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downsort.faq
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1996-12-27
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A couple of Frequently Asked Questions about Downsort by Rob Hamerling
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
These questions are about and the answers hopefully explain or prevent
unexpected behaviour of Downsort. It may help you to understand how to
organise your FILES.BBS and specify the parameters in Downsort.Cfg for
optimal results.
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Q1. The setup of Downsort is too complicated for first time users, the
sample Downsort.Cfg contains too much text, cannot it be made simpler?
A1. Sysops are always in a hurry and read Downsort.Cfg sometimes only after
hours of experiments. Every good manual is a comprimise between being
clear and complete. Therefore I made a complete manual (Downsort.Doc)
and summarised the most important instructions in a sample Downsort.Cfg,
following the style of MAX.CTL and many other programs.
Why does one expect a versatile program to be simple to setup?
Q2. What is the minumum parameter specification for Downsort.Cfg?
A2. Without ANY commandline parameter and configuration file Downsort will
probably generate an Allfiles.Lst for you (since version 6.3)! This will
work if you run Downsort from the directory in which the Maximus file
FAREA.DAT is located, or the MAXIMUS environment variable points to the
directory of Maximus' main control files, among which the file
FAREA.DAT. See also chapter "Quick Start" in Downsort.Doc.
If you want more or want it differently, you need to tell Downsort via a
configuration file such as the sample file Downsort.Cfg.
Q3. Why does Downsort not support privilege and key/locks or ACS?
A3. Maximus 3.0 uses an Access Control String (ACS) as a suffisticated
method to control which class of users may access which resources.
Downsort is only concerned with downloadable files, which is just a tiny
subset of the scope of Maximus. Filelists are generally not provided
in all variations of your user classes. And since most sysops use
access-rights to download areas much simpler than Maximus allows, I
considered it not worth the trouble to copy or mimic the rather
complicated method of ACS.
With Downsort's support of AreaGroups you may obtain an approximate
result, but agreed, this is not automatic.
Q4. I have my FILES.BBS formatted like this:
Filename.Ext Short file description,
+----------------------------------------------+
| but this is only the first line of a longer |
| and neatly(?) formatted description. |
+----------------------------------------------+
How do I tell Downsort to maintain this carefully formatted description?
A4. According to Maximus' docs the whole file-description must be on the
line with the filespec and may not exceed 1024 characters (Maximus 3.0).
Maximus does not know about 'continuation lines', and handles these
as comments. So in fact this is an improper question!
However Downsort has a slightly more practical approach: it tries to
recognise continuation lines and will handle these as integral part of
the file description. For this purpose Downsort collects the description
including (supposed) continuation lines in a single string of up to 2 KB.
Advantages:
1. FILES.BBS can be sorted without loosing the 'comment'-lines, which
are in fact continuation lines of the description. Where should these
lines be put otherwise after sorting?
2. Saves memory for the leading blanks: maybe not so important for
OS/2, but the more for DOS.
3. Faster sorts: less lines to be sorted.
4. Allows dynamic formatting of the description based on the available
width, which is different for different lists.
With IPFFileList this is down by VIEW, and with HTML-formatted lists
by the browser, depending on the used font.
Disadvantage: the original format of the description is lost.
Of course I have thought about different approaches, but so far I could
not find a method without loosing the listed advantages.
Q5. Can Downsort import FILE-ID.DIZ?
A5. Yes it can! (since version 6.3)
There are some prerequisites and other matters you should be aware of:
- With the keyword DIZimport (see the sample Downsort.Cfg) you can
specify: 'Yes' to import only missing descriptions, or 'Force' to
replace existing descriptions, or a numeric value when the current
description is shorter than this number of bytes.
Finally you can choose for 'No' import, which is the default.
- Downsort follows the rules as in the answer of question 4: The whole
description will be in single string of up to 2 KB, and the text will
be unwrapped (newlines and consecutive blanks removed).
- A configuration file Compress.Cfg is used to obtain the extract
command specification for a particular archive type. This can be the
same file as you use for Maximus or Squish. A copy of one of those is
provided with Downsort.
Q6. How careful handles Downsort my Files.Bbs?
A6. Since Files.Bbs is a valuable resource, Downsort is designed to allow
you to recover from a wrong choice, or even malfunctioning of Downsort.
These are the options and possible pitfalls:
- You can create new Files.Bbs files in another directory than where the
originals are. This is the most safe way of doing it, since the
originals will be read only. But your users will not see the results
unless you copy this output over the original Files.Bbs!
- When you choose to let Downsort update your Files.Bbs files then the
original will be copied to Files.Bak for every area. But of course
this allows recovery only after a single update by Downsort!
- When an error is detected during write of a new Files.Bbs file in
update mode, the original is restored immediately!
- All text that Downsort recognises as file description or continuation
lines of it are preserved with a maximum of 2 KB. Other text in
Files.Bbs is handled as comment. If you choose to sort the contents of
Files.Bbs, then the comments are lost.
** Always check results and recover before running Downsort again **
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Hopefully these answers explain some 'unexpected' or 'unwelcome'
behaviour. If still unclear, please ask!