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OffTopic Version 1.00 A Message Base Thread Remover And Twit Filter for RemoteAccess 1.00 or higher (c) Copyright 1991, by Kenneth R. Doebler All Rights Reserved Released to the general public on July 27, 1991 DISCLAIMER "OffTopic is supplied as is. The author disclaims all warrantees expressed or implied, including, without limitation, the warrantees of merchantability and of fitness for any purpose. The author assumes no liability for damages, direct or consequential, which may result from the use of OffTopic." DISTRIBUTION OffTopic is distributed in archived form. The distribution archive should contain the following files: OT EXE 42181 7-27-91 1:00a OT DOC 33312 7-27-91 1:00a TOPIC LST 31 7-27-91 1:00a PEOPLE LST 28 7-27-91 1:00a SOFTRES DOC 2030 7-27-91 1:00a If your distribution archive is missing any of these files, or if any of your files are different from the above list, you do not have an original distribution archive. Please contact me at the address or number listed at the end of this document. You may obtain the latest official distribution archive at any time from The Software Resource, listed at the end of this document. You are encouraged to pass a copy of OffTopic along to your friends and post it on Bulletin Boards for downloading, provided that you: 1) Do not modify or alter the original program or documentation files in any way. 2) Pass along the complete archive with all files included, in it's original unmodified form. 3) Do not distribute the archive in conjunction with any commercial or money making endeavor of any kind without prior consent of the author. If you are in doubt about the contents of your distribution archive or any of the above items, please contact me via netmail or call The Software Resource at the address and number listed at the end of this document. Introduction Getting tired of wading through all those off-topic messages in the thread that wouldn't die? Is there someone out there in one of the conferences you read that you just can't seem to tolerate any longer? Finding yourself more and more pressed for time and barely able to keep up with the echomail flow in the areas you read? Is it all you can do sometimes to keep yourself from jumping on that reply key and giving someone out there a piece of your mind? Well, have no fear... Relief is in sight! You are now in possession of the ultimate personal weapon for combatting all those off-topic threads and unbelievable people. What Is OffTopic? OffTopic is a message base utility for use with RemoteAccess 1.00 and higher. OffTopic will allow you to selectively remove those irritating off-topic threads in your message base, and also eliminate that nonsense that seems to come from certain individuals out there, so you never have to see it. OffTopic will let you do all this and more, either interactively or in an automated fashion. OffTopic will save you both time and frustration by reducing the reading load in your message base and eliminating messages you don't want to read. OffTopic can also be used in several other ways to make your life easier and more pleasant! Registration OffTopic is provided free of charge to anyone interested in trying or using it. There is no commercial or otherwise industrial strength version of OffTopic. This is it. No registration required, no fees, no monthly payments, nothing of the kind. OffTopic is primarily a by-product of my work on another project called Mail. I found OffTopic useful here and thought that some others might find it useful also. If you use OffTopic, and you like it, I'd appreciate a note via Netmail letting me know that you enjoy it or that it's of use to you. This will give me an idea of how useful it is to others, and whether or not future enhancements might be worthwhile. Setup And Installation Setting up and/or installing OffTopic is easy. You can run OT from any drive or directory, provided that you have your RA environment variable set (RA=PATH etc). OffTopic will check your environment for the RA= variable and if found, will use this information to find your RA system files. If you do not have your RA= environment variable set, you will need to run OT.EXE from your main RA system directory. OffTopic will locate your message base files and a few other RA system files from the information it finds in CONFIG.RA. No special setup or configuration is needed.. OT handles everything automatically. You can run OffTopic from the DOS command prompt, or you can also run OT from a batch file. One possibility might be running OT after you toss new mail to your message base, or perhaps nightly during maintenance. Using OffTopic OffTopic can be used in a variety of ways. In it's simplest form, OT can be used to selectively remove certain message threads or topics from your message base. There are times when certain topics or threads become ridiculously off-topic and long lived, and OT gives you the ability to spot and remove these threads automatically if you like. On another level, OT can also be used to remove any messages from a certain individual from your message base. There are times when one individual is causing a great deal of disruption or annoyance in an echo conference. Sometimes this passes by quickly, and other times it seems like that individual will never stop or leave. OT will let you "twit" that person, removing any mesages written by that individual from your message base and making the conference much more bearable. On yet another level, OT can also be used to protect you against potentially irritating users. If you are running an "open" system and like to leave your echo conferences open to all users, OT will make it easier for you to do so. Everyone has experienced that truly "twit" user who insists on being an annoyance by posting off-topic or otherwise inappropriate messages in your echo areas. If you know who these users are, you can have OffTopic remove their messages from your message base automatically, before you export their messages and before anyone has a chance to read them. I'm sure there are other uses you can think of for OffTopic, so I'll let you use your imagination. OffTopic is not intended to be anything but a tool that will help you clean up your message base and rid it of some of the more common plagues that make life for a sysop less than pleasant at times. OffTopic also has an "Oops!" option in case you need to recover from an accidental overkill. This command is discussed in the next section under OffTopic Commands. OT has the ability to UnDelete deleted messages on specified boards or in the entire message base. This can come in handy any time you delete a message by mistake, and wish to recover it. And finally, if the idea of having OffTopic kill messages is mildly disturbing to you, you can optionally have OT just Move the messages to another board for later review and processing. OffTopic Commands And Options The following is a summary of the basic commands and options available for use with OffTopic: OT "topic string" -<options> Where "topic string" is the topic or string to search for in the message headers. In some cases, "topic string" is optional, i.e. if you specify a person list or topic list to use rather than a topic in quotes on the command line. You can, however, use both a "topic string" and a Topic List file. Options: -b<board number(s)> -c<case sensitive> -e<exclude board numbers> -k<keep messages to sysop> -l<log activity> -m<move to board> -n<"name"> -p<person list file> -rn<relaxed name search> -rt(relaxed topic search> -t<topic list file> -u<undelete> Explanation of options: -b<board number(s)> This option allows you to specify which board or boards you wish OT to process or search. The -b option can be used at any time, in conjunction with any of the other options. An example of how it would appear on the command line follows: OT "offline readers" -b 2 3 29 This would cause OT to search for and kill messages who's topic or subject field contained "offline readers" on boards 2, 3 and 29 only. The board numbers must be separated by a space on the command line (as above). The space between "-b" and "2" is optional. -c<case sensitive> This option allows you to tell OT to look for exact matches to names and topics, exact meaning exact. Upper and lower case distinctions apply. For example: OT "offline ReaDerS" -c This would require an exact match, case and all, for OT to kill the message. OT would need to find "offline ReaDerS" in the subject field of the message headers, exactly as you see it in quotes above. By default, OT does NOT pay attention to upper/lower case distinctions. This option is mostly here in case you ever have a need for it, however, most of the time it will be easier to let OT ignore case. -e<exclude board numbers> This option is similar to the -b<board numbers> option except that it allows you to exclude certain board numbers from OT's search. An example might be: OT "tag lines" -e 20 21 34 OT would then search for the topic "tag lines" on all message boards except boards 20, 21 and 34. This would probably speed up the search slightly also. The -e<exclude board numbers> option can also be used in conjunction with the -u<undelete> option, to tell OT to ignore deleted messages on certain boards (not undelete them). -k<keep messages to sysop> This option can be used to ensure that OT will NOT delete or move any messages that are addressed to you, the sysop. The sysop name used is the name you have defined as sysop in your Config.Ra file. Example usage might be: OT "boring topic" -k This would tell OT to search for and kill any messages that contained "boring topic" in the message header, but to keep (not kill) any messages that happen to be addressed to you, the sysop. -l<log activity> Using this option enables OT activity logging. This is particularly useful if you're running OT unattended from a batch file on a regular basis. OT will make a summary log entry to the file "OT.LOG" every time it's run. If the log file OT.LOG doesn't exist, OT will create it. If it does exist, OT will append the new info to it. An example: OT "yet another topic" -l This will cause OT to make a log entry for this run. After a few successive runs of OT, a typical OT.LOG might look something like this: --- OffTopic Log Created 07-23-91 13:09:20 07-23-91 13:09:29 No Off Topic Messages Found 07-23-91 17:16:53 26 Message(s) Killed 07-23-91 19:04:08 14 Message(s) Killed 07-23-91 21:13:50 1 Message(s) Killed The logging is fairly primitive, as you can see above, and does not record any detailed information, but it does give you an idea of what happened and when. The logging detail may be expanded in future releases if it seems warranted. -m<move to board> This option let's you tell OT to move messages it finds to another board, rather than kill the messages. If you use the "-m" option, you must specify a valid message board number so that OT can move what it finds to that board. An example of how this might be done is: OT "Bimodem" -m 99 This would tell OT to search message headers for "Bimodem" and rather than kill these messages, move them all to board number 99. The board number specified must be a valid board in your message base. If you use the "-m" option, you might set up a special board with sysop access only as a holding area for these messages. -n<"name"> This option allows you to specify a user name for OT to search for. All messages From this username will be killed. The username "name" must appear between quotes on the command line. For example: OT -n"Joe Blo" Optionally, you may have a space between "-n" and "Joe Blo". -p<person list file> This option allows you to specify file on the command line which OT will use as a list of people to twit or kill messages from. This "list" file is a plain ASCII file listing all the names you want OT to scan for. Quotes are not used in the list file, and OT will strip all leading and trailing blanks from all list entries. The list would be of the following form: Joe Blo Captain Kool Rude Dude You can create or edit this list with any standard text editor. The present limit on the number of people you can have in the list file is 200. This should be plenty for most occasions, however it may be increased in later versions of OffTopic. If the person list file is not in the current directory or same directory that OT.EXE is run from, then you must include the full drive:\path\filename.ext on the command line. For example: OT -p c:\file\bbs\people.lst The space between "-p" and "c:\file\bbs\people.lst" is optional. -rt<relaxed topic search> This is probably the most useful option in that it allows you to tell OT to search threads or topics in a more relaxed fashion. This means that if OT finds your topic string within the Subject field of a message, it will call it a match and delete the message. This relaxed search is in contrast with an Exact match type of search, where the topic string would have to match the subject field *exactly*. OT, by default, uses an exact match search. Therefore, without the -rt option, if your topic string was "offline", and the subject field contained "offline readers", OT would NOT call this a match. You would need to use the -rt option to "relax" the pattern matching a bit, so to speak. Using -rt in a search gives you more flexibility, but you must also be careful not to be too general with your search string. For example: OT "on" -rt would probably delete half your message base, or perhaps more. OT would find the string "on" within many of the subject fields in the message base. Be careful with this option. Ideally, you should use a topic string as specific as possible, while still making it general enough to match the topics without being too strict. -rn<relaxed name search> This is identical to the -rt<relaxed topic search> option, but it causes OT to relax it's name matching rather than topic matching. An example of using -rn might be: OT -n "joaq" -rn -m 20 This would tell OT to relax it's name pattern matching and would match any message headers which contained "joaq" within the From field of the header, and Move these messages to message board number 20. OT would most likely come up with "Joaquim Homrighausen" in this example. The "-rn" option will allow OT to find names in a more flexible manner. When using the -rt and -rn options, be aware that you may come up with unintended matches which you didn't anticipate. For example: OT -n "john" -rn would match all of the names listed below: John Doe Bill Johnson Johnathan Smith which is NOT what you had intended to find. The best way to combat this problem in relaxed searching is to make your search string long enough to be reasonably certain that it won't generate unexpected matches. In the example above, to find messages From "John Miller", you might do something like this: OT -n "john m" -rn The same would apply to topic searches with the -rt option. -t<topic list file> This options is basically the same as the -p<person list file> option. This allows you to specify a list file which contains up to 200 topic strings or threads. OT will search each message header subject field for each topic you have in the list file. For example: OT -t c:\file\bbs\topic.lst See the section above on the -p<person list file> option for more details. -u<undelete> This is the "Oops!" option or UnDelete command option for OffTopic. This option allows you to UnDelete any deleted messages in the message base if you find that you've accidentally deleted something you didn't want to delete. This option can be used with one other option at the same time, which is the -b<board number(s)> option. Using the -u<undelete> option in conjunction with the -b<boards> option allows you to tell OT to search only the board numbers specified after the "-b". For example: OT -u -b 22 120 This command line would tell OffTopic to UnDelete all deleted messages on boards 22 and 120. Any deleted messages on other boards would remain deleted. When OT UnDeletes messages, it will re-link them back into any existing reply chains "on the fly". Likewise, when OT kills or moves messages, it will fix up any "holes" left in the reply chain "on the fly". One last note on the UnDelete option. This option is only useful if you use it *prior* to a message base Pack. When you Pack the message base, you eliminate all chances of UnDeleting a message. The "-u" option must be used prior to Packing the message base or you will recover nothing. Some Examples To Illustrate Using OffTopic Here are a few example command lines to illustrate how you might use OffTopic in normal situations: OT "readers" This is the simplest form that the command line can take for a Topic search. OT will search the message headers for the topic "readers" and it will require an exact match before it kills the message. OT will search all message boards by default. OT "test" -rt This would tell OT to search message headers for that good old phrase "test" and to search in a relaxed manner. OT would kill any messages with "test" in the message header, i.e. "Testing" or "This is just a test", and so on. OT -n "UUCP" This command line would tell OT to search message headers for any messages From "UUCP". Case is irrelevant, i.e., OT doesn't care about upper/lower case distinctions. However, an exact match on names is necessary for OT to kill the message in this case. Adding -rn to the command line would relax the search. OT -n "UUCP" -m 50 -l This command line would tell OT to search message headers for any messages from "UUCP" and, rather than kill them, OT would move them to board #50. OT would also log summary info to the OT.LOG logfile. OT -t d:\fd\misc\topic.lst -rt This tells OT to search for off-topic messages based upon a list of Topics you consider to be undesirable or not worthy of viewing. This search is also conducted in "relaxed" mode, that is, each Topic in your list file will be searched for within the message headers in a non-exact-match mode. Your list file might look something like this: Comm Bimodem Offline reader latest files and so on. Any topic or topic fragment is valid. Remember that if you don't use the "-rt" option, OT will enforce an exact match of the topic before it will kill a message. OT -t d:\fd\topic.lst -rt -b 15 20 This will tell OT to do the same search as in the example above, but only conduct the search on message boards 15 and 20. Anything outside these two boards will be ignored. OT -p d:\ra\people.lst -k This is similar to the above, only OT will use your People List and kill any messages it finds coming from persons listed in your List. OT however, will NOT kill any messages if they are addressed to you (the -k option). OT -n "james" -rn -t d:\fd\topic.lst -rt -m 30 -e 15 16 -l As you can see, one can get fairly complicated with all the options and combinations. This command line would tell OT to search for "james" using a relaxed search, and ALSO to search for all of the topics listed in the "topic.lst" file, using a relaxed topic search, and Move these messages to message board number 30. OT will exclude message boards 15 and 16 from it's search, and will also log all summary activity to OT.LOG. OT -u This will tell OT to UnDelete any killed messages on all message boards. To narrow this down to a specific board or a few boards, use the -b<boards> option with the -u option. OT -u -e 55 This will tell OT to UnDelete any killed messages on all message boards except board number 55. This would be handy for times when you don't want messages in all boards UnDeleted. That should be enough to get you started and give you an idea of how the command line options work. If you enter anything on the command line incorrectly, OT will hopefully give you some kind of error message telling you what's wrong and so on. Some General Comments On Command Combinations Obviously, some OT command line options are ambiguous or non-sensical. For example, the following would generate an error message from OT: OT -u -n"Joe Blo" Here, you're telling OffTopic to UnDelete messages AND to kill messages from Joe Blo. OT won't do both at the same time. OT -u -b 100 -e 100 This would of course be senseless. Here you're telling OT to UnDelete messages on board 100 and to exclude board 100 from the search at the same time. Obviously this will yield a net result of nil. If you use an illegal or conflicting set of command options with OT, OT will give you an error message and tell you what was wrong. If you type "OT" with no topic string or options, OT will display an error message and a list of available options. A Batch File Example For Using OffTopic One of the greatest potential uses for OffTopic is in your main RunFd.Bat file (or whatever your's happens to be called). I run FrontDoor and RemoteAccess, and also use TosScan to process my echomail. Your case may be slightly different, however, the same basic principle applies. Here is an example section of my batch file which illustrates one way to use OffTopic. When FrontDoor receives mail, it exits with an errorlevel and jumps to the following :TossMail section of the batch file: :TossMail d: cd d:\fd if EXIST d:\files\*.MO? tosscan toss /NOMGR if EXIST d:\files\*.T?? tosscan toss /NOMGR if EXIST d:\files\*.WE? tosscan toss /NOMGR if EXIST d:\files\*.FR? tosscan toss /NOMGR if EXIST d:\files\*.S?? tosscan toss /NOMGR if EXIST d:\fd\import.xyz OT -t topic.lst -rt -p people.lst -k -l if EXIST d:\fd\import.xyz Tsutil link -t if EXIST *.msg tsutil import goto restart In the example above, my "topic.lst" file and my "people.lst" file are in the current directory (d:\fd), so I have omitted the complete drive and path name from the command line. Your setup and configuration may vary from this, but the basic idea here is to receive mail, exit and toss the mail to the message base, run OT, link or import if that's what you usually do, and finally reload the mailer. In my case above, TosScan always leaves the file "import.xyz" behind after it tosses new mail to the message base, so I have used this as my "trigger" to tell me if I need to run OT. Likewise with Tsutil Link. Even if you have to run OT "blindly" without knowing if new mail has been tossed or not, it shouldn't take more than a few seconds or so for OT to scan the message base and do it's work. You can do something similar after each caller logs off, or whenever you feel it might be a good idea to run OT. You may have several questionable users that you want to monitor, and this would be one way to check their messages before they go anywhere or before they're seen by anyone. You could have OT automatically scan for messages from certain users, and move them to a private "holding area" for further review before processing them. A Few Final Notes Regarding OffTopic How you use OffTopic is of course your own business. My initial thought in writing OT was to "weed out" some of the excess threads and topics in various echo areas I read. Many of these areas have a daily flow in excess of 100 messages, which quickly becomes difficult to read and keep up with on a daily basis if one tries to read everything. Some threads are of no interest to me, and since they recur consistently, week after week, I let OT remove them automatically, which helps cut down the amount of mail I have to wade thru here. After I began writing OT, it quickly became apparent that a few other options would be useful in some situations. And as OT developed further, I kept seeing more and more potential uses for it which I am sure many others may see also. It is not my intention to tell anyone how to use OffTopic, so it's entirely up to you. I have included an idea here and there mainly to illustrate several potential uses, not to dictate how it's used. As far as I know, OffTopic cannot be used in any harmful way. OffTopic is a very personal utility for the Sysop, and one which will hopefully make life a lot easier in many ways. OffTopic has the potential to assist the Sysop in some areas which were previously very difficult to say the least. Other Miscellaneous Pieces Of Info OffTopic will display what it's doing most of the time. This is mostly to let you know what's going on, and that something is happening. OffTopic will also report how many messages it has deleted after it's done, or it will alternatively tell you that no off-topic messages were found. If you are running OT unattended, using the -l option will also log this summary info to OT.LOG. OffTopic does not yet support any kind of message base locking scheme, and as such, should be used with caution within a multi-node or multi-tasking environment. I will be incorporating Andrew Milner's locking scheme in future releases of this program, however, at this time, I would advise great caution in this area. It's best to run OT while no other program is accessing the message base files. Credits I would like to give my special thanks to Basil Groman on Fidonet 1:284/100 for his ongoing and consistent support and help in testing many of my programs. Without his help and insight, these projects would have been much more difficult. Thanks Basil.. And of course, in case there is anyone out there who doesn't already know... FrontDoor and TosScan are copyrighted material of Joaquim H. Homrighausen, and RemoteAccess is copyrighted material of Andrew Milner and Continental Software. The Grand Finale Well, that's about it for now. This is version 1.00 of OffTopic, and as such, I would appreciate hearing from you regarding any bugs or problems you encounter while using OT. Comments, suggestions, and other ideas are also welcome. Complaints and other nonsense will be considered OffTopic. :) I am reachable via Netmail and also on the BBS at the address listed below. I also read the RA_UTIL echo and FDECHO fairly regularly at this time, however, it is usually preferable to use Netmail or the BBS for any extended questions, comments or bug reports relating to OffTopic. Thanks for your interest and I hope you find OffTopic easy to use and useful on your system. Ken Doebler 07/27/91 The Software Resource Mail Development Headquarters Fidonet Address 1:102/330 Torrance, California USA (213) 214-2018 24 Hours A Day 2400 bps <end of document>