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Text File | 1990-11-10 | 15KB | 349 lines

The WANTAD Door for Spitfire BBS Systems from: ----------------------------------------------- Bob Zimmerman Sysop - The Mainframe BBS 312-364-0425 2400/1200/0300 The Mainframe PO Box 1387 Arlington Heights, IL 60006 MCI Mail R. Zimmerman 386-4706 Compuserv 72371,1700 History of updates are kept at the back of this manual! Description: ------------ The WANTAD Door is designed to run as an extension of the Message Menu. It may be run from the Doors Menu as well. The WANTAD Door allows users to list advertisements in a special database. The real reason you might want a user to use this special door, as apposed to a Message, is the unique search features. This door allows users to search for ads in the order they were added to the database, by author (e.g. all Ads from Bob Zimmerman), by category (e.g. all Jobs Wanted or For Sale), by Keyword (e.g. Monitor and EGA), or search for any string anywhere within the AD. So if a user wants to see all Job Openings, or all ads selling monitors, it is very easy to view these requests. This becomes very effective if you have alot of "ads" on your system. In a future release, I plan a user to "extract" the ads into an ASCII file and download the file! You can see that for high volume, this door can really make managing ADS very easy. This version of WANTAD has been tested with Spitfire versions 2.6 and 2.7. There seems to be no problems! The WANTAD Door Version 4.2 Page 2 Installation: ------------- The following steps install the WANTAD program on the Message Menu option K (add your own). 1) Unzip the WANTAD file into a special WANTAD directory. For sake of discussion, let us say this directory is D:\WANTAD. 2) In your Spitfire directory (e.g. C:\SF), where Spitfire.EXE is located, create a file called SFMESS.BAT with the following data: COPY SFMESS.DAT D:\WANTAD\SFDOORS.DAT D: CD \WANTAD WANTAD ( see below for optional parameters ) 3) The above lines are explained as follows: COPY... This line copies the system info to WANTAD D: This and the next line change to the WANTAD Dir CD\WANTAD WANTAD... This line begins the program. 4) Update SFMSG.MNU so that the K - ADD YOUR OWN option now says W ...... Wantads . You will also have to update any customized .BBS/.CLR menu files. 5) To test this program out, boot up spitfire and logon, either using another PC or using local logon (ALT-S/Q). Go to the Message Menu. Select option W. Try adding an Advertisement. Try Scanning Advertisements. The WANTAD Door Version 4.2 Page 3 Files in the WANTAD directory ----------------------------- The following files are in the WANTAD directory: WANTAD.EXE - The program file WANTAD.DAT - The database file WANTAD.USR - The WANTAD User Statistic file None of the above files should ever be deleteted! WANTAD.LOG - This is a log similar to CALLERS.LOG showing you what the users have done while in the door program. Using parameters on the WANTAD command line, you may supress this log, or have it written to the regular CALLERS.LOG file. See the section of this doc called Command Line Parameters. WANTAD.PRO - Optional category file. If found, it must contain ALL categories. Each category must be listed separatly on its own record. You are allowed up to nine categories! If you only want to override the 3rd category you still must supply all 6 categories, if you want 6 categories. Command Line Parameters ----------------------- When starting WANTAD, there are several parameters you may specify on the WANTAD command. /NOLOG - Suppresses any LOG being generated. By default, WANTAD maintains a log file similar to CALLERS.LOG. The log file is called WANTAD.LOG and is maintained in the WANTAD directory. /CALLER - Forces the LOG to be written to the regular CALLERS.LOG. This means, that regular Spitfire CALLERS.LOG will have lines added describing what happened while the user was in the WANTAD door. The WANTAD Door Version 4.2 Page 4 /NOLABELS - This will supress showing who is logged onto the door at the BBS console. It will speed up the program on XT machines. /L - Normally, if you want to run this door locally, you log on to the BBS in local mode using the regular Alt-S or Alt-Q. Using the /L option, an SFDOORS.DAT file will be generated with some basic information. For example, the user will be SYSOP and the time left to access the door is 255 minutes. Be careful, because any ads that you add to the database will be marked as being added by Sysop! /ANSI - Only has meaning when using the /L parameter. This will set ANSI Graphics ON. The default for the /L logon is off. /Ppathinfo This only has meaning when using the /L parameter and tells the program where the path of SPITFIRE.EXE. for example /PC:\SF\ The WANTAD Door Version 4.2 Page 5 Registration ------------ All questions should be directed to: Bob Zimmerman Sysop - The Mainframe BBS 312-364-0425 2400/1200/0300 The Mainframe PO Box 1387 Arlington Heights, IL 60006 MCI Mail: R. Zimmerman 386-4706 Compuserv 72371,1700 The above mailing address should be used for the registration fee. For the current version (4.0), registration is $25.00. When this is received, a ZIP file will be created on my BBS and made available for you to download. If you want me to send you the disk and this manual printed, add $5 for 5 1/4 disk or $7 for 3 1/2 disk. If you prefer, your package can be delivered via EASYPLEX of Compuserv. Registration plus Easyplex delivery will cost an additional $5. Registration will get you a specially compiled version that eliminates the front end "unregistered copy" message and will also get a utility that will return space from the deleted ads, delete all ads a certain age, print the ads to an ascii file (so you can print them or save them) etc... Some future utility functions will include the ability to convert messages from the Spitfire message section to the Wantad Door and back. This utility will probably be an extra cost utility. You are granted 60 days to evaluate this program. After that 60 day period, if you choose to continue running this program, you should register the product! The WANTAD Door Version 4.2 Page 6 Update History -------------- Version 2.7 First release available as Shareware Version 2.71 Added support for DTE modems Version 2.8 Added /NOLABELS keyword on the command line. This will supress the name of the person logged on from being displayed on the screen. This will speed up the program for slow XT machines. Also optimized some code to make it run fast on XT machines (NOLABELS keyword probably is not required but is available). Version 3.0 When using the /CALLER keyword, WANTAD now checks to see if you have selected PRINTER ON in the Spitfire Options. If you have Printer ON, WANTAD will write the log records to the printer as well as to the CALLERS.LOG file. This will ensure that the printed log matches the log on disk. When listing out an Ad using option 1, and the user is logged on using Color Graphics, Keywords are now highlighted a bit more to make it a bit easier to read. When users add an advertisement, they are prompted, Press A to Add, E to Edit or Q to Quit. The EDIT routine had some problems in how friendly it was to use. For example, if you were editing a 3 line ad, it would force you to edit all 10 lines. This code has been cleaned up. Added a new option to the menu which lets you edit any record you have added. Sysops have full authority to edit anything they want (except the first record on the database). The MENU.BBS/CLR files are no longer required. They are built into the EXE file. You may delete those files. The Shareware version now allows for a 60 day evaluation period. Registration is now $20 (see the section on registering the product). The WANTAD Door Version 4.2 Page 7 Version 3.1 Added the L option. This option does not show on the menu, but prints out the user file. It is only available to the Sysops (security level 999). Also, sped up screen transmission. This will only be evident in XT machines... I think this is finally cleaned up. Version 3.2 This enhacement is made due to a registered user, The DRAWING BOARD BBS requesting it! Added the WANTAD.PRO file (described above). This file allows you to "override" the category names with whatever names you would like to use! Version 4.0 This version is a "total" rewrite of the door. I don't think I have gotten as many suggestions on anything else I have done as this one. YOU MUST RUN the CONVERT program before using this version! Version 4.0 will act more like a message base. WANTAD use to search ads backwards, showing you the latest ads first. It now searches forwards like a regular message base. Also, an ad may now have up to 50 lines. Word Wrap is supported when entering the ad. I have sped up the access quite a bit. Users may now download the WANTADS in a file. Up to 9 user selectable categories are allowed. If a file called WANTAD.ADD is found, it must contain the names for all users allowed to add wantads. In other words, if the file is found in the WANTAD directory, then no users are allowed to add a WANTAD unless they are listed in this file. Users names are listed, one per line in this file. Someone had asked for security to prevent all callers from adding to the WANTAD file. This is how you can control it now! The WANTAD Door Version 4.2 Page 8 Registration is now $25. There is no upgrade fee for current registered users. There will also be a Sysop option allowing you to: Delete old ads Change all ads of one category to another Compress deleted ads out of the file. I am not sure exactly when this above functionality will be available. I am working on it slowly! The file WANT.DAT controls Zipping of wantads for download. Version 4.1 There was a problem with editing an AD. You could edit the name, keywords, description etc... but not the actual "text" of the ad. This has been corrected. Version 4.2 Updated for version 3 of Spitfire.