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╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ S Y N E R G Y A L L F I L E S D O O R v1.0 ║ ║ a door for Searchlight BBS systems ║ ║ Sysop documentation for "Synergy Allfiles Door" ║ ║ Copyright(c), 1992 ║ ║ Synergy Computer Systems ║ ║ Cocoa Beach, Florida ║ ╚═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝ ╔═══════╗ ║ INDEX ║ ╚═══════╝ General Information ............................ 1 Quick Setup .................................... 2 Warning ........................................ 3 Batch File Utilities ........................... 3 Heart of the Door .............................. 3 Advanced Setup ................................. 4 ANSI Tips ................................... Appendix Screen Size Conflict .................. i Practice "Safe ANSI" .................. i ANSI Commands ......................... ii No more Jerky ANSI Screens ............ iii BE CAREFUL ............................ iii - 1 - ╔═════════════════════╗ ║ GENERAL INFORMATION ║ ╚═════════════════════╝ Cost: $0.00 Guarantee: Money Back. It will work if you follow the instructions. Tech-Support: None. Praise/Donations: Always accepted, Who knows, with enough of them I might be able to put my board back on-line. Send blank checks to: Ron Ryan Synergy Computer Systems 524 S. Atlantic Ave. #3 Cocoa Beach, Florida, 32931 Special Thanks To: A good friend and fellow Searchlight SysOp, Genie Bohn. Frank LaRosa for writing such a wonderful BBS package. Acknowledgements: SLBBS, SLDIR and Searchlight are trademarks of Searchlight Software. Turbo Pascal is a trademark of Borland International Inc. TheDraw is a trademark of TheSoft Programming Services. DSZ is a trademark of Omen Technology Inc. PKZIP is a trademark of PKWARE Inc. Copyright(c) Notice: Though "Synergy Allfiles Door" is FreeWare, it is also Copyrighted (c) material, with all rights reserved by Synergy Computer Systems of Cocoa Beach, Florida. Synergy Computer Systems grants you the right to freely modify "Synergy Allfiles Door v1.0" and use for an indefinite period of time at no cost to you, but you may NOT distribute modified copies of "Synergy Allfiles Door", nor may you distribute "FILDOR10.ZIP" unless it is in its original archive form and packaged as a child archive of SYREADxx.ZIP. The rights, exclusions herein stated pertain only to the files included in "FILDOR10.ZIP" and do NOT grant you any rights to SYREADxx.ZIP. For your rights to SYREADxx.ZIP see the "Usage Agreement" at the end of "DOCUMENT.LST" inside the original SYREADxx.ZIP. - 2 - ╔═════════════╗ ║ QUICK SETUP ║ ╚═════════════╝ from DOS log into your BBS drive and type: MD \SLBBS\FILEDOOR /│\ └─── edit as required for your BBS directory. go to where ever this zip is and type: PKUNZIP FILDOR10.ZIP d:\SLBBS\FILEDOOR /│\ d: <────────────────┴─── whatever drive your BBS is on. CD \SLBBS\FILEDOOR PKUNZIP FILEDOOR COPY *.EXE \[anywhere in your path statement] DEL *.EXE COPY FILEDOOR.DEF .. <──┬─── copies the files to the parent directory, COPY FILEDOOR.BAT .. <──┘ [SL]BBS if you followed the instructions so far. DEL FILEDOOR.* If your BBS text directory is not a child directory of your BBS or it is not named "TEXT" you will need to edit both of the following: READRON.BAT READROFF.BAT so that they copy the appropriate .ANS and .TXT files to your text directory. If you are unsure of what a "child directory" is, go to the next step and if you don't see 4 lines of "1 file(s) copied" come back to here, edit the two batch files then repeat the next step. Run either of the above batch files from the DOS command line one time - this will initialize a "Toggle Setting". What the toggle setting is will become apparent from inside the door. CD .. Okay, now that the hard part is done, fire up your favorite ASCII text editor and enter the following line in your DOORS.DEF (or a sub menu): 9;0;0;0;Allfiles List Door;.;FILEDOOR.DEF Find the SYREADxx.ZIP that FILDOR10.ZIP came in and copy MAKEIDX.EXE to anywhere in your path. Copy SYREADER.EXE to d:\SLBBS\FILEDOOR. Log back into your BBS directory and type "MAKEIDX" (without the quotes). Fire up your editor again and edit MAKEIDX.CFG (it was just created by MAKEIDX.EXE). Be sure you have DSZ.COM and PKZIP somewhere in your path. log into your BBS and check out the new door. Now that wasn't so hard, was it? - 3 - ******************************** WARNING ************************************ SL Doesn't provide a way to pass security attributes via Meta-Strings, and I don't have Frank's FILEDEF Units to access the system files, So . . . If you use this package as a door -AND- are using attributes to secure certain file areas I recommend that you go back into your SETUP and raise the access to any restricted file areas to an access level greater than that of any user you don't want to have access to a copy of the directory listing of the above said file areas <Grin>... Did you get that? ***************************************************************************** If you don't care about the trivial and the tech you can pass up this section and go straight to the "ADVANCED SETUP" section that follows. ╔══════════════════════╗ ║ BATCH FILE UTILITIES ║ ╚══════════════════════╝ The early releases of v2 SLDIR had a bug (I have no idea if it has been fixed yet) that required entering two carriage returns if you ran SLDIR from inside a batch file. ENTER.EXE is a little public domain utility that was written for the old XT's... it places two carriage returns in the heap and returns them right after the next command is run from inside a batch file (originally to get passed the TIME/DATE annoyance of the old A: drive systems). Well, it's just what the doctor ordered for SLDIR. I do most of my programing in Turbo Pascal 4.0 (yea, it's old, but I can't afford a new one), and it has a faulty DOS unit (i.e . . . Exec is non-existent) so running a command.com /c just plain old doesn't work. so you are stuck with this flimsy Batch door until you write a REAL one, or I win the Lotto. LN.EXE is assigned to a null file with DirectVideo:=False, so it should have no problem transmitting over a com port or being redirected. LN.EXE is my solution to the cruddy DOS echo command that returns an OFF or ON pending on it's status unless you put something on the line with it. I think a blank line with "." or something looks tacky. LN.EXE is just a WriteLn statement assigned as stated above. WAIT A MINUTE!! I know it use to work, ^G inside a batch file used to send a BEEP, I don't know what happened, if it's my system, or the new DOS but ^G no longer works on my system, I am going to assume it is the new DOS and therefore BEEP.EXE is just plain old there unless you want to dump it. ╔═══════════════════╗ ║ HEART OF THE DOOR ║ ╚═══════════════════╝ If you are interested in figuring out how this batch door works, just print FILEDOOR.DEF and FILEDOOR.BAT. The "Toggle" works through READRON.BAT, READROFF.BAT. and a batch file they copy each other to - TOGGLE.BAT which is called by selection 1) on the door menu - I call this process "Oaky Boolean". - 4 - The first 3 parameters in FILEDOOR.DEF are standard SL Meta-Strings (%K = First Name, %F = File Access Level, %P = Com Port) the forth parameter is the batch file prefix for the requested transfer protocol, see the forth line up from the bottom of FILEDOOR.BAT. ╔════════════════╗ ║ ADVANCED SETUP ║ ╚════════════════╝ FILEDOOR.BAT ── line 6: ── Remember - %2 is the second parameter from the FILEDOOR.DEF file so %2 is equivalent to the user file access level of who ever is in the door. For more information on the usage of SLDIR.EXE line refer to SLDIR.DOC (it's in SLDIR.ZIP on one of your SLBBS disks). ── line 24 ── The default zip name is SYNERGY.ZIP, you may want to change "SYNERGY" to a legal DOS prefix (8 characters) that is representative of your BBS. ── line 31 ── You may need to change the path statement at the end of this line. If you change line 21 then also change this line to "prefix.ZIP". It should look like this: CALL %4 %3 prefix.ZIP C:\SLBBS\FILEDOOR ── Idea ── If you would like the door to default back to Toggle On -or- Off after someone has used the door add either of the following lines to the end of FILEDOOR.BAT: CALL READRON -or- CALL READROFF READRON.LST & READROFF.LST TOGGLE.BAT copies one of the above stated files to ZIPPING.LST This file contains the file names required as per the usage agreement for SYNERGY.EXE. The 24th line of FILEDOOR.BAT assigns this file for PKZIP's use . . . PKZIP looks inside this file for the names of the file to zip up in the download packet, you may add additional files to this list if you so desire, but they must be available in d:\SLBBS\FILEDOOR or there full DOS path declared in ZIPPING.LST (see PKZIP.DOC for more information). READRON.ANS & READROFF.ANS TOGGLE.BAT copies one of the above stated files to ..\TEXT\FILEDOOR.ANS along with its respective .TXT file. NOTE: if you edit these files PLEASE read "ANSI TIPS". Appendix - i - ╔═══════════╗ ║ ANSI TIPS ║ ╚═══════════╝ NOTE: For best results, always save .ANS drawings with a Clear Screen, unless you plan on using small drawings for "Signature Macros" via your INCLUDE file directory and the %%FILENAME directive. For further information on the %%FILENAME directive see your SL manual (7-13 for v1.7? users and 9-13 for 2.?? users). ╓──────────────────────╖ ───╢ Screen Size Conflict ╟─── ╙──────────────────────╜ Now, if you redrew the .ANS menu, do me and your users a BIG favor . . . Edit out all of those extra lines at the end installed by TheDraw so we can have CLEAN screen transitions. If you don't know how to do this read on - I'll try and make it as simple as possible - The ANSI standard file is 25 lines long (one full screen). We need a line for the status bar, a space, a command line and another space (whops, that's backwards... from the bottom up) count them: 1 bar + 1 space = 2 + 1 command line = 3 + 1 space = 4. Our screen is only 25 lines. A 25 line ANSI screen + 4 lines for the BBS = 29. Sounds like a lousy <MORE> prompt to me, or at the least a jerky screen scroll. So FIX IT!!! How? ╓──────────────────────╖ ───╢ Practice "Safe ANSI" ╟─── ╙──────────────────────╜ First of all, as a general rule leave your top line blank - many com programs have a status bar on the top as well as the bottom. Second, to simplify later editing in an ASCII editor I always save ANSI files with maximum line lengths of 80 (not TheDraw's default of 255). Never put anything in your ANSI drawing beyond line 21. One more point, I have on two occasions had users tell me that they get a "Word Wrap" type effect on some of my full-screen width drawings - this is a problem with there ANSI driver or com program, not the images - There ANSI driver was for some reason warping at around 78 characters. I'm not sure what driver they where using (they didn't know). I solved this problem by NEVER writing in the 1st or 79th column. Appendix - ii - Let's go over this again: 1) Top line Blank. 2) Last Line 21 (maximum). 3) 1st column 2. 4) Last column 78. 5) save as 80 for line length. 6) Save Clear Screen. To use an ANSI "Signature Macro" with the %%FILENAME directive ignore rules 1 and 6. ╓───────────────╖ ───╢ ANSI Commands ╟─── ╙───────────────╜ All of the typical ANSI editors I've seen pad the end of the ANSI files to line 25 in order to conform with ANSI standards. If for example your last character is a "╝" on line 20 the end of your file may look something like this: . . .═══╝ *[0m*[21;1H*[22;1H*[23;1H*[A *[24;1H*[25;1H*[0m*[255D NOTE: To facilitate printing, I used an astrik (*) to represent the ASCII character #27 (left arrow). The "*" (left arrow) is an Esc. code. The combination "*[" signifies an ANSI terminal code (or an upcoming command). Each terminal code is followed by a number, or a series of numbers separated by semi-colons, then a letter. The letter is the command. The numbers are the variables to the command. i.e . . . In "COPY FILDOR10.ZIP", "COPY" is the command, while "FILDOR10.ZIP" is the variable (yes, ANSI does it backwards to!). The four commands you'll most likely see at the end of an ANSI file are: m, H, A, and D. m sets the color. *[0m sets the color back to default. H controls the cursor position. A is simply an "End of Line" marker or "word wrap" command. When ANSI *[A encounters the *[A command it stops reading on the current line *[A and starts again on the next line. NOTE: This has no bearing on the output, it is just a pointer inside the file being read. D moves the cursor to the left one count for each number (*[255D moves the cursor left 255 columns). Appendix - iii - The ANSI command you need to worry about is the "H" command. The first number is the row, the second number is the column, i.e . . . *[21;1H says move the cursor to the beginning (column 1) of line (row) 21, *[22;1H says move the cursor to the beginning of line 22, Etc . . . until you are finally at line 25. ╓────────────────────────────╖ ───╢ No More Jerky ANSI Screens ╟─── ╙────────────────────────────╜ The fix for this annoyance? Simple... After you exit your favorite ANSI editor enter your favorite ACSII editor and delete all of the *[##;#H commands AFTER the last character in your drawing. NOTE: Out of habit, I always stop my drawings by line 20 and leave in the first "H" command in for prosperity, though theoretically this is not necessary, I've yet to have bad results. For Signature Macros, you need to follow this process, or any subsequent text (i.e . . . P.S ...) will continue on the same row and column as the last character in the macro. The end of one of my files would look something like this: . . .═══╝ *[0m*[21;1H*[0m*[255D - OR - . . . ═══╝ *[0m*[21;1H*[A *[0m*[255D both of the above examples are legal, but this is not: . . .═══╝ *[0m*[21;1H*[A*[0m*[255D ANSI would reset the color, move the cursor, then read from the next line and find that it was at the end of the file . . . without ever resetting the terminal. Remember - the original looked like this: . . .═══╝ *[0m*[21;1H*[22;1H*[23;1H*[A *[24;1H*[25;1H*[0m*[255D ╓────────────╖ ────╢ BE CAREFUL ╟──── ╙────────────╜ Don't take out any of the other ANSI commands, or parts of them, or you might have some weird things happen to your screen colors or cursor positioning, nothing permanent, but it can sure mess up a nice piece of art!