home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Acorn User 3
/
AUCD3.iso
/
airport
/
browsers
/
acornet
/
archive
/
archive797
/
000017_owner-acornet@…s.barnet.ac.uk _Wed Jul 30 11:00:36 1997.msg
< prev
next >
Wrap
Internet Message Format
|
1997-08-28
|
6KB
Received: (from majordomo@localhost)
by odie.barnet.ac.uk (8.8.6/8.8.6) id LAA10999
for acornet-list; Wed, 30 Jul 1997 11:00:36 +0100
Received: from garfield.barnet.ac.uk (root@garfield.barnet.ac.uk [194.82.202.99])
by odie.barnet.ac.uk (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id LAA10995
for <acornet@lists.barnet.ac.uk>; Wed, 30 Jul 1997 11:00:24 +0100
Received: from mail.barnet.ac.uk (mail.barnet.ac.uk [194.82.202.100])
by garfield.barnet.ac.uk (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA07974
for <acornet@lists.barnet.ac.uk>; Wed, 30 Jul 1997 09:59:36 +0100
Received: from BCMAIL/SpoolDir by mail.barnet.ac.uk (Mercury 1.31);
30 Jul 97 10:58:41 GMT
Received: from SpoolDir by BCMAIL (Mercury 1.31); 30 Jul 97 10:58:23 GMT
From: "Carol Carpenter" <carol@barnet.ac.uk>
Organization: Barnet College
To: acornet@lists.barnet.ac.uk
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 10:58:17 GMT +0000
Subject: Welcome and some questions...
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.40
Message-ID: <120072577CC@mail.barnet.ac.uk>
Sender: owner-acornet@lists.barnet.ac.uk
Precedence: bulk
X-maillist: acornet
Hi,
As I mentioned in my post to c.s.a.announce - I feel it is about time
that Acornet was upgraded. Most of the components have later
versions available or in some cases there are possible alternatives.
It would be a pity if Acornet stagnated and it was just left up to
the hardy 'have a go's' to upgrade their own setups. We need to keep
the momentum going since, with Termites seeming demise, Acornet is the
only other current alternative to the ANT suite.
However before we can do much we need to discuss a few issues and
make a few decisions.
Acornet 0.19 currently consists of the following programs and
versions:
ArcWeb 1.69
FreeTerm 1.20
Newsbase 0.57
Groups 0.36
FreeNews 1.03
Pop 0.98
FreeSMTP 1.21
FreeFTP 0.45b
Ping 0.13
Finger 0.13
NetConfig 2.5
StronHelp 2.03
SlipDial 0.42a
SerialDev Rev 12
So far I've upgraded the following :
ArcWeb to 1.89
Freeterm to 1.31
Newsbase to 0.59b
TTFN to 0.39
Groups to 0.17
FreeNews to 1.14
POP to 0.99
FreeSMTP to 1.21
I've added in FreeTime v 1.03 and QEdit 0.58e
If any of these are not the latest - please let me know (yes I know
theres a newsbase 0.59c - I'll do that shortly).
The questions are :
1. Should we stay with SlipDial or go for FreeDial ?
2. TTFN or Messenger ?
R.Sergeant has aparently had a go at modifying the ttfn reader
after the sources were released a while ago by its original author.
He has 0.40 available from his site http://www.arcade.demon.co.uk/.
I don't know if anyone else is also developing ttfn any further.
Also the long awaited release of Messenger has just taken place -
this can be downloaded from http://www.locutus.demon.co.uk/messenger.
3. FreeNews or Newshound ?
4. There is an issue of size. The 0.19 archive as it stands is
nearly 3 Megs in size which is quite large. With new versions of
things its set to get much bigger. We need to consider ways to
reduce this as much as possible.
One suggestion is to remove all the documentation and have that as a
seperate file. I don't think we want to include apps that aren;t
absolutely necessary. But perhaps we could collect together other
apps into a seperate archive. Such things could include !talker,
!uuencode, !newsfind, and ircclient perhaps and anything else you can
suggest.
5. I'd like to keep 0.20 based on the freenet I stack - so that
users of earlier machines can use this but with all the apps
upgraded. Then 0.21 we could upgrade the stack. But to what ?
Freenet II or the Acorn stack ? Or as has been suggested already we
could perhaps do two 0.21a and 0.21b so people can choose.
6. FreeFTP is not going to be developed any more since the author
is now working on a commercial one instead. Do we keep it in - since
it is the only graphically based free one around ? Or do we remove it
altogether and perhaps create a simple guide to using ArcWeb for ftp
purposes. I don't personally think sftp should be in it. This could
be in the additional apps archive perhaps.
7. The frontend itself. What should we put in the additional blank
square ? POP ? something else ? leave blank ? Should we add
aditional spaces ? Perhaps we could make it so that if you drag a
recognised app to a blank square it automatically adds it into the
structure and puts up an icon in the blank square ? Dunno - I'm just
rambling (It sounds like a lot of work).
I think I've covered everything I wanted to say initally, sorry for
the length of the posting. We may have to have some form of voting on
some of these issues.
Perhaps it might be an idea to form threads about single issues
to keep the posts short.
If you have an idea... lets hear it. If you'd like to help in anyway
- please email me at my home address.
Theres no time scale on this - however I'm of the opinion that its
better to release something occasionally with a few major changes
than to wait for ages till a relese of everything.
I'll keep notes of all suggestions made and post a summary at an
appropriate point.
Carol
--
Carol Carpenter
Software Support @ Barnet College
(W) carol@barnet.ac.uk http://www.barnet.ac.uk/~techcc/
(H) carol@nocturnal.demon.co.uk http://www.nocturnal.demon.co.uk/