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┌─────────────────────────────┐ │ -*- Q-Export -*- │ └─────────────────────────────┘ v2.50 A Message Exporting Utility for QuickBBS Systems. by Bob Ransom Copyright (c) 1989 All Rights Reserved First Things First -- This version of Q-Export is being released as shareware. A great deal of work has gone into this program, expanding it and making it more versatile, adding features, etc. If, after a reasonable trial period, you find it useful and wish to use it regularly, please send a small donation of $5 to me at the address listed at the end of this document. What It Be -- Q-Export is a simple means to move massive amounts of messages out of your QuickBBS message base and into a text file. Since QuickBBS stores its messages in a Turbo Pascal database, with a variety of index files and other things, you can't just "TYPE" the message base and make any sense out of it. Q-Export will dump messages from any single message board or from all boards at once, starting at any valid message number to an export file which you can name (if you don't wish to name it, Q-Export will name it for you.) Additionally, you may also tell Q-Export to only dump messages addressed to a specific user, or from a specific user, and have Q-Export search for keywords in the Subject line. Command Line Syntax -- Q-Export is driven strictly by command line parameters; no "control" file is used. Here's a summary of the syntax followed by some examples: Q-Export v2.5 Doc Page 2 QEXPORT <-Bxxx><-Nxxx><-Hxxx><-Exxx><-Txxx/-Fxxx><-Sxxx> [<-Z>] where: -B = Message board to export from or "All" for all boards. Ex: -B7 or -Ball -N = Starting message number to begin export. If message number is out of range, export begins at the first valid message number. Ex: -N14254 -H = File to store "last message exported" number for running Q-Export automatically from a batch file. See below for more on this. -E = File to export the messages to. If no filename is specified, Q-Export will name the file QEXP-xxx.TXT where xxx is the board number messages were exported from. If the file already exists, Q-Export will append the exported messages at the bottom. Ex: -Eqbbsecho.txt -L = Log all activity to QEXPORT.LOG. The log structure is much like the command structure: Each item is preceded by a letter that matches with the command line syntax ("B:12" means messages on board #12; "E:textfile.ext" means messages are exported to the file "textfile.ext"). Ex: -L -T/-F = Tells Q-Export to either export only messages to a specific user (-T) or from a specific user (-F). You must use an underline to separate the first and last names. Right now you can only export messages to a user OR from a user, but not both. Ex: -Tbob_ransom or -Fjoe_doe -S = Keyword in the "Subject" field to search for. This is not really word specific; it will find any and all matches, regardless of case or whether the match is a complete word or just part of a word. For more on this, see below. Ex: -Sqbbs -Z = Use to reset the high message read pointers created with the -H option. This command will rarely be used. See below for more info. Examples: QEXPORT -N12 -B2 -Fjohn_doe - exports messages from board #2, starting with message #12, that are from John Doe. QEXPORT -Ball -Hallbord.hi -TBob_Ransom Q-Export v2.5 Doc Page 3 - exports all messages on all boards addressed to Bob Ransom. The last message number is stored in the file ALLBORD.HI. The -B command could be left out in this case, as default is to all boards. QEXPORT -N1 -B7 -Eqbbs.txt -Sqbbs is - exports all messages from board #7 starting with message #1 in which the subject field contains "qbbs is". Export filename is QBBS.TXT. QEXPORT (no parameters at all) - exports all messages from all boards. Be careful with this as Q-Export doesn't care how large your message base is, or whether or not there's enough space to actually export the entire base. If your message base is 8 meg, your export file will be 8 meg. QEXPORT ? - brings up a small help screen. The -H Parameter -- Q-Export will create a sort of "last read" message pointer if you so desire. This is useful if you run Q-Export nightly or weekly from a batch file. Here's what it does: If you specify the -H parameter (and filename), Q-Export will store the message number of the last message exported in this file. The next time Q-Export is run using the -H parameter and same filename, Q-Export will pick up where it left off and export only new messages. Here's an example that I use here in the nightly maintenance section of my main BBS batch file: QEXPORT -B23 -Epascal.txt -Hpascal.hi Each night when this runs, messages on board #23 (Pascal Echo) are exported to the file PASCAL.TXT, starting with the message number stored in PASCAL.HI. Each night, only new messages are exported. If last night the last message exported was 12178, then tonight exporting will start with 12179. The first time Q-Export is run using the -Hfilename parameter, filename won't exist. Q-Export will bitch a bit, then create the file and begin the export from the first valid message. There's one hitch to this: when you renumber your message base. Q-Export has no way of knowing when you do this, and doing so without changing the -H files means that Q-Export won't export anything. Here's why: Say you have 3500 messages on your system numbered from 1 - 28774. The Q-Export v2.5 Doc Page 4 last time you ran Q-Export with the -H option, 28774 was stored in the "high message" file. Then you run MSGPACK with the -R option to renumber the messages. Now messages are numbered from 1 - 3500. When Q-Export runs again with the -H option it finds that 28774 is an invalid message number and aborts. A problem. This is where the -Z command comes into play. The -Z Command -- This command, when used in conjunction with -Hfilename will reset the high message number in filename to the last valid message number on the system. In the above example, filename would be reset to 3500. Note: You must use -Z with -H (to tell Q-Export which high message pointer to reset). Without the -H, Q-Export will simply abort as it doesn't know what to do. Example: QEXPORT -Z -Hpascal.hi This resets the number in the file PASCAL.HI to the correct high message number on the system. QEXPORT -Z This does nothing. Q-Export just aborts. Note to users of older versions of Q-Export: You no longer need the separate program SET-QEXP.EXE as that function is now built in with the -Z command. More On "Subject" Searches (-S) -- As mentioned before, if you use the -S parameter Q-Export will search for any matches in the Subject field of the messages. Case is not important, nor does it search for just whole words - partial words will be found, too. Also, Q-Export will search for more than one word if you wish. Here are a couple of examples of the -S parameter in use, and what would be found. QEXPORT -Sand syntax The Subject "spelling and syntax" would be considered a match as would the Subject "command syntax" (both contain, literally, "and syntax"). QEXPORT -Sa The following subjects would all match: "A big deal," "deal," "android," "A," etc. Anything where the Subject contains the letter A (upper or lower case). Q-Export v2.5 Doc Page 5 As mentioned and shown above, multiple words may be searched for without specifying the -S before each word. You need only do it once. After that, any parameter that doesn't start with a proper Q-Export command is considered a subject to search for. Here's a convoluted example: QEXPORT -Sthat -B7 was -N1 then -Edump.txt and this is now Kind of a mess but it would work as follows: All messages from board #7, starting with message #1, would be exported to the file DUMP.TXT if the subject contained the phrase "that was then and this is now" (or "THAT Was then aNd thIS IS noW"; remember, case doesn't count.) I don't suggest doing it this way. In fact, I suggest for clarity you always put Subject searches as the last parameter. Stuff You Should Know -- Not only is case not important in subject searches, it doesn't matter anywhere. Q-Export is not case sensitive at all. Name searches look for exact matches. Remember to always separate first and last names with an underline (Bob_Ransom). This is how Q-Export decides if it's a first and last name, or part of the Subject to be searched for. Q-Export is hard to stop once it's running. Don't blame me, blame Borland. Turbo Pascal checks for BREAK after every normal screen write. For added speed, I'm using some different screen writes (direct writes) that don't use standard Turbo Pascal WRITELN commands. Hence, BREAK (aka CONTROL-C or ^C) doesn't do much. Sorry 'bout that. I've considered making it possible to switch all screen writes to go through DOS so that Q-Export would be redirectable. If I do that, and you use the DOS mode, BREAK would work. But it would be slow, slow, slow... I don't know if I need to mention this or not: Q-Export must be run from your main QuickBBS directory. Q-Export was written using Turbo Pascal 5.0. I still haven't gotten around to upgrading to 5.5 yet. Legal Stuff -- Q-Export is released as shareware, meaning that after a reasonable trial period, if you wish to continue to use the program you should send $5 to me at the address below. This program is not public domain -- it is copyrighted by Q-Export v2.5 Doc Page 6 the author with all rights reserved. It may be copied freely provided no changes are made to the executable files, document files, or any other related files included in the original package. You are free to rearchive the files using whatever archiver you wish provided all of the original files are included and no other files added, and provided that you don't add any sort of advertisement to the archive comment. Registered users will receive a sincere thank you from me, either by netmail or by U.S. Mail, and will be considered registered for any and all future releases of the program. Beta testers are specifically exempt from the need to register. Your help is invaluable to me and is worth much more than the registration fee. Future Plans -- The next step in the ongoing evolution of the program will be to add two features: 1- The ability to follow message threads (reply chains) to make for easier offline reading. Now that 2.04 has the feature, I'd like to take advantage of it. 2- Modem routines to allow Q-Export to run as a door. Mike Ratledge has done a phenominal job with the QMX/XRS system and I have no desire to compete with that. I would, however, like to make it possible for non-MS-DOS users to take advantage of the offline message reading that we IBM types have grown so accustomed to. Adding this is gonna take some work, so don't expect this to be released next week. :-) That's about it. Hope you like how the program works. Should you run into problems or have questions or suggestions, feel free to contact me via the QUICKBBS echo, the QUICKPRO echo, PASCAL echo, or via netmail. -Bob Ransom The Creative Connection BBS 27840 Lathrup Blvd. Lathrup Village, MI 48076 (313) 559-9039 (1:120/96.0) October 4, 1989 Q-Export v2.5 Doc Page 7 ┌───────────────────────────────────────┐ │ R E G I S T R A T I O N F O R M │ └───────────────────────────────────────┘ DATE: NAME: ADDRESS: CITY: STATE/PROVINCE: ZIP/POSTAL CODE: COUNTRY: BBS NAME: BBS PHONE: NET/NODE #: