Acorn User 3/AUCD3.iso/airport/browsers/acornet/archive/archive897/000079_owner-acornet@…s.barnet.ac.uk _Sat Aug 16 03:57:51 1997.msg

Internet Message Format | 1997-08-28 | 6KB

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Date: 15 Aug 1997 23:59:29 +0100
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From: Richard Sargeant <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: My Newsbase installation...
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On Fri, 15 Aug 1997 16:09:50 GMT +0000 [e-mail] wrote:

> On 13 Aug 97 at 15:47, Richard Sargeant wrote:

[sorry about the last subject line - it was merely an attention grabber]

> > The directory for the !Newsbase.!AutoBoot program is missing, but

Because SparkFS (1.27) [or more specifically, its module Zip 0.01] does
not store empty directories (actually any directory entries at all) in
a zip format archive.  Later versions of David Pilling's Zip module for
SparkFS do store entries for all directories in zip archives.  I do not
have here a copy of a new zip module to see if its configurable or not.

I would hazard a guess that you used a copy of SparkFS.  As I have
mentioned on a few occasions, one can create zip deflated archives using
InfoZip zip, which does run on an Acorn courtesy of Messrs Davis &
Monesi.  InfoZip 2.1 is at Imperial College (earlier copy at HENSA/micros
last time I looked, although 2.1 might be on their SimTelNET mirror.

> > that should be the least of your worries because I had rewritten
> > this program (originally by Adam Goodfellow, IIRC) so it did not

BTW, I found out Adam wrote this after I had built my own copy.  This
is the reason why his name is not in the !ReadMeNow in the archive of
my version which is in my directory at ftp.dsse.ecs.soton.  There are
copies set up for !Newsbase and !TCPIPUser in the archive, with brief
information about what it is and how it probably is to be installed.

> > generate an error like it used to in the Newsbase 0.58 release.

The error message (for a missing !Newsbase.Autoboot) in 0.58 is... (hold
on, I'll just check what I had on screen - oh, I need to hex-dump it!)

  00000000 : 81 F8 E3 EA EC        (Control chars suppressed for Stewart)

> What error ?  Doesn't do it for me.

Good.  It was replaced in Newsbase 0.59 beta 3 (released 06-may-97).

> The !newsbase dir is as it was when extracted from a downloaded copy.

You'll find an empty directory was created.  I've outlined why it went.

                    -  -  -  o    O    o  -  -  -

[other readers, skip the rest of my message to keep to the list's topic]

                    -  -  -  o    O    o  -  -  -

> By the way - have you actually ever written anything
> that wasn't a rewrite of someone elses code ?

A direct question, to which the answer is an affirmative. My reason
for re-writing the !AutoBoot program was because there were several
reports that Adam's copy had strange effects for users who had
upgraded to Strong ARM and RISC OS 3.70, as commented by Graham.

I did not have the source code available, so I started from scratch.
So that it had the same effect, I had to look at Adam's original
binary in !Zap, and from that I generated a disassembly and trans-
formed this to create an assembler source listing for ObjAsm 3.06.

At the point when I verified I re-created the source for it, it is
true to say that it had been reverse engineered.  After I was able
to fix the bugs I found it did have, and I improved it so it does
the same work using fewer |OSGBPB_DirEntriesInfoStamped| calls.

d096 21/05/95 ---- WAVEFORM 1.01 - Blue Wave mail format reader

This I wrote all by myself.  (Note, that copy may not be
StrongARM compatible because it was written and released
a long time ago.  I can provide a copy which does work.)

It reads a kind of bulletin board mail format not supported by
ReaderS (which I have never seen in action - I read my BBS mail
from Arcade in an editor) - not ARCbbs, not QWK[1], but BW.

It was a re-write though! :)  Started in BASIC, then C, and (due
to an error I could not trace and made the program disappear) I
thought I'd start writing it in ARM code, which I did.  It is
not a finished product in that it reads mail but does not allow
replies written off line to be saved for upload back to the BBS.

Everyone who has contacted me (20) by e-mail to say that they
had a copy has been sent a personalised copy, free.  This was
one program I was hoping to release as shareware.  I have not
accepted any money from people because it is not yet finished.

IMHO, motivation is an important factor as to whether software
will be continued to be developed further or not by an author.

The companion to this application is a system that runs on (Acorn
based) ARCbbs 1.64 bulletin board systems, called !ARCbbs-BW.  It
creates Blue Wave format mail packets that PC users can read. :-|

This is written in C, and both programs do make use of the file
format for the Blue Wave mail system designed by George Hatchew.

[I'll take a break here]  5K this reply... :-)

Good luck!

Richard.

[1] !waveform loads QWK mail using a QWK->BW filter program (not supplied).
--
Richard S. | mailto:[e-mail] | http://www.arcade.demon.co.uk/
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