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FrontDoor 1.99c Noncommercial version A FidoNet compatible e-mail system. For noncommercial use and distribution. USER GUIDE The FrontDoor package is protected by both United States copyright law and international treaty provisions. FrontDoor is provided as is, without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. Joaquim H. Homrighausen only guarantees that FrontDoor will occupy disk space. In no event shall Joaquim H. Homrighausen be liable to you or anyone else for any damages, including any lost profits, lost savings or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use this program. All Joaquim H. Homrighausen products are trademarks or registered trademarks of Joaquim H. Homrighausen. Other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. This version of FrontDoor is referred to as the noncommercial version. It is not a crippled version nor does it quit working after a period of time. See the Appendix section for ordering and pricing information. --------------------------------------------------------------- The noncommercial version is yours to keep. It is not public domain, shareware or freeware, it is simply free of charge. You can use it as long as you do not use it within a commercial environment. It doesn't matter if you are making money by using it or not, if you are using it within commercial walls, you may not use the noncommercial version. --------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1989, 1990 Joaquim H. Homrighausen. All rights reserved. Written by Joaquim H. Homrighausen and Peter Stewart Documentation written by Joaquim H. Homrighausen - 2 - Chapter 1 Preface Welcome to FrontDoor, the complete e-mail package from Joaquim H. Homrighausen. It's probably safe to say that an e-mail package, like FrontDoor, is one of the most complex type of applications around. This manual is very straight forward and may seem hard to understand at first glance. If you get lost, or can't understand something, go back and read the section you're having problems with, carefully. 1.1 Hardware requirements FrontDoor has been tested on more than five hundred systems for over three years. It will run under MS or PC DOS versions 3.00 and above. It runs under most LAN software; including Novell and Lantastic. It also runs under PC-MOS/386, VM/386 and other multitasking environments such as DESQview. Although it will run on most machines, there are a few restrictions and requirements. o An IBM PC, AT or 100% BIOS compatible o A hard disk with at least one megabyte available o An asynchronous modem capable of sending alphanumeric messages such as CONNECT 2400, etc. o A monochrome or color monitor o 256 KB of system memory 1.2 Software requirements o MS or PC-DOS 3.00 or above o A FOSSIL driver such as X00 or BNU - 3 - 1.3 BBS software FrontDoor can be used as a front-end to many popular bulletin boards such as TPBoard, TCL, Allan's Kakburk, QuickBBS, Phoenix RCS, RemoteAccess, Fido, Opus-CBCS, and Maximus-CBCS. 1.4 History FrontDoor began as most programs do, simple and small. Back in 1986, Fido, by Tom Jennings was the major bulletin board system, used by over a thousand people all over the world. It was the only good BBS software around at the time. It had one major drawback, however. Users had to whack and bang their keyboards to death before they would be let in to the BBS. Fido needed to detect the baudrate and it took a long time. So, I, Joaquim Homrighausen thought I had a good idea (I didn't realize what I was getting into), a front-end that answered the phone, read the result codes from the modem, and passed the speed to Fido. I'd seen Peter Stewart's name appear in several small programs floating around Sweden and I didn't have the time to do all the coding myself, because I was working at Ericsson Data Services at the time. I decided to give him a call. A few weeks later, catastrophe was unavoidable; the first version of FrontDoor was released. Mats Knuts, my network host at the time, started to use the simple (and small, 15 KB) program and came up with several ideas and bug reports. We fixed them and released another version. The word got around and soon the first caller from the US logged on to my board and downloaded FrontDoor. - 4 - (History cont'd) Between August 1986 and June 1987 we did nothing but add functions and correct bugs. Things were looking great, and in July of 1987, the nightmare began. Someone asked (very gently) if we could add support in FrontDoor to receive mail. Sure thing, another release and FrontDoor supported incoming mail. The problem was that it couldn't send any mail. A few more releases and it could send and receive mail using SEAlink, Xmodem or Telink. At this time, FrontDoor was in closed beta testing, but a few weeks later, someone asked us a question about FrontDoor, and he wasn't even in the beta group. He had downloaded the program from the "Opus Archive" system. So instead of doing something stupid (yeah, right), we decided to go to public beta testing. The rest.. FrontDoor has expanded to a full-grown FidoNet compatible system. We will never know how big of a mistake it was :-). Joaquim H. Homrighausen Peter Stewart - 5 - - 6 - Chapter 2 Installation Included in the distribution archive are several files. This document will walk you through the installation and configuration of the system. All path names and directories suggested here are not required. You can change them as you wish, but I suggest you use the example in this document for a start and then move on to change things as you become more familiar with the system. In the example, we assume that you are about to install FrontDoor on your C drive. 2.1 CONFIG.SYS FrontDoor needs to have a few extra file handles allocated to keep the nodelist and other files open. Your CONFIG.SYS file should contain FILES=25 (or higher). If you don't know what handles means, that's okay. As long as you have the FILES=25 statement in your CONFIG.SYS file. You should also have BUFFERS=30 (or higher) in your CONFIG.SYS file to improve DOS' buffer performance. If you are using a disk cache, you should have BUFFERS=3 or something close to that. - 7 - 2.2 AUTOEXEC.BAT Add SET FD=C:\FD to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. This will make sure FrontDoor can find all its system files. You may NOT have spaces between FD and =. 2.3 Directories From your root directory (C:\) create a directory called FD. This is the main (ROOT) directory for FrontDoor. Change the active directory to FD. Create the following directories: NODELIST MAIL PACKET FILE 2.4 Files Copy FD.EXE, FD.OVR, FM.EXE, FM.OVR, FDNC.EXE and SETUP.EXE to C:\FD. The program files are now installed. - 8 - Chapter 3 Setup The setup program, SETUP hereafter, is used to configure your FD package. Most functions and behavior of the editor, mailer and terminal are controlled from SETUP. When you start SETUP, it searches for the system file, FD.SYS, in the directory pointed to by the FD environment variable. If the FD variable hasn't been set, SETUP searches the current directory for FD.SYS. If it can't open FD.SYS, it will ask you if you want to create a new file or return to DOS or the mailer. 3.1 FD environment variable The FD environment variable allows the FD package to find the system file, FD.SYS, even if it's not located in the current directory. If you have a multi-drive configuration, or are running in a network environment, you should always set the FD variable to point to the directory where FD.SYS is located. To set the FD variable, place the following line in AUTOEXEC.BAT. SET FD=<PATHSPEC> E.g. SET FD=C:\FD 3.2 Getting started To create a new FD.SYS file, make the FrontDoor root directory the active directory by using the DOS command CD; type SETUP and press Enter. If you have set the FD variable, you don't have to change the active directory before invoking SETUP. SETUP will display a message saying something like "FD.SYS, path or file not found". Press the space-bar to create a new file. - 9 - 3.3 Menus There are eight top-level (pull-down) menus. Each function and menu of SETUP will now be described. 3.3.1 File Shell to DOS Invokes a temporary DOS shell. Type EXIT and press Enter to return to SETUP. You can invoke a temporary DOS shell in SETUP by pressing Alt-Z in the middle of input fields, pull-down menus, selection fields, etc. Exit Returns you to DOS or the mailer, depending on how SETUP was invoked. If you made any changes to your configuration, you will be asked if you want to make your changes permanent or abandon them. You can also exit SETUP by pressing Esc at any of the top-level menus. 3.3.2 Global Address Defines your network address and alternate network addresses (AKAs). You must define at least one network address (the first slot). Filenames System Where the FD package keeps its system files. This should NOT be a RAM disk. Netmail Where netmail messages are stored, i.e. the netmail folder. The mailer unpacks received messages to this directory. This should NOT be a RAM disk. Files Where inbound (received) files are stored. This should NOT be a RAM disk. Packets Where the mailer stores its temporary mail packets. They are created every time the mailer runs a mail event and are removed after when the event ends. You can use a RAM disk for this directory as the packets are temporary and can be rebuilt. - 10 - Filenames (cont'd) Log file The log file. This is a complete filename, e.g. C:\FD\FD.LOG. The mailer is the only program in the FD package that writes information to this file. You should NOT use a RAM disk for the log file as it will disappear if the system reboots. Banner The contents of this file is displayed to human callers before the mailer passes control to your batch file to invoke the BBS software. This file isn't used if you're running in mail-only mode. You should NOT use a RAM disk for the banner file. Nodelist Where the nodelist database is stored. The nodelist compiler expects to find its control file(s) here. The mailer and editor expects to find the compiled nodelist database here. If this directory isn't specified, all programs in the FD package will use the SYSTEM directory instead. The nodelist directory should NOT be located on a RAM disk. In-event This file is displayed to human callers if the mailer rejects their call. I.e. if you're running in mail-only mode or if a mail event prevents human callers from accessing your BBS. QuickBBS Where the editor expects to find the QuickBBS/RemoteAccess message base files (MSGHDR.BBS, MSGTXT.BBS, MSGINFO.BBS, MSGIDX.BBS, MSGTOIDX.BBS and LASTREAD.BBS). If you don't have any folders with QuickBBS status, you don't have to specify this. Swapping If you enable swapping to disk or there isn't sufficient LIM/EMS memory available. The mailer and the editor will use this path to store its swap file. - 11 - General Your country code Your country code. E.g. USA=1, Sweden=46. This is used for telephone number translations. This is related to the COUNTRY= command used in CONFIG.SYS. It doesn't, however, have to be the same as your COUNTRY= setting. SETUP's country code setting should ALWAYS be your real country code. Screen flickers All programs in the FD package attempts to detect if you have a CGA card that causes flicker if software performs direct-to-memory access. The default for this setting is NO and you should leave it alone unless you're seeing flicker on your screen when you use the mailer, editor, or terminal. Use "fastkey" Forces the mailer, editor and terminal to speed up the typematic rate of your keyboard. This is only valid for machines with an AT-BIOS installed. If you are using other keyboard speed-up utilities, leave this to NO; otherwise, the programs in the FD package will restore the typematic rate to the default when they terminate. Screen blanking Prevents screen images from "burning in". If you are using a monochrome monitor, data that is displayed often in the same location on your screen will "burn in" and leave ugly marks. Color monitors usually don't have this problem. Since the mailer is active more than 80% of the day on most systems, it may be wise to enable this option to avoid "burn ins" of the mailer's main display. - 12 - General (cont'd) Blackout timer Specifies how many seconds of inactivity should pass before the screen is blanked. This option is only used if screen blanking (previous page) has been enabled. You can "light up" a blanked screen by pressing a key. The screen will also be lit when the mailer places outgoing calls and when incoming calls are answered. Extended keyboard Specifies which type of keyboard you have (101/102 or 83/84). SETUP will attempt to 'guess' which type of keyboard you have, but some BIOS flavors doesn't properly indicate the type. This allows you to override what SETUP detects. Force 24-hour fmt Allows you to force the mailer and the editor to display the time in 24-hour format even if you're located in a country that uses the 12-hour format, such as USA. - 13 - Users Allows you to specify user names and access levels. The default name of the first user is System Operator. You should change this to your own name. Access levels There are three different access levels. Supervisor, Administrator and User. A user with Supervisor access can override any restrictions on folders and messages. He/she can also change all settings regardless of passwords. You should only have one user with Supervisor access, but SETUP will allow you to define more than one. At least one user with Supervisor access MUST exist. A user with Administrator access can't override any restrictions on folders and messages. He/she has to enter passwords for protected items before they can be changed. A user with User access can't override any restrictions on folders and messages. The only setting he/she can change in SETUP is his/her own password. 3.3.3 Mailer Miscellaneous Mail from unlisted systems Defines whether or not the mailer should accept incoming calls from systems not listed in your nodelist database. If this option is disabled (set to NO) and an unlisted system calls in, the mailer will terminate the call immediately. Mail from "unprotected" systems Defines whether or not the mailer should accept incoming calls from systems for which you don't have a session level password defined. If this option is disabled (set to NO) and an unprotected system calls in, the mailer will terminate the call immediately. - 14 - Miscellaneous (cont'd) Mail from unlisted points The mailer will by default accept calls from points of other systems. You can, however, specify that you don't want the mailer to accept calls from points that aren't listed in your nodelist database. If this option is disabled (set to NO) and a point for which you have no entry in your nodelist database calls in, the mailer will terminate the call immediately. Kill empty received messages Specifies that you want the mailer to kill empty messages (messages with no text in its body) when they are unpacked from mail packets. Terminal only (no mail) If enabled, the mailer will invoke the terminal function as soon as it's loaded. This setting can be overridden with the /M command line switch. Mail only (no BBS) If enabled, the mailer will not accept human callers under any circumstances. Use this option if you don't have a BBS or similar software running "below" the mailer. Match remote's zone If enabled, the mailer will attempt to match the remote system's zone with one of your own AKAs in the same zone. This option is only used if you have specified more than one address (AKA). The AKA list is scanned from top to bottom and the first entry with a zone matching the remote's zone will be used. - 15 - Miscellaneous (cont'd) Present all AKAs to remote system If you have more than one network address, the mailer will by default attempt to pickup mail destined for all your addresses during a mail session. This can be disabled so that only one address is presented to the remote system. If "Match remote's zone" (previous page) has been enabled and this setting is disabled, the first AKA matching the remote's zone will be the presented address. Trigger exit upon receipt of netmail The mailer will by default only trigger (set) the exit flag when compressed (following the ARCmail 0.60 standard) mail is received. If this option is enabled, the exit flag will be triggered (set) when netmail packets (files ending with the extension .PKT) have been received. Whether or not the mailer will actually exit is controlled by event behaviors and the mail exit errorlevel. Trigger exit upon receipt of ANY file Similar to the previous option, but will trigger exit as long as any (file) data has been received. Print received messages If enabled, the mailer will print messages unpacked from mail received packets (files ending with the extension .PKT). This option is only available in the full version. Busy retries Defines the maximum number of times the mailer will attempt to call a system during an event if the system is busy or doesn't answer on the first call. See the chapter about the mailer for further details regarding call progress. - 16 - Miscellaneous (cont'd) Resend retries Defines the maximum number of times the mailer will attempt to transfer mail to a system during an event if the first attempt fails. See the chapter about the mailer for further details regarding call progress. Retry delay Defines the minimum number of seconds the mailer will wait between outgoing calls. Delay before first call The mailer will by default attempt to place the first outgoing call as soon as possible. If this option is enabled, it will delay the first call. Days to keep mail history Number of days to retain entries in the floating inbound/outbound history files. The mailer removes all entries older than this value from the history files every morning (at first opportunity after midnight). BBS software name Name of the BBS software you're running (if any). This is displayed to human callers together with the "Press Esc twice for <BBSNAME>" if the event allows human callers to access the BBS. Seconds before passing to BBS Defines the number of seconds the mailer will wait before assuming a human caller. Unless the mailer receives two consecutive Esc characters, it will attempt to establish a mail session for the amount specified here. The minimum and default value is 11 seconds. The maximum value is 60 seconds. Minimum undialable cost The minimum cost of a call for a system to be processed by the undialable handler. The undialable handler is discussed in a separate section. - 17 - Log Defines the various level of logging. All messages will appear on the screen, the log options defines which of them ends up in the log file. File requests Mode Anyone can request All systems are allowed to make file requests. No requests No file requests will be accepted. Systems in nodelist can request All systems listed in your nodelist database are allowed to make file requests. List Defines the file containing requestable directories. The file should contain one directory per line. E.g. C:\FILES\BBSPROG\ C:\FILES\FDPROG\ This is NOT a filemask. All files in the specified directories are made available for file requests. Alias Defines the file containing alias filename definitions. This is quite useful for having files on-line that changes name frequently, etc. The remote system can request the alias filename and then receive whatever you've told the mailer to send. E.g. FRODO C:\FILES\FDMAILER.LZH XR C:\FILES\XROBOT.LZH RACCESS C:\FILES\RA*.LZH MYSECRET C:\TEST1.LZH C:\TEST2.LZH The remote system can request FRODO, XR, RACCESS or MYSECRET and get the specified files. - 18 - Alias (cont'd) Files listed as alias names don't have to be located in requestable (see List) directories. Message The contents of this file will be appended to the "Failed request" message generated by the mailer if one or more of the file requests couldn't be processed. Max match Specifies the maximum number of files your system will send during one file request session. If the remote system requests an alias filename that expands to two files, the request is counted as two files. Setting max match to zero disables this feature. Max size Specifies the maximum amount of data (in KB) your system will send during one file request sessions. Note that if the remote system requests an alias filename that expands into two files, the size of both files is checked. Setting max size to zero disables this feature. Max time Defines the maximum time (in minutes) the resulting files of a file request may take to transfer. Before sending each file, a check is made to see if sending the file will cause this limit to be exceeded. If so, the file is skipped and the next file in the list will be checked. Setting this option to zero disables this feature. Minimum speed Specifies the minimum baud rate required to allow file requests. If the current connection is at a lower speed, file requests will not be honored. Limited Enables limited hours. Start Defines the time of day when your system should start honoring file requests. This setting can only be changed if the limited option is enabled. - 19 - Limited (cont'd) End Defines the time of day when your system should stop honoring file requests. This setting can only be changed if the limited option is enabled. Days Specifies on which days your system will honor file requests. FDServer The FDServer function is described in a separate chapter. If no password is specified in SETUP, the FDServer function is inactive (disabled). External mail When the mailer processes an incoming call, all received characters are processed for a possible match with any of the external mail "wake-up" sequences and if a match is made, the mailer exits with the specified errorlevel of the matching string. This allows you to run alternate mail handlers "below" the mailer, such as UFGATE to process uucp mail. Note that the call isn't terminated when using the external mail interface, the FOSSIL driver is simply deinitialized and the mailer exits. This option is NOT intended for echomail processors, etc. To enter characters with an ASCII code below 32 (space), hold down the ALT key, enter the ASCII code on the numerical keypad and release the ALT key. - 20 - Display Mail waiting flashing When there's new mail waiting, the text 'Mail' will flash on the mailer screen. The flashing can be disabled with this option. Display clock Specifies whether or not you wan the current date and time displayed in the top right corner of the mailer screen. Screen size This option is only valid for systems with EGA and VGA cards; supporting 43/50 line modes. If enabled, the mailer will set 43 or 50 line mode when it's started. Colors Allows you to choose between the default monochrome (black and white) and the default color sets. You can also choose to customize the colors to suit your own needs. Hidden dial info Allows you to hide portions of telephone numbers that otherwise would be displayed when the mailer places an outgoing call. E.g. The mailer calls "1-305-596-2904", if you had one of the hidden dial info strings set to "1-305", the displayed number would be "-596-2904". - 21 - Function keys Allows you to define up to 20 (24) programs, etc. to invoke from the mailer when any of the functions keys are pressed. The first 10 (12) function keys are accessed through F1-F10 (F12), the second 10 (12) function keys are accessed through Shift F1-F10 (F12). Title The title to appear on the screen when you press Alt-K from the mailer's main screen. Action The program to invoke or errorlevel to exit with. To specify more than one program, separate them by semicolons (;). To exit with an errorlevel, specify ?<errorlevel>. E.g. LIST C:\FD\FD.LOG;DEL C:\FD\FD.LOG Would load the program LIST and pass C:\FD\FD.LOG as the parameter. When the LIST program terminates, the mailer would proceed to the next command, which in this case removes C:\FD\FD.LOG. ?255 Would force the mailer to terminate with an errorlevel of 255. Pause Specifies whether or not you want the mailer to pause when the invoked program(s) terminates. Check Specifies whether or not the mailer should re-scan its message base when the invoked program(s) terminates. To create a DOS shell that doesn't force a re-scan of the message base, specify C:\COMMAND.COM (or wherever you have your copy of COMMAND.COM stored) as ACTION and set CHECK to No. - 22 - Errorlevels This section allows you to invoke BBS software, or other similar software, when an incoming call is established and the mailer has determined that it's not a mail call. It also allows you to define an errorlevel to exit with when mail has been received. If a baudrate related errorlevel is zero, the mailer will display a message to human callers saying that your system doesn't support non-mail calls at that speed and then terminate the call. If you're running in mail-only mode, the mailer will never accept non-mail (human) calls. If the RECEIVED MAIL errorlevel is zero, the mailer will never exit when mail has been received. Whether or not the mailer will actually exit when it has received mail is determined by the current event (if any) behavior and whether or not the received file(s) indicated mail. The CREATE .BAT FILE option allows you to simplify BBS operation. If it's enabled, the mailer will create a batch file containing the current baudrate, the COM port used, the number of minutes left to the next system event, etc. This is described in a separate chapter. Audio control The mailer can sound alarms and make other noises when certain events occur, such as received mail, incoming human callers, fatal errors, etc. This section allows you to control which sounds should be active and when audio should be active. Swapping Determines whether or not you want the mailer to use swapping. You can disable the use of LIM/EMS memory for the swap function. The swap function is explained in the Miscellaneous chapter. - 23 - Protection Allows you to protect certain functions of the mailer, such as access to the DOS shell, editor, nodelist compiler, terminal, etc. with a password. This feature is only available in the full version. - 24 - 3.3.4 Editor Miscellaneous Netmail.Restricted Specifies if the netmail folder should be restricted. If you enable this, users with user or administrator access can only read private messages addressed to their usernames. Netmail.Read-only Prevents users with user or administrator access from writing messages in the netmail folder. The definition of writing includes forwarding and moving of messages to the netmail folder. Netmail.Export OK Defines whether or not users with user or administrator access can export messages from the netmail folder. The definition of export includes moving, copying, and export to disk. Netmail.Use tables Defines whether or not the translation tables should be active by default in the netmail folder. This can be toggled from within the editor. Netmail.Crash If the crash status bit should be set by default on created messages. Netmail.Direct If the direct status bit should be set by default on created messages. Netmail.Hold If the hold status bit should be set by default on created messages. Netmail.Private If the private status bit should be set by default on created messages. Netmail.Kill/Sent If the kill/sent status bit should be set by default on created messages. Screen size This option is only valid for systems with EGA and VGA cards; supporting 43/50 line modes. If enabled, the editor will set 43 or 50 line mode when it's started. - 25 - Miscellaneous (cont'd) Show hard CRs If enabled, the editor will show hard CRs in messages. The display of hard CRs is disabled by default and can be toggled from within the editor. Margin Specifies the margin at which the editor should automatically wrap text when you enter messages. The default value, 60, should not be changed in most cases. When you reach the margin, the editor will insert what's referred to as a soft CR which means that other editors CAN wrap the text at that position. When you read messages in the editor, it will use all available columns (80, 132, etc.) as the wrap margin. Keyboard macros Allows you to define up to 20 (24) macro strings. These can be used to insert common text, such as name signatures, etc. while editing messages. The first 10 (12) function keys are accessed through F1-F10 (F12), the second 10 (12) function keys are accessed through Shift F1-F10 (F12). A pipe (|) character is translated to a CR which has the same effect as if you would have pressed the Enter key while typing text. Origin lines Appended to messages you create in echomail-type folders to show the origin of a message. These should include the name and location of your system if possible. You can choose default origin lines for all echomail-type folders. You can also choose a different origin line from within the editor. Whether or not the origin line is appended to messages you enter in echomail-type folders is controlled by the echo info status bit for each folder. - 26 - Colors Allows you to choose between the default monochrome (black and white) and the default color sets. You can also choose to customize the colors to suit your own needs. Xlat.In and Xlat.Out Defines the translation tables to use wherever the translation table status bit is active. This is used to translate language specific 8-bit ASCII characters to 7-bit ASCII when writing messages to disk and vice versa when reading messages from disk. The In table is used when reading messages from disk and the Out table is used when writing messages to disk. The SETUP program automatically creates reasonable defaults for most countries when it creates a new FD.SYS (system) file. If you're located in an English speaking country, you don't have to worry about translation tables. Swapping Determines whether or not you want the editor to use swapping for its DOS shell. You can disable the use of LIM/EMS memory for the swap function. The swap function is explained in the Miscellaneous chapter. 3.3.5 Terminal Miscellaneous Init An additional modem initialization string, sent to the modem as soon as the terminal is started. If you start the terminal directly from DOS (FD /T) or have set the terminal-only option in SETUP, the mailer's initialization strings are first sent to the modem. Download Default download path. Files that you received (download) during a terminal session will by default end up here. Upload Default upload path. - 27 - Miscellaneous (cont'd) Editor Allows you to install an editor or file listing program and invoke it from the terminal. The terminal will prompt your for optional parameters, such as filenames, etc. This can also be used to invoke external protocols or external protocol menu programs. Protocol Zmodem, Telink or Xmodem. Defines the default transfer protocol to use for file transfers in the terminal. Emulation ANSI, TTY, VT100 or VT52. Defines the default terminal emulation protocol to use in the terminal. Note that the terminal's ANSI protocol supports the AVATAR (AVT/0) emulation protocol. Avatar Allows you to disable the support for AVATAR sequences in ANSI emulation. Buffer The size, in KB, of the scroll-back buffer. Connect noise Whether or not the terminal should make noise when a connection has been established. Transfer noise Whether or not the terminal should make noise after file transfers. Use tables Whether or not the terminal translation tables should be active by default. See Editor.Xlat In for a detailed explanation of translation tables. Auto Zmodem Whether or not the automatic Zmodem download (receive) function should be enabled by default. Local echo Whether or not the terminal should echo typed characters to your screen by default. - 28 - Miscellaneous (cont'd) Wrap around Whether or not the terminal should move the cursor to the beginning of a new line when it reaches the end of the previous line. Screen size This option is only valid for systems with EGA and VGA cards; supporting 43/50 line modes. If enabled, the terminal will set 43 or 50 line mode when it's started. Delay Number of seconds to wait between outgoing calls if the number you dialed was busy or didn't answer. If there's more than one entry in the dial queue, the delay is ignored and the terminal proceeds to the next number in the queue. Keyboard macros Allows you to define up to 20 (24) macro strings. These can be used to transmit common text, such as names and passwords, etc. The first 10 (12) function keys are accessed through Shift F1-F10 (F12), the second 10 (12) function keys are accessed through Ctrl F1-F10 (F12). To enter characters with an ASCII code below 32 (space), hold down the ALT key, enter the ASCII code on the numerical keypad and release the ALT key. This is referred to as the default macro set. Xlat.In and Xlat.Out See Editor.Xlat In for a detailed explanation of translation tables. The In table is used for characters received from the modem (remote). The Out table is used for characters typed on the keyboard. - 29 - 3.3.6 Modem Hardware Modem port The COM port your modem is attached to (1-8). Maximum baudrate The maximum supported baudrate of your modem (300-38400). If you have locked your FOSSIL driver, set this to the same speed as the speed you locked the FOSSIL driver at. Lock port Whether or not you have locked the FOSSIL driver's baudrate. Reset modem to connect speed --------------------------------------- This option should ONLY be used if you have a modem that supports the CCITT V.23 (split speed, 1200/75 and 75/1200) recommendation. --------------------------------------- Lower DTR when busy Determines how the mailer should handle the modem when it invokes other programs, exits and shells to DOS. If enabled, the mailer will simply lower DTR. This means that your modem won't answer the phone, but any calling systems will not get a busy signal. If you disable this, the mailer will send the Offhook string to the modem instead of lowering DTR. This can be used to take the modem offhook when your system isn't available so that calling systems gets a busy signal instead of no answer. --------------------------------------- It's against the law of some countries to take a modem offhook unless actual communication is taken place. As the operator of the FD package, it's your responsibility to be aware of such laws in your own country. --------------------------------------- - 30 - Hardware (cont'd) Lower DTR to terminate call If enabled, the mailer will drop DTR for a short period of time to terminate calls. Most modems supports this and you should only disable it if your modem doesn't support lowering of DTR. If disabled, the mailer will send the Escape code string followed by the Onhook string to terminate a call. Toggle DTR before dialing Specifies that the mailer should lower DTR, pause, and then raise DTR again every time it places an outgoing call. While this increases the chances of call collision, it can be required by some modems to reset properly, etc. Do not enable this option unless it's absolutely necessary. Messages This option allows you to define the messages sent by your modem. If your modem doesn't send one or more of the strings you should NOT remove them. The 300 string is sent as CONNECT followed by a carriage return by some modems (USR HST for example). You should therefore set the string to CONNECT| (the pipe character will be replaced with a CR by the mailer) if this is the case with your modem. The RING string should be set to RING| (the pipe character will be replaced with a CR by the mailer) if your modem sends the RINGING message while waiting for a call to be connected. - 31 - Command strings All command strings may contain a pipe (|) character, which translates into a CR and a tilde (~) character which translates into a one second pause. Escape code Used to place the modem in command (as opposed to data/on-line) mode. This is only used if you have disabled "Lower DTR to terminate call" or if you're using the "Reset modem to connect speed" option. Return on-line Used to place the modem in data/on-line (as opposed to command) modem. This is only used if you're using the "Reset modem to connect speed" option. Onhook Used to place the modem on hook (as opposed to off hook) if you have disabled "Lower DTR when busy" or "Lower DTR to terminate call". Offhook Used to place the modem off hook (as opposed to on hook) if you have disabled "Lower DTR when busy". Dial Used when the mailer places an outgoing call. The mailer will send the dial (this) string, the Prefix, the telephone number, followed by the Suffix. E.g. <DIAL><PREFIX><NUMBER><SUFFIX> Prefix Sent before every number when the mailer places an outgoing call (see above). Suffix Sent after every number when the mailer places an outgoing call (see above). This should be set to the pipe (|) character to indicate a CR in most cases. Delay The delay (in 1/10 second) between every string the mailer sends to the modem. If you have an extremely fast modem (not baudrate), such as the USR HST, you can set this as low as one or two, but most modems require that this is set between four and eight. - 32 - Command strings (cont'd) Init-1 .. Init-3 Modem initialization strings. They're sent every time the mailer initializes the modem in order (Init-1, Init-2, Init-3). Unused strings should not be set to anything (leave field blank). Down Sent to the modem when the mailer terminates. This occurs when mail has been received or when you press Alt-Q (quit). Reset Sent to the modem to force it to respond with an OK message. This should be set to AT| in most cases. Answer control Manual answer Defines that the mailer should wait for the RING message from the modem and then send the force answer string (below) to force the modem to answer. This is the safest way to control modem answering and should be used unless your modem doesn't support it. For Hayes compatible modems, you should add S0=0 to one of your init strings to prevent the modem from answering automatically. Force answer The string forcing the modem to answer an incoming call. This should be ATA| in most cases. Answer delay When the mailer receives the RING message from the modem, it will pause for nn 1/10 seconds before sending the force answer string. This should be set between four and eight for most modems. Limited hours Starting time Ending time Allows you to force the mailer to ignore the RING message outside the specified hours. This is useful if the telephone line is shared by other people during daytime but available during the night for example. - 33 - 3.3.7 Printer The printer configuration can only be changed if you have the full version. The noncommercial version defaults to using LPT1. 3.4 Manager The managers are used to define events, session level security, file protection (for file requests) and to define your various message folders. All managers require that the SYSTEM path has been defined since they store their data files (EVENT.SYS, PASSWORD.SYS, REQUEST.SYS and FOLDER.SYS) in that directory. 3.4.1 Events The event manager is used to control mail and external events. There's a global event, which is active when no other event is active. The @ character is used for the global event. There are two basic types of events. Mail events and external events. Mail events are used to control how the mailer treats mail during a given time of the day. External events are used to force the mailer to terminate with an errorlevel at a specific time. They can be used to run system maintenance programs, disk optimizers, etc. The event manager has two modes. The first is the view mode, which is self explanatory. The second mode is the edit/create mode. It will now be described. Tag The event ID. A letter from A-Z or @. The @ event has special meaning and is described later. X is used for eXternal events, all other letters are used for mail events. Which letter you use isn't important. They could correspond with the time of day, N for Night, E for Evening, D for Day, etc. The event tag is used to associate an event with a schedule block in the route file (described later). Days The days you want the event to be active on. The @ event is active on all days. - 34 - Modifier You can define a start time for the @ event. It's not used to control the start of the @ event. It can be added, subtracted, or ignored, when calculating the actual start time of other events. If the modifier for an event is +, the start time of the @ event is added to the start time of the event. If the modifier for an event is -, the start time of the @ event is subtracted from the start time of the event. If the modifier for an event is *, the start time of the @ event is ignored and not used to calculate the actual start time of the event. This is very useful when it's time to switch between winter and summer time. Instead of having to manually go into each event and define a new start time, you could change the start time of the @ event and the start time of all other events will be changed. Let's say you have an event (tag=E) that starts at 08:00 in the morning with a modifier of +. Your @ event has a start time of 01:00. Since the modifier was + (add), the start time of @ (01:00) will be added to the start time of the E event and the result will be that event E starts at 09:00. If you change the modifier to - (subtract), the start time of event E will be 07:00 (08:00 minus 01:00). If you set the modifier to * (ignore), the start time of E isn't affected. Start time Defines the start time of an event. See Modifier (above) for an explanation on how this can be affected. Length Defines the length of the event. External events (X) always have a length of 00:01 (one minute). - 35 - Min.cost / Errorlevel For mail events, this defines the minimum cost of messages that should be qualified (see Mail routing). For external (X) events, this defines the errorlevel that the mailer will terminate with. You may use any value from 31-255. Max.cost Defines the maximum cost of messages that should be qualified (see Mail routing). Behavior Defines the behavior of the event. Mail events and external (X) events have different behavior options, this is described later. Use alias Defines which of your AKA the mailer should use for a mail event. It will present itself with the specified address (AKA) during the whole event. This does not affect the "Match remote's zone" option, described earlier. Retry delay Defines the delay (in seconds) the mailer should wait between placing outgoing calls. A value of zero means that you want the mailer to use the default delay (described earlier). 3.4.1.1 External event behavior Allow users during event Defines whether or not non-mail (human) calls are allowed to interrupt the event. If a non-mail call comes in at 12:00 and you have an external (X) event scheduled for 12:30, the mailer will take the X event into account when calculating the number of minutes left until the next event, depending on how this option is set. If it's disabled, the user would, in this case, only have 30 minutes until the next event. If it was enabled, the mailer would instead scan ahead for the next (if any) event that doesn't allow users. - 36 - External event behavior (cont'd) Forced Defines whether or not the event is forced. The mailer, by default, ignores events that it "missed" while doing something else. If you enable this option, the event will be executed even if the mailer have "missed" it. Assume you have a non-forced external (X) event scheduled for 12:00 and a user calls in at 11:50. The call lasts for 30 minutes (12:20). When the mailer is brought back up again, the external event will not be executed. If, however, you had this option enabled for the external (X) event, it would be executed as soon as the mailer was brought up again. Inactive Toggles the state of the event. The mailer will ignore any inactive events. This allows you to deactivate events without removing them from the event manager. 3.4.1.2 Mail event behavior Allow users during event This has the same function as for external (X) event. In addition, non- mail calls will not be accepted during the duration of the event if this is enabled. Exit when mail is received Defines whether or not you want the mailer to exit when mail has been received. This allows you to process received echomail, etc. High priority (crash) mail only Forces the mailer to ignore messages that doesn't have crash status. Note that messages with immediate (IMM) status are not affected by this. - 37 - Mail event behavior (cont'd) Allow file requests Defines whether or not you want the mailer to honor file requests during an event. If you disable this option, the mailer will simply ignore file requests. Pickup file requests The mailer will by default not accept file requests received during an outgoing (outbound) mail call since you're paying for the call. This option allows you to pickup waiting file requests and process them. Whether or not they're actually honored is defined by the Allow file requests option. Hold (don't send) file requests Forces the mailer to ignore outgoing (your own) file request messages during the event. This is useful if you don't want to send out file requests during daytime events for example. Attempt to pickup waiting mail Defines whether or not you want the mailer to pickup any waiting mail on outgoing calls. The default (Yes) should be used unless you want the mailer to terminate the mail session as soon as it has delivered its mail. If this option is disabled, your file requests (if any) will fail since the mailer terminates the call before the remote system has a chance to process them. Allow nodes to pickup waiting mail This option is the same as using the DENY route command (see Mail routing). The only difference is that you can't be selective about which systems can pickup waiting mail. If a system calls in to deliver its mail and this option is disabled, your system will not release (send) any waiting mail. - 38 - Mail event behavior (cont'd) Send-only Forces the mailer to make outgoing calls without waiting for the specified time (retry delay, etc.) between calls. The mailer will still accept incoming (inbound) mail, but the chances of another system getting through are very small. Receive-only Specifies that you don't want the mailer to make any outgoing calls during the event. End event when no more mail to send If you have an event with some restrictions on other systems or don't allow users, it may be useful to enable this option, forcing the mailer to release all restrictions enforced by the event as soon as there is no more mail to send. If new mail is entered that qualifies for mailing and the event has ended (prematurely), it will be restarted. Send to CM systems only Forces the mailer to only qualify those systems that have the CM (continuous mail) flag set in their nodelist entry. Send to non-CM systems only Forces the mailer to only qualify those systems that DON'T have the CM (continuous mail) flag set in their nodelist entry. - 39 - Mail event behavior (cont'd) Only execute event once Forces the mailer to only deliver mail to a system once during the event. If the event is interrupted or aborted, the mailer will remember which systems it has already delivered mail to and when the event is restarted, it won't call those systems again. Assume you have mail to 1:135/20 and 2:310/11 during event A, with this behavior enabled. On the first call to 1:135/20, the mailer sends its mail successfully. If the event is restarted for some reason (user break, human caller, mail receive exit), the mailer won't call 1:135/20 again, even if there's new mail for that system. Inactive The same as for external (X) events. 3.4.1.3 The @ event The @ event, unless you have defined it as inactive, is active whenever your system is not in another mail event. You can use it to send local and/or low cost mail whenever the mailer isn't busy, etc. You can specify a schedule block (see Mail routing), using the @ tag and define routing rules for it just like any other mail event. If the mailer doesn't find a schedule block for the @ tag, it will still use any global rules defined in the route file. 3.4.1.4 Overlapping events Overlapping events are fully supported by the mailer. Event B starts at 05:00 with a duration of 01:00. Event A starts at 05:01 with a duration of 00:15. The behavior for event A includes Only execute event once and End event when no more mail to send. Event B will start at 05:00, after one minute, event A will start and last for fifteen minutes (or end when there's no more mail to send). Once event A has ended, B will resume. This is a very powerful and useful concept. It can be used to start temporary or dynamic events within events that lasts for several hours. - 40 - 3.4.2 Folders Folders are used to define different areas (directories or boards for QuickBBS/RemoteAccess) so that you can use the editor to read and write messages in those areas. The editor only knows about one folder by default. It's defined in the path section of SETUP (described earlier) and is referred to as the Netmail folder. The folder manager has two modes. The first is the view mode, which is self explanatory. The second mode is the edit/create mode. It will now be described. Status The status and type of the folder. Origin The default origin line to use. This is only used for echomail-type folders with the echo info status enabled. Origin lines are used to identify the origin of a message in echomail conferences. This is required because echomail isn't a point to point environment, like a telephone conversation. Echomail conferences are usually widespread and can have an unlimited number of participating systems. Title The title appearing in the folder list when you select a new active folder in the editor. Board / Path Depending on the type of the folder, this is either the QuickBBS/RemoteAccess board number or the DOS path (directory) where the messages for this folder should be stored. Users Defines which users should have access to this folder. If a user doesn't have access to a folder, it won't show up on his/her list of available folders. Password Defines whether or not access to the folder is protected by a password. You can allow users to access a folder, and the password protect it. - 41 - Use AKA Defines which address (AKA) the editor should use for the folder. This is only important for echomail-type folders with the echo info status enabled. The address is a part of the origin line. Folder status Restricted If enabled, users can only read private messages addressed to their username. Public messages are not affected by this. Echo info Whether or not an origin line should be appended to newly created messages. See Origin (previous page) for more information. Export OK See Netmail.Export OK described earlier. Echomail Defines the folder as an echomail folder (as opposed to a local folder). Local Defines the folder as a local folder (as opposed to an echomail folder). This is usually used to access local BBS message areas. Translate Enables the translation tables for the folder. They can be toggled on/off from within the folder. Private Specifies that the private status should be allowed (and the default) for messages created in the folder. This should NOT be used in echomail folders unless the echomail conference explicitly allows this. Read-only See Netmail.Read-only described earlier. - 42 - 3.4.3 Security The security manager is used to define session level passwords for other systems. The security manager can also be used to explicitly refuse file requests from a system. Session level passwords are used to protect the receiving (called) system in a mail session to ensure that the calling system really is what it appears to be. Anyone can setup a mailer, like FrontDoor or D'Bridge and send you mail. If there's mail waiting for the address they're using, your system will by default attempt to send it. You should setup session level passwords for all your common mail links, such as echomail distribution systems, etc. System The system address of the remote system. E.g. 1:135/20. Password Defines the session level password that your system will present when calling the specified system and the password that your system require to establish a mail session from the specified system. Note that some systems treat passwords case sensitive, i.e. ALLAN is not treated like AlLaN. The mailer will treat passwords case insensitive on incoming (inbound) calls. They will, however, be sent EXACTLY as you have defined them here. You don't have to specify a password to enable the FREQs option (below). FREQs Specifies whether or not the specified system is allowed to make file requests. ARCmail Not implemented yet. The mailer will ignore any entries in the security manager with inactive status. - 43 - 3.4.4 Requests The request manager is used to password protect file requests. You can protect a whole directory or individual files. This is useful if you have sensitive files on-line for file requests but don't want everyone to be able to request them. Filename/Directory Defines the filename / directory you want to protect. This is NOT an exclusive name. If you set this field to C:\HIDDEN\ and define a password, all file requests that result in files being sent from C:\HIDDEN\ are protected. If you set this field to MYSECRET.LZH and define a password, the file MYSECRET.LZH will only be sent if the requesting system presented the proper password. Password Defines the password for the specified file / directory. The requesting system have to present this in its request to get the file(s). These passwords are treated case insensitive. The mailer will ignore any entries in the request manager with inactive status. - 44 - Chapter 4 Mailer The mailer (FD) is the core program of the FD package. It's responsible for sending and receiving messages; and optionally pass human callers to a BBS. The terminal function is also located in the mailer and can be reached from one of the menus in the mailer. Most functions of the mailer are reached by holding down the Alt key and pressing a key, A-Z. 4.1 Menus Each function and menu of the mailer will now be described. 4.1.1 Alt-P Programs Alt-E Message editor Loads the editor (FM). Alt-J Terminal Loads the terminal function (it resides in the mailer overlay file, FD.OVR). Alt-C Configure Loads the SETUP program. Alt-N Nodelist Loads the nodelist compiler (FDNC). Alt-K User keys Allows you to select one of the 20(24) user definable functions. - 45 - Alt-Z DOS shell Invokes a temporary DOS shell. Type EXIT and press Enter to return to the mailer. Packets created with any of the temporary mail services function (File request, transmit file, send mail) will be discarded when you return and the mailer will re-scan the message base. Alt-Q Quit Returns you to DOS. The mailer will return errorlevel 10 (user break) when you press Alt-Q. 4.1.2 Alt-U Utilities Alt-A Active event Shows the settings for the currently active event (if any). Alt-I Inbound history Invokes the inbound call (mail) history management function. Alt-O Outbound history Invokes the outbound call (mail) history management function. Alt-R Recent activity Shows you the last two days of general activity, failed sessions, file requests, number of files/bytes sent and received, etc. Alt-X Disconnect Allows you to manually terminate a call. This will also re-initialize the modem. Alt-L Lock keyboard Allows you to lock the keyboard (and mailer) against unauthorized use. The mailer will still perform its duties such as sending and receiving mail, etc. You must enter the specified password to unlock the keyboard. If the mailer exits (due to mail received or a BBS call is received), the keyboard lock status is retained and when the mailer is brought back up, the keyboard will be locked. - 46 - Restart event Forces the mailer to re-scan the message base and create new mail packets. All previous packet (note: NOT MAIL) information is discarded. 4.1.3 Alt-M Mail Alt-B Queue manager Allows you to manipulate the current mail queue. If no mail event is active, the mail queue is empty. The mail queue is described in a later chapter. Alt-V Undialable manager Allows you to manipulate systems marked as undialable. This is discussed in a separate section. Alt-F Forced poll Creates a priority entry in the mail queue for the specified system. If an entry for the specified system already exists in the queue, its status is set to priority. If the mailer has to re- scan the message base, the temporary poll is removed from the mail queue. Alt-G Request files Allows you to create a temporary file request to the specified system. If the mailer has to re-scan the message base, the temporary file request is removed from the mail queue. Alt-T Transmit files Allows you to transmit files to the specified system. As with the poll and request function (above), this is only a temporary function; if the mailer has to re-scan the message base, the entry is removed from the mail queue. Alt-S Send mail Allows you to create a temporary mail packet for the specified system. You can choose to include all or high-priority mail. If the mailer has to re-scan the message base, the entry is removed from the mail queue. - 47 - 4.1.4 Alt-Y Your profile Answer Allows you to toggle the manual answer status. This option is only valid if you have enabled the manual answer option in SETUP. Printer Allows you to toggle the printing of new (incoming) messages. This option is only available in the full version. Human callers Allows you to toggle whether or not you want the mailer to accept human callers. This option is only valid if you're not running the mailer in mail-only mode. Exit on mail Allows you to toggle whether or not the mailer should exit when mail has been received. This option is only valid if an errorlevel for received mail has been specified in SETUP and the active event (if any) specifies that the mailer should exit when mail has been received. Alt-W Which AKA Allows you to select a different AKA to operate under. The specified AKA will be active until the mailer exits or you select a new AKA to operate under. Note that this does not effect the zone match function of the mailer. 4.2 Alt-B Mail queue The mail queue function allows you to modify the status of one or more mail packets, temporarily change the destination of mail packets and to unpack one or more packets. F1 Priority Sets priority status on all selected packets. Packets with priority status are always processed before packets with crash or normal status. F2/Enter Verbose Shows more information about the highlighted mail packet such as attached files, estimated transfer time, etc. - 48 - F3 Crash Sets crash status on all selected packets. F4 Hold Sets hold status on all selected packets. Packets with hold status will never be processed by the mailer unless the destination system calls in to pickup mail. F5 Select all Selects all packets. F6 Destination Changes the destination of all selected packets. When the mailer processes the mail queue, it will treat all active (non sent and non held) packets as individual packets, including two or more different packets destined for the same system. If a connection is made (whether the destination system calls you or your system calls it), however, all packets destined for that system will be sent. F7 Unpack Discards all selected packets (note: NOT MAIL) from the queue. F8 Clear status Sets normal status on all selected packets. F9 Clear busy retries Sets the dial attempts for all selected packets to zero. Esc Exit Returns you to the mailer. Space Select Selects the currently highlighted packet. - 49 - 4.3 Call progress When the mailer has mail to send, it will walk through the mail queue and call the systems with mail packets waiting. Packets with sent, failed, and hold status are ignored by the mailer. Packets with failed and hold status can always be picked up by the destination system when it calls in. After every unsuccessful (busy, no carrier, etc.) call, the busy retry counter is incremented until it reaches the value defined in SETUP. Once the limit has been reached, the mailer puts hold status on the packet. If a connection is made but the actual transfer fails, the resend retry counter is updated and once the limit, defined in SETUP, is reached, the mailer puts failed status on the packet. Press the space-bar to force the mailer to place the next outgoing call. 4.4 Waiting mail indicator Every time the mailer scans the message base (netmail folder), it looks for unread messages destined for your system. If any are found, it will enable the flashing "Mail" text on the top of your screen. Once the message(s) have been marked received (read), the flashing mail text will disappear. 4.5 Undialable When the mailer reaches the resend (session failure, transmission failure, etc.) retry limit for a system during an event. That system is added to the undialable table with a 'grade' of one. When the 'grade' reaches three, the system is considered undialable and the mailer will never call that system again (until you manually 'upgrade' it). The undialable manager is accessed by pressing Alt-V from the mailer's main menu and allows you to 'upgrade' a system's status, add a system manually to the undialable list, and remove one or more undialable systems. The undialable system information is kept in FDNODIAL.SYS in FrontDoor's system directory. - 50 - 4.6 Command line switches /T Force the mailer into terminal mode directly from DOS. Once you exit the terminal, you will be returned to DOS. /M Force the mailer into mail mode directly from DOS. This switch was added to allow you to override the terminal-only setting in SETUP. /S Force the mailer to ignore any forced events it may have missed. The mailer will by default execute all pending external events when it's brought up. This switch is useful if you've performed system maintenance for several hours and don't want the mailer to execute any overdue forced events. /NOEMS Specifies that you don't want the mailer to use LIM/EMS (expanded) memory for its overlay buffer. If you load the editor from the mailer (Alt-E) and /NOEMS was specified when the mailer was loaded, the editor will also be loaded with /NOEMS. This has no effect on how swapping is handled. /L:<password> Locks the keyboard with the specified password directly from DOS. This has the same effect as using the Alt-L (Lock) function from the mailer's main menu. - 51 - - 52 - Chapter 5 Editor The editor (FM) is the program used to write and read messages. It can be invoked from the command line in DOS or from the mailer (FD) by pressing Alt-E. The editor has two "status" lines. The bottom status line is used to display the current message, number of messages in the current folder, the lowest and highest message numbers and the number of messages remaining to the last message (last minus current). The top status line shows the currently active AKA (address), the current time and the folder you're in. Most functions of the editor are reached by holding down either the Ctrl or Alt key and pressing a key, A-Z. If you press a key that has no function in the editor, it will display a message saying "Press Alt-M for menu" on the bottom status line. 5.1 Menus Each function and menu of the editor will now be described. 5.1.1 Alt-M Main Ins Create Allows you to create a new message in the current folder. You will be prompted for the destination (address/user), etc. Del Kill Removes the currently displayed message. The editor will confirm that you really want to remove the message. - 53 - Alt-R Reply Similar to the create (Ins) function. The destination of the newly created message, however, is taken from the sender of the message you're replying to. This function also allows you to quote the original message, in whole, or selected parts. Alt-N Netmail reply Similar to the reply (Alt-R) function. If you are in a local or echomail folder, your message (the reply) will be placed into the netmail folder. The destination address of the message is taken from either the origin line (echomail folders) or the sender's name (local folders). Alt-C Reply comment Similar to the reply (Alt-R) function. It allows you to create a follow-up message with additional comments to the same destination as the original message. This function is only available in the full version. Alt-L/TAB Forward This function allows you to redirect a message to someone else. It will also insert some additional information at the top of the message, showing who the message was originally from, etc. You can choose whether or not you want to overwrite the original message with the forwarded message. Alt-L will also add the default message status to the message and remove the Rcvd and Sent status bits if they were set. - 54 - Alt-F Folders Allows you to change the active folder. You can't change to another folder while editing a message, but you can view the folder list. The type of each folder is shown as E for Echomail, L for Local and M for netmail. To select a folder, you can use the arrow keys to move the highlight bar and then press Enter. You can also type the number of the folder followed by pressing Enter. Cltr-F Folder scan Scans all folders and indicates which folders have any message number higher than the last read message. Alt-Z DOS shell Invokes a temporary DOS shell. Type EXIT and press Enter to return to the editor. Alt-Q Quit Returns you to DOS or to the mailer, depending on how the editor was invoked. If you are editing a message, you will be asked whether or not you wish to save it before exiting. - 55 - 5.1.2 Alt-E Edit Alt-S Status Allows you to change the status of a message. Alt-A Subject Allows you to change the subject of a message. If you have a message with file attaches and press Alt-A, the file attach list will be processed again and if you specified wild-cards or more than one file on the subject line, you'll have to select the files you want to send once again. Alt-T Text Allows you to edit the text (body) of a message. If you are already in editing mode, this will bring up a secondary menu with text editing related functions. Alt-D Destination Allows you to change the destination of a message. This will add the default message status to the message and remove the Rcvd and Sent status bits if they were set. As opposed to the forward (Alt-L) function, using Alt-D will not result in any text being added to the message body (forwarding info). Ctrl-F2 Toggle Brings up the toggle menu. - 56 - 5.1.3 Alt-T in edit mode Alt-F2 Import file Allows you to import an ASCII file into the text. The contents of the file will be inserted at the current cursor position. Ctrl-Enter Insert line Inserts a blank line after the current line. The cursor will remain in the same position. Ctrl-B Line to buffer Adds the current (where cursor is positioned) line to end of the temporary buffer and moves the cursor down one line. The last eighty lines of deleted/marked text is always retained in a temporary buffer and can be reinserted with Alt-F1 or Esc. Ctrl-W Delete word Deletes the word to the right of the cursor. Ctrl-G Go to line# Allows you to specify an absolute line number to place the cursor on. Ctrl-T Delete to EOF Deletes all text from cursor to end of message. Alt-F5 Find Searches for the specified string, and if found, places the cursor on the first character of the found word. Alt-F6 Find & Replace Allows you to replace a string with another. Note that this function will restore the cursor position (the find function will not). - 57 - Alt-F8 Re-format Reformats a block of text (from cursor to the next blank line) and removes any hard CRs from the reformatted lines. It will add a hard CR to the end of the reformatted block. Alt-F4 Line drawing Allows you to draw lines and boxes using a variety of line sets. This function is only available in the full version. Alt-F1/Esc Undelete Inserts the last deleted line at the current cursor position. The last eighty lines of deleted/marked text is always retained in a temporary buffer. Alt-F10/Ctrl-Z Save & exit Save (or discard changes to) the current message. 5.1.4 Toggle menu Ctrl-X Translation tables Toggles the state of the translation tables. Ctrl-C Hard CRs Toggles whether or not hard CRs in the message text should be displayed. Cltr-E Echo info Toggles the state of the echo info. This function is only available in echomail folders. 5.1.5 Other keys in edit mode Left, Right, Up, Down Moves the cursor. Ctrl-Left Places the cursor at the beginning of the word to the left of the cursor. Ctrl-Right Places the cursor at the beginning of the word to the right of the cursor. Home Moves to the beginning of the current line. If the cursor is already at the beginning of the line, it will be moved to the top of the text window. - 58 - (Other keys in edit mode cont'd) End Moves to the end of the current line. If the cursor is already at the end of the line, it will be moved to the bottom of the text window. PgUp/PgDn Scrolls one page up/down. Ctrl-Up/Ctrl-Down Scrolls one line up/down without moving the cursor. This option is only available for systems with 101/102 key (extended) keyboards. Ctrl-PgUp/Ctrl-PgDn Moves to the beginning/end of message. Tab Expands to 6 spaces (or to the next TAB column). Backtab (Shift Tab) The opposite of Tab. Moves the cursor six spaces back (or to the previous TAB column). Ins Toggles insert mode on/off. Del Deletes character under cursor and scrolls the rest of the line left without moving the cursor. Backspace Deletes character to the left of cursor and scrolls the rest of the line left, moving the cursor one step. Ctrl-End Deletes from cursor to end of line. Ctrl-Y Deletes the entire line. Ctrl-U Changes the case of the current line. - 59 - 5.1.6 Other keys in view (read) mode Home Move to first message in folder. End Move to last message in folder. Left/Right Move to previous/next message in folder. Up/Down/PgUp/PgDn Scroll message text (line or page). Ctrl-PgUp/Ctrl-PgDn Move to beginning/end of message. Space Selects current message as 'home' message. Note that once you switch to another folder, set 'home' message is by default set to the current message. Enter Returns to home message. Ctrl-Left/Ctrl-Right Find previous/next message addressed to current user. -/+ Move to previous/next message in reply chain. Ctrl-Home/Ctrl-End Move to first/last message in reply chain. 1-9 Go to specified message number. Ctrl-Up/Ctrl-Down Move to previous/next tagged message. This requires that you first use Alt-F9 (management) and select the messages you wish to move between. - 60 - 5.1.7 Alt-U Utilities Alt-F9 Management Invokes the management function. Alt-J Move/copy Allows you to move/copy the current message to another folder. Alt-V Message to file Exports the current message to an ASCII file. If the specified file already exists, you will be asked if you want to overwrite its contents or append the message to the end of the file. Alt-I Print message Adds the current message to the print queue. Alt-B Renumber Renumbers the messages in the current folder so that there are no gaps in the numbering. This function is not available in QuickBBS/RemoteAccess-type folders. Alt-G Change username Allows you to change the current user profile. Alt-W Change address Allows you to change the active network AKA (address). This will also change the address that's inserted in origin lines in echomail folders. Alt-O Change origin Allows you to change the active origin line. Whether or not an origin line is appended to messages that you create is determined by the echo info setting (echomail folders only). Alt-X Show notes Displays extended information (hidden behind control-A characters) in a message. - 61 - 5.1.8 Alt-P Purge From user Allows you to purge all messages from the specified user in the current folder. To user Allows you to purge all messages to the specified user in the current folder. From network address Allows you to purge all messages that originated from the specified address in the current folder. To network address Allows you to purge all messages destined for the specified address in the current folder. Received Allows you to purge all received (read) messages in the current folder. Age Allows you to purge all messages older than the specified date in the current folder. 5.2 Entering messages Press Ins. The screen will be refreshed and you will be prompted for the destination. If you are in the netmail folder, you can use the name/address look-up function to specify the destination of the message; if you are in an echomail/local folder, you must type the destination manually. Once you have specified the destination of a message, you will be prompted for the subject (Re:). If you want to send or request files to/from another system, select the proper status bits and specify the file data in the subject line. Note that the default message status (specified in SETUP) is always added, but can be changed. Enter the message text and press Ctrl-Z (or Alt-F10) to save the message. - 62 - 5.2.1 Message status bits Ctrl-P Private Indicates that the message should only be read by the addressee. Ctrl-C Crash High-priority mail. Messages with crash status can never be routed or held by a route file. Crash messages also overrides any cost restrictions for an event. Crash messages do, however, require that the destination system has been qualified before the mailer will call it. Ctrl-H Hold The hold status will force the mailer to ignore the message unless the destination system calls your system to pick up its mail. If the message is destined for a point system and the boss of the point system calls your system, the message will be given to the boss unless the message also has direct status. Ctrl-F File Indicates that the message has one or more files attached to it. The files are listed in the subject line. File attach messages can be routed and held unless another status bit (Crash, Immediate, Hold, etc.) prevents it. The default treatment of a file attach message is to send it directly to its destination. Ctrl-R File request Indicates that the message is a file request. The requested files are listed in the subject line and may contain wild-cards characters. File request messages can be held, but are never routed. - 63 - Ctrl-U Update request Similar to file request (Ctrl-R), but the subject line must contain valid (existing) file specification(s). When the mailer connects to the destination system, the requested files will only be sent by the remote if they are more recent than the matching files on your system. Ctrl-K Kill/Sent Removes the message after it has been sent or picked up. If the kill/sent status is not set on a message, it will be marked as sent after it has been sent or picked up. Ctrl-T Truncate file/sent Truncates the attached files to zero length after they have been sent or picked up. This option is only valid for file attach messages. Note that it's nearly impossible to recover a truncated file so use this option with caution. Ctrl-E Delete file/sent Removes the attached files after they have been sent or picked up. This option is only valid for file attach messages. Ctrl-D Direct Similar to the crash status, but messages with direct status can be held and will not override cost restrictions. Ctrl-I Immediate mail Similar to the crash status, but messages with immediate status will be sent at the first opportunity, ignoring all restrictions/qualifications. If there's one or more messages with immediate status to a system, all other messages (except those with hold status) to that system will be added to the mail packet. USE THIS OPTION WITH EXTREME CAUTION! - 64 - Ctrl-L Lock Locks a message from further access. This is done by setting the DOS attribute to read-only. The mailer and most other utilities will ignore files with read-only status. Messages with lock status can't be removed by any of the purge functions and will never be sent (or picked up). The editor can renumber a message with locked status. Ctrl-S Sent Indicates that the message has been sent or picked up by the addressee. Once a message has been flagged as sent, they can't be sent or picked up by the addressee. Ctrl-Z No status Clears all status bits. - 65 - 5.3 Alt-F9 Management The management function is used to perform global operations on a range of messages such as moving, printing, copying, deleting, etc. When you press Alt-F9 for the first time in a folder, the editor will scan all the messages in the folder and build a list of them. That list is kept in memory until you press Alt-F9 in another folder. If you remove, add or renumber messages the list will be updated accordingly, so no re-scan is necessary. 5.3.1 Main menu Del Kill Removes all selected messages. F3 Print messages Prints all selected messages. F4 Range select Allows you to select a range of messages matching a certain criteria. F5 Select all Allows you to select all messages in the folder. F6 Move Allows you to move all selected messages to another folder. F7 Copy Allows you to copy all selected messages to another folder. F8 Export to file Allows you to export all selected messages to an ASCII file. Enter Go to message Returns to view mode and makes the highlighted message the current message. Space Select Selects the current message. Esc Exit Returns you to view mode. - 66 - 5.3.2 Continuoues tagging If you activate Caps Lock, messages can be tagged (selected) by moving the bar with the arrow keys. 5.3.3 Range select The range select function allows you to select a range of messages matching a certain criteria. Most of the functions only require a partial match with the selected search criteria. F2 From user Selects all messages from the specified user. F3 To user Selects all messages to the specified user. F4 Originating address Selects all messages originating from the specified address. F5 Destination address Selects all messages destined for the specified address. F6 Text Selects all messages containing the specified search string in the message body. F7 Date Selects all messages between two dates. F8 Subject Selects all messages matching the specified subject. F9 Received Selects all messages with received (read) status. Esc Exit Returns you to the main menu of the management function. - 67 - 5.4 Keyboard macros The keyboard macros are located on F1-F10(12) and Shift F1- F10(12). When a macro key is pressed, the editor will insert its contents at the current cursor position. Pipe (|) characters are translated to CRs. 5.5 Carbon copies (CC) Carbon copies, CC hereafter, is more or less what the name implies. A function that allows you to send the same message to two or more recipients; a distribution list. The CC function is only active in the netmail folder. The CC function can also be used for file attach and file request messages. To use the CC function, put the text "CC:" followed by one or more SysOp names or system addresses, separated by a comma, at the top of the message. Once you select to save the message, the editor will scan the beginning of the message text for CC: and if found, process each element of the CC list. You can have more than one line with CCs. I.e. cc: homrighausen,#stewart,samet cc: nugent,kasza,wallin,1:135/33 Note that if you create several messages using the CC function, editing any of them will not reactivate the CC function. You can only tell the editor to process CC lists when you are entering new messages. - 68 - 5.5.1 Hidden CCs To hide a recipient in a CC list, put the pound (#) character in front of the SysOp name or system address. I.e. cc: #1:135/20,#1:135/990,2:310/11 5.5.2 Using files as input to CCs You can also specify a file containing SysOp names or addresses to the CC function. I.e. cc: @betanote.txt 5.5.3 Address expansion All addresses in a CC list can be entered in short form, and several macros are recognized. cc: mynet/all Will process your whole net (using the currently selected AKA) and add every system to the CC list. cc: 2:310/all,1:135/all Will include all systems in net 2:310 and 1:135. cc: 1:135/20.all Will include all listed point systems under 1:135/20. - 69 - 5.6 Cross-posting (XC) Although CCs aren't supported for echomail and local folders, there's an additional function that provides you with a method of broadcasting the same message to two or more folders. This function is called cross-posting, hereafter called XC, and is only available in the full version. To use the XC function, put the text "XC:" followed by one or more numbers, separated by commas. Each number represents a folder number where you want the message cross-posted. If your folder list looks like: 1 BNU 2 COMP.SYS.IBM.PC 3 FDECHO 4 TSECHO 5 NETSYSOP And you put XC: 1,3,5 in a message in folder two. The resulting messages will have * Cross-posted in BNU * Cross-posted in COMP.SYS.IBM.PC * Cross-posted in FDECHO * Cross-posted in NETSYSOP At the top of each message. The target folder is excluded from the list. I.e. * Cross-posted in BNU will appear in each message not going to the first (BNU) folder. 5.7 Command line switches /NOEMS Specifies that you don't want the editor to use LIM/EMS (expanded) memory for its overlay buffer. This has no effect on how swapping is handled. - 70 - Chapter 6 Terminal Although FrontDoor was designed primarily as an e-mail system, it also features a powerful terminal emulator, hereafter called the terminal. The terminal features very accurate and efficient terminal emulation and file transfer protocols; and several other features found in expensive and/or complex communications packages. The terminal is invoked by pressing Alt-J from the mailer's main menu, or by specifying /T on the mailer's command line. You can also choose to run the mailer in terminal-only mode, in which case the terminal is brought up directly when you start the mailer. Most functions of the terminal are reached by holding down the Alt key and pressing a key, A-Z. If you press a key that has no function in the terminal, it will display a message saying "Press Alt-H for help". 6.1 Menus Each function and menu of the terminal will now be described. 6.1.1 Alt-F File The file menu contains functions to manipulate macros, upload and download files, transmit ASCII files, invoke DOS shell and editor, etc. Alt-G Download files Receive one or more files from the remote system. Alt-T Upload files Transmit one or more files to the remote system. - 71 - Alt-A Transmit ASCII file Allows you to transmit an ASCII file to the remote. You will be able to select the default inter-character delay and line translation. It's possible to create simple script or macro files by using this option. Alt-V Macro management Allows you to create and maintain your macro key sets. Use this function to make a different macro key set the active set. Alt-U Command history The terminal records your last ten typed lines. When you press Enter, it removes the oldest entry and adds the newly typed line to the list. You can choose any one of the ten history entries and retransmit it to the remote. Alt-I Editor Invokes the program defined in the Terminal.Miscellaneous.Editor field in SETUP. You will be asked for optional command line parameters, they are stored for the remains of your terminal session. This could also be used to bring up external protocol menus, etc. Alt-Z DOS shell Invokes a temporary DOS shell. Type EXIT and press Enter to return to the terminal. Alt-Q Quit Depending on how the terminal was invoked, this will return you to the mailer's main menu or to DOS. If you're connected to a remote system when you press Alt-Q, you will be prompted for the termination of the connection. - 72 - 6.1.2 Alt-L Line settings The line settings menu contains your current communications parameters. You can't reach the options of this menu unless you press Alt-L. Most of the options in this menu are self explanatory, only the not so obvious options are explained here. Baudrate The current DTE baudrate. If you have enabled the "Lock port" option, this field will contain "Fixed" and you will not be able to change it. Wraparound Determines whether or not the terminal should place the cursor on a new line when it's positioned at the rightmost position of the screen and a character is received. This should be set to On in most situations. There are however VT100/VT52 applications that require this setting to be Off. Note that a CR/LF will force a new line even if this is set to Off. Line feed Determines how a received CR character should be processed. If set to CR, no expansion is made. If, however, it's set to CR/LF, the terminal will expand all received CR characters to CR/LF. Local echo Some on-line services do not echo the characters you type. It may be necessary to enable this option to see what you are typing. If the on-line service you're using does echo the characters you type and you enable this option, you will get duplicated characters. E.g. "HHEELLOO!!". Emulation Allows you to choose between ANSI, VT100, VT52 and TTY (no) emulation. Note that the default for ANSI emulation is to support Avatar sequences. Avatar is a terminal emulation protocol designed by George A. Stanislav. It's extremely fast and very efficient at low-speeds. Translation tables If enabled, the terminal will use the terminal translation tables to filter any received characters. - 73 - Auto-Zmodem downloads The terminal monitors received characters for the special sequence a Zmodem transmitter sends when a Zmodem file session is started. If it detects this start-up sequence, it will automatically invoke the Zmodem receiver. If you disable this option, you must use Alt-G (Download) to receive files using the Zmodem protocol. Allow AVT/0 sequences Determines whether or not you want to accept Avatar emulation sequences when you are in ANSI emulation. Since Avatar is based upon certain control characters, you may want to disable this option if you are using programs like Doorway, etc. which frequently transmits control characters. - 74 - 6.1.3 Alt-S Session Alt-C Capture Allows you to capture characters, as they appear on the screen, to a disk file, or logging it to a printer. Since the terminal filters out NUL characters (ASCII 0), they will never appear in a capture file. Alt-N Conversation (chat) The conversation functions splits the screen in half, creating two windows or sections on the screen. Data received from the remote system will be displayed in the top section, while the characters you type will be displayed in the bottom section. Alt-D Dial Allows you to dial a system in the nodelist. This function is disabled if no nodelist files are detected when the terminal/mailer is started. Note that you can't queue numbers in the nodelist. Alt-M Manual dial Allows you to enter a number manually, which will then be dialed until you press the Esc key or a connection has been made. Note that you can't queue manually entered numbers. Alt-X Disconnect Disconnects the current call and displays the elapsed time. Alt-P Phone directory Brings up the phone directory manager. Alt-R Reset timer Resets the on-line timer. The timer is automatically reset when a new connection is made. - 75 - Alt-B Scroll back buffer Allows you to view data that has scrolled off the screen. Alt-W Send BREAK Sends a BREAK signal to the modem. Consult the documentation for your modem regarding BREAK signals. This is often used to terminate inquiries to commercial on-line systems, etc. but can be treated differently by your modem. Alt-J Clear screen Clears the screen and moves the cursor to the upper left-hand corner. 6.1.4 Alt-O Options Most terminal emulators and communications packages have a status line, either at the top or at the bottom of the screen; on which they display various information about settings and the current connection. FrontDoor's terminal doesn't have a status line, hence the options menu. 6.2 Keyboard macros Depending on how many function keys you have on your keyboard, you'll have access to 20 or 24 keyboard macros for every macro set. You can have over 60,000 macro sets defined, but only one can be active at any time. The macro management function is reached by pressing Alt-V. The keyboard macros are located on Shift F1-F10 (12) and Ctrl F1-F10 (12). When a macro key is pressed, the terminal will send the data specified as the macro string, uninterpreted, to the remote system. The two exceptions to this are the tilde (~) character which forces a one second pause, and the pipe (|) character which translates into a CR. Neither the tilde, nor the pipe character is transmitted to the remote system. - 76 - 6.3 Raw mode The IBM PC keyboard generates two characters for every key you press. The first character is called the ASCII code, and the second character is called the scan code. Only the ASCII code is transmitted to the remote system by default. There are, however, some situations which require the terminal software to transmit both codes. The Avatar emulation protocol and the Doorway programs both require both codes to identify certain keys, function and arrow keys in particular. Once raw mode has been enabled (by pressing the Scroll Lock key), you can't reach any of the terminal's regular functions. Raw mode is disabled by deactivating Scroll Lock. 6.4 Keypad modes The VT100 and VT52 emulation protocols require that the cursor keys transmit different codes depending on the state of the remote application. Most on-line services follows the VT100 recommendation for this, but several editors and other programs have their own ideas of how this should be handled. If you enable the numerical keypad (Num Lock), the white cursor keypad will transmit the numerical application codes for VT100/VT52. If you have an extended (101/102) keyboard, the gray cursor keys will not follow the numerical keypad setting. By using the shift key together with the white cursor keypad, you can negate the setting of Num Lock temporarily. I.e. if Num Lock is enabled and you press Shift-Up (8), the terminal will transmit the up key sequence to the remote. If Num Lock is disabled and you press Shift-Up (8), the terminal will transmit the numerical application keypad sequence for 8. 6.4.1 PC keyboards When the remote (host) requests that the terminal enters numerical application keypad mode, the terminal automatically enables Num Lock. On extended (101/102) keyboards, this will also enable the Num Lock LED. The Num Lock LED on IBM-PC (standard) keyboards will not change by doing this. The Options (Alt-O) menu should correctly reflect the proper state of Num Lock anyway. - 77 - 6.5 Alt-P Phone directory The phone directory allows you to define up to 200 numbers in addition to those stored in the nodelist database. The terminal keeps the internal phone directory in a file named TERMINAL.SYS, which is located in your FrontDoor SYSTEM directory. The top menu in the phone directory has nine options. F1 Clear queue Removes the queue (Q) status from all entries in the phone directory. If no entries are listed in the queue, no action is taken. F2/Enter Dial Adds the current (highlighted) number to the queue and proceeds to the dial function. If no connection is made, the terminal will proceed to the next number in the queue. If no other numbers exists in the queue, the terminal will wait the defined (in SETUP) number of seconds before trying again. You can abort dialing by pressing the Esc key. F4 Edit existing entry Allows you to change an existing entry. F6 Purge Removes all entries marked for deletion (small square) from the phone directory. There's no way to recover a removed entry, so use this option with caution. F7/Space Toggle queue status Adds/removes the current (highlighted) number to the queue. F8 Sort/purge This option is similar to the purge (F6) option with one difference. It will sort the phone directory in ascending order, based on the name field. Ins Add entry Allows you to add a new entry to the phone directory. - 78 - Del Mark for deletion Marks an entry for deletion (small square). No other action is taken. You must use the F6 or F8 function to remove entries marked for deletion. 6.5.1 Queue status The queue status is only retained while you are in the phone directory. Once you return to the terminal, the phone directory is removed from memory. 6.5.2 Adding/changing entries When you press F4 (Edit) or Ins (Add), the edit screen will appear. Press Enter to save the entry and Esc to abandon the entry/changes. 6.6 Inactivity timer If you aren't connected to another system, the terminal function will be terminated automatically after ten minutes of inactivity. The timer is reset if data is received from the modem or press any key. 6.7 File transfers When you transmit or receive files in the terminal, it will automatically set the line parameters to no parity, eight data bits and one stop bit. Once the transfer is completed, the line parameters will be reset to whatever values they had prior to the transfer. 6.8 On-line timer The on-line time displayed in the Options (Alt-O) menu shows the elapsed time of the current connection in hours and minutes. It isn't intended as a precise mechanism for cost calculations, etc. but will give you a rough estimate of the time you've spent on- line. - 79 - - 80 - Chapter 7 Miscellaneous This chapter contains functions and options that are global to the whole FD package. 7.1 Destination of messages When you are prompted for an address and/or SysOp name for a message, you can use the look-up function. This is true for both the mailer, the editor and the terminal. The editor only allows you to use the look-up function for messages written in the netmail folder. You don't have to use the look-up function, of course. You can enter a short form address, such as 10 (for node 10 in your own net), .1 (for point one in your own point net) in which case the SysOp's name is taken from the nodelist data. This is one of the most flexible functions in the FD package. 7.1.1 Name lookups If you specify "Homrig" as the destination, you will be prompted to select from a list of all users with a last name matching "Homrig" (Homrighausen for example). The network address will also be taken from the name you select. - 81 - 7.1.2 Address browsing To enter the address browse mode, specify an incomplete address, such as "1:?", "1:135/?" or "1:135/20.?". You can then browse through all zones, regions, networks and pointlists known to your system. If you press Enter (and the input field is blank) when you are prompted for an address, you will be placed in browse mode in your own net. 7.1.3 Address macros You can also create a file containing short names which expands into a full address/SysOp name. The macros are located in a file called NAMES.FD which must be placed in the SYSTEM directory. Here's an example of my NAMES.FD: am,AreaMgr,20 jps,Peter Stewart,.2 jon,Jon Schneider,7:766/23 rick,Rick Petersen,381/30 flx,felix kasza,2:310/11 As you can see, all addresses are (as usual) listed in short form. To use an address macro, put an asterisk (*) followed by the name of the macro. I.e. *flx Would expand to "felix kasza, 2:310/11". The address macro function can be used in carbon copies as well. 7.2 File requests When you want to request files from other systems, you may have to supply a password to the remote system for certain files. To do this, add a space after the filename/mask you're requesting followed by !<password>. E.g. To request the file "BETAFD.ZIP" from 1:1234/5678 with a password of "BETA", you would enter: betafd.zip !beta This format applies to both the mailer and the editor. - 82 - 7.2.1 Update requests An update request is very similar to a file request with one difference. An update request will force the remote to send the matching files if they are newer than the matching files on your system. To make an update request of the file C:\FILES\FD.ZIP, you would put: C:\FILES\FD.ZIP The editor has a separate status bit to indicate an update request while the mailer automatically determines if it's an update request or plain file request you are entering (by looking for absolute path specifications). You can supply passwords to update requests the same way you do for file requests. 7.3 Swapping Both the editor and mailer requires well over 130KB of RAM. If you shell to DOS, or load another program from the mailer, this memory is not freed. The FD package allows you to swap out the memory used by the mailer and editor, either to LIM/EMS memory or to a disk file. If you have specified that you want the programs to use LIM/EMS memory for swapping but don't have any, or sufficient LIM/EMS memory, the swap image is written to disk. The swap file is placed in the SYSTEM directory and removed when you return to the program. If you enable swapping for the mailer, it will be swapped out when you invoke a DOS shell and when you invoke other programs. The mailer swap setting also affects the terminal. The terminal will not flush its scroll-back buffer to disk if any type of swapping is enabled for the mailer. Once the swap image has been created and written to LIM/EMS memory or a disk file, all used (by the mailer/editor) memory is freed except 2KB which will always remain in memory. 7.4 CRT environments All programs in the FD package are screen environment aware and most of them can adjust to most (if not all) screen sizes as long as the current screen mode has 80 or more columns (across). If you have an EGA or VGA card that allows you to set the screen mode to something like 132x28 and you want to use this in the editor or mailer (or terminal), you should specify that you only want to use 25 lines in SETUP. This will prevent the programs from altering the screen mode. - 83 - - 84 - Chapter 8 Mail routing This is one of the most complex parts of the FD package and takes time to learn and understand. Make sure you understand how each routing verb affects mail routing before you use them. When the mailer is brought up, it scans for any active events and if one is found, opens the route file, ROUTE.FD, and uses it to determine whom to send mail to, and how to send it. The route file must be placed in the SYSTEM directory. If the timestamp of the route file is modified, the mailer will detect it and re-scan its message base. Global routing verbs are those that appear before any SCHEDULE keyword in the route file. They are always used, so you can specify routing that's identical for all your events here. Local routing verbs are those that appear between two schedule keywords in the route file. The mailer determines which schedule "block" to use by searching for a schedule keyword with a tag (letter) matching the current event tag. Several references are made to hold status in this chapter. Do not confuse this with the HOLD route verb. The hold status refers to the message status bit. The mailer allows you to insert comments in your route file. Every line with a semicolon as the first non-space (TAB/space) character is treated as a comment. While comments may seem inadequate at first glance, it's a very useful function. Going back to a route file you wrote five months ago may not be your definition of spending a weekend in joy and happiness. Addresses specified in the route file can be listed in short form and the ALL macro is fully supported. To list several systems in a net after each other, you only have to specify the network number for the first entry. You can also use nodelist flags to specify a range of systems. The routing language is completely case insensitive. SCRIPT, script, and ScRiPt are all treated as the same command. - 85 - 8.1 Default routing The mailer has several default rules for routing that will be used if no other rule has been defined for a specific message. Some of the default rules can't be overridden by routing verbs. 8.1.1 Message status Messages with immediate (IMM hereafter), crash, file request, update request and direct status will NEVER be routed, they are always sent directly to the destination system. Messages with IMM or crash status can never be held by using the HOLD keyword. Messages with crash status can, however, be prevented from being sent by event behavior or qualification lists, but never held with the HOLD route verb. Messages with hold status will NEVER be packed into a mail packet. Messages with hold status can always be picked up by the destination system. Messages to points with hold status can and will be picked up if the boss of the point calls to pickup mail, unless the message also has direct status. Messages with IMM status will always be packed into mail packets, overriding ANY event restrictions. If you have a message with IMM status, the mailer will add all other qualifying messages to the same system to the same mail packet. Messages with received (read), orphan, lock, and/or sent status are ignored by the mailer. - 86 - 8.1.2 Host/hub routing Messages not otherwise prevented from being routed will by default be sent to the destination system's HOST if the destination system is outside your own net and to its HUB if it's within your own net. If you have mail for a system listed as down in your nodelist database, it will never be packed. If the down listed system calls your system to pick up mail, it will receive its mail. If you have mail for a system listed as hold or pvt (no telephone number) in your nodelist database, the default behavior is to send the mail via the system's host/hub. If the mail to a hold or pvt listed system contains file attaches, the mail packet will by default be placed on hold for the host/hub. Messages to systems not in your nodelist database (unlisted systems) will not be host/hub routed by default, but they can be routed by using route verbs. Messages with crash, IMM or direct status, destined for points to which the mailer can't place a call directly will retain its status (and restrictions), but the mailer will instead assume the point system's BOSS as the destination. 8.1.3 Qualifying systems Before the mailer will send mail to a system, it must be qualified by specifying its address, or a macro that includes its address in a SCHEDULE block (this is not true for IMM mail as previously described). You can qualify a system by placing a SEND-TO statement in the global section of a route file, but this is NOT RECOMMENDED. SEND-TO, POLL and the optional SEND-LIST after a schedule command are the only available methods to qualify a system for mailing. - 87 - 8.2 Route commands SCHEDULE <TAG> [SEND-LIST] Defines the start of a schedule block. All commands following a schedule command are considered a part of the same block until another schedule command is encountered. TAG is a letter corresponding with the event tag, defined in SETUP. You should only have one schedule block per defined event tag. The optional SEND-LIST parameter should contain the systems to qualify for the event. SEND-TO <SEND-LIST> Qualifies the specified systems. This is identical to the optional SEND-LIST after the schedule command. HOLD <LIST> Hold mail for the specified systems. Held mail can later be routed with a ROUTE-TO command. UNHOLD <LIST> The opposite of HOLD. Useful if you have global HOLD statements and want to negate the effect of those statements for one or more systems. NO-ROUTE <LIST> Send mail to the specified systems directly. This overrides the default routing rules. ROUTE-TO <TARGET> <LIST> Route mail (excluding file attach messages) for the specified systems through TARGET. The TARGET system must have been qualified for this to work. - 88 - HOST-ROUTE <LIST> Route mail (excluding file attach messages) for the specified systems through their HOST system. HUB-ROUTE <LIST> Route mail (excluding file attach messages) for the specified systems through their HUB system. ROUTE-FILES <TARGET> <LIST> Route file attach messages (excluding normal mail) for the specified systems through TARGET. The TARGET system must have been qualified for this to work. You should ask the SysOp of the TARGET system if he allows you to route files through his system before using this command. POLL <LIST> Force the mailer to call the specified systems even if there's no other mail destined for them. This does not effect the routing of existing mail destined for the specified systems. The POLL command unconditionally qualifies a system for mailing. Each system in LIST will only be called once, if an event is restarted, the mailer will not call systems that it has already polled. EXCEPT <LIST> Specifies an exception to the LIST of the previously used command. Multiple lines with EXCEPT are supported. - 89 - FORWARD-FOR <LIST> Tells the mailer that you allow the specified systems to send mail (excluding file attach messages) through your system. Note that this doesn't place any restrictions of the destination of the forwarded mail. FORWARD-TO <LIST> Tells the mailer that you allow mail (excluding file attach messages) to be forwarded through your system ONLY if it's destined to any of the specified systems. This is a more secure option to the FORWARD-FOR command. FILES-FOR <LIST> Identical to FORWARD-FOR, but for file attach messages. FILES-TO <LIST> Identical to FORWARD-TO, but for file attach messages. DENY <LIST> Allows you to prevent the specified systems from picking up waiting mail. The mailer will still accept incoming mail from the specified systems. This can be used to prevent local (or other low-cost) systems from picking up their mail in national mail events, etc. SCRIPT <SCRIPT FILE> <LIST> Tells the mailer to use the SCRIPT FILE when calling the specified systems instead of the telephone number (if any) in your nodelist database. Scripts are explained in a separate chapter. NO-SCRIPT <LIST> Prevents the mailer from using default script handling for the specified systems. Scripts are explained in a separate chapter. - 90 - 8.2.1 LIST specifications You can use a variety of formats to specify a list of systems for a route verb. A few follows: ALL All systems 1:ALL All systems in zone one 1:135/ALL All systems in zone one, net 135. MYNET/ALL All systems in your own net. Note that the result of this format depends on which AKA you have specified in the definition of the event. 1:135/1 10 20 1:135/1, 1:135/10 and 1:135/20. .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 Your point one, two, three, four and five. 8.2.2 Using nodelist flags When you specify system LISTs to a route command, you can use nodelist flags in place of address information. Most of the available mail- and system related nodelist flags are supported by the mailer. You can mix flags and address information as you wish. A few follows: HST CM All systems with HST or CM in their nodelist entry. !HST All systems that DON'T have HST in their nodelist entry. The ! character negates the meaning of a flag. !HST !CM All systems that DON'T have HST or CM in their nodelist entry. 1:135/20 HST CM 1:135/20 and all other systems with HST or CM in their nodelist entry. 8.2.3 File routing/forwarding FILES-FOR and FILES-TO will mark all in-transit (not destined for your system) file attach messages as Del/Sent (delete attached files after sending). If you receive the same file destined for two different systems, the file will not be removed until it has been sent (or picked up) to both systems. - 91 - 8.2.4 Message forwarding When the mailer unpacks received mail packets, it will always mark messages as in-transit if they're not destined for your system (including any AKAs). These messages can be forwarded by using FORWARD-FOR and FORWARD-TO, but the mailer will under NO circumstances forward mail automatically to systems unless one or both of these two commands are used. 8.2.5 Multiple zones If you are operating under more than one AKA listed in different zones, it's important to explicitly specify a zone for address information in the route file. 8.2.6 Examples Here are a few examples of route files and how to use route commands: schedule A ALL route-to 2:310/11 2:all hold 2:310/11 !CM !HST This qualifies all systems for mailing. Routes all mail destined for zone two through 2:310/11. Holds mail for 2:310/11 (including the routed mail) and any systems that doesn't have the CM or HST flags in their nodelist entry. schedule D MYNET/ALL This qualifies all systems in your own net and uses default routing. Remember that MYNET can have a different value depending on which AKA you have specified for the event. schedule A send-to 1:all 2:all 3:all route-to 2:310/11 2:all except 2:201/110 route-to 3:632/348 3:all deny mynet/all This qualifies all systems in zone one, two and three. Routes all mail destined for zone two through 2:310/11 except for mail destined to 2:201/110. Routes all mail destined for zone three through 3:632/348. Prevents systems in your own net from picking up their mail. - 92 - schedule B ALL hold ALL except 2:all no-route 2:all This qualifies all systems. Holds all mail except mail destined for systems in zone two. Sends mail destined for zone two directly to its destination. hold ALL schedule D MYNET/ALL unhold MYNET/ALL schedule A 1:ALL unhold 1:ALL This holds all mail by default (the HOLD command is in the global section). Schedule D sends mail to all systems in MYNET. Schedule A sends mail to all systems in zone one. 8.2.7 Dynamic packing Whenever a mail event is started, the mailer scans the messages in the netmail folder and possible packets are built. Messages that does not qualify to be processed will not be packed (but kept in the internal list). If a system calls in, the mailer will scan the message list stored in memory and create a mail packet on the fly and immediately send it to the calling system. So mail is always available, 24 hours/day. This means that your system doesn't have to be in an event for other systems to pickup their mail. Note that you can prevent systems from picking up their mail with the DENY command and by modifying an event's behavior. 8.2.8 Regarding points Points of other systems are always treated as their boss system unless you explicitly specify the boss or a point. To ONLY reference a boss system, without referencing its points, use .0 (e.g. 1:135/20.0). - 93 - - 94 - Chapter 9 EMSI EMSI or "Electronic Mail Standard Idenfication" is a handshake method developed by Joaquim H. Homrighausen and Chris Irwin (author of D'Bridge). It provides features and flexibility that other handshake methods, such as FTSC-0001 and FTSC-0006 (YooHoo) doesn't offer. The two major advantages of the EMSI handshake method is the ability to pickup mail for all your AKAs in one call, and unlimited expansion of the data (handshake packets) exchanged when a session is negotiated. I won't go into any technical details about EMSI here, I will, however, describe the handling of the multiple AKAs. The EMSI handshake is supported by D'Bridge 1.30+, AirMail 1.00, and FrontDoor 1.99c+. I expect other packages such as BinkleyTerm and TrapDoor to to add support for it as soon as I've released the specifications. EMSI does not interfer with other handshake protocols such as FTSC-0001 and FTSC-0006. 9.1 Passwords If you have established or wish to establish a session level password for a certain system, you must make sure that you have entered all AKAs of that system in the security manager. All entries must have the same password. For example, let's assume you want to establish a session level password with 1:135/142 which is also 26:1305/142. You should add both 1:135/142 and 26:1305/142 in the security manager and use the same password for both entries. - 95 - 9.2 Mail Using the same example, if you have mail for both 1:135/142 and 26:1305/142, all mail (for both addresses) would be delivered during the same session. This is true for both inbound and outbound connections. If you know that a system is EMSI capable and you have regular mail traffic with more than one of its AKAs, you can HOLD mail for the system's other AKAs and only allow the mailer to call one of the addresses. When the session is established, all of the remote system's AKAs are processed. This probably sounds more confusing than it really is. So to make a long story short, make sure you have the "Present all AKAs to remote" option enabled (Mailer>Miscellaneous) and play it by ear. - 96 - Chapter 10 Script language The script language provides an alternative method of calling a system (instead of calling it directly with the telephone number listed in your nodelist database). A script file is used where you have to, or prefer to, connect to another system indirectly. I.e. you will not be calling it by dialing its number directly. This could be through X.25 or PC Pursuit. The script file must be a plain vanilla ASCII file. A semicolon (;) may be used as a comment character, making FrontDoor ignore everything following the semicolon on the same line. FrontDoor is not case sensitive when interpreting the script file. The route file can be used to specify that a script should be used for one or more nodes by entering: SCRIPT <SCRIPT FILE> <LIST> (see Mail routing). The command may be global or local to a specific event's schedule block. If you are using PC Pursuit, you can use a generic script file for all PC Pursuitable nodes. See PCP SCRIPTS. - 97 - 10.1 What can I do with it? The script language consists of a number of commands that allows you to send characters to the modem, wait for responses from the modem or the remote system/network that you are using, and trigger different actions depending on the responses you get. The versatility of the script language is further enhanced by the use of so-called labels to execute different parts of the script depending on a specific situation. The script language can be seen as a simple programming language for controlling the way the mailer or terminal makes a call. 10.2 Commands SEND <STRING> Sends a series of characters to the modem or the remote system. Everything following the SEND command on the same line will be sent. Control characters may be entered using mnemonics, e.g. <CR>. In addition, <CR> (carriage return) may be sent by using the pipe (|) symbol. The string will be sent exactly as entered, with no case conversion. DIAL <NUMBER> Sends NUMBER, preceded by the dial command specified in SETUP's modem section. Control characters may be entered in the same manner as with the SEND command. SETPORT <BAUD> <DATABITS> <STOPBITS> <PARITY> Sets the communications port to the specified parameters. BAUD can be any value supported by the hardware between 300 and 9600 baud. At no time will the baudrate be set to a higher value than the the highest supported speed of the destination system, or the baudrate of the outbound node in a PC Pursuit script. DATABITS is 7 or 8. STOPBITS is 1 or 2. PARITY is NONE, ODD or EVEN. In addition, a value of -1 means that the previous setting for that parameter should be retained. - 98 - PROVOKE <STRING> Keeps sending STRING with an interval of one second, until any character is received from the remote system, or until a timeout occurs (see TIMERSET), or until interrupted by the user. Control characters may be entered in the same manner as with the SEND command. TIMERSET <SECONDS> Sets the timer for fatal timeouts while waiting to receive something from the remote system. The default is 120 seconds (two minutes). The maximum value is 300 seconds (five minutes), and the minimum is 0. DEBUG <ON|OFF> Sets debug mode on or off. In debug mode, all characters received while waiting for one or more strings will be displayed. When you're not using debug mode, only the string that matched a pattern will be displayed. Similarly, in debug mode all strings sent to the modem/remote system will be displayed, whereas FD will only say "Sending string" when not using debug mode. It's recommended that you enable debug mode while developing and testing a script. WAIT <SECONDS> Makes the script wait a for SECONDS seconds before continuing. WAITFOR <STRING>[|<STRING>|<STRING>..] Forces the script function to wait for one or more specified strings or until a timeout occurs (see TIMERSET). Each string must be separated with a pipe (|) character. Control characters may be entered in the same manner as with the SEND command. Of the specified strings, only the first will signify success, the other strings will immediately terminate the script with failed status. The string comparison is case sensitive, and requires an exact match. - 99 - CASE / ENDCASE Starts and ends a CASE statement, respectively. CASE is a more flexible variety of WAITFOR. Each line after CASE must start with a string that the script should wait for, followed by a colon and one or more script commands, or a label jump directive (see LABELS). If the string consists of more than one word, it must specified between quote characters ("). The CASE statement is ended with the command ENDCASE on a separate line. When a matching string has been received from the modem or the remote system, the command on the same line will be executed. If the command consists of a label jump instruction, the script will continue from the specified label position. If it is one or more script commands, they will be executed, and the script will continue from the line following the ENDCASE statement, unless the command terminates the script (see below under SESSION and FAIL). The string comparison is case sensitive, and requires an exact match. A short example follows. CASE ; comments: CONNECT : session ; connect BUSY : >redial "NO CARRIER" : >redial VOICE : fail @NOCARRIER : fail ; carrier lost @DEFAULT : fail ; timeout ENDCASE @NOCARRIER Tests the presence of carrier in a CASE statement. @DEFAULT May be used to specify a default course of action if a timeout occurs in a CASE statement. SESSION Terminates the script with success status, leading to a mail session. It is NOT necessary to have a SESSION command in script files used to connect to another system in the terminal. The SESSION command is only used to establish mail sessions. FAIL Terminates the script with failed status. No mail session will be initiated. - 100 - PURGEIN Purges the inbound buffer, getting rid of any pending characters. PURGEOUT Purges the outbound buffer, getting rid of any pending characters. RETRYCOUNT <RETRIES> Provides a means of incrementing and checking a predefined retry count variable. If the retry count exceeds RETRIES, the script is terminated with failed status, otherwise the count is incremented with 1. The retry count does not include the first attempt. CLEARCOUNT Clears the predefined retry count variable, resetting it to 0. MAX2400 <COMMANDS> MAX1200 <COMMANDS> Commands following on the same line will only be executed if the max baudrate for the session is 1200/2400. The maximum baudrate for a session is calculated as the maximum baudrate supported by the remote system, by the outbound node (if using PCP), or by your own modem, whichever is lowest. E.g. MAX2400 setport 2400 -1 -1 -1 MAX1200 setport 1200 -1 -1 -1 @OUTBOUND Used to insert the name of an outbound PC Pursuit node in a string. The contents of @OUTBOUND is undefined if used in any other script than PCP.SCR. E.g. send C @OUTBOUND,ABC12345<CR> - 101 - @LOCALNUM Used to insert the local telephone number in a PC Pursuit script. The contents of @LOCALNUM is undefined if used in any other script than PCP.SCR. E.g. send ATDT@LOCALNUM<CR> ENDNODE Terminates a "node block". See NODE BLOCK. UPLOAD <PROTOCOL> <FILESPEC> Transmits the files matching FILESPEC to the remote, using the PROTOCOL transfer protocol (X=Xmodem, T=Telink, Z=Zmodem). FILESPEC may include wild-cards characters for all protocols. This command is only available in the full version. E.g. upload Z C:\FILES\FD*.LZH DOWNLOAD <PROTOCOL> <PATH> Receives one or more files from the remote, using the PROTOCOL transfer protocol (X=Xmodem, T=Telink, Z=Zmodem). PATH must be a complete filename for Xmodem transfers and a valid directory for Zmodem and Telink transfers. This command is only available in the full version. E.g. download Z C:\INFILES\ download X C:\INFILES\FUN.LZH DISCONNECT Unconditionally terminates a call (if any) from within a script. Script execution will resume as soon as the carrier (CD) signal has been lost; the script function lowers DTR to disconnect. This command is only available in the full version. - 102 - 10.2.1 Labels A label is used to define a position in the script, so that it may be used as a jump destination. The label can consist of any word, starting with a letter from A to Z, except the above script commands, and must be preceded by a colon. At the position in the script where you want to execute a jump to the label, you enter the label name preceded by a greater than sign (>). E.g. .. .. :redial send ATDT@LOCALNUM<CR> CASE CONNECT : session BUSY : >redial @default : fail ENDCASE 10.2.2 Node block A node block is a special type of label. It starts with a node number preceded by a colon, and all the commands from the first line to the ENDNODE statement that ends the nodeblock will only be executed if you're currently calling the specified node. E.g. .. .. :135/20 ; start of node block send ATZ<CR> ENDNODE ; end of node block - 103 - 10.3 PC Pursuit You can use a generic script for calling all PC Pursuitable nodes, taking advantage of the specific PCP commands @OUTBOUND and @LOCALNUM. This requires that the script file is named PCP.SCR and is placed in the SYSTEM directory. You must also compile the nodelist with the file PCP.DAT, containing a list of all pursuitable exchanges, present in the NODELIST directory. If you have followed these steps, the PCP script file will be used automatically when FrontDoor finds that a node is pursuitable. You will probably wish to prevent FrontDoor from using the PCP script in the daytime on weekdays. A special route command, NO-SCRIPT, exists specifically for this purpose. For further information, see Mail routing. 10.3.1 How do I update PCP.DAT? The file PCP.DAT is a somewhat modified version of the file provided by Telenet's BBS. We take no responsibilities whatsoever regarding the contents of the PCP.DAT file supplied with FrontDoor. To update it, you must issue CONNECT PURSUIT from PCP's command prompt and log-on to their BBS. The file that you want to download is called EXCHANGE.TXT (or EXCHANGE.ARC). Should you update this file, you MUST make sure that your files follows the same format as the file supplied with FrontDoor. - 104 - 10.4 MNEMONICS The following mnemonics may be used to enter control characters in the script, both for sending and receiving. They can be used with the following commands: SEND, DIAL, PROVOKE, WAITFOR, and CASE. ASCII MNEMONIC : ASCII MNEMONIC ----------------------+---------------------- 0 <NUL> : 17 <DC1> 1 <SOH> : 18 <DC2> 2 <STX> : 19 <DC3> 3 <ETX> : 20 <DC4> 4 <EOT> : 21 <NAK> 5 <ENQ> : 22 <SYN> 6 <ACK> : 23 <ETB> 7 <BEL> : 24 <CAN> 8 <BS> : 25 <EM> 9 <HT> : 26 <SUB> 10 <LF> : 27 <ESC> 11 <VT> : 28 <FS> 12 <FF> : 29 <GS> 13 <CR> : 30 <RS> 14 <SO> : 31 <US> 15 <SI> : 32 <SP> 16 <DLE> : ----------------------+---------------------- - 105 - - 106 - Chapter 11 Nodelist The nodelist refers to the nodelist database, a set of files with information about other systems. Their system address, telephone number, maximum supported baud rate, etc. The FD package doesn't require a nodelist to operate. If you want to send mail, however, a nodelist is required. The nodelist that FrontDoor need to process is often referred to as the raw nodelist. Meaning it should not have been processed by Xlatlist, Parselst or a similar utility; but only be the nodelist you receive each week (if you are a FidoNet node) from your host. Grab a somewhat recent version of a nodelist and decompress it. Place the resulting file (such as Nodelist.288) in the NODELIST directory. Create a file called FDNODE.CTL with your favorite text editor and place it in the same directory. You can also use the sample file included in the FD distribution package and modify it to suit your needs. 11.1 FDNODE.CTL FDNODE.CTL is the nodelist compiler's, FDNC hereafter, control file. It's used to control how FDNC processes the nodelist files, for dial translation and cost calculation. The order of commands doesn't matter. All commands are case insensitive. POINTLIST <FILENAME> [BOSS] This option allows you to add points to your nodelist database. The optional BOSS address is required if FILENAME doesn't contain a BOSS entry and should not be specified if FILENAME contains a BOSS entry. If you only have one file with point entries, you can use FDPOINT.PVT. FDNC will automatically use it if it's found in the NODELIST directory. Note that if you use one or more POINTLIST statements, FDNC will merge all specified files into FDPOINT.PVT, overwriting its contents. A separate chapter discusses the point concept. - 107 - PVTLIST <FILENAME> [ZONE] Similar to the POINTLIST command, but FILENAME contains one or more regular nodes. The optional ZONE number is required if FILENAME doesn't contain a ZONE entry and should not be specified if FILENAME contains a ZONE entry. FDNC accepts the POINT keyword in private nodelists. If you only have one file with additional node entries, you can use FDNET.PVT. FDNC will automatically use it if it's found in the NODELIST directory. Note that if you use one or more PVTLIST statements, FDNC will merge all specified files into FDNET.PVT, overwriting its contents. Note that FILENAME for POINTLIST and PVTLIST may contain wild- card characters (* and ?). FDNC will use the most recent (by comparing the timestamp of the matching files) file. SWEPULSE This command was added to handle the somewhat screwed up method Swedish exchanges handles pulse dialing. Most modem manufacturers uses the British standard for pulse dialing, which is not compatible with Swedish pulse dialing. If you use SWEPULSE in FDNODE.CTL, telephone numbers will be properly translated. Do NOT use this command unless you live in Sweden and have to use pulse dialing. PHONE <ADDRESS> <TELEPHONE NUMBER> Some systems are listed as PVT (private) in the nodelist, in which case there's no telephone number available (the text - Unpublished- is used in place). This, of course, means that the mailer can't call a system listed as PVT. If you have the phone number of a PVT listed system, or wish to override the telephone number listed in the nodelist, you can use the PHONE command. ADDRESS is a fully qualified address (e.g. 1:135/20). TELEPHONE NUMBER is a untranslated (raw) telephone number (e.g. 1-305-596-2904). If the PHONE command is used, FDNC will remove possible DOWN, HOLD and PVT flags for the specified system. - 108 - USE ZONE <ZONE>[<ZONE> <ZONE>..] This command controls which zones FDNC should include in the nodelist and username index files. The default is to include all encountered zones. This does not affect the contents of raw nodelist files, only what information ends up in the nodelist and username index files. DIAL <NATL PREFIX>/<SUFFIX> <INTL PREFIX>/<SUFFIX> Indicates the start of the dial translation table. All four parameters are optional and are only used if no other translation applies for a telephone number. If you only want to use a national (NATL) prefix/suffix, you must specify the / character for the international (INTL) prefix/suffix to indicate no special treatment. The same applies if you only want to use an INTL prefix/suffix. ; prefix ; prefix/suffix ; /suffix ; DIAL / 10288-011- ; Add INTL prefix to all INTL ; numbers. 1-305-596 596 ; My local exchange. 1-305 1 ; Remaining numbers in area 305. 46-8 /391 ; Append (suffix) 391 to all ; numbers in Stockholm Sweden. END END is required to terminate the dial translation table. If you need to strip the search value from a number, you don't have to put anything after it. In other words, if you need to strip 1-305-596 from all number, you enter that string with no translation. Comments are ignored and must be preceded by a semicolon. - 109 - DIAL 12345-1- 10288-011- .. .. END Would add (prefix) 12345-1- to all NATL numbers not otherwise translated. It would add (prefix) 10288-011- to all INTL numbers not otherwise translated. DIAL /2222 10288-011-/1111 .. .. END Would append (suffix) 2222 to all NATL numbers not otherwise translated. It would add (prefix) 10288-011- and append (suffix) 1111 to all INTL numbers not otherwise translated. The translation values (strings) doesn't have to contain number characters (0-9,.-). They can include commands such as "S25=100" etc. as long as your modem supports it. COST <NATL COST> <INTL COST> Indicates the start of the cost table. The two (default) parameters are NOT optional. The default cost only applies to numbers with no matching entry in the cost table. COST 50 150 ; NATL default: 50 INTL: 175 1-305 30 ; Numbers in area 305.. 1-305-596 0 ; ..except for my local exchange 46 110 ; Sweden END An additional parameter can be added after the cost for a number entry indicating the maximum baud rate used. This is useful when calling locations with a lot of line noise etc. Please note that this doesn't work with several high-speed modems such as the US Robotics HST. You can't force a HST modem to connect at 2400 with another HST modem by changing the baud rate. - 110 - MODEM Indicates the start of the special modem string table. When a call is placed, this table is scanned for possible matches. If one or more matches are found, the specified strings are sent to the modem before any of the dial strings (commands) are sent. MODEM HST AT&M5| PEP ATX4| 1:135/10 ATX4| END The search value can contain nodelist flags or complete addresses. No short form addressing is accepted. The ! character (see Mail routing) in front of a nodelist flag is NOT supported. Note that the MODEM look-up is NOT performed when the mailer calls a system by using a script file. The length of the string to send to the modem must not exceed 50 characters. The whole table is always searched, from top to bottom. All matching search values will result in the mailer sending the specified string to the modem. 11.2 Compiling the nodelist To compile your nodelist, type FDNC and press Enter, or invoke the nodelist compiler from the mailer's main menu (Alt-N). When the nodelist compiler is started, it will compare the date of the raw nodelist and its index files. If the dates match, and no update has been made to FDNODE.CTL, no compilation will be made and the program will ask "Nodelist files are up-to-date, compile anyway?". If you want to force compilation, run FDNC with the -f command line switch. - 111 - - 112 - Chapter 12 FDServer The mailer has a function referred to as FDServer. It can be used to perform functions on your system from a remote site, such as moving and copying files, etc. FDServer is a very powerful function and the examples given in this chapter are only some of the things you can do with it. FDServer is activated by specifying a password in SETUP. FDServer requests will be ignored if no password has been specified in SETUP. FDServer requests are processed after a mail session has been completed and the call has been terminated, so everything you specify in request message is processed off-line. 12.1 What is a FDServer request? A FDServer request is a message, addressed to FDServer (case doesn't matter) on your system, with commands. Think of it as a remote, but controlled, DOS shell. You can run almost any program and perform any DOS function from a FDServer request. The FDServer function has some limitations, however. You can't use the DOS command ECHO in a FDServer request. Programs that require local keyboard input shouldn't be executed from a FDServer request since these program(s) will just sit and wait for keyboard input. FDServer request messages must NOT be compressed (ARCmail, etc.). The function is only triggered if the mailer unpacks the request message. Batch (.BAT) file labels are not supported. - 113 - 12.2 Request message Each line of the message is considered a command and blank lines are ignored. When FDServer has executed all commands found in the message, it will change drive and directory to where it was before processing your request and return to the mailer. 12.2.1 Internal commands Lines beginning with a % character are internal FDServer commands. %logall Will create one line in the log file for each command that was executed along with the status (err: or exe:). %nologerr Normally, all commands that generated an errorlevel will be logged, this can be disabled with this command. %store After a request is processed, it will be deleted by default. This can be disabled by putting this command in the message which will force FDServer to mark the messages as received. 12.3 Using it You're sitting in front of your computer at home, working with a report or something similar and find that you need some files from the office machine. Assuming that these files contain information that is very sensitive or confidential, and even though you have the option to protect your file requests with a password, you may still not want to have the files semi-accessible. This is where you can use FDServer. The directories and file names used in this example were thought up and does not necessarily match the setup on your machine. - 114 - Create a message addressed to FDServer on the node you want to call and send it. By: joaquim homrighausen, JoHo's Home (1:135/20.1) To: fdserver, My Office (1:135/20) Re: password ---------------------------------------------------- %nologerr cd \TEMP copy C:\LOTUS\THA*.SPS lharc a THA THA*.SPS erase *.SPS copy THA.LZH C:\REQUEST\FORNOW erase THA.LZH The server function will read the message and execute each line. The next step would be to create a new server request containing the following: By: joaquim homrighausen, JoHo's Home (1:135/20.1) To: fdserver, My Office (1:135/20) Re: password ---------------------------------------------------- %nologerr erase C:\REQUEST\FORNOW\THA.LZH And send it along with a file request for THA.LZH. The mailer will process the file request first, and when the mail session has been completed, the newly created server request will be processed by FDServer. 12.4 Keeping calls to a minimum You could avoid the extra phone call in the example with the request if you have a robot utility such as XRobot (by Joaquim H. Homrighausen) and create a file attach with the files you need so the mailer will call you back. 12.5 A word of caution If you don't need to use FDServer, DON'T define a password for it in SETUP. Since FDServer is a VERY powerful function, the results could be disastrous if someone got hold of your FDServer password. - 115 - - 116 - Chapter 13 Service requests Service requests is a very powerful function of the mailer. It allows you to use the mailer as a front-end to databases, to make on-line inquiries etc. without having to manually call the system with a terminal program. 13.1 Service requests vs FDServer The difference between a service request and a FDServer request is that they are processed while two systems are connected. This has the drawback of being slightly more expensive, but it offers a much greater flexibility than the FDServer function. Consider this. You have a program on your system that allows people to search for data in a database of files and then get a list of all the new files, you have named the service request WHATSNEW. Your system receives a file request for WHATSNEW and the mailer runs the program SEARCH.EXE, defined as the program to run for WHATSNEW. When SEARCH terminates, the mailer will send the file NEWFILES.LST, created by SEARCH, to the remote system. - 117 - 13.2 Setting up Service requests are defined in the ALIAS file (where you define alias file names for file requests). The format of a service request definition looks like this: <NAME> ><PROGRAM> <PARAMETERS> ^<+ or - path name> E.g. WHATSNEW >SEARCH.EXE findit =A =T ^-C:\SERVICE\RESULT\*.TXT 13.2.1 Service name NAME (case doesn't matter) is what the remote system should request to invoke the service request. 13.2.2 Program >PROGRAM is the program that should be invoked when the mailer receives a request for NAME. The > character is required and tells the mailer it's a service request and not an alias definition. There should be no spaces between the > and PROGRAM. The extension of PROGRAM is important. The mailer can execute batch (.BAT) files as a result of a service request, but it must do it through COMMAND.COM. So it has to know what type of file (program) it is that you're executing. 13.2.3 Parameters You can pass any parameters to the program. The only restriction is (as with DOS) that they do not exceed a length of 128 characters and none of them starts with the ^ (see below) character. There are several macros that you can specify as parameters. Macros should be preceded by a single equal sign (=). The mailer will expand these macros before calling the program. You may include macros in other parameters. E.g -p=P Would pass -p followed by the value of the P macro to the program. - 118 - 13.3 Macros Here's a list of the available macros. =A The requesting system's network address. E.g. 1:135/20. =B The baud rate of the connection. E.g. 9600. =C The cost per minute for the connection. If your system initiated the session (called the requesting system), this is the cost per minute. If the requesting system initiated the session (called your system), this will be 0. =D OUTBOUND if your system initiated the session (called the requesting system) or INBOUND if the requesting system initiated the session (called your system). =L The requesting system's location. E.g. Miami_FL. This value is taken from the nodelist based on the network address. Note that if the requesting system isn't listed in your nodelist, this value will be "UNKNOWN". =N The name of the requesting system. E.g. FroDo_Headquarters. =O The operator of the requesting system. E.g. Bilbo_Baggins. Note that space characters are replaced with an underscore. =P The password that was specified for the request (if any). =S The service that was requested. E.g. WHATSNEW. =U The date and time supplied on an update request. It's expressed in UNIX format, i.e. the number of seconds since 1970. If the request was a plain file request, this will be 0. - 119 - Macros (cont'd) =X Whether or not the session is password protected. This macro can have two values, SECURE or UNSECURE. =Z The type of the mail session that has been established. This macro can have three values, WAZOO, EMSI, or OTHER. 13.4 ^ - + The ^ character defines the beginning of a filemask that the mailer should send after the service request has been completed. If no ^ definition has been made, the mailer will not send any files as the result of a service request. The plus (+) means that the mailer should NOT remove the files once they've been transmitted. The minus (-) means that the mailer SHOULD remove the files once they've been transmitted. This also means that the files will be removed even if they couldn't be sent (carrier lost etc.) The path name is a file specification, it may include wild-card (? and *) characters. The mailer will send all matching files. 13.5 Security Since service requests are built on the concept of file requests, they are protected the same way a file requests are protected. To setup a password, you have to use the request manager in SETUP and define a password for the service request name. 13.6 A word of wisdom Service requests should be used with extreme caution. It's recommended that you have a full understanding of what a service request actually does before you attempt to use it. You should also keep in mind that the requesting system is waiting at the other end for the mailer to start sending files. So keep it short and sweet. - 120 - Chapter 14 Points Point systems are very similar to BBS users. In short, a point is a BBS user with a very advanced terminal program that will allow him/her to perform the same functions off-line as BBS users performs on-line, and thereby save time and in most cases money. Point systems are usually using point smart software, such as FrontDoor. A point system is addressed by specifying the BOSS system's address followed by the point number. E.g. 1:135/20.1 is point one (me) of 1:135/20. The BOSS system is called point zero (1:135/20.0), but the .0 is usually left out. FrontDoor is one of the most point smart software packages around today and fully supports the "four-dimensional" (zone, net, node, point) addressing method. FrontDoor also supports the "two- dimensional" point approach used by software like Binkley and oMMM. This is often called the fake net method. Fake because the software uses a non-existant network number to identify its "point net" and uses the node field for the point number. The maximum number of points any system can have is 65,535, not counting the BOSS, or point zero. - 121 - 14.1 Pointlist A pointlist is very similar to a normal nodelist, with the exception that all entries are considered point systems. FrontDoor uses the file FDPOINT.PVT to store its pointlist. It's possible to add points of other systems to your pointlist. This will allow you to enter messages to other systems' points just like you would to any other system. Here's a sample FDPOINT.PVT: ,1,JoHo's_Turf,Miami_FL,joho,-Unpublished-,9600 ,2,Peter's_Bath-tub,Miami_FL,jps,-Unpublished-,2400 As you can see, a point list looks very much like a raw nodelist. The last field contains nodelist flags (HST, MO, CM, etc.) and if more than one flag is present, they are separated by commas. Points can also be added to systems in the master nodelist by using the POINT keyword. ,20,FroDo_HQ,Miami_FL,joho,1-305-596-2904,9600,HST,CM,XX Point,1,JoHo's_Turf,Miami_FL,joho,-Unpublished-,9600 Point,2,Peter's_Bath-tub,Miami_FL,jps,-Unpublished-,2400 ,990,Dorothy_'n'_Co,Miami_FL,Scott_Samet,1-123-456-7890,2400 Point,1,ScottPoint,Miami_FL,Scott_Samet,-Unpublished-,2400 Assuming this was listed under the Net-135 Host in zone one, we have created 1:135/20, 1:135/20.1, 1:135/20.2, 1:135/990, and 1:135/990.1. The second example shown above works well if your nodelist isn't updated frequently (weekly, daily, etc.). But if you have to add the "Point,#" every time you get a new nodelist, this task becomes boring. FrontDoor therefore supports an additional pointlist format: Boss,1:135/20 ,1,JoHo's_Turf,Miami_FL,joho,-Unpublished-,9600 ,2,Peter's_Bath-tub,Miami_FL,jps,-Unpublished-,2400 Boss,1:135/990 ,1,ScottPoint,Miami_FL,Scott_Samet,-Unpublished-,2400 This does away with the need to constantly update the BOSS system's data in the raw nodelist and allows you to put your pointlist in a separate file. The nodelist compiler (FDNC) will then take the BOSS system's data from the master nodelist. - 122 - 14.2 FDNODE.CTL If you only have one file with point definitions, you can put them in FDPOINT.PVT and use the third example on the previous page to add points for other systems, or your own system. If you have more than one file with point definitions, however, you should NOT name any of them FDPOINT.PVT. Assume we had two files with pointlists: FDHQ.PTS: ; ; Pointlist for FidoNet.1:135/20 ; Boss,1:135/20 ,1,JoHo's_Turf,Miami_FL,joho,-Unpublished-,9600 ,2,Peter's_Bath-tub,Miami_FL,jps,-Unpublished-,2400 SCOTT.PTS: ; ; Pointlist for FidoNet.1:135/990 ; Boss,1:135/990 ,1,ScottPoint,Miami_FL,Scott_Samet,-Unpublished-,2400 We would tell the nodelist compiler to merge these two files into FDPOINT.PVT before it compiles the nodelist, by specifying the following in FDNODE.CTL: pointlist C:\FD\NODELIST\SCOTT.PTS pointlist C:\FD\NODELIST\FDHQ.PTS The BOSS statement in FDHQ.PTS and SCOTT.PTS can be remove if you instead specify: pointlist C:\FD\NODELIST\SCOTT.PTS 1:135/990 pointlist C:\FD\NODELIST\FDHQ.PTS 1:135/20 You must ALWAYS specify the address of the BOSS system (as shown above) if it's not listed in the actual pointlist file. - 123 - 14.3 Point handling A point system is treated just like any other system with one exception. A point system of another system than your own is always treated as its BOSS (or point zero) system. When the mailer creates mail packets for 1:135/990, it includes mail for any points under 1:135/990 by default. 14.4 Remapping If you have points that uses "point dumb" software, i.e. which doesn't support the "four dimensional" (zone, net, node, point) concept fully, you must instruct the FD package about this. Since the FD package supports the "four dimensional" concept, it has to remap mail from and to "point dumb" software. 14.4.1 POINTNET If the POINTNET environment variable is set, mail from and to systems with the same net number as the value of POINTNET is remapped. E.g. AUTOEXEC.BAT: SET POINTNET=1004 Would force the mailer to remap mail from and to 1004/1, 1004/2, 1004/3, and 1004/4 to 1:135/20.1, 1:135/20.2, 1:135/20.3, and 1:135/20.4; assuming your network address is 1:135/20. The mailer automatically remaps messages that it extracts from mail packets. If you use the POINTNET variable, the mailer will treat 1004/1 identical to 1:135/20.1; assuming your network address is 1:135/20. 14.4.2 Echomail The "two dimensional" or fake point handling method is a very touchy subject, and requires that the echomail processor is fully aware of the POINTNET environment variable to properly remap mail to and from "fake points". TosScan, the echomail processor by Joaquim H. Homrighausen, handles both point handling methods flawlessly. It's one of the most advanced echomail processors / conference mail systems around today. TosScan features complete zone/point support, exporting on-the-fly, multiple compression formats, and much much more. - 124 - Chapter 15 Batch files The mailer will, in most cases, be run from a DOS batch (.BAT) file. When the mailer terminates, it will return certain errorlevels that you can trap for in your batch file. 15.1 Errorlevels 1 Internal error 2 External error - missing files, paths, etc. 3 Insufficient available disk space (less than 32KB) 4 (reserved) 5 Unable to initialize modem 6 Incorrect FOSSIL version 7 FOSSIL not loaded or detected 8 FrontDoor already loaded, issue EXIT to return 9 (reserved) 10 User break 11 - 30 (reserved) 31 - 255 User definable errorlevels If you invoke the terminal function from DOS by running FD /T, it will always terminate with an errorlevel of 10 (User break), the same applies when you have specified 'Terminal only' in SETUP. - 125 - 15.2 Categories The various errorlevels can be organized into four basic categories: Mail received When mail is received, you can choose to exit to the batch file to run external mail processing utilities, such as TosScan, etc. User break/errors When you press Alt-Q from the mailer's main menu or when errors occur. BBS calls If you are running a BBS under the mailer, it is necessary for the mailer to exit with an errorlevel indicating the baudrate of the call. The line is still active when FrontDoor exits to the batch file, the BBS software is loaded and the caller will be able to access the BBS. External events The errorlevels defined in SETUP's event manager. 15.3 Loading BBS software There are two methods that can be used to invoke BBS software when the mailer detects a non-mail (human) call. The first uses different batch file labels for the various baudrates and the second one uses the same label for the various baudrates. The second method relies on the "Create .BAT file" option in SETUP (under Mailer.Errorlevels). - 126 - 15.3.1 Different labels @echo off rem --- We end up here after every BBS call :loop C: CD \FD FD rem --- Check errorlevels returned by the mailer if errorlevel 200 goto b9600 if errorlevel 199 goto b2400 if errorlevel 198 goto b1200 if errorlevel 197 goto b300 if errorlevel 100 goto mailIN if errorlevel 10 goto userBRK if errorlevel 1 goto FDerror :mailIN rem --- Process possible echomail, etc. tosscan toss tsutil link -t goto loop :b9600 Load BBS software for incoming call at 9600 bps goto loop :b2400 Load BBS software for incoming call at 2400 bps goto loop .. .. :userBRK cls @echo User break. goto done :FDerror @echo Mailer returned an error (1-9) :done - 127 - While this option works just fine for a environment where it isn't critical that the BBS software knows about upcoming events etc. it is somewhat limited. 15.3.2 Same label @echo off rem --- We end up here after every BBS call :loop C: CD \FD FD rem --- Check errorlevels returned by the mailer if errorlevel 200 goto bbsCALL if errorlevel 199 goto bbsCALL if errorlevel 198 goto bbsCALL if errorlevel 197 goto bbsCALL if errorlevel 100 goto mailIN if errorlevel 10 goto userBRK if errorlevel 1 goto FDerror :mailIN rem --- Process possible echomail, etc. tosscan toss tsutil link -t goto loop :bbsCALL rem --- Load DOBBS.BAT, created by the mailer if rem the "Create .BAT file" option is enabled. dobbs :userBRK cls @echo User break. goto done :FDerror @echo Mailer returned an error (1-9) :done - 128 - 15.3.2.1 DOBBS.BAT This is the batch file created by the mailer when you have the "Create .BAT file" option enabled. It contains the speed at which the call came in, the COM port, number of minutes left till the next event and possibly a string indicating ARQ, MNP etc. For a call coming in at 9600 bps with ARQ, 30 minutes left till the next non-user event, on COM port 1 the DOBBS.BAT file would contain: exebbs 9600 1 30 /Arq For a call coming in at 2400 bps, two hours left till the next non-user event, on COM port 1, the DOBBS.BAT file would contain: exebbs 2400 1 120 - 129 - 15.3.2.2 EXEBBS.BAT This is the file you have to create. It should handle everything required for the BBS software you are running, including exporting mail after users have logged off, etc. The last statement of your EXEBBS.BAT file should be the name of the big (main) batch file. Here's a sample of an EXEBBS.BAT file: coolBBS -b%1%4 -p%2 -t%3 if errorlevel 200 goto newmail if errorlevel 40 goto fatal run :newmail cls echo User entered echomail, let's send it! tosscan scan run :fatal cls echo A fatal error has occurred in coolBBS Since DOBBS.BAT calls EXEBBS.BAT with various information, it can be used to pass parameters to the BBS software. The result of the above EXEBBS.BAT file would expand to: coolBBS -b9600/Arq -p1 -t120 If a BBS call came in at 9600, the COM port is one, the number of minutes till the next non-user event is 120 and the optional (%4) string contained /Arq. - 130 - The text RUN, refers to the original (main) batch file, in which we bring the mailer back up again. When the BBS software (coolBBS in the above examples) terminates, EXEBBS.BAT will trap two errorlevels and then invoke RUN(.BAT) again. 15.3.2.3 Flow (batch files) Complicated? Here's the actual file flow between RUN, DOBBS and EXEBBS: +-> RUN.BAT Loads the mailer and performs all : : echomail and error handling. When a : : non-mail (human) call is detected, ^ V it loads DOBBS.BAT, created by the : : mailer. : : : DOBBS.BAT Created by the mailer. It calls the : : EXEBBS.BAT file with the baudrate, : : port, remaining time till the next ^ V non-user event, and possibly the : : /Arq parameter. : : : EXEBBS.BAT Called by DOBBS.BAT with the above : : described parameters. Loads the BBS : : software, processes newly created ^ V mail (if any), and finally returns : : to RUN.BAT. +--<--+ - 131 - - 132 - Appendix A Help systems The following systems and persons can be contacted if you have problems or questions regarding FrontDoor. You will most likely find the latest noncommercial version on these systems as well. Chris Homrighausen Europe (main)/Sweden 9600 HST 2:2/106 Lars Eriksson Finland 9600 HST V32 2:2/109 Ulrich Bartelt West Germany 9600 HST 2:241/2 Peter Janssens The Netherlands 9600 HST V32 2:28/2 Luc Schoofs Belgium 9600 HST 2:29/100 Patrick Oetiker Switzerland 9600 HST 2:30/5 Orlando Castillo Spain 9600 HST V32 2:34/2 Felix Kasza Austria 9600 HST V32 2:310/11 Luca Leone Italy 2400 2:33/108 - 133 - Help systems (cont'd) Stig Jacobsen Denmark 2400 2:231/16 David Nugent Australia (West) 9600 PEP 3:3/101 Andrew Khoo Australia (East) 9600 V32 PEP 3:711/805 Pablo Kleinman South America 9600 PEP V32 4:4/104 Bruce Bodger USA (main) 9600 HST 1:1/101 Mark Howard USA 9600 HST 1:260/340 Bryan Bucci Canada 9600 HST 1:153/133 Some of these systems are also listed in other network's nodelists. Such as SIGNet, AlterNet and the Network. - 134 - Appendix B FOSSIL drivers A FOSSIL (or Fido/Opus/SEAdog Standard Interface Layer) driver is a memory resident program that works as a layer between the application program and your computer's hardware. The mailer requires a FOSSIL driver to function. The advantages of the standard FOSSIL interface is that programs can be ported easily to other machines and/or operating systems. There are several FOSSIL drivers available. The mailer has been tested with OpusComm, X00 and BNU with good results. X00 and BNU will be described here. B.1 BNU BNU, written by David Nugent, comes in two flavors. One is a device driver, similar to X00.SYS. The second flavor is a .COM file, loaded from AUTOEXEC.BAT or another batch file. I use the .COM flavor. For a detailed description of the BNU driver, read the documentation included in the BNU distribution archive. [AUTOEXEC.BAT] BNU /R=1024 /T=512 /L1:38400 /R=1024 Specifies a transmit buffer of 1024 bytes. /T=512 Specifies a receive buffer of 512 bytes. /L1:38400 Locks COM2 at 38,400 bps (for use with the 14400 HST or DS modems). If you are not using a high-speed modem the above example should most likely be modified to not lock COM2. - 135 - B.2 X00.SYS X00, written by Ray Gwinn, is a device driver, it's loaded from your CONFIG.SYS file when your machine is started. For a detailed description of the X00 driver, read the documentation included in the X00 distribution archive. [CONFIG.SYS] device = X00.SYS E 1 B,1,38400 T=512 R=1024 E Disable 5 second "commercial" when X00 is first loaded. 1 Number of COM ports X00 should allow to be accessed at one time. B,1,38400 Locks COM2 at 38,400 bps (for use with the 14400 HST or DS modems). T=512 Specifies a transmit buffer of 512 bytes. R=1024 Specifies a receive buffer of 1024 bytes. If you are not using a high-speed modem the above example may not be what you want. The most common command line for X00 is: device = X00.SYS E 1 - 136 - Appendix C Modems FrontDoor works with several modems, including USR HST, Telebit's Trailblazer, ANC, Everex and Hayes. The general rule is that the modem must be able to send alphanumeric result strings. For most modems, the basic configuration is all that is required. For high-speed modems such as the HST, a few extra settings are necessary. The reason HST is the only modem described here is because it's the only modem I've used with FrontDoor. C.1 General requirements The modem must not echo characters sent by FrontDoor, it must not have CD (carrier detect) forced. It should support disconnecting by lowering DTR (data terminal ready), but it's not necessary. DTR must not be forced. The current version of FrontDoor does not support manually operated modems with fixed speeds since most of them do not send any type of messages to the terminal (program). This is expected to be implemented in future versions. To use FrontDoor with high-speed modems such as the HST and Trailblazer, it is often necessary to lock your COM port (using fixed speed). In general, this improves throughput. For more information about this, see FOSSIL drivers. - 137 - C.2 USR HST DIP Switches: 0 (big) OFF 1 OFF 2 OFF 3 ON 4 OFF 5 ON 6 OFF 7 OFF 8 ON 9 ON 0 OFF Command/modem strings: CONNECT 300 CONNECT| RING RING| OffHook ATH1| OnHook ~ATH0| Init-1 AT&G1&K0&M4S19=2B&B1&H1&R2&N0S15=8| Init-2 ATV1X6S7=55EQM0S11=50S0=0| Down AT| Reset AT| Modem hardware: Lock port YES Baudrate 38400, 19200 or 9600 Answer control: Manual answer Yes Force answer ATA| Delay 5 - 138 - Appendix D Multitasking FrontDoor can be used together with most multitasking programs. It has been tested with DESQview, DoubleDOS, Multilink and Taskview. It will automatically detect most multitasking software. My personal suggestion would be DESQview. One of the best multitaskers around for PC/MS-DOS. D.1 NS16550 If you're running FrontDoor under a multitasker or in a LAN environment, I suggest you replace your 8250 or 16450 UART chip with a NS16550AN or NS16550AFN. These are available from several electronics outfits for somewhere between USD 17 and USD 23. The 16550 family of UARTs have internal buffering and will improve performance in multitasking and LAN environments. Both BNU and X00 has direct support for the 16550 family and can be used without modifying your command-line paratmeters when loading them. - 139 - D.2 DESQview FrontDoor will request a virtual screen buffer from DV and write to it. The result is very fast and very well behaved screen writes. I have successfully used FrontDoor's mailer under DESQview 2.21 (and 2.25) with 180KB. Here're the settings I use with DESQview: Keys to Use on Open Menu FD Memory Size (in K) 250 Options: Writes text directly to screen N Displays graphics information N Virtualize text/graphics (Y,N,T) N Uses serial ports (Y,N,1,2) 2 Requires floppy diskette N Advanced Options: System Memory (in K) 0 Maximum Program Memory Size (in K) <empty> Script Buffer Size 0 Maximum Expanded Memory Size (in K) 0 Text Pages 1 Graphics Pages 0 Initial Mode <empty> Interrupts 00 to FF Maximum Height 25 Starting Height 25 Starting Row 1 Maximum Width 80 Starting Width 80 Starting Column 1 Close on exit (Y,N,blank) N Uses its own colors Y Allow Close Window command Y Runs in background (Y,N,blank) Y Uses math coprocessor N Keyboard conflict (0-4) 0 Share CPU when foreground Y Share EGA when foreground/zoomed Y Can be swapped out (Y,N,blank) N Protection level (0-3) 0 - 140 - D.3 DoubleDOS Smart multitasking software allocates a virtual screen buffer for each task. Applications can then ask the multitasking software where it should write and the multitasker handles the screen updates. DoubleDOS, however, is using a different method. Every time you switch tasks from the keyboard, the screen-buffers change. So there's no easy way for the software running under DoubleDOS to detect this. In DoubleDOS 5.00, there are two options that allows you to run FrontDoor under DoubleDOS just fine. You MUST run FrontDoor in the TOP section for the two methods below to work. - 141 - DISPLAY=TEXT If your system has a MCGA, CGA, EGA or VGA card installed, there's extra memory available on those cards for graphics, etc. DoubleDOS can use some of that memory for each of its screen buffers. To enable this, add DISPLAY=TEXT to your DDCONFIG.SYS file. REFRESH If you have a text-only adapter (MDA) there's most likely no extra memory available on the card. Add REFRESH by itself on a line to your DDCONFIG.SYS file. This will tell DoubleDOS to repaint the screen if the other task is bleeding through. X00 and DoubleDOS When using FrontDoor, X00.SYS and DoubleDOS, there are a few rules that must be followed: Do not assign the COM ports in DDCONFIG.SYS Make sure you execute CAPTURE (supplied with X00) after you execute DOUBLEDO (the DoubleDOS executable). To be safe, execute CAPTURE in both partitions. If you have problems with your clock, try the DEFER option in X00. Make sure you replace ANSI.SYS with DBLDANSI.SYS. The BOTTOM partition should initialize before the TOP partition. In other words, if you're loading FrontDoor in the BOTTOM partition, try to delay the initialization of the TOP partition. D.4 Multilink I would personally not recommend anyone using FrontDoor with Multilink. I have never successfully executed any program under Multilink for longer periods of time than momentarily. - 142 - Appendix E Converting from other mail systems If you were using SEAdog or D'Bridge before you started using FrontDoor, you should have little trouble converting to FrontDoor. The routing and message handling used by these two mail systems is very similar to the way things are done with FrontDoor. If you are converting from Binkley, Opus, or Dutchie, however, there are a few things you should know and make sure you have done before you install FrontDoor. The main difference between FrontDoor and Binkley or Opus is that FrontDoor doesn't use oMMM, the static message packer written by Bob Hartman. We see the oMMM approach as a black hole from which there's no return. This is not true in some cases and there are advantages of using oMMM type packers instead of the method used by FrontDoor. oMMM will create what we call static bundles, where each system has a control file that tells the mailer what files and messages to send to what systems. FrontDoor will NOT recognize oMMM type bundles (packets) so before you fully convert to FrontDoor, you must make sure that all the oMMM type mail is sent before you convert to FrontDoor. You can use FrontDoor to send the remaining oMMM type mail by attaching the files manually with FrontDoor's editor or a robot utility such as XRobot, but you'll need a utility with which you can determine which file belongs to which system before you can do this. So it might be easier for you to tell Binkley or Opus to send its remaining mail before you do the conversion. - 143 - - 144 - Appendix F Sample (PCP) script This script was written by Eric Larson, FidoNet.1:260/330 and is intended as a sample PC Pursuit script. ; PCP script for FrontDoor 1.99b and above ; Eric Larson, 1:260/330.0, 8/30/89 ; modified from script supplied in FD 1.99 documentation debug ON setport 2400 ; Redundant if you have locked your FOSSIL ; If you have a 1200 indial :-(, use 1200 ; here and change the hunt-confirm sequence ; to @ wait 1 <CR> ;---------------------------------- ; Your Indial Phone Number Here ;---------------------------------- ; ; Users with MNP modems should disable MNP as the buffering ; combined with PCP's packet latency will cause block position ; errors during error recovery. For HST owners, use: ; send AT&M0<CR> waitfor OK ; ; Others should comment out the above two lines ; ; Now, your local indial modem ; send ATDT4795395<CR> case CONNECT : >whackit RING<CR> : fail BUSY<CR> : fail "NO " : fail @default : fail endcase - 145 - :whackit ; Attempt to "wake-up" PCP purgein ; Telenet recommends at least wait 2 ; a 200 ms pause between send @ ; characters in the hunt-confirm sequence wait 1 ; change the @ to <CR> if you send D ; call a 1200 bps indial modem wait 1 send <CR> waitfor TERMINAL= send D3<CR> ; Preferred terminal type waitfor @ :outdial ; Dial PCP city purgein retrycount 5 send C @OUTBOUND,xxxxxxxxxx<CR> ; Your ID Here waitfor PASSWORD send xxxxxx<CR> ; Your Password Here case CONNECT : >local ; Gotcha! BUSY : >outdial "NOT " : fail @nocarrier : fail @default : fail endcase :local ; Initialize Outdial purgein send <CR> wait 1 send I<CR> send ATZ| timerset 15 waitfor OK send @| waitfor @ - 146 - send SET?<sp>1:0,7:8<CR> waitfor @ send CONT<CR> send ATH0Z<CR> waitfor OK|IDLE send <ENQ><CR> ; Turn on RV Mode waitfor * purgein clearcount timerset 35 wait 1 send D@LOCALNUM<CR> purgein case ONTROL : >landing ANSWER : >landing BUSY : fail FAILED : fail "NO DIAL TONE" : fail "NO DTR" : fail "NO CARRIER" : fail VOICE : fail @default : fail @nocarrier : fail endcase :landing ; Landing on Pluto wait 7 purgein session - 147 - - 148 - Appendix G Commercial inquiries The FD package is free of charge if it's used in a noncommercial environment. If it's used in a commercial environment, you may NOT use the noncommercial version - period. Please send commercial inquiries to: Australia Workware Australia Pty, Ltd attn: Kim Nugent Suite 3.03, 620 St. Kilda Road Victoria, Australia, 3004 Europe Computer-Laser Systems attn: Felix Kasza Technical Services Group Hetzendorfer Strasse 191 A-1130 Vienna Austria Bremin & Co. AB Pontonjargatan 1 S-112 22 Stockholm Sweden USA OCI - Online Communications, Inc. 22 State Street Bangor Maine 04401 USA Canada 1B Systems Management, Ltd. 5761 Ascot Road Nanaimo BC V9V 1E6 Canada - 149 - G.1 Pricing FrontDoor and TosScan for commercial use: Suggested retail price: USD 189 FrontDoor and TosScan for commercial use (SysOps): Suggested retail price: USD 120 FrontDoor for commercial use (SysOps): Suggested retail price: USD 99 TosScan If you have purchased a copy of FrontDoor, you may purchase TosScan at the price of USD 30. If you are running the noncommercial version of FrontDoor, the price for TosScan is USD 45. G.2 Shipping and handling Make sure you include sufficient funds for shipping and handling (around USD 6-10). If sales tax apply to your order, you must include funds to cover it. G.3 Dealers Please contact the appropriate dealer (previous page) for commercial inquiries and any questions you may have regarding the purchase of FrontDoor and/or TosScan. - 150 - Appendix H Developer notes A separate package with information regarding FrontDoor is distributed under the name FDDEV. It contains structures and technical information directed towards authors of FrontDoor utilities. If you are planning on writing a utility with explicit support for FrontDoor, make sure you grab a copy of the FDDEV package and look at it. - 151 - - 152 - Appendix I Credits Thanks to.. ..Anders Johansson, Andrew Khoo, Bill Bolton, Bill Dunn, Bjorn Bogfelt, Bob Rudolph, Boris Osadciw, Chris Homrighausen (hey bro!), Chris Van Tuin, Chris Baker, Clement Studer, David Kerley, Dieter Soltau, Eelco de Graaff, Felix Kasza, Fred Vlinkervleugel, 1B Systems Management Ltd, Ken McVay, Gareth McClean, Horst Buhl, James Henthorn, James Smith, Jan Crommenacker, Jan Jonsson, Jeff Wolach, Jerry Hindle, Jim Faucette, Joakim Hernberg, John Huls, Jon Schneider, Ken Doebler, Kim Lykkegard, Lasse B, Malte Erikson, Mario Diaz, Mark Howard, Mats Knuts, Mats Wallin, Peter Adenauer, Randy Harner, Rick Petersen, Rick Siegel, Robin Valle', Ruud de Bruin, Scott Samet, Thomas Stjernstrom, Thomas Sundblom, Todd Lehr, Tomas Bremin, Bremin & Co AB, Tony Wagner, Ulf Hedlund, Ulf Jungjohann, Andreas Polz, David Nugent, Workware Australia Pty Ltd, Steve Froeschke, Eric Larson, Bob Beilstein, Bruce Bodger, Michele Hamilton, Phil Mackay, Michael Butler, Paul Schlyter, Bill Kraski, Alexander Holy, Lars Eriksson, Fabiano Fabris, Aaron Schmiedel, Mike Janke, Peter Janssens, Jeff Murphy, Gary Funk, Luca Leone, Andrew Milner. ..Tom Jennings, Bob Hartman, Chris Irwin, Chuck Forsberg, Henk Wevers, Randy Bush, Ray Gwinn, Thom Henderson, Vince Perriello, Wynn Wagner III, Mike Ratledge, Rick Moore, George A. Stanislav, jim nutt. - 153 - Contents Chapter 1 Preface 3 1.1 Hardware requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2 Software requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.3 BBS software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.4 History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Chapter 2 Installation 7 2.1 CONFIG.SYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.2 AUTOEXEC.BAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2.3 Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2.4 Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Chapter 3 Setup 9 3.1 FD environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3.2 Getting started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3.3 Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 3.3.1 File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 3.3.2 Global . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 3.3.3 Mailer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 3.3.4 Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 3.3.5 Terminal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3.3.6 Modem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3.3.7 Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.4 Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.4.1 Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.4.1.1 External event behavior . . . . . 36 3.4.1.2 Mail event behavior . . . . . . . 37 3.4.1.3 The @ event . . . . . . . . . . . 40 3.4.1.4 Overlapping events . . . . . . . 40 3.4.2 Folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 3.4.3 Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 3.4.4 Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Chapter 4 Mailer 45 4.1 Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 4.1.1 Alt-P Programs . . . . . . . . . . . 45 4.1.2 Alt-U Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . 46 4.1.3 Alt-M Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 4.1.4 Alt-Y Your profile . . . . . . . . . 48 4.2 Alt-B Mail queue . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 4.3 Call progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 4.4 Waiting mail indicator . . . . . . . . . . 50 i 4.5 Undialable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 4.6 Command line switches . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Chapter 5 Editor 53 5.1 Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 5.1.1 Alt-M Main . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 5.1.2 Alt-E Edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 5.1.3 Alt-T in edit mode . . . . . . . . . . 57 5.1.4 Toggle menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 5.1.5 Other keys in edit mode . . . . . . . 58 5.1.6 Other keys in view (read) mode . . . . 60 5.1.7 Alt-U Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . 61 5.1.8 Alt-P Purge . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 5.2 Entering messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 5.2.1 Message status bits . . . . . . . . . 63 5.3 Alt-F9 Management . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 5.3.1 Main menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 5.3.2 Continuoues tagging . . . . . . . . . 67 5.3.3 Range select . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 5.4 Keyboard macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 5.5 Carbon copies (CC) . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 5.5.1 Hidden CCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 5.5.2 Using files as input to CCs . . . . . 69 5.5.3 Address expansion . . . . . . . . . . 69 5.6 Cross-posting (XC) . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 5.7 Command line switches . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Chapter 6 Terminal 71 6.1 Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 6.1.1 Alt-F File . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 6.1.2 Alt-L Line settings . . . . . . . . . 73 6.1.3 Alt-S Session . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 6.1.4 Alt-O Options . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 6.2 Keyboard macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 6.3 Raw mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 6.4 Keypad modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 6.4.1 PC keyboards . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 6.5 Alt-P Phone directory . . . . . . . . . . 78 6.5.1 Queue status . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 6.5.2 Adding/changing entries . . . . . . . 79 6.6 Inactivity timer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 6.7 File transfers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 6.8 On-line timer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Chapter 7 Miscellaneous 81 7.1 Destination of messages . . . . . . . . . . 81 7.1.1 Name lookups . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 7.1.2 Address browsing . . . . . . . . . . . 82 7.1.3 Address macros . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 7.2 File requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 7.2.1 Update requests . . . . . . . . . . . 83 7.3 Swapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 ii 7.4 CRT environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Chapter 8 Mail routing 85 8.1 Default routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 8.1.1 Message status . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 8.1.2 Host/hub routing . . . . . . . . . . . 87 8.1.3 Qualifying systems . . . . . . . . . . 87 8.2 Route commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 8.2.1 LIST specifications . . . . . . . . . 91 8.2.2 Using nodelist flags . . . . . . . . . 91 8.2.3 File routing/forwarding . . . . . . . 91 8.2.4 Message forwarding . . . . . . . . . . 92 8.2.5 Multiple zones . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 8.2.6 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 8.2.7 Dynamic packing . . . . . . . . . . . 93 8.2.8 Regarding points . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Chapter 9 EMSI 95 9.1 Passwords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 9.2 Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Chapter 10 Script language 97 10.1 What can I do with it? . . . . . . . . . . 98 10.2 Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 10.2.1 Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 10.2.2 Node block . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 10.3 PC Pursuit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 10.3.1 How do I update PCP.DAT? . . . . . . 104 10.4 MNEMONICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Chapter 11 Nodelist 107 11.1 FDNODE.CTL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 11.2 Compiling the nodelist . . . . . . . . . . 111 Chapter 12 FDServer 113 12.1 What is a FDServer request? . . . . . . . 113 12.2 Request message . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 12.2.1 Internal commands . . . . . . . . . . 114 12.3 Using it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 12.4 Keeping calls to a minimum . . . . . . . . 115 12.5 A word of caution . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Chapter 13 Service requests 117 13.1 Service requests vs FDServer . . . . . . . 117 13.2 Setting up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 13.2.1 Service name . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 13.2.2 Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 13.2.3 Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 13.3 Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 13.4 ^ - + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 13.5 Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 13.6 A word of wisdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 iii Chapter 14 Points 121 14.1 Pointlist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 14.2 FDNODE.CTL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 14.3 Point handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 14.4 Remapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 14.4.1 POINTNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 14.4.2 Echomail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Chapter 15 Batch files 125 15.1 Errorlevels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 15.2 Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 15.3 Loading BBS software . . . . . . . . . . . 126 15.3.1 Different labels . . . . . . . . . . 127 15.3.2 Same label . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 15.3.2.1 DOBBS.BAT . . . . . . . . . . . 129 15.3.2.2 EXEBBS.BAT . . . . . . . . . . . 130 15.3.2.3 Flow (batch files) . . . . . . . 131 Appendix A Help systems 133 Appendix B FOSSIL drivers 135 B.1 BNU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 B.2 X00.SYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Appendix C Modems 137 C.1 General requirements . . . . . . . . . . . 137 C.2 USR HST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Appendix D Multitasking 139 D.1 NS16550 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 D.2 DESQview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 D.3 DoubleDOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 D.4 Multilink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Appendix E Converting from other mail systems 143 Appendix F Sample (PCP) script 145 Appendix G Commercial inquiries 149 G.1 Pricing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 G.2 Shipping and handling . . . . . . . . . . . 150 G.3 Dealers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Appendix H Developer notes 151 Appendix I Credits 153 iv