashes the screen 5 times and posts a message in the status window stating that the online user has paged. Returns nothing and takes no parameters. Commands Recognized with no Caller Online: Here are the commands that TransAmiga understands when it was started with the -r option, these commands are not recognized when there is a caller online: BAUDRATE <baud> - TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 87 Specifies the baud rate the TransAmiga should log the caller on at. Typically this is followed closely by a LOGON command. Equivalent to the -b command line parameter. It will only actually change the baud rate of the serial port if the LOCKBAUD or -l options were not used. It returns nothing. LOCAL [WAIT] - Does a local logon, equivalent to the Local Logon item from the pull-down menu. It takes no arguments and returns nothing. If the optional WAIT keyword is passed, this command will not returned until the local user has logged off, otherwise, it will return immediately. LOCKBAUD <baud> - Specifies at what baudrate TransAmiga should lock the serial port at. Equivalent to the -l command line parameter. It returns nothing. LOGON [WAIT] - Tells TransAmiga to log on an online user. Typically a combination of BAUDRATE and possibly LOCKPORT, MAXTIME and USERNAME commands are issued right before this. It takes no arguments and returns nothing. If the optional WAIT keyword is passed, this command will not return until the call has completed, otherwise it will return immediately. MAXTIME <minutes> - Specifies the maximum amount of time the next caller will have. Equivalent to the -t command line parameter. It returns nothing. RESCAN - Tells TransAmiga to rescan the message areas. You will need to do this if TrUMP has been run because of changes to the message pointers (eg. after a renumber or import) without the BBS being restarted. It takes no arguments and returns nothing. QUIT - Simply tells TransAmiga to shut down completely, equivalent to the Quit item from the pull-down menu. It takes no arguments and returns nothing. UNLOCKPORT - TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 88 Tells TransAmiga not to lock the serial port, and to adjust the baud rate of the serial port to that of the caller. This is the default, and is only used to over-ride a LOCKPORT or -l command. USERNAME <user> - This can be used to bypass the initial user name prompt once the LOGON or LOCAL command is executed. The logon process will start with the BBS evaluating the name entered. If the user is currently a member, the password prompt will be entered. If not, the guest user process will take place. If its an invalid name, then the BBS will display the user prompt. This command is very useful with frontends that take input from the user (eg. Welmat). This way you can get the user's name from the frontend and pass it directly to the BBS. The commands are typically used in conjunction with some kind of frontend, such as a FidoNet mailer. Using these commands, you can have the BBS in memory all the time, and have the frontend run an ARexx macro to "wake-up" the BBS and save the usual waiting period while the BBS loads, making the transition from frontend to BBS almost instantaneous for the caller. SkyLine/C-Net ARexx Emulation: TransAmiga also understands many of the same commands as SkyLine BBS does. Those of you familiar with its command set will have noticed that several commands are the same (eg. GETCHAR and QUERY), while other commands work are very similar to SkyLine BBS ARexx commands, but have different names (such as SYSOPLOG, which is directly equivalent to SkyLine's LOGENTRY commands). TransAmiga therefore provides synonyms for these commands, so that most SkyLine ARexx macros can be run under TransAmiga almost unmodified. All that needs to be done is to remove the line: address 'SkyLine' from any ARexx macros, and they should work under TransAmiga. If they do not, it is because they are using SkyLine ARexx commands that TransAmiga does not support. If this happens, usually only very simple modifications will be necessary to support the equivalent TransAmiga commands. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 89 In addition to TransAmiga's commands which are already compatible with SkyLine, TransAmiga supports: TRANSMIT, SENDSTRING, LOGENTRY, BUFFERFLUSH, SHUTDOWN, CHECKIO, and some instances if the GETUSER command. Example ARexx Macro: To help you get started writing your own ARexx macros for TransAmiga, a very simple example is given here. Its not particularly useful for any purpose other than to illustrate how to use TransAmiga ARexx interface. Lines have been numbered in this manual for easy reference, but actual ARexx macros, naturally, would not have these numbers. 1: /* Example.trans - the World Famous Hi-Lo Game! */ 2: options results 3: userinfo a ; username=result 4: print "Welcome" username "to The World Famous Hi-Lo Game!" 5: newline 6: keepgoing=1 7: do while keepgoing=1 8: num=random(1,100,time(e)) 9: print "OK, I have chosen a number between 1 and 100, and" 10: print "it is your job to guess what it is." 11: notright=1 12: guesses=0 13: do while notright=1 14: guesses=guesses+1 15: prompt 3 'NORMAL' '"Enter guess #'guesses': "' 16: guess=result 17: if carrier=0 then exit 10 18: if guess<num then print "Too low." 19: if guess>num then print "Too high." 20: if guess=num then notright=0 21: end 22: print "You win! And it only took you" guesses " tries!" 23: newline TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 90 24: prompt 1 'YESNO' '"Would you like to play again?"' 25: answ=result 26: if carrier=0 then exit 10 27: if answ='N' then keepgoing=0 28: end 29: print "Bye!" 30: exit line 1: This is a comment line, every single ARexx macro must start off with a comment line like this. Comments in ARexx are enclosed in /* and */ line 2: All your TransAmiga ARexx macros must have this line. It tells ARexx that it should expect the host (that is, the BBS) to set the result after a command. line 3: This is the first usage of a TransAmiga ARexx command, USERINFO. USERINFO takes as a parameter a code which tells it what piece of information to return. In this case, the code is A, which means it should return the current user's name. Our ARexx macro takes this value (all values returned by TransAmiga are stored in the variable result) and copies into a variable called username (since the result variable will be changed by other commands). line 4,5: These two lines make use of the PRINT and NEWLINE TransAmiga ARexx commands. Note in line 4 how you can easily include variables in the arguments you pass to TransAmiga ARexx commands. line 6,7: This initiates the play loop for our game, using ARexx's DO WHILE... construct. line 8: Makes use of ARexx's built-in RANDOM() function to generate the number that the user is going to have to guess. line 9,10: Uses TransAmiga's PRINT command again to show the user some information. line 11,12,13: Initiates the guessing loop, again using ARexx's DO WHILE.. construct. line 14: Increments the guesses variable that we initialized earlier, to keep track of the number of guesses the user has made. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 91 line 15,16: Prompts the user for a guess using TransAmiga's PROMPT command. NORMAL indicates the input type, and 3 is the maximum number of characters the user can enter (since the number is between 1 and 100, there's no point in entering anything longer than 3 characters). The text the user entered is then copied into the variable guess. line 17: This is a very important line. While our macro was waiting for input, the user could have dropped carrier, had the idle timer expire, or had his/her time limit run out. In which case, it would be pointless and stupid for our game to continue without a user there to play. What we do then is check the TransAmiga variable CARRIER to see whether or not the user is still there. If it's 0, then he/she is gone, so our macro should exit. Otherwise, we can continue. line 18,19,20: Here we check the user's guess to see if it is too high or too and tell the user so. If the user's guess is correct, we exit the guessing loop. line 21: The end of the guessing loop, go back up to the beginning of this loop. line 22,23: Congratulate the user using TransAmiga's PRINT and NEWLINE commands. line 24,25: Ask the user if he/she would like to play again. This uses TransAmiga's PROMPT command again, but this time we use the YESNO input type, since we want the user to answer Yes or No. The user's response (which is guaranteed to be either Y or N) is copied into the variable answ. line 26: Once again, the all important check to make sure the user is still with us. line 27: If the user responded with No, then exit the playing loop. line 28: End of the playing loop, go back to the start. line 29: Say good-bye! line 30: Exit, end of our macro. Any actual macro you were to write would naturally be a little more involved that this. For example, you may want to display ANSI graphics to users that have ANSI turned on. Also, a little more "idiot-proofing" should be done (for example, if the user enters text instead of a number, the TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 92 macro will halt with an error). However, this should give you a good idea of what a TransAmiga ARexx macro looks like and you should be ready now to write some of your own. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 93 P A R T V I I -------------- Politics Disclaimer: No warranties are implied or expressed with regard to the fitness or merchantability of TransAmiga BBS for any particular purposes. All risks and damages, incidental or otherwise, arising through the use or misuse of TransAmiga BBS are entirely at the responsibility of the user. While considerable effort has been made to provide you with a reliable product, there is no guarantee that the programmes are 100% "bug-free". Any bugs will be fixed at the author's discretion in possible future releases of TransAmiga BBS. License: "TransAmiga" refers to a set of programmes for Amiga computers by Timothy J. Aston making up the TransAmiga BBS package. 1. TransAmiga is the copyrighted material of Timothy J. Aston. It may only be used in accordance with the conditions set out by this license agreement. 2. So that you may evaluate TransAmiga, you are granted a limited use license for a period of twenty (20) days after initial usage. After this period you must register with the author or discontinue using TransAmiga. 3. Registration entitles you to use TransAmiga and any future versions of TransAmiga as long as you wish, subject to any special licensing conditions attached to future versions. 4. Timothy J. Aston is in no way obliged to provide future versions or support for TransAmiga. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 94 5. You may not modify, disassemble, decompile, re-source or otherwise reverse engineer TransAmiga. 6. Distribution is limited to the original shareware archive file only, none of the member files may be omitted and no new additional files may be included. Furthermore, no profit or other material gain may be realized for distributing TransAmiga with the sole exception of that which is required to cover the cost of the medium. Bundling TransAmiga, the distribution archive, or any member files, with any commercial product is not permitted without the express written consent of the author. At no time are you permitted to distribute or modify the file "TransAmiga.Key". 7. TransAmiga may not be used in any unlawful or illegal manner. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 95 Registration Shareware: TransAmiga is distributed under the concept of shareware. Some people like to call this particular brand of shareware "crippleware" because I am distributing a version with several features removed. It's not "crippled" though, because enough features are enabled for you to set up the BBS, use it, and decide what you think about it. This allows you to "try before you buy." If, after a period of 20 days you decide that TransAmiga is not the thing for you, simply delete it and all it's files, and no harm is done. However, if you decide that you want to keep using it, you simply register yourself, and you get your own keyfile making the BBS fully functional. How to Register: To register, you must follow these instructions. The registration fee should be in the form of cash, a postal money order, or any cheque or money order that is negotiable at a Canadian chartered bank. Most cheques and money orders drawn on major world currencies are acceptable, but only cash in Canadian dollars, U.S. dollars and U.K. pounds can be accepted (it is generally not advisable to send cash through the mail anyway). Please make cheques payable to "Timothy Aston". These are the only possible methods of payment for registration. International bank transfers to my account would be very slow and costly, plus I never quite know when the money has actually arrived, so do not bother with that. If you are sending an international postal money order, please remember that you must also send a cover letter. The registration fees are as follows: Canada - thirty dollars ($30) Canadian funds United States - thirty dollars ($30) U.S. funds Elsewhere - thirty-five dollars ($35) U.S. funds TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 96 This amount covers the registration fee, as well as postage and media costs. You should send the money along with a letter (note: even if you send an international postal money order, you must also send a letter) which clearly gives following information: * Your full name * Your complete mailing address * Your voice Telephone number * Some details about the BBS you run, including the phone number(s), hours of operation, baud rates supported, etc. * Your network addresses for FidoNet and any other networks you may be a member of (please specify the name of the networks). Additionally, you may include any of the following information, which I just like to know out of personal interest. They are all optional: * What kind of Amiga(s) you own, and what hardware you have for them. * How long you've been a SysOp for, and what other BBS software you have used. * What you like the most and the least about TransAmiga. * What your occupation is, your hobbies, favourite TV shows, preferred sports teams, etc. * Any other interesting facts about yourself (world records, appearances on popular TV game shows, etc). All this should be sent to: TransAmiga Registration c/o Timothy Aston 128 Riverview Blvd. St. Catharines, Ont. L2T 3M2 CANADA In return, you will be sent a floppy disk containing the latest version of TransAmiga BBS, along with your own personalized keyfile to enable TransAmiga's crippled features. All disks are sent via Canada post regular mail, please allow 3-6 weeks for delivery. Registration through the author is the only way you can become a registered TransAmiga users. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 97 Support: As a registered user, you will be entitled to support from the author from the following sources: * FidoNet netmail: Tim Aston @ 1:247/192.0 (*) * UUCP E-Mail through the FidoNet gateway: tim.aston@p0.f192.n247.z1.fidonet.org * FAX: +1-416-682-3501 * Chris's Amiga BBS, +1-716-289-3351, DS-HST, 1:260/660.0, SysOp Christopher Kloiber, in Manchester, New York, U.S.A.- official distribution and support HQ or TransAmiga BBS. * DecBBS, +353-1-288-2454, DS-HST, 2:263/198.0, SysOp Declan McArdle, in Dublin, Ireland - official European distribution site and support board. * Amiga Time, +1-315-454-3072, HST, 1:2608/22.0, SysOp John Kratz, in Mattydale, New York, U.S.A. - official American support board for TransAmiga BBS. * MEBBS ][, +1-306-775-1437, 2400 Baud, 1:140/140.0, SysOp Jim MacKenzie, in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada - official Canadian support board for TransAmiga BBS. * Essex Amiga BBS, +44-277-233354, HST, 2:440/67.0, SysOp Mark Kidd, in Brentwood, Essex, U.K. - official U.K. support board for TransAmiga BBS. * Amiga on Phone BBS, +49-7271-6877, DS-HST, 2:241/7520.0, SysOp Sami Radwan, in Woerth, Germany - official German support board for TransAmiga BBS. * Regular mail (remember that?): Timothy Aston 128 Riverview Blvd. St. Catharines, Ont. L2T 3M2 CANADA Please, do not call me at home, I have a life you know. I tend to be quite busy, and I'm just not setup to spend a lot of time on the phone with users (besides, I'm not home often anyway). A dedicated support echo called TRANSAMIGA also exists available on several regional backbones. If your REC does * The telephone number of this address is unpublished. For the quickest mail deliver, route mail through 1:247/205. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 98 not carry it, please tell him/her that you'd like to see it on your region's backbone, and in the meantime you can link up through Chris' Amiga BBS, or any other site carrying it. TransAmiga may be periodically upgraded. All upgrades will be made available on the support boards and on the Amiga Distribution System's (ADS) dedicated TransAmiga area, ADSTRANS. Since registered and unregistered users actually use the same programme, there is no need to mail registered users upgrades. New versions will recognize your keyfile and run in registered mode. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 99 Conclusion: Future: Here's some things I'm planning to add in the (hopefully) not too distant future: * Redesigned user interface according to the recommendations set out by Commodore's style guide. * A set of Release 2 style Preferences tools to replace TransCfg. * A completely open-ended menu design system, that will give you complete flexibility in customizing your menus. * Full support for a standard message base library currently being developed. * Greater flexibility, more commands, etc., etc. NOTE: Apart from possible minor upgrades to TransAmiga v1.1, all versions past v1.1 will probably require Release 2 of the Amiga's operating system. Comments: If you have anything you would like to tell me about TransAmiga, I encourage you to speak. Comments, criticisms, suggestions, praise, bug reports, and the time of day are all very welcome. I really like to receive comments. Acknowledgements: Special thanks to the following people (in no specific order): * Ryan Lanyon, my first beta-tester. * Christopher Kloiber, my secondary beta-tester and SysOp of the North American support board, who does an outstanding job at reporting the bugs, making suggestions, and helping out other TransAmiga SysOps. * The other support board SysOps: Declan McArdle, Mark Kidd and Jim MacKenzie. * Declan McArdle, for TrBroad, and for his tremendous help in distributing TransAmiga files and information all over Europe. * Steve Palm for the TransAmiga support in ConfMail. * Peer Hasselmeyer for allowing me to be a beta-tester for Foozle, the absolute best FidoNet mail system for the Amiga. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 100 * The makers of HiSoft BASIC, the only BASIC compiler for the Amiga worth half a hill of beans. * Bruce Geerdes for writing Petra, a fine example of a BASIC BBS. * Maximilian Hantsch for writing TrapDoor, and for the free registered version. * Michael Richardson and Russell McOrmand for writing Welmat, and for making it free. * Damian Rogers for helping with writing the FidoNet documentation. * Jonathan Forbes and Steve Tibbett for their work, patience and co-operation in creating the ABBEREXX standard. * My parents for paying my phone bills. * All the users that made suggestions, offered bug reports, and other helpful things. * My competition, for pushing me to add new and better features. * All the people that have registered TransAmiga. I never dreamed it would ever get this big in such a short amount of time. On Your Own: That about wraps things up, you're on your own from now on. I apologize if I forgot to mention anything in this documentation, if I was a little vague at times, or if my grammar was not perfect (spelling wasn't bad though thanks to WordPerfect). If you think you can write something better, I encourage it. I hope you enjoy using TransAmiga and I look forward to hearing your comments! -Tim TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 101 A P P E N D I C E S ------------------- Appendix I Samples: This appendix provides numerous samples for to follow to help you in getting your system running. The samples cover a wide range of applications, and you will probably only need to refer to a few of them depending on how you have things set up. Be careful, as some lines have had to be wrapped so as to fit in the manual. Sample TrapDoor Configuration: This is an example configuration file for the TrapDoor FidoNet mailer, running as a node. In addition to the TrapDoor programme itself, the TrapDoor package comes with three other programmes you will be need in your setup, TrapTell, TrapPoll and TrapList. TrapTell won't be used in our examples, but TrapPoll will, and you will need TrapList, as that is TrapDoor's special nodelist processor. Copy all of the files into Mail:. TrapDoor comes with a shared library called traplist.library, which must be placed in your Libs: directory. There are also a few other tools that come with TrapDoor which you may find useful, but will not be explained here. Here is a sample configuration file. Comment lines start with a semi-colon (;). ; This is your node number. If you haven't yet received ; yours, use zone:net/9999.o NODE 1:247/9999.0 ; This is the name you've chosen for your system NAME "TransAmiga Development" ; This should be easy enough, your name SYSOP "Tim Aston" ; When you are going to perform password protected session, TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 102 ; this is where the password goes. For now, leave at "" PASSWORD "" ; Your maximum and minimum baud rate. Unless you're using ; an HST, leave NOLOCK as is. BAUD 2400 NOLOCK MINBAUD 300 ; The address and phone number of your mail feed. BOSS 1:247/9999.0 CALL 1:247/99 ; These parameters define the type of mail sessions TrapDoor ; will do. Generally you don't have to alter them. DIETIFNA ZEDZAP WAZOO ; Your Outbound, Inbound, and Nodelist directories. If you ; don't have a nodelist, use NODELIST "" OUTBOUND "Mail:Outbound" INBOUND "Mail:Inbound" NODELIST "NodeList:" MAXBAUD RINGS 1 ; Some BBS setup commands, leave these as is for now BANNER "This is my BBS running TransAmiga" ; The BBS startup command BBSCOMMAND "rx StartBBS %b" BBSINOUT "" BBSMODE SPAWN ; Log file setup LOGFILE "ram:TrapDoor.log" LOGLEVEL 0:2 LOGLEVEL 1:2 LOGLEVEL 2:2 LOGLEVEL 3:2 LOGLEVEL 4:2 LOGLEVEL 5:2 LOGLEVEL 6:7 LOGLEVEL 7:2 LOGLEVEL 8:5 LOGLEVEL 9:2 WRAPLINES SLOWMODEM 10 ; Your modem commands. On a typical 1200 or 2400 baud modem ; these should be enough MODEMINIT "ATZ|~~~~~" MODEMHANGUP "||^|" MODEMDIALPRE "ATDT " MODEMDIALPORT "|" MODEMANSWER "ATA|" SHARED ; If you've got ARexx, you can use the FRequest.rexx macro ; to allow other FidoNet systems to request files from you. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 103 ; If you don't have ARexx, change this to FREQUEST "" FREQUEST "rx FRequest %i,%o,%l" ; Import.rexx should be an ARexx script that does your ; importing and renumbering AFTERSESSION "rx Import" REXXNAME "TrapDoor" SHOWREXX DSR SERIALNAME "serial.device" SERIALUNIT 0 SERIALFLAGS 0 ADJUST -11 LOGWINDOW 30/12/580/125 STATWINDOW 30/139/580/61 SCREENMODE TRAPDOOR NOBACKGROUND AUTOOVERSCAN COLOURS $a00/$fff/$000/$99e ACCOUNTING ACTMAX "3000 20 2 20 5 2" ANSWER RETRIES 1 REDIALDELAY 1 NOQUIET NOSWEPULSE FKEY "1:EMSI" FKEY "11:NOEMSI" FKEY "2:WAZOO" FKEY "12:NOWAZOO" FKEY "3:ZEDZAP" FKEY "13:NOZEDZAP" FKEY "4:DIETIFNA" FKEY "14:NODIETINFA" FKEY "5:BBSMODE SPAWN" FKEY "15:BBSMODE ZMH" FKEY "10:SPAWN \"TransAmiga -x\"" Save your configuration in Mail: as TrapDoor.Cfg. To start TrapDoor, you would just enter: run TrapDoor Sample Welmat Configuration: This is an example configuration for the Welmat FidoNet frontend mailer, running as a node. Welmat is a little different than TrapDoor in that it requires a few more utilities to run. There is the Welmat programme itself, WCompile, WCtl, WAbort, and WGetLine. In addition, you will IGen by Todd Kover and its nodelist.library for processing your nodelist. All these programmes should go in Mail:, except for nodelist.library and flow.library which should go into your Libs: directory. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 104 Lines starting with a # are comment lines. # You enter your address here, use zone:net/9999.0 if you # haven't received one yet Host 1:247/9999 # Simple enough, your name Sysop "Tim Aston" # This is the name you've chosen for your system System "TransAmiga Development" # Log file information LogFile ram:Welmat.Log LogFileLevel 30 LogWindow "WelMat Log" 0 119 333 81 LogWindowName "WelMat Log" DisplayLogLevel 30 DisplayLogLevel 30 StatusLevel 80 # Your Outbound, Inbound, and Nodelist directories. If you # don't have a nodelist, comment out that line FidoListM NodeList:NODELIST Inbound Mail:Inbound Outbound Mail:OutBound # Codes is a file that comes with Welmat so that it can # identify what kind of system it is talking to CodeList Mail:Codes # Here's where we set up the individual modem lines. This, # of course, will be a single line setup, but we will # actually need TWO Modem # entries, one for normal BBS # spawning, and one for no BBS spawning. Modem 0 # Serial port and modem setup Device serial.device Unit 0 ModemName "Avatex 2400E" BaudRate 2400 # The modem commands. These should work pretty much # unchanged with most 1200 or 2400 baud modems. Init ~ATZ|~~ Dial ~ATDT Hangup v~~^~~ATH0|~AT| PostDial ~~|~~ Atten |~AT| Answer ATA| # These are the modem response codes. Again, these # shouldn't have to be changed. Response busy "BUSY" Response ring "RING" Response maid "NO CARRIER" Response maid "ERROR" TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 105 Response maid "VOICE" Response line "NO DIALTONE" Response 300 "\r\nCONNECT\r\n" Response find "CONNECT %d" Prompt OK # Some miscellaneous modem settings ResponseWait 10 ConnectWait 60 UseDTR No7Wire # The command users see when they connect WelcomeMessage "|Press Escape for my TransAmiga BBS|" # This is the BBS startup command, we'll go into more # detail about this later BBSExecute "TransAmiga -b%d -x" YesBBS NoLogin NoWaZoo Launch ReceiveCalls StatusWindow "RAW:316/159/324/41/Welmat Slave Status" LogWindow "WelMat Slave Log" 316 21 324 148 ModemEnd # This is the ZMH configuration that doesn't spawn the BBS. # The Launch keyword is left out because we don't want # Welmat to start with this entry Modem 1 # Serial port and modem setup Device serial.device Unit 0 ModemName "Avatex 2400E" BaudRate 2400 # The modem commands. These should work pretty much # unchanged with most 1200 or 2400 baud modems. Init ~ATZ|~~ Dial ~ATDT Hangup v~~^~~ATH0|~AT| PostDial ~~|~~ Atten |~AT| Answer ATA| # These are the modem response codes. Again, these # shouldn't have to be changed. Response busy "BUSY" Response ring "RING" Response maid "NO CARRIER" Response maid "ERROR" Response maid "VOICE" Response line "NO DIALTONE" Response 300 "\r\nCONNECT\r\n" TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 106 Response find "CONNECT %d" Prompt OK # Some miscellaneous modem settings ResponseWait 10 ConnectWait 60 UseDTR No7Wire # The command users see when they connect WelcomeMessage "|Press Escape for my TransAmiga BBS|" # This is the BBS startup command, we'll go into more # detail about this later NoBBS NoLogin NoWaZoo ReceiveCalls StatusWindow "RAW:316/159/324/41/Welmat Slave Status" LogWindow "WelMat Slave Log" 316 21 324 148 ModemEnd Save this file in Mail: as Welmat.Cfg. Welmat works a little differently than other programmes, in that before Welmat can understand your configuration file, you must compile it. You do this using the supplied WCompile tool, which will create a file called Welmat.Data which Welmat can read. To run Welmat you just need to type: run Welmat You'd probably want to do this somewhere in your s:Startup- Sequence. Sample ConfMail Configuration: ConfMail requires two configuration files, both go in Mail:. The first is called Areas.BBS and that gives information on the various mail areas you wish to keep around. The second is called Config.Dog, and that contains additional information for ConfMail. Here is a sample Areas.BBS file, lines starting with a ; are comment lines: ; The first line that is not a comment or blank must be the ; name of your system, following by a !, followed by your ; name. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 107 ;--- board name should not be longer than this ---: TransAmiga Development ! Tim Aston ; Now come your areas. First comes the directory, then ; the exact tag name for the echo, then the list of nodes ; that it gets exported to (usually only your mail feed). ; System areas, these two are required Mail:Netmail/ MAIL_DIR 247/99 Mail:Bad/ BAD_MSGS ; Echomail areas Mail:Echoes/Amiga_Net_Dev/ AMIGA_NET_DEV 247/99 Mail:Echoes/Amiga_Prog/ AMIGA_PROG 247/99 Mail:Echoes/Amiga_SysOp/ AMIGA_SYSOP 247/99 Mail:Echoes/Amy_Point/ AMY_POINT 247/99 Mail:Echoes/Niagara/ NIAGARA 247/99 Mail:Echoes/TransAmiga/ TRANSAMIGA 247/99 Mail:Echoes/TrapDoor/ TRAPDOOR 247/99 Mail:Echoes/Welmat/ WELMAT 247/99 Here is a sample Config.Dog file: ; This is your address NODE 1:247/9999 ; Here you put the name of your outbound directory MAIL Mail:Outbound ; This is you inbound directory FILES Mail:Inbound ; This is the directory where ConfMail temporarily stores ; unpacked mail bundles PACKET t: ; Your command for arc'ing mail. This example uses zoo, ; but archiving methods used vary. ARC Zoo a ; This is your unarc command. Again, Zoo is used in this ; example, but it will vary. UNARC Zoo x ; These commands tell ConfMail what to do with your netmail ; directory NETMAIL Mail:Matrix DO_NETMAIL TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 108 FWD_REPLIES ; Tell ConfMail to update TransAmiga's last read pointers on ; renumber TRANSAMIGA TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 109 Appendix II BBS Tools Reference: This appendix provides a quick reference on the use of all of the included TransAmiga tools. All these programmes can be found in Bin directory. TransAmiga Access Lock: Usage: TrAL L|U Pronunciation: TRAWL Either locks (L) or unlocks (U) TransAmiga's message areas. When the areas are locked, all message areas become read- only, and users will not be allowed to save messages. Warning, this only has any real effect while there is a BBS line running (or anything else that uses transamiga.library). There is little chance that locking will have any effect if TrAL is used before any BBS lines are running, and there is an equally small chance that the lock will be retained after all lines have been exited. TransAmiga BBS: Usage: TransAmiga -c<config file> [-b<baud rate>] [-l<locked baud rate] [-t<max time>] [-n<line>] [-x] [-r] [-s] Starts up the BBS. See earlier on in the manual for complete details. TransAmiga BBS Line Activity Display: Usage: TrBLAD [<line>] Displays all current BBS activity in a similar manner to the "Who's Online" command from the main menu. If no specific <line> is specified, all lines will be listed. TransAmiga Broadcaster: Usage: TrBroad <message> -n<line> TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 110 Sends an online message to the indicated line number. TransAmiga Configuration Tool: Usage: TransCfg -c<config file> Setup up and/or edit TransAmiga's configuration. <config file> is the name of TransAmiga's master configuration file. TransAmiga File Lister: Usage: TrFL -o<out file> -c<configs dir> [-t<title>] [-a<access>] [-d<days>] [-s] [-n] Pronunciation: TRY-full Creates a readable text file listing files available in the file section. <out file> is the name of the text file to create. <configs dir> is the name of your TransAmiga configurations directory. <title> is an optional text file that will be inserted at the top of the generated file listing. Specifying <access> allows you to limit what areas are included: only areas with this level or lower will be listed in the generated file. <days> defines what is a "new" file. New files are marked with an asterisk (*) in the output file. Specifying -n tells TrFL to include only files that are new. Finally, -s tells TrFL to sort the output file. TrFL is very intelligent about this, when sorting it will not move around comment lines in the file listing (lines starting with a backslash), and will sort the files inbetween the comment lines, and not move them elsewhere. TransAmiga User Maintenance: Usage: TrMaint -c<config file> [-n<line number>] Starts the remote SysOp user maintenance module. If you specify a line number, TrMaint assumes that it will be going through the BBS as a door. Otherwise, it will simply run from the CLI. TransAmiga DOS Shell: Usage: TrShell -n<line number> -f<FIFO name> TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 111 Starts up TransAmiga remote shell. This can only be run from within the BBS as a door. This is a full interactive shell, supporting things such as simple command line editting, and "raw" mode. It will also check for carrier loss and user idle timeout, in these cases it will send a CTRL-C break to the running programme. In order to run, TrShell requires that the FIFO: device be properly installed on your system. This requires that you copy the fifo.library file to your Libs: directory, the fifo-handler file to your L: directory, which also must be executed in your Startup-Sequence. For TrShell to work properly, you should first start up a new CLI process, with all it's input and output going through FIFO:. Note how a unique FIFO name must be generated for each invocation, in the example below this is done with the ARexx pragma("id") function. An example of starting TrShell from ARexx would be: /* ARexx macro to start the remote shell */ options result id=time("s") SYSTEMINFO 8 ; bbsline=result address command 'NewShell FIFO:trshell'id'/rwkecs' address command 'TrShell -n'bbsline' -ftrshell'id exit "trshell" is the unique filename that you must pass to FIFO: and also to TrShell (they must be identical!); the BBS line number is appended to the end to avoid conflicts on multi- line systems. The "/rwkecs" are the parameters that are required for FIFO: to work correctly with TrShell. Tell TransAmiga ARexx Commands: Usage: TrTell [-n<line number>] <command> Sends a TransAmiga ARexx command to a currently running line. Usually this is used when you've started TransAmiga with the -r option and it is just sitting waiting for an ARexx messages. The same result can be achieved by using the RX command, this way just takes a little less typing. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 112 If your command is more than one word, you should enclose the command in quotes, eg: TrTell -n0 "baudrate 2400" TrTell -n0 logon (the commands are case-insensitive). Sending ARexx messages while a user is online is generally not a good idea, and can lead to unpredictable results. You should only use this command in the situation described above. TransAmiga Update File Areas: Usage: TrUFL <file dir> Pronuncation: TRUH-full This searches through the specified file directory for files not listed in TransAmiga's Files.BBS, and prompts you to enter a description so that it will be added to the file listing. If you do not wish to add it, simply press RETURN at the prompt. No long description will be given, and the uploader's name will be set as "SysOp". This can easily be edited simply by loading up the appropriate .Desc file in a text editor. TrUFL also searches for files that are listed in the file listing but not actually present in the file directory. This is handy if you've moved or deleted the file from the Shell or Workbench, and have forgotten to update the file listing. TransAmiga Update Message Pointers: Usage: TrUMP <msg dir> [<msg dir>...] This searches for the high and low message pointers in the specified netmail or echomail message directories. This must be run when any programme other than TransAmiga adds a message to an area, otherwise TransAmiga will have incorrect values for the message pointers. Due to slight differences in the way TransAmiga treats local and privileged-only areas, you must never use TrUMP on directories of these types. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 113 Appendix III Amiga ANSI Codes: This is a complete references section for the ANSI codes that TransAmiga) understands. For maximum compatibility with various terminal types, TransAmiga understands a combination of both IBM ANSI codes, and Amiga console.device ANSI codes. Colour Change Codes: ESC [30m - black foreground ESC [31m - red foreground ESC [32m - green foreground ESC [33m - yellow foreground ESC [34m - blue foreground ESC [35m - purple foreground ESC [36m - cyan foreground ESC [37m - white foreground ESC [40m - black background ESC [41m - red background ESC [42m - green background ESC [43m - yellow background ESC [44m - blue background ESC [45m - purple background ESC [46m - cyan background ESC [47m - white background Style Controls: ESC [0m - reset ANSI codes ESC [1m - boldface on (*) ESC [3m - italics on ESC [4m - underline on ESC [7m - inverse on (*) In 16 colour ANSI, boldface text is rendered as a slightly brighter colour, thus giving you access to the 8 additional colours in the palette. Cursor Controls: ESC [A - cursor up TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 114 ESC [B - cursor down ESC [C - cursor right ESC [D - cursor left ESC [#A - cursor up # lines ESC [#B - cursor down # lines ESC [#C - cursor right # spaces ESC [#D - cursor left # spaces ESC [H - cursor home ESC [#H - cursor to line # ESC [#;#H - cursor to a specific row and column ESC [s - save the current cursor position ESC [u - restore cursor to the last saved position Miscellaneous Commands: ESC [@ - insert a space ESC [#@ - insert # spaces ESC [L - insert line ESC [#L - insert # lines ESC [M - delete line ESC [#M - delete # lines ESC [P - delete character ESC [#P - Delete # characters ESC [K - delete to end of line ESC [1K - delete to start of line ESC [2K - delete entire line ESC [J - clear to end of screen ESC [1J - clear to top of screen ESC [2J - clear entire screen NOTE: some ANSI commands can be stacked using the semi-colon (;), eg: ESC [1;43;34m - blue bold text on yellow background TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 115 G L O S S A R Y --------------- Access Levels: A means of restricting users from using certain parts of the BBS. When an access level is specified for a command or area in TransAmiga, that function becomes invisible to users who have an access level lower than that number. Valid access levels range from 1 to 255. ANSI Graphics: A format for sending simple graphics information. It has codes for changing colours, moving the cursor, etc. Most terminal programmes and BBS's support this protocol. Archive: A single file that contains several other files encoded into it. Usually some kind of compression is done on these files. Special tools are needed to add and extract files from archives. There exist various archiving methods such as: LHarc and Zoo, which are characterized by the suffixes .Lzh and .Zoo on the filenames of their respective archives. ARexx: A high level scripting language for the Amiga that is unique in that it defines a protocol for inter-process communication, allowing non-programmers to create macros that control other software. Batch Transfer: A transfer in which several files will be sent automatically one after another where no extra work is required by the users between each transfer. Only certain protocols such as Zmodem are capable of batch transfers. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 116 BBS: Bulletin Board System. A piece of computer software that will automatically receive calls over the modem and allow callers to perform various functions such as posting and reading messages, sending and receiving file, etc. Door: A programme that is executed by the BBS to perform some sort of outside function. Now an obsolete term, as most BBS packages work interactively with external programmes these days. Download: To receive a file over the modem. Echo: A FidoNet message area, where all messages posted are sent through FidoNet to all other systems that wish to receive that echo. In essence, a public message conference. FidoNet: A non-profit publicly accessible network of several thousand computer users all around the world (but predominantly in North America, Europe and Australia) that allows for the transferring of messages and files. Freeware: A concept of software distribution in which the author(s) retain a copyright over the programme, but require no fee to use it. FTS-0001: The basic FidoNet technical document that describes the message format, packet format, and mailer protocol. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 117 Intuition: The Amiga's graphical user interface. Intuition provides such aspects of the Amiga's operating system and pull-down menus, windows, gadgets, etc. Intuition is held in a shared-library in ROM. Kludge Lines: Special lines that appear in FidoNet messages that are intended to give more information to programmes processing FidoNet messages. A CTRL a (ASCII code 1) precedes them to identify them as kludges. TransAmiga displays these in bold text and can only be viewed by those with privileged access. Mailer: A programme that makes and receives calls for the delivering and picking up of mail bundles and other files. Used within FidoNet. Usually this will also act as a frontend to a FidoNet BBS, answering incoming calls and spawning the BBS when necessary. Eg. TrapDoor, Welmat. Mail Processor: A programme used to unpack incoming mail bundles and toss them into the correct areas, and to pack up outgoing mail into bundles ready for sending. Eg. ConfMail, FastPoint, GCCHost, Foozle. Matrix Mail: See Netmail. Message Header: The part of the message that contains such information as who sent it, who it was sent to, date it was sent, etc. Multi-Line: TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 118 The ability for a BBS to somehow handle multiple callers on multiple phone lines at the same time. Netmail: Messages sent through FidoNet to a specific person at a specific FidoNet address. Usually used to send mail that is intended to be relatively private. Also referred to as Matrix Mail. Path Name: Refers to the full AmigaDOS reference to the location of a file. This includes the device or volume name which should be followed by a colon (:); followed by any directories that the file may be in, followed by a slash (/); followed by the file name itself. Example: Sys:Utilities/Calculator Public Domain: When referring to software, it means that the author(s) gives up all rights over the software, allowing anyone to do whatever they like to it. Protocol: A special means to transfer files over the modem that insures that the file arrives error free. Examples are Xmodem, Zmodem, Xmodem-1k, etc. Release 2: Refers to the second generation of the Amiga's operating system. Often referred to as Workbench 2.0 or just 2.0. Return Code: A code sent to AmigaDOS by a programme when it exits. Usually to provide information about what that programme has done so certain actions can be handled by a script file. Session Handler: TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston TransAmiga BBS User Manual Page 119 See Mailer. Shared Library: A collection of predefined functions that programmers can use in their programmers. They can either reside in the Amiga's ROM (such as the intuition.library) or on disk in the Libs: directory (such as the diskfont.library). Shareware: A concept of software distribution where some form of the software is provided free, and users are required to "register" after a certain period of time. Registering normally includes a fee. Upload: To send a file to another system over the modem. Upload:Download Ratio: A means of restricting people from downloading too much, and forcing them to upload. For every specified amount of files they download, they must upload one. If the reach the download limit without a corresponding upload, they will not be allowed to download anymore until a file is uploaded. Ideally, a circle is created: the more people download, the more they must upload, and the more files there are for downloading, the more people will download. XPR Protocols: A method of implementing file transfer protocols externally on the Amiga. Each protocol lives in its own shared library, which contains a standard set of functions for transferring files. An XPR supporting application can be made to work with any number of protocols simply by installing new libraries. TransAmiga BBS v1.1 Copyright 1991 by Timothy Aston c