synchro.net/synchro.net.tar/synchro.net/modem.madness/SMMPROG/TPASM95.ZIP/BETA.DOC

Text File | 1993-06-01 | 5.4 KB | 91 lines

Thank-you for trying the v0.95 Beta version of the TPA System Manager.

There has been the need for a program to  move conferences around that is
TPA aware, so I am releasing  TPASM prior to finishing all the Bells &
Whistles.  This will also allow me to get feed back as to what additional
features or changes should be made prior to releasing the full version.

Also, in order for TPASM to do it's designed job of managing TPA's,  I need
feed back from Door and Utility  Authors as to what type of structures need
to be edited by  TPASM and create a control  file for the various programs.
Program Author's will be able to create their own control files in a future
release and will be encouraged to include TPASM with their own programs and
a special .KEY file will be available to them for that purpose.   This will
free them up  to concentrate on the  features of their Door  or Utility and
not  on having to manage  the editing of  Users data  by writing  their own
System Manager. They will be able to include a .KEY file with their program
to allow the Sysop to edit the  TPA data for their program for only  $1 per
registered program.   If the Sysop has already registered  TPASM this  .KEY
file will not be required.

Limitations of this Beta Release:
---------------------------------

1. There aren't any TPA control files so you will not be able to view or edit
   TPA info although you can select the function and display Users records to
   try out  the features.  Most of the record features of  PCBSM are included
   (like Jump, User Name Find  (including 'sound alike') and a  special ALT-N
   to jump to the Next Active (non-blank) TPA record.) For PCBoard 15.0 users
   I have included TPA definition files for the New PCBoard PSA additions.

2. Editing of the TPA control file is not implemented in this release.


3. Due to string memory limitations and Data Segment limitations of QuickBasic
   the largest string that can be handled is 30k.  This means that to move the
   conferences around the flags will be no problem.  PCBoard's limit of 65,535
   conferences would require a string of 8,192.

   The Last message pointers though would require a string 262,144 long. The
   limit for the number of conferences would thus be  8,192 which  should be
   enough for now.  The TPA area though could be a problem.  To determine if
   the  program  will choke,  divide  32768 by  the number of  DYNAMIC bytes
   required by any single TPA installed. If the number of conferences exceeds
   this number, then TPASM will not be able to function.

   Future versions of TPASM will overcome this limit.

Well, I never heard anything from anyone,  so I don't know  if anyone tried
the program.  I found several  problems with larger  number of conferences.
I have changed the routines to allow for huge arrays and those problems are
now gone.  My own BBS only had 40 conferences and everything checked out. I
tried  to test the program  under larger  conference numbers,  but ran into
problems creating the test files with PCBSM.  I reduced a copy of the Users
file down to 40 users and  setup 4096 confernces to  test things out and it
now works fine. I had origionally read CNAMES.@@@ and loaded the conference
names into  strings to speed  up the  display of the  conference name  when
doing  conference  selections for swapping,  rather than read the name from
the disk each time.  Unfortunately, that ate up memory quickly when you had
a large number of conferences. I have now worked around that by storing the
names in far memory. I also goofed up on reading the USERSYS.DOC and didn't
notice that the extended conferences (40+) have the Message Pointers stored
as LONG Integers  while the first  40 conferences are stored as  MBF Single
precision numbers.  I saw they were all four byte entries  and just swapped
them, which of course was inappropriate.  I have fixed that and now convert
the first  40 conferences to  LONG Integers after  reading them into memory
before the swaps and convert them back on the way back out.

Still not much word from anyone after 0.91 Beta, but the problem I did hear
about was a problem reading PCBOARD.DAT and resulting in Zero conferences
reported for PCBOARD.DAT. This was due to an error when skipping over lines
that were not needed. If the line contained a comma, it was not skipped, but
thru the line count off as it counted as 2 or more lines. This has been fixed
and I added conference copying and moving features to the program.

Got a problem report with a 16 conference setup. I was so intent on testing
with my 40 conferences, then 256, then 4096, that I forgot to test with less
than 40 conferences. The program checked the USERS.INF file for extended
conferences and was designed to report an error and stop if the number there
did not agree with the PCBOARD.DAT number (- 39). Of course with less than
40 conferences the test failed so I reported an error when there wasn't one.
Also I noticed while fixing that problem, that I had deisgned it to report
NO TPA's installed and stop which wasn't necessary (or desirable) so I also
removed that test. I remember now placing it in there as there was no reason
to run a TPA editor when there are no TPA's installed, but now that this has
also become a conference mover, you need to be able to move conferences even
without TPA's.

If you found you couldn't get the program to work at all in 0.90 Beta, give
it another try and you should see it working now.