Crawly Crypt Collection 1/crawlyvol1.bin/bbs/citadel2/archive.doc

Text File | 1989-12-01 | 4KB | 74 lines

Archive Feature (available as of Commands version 29.101 86Aug02)

   An interest has been expressed recently in giving Citadel the ability to
automatically maintain, in some way, a record of conversations that are
held.  This has been motivated by the CitaBook project, story-telling, and
other subjects that have, for one reason or another, given the system
operator reason to pause, think, and wish to save those messages in a far
more permanent form than as a C-86 message, which will inevitably scroll.

   The first attempt at such an ability was the EXTRACT utility.  Crappily
written, an awkward user interface, and being an independent utility
all contributed to it being spat upon by all who used it (including the
author).

   The second attempt, which is itself recent as of this date, was essentially
the integration of EXTRACT into CTDL.EXE.  This feature was restricted to
aides at the sysConsole, and was accessed in a way similar to the manner
in which messages are deleted.    The aide would hit <P>ause during the printout
of the message to be extracted.  Then the aide would hit J, for Journal, to
restart the message (to Delete a message, the aide would hit D).  At the
end of the message, Citadel would ask for the file to store the message under.
This is (I think) a very useful ability, and seems to work well.

   Still, it boils down to a lot of manual labor; it's only convenient for
single messages.  What if the sysop wants to record an entire room on disk, on
an ongoing basis?

   Therefore, Citadel now has the ability to maintain just such a textfile
on disk. Called (for the time being) the Archive feature, it allows the sysop
to designate virtually any room to be an Archive room.    Such a room then
will have a filename associated with it.  Within the file of that name, each
and every message that is entered into that room will also be recorded in
MS-DOS textfile format.

 PROCEDURE:
   The procedure to designate a room as Archive is to simply edit the room
(note that this automatically excludes Aide>, Mail>, and the baseRoom as
Archive rooms).  One of the questions that you will encounter will concern
Archive status of the room. If you answer yes, the system will do one of two
things:

 A) If the room was not an Archive room before, it'll ask for a filename to
associate with the room.
 B) If it was already an Archive room, it'll just assume that the filename
should remain the same, and not bother you further about Archive stuff.

   If it does ask for filename, the filename that you should type in can be
located anywhere in the system that you desire.  Once you have typed it
in, Citadel will attempt to archive all the messages that are currently in
the room (message numbers will be spewed out at this point to reassure you
that there is* method in Citadel's madness).

   An Archive room puts each new message into the Archive file when it is
initially entered into the room (note that Aide actions, such as deleting
the message later, does not affect the Archive file).

 CONSIDERATIONS:
   This feature is recommended only for high-performance systems, particularly
those with fairly fast hard disks, since each message is, in effect, saved
twice.    Furthermore, since active rooms will result in very fast file growth,
close tabs should be kept on disk free space by the sysop.

 NOTES:
   This is all Torkildson's fault.
   The filenames are stored in the new .SYS file CTDLARCH.SYS file.  This file
is unique in the respect that it is a human readable text file. Each Archive
room on the system will have an entry in this file, in the following format:

 <room#><space><full-filespec>

   Thus, if the sysop wants to modify what file to store the Archive data in
without going through the hassle of editing the room twice (see above), s/he
can whip out their handy-dandy text editor, and fix it right then and there.