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Contents Disclaimer ...................................................1 What Is Febbs? ...............................................2 Features .....................................................3 How To Get Started ...........................................4 Setup ........................................................5 Bbs System .................................................5 General Items .............................................5 Flag Toggle ...............................................10 Colours ...................................................12 The Filelists .............................................12 Areas To List .............................................16 Files To Ignore ...........................................17 External Support Programs .................................17 The External Viewer's .....................................18 The Archive Programs ......................................19 The External Utilities ....................................20 The Text "Macros" .........................................20 Keyboard Setup ............................................20 Entering The Registration Code ............................21 Compile Helpfile ..........................................21 Editing The Control Files .................................21 Save The Changes ..........................................22 Editor ......................................................23 How To Edit Your Files.Bbs ................................23 How To Read The Function Part Of The Manual ...............23 The Functions That Can Be Used Inside The Editor ..........25 Add Avatar colour codes ................................25 Add character literal ..................................25 Add download Counter as specified in setup .............25 Add GIF information to description .....................25 Adopt Missing Files to Files.Bbs .......................26 Binary Viewer ..........................................26 Copy description from line Above .......................26 Copy tagged Lines/Files to different Area ..............26 Copy Files descriptions Anywhere and without area ....27 change ........................................... Copy Line ..............................................28 Display Files.Bbs as the BBS would .....................28 Display the External support programs ..................28 DOS Shell ..............................................28 External Archive Viewer ................................28 External GIF Viewer ....................................29 Global Unmark of tagged Lines ..........................29 Hurl tagged Lines/Files to different Area ..............29 Hurl Files descriptions Anywhere and without area ....29 change ........................................... Import FILE_ID.DIZ .....................................29 Indent comment to position specified in the setup ......30 Kill All tagged Lines / Files ..........................30 Look Inside Archive / GIF information ..................30 Memory Status ..........................................31 Menu in editor .........................................31 Move Line ..............................................32 Move tagged Lines inside editor ........................32 Remove Both line and File ..............................32 Remove File but leave description in Files.Bbs .........32 Remove missing files from Files.Bbs ....................32 Rename File on Current line ............................33 Save current Files.Bbs ................................33 Search for Filename ....................................33 Search again ...........................................33 Sort Block .............................................34 Show text "macros" .....................................34 Show ANSI or AVATAR file ...............................34 Strip Download counter .................................34 Switch Area ............................................34 Tag all missing files ..................................35 Tag dupe entries in current files.bbs ..................35 Tag files older then date ..............................35 Tag line for later action ..............................35 Tagged files status ....................................35 Text viewer ............................................35 Text "macros" as defined in the setup ..................36 Toggle display file-size / -date on statusline .........36 Touch file on current line .............................36 Touch all tagged files .................................36 Xpress way out of editor ...............................36 Avatar Control Codes ........................................37 Support Files ...............................................38 HEADTEXT.FEB ...........................................38 HURLTEMP.FEB ..........................................38 TAGTEMP.FEB ............................................38 ERROR.FEB ..............................................38 IMPORT.FEB .............................................38 Limitations Of Febbs ........................................39 Support Programs ............................................39 FBA ....................................................39 Runtime Errors ..............................................39 The Filelists ...............................................40 Avatar Codes ..............................................40 General Items .............................................40 The Directory List ........................................40 When, How And Where? ......................................41 Headers And Footers .......................................42 Area Header ...............................................42 Sample Batch File .........................................43 Different Filelists .......................................43 Extended Descriptions .....................................43 Memory Swapping .............................................44 Febbs Vs Viruses And Exe Compressors ........................46 The Overlay Buffer And Slow Machines ........................47 Commandline Parameters ......................................48 Multitaskers And Share ......................................49 The Future ..................................................50 Support ......................................................51 Copyright, Trademarks .......................................52 Disclaimer The FEBBS-Package is subject to the following licence terms and conditions. The FEBBS-package is supplied as it is. The author disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties 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 the FEBBS-package. The FEBBS-package is a "shareware program" and is provided at no charge to the user for evaluation. Feel free to share it with your friends, but please do not give it away altered or as part of another system. The essence of "user-supported" software is to provide personal computer users with quality software without high prices, and yet to provide incentive for programmers to continue to develop new products. The FEBBS-package, all programs, the documentation and support files are copyrighted 1991-1994 by Patrik Sjoberg. All rights are reserved. You may copy this package for backup purposes. You may also copy and share unmodified copies of the whole package, providing that the copyright notice is reproduced and included on all copies. You may not sell the product for a fee and/or distribute the product along with other products without written permission, nor may you modify or remove the Copyright Notices from the programs or the documentation files. User clubs, if they are NOT commercial, are allowed to ask a small amount of money for distribution and storage when they want to share this package among their members. It is forbidden to modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, and/or disassemble the software in the FEBBS-package. Patching the medium at places that carry the software is seen as a program change and is also forbidden. Non-commercial users can get a licence for the usage up to this release of the FEBBS-package for a small amount of money. Commercial usage of FEBBS will cost somewhat more. Also, a so called 'closed' bulletin board system (a system where the user must pay direct to the SysOp to get full access) has to pay more than a Non-commercial user. Usage of the Febbs-Package on a BBS with three lines or more is considered as 'closed BBS' usage also. Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 1 What is FEBBS? Febbs is a file area manager for your bulletin board system, BBS. It will help you keep your file areas in shape and create your daily filelists. How often have you not edited those files.bbs files? How many times have you not been "running" around in your directory tree just to get to each of them? Copying files cross drives just to forget to move descriptions as well. This agony is all over with Febbs. Just sit tight and edit every one of the files.bbs files from a directory of your choice. No more changing directories and unloading/reloading your editor. Move files and descriptions easily between areas. Look inside your archived files to find out what is in them, create your daily filelists and statistical files and much more... Febbs will save you, the busy system operator, countless of hours as you would have spent maintaining the file area part of your system. It is a small investment that will repay itself with a couple of weeks. If You value Your own time in any way. 2 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs Features Support for RemoteAccess 1.11 / Maximus 2.00 / Tubbs 1.00Beta / QuickBbs 2.6x to 2.76 / SuperBbs1.15 / Proboard 2.00 Edit all your files.bbs files from one spot. Full screen editor with standard edit commands. Fully user definable keys for almost all functions. Enter Avatar / control codes within the editor. Supports' SAA/CUA in program design. Adopt missing files to files.bbs. Add GIF info to the description automatically when adopting files. Add GIF and JPEG resolution easily to files already in your descriptions. Create Your daily lists. Create overview of all Your areas ASCII/ANSI/AVATAR flavour. Create a list over frequable directories for Your Mailer. Create a list over the 50 most downloaded files. ASCII/ANSI/AVATAR flavour Strip Avatar codes from filelists. Tag missing files that exist in Files.Bbs. Tag dupe entries in Files.Bbs. Hurl/copy files to other areas. Description moved as well. When hurling/copying place the hurled/copied files at position you like in the new Area, or if you wish hurl without changing area. Hurl files to any directory you wish. Sort tagged blocks inside editor. Look inside all major archives and at files inside archives. Look at GIF, JPEG files resolution. DOSshell with built in swap to EMS, XMS or Disk. Support for internal viewers of archives, text and binary Files Support for external viewers of archives, text files, binary files and GIF files. Delete missing files from Files.Bbs Search for files local and if not found local, global. Rename files. Slots for any external support program. And more ... Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 3 How to get Started Unpack the Archived file containing FEBBS. Read all the documentation files contained in the Archive. Put FEBBS in a directory you fancy. Fire up FEPPLA, the Febbs setup utility. Feppla will now create a file called FEBBS.CTL. This file contains the setup info needed for FEBBS. If you are upgrading from a version older than 1.00 of FEBBS then you must delete the old FEBBS.CTL and then redo the setup. And if you are upgrading from version 1.80 to 1.9x then you simply run FEPPLA and save the configuration file to upgrade to the new format. If you wish to create different setup files for different occasions just add the switch /S:<Name> to the commandline and the configuration file <name> will be used instead. Just remember to do the same with Febbs when you wish to use it later. Why would You want a different Setup? Imagine that You wish to create different lists for different areas. Lets say you have One List containing PC programs and one containing Amiga programs. Then in your batchfile simply put the following commands: FEBBS N F : This one uses standard config Febbs.ctl FEBBS N F /S:Amiga.Ctl : This one uses the Non Standard Amiga.Ctl This way you can create different filelists. Just remember to name them differently in the configurations so that they do not use the same name when creating the lists and thereby overwrite each other. You can read more about the filelists later on in this document. 4 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs Setup The configuration program is a very essential part of the Febbs-package. If Febbs is not set up properly it will not work properly either. So it is essential that you take your time and walk through the whole set up program. Through out the setup program you can always press F1 for some on-line help. All items, except the most obvious, have on-line help. The setup program also tries to adapt to the SAA/CUA (Common User Interface) interface that most new programs use nowadays. That means that F1 will always be help and save will always be F2. Time to fire up Feppla - The setup utility for the Febbs-package. BBS System BBS type What type of BBS Software do you use? RemoteAccess, Maximus, Tubbs, QuickBBS, Proboard or SuperBBS? This menu option let you tell Febbswhat area files it should be looking for. Either Config.Ra/Files.Ra for Remote Access, Area.Dat for Maximus, Axaareas.dat for Tubbs, FlSearch.Ctl for QuickBBS 2.6x or FilCfg.Dat for QuickBBS 2.7x. Or Flsearch.Bbs for SuperBBS. General Items Path to BBS files This is where your area files reside. That Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 5 is where your Config.Ra/Files.Ra, Area.Dat, Axaareas.Dat, SystemXX.Dat, FlSearch.Ctl, FileCfg.Dat or Flserach.Bbs resides. (Depending on if your BBS software is Remote Access, Maximus, Tubbs, Opus, QuickBbs or SuperBbs). Febbs can handle up to 300 areas in Your BBS. Most of the BBS packages can't handle any more either. Adopted files. This is the comment that will be added to files adopted to Files.Bbs by Febbs. Febbs can handle one meta string in the adoption description. This meta string is ~D (tilde D) and it will insert today's date. (A meta string is a small string that when Febbs finds it he will replace it with something more relevant). An adopted file would look like this after it has been adopted if You had entered '[0] (v0.00)' in the setup. ANYFILE.ZIP [0] (v0.00) Ordinary ZIPfile Comment chosen by You. Fig. 2. Adopted GIF files This is the comment that will be added to adopted GIF and JPEG files. It works the same way as the above adopt function. But it also honours the ~G meta (GIF information) string also the ~D meta string. If You had entered '[0] ~G Adopted : ~D' in the setup and the file was adopted on the first of December the adopted GIF would get the following description. The date style is of course configurable (later in this document). Ordinary GIF file. ANYFILE.GIF [0] (640*480*256) Adopted : 91-12-01 Resulting description. Fig. 3. The download counter This is used when you when you add the DL counter manually inside the editor. That is if you use any. Febbs does NOT do any download counting of its own. You must install another third part utility to 6 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs handle the counters. Febbs only reads them when creating the list of most downloaded files. Date style To be able to make the whole world happy the date style is configurable. Choose the style you fancy and all lists and all dates inside the editor will look like that. Or let Febbs figure it out from what You normally use in Your daily DOS environment. Name of swap file This option is there to let you place the Swapfile that Febbs creates when swapping to execute an external program or just shelling to DOS on a RAM disk or maybe a disk that is fast to speed up the Swapping. Febbs has the ability to Swap most of itself out of memory when accessing external programs or just Shelling to DOS. If you have EMS or XMS memory then of course it doesn't matter what you write on this line since no physical swap file is generated. All swapping is done via memory. This is also a whole lot faster. Read more about swapping in the "Memory swapping" section of this manual. Indent value This is how many spaces that Febbs will pad to the left of the description when you press <TAB> inside the editor. Read more about the function in the "How to edit Your Files.Bbs" section of this manual. Logfile When you are running Febbs in batchmode to create your daily filelists Febbs can keep a log file of what has happened during this unattended event. This is good if you wake up one morning to find that your nightly events didn't work as you thought they would. I have tried to keep the log file as trimmed as possible so that it won't grow to much. Here You specify what to call the log file and where to place it. GIF information When adopting GIF files or when using the "Add GIF information" function Febbs will add the HEIGHT, WIDTH and PALETTE of the GIF image. This is Your opportunity to design the style of this information. You Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 7 can use three meta strings to design the style of the information. The default is (~W*~H*~P). That is an ordinary SuperVGA image would look like this (640*480*256). If you wish to have another style use the following meta-strings and create your own inf. style. ~W = Width of GIF Image. ~H = Height of GIF Image. ~P = Number of Colours in GIF Image. Where ~ is a Tilde (#126). JPEG information When adopting JPEG files or when using the "Add GIF/JPEG information" function Febbs will add the HEIGHT and WIDTH of the JPEG image. This is your opportunity to design the style of this information. You can use two meta strings to design the style of the information. The default is (~W*~H). That is an ordinary SuperVGA image would look like this (640*480). If you wish to have another style use the following meta-strings and create your own inf. style. ~W = Width of JPEG Image. ~H = Height of JPEG Image. Where ~ is a Tilde (#126). Temporary directory When extracting files from archives or performing other functions Febbs might need to put some temporary files somewhere. This is where You tell Febbs to store those files. This directory that You specify here will not be erased when Febbs is done so Febbs can share this directory with other programs that also needs a temporary directory. Overlay memory To save some conventional memory Febbs will not load all of its code into memory at once rather the program will when it needs a part of itself load that particular part into memory. This means that Febbs needs to access its own code 8 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs from time to time. And to speed up this access Febbs can put its code in EMS or XMS memory to speed up this access. For systems without EMS and XMS Febbs can read the code from disk when needed. This is where you tell Febbs where to put its overlay part of the code. If you can then choose XMS as the place where to put the overlays since this memory is the fastest. Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 9 Flag toggle Exploding Windows Do you wish to use Exploding windows when inside Febbs? Just some aesthetic stuffs, but nice for the Eye. Display fileinfo Febbs can show the date and size of the file on the line that the cursor is on then. The size and date will be displayed on the statusline. This option sets the default start value for this option. This can later be toggled ON / OFF from inside the editor. Backup Files Do you wish to keep BAK files of your Files.Bbs. That is Files.Bak of every saved Files.Bbs or not. FEBBS always creates a BAK file when saving. This option only chooses whether or not to delete that Bak file after completed save of the current Files.Bbs. This option has no effect when you use Remote Access 1.00 new CD-Rom support since all Files.Bbs resides in the same directory and is called the same except the extension. So when Febbs renames the current Files.Bbs to Files.Bak it will overwrite the last Files.Bak that was in the same directory. Noise when Explode This will let you choose whether or not to use some sound effects when exploding the windows onto the screen. This flag has absolutely no meaning if the Exploding windows option is set to OFF. Swap Swap out of memory when Shelling is a very powerful feature that Febbs has that allows almost any program to be run in a DOS Shell from inside Febbs. Here you decide if you wish to use this feature. On an old machine with little memory and a slow disk it can be painfully slow to swap out Febbs. So if you know that you will never use any large programs (The PAK and ARJ archivers are considered large programs) you may turn this feature off. Columns in area list When choosing area from the File Area pick list, you can select how many columns that you wish to have displayed on the screen simultaneously. Possible value for this item is 1-3. 10 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs Delay when explode When Exploding windows is set to true then this item also effects the way this is displayed. You can fine tune the way you wish your Windows to Explode. This is all depending on how fast machine you have got. So try what settings you prefer on your machine. In area list from start Mostly you wish to end in the Area Pick List when you fire up Febbs. Set this option to ON and Febbs will push an enter into the keyboard buffer and by that leaving you in the Area Pick List when you enter Febbs. This option has only been tested on AT machines and upwards. It may not work on older machines. Virus check If you rest assure that no virus will ever get near your machine You may want turn of the Virus check at the start up of Febbs. Video mode This option will let you choose if you wish to run Febbs in a higher line mode then 25 rows. This only works on EGA/VGA adapters and monitors. Febbs also supports other modes of Screen length as long as you do not shell to DOS and reset the screen to an other mode. If you do that you are on your own! Febbs will when exiting after completed task try to restore the screen mode to what it was before you entered Febbs. If You wish to run Febbs in any non standard video mode be sure to set this option to AUTO then Febbs will not set the vidoemode upon execution rather simply adopt to the mode You have when You start Febbs. Pause after DOS shell You may configure if you want Febbs to pause before returning from a shell to let you see the last screen of the program that you shelled to. This function however does not effect the "look inside archives" function. Empty lines in files.bbs This option lets You tell Febbs how many empty lines You wish to have last in the Files.Bbs file when saving it. Fast move When hurling (moving) files Febbs can move Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 11 files fast by simply renaming the files. This works well as long as You are on the same drive or You rename across substituted or assigned drives. But this does not work to well on some LANs. So if You do not use the DOS commands SUBST or ASSIGN i suggest that You have this switch set to NO to prevent any problems. Long areanumbers You can, as Maximus 2.00 sysop, choose if You want to use the long areanumbers or if You want to stay with the old three character style. This switch has no effect in any other mode then Maximus 2 mode. Colours After this it's time to be creative. Choose Colours, This is your change to get seasick. Have Fun. If you wish to temporarily use Febbs on a monochrome monitor and you have no wish to change the setup then fire up Febbs with the parameter /M. C:\> FEBBS /M Will temporarily put Febbs in a monochrome mode. The Filelists Total List This is the name of the global filelist that will be created for you when you either in batchmode (see later in this document) or from the menu order a filelist. News List The same as the above is valid for Newslist. Although this is a list of New files the "Days for News list" number of days. How old Enter how old files that should be included in the list of new files. Error date Febbs has the ability to "fix" bad dates when creating lists. If a date is found to be ahead of the current date Febbs will take action and add the number of days that is found in the "Error Date handling" field. If you specify a negative value larger then the number of days of files to include in the news list you will no 12 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs longer have these files showing up in the list of new files. This option is handy when You have a CD-ROM with some bad dates on it. Condensed list This list is a mix between the News list and the Total list. All files are included just like the Total list but only the names and the descriptions after the names. Any descriptions between two files will be omitted. Areas dir list This is a list containing the directories of all your areas that is included in the filelist (and the areas that are tagged for a password). This is to create a directory over Frequable directories for your mailer. See the list part of this manual for more information. Style of areas dir list Febbs supports two styles of Areas DIR list. The styles supported are called FrontDoor and Binkley. The names are taken from then both programs that uses the different types of list. When in FrontDoor mode Febbs will write each line in the following Style : C:\FILES\FEBBS and when in Binkley mode it will write the following : C:\FILES\FEBBS\*.* Missing files If a file is Missing this will be displayed instead of Date and Size in the filelist. (or if a file has Zero length). Overview of areas The overview list is a little overview of all your areas. Nothing fancy but it still an overview. ASCII Version Overview ANSI This is the ANSI version of the area overview list. Maybe nice to have on display in your BBS so that all those twit Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 13 users will see how much files there really are and upload something (for a change) to get hold of the other areas. Overview Avatar Avatar version of the area overview list. The same list as the above but with Avatar colour codes instead of ANSI colour codes. Best download lists When creating the Total filelist Febbs can also look at what files that have been downloaded most. Nice to have on-line to show your users what files that are the most popular. You can create both an ASCII,ANSI and AVATAR version of this list. The 50 most downloaded files on your system can be placed in this list. For this to work you have to have a program that maintains download counters in your files.bbs. NICENICE.GIF [10] (640*480*256) Really nice picture. The part of the description with the digits 10 is the download counter. And it has to start at position 14 in your Files.Bbs. But if it doesn't Febbs will adjust this for You at runtime. Both when creating lists in batchmode and when loading a Files.Bbs for editing. Febbs can handle Download counters of a variety of styles. [](){}<>0123456789 are all valid as download counters. Note that also just numbers works. NICENICE.GIF 10 (640*480*256) Really nice picture. The list is created when you run a total list and you have named the ASCII, ANSI or AVATAR versions in the Setup. Febbs does NOT do any download counting on its own. You must use another program to maintain your download counters. Febbs simply use them when it creates this list. Number of items You can decide how many items you wish to appear in the "Best Download" list. Values between five and 50 are valid. 14 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs Messages to the users The message that appears under the head in the Filelist is configurable. The two messages that appear is linked with the areas that you tag as password areas (see below) and those that you don't. It doesn't have to be solely for file request that you can use these little messages. It works just as well if you just want to inform that this area is only for registered users or something like that. Header of total list This option let You specify if You want to have a header of the total list. Perhaps a textlogo of some description about the contents of the list. While adding the headers Febbs can add some information when the list was created and how old files that are marked as new. There are two meta strings for this information. ~D = The current date ~N = How old files that are marked as new are These meta strings can be used in all header files. Header of news list This option let You specify if You want to have a header of the list of new files. Perhaps a textlogo of some description about the contents of the list telling the user how old files are included or something like that. Footer of total list This option let You specify if You want to have a footer of the total list of files. Perhaps the ASCII version of the area overview. Or just some advertisement about You and Your system. Footer of news list This option let You specify if You want to have a footer of the list of new files. Perhaps the ASCII version of the area overview. Or just some advertisement about You and Your system. Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 15 Area header The header over each file area in the filelists are configurable. The format of the header control file is described in the filelist part of this manual. If you want to edit the file from this position in the setup program simply press F4 and the file will be loaded into the internal editor of Feppla. Missing file report Febbs can output a simple report of all files missing or of zero length. If a file is listed twice or more times in a files.bbs file, a duplicate, the duplicate will also be listed in this report. Areas to list Areas to list This item will bring up a list of all the areas specified in your areafile(s). Here you tag which areas that will be included in the lists, to have the password string under the header or to be included in the list of frequable directories for Your mailer. To toggle the different selections ON/OFF use the following keys : L Toggle include in lists. P Toggle password string. F Toggle include in list of directories. Include in lists This option selects whether or not this area should be included in all the lists that Febbs can produce. The Password areas The Password item will let you tag those areas that needs a password to be accessed. Either for file request (via Your mailer) or on-line. This will put the text that You already have specified above in the list setup under the header of the filelists. If an area is tagged then the text from the "Password Freq. message" will be put under the header and if not tagged then the "Freq. Possible message" will be put there instead. And as mentioned above you can put any message 16 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs that you find suitable there. There is no need for it to be a password message. Directory list Febbs can create a list of directories that Your areas reside in. This option toggles whether or not to include this area or not in this list. Files to ignore You can define up to 10 filenames that You want Febbs to ignore when adopting files and in other functions. This has the advantage that if You have any files needed by Your BBS that Febbs is not aware about then You can teach Febbs to become aware that these files are system files. From start Febbs is aware of all .BAK and .BBS files. External support programs All external programs can be accessed via the DOS Path. If a program is in the path then simply write same command in the configuration as you would from the DOS command line. But if not in the path please state full path and name! Ex. D:\PATH\PKUNZIP.EXE. Please read the part about swapping and turn it on if you are accessing any large programs from inside Febbs. Febbs interacts nicely with external support programs. These programs can both be anything you like and they are often used to either replace or enhance some of Febbs built in features. To be able to pass commands to the external programs Febbs uses so called meta strings. The following meta strings are available on the command lines: ~C Current directory ~P Path and Name of Current files.bbs ~N Name and full path to file on current line ~@ Text list containing full names of all tagged files in area ~D The description of the file on the current line. ~A Areaname of current area. ~F Filename only (no path). The first character in the meta strings is a so called tilde (#126). The meta strings can occur more than once on the same line. Ex1. Febbs has been executed from C:\FEBBS. And the commandline in the setup for Your external program looks like this : Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 17 MTA /@~@ If You execute this, the commandline would expand to : MTA /@C:\FEBBS\FBTAGG.TMP The FBTAGG.TMP file is the file where Febbs puts the list of all tagged files in the editor. Make Them Anything (MTA) is an Archive converter by Rob Van.Hoeven Ex2. If your standing on a line looking like this: FENRIR.GIF Nice Picture of Your SysOp. And the commandline in the setup looked like this : HATCH /cTIC.CFG /f~N /d~D Then his would expand to : HATCH /cTIC.CFG /fFENRIR.GIF /dNice Picture of Your SysOp. Allowing you to easily hatch files into different File echos. Hatch is a part of the FileEcho package called TICK by Barry Geller. The external viewer's The external viewers are accessed like this : If You have specified an external viewer then that one will be loaded when you press the appropriate key (see "How to edit your files.bbs" later in this manual). It will be loaded with a commandline that is translated from what you have written in the setup. Se the example above. If no viewer has been specified in the setup then Febbs will use the built in viewer. This goes for all viewers except the GIF viewer. 18 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs Febbs supports the following types of viewers : Archive viewer. Text file viewer. Binary file viewer. GIF viewer. ANSI viewer. Avatar viewer. The Archive programs Febbs has the ability to look inside all major archive types to look at the files that reside inside the archives. What Febbs can't do is to unpack a file inside an archive that you wish to look at. This is where the external archive programs comes in. If you do not want to look at files inside archives then you won't have to configure any archive programs. There is no no no need for any parameters for the arc programs. Febbs will, when executing them, supply the needed parameters. Febbs supports the ability to look at files inside the following archive types. Archive Type Version SFX PKZIP 2.04g Yes LHA 2.13 Yes LHArc 1.13 Yes AR 0.20 Yes LARC 3.30 Yes Hyper 2.50 ARC 6.02 PAK 2.51 PKPak 3.61 ARJ 2.39 Yes SQZ 1.08.3 Yes ZOO 2.xx Please note that LHA 2.13 is used to unpack LHarc 1.13, AR 0.20 and LArc 3.30 archives. And PAK 2.51 is used to unpack any ARC and PAK files. The archive programs marked with a 'Yes' on the SFX option can Febbs also look inside the so called self extracting archives that these archivers can produce. Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 19 Please, look at the swap option if you intend to use either PAK or ARJ since both packers require much memory to operate properly. If you are missing an archive type then please let us know. And if you supply us with the technical information about archives we probably can add that archive type in a later release. The external utilities There are five slots for external support programs. These programs can be anything you like. Just like all the other external programs these can be accessed via the DOS path. And if not in the path please supply full path name. All programs can use the same meta strings as the other external programs. The Text "macros" Macros Often used text strings can be entered here to speed up editing of Your Files.Bbs files. These texts will be inserted at cursor position inside the editor. That is if you have pressed the appropriate "HotKeys". Febbs does not support any real macros. That is recording of keyboard strokes. Keyboard setup Keyboard redefinition All key assignments of functions in Febbs can be defined by the user on which keys he would like them. This has the advantage that You can streamline Febbs into Your computer environment. This also effects the manual that will not refer to functions via their key assignments rather their functions. All functions can have to key sequences that assigned to them. But You do not have to assign more then one if You do not wish. To assign a key simply place the cursor on the key You wish to reassign and press <ENTER>. A small box will pop up and then You press the key You want to assign to the function. If the key sequence is already occupied, You will be notified. To remove an assignment press <ENTER> and 20 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs then press <BACKSPACE> to remove the assigned key sequence. Entering the registration code Keynumber. If you decide to use Febbs after the trial period you must register and this is where you enter the registration info after you have received your keynumber. Your Name. Your name must be exactly as you spelled it in the registration form and remember that it is case sensitive. BBS Name. The name of your BBS is the background that is used in Febbs. This one can be changed after registration without the need of a new keynumber. General info. Febbs has a dual key system. That is it has both a key You enter above and a file on disk that contains Your registration information. When You register You will therefore be forced to both enter a code given to You in the setup and make sure the keyfile (named FEBBS.KEY) resides in the same directory as FEBBS.EXE. Compile helpfile Compile. When You have made changes to Your key assignments You will most likely be wanting to update the help in Febbs to reflect Your new key assignments. To do this You have to have the file called FEBBS.TXT in the same directory as Feppla-The setup program. FEBBS.TXT is the source code of the binary helpfile that Febbs uses. When You select "Compile" in the menu, Feppla will first create a temporary file which it inserts all Your key assignments in and then it will compile the binary helpfile from this temporary file. It is beyond the scope of this manual to describe how to program the helpfile. But if You are interested contact FenrisUlven Data to receive the needed information. Editing the control files Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 21 The area header This option You choose to edit the area header control file. The file has been named already under the list setup. Total list header This is the top header of the total list and the condensed list. And as with all the other files they have been named under the list setup. Total list footer The footer of the total and condensed list. News list header The header of the list of new files. News list footer The footer of the list of new files. Files.bbs creation When a files.bbs file is created this file is used as a template for the files.bbs file. If you want some text at the top of every new files.bbs file then this is the place to put it. Edit any textfile. Here You can edit any textfile smaller then 64Kb of size. All You have to do is input the full path and name of the file You want to edit. Save the changes Save. You have now reached the final decision. To save or not to save. 22 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs Editor The maintenance menu in Febbs is not much to talk about. And this is the purpose of it. All you have to do is press enter twice to find yourself in the first area. If we look at the choose area list you will see a list of the areas represented in your areafile. From the list presented you can choose an area to work on. Use either your cursor movement keys (PgUp/PgDn/Arrows), the mouse or press a number. If you press a number watch the lower left corner of the window, Press for example 19 <Enter> to be transferred to area no 19. This will greatly improve the speed when choosing area if you are at the bottom of the list and want to go to area one. Then just press "1" and enter. Sometimes, if you wish to go to an area that is in the range one to nine then maybe you need to press <AreaNumber> <Space> so that Febbs understands that you wish to go to area 4 and not to an area in the range 40 to 49. Febbs picklist is showing all area listing info (areas to list, file requestable area and password areas) just as Feppla does. This information is displayed between the areanumber and the areaname. How to Edit Your Files.Bbs When you have chosen an area to edit then you will find yourself inside an "ordinary" ASCII editor with your files.bbs loaded in it. From here it's just plain old boring editing <Smile>. If you are running FEBBS with a BBS package that supports Avatar codes then perhaps you use them in your Files.Bbs to make the lists more interesting. Febbs has no problem with these except the character #13 that is considered as carriage return. But any other codes just enter them in the editor as you did before in your old editor. Or why not use Febbs built in Avatar colour picker. Choose any colour from a nice colour chart and have the appropriate Avatar Colour code added at cursor position. When inside the editor use either the cursor keys or a Microsoft compatible mouse to manoeuvre. Press <F1> for an instant help from anywhere in the editor. How to read the function part of the manual Febbs can let You assign all functions to keys that You prefer. This in return means that there is no easy way to show You in this manual which keys which function is assigned to. Therefor we have decided that only the functions names are used as reference and not the assigned keys sequences. Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 23 But You have all the Key-Function assignments in the available in the Febbs help system. And the Febbs help system can be updated by You when You make changes to the Key-Function assignments. 24 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs The functions that can be used inside the editor Add Avatar colour codes This is an easy way to add some nice Avatar colours to your Files.Bbs. You can choose colour from a colour chart. Press Enter and the Proper Avatar code are inserted at the cursor position. Add character literal Add character literal at cursor position. Execute Character literal and then Any key (or use Alt-Keypad) to add any character to the Files.Bbs. Even if it is occupied by a function usually. Good to have when you adding Avatar codes or some other Control codes that your BBS supports. Some control codes can be added without you using these functions but as more and more control codes are occupied by functions inside the editor it is often easiest to use this one all the time. Add download Counter as specified in setup If you execute add download counter it will be added first to the description. You may specify the style of the counter in the setup. If no counter specified the description will be justified at position 14. A check to see if a DL Counter is already present is performed when you try to add a DL Counter. The Check is very hard to do, due to all the different styles of the DL counter. Hopefully it works satisfactorily most of the time. If You are unable to add a DL counter to a specific line try inserting a few spaces to the description, just so that the check for a download counter is temporarily fooled. Add GIF information to description If you are editing an area that has GIF files in it and you are standing at a line with a GIF file that looks like this ... NICENICE.GIF A Really nice picture. and you execute Add GIF information you will get this... NICENICE.GIF (640*480*256) A Really nice picture. That is, the Resolution and how many colours will be added to the description of that particular file. Nice if you have GIFs in your Files.Bbs that where there before FEBBS Adopt function came along to add the resolution for you. Febbs Supports both the GIF87a standard and the new GIF89a standard. The (X*Y*Pal) value will be inserted at cursor position but if you are standing on the filename it Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 25 will be inserted as the first text in the description. And if you are a registered user have a look at the setup where You can style the added GIF information the way you like it. Adopt Missing Files to Files.Bbs When you press execute the adopt command Febbs will compare the files in the current Files.Bbs with the files found in the directory connected with the current Files.Bbs. Any file found on the disk and not inside the current Files.Bbs will be added to the bottom of the Files.Bbs with the description chosen by You in the setup. Binary Viewer If you have specified an external binary viewer then that one will be loaded when you press the key sequence that is associated with this function. It will be loaded with the commandline that exists of name and full path to the file you where standing on inside the editor. Ex. of commandline : C:\DIV\DP.EXE C:\FILE\FENRIS.ZIP Your Setup Part added by FEBBS. Fig. 5. If no Binary viewer has been specified in the setup then Febbs will use the built in viewer. Copy description from line Above This one Copies the description from line your standing on to file below. Nice when your adding the same description to multiple files. Copy tagged Lines/Files to different Area This option will let you copy the already tagged lines to a different area. The select area window comes up again and all the commands described in this window above is working. Then, when you have chosen an area to hurl to the files will be moved there and then the old files.bbs will be saved and the new one loaded. When the chosen area has been loaded just move to the position you would like to give the hurled files descriptions and press the <Copy function> key again. The descriptions will now be placed where you where standing on. Febbs is all the time trying to find out that enough diskspace is left on the drive that you are hurling too. If not enough room on the destination Febbs will stop and only let You hurl the files that will fit. But as always there can be things that might go 26 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs wrong if you are getting short of diskspace so try not to get into this dilemma. If a file that you are copying already exists in the area you are copying to FEBBS will ask you if you wish to overwrite the file. If you answer Yes the file will be overwritten. To save memory, Febbs will when copying create a temporarily file called FEBHURL.TMP. This file contains the descriptions from Files.Bbs that are to be hurled. Creating this file has an advantages, It adds extra safety to the copy. What if something happens to your system before you have had a chance to place the copyied files and you had to restart your computer? The descriptions would be lost forever. But now you can simply look at the file FEBHURL.TMP in the home directory of Febbs and there are the descriptions. If you try to copy a file to a path that does not exist, FEBBS will ask if you wish to create the directory. Although the same restrictions as the MD command in DOS must be observed, that is Febbs can't create a whole path Ex: C:\FILES\PASCAL\ cant be created but if C:\FILES\ existed already then the subdir PASCAL would be added. See Also : Copy/Hurl Files descriptions Anywhere and without area change. Copy Files descriptions Anywhere and without area change This version of the copy will not let you place the descriptions in the area that you area copying to. That is when copying you will NOT be transferred to the new area. The descriptions of the files will be placed last in the area you are copying to. Also this version of the copy will let you copy files and descriptions to any directory you wish. Tag as usual the files you wish to copy and then while browsing the areas of your areafile press <Ctrl-Enter>. A new box will appear that let you type in the full path to where you wish to hurl the files. If the directory doesn't exist Febbs will ask you if you wish to create it first. Although the same restrictions as the MD command in DOS must be observed, that is Febbs can't create a whole path Ex: C:\FILES\PASCAL\ cant be created but if C:\FILES\ existed already then the subdir PASCAL would be added. Febbs will also try to create a new Files.Bbs if one doesn't exist in the directory your copying to. All the descriptions will be placed in this Files.Bbs. See Also : Copy/Hurl tagged Lines/Files to different Area. Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 27 Copy Line Pressing <Copy line> will Copy the line you are standing in to a buffer. And pressing <Copy line> again will transfer the buffer to line you are standing on. A status indicator in the lower right of the screen will indicate if something is in the buffer. This function only works inside the current Files.Bbs. You can not use this one to copy text between areas. See Also : Move line Display Files.Bbs as the BBS would When you execute this command Febbs will let you look at the Files.Bbs just like the user would see. It displays the page your standing at in the editor and it is aware of some Avatar codes. The Avatar codes that it is aware of is discussed in the Avatar section later on in this manual. Display the External support programs A display of the External programs that you have assigned in the setup. It displays a list of all the external support programs in the setup. Including the five DOS programs that you have a possibility to install. DOS Shell This option works just like any other shell to the operating system, although the DOS Shell option will only load an extra copy of command.com, or whatever command processor you use, into memory. No commandline is passed. You will find yourself inside the directory you where editing inside the editor. To return to Febbs simply type EXIT at the DOS prompt and press return. Febbs will also change the DOS prompt to remind you of this. And as in all shells you are not allowed to load any programs that do not release all memory after execution. When returning from the shell Febbs will check to see if a file called IMPORT.FEB exists in the temporay directory. If it exists Febbs will then read the file and import it to the files.bbs you are currently editing. External Archive Viewer This one works just like the binary viewer although the internal Archive viewer is located on a different key sequence. See Also : Binary Viewer, Look Inside Archive/GIF information. 28 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs External GIF Viewer Febbs has no internal GIF viewer so only the external is used if you trigger the <Alt-P)eek> option. Remember that if You are in some none standard text mode when You peek at GIF images then Febbs will not be able to switch back to that mode after You have finished to look at the GIF image. As standard text modes are 25,43 and 50 row modes. See Also : Binary Viewer. Global Unmark of tagged Lines This option clears all tags in the current Files.Bbs See Also : Tag line for later action. Hurl tagged Lines/Files to different Area This option will let you hurl (move) the already tagged lines to a different area. This function works in most parts as the Copy version of this function, only the differences are used. If the file areas you are hurling between is on the same drive no physical moving is done. Only at directory level are the files moved. This makes the Hurl process extremely fast. If a file that you are hurling already exists in the area you are hurling to FEBBS will ask you if you wish to overwrite the file. If you answer Yes the file will be overwritten but the description won't transferred to the new area. This is to prevent dupe descriptions in the area. FEBBS simply assumes that the description already in the area is the correct and simply kills the new one. See Also : Copy/Hurl Files descriptions Anywhere and without area change. Hurl Files descriptions Anywhere and without area change This version of the hurl will not let you place the descriptions in the area that you area hurling to. That is when hurling you will NOT be transferred to the new area. The descriptions of the files will be placed last in the area you are hurling too. This file works just as the copy version of this function. See Also : Copy/Hurl tagged Lines/Files to different Area. Import FILE_ID.DIZ Febbs can import FILE_ID.DIZ from archives into the editor. This option is available from both a hot key and from the menu. The FILE_ID.DIZ file is a small file describing the program in the archive. Usually this text will need some editing after it has been Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 29 imported since many people writing the description adds to much information and your users will very fast get tired with long file descriptions. Indent comment to position specified in the setup Sometimes when descriptions of files that take more than one line it is nice to be able to indent the following lines at a position that will look nice when your BBS displays them. Pressing tab will do that for you with the line you are standing on. If the line doesn't fit it well be wrapped to the next line. Please not that you cannot indent a file. So if the line you wish o indent is starting at position 1 then Febbs consider that one to be a file. Inserting a space as the first character on the line will let you indent it with <TAB>. Kill All tagged Lines / Files Just as the header says this function kills (erases) all tagged lines (and the associated files) in the editor. If a file is missing it simply works as <Ctrl-Y> - Remove line. See Also : Remove Both line and File. Look Inside Archive / GIF information Febbs has the ability too peek inside most of the major Archives that are so popular on BBS systems. Archived files save both time when Downloading and space on the System Operators disk. And in the same time it sees to that all files in a package is kept together. That is documentation and the Executables will never part. When you execute this function You will see a window with the contents of the archive you where standing on with the cursor. If the file is a GIF file instead of an archive you will see an info-window containing relevant information about that particular GIF picture. After Febbs has scanned the entire file you will be able to scroll around inside the window just like when choosing a filearea. And if you wish to look at a file inside the archive just press enter and that particular file is unpacked and loaded into the either the internal viewer or external. All depending on whether or not you have configured any of these in the Setup. Febbs will load the Binary viewer if the file has an extension of EXE, COM or OVR. And load the texviewer if any other extension is found. Febbs will behave just as when you use the viewers from inside the editor. Please note that for this function to work you have to install the external archivers in the Setup. Febbs do NOT do any unpacking of its own. 30 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs Febbs supports the ability to look at files inside the following archive types. Archive Type Version SFX PKZIP1.10 Yes LHA 2.13 Yes LHArc1.13 Yes AR 0.20 Yes LARC 3.30 Yes Hyper2.50 ARC 6.02 PAK 2.51 PKPak3.61 ARJ 2.21 Yes ZOO 2.xx SQZ 1.08.3 Yes The Archive programs with the SFX flag are Febbs also able to peek into the so called SelF-Extracting files made by these Archives Please note that PAK 2.51 needs approximately 185 Kb to work properly. And the ARJ archiver is also a real memory hog so consider Febbs abilities to swap itself out of memory if You plan to look at files inside ARJ,PAK or ARC Archives. When your looking at files inside archives Febbs needs to extract the file to be able to let you have a look at it. If you do not wish to use the standard temporary directory that Febbs has hardcoded into itself, then specify in the setup under GENERAL ITEMS where Febbs should store the extracted file. When you are looking inside archives Febbs will use the viewer that you have defined or not defined if you wish to use the internal. If you have installed an external viewer Febbs will, to make this operation as fast as possible, create a BATCH file in its home directory and from that batch file execute the programs. Both the Unpacker and the viewer. Otherwise Febbs would have to shell twice and if you have not got any XMS or EMS memory then the swap operation can take a while. See Also : External Archive Viewer. Memory Status The function memory status will display both disk status and memory status. It shows all drives in the system. Menu in editor If You are not that familiar with Febbs and the Key assignments You have selected You can rest calmly Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 31 because there is a menu in Febbs which has all functions that are available via "hotkeys". So simply invoke the editor and browse the menus to decide what function You want to perform. Move Line Move line works just like Copy line although the line you are standing on will be moved to the buffer instead of copied. And the next time you press <Move Line> it will be transferred to the line the cursor was on. Please note that if you move something into the movebuffer and then switch filearea the line inside the buffer will be lost. See Also : Copy Line, Move tagged Lines inside editor Move tagged Lines inside editor This function moves the tagged lines inside the editor. When execute this function all the tagged lines in the editor will be moved to the line you are standing on. Nice if you wish to move a number of files. A bit too much job to do that with Move Line. See Also : Move Line Remove Both line and File This function will Delete the file and description not only from the list but from the disk as well. FEBBS will ask you if you are sure when deleting files. No harm done if you choose the wrong file. Although Febbs will not ask if the Files is missing and its only a textline. Then this function works just as if you had pressed <Ctrl-Y> - Delete Line. See Also : Remove File but leave description in Files.Bbs. Remove File but leave description in Files.Bbs Removes the file but leaves the description. This one can be used when you are short of diskspace but wish to leave the description in the list and thereby make it <MISSING> when your users view your Files.Bbs. See Also : Remove Both line and File, Kill All tagged Lines / Files Remove missing files from Files.Bbs When you execute this function Febbs will check that all the files in Files.Bbs really exists. If an entry does not exist on disk then it is removed from Files.Bbs. 32 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs See Also : Tag All Missing Files Rename File on Current line When executing rename you will be able to Rename the file on the current line. Febbs will automatically update the Files.Bbs file for You as well as renaming the file on disk. Save current Files.Bbs When saving Files.Bbs Febbs will handle any upcoming errors. If an error should occur then Febbs will prompt You for a new filename so You may save the file elsewhere. Search for Filename When executed this function will pop up an entry field where you enter a search string to look for. Please note, no wildcards or anything like that. If You wish to find "NICEGIRL.GIF" just enter "GIRL". Then Press <Enter> to start search. Febbs will first search in the current area for the name. Starting at row below the cursor position and to the end. If Febbs find "GIRLS.GIF" and stops at that but you know that one is not the right one use <Search Again> to continue Search. But if not Found then a Question will pop up on the screen asking if you wish to search Global. If you answer yes you will see Febbs strawl down all your Areas looking for the file. Only Files listed in Files.Bbs is taken into the search. After completed search or after you have pressed a key to stop search You will see the found (if any) Files in a Scrollable window just like the Choose area window. And if you position yourself upon a File and press enter you will automatically be transferred to that file. If in another area, a new Files.Bbs will be loaded. And the cursor will be placed on the File you wanted to go to. See Also : Search again. Search again As described under the <Search for filename> function <Search again> continues the search after the first "hit". Ex. A nice way to use search is like this. You have just received the latest DSZ protocol by Chuck Forsberg and wants to hurl it from the upload area to its appropriate area. But you do not remember where the old versions area. Simply press <Search for file> enter the Search argument DSZ press enter and Febbs will start looking for any DSZ files for you. When you see the old ones popping up in the search window press any key to stop search. You Now see where the old file is, what it is called, what area and area number. You remember the number and presses Escape to Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 33 abandon the Search completely. You tag the New DSZ. Press <Hurl file> for Hurl. Enter the area number where the old ones where. For example 15 and press Enter. You will find yourself inside the Files.Bbs of area 15 at the top. Now to get to the old DSZ files simply press <Search Again> to Continue search and viola there you are. Press <Hurl file> to "put down" the new DSZ and use <Remove file> to get rid of the old one. Simple and Fast. What more could you want. See Also : Search for Filename Sort Block This one will let you sort a block that you first mark with the direction keys. The direction keys are Up-/Down-Arrow and PageUp/PageDown. When You have marked the block that You wish to sort press <Enter>. Please not that Febbs do not support sorting of multiline descriptions. Show text "macros" This will pop up a little box on the screen showing what macros you have defined in the setup. Good to have when your memory isn't what it ought to be :-) Show ANSI or AVATAR file With this command you can look at ANSI and Avatar pictures. When You execute this function Febbs will view the following files. .ANS, .AVT, .ASC, .MUS and .GBS. Strip Download counter A lot of people use download counters in their files.bbs files to show the users which files are the most popular. And Febbs has the ability to add these counters but not update them. But what happens when You want to remove those download counters? Well, that's easy. Just use the following function to have Febbs remove the download counter on the current line. Switch Area When you are inside the editor it would be very clumsy if you had to leave it and return to the main menu every time you wished to change area to work on. Therefore Febbs has the ability to let you choose a new area to work on from inside the editor. This function works just like the choose area item from the main menu. Just cruise between your areas and select a new one with enter. (or use the HotKeys ! That is if you wish to go to area 19 simply press 1, watch the lower left corner of the window, press 9 and press Enter. As fast as it can be) You will upon selection be transferred directly to the new 34 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs area. The Files.Bbs you leave will automatically be saved if you have done any changes to it. If you wish to discard your changes you will have to choose F3 (or ESC) to abandon your changes. And take of from the main menu for new adventures in Files Land. Tag all missing files Maybe <Remove all missing files> is a bit too strong for you. You wish to have files off-line" due to lack of disk space. But you do not wish to keep all that junk lying around as off-line. Easy, Simply press <Tag missing> and all missing files will be tagged and then untag those you wish to keep and the others use <Kill tagged files> See also : Remove missing files from Files.Bbs, Kill All tagged Lines/Files. Tag dupe entries in current files.bbs This function will compare all file names in the Current Files.Bbs to see if any Duplicate entries exist. If any, they will be Tagged and you are able to see which are dupes and afterwards take appropriate actions. See Also : Kill All tagged Lines / Files Tag files older then date Use this function to tag files in the current area that are older then the date You input. Useful when You want to get rid of old files lying about and wasting space that can be used to hold new and exciting files. Tag line for later action Tag line will simply tag the line you are standing on. It will change colour to the colour chosen by you in the setup to indicate that it is tagged. If the line is already tagged then the line will be non-tagged. Simply a Tag-Toggler. See Also : Global Unmark of tagged Lines. Tagged files status This function will display how many files that have been tagged and the total size of the tagged files. Text viewer Febbs internal textviewer has some limitations. It can only handle 2000 lines and it can only handle as much lines that can be stored in memory. it can't wrap lines either. But it is in my opinion fully functional for its purposes. The external text viewer works just like the Binary. Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 35 See Also : Binary Viewer. Text "macros" as defined in the setup These texts, that you have specified in the setup, will be inserted at cursor position when you press the appropriate "HotKey". Toggle display file-size / -date on statusline This toggles the option to display size and date of file on current line on the statusline. The default state of this toggle is already chosen in the setup. Touch file on current line If you execute this function the file on the current line will be stamped with the current date and time. Nice if you have manually copied in some new files from floppy and wish to let your users now that these are new files. See Also : Touch all tagged files Touch all tagged files Touch all tagged files. Works just like <Touch file> that touches the file on the current line, although this one touches all tagged files. By touching i mean setting current date and time on the file. See Also : Touch File on Current line Xpress way out of editor When your in a hurry to leave Febbs use the Xpress way out of the editor. When inside the editor and in editing mode a press of <Xpress way out> will transfer you directly to DOS. Although if you have made changes then Febbs will ask you if you are sure. 36 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs Avatar Control Codes Febbs is aware of some Avatar codes. Avatar stand for Advanced Video Attribute Terminal Assembler and Recreator and is a TM of George A. Stanislav. I will not go in to deep here on the Avatar codes but if you wish to examine them closer i suggest you get hold of the following FidoNet technical Standards documentation's : FSC-0025 and FSC-0037 They should be available on most Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) but if you can't find them contact me and i will supply you with them. The Following codes are supported by Febbs. ^Y<Char><Repeat> Repeat Character. ^V^B Turn Blink on. ^V^A<Colour> Change Colour. Where ^ stands for Control (Ctrl). Press down Ctrl and then Press the Character after ^ to create the Control character. These codes are supported in both the Files.Bbs viewer and when creating lists. When looking at the current Files.Bbs with the viewer Febbs will translate the Avatar codes into proper colours, blinks and expand any repeat char sequence. And when creating the filelists Febbs will strip the Colour and Blink codes and expand the repeat char sequence. That way your users will get a filelist that looks just like the list they saw on the screen while they where on-line. Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 37 Support files There are a files used by Febbs that aren't configurable. Theese files have names that are hardcoded into the Febbs program. Below you will find a list of theese files and what they are used for. All other files are configurable in the setup program and they are not mentioned here. HEADTEXT.FEB The text lines inserted when creating a files.bbs file is configurable. The file HEADTEXT.FEB which is a textfile placed in the same directory as Febbs contains the text to be inserted. This file can be edited from within Feppla. HURLTEMP.FEB The temporary file that Febbs creates when moving/hurling files. The file will be created in the directory that the Febbs setup is pointing to as a temporary directory. TAGTEMP.FEB Temporary file created when shelling to hold tagged files if the commandline parameter passed was ~@. ERROR.FEB This file is created if Febbs crashes during runtime. The file will contain the runtime error information and you can submit this information to us so that we can fix the problem. IMPORT.FEB After shelling to the operating system Febbs will when returning check for the presence of this file and if it exists Febbs will read the contents and import it to the files.bbs file you are currently editing. This feature is useful when looking at text files either inside an archive or a non archived file and you want to import some text as a description into Febbs. There is no limitation of the size of IMPORT.FEB. Febbs will import until the editor reaches its limit. 38 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs Limitations of Febbs There are some limitations in Febbs. Some area of design built into the program and some are limitations of the platform the program runs under. OS/2 2.1 kernel PJ09050 has problems when running Borland Pascal generated code that uses the overlay manager. So my recomendation is to NOT use this kernel if You plan to run Febbs. Febbs does not support lines longer then 150 characters in files.bbs. Febbs supports 2000 file areas. If you have any more then this number please let me know. Maximus v2.xx does not handle more then 1200 areas before it will trash its own index file. The indexfile is a must for Febbs to read the file areas and therefore Febbs can not support more then 1200 areas under Maximus v2.xx. Febbs will replace all character 255 found in the files.bbs file with character 32 (space). This is to fix a bug in the Maximus filebase compiler. This isn't relly a limitation but rather a planned feature. Support programs FBA FBA will dump all fileareas found in your BBS configuration to screen. This tool is handy when you suspect that Febbs is missing out on something when reading your area file and you want to check out what it is. Runtime Errors Built into Febbs is an errorhandler for Runtime Errors (God forbid that there are any). Febbs will tell you what is wrong in plain English and will also create a file in the current directory called ERROR.FEB with the same information. Please forward this file with a detailed explanation of how you managed get the Error to the author. Otherwise i won't be able to fix it. But before you report it to me see to that you can reproduce the error on your machine. I can not correct any errors if i cant reproduce them. Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 39 The Filelists A very Important feature of Febbs is the ability to create filelists for your daily maintenance. Febbs is able to create a variety of lists Those are : Total Filelist of all chosen areas. A Newslist of new files in all chosen areas. An Overview list of all chosen areas. A list over the physical directories that your areas resides in. A list over the 50 most downloaded files on your BBS. These files can be created from the menu or by calling Febbs with commandline parameters. The Overview of chosen areas and the best download list is available in both ANSI, ASCII and AVATAR flavour. Avatar Codes If you are running Febbs with a BBS package that handles Avatar codes, or with the files.bbs Browser from FenrisUlven Data then maybe you use Avatar Codes in your Files.Bbs to increase the viewability. Febbs will when run strip all Avatar codes from the lists and expand any Repeat Char Codes. (See the Avatar part of this manual) Thereby make the lists very viewable in text also. Gone is all those happy faces that the users hate when they tried to read the lists or even worse, Print them! Have you ever seen what Avatarcodes does to a Printer? It isn't a pretty sight i might tell you. Well Febbs will take care of it all, so happy filelisting and to your users have a nice reading! General items Febbs wraps the descriptions in the fileslists if they are to long. This is done i all three list types (Full, news and condensed). When running in batchmode Febbs has the ability to create a logfile. This log file will let you know a thing or two about Febbs unattended operations. If you do not want a log file then simply leave the logfile field in the setup empty. Today the logfile is in a FrontDoor TM style but if you feel that you different style let me know. The directory list The directory list is meant to keep your Frequable directories up to date. That is this file that is used by your mailer to determine which directories that are file requestable. Haven't you sometime redesigned the physical location of your file areas? And did you, at that time, remember to modify to modify the list over file requestable directories? The answer is most likely to be no. 40 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs Febbs will now take care of that for you. But maybe you got a few areas that you do NOT want to be included in the filelist but you wish to be frequable anyway. An example is my Beta directory where i keep Beta versions of my software. I Still wish this directory to be frequable but i do not wish to display to the public what is going on here. So therefore you simply create a file called FEBBOK.TXT. This file will automatically at creation time for the directory list be added to the above mentioned list. Mine looks like ... C:\FEBBETA ... Nothing Fancy at all. Another way of doing this, if you have the directories that you wish to include in this list set up in Your area file, is to tag areas in the list of areas that should have the password message added to them. And not tag them in the areas to list option. Febbs will include the areas that are tagged in the areas to list as well as those that also those that has the password tag set. This is so that areas not in the filelist can be accepted as frequable by Your mailer. When, how and where? Three files, Overview list, Directory list and most Downloaded files, will automatically be created when you choose the Total list from either the main menu or via the commandline (of course also the Total list will be created). If you do not wish to create these lists simply leave them out of the setup. That is do not give them a name just leave the input field blank. The commandline parameters are "N", "F" and "C". Where "N" stands for Newslist, "F" for Full list and "C" for the Condensed list. Ex. C:\FEBBS> FEBBS N Would create a newslist. And ... C:\FEBBS> FEBBS F Would create a Full list over all your areas. An overview list and a directory list. Of course can you do it like this ... C:\FEBBS> FEBBS F N C This is my recommendation if you wish to create both a Full list, a news list and a condensed list. Since all lists area created at the same time. That way Febbs doesn't have to scan all your areas twice this way. Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 41 Headers and footers But what is a filelist without some nice advertising in the beginning? Yes let's have some nice information about your BBS in the beginning of the Filelists. So simply create a header in a style you fancy and enter the filename of the header in the setup. You can put different headers into the Total list and the news list. Still the Total list, and the condensed list,uses the files the same header and the News list will use its own header. There are two meta strings that can be used in the header of the filelist. ~D The current date ~N How old files that are marked as new. The header files are specified in the setup program. Information about the setup program and its options are found in the beginning of this manual. Area header Above each new area Febbs will put a so called area header. This header contains some information about the particular area (like areaname and so on). Febbs has one pre-defined header that will be used if You do not specify a header. The area header is specified in a normal textfile that You can edit from within Feppla, the setup program. You can design the header that comes before each area in the filelist. This is done in a text file that You can call anything You want. Just make sure to in the setup, under list setup -> Headers/footers to set "Area header ctrl file" to point at this text file. Included as an example is HEAD.FEB that also explains the metastrings available. The meta strings that You can use in the area header are the following : ~A Area name left justified [40 characters] ~B Area name right justified [40 characters] ~# Area number [3 characters] [9 characters if full Maximus 2 area numbers enabled] ~L Access level to this area [10 characters] ~F Number of files [5 characters] ~S Size of all files in Kbytes [6 characters] ~D Number of downloads in this particular area [4 characters] 42 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs Headstart starts header information and Headend ends header information Up to 10 lines can be used for a header and they can be up to 80 chars wide. If You have several headers in this file all You have to do is comment out the headstart/headend commands. No need to comment out the header. A line starting with a ";" character is treated like a comment. Example : ;Febbsstandard header ; HEADSTART #~# ~A Privilegie : ~L Sample batch file Now you are ready to start creating those nice lists that everyone just loves to download. I would recommend that you somewhere in your nightly maintenance add the command to create the lists and then simply after creation Zip them up and copy them to your Filelist area. Maybe something like this : CD\FEBBS FEBBS F N PKZIP FENRIS FENRIS.TXT COPY FENRIS.NEW D:\FILE\TEXT COPY FENRIS.TXT D:\FILE\TEXT COPY FENRIS.ZIP D:\FILE\TEXT CD\BBS This is my batchfile for creating my lists. Nothing Fancy at all. Different filelists But wait a second! I want to create different lists for different users. That is the PC users doesn't like to download filelist that contain Amiga files and vice versa. That's easy! Simply create a new config file with Feppla like this. FEPPLA /S:Amiga.Ctl Set up the areas you wish to include and name the filelists. Then Run ... FEBBS N F /S:Amiga.Ctl and that Setup file will be used. For more information see the setup part of this document. Extended descriptions Febbs understands SuperBBS extended descriptions when creating the filelists. Febbs will when finding a > character in the second position of a string in files.bbs Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 43 remove this character and indent the description to the position specified in the setup under General items->Indent to column. Febbs does not yet understand that this is an extended description inside the editor. Febbs also know about the Maximus bbs special identifiers. Febbs will strip the codes /T, /B and /TB that are first on the description line in when creating the filelist. These codes are used to indicate free byte download and free time download in the Maximus bbs. Memory Swapping When shelling Febbs has the ability to swap itself out of memory to make room for other programs to run. When swapping, Febbs can swap to Disk, EMS and XMS. FEBBS will check for the presence of EMS and use that for the swap file. If there is no EMS or not enough free EMS, FEBBS will try to allocate XMS memory, and if there is no XMS or not enough Febbs will try to swap to disk. You have the ability to toggle swapping on or of in the setup. If you are using a system with slow disks and no extra memory then it can be good to turn of swapping to speed things up. Please keep in mind that PAK for instance needs approximately 185 Kb of memory to operate and ARJ even more, so therefore check how much memory you have when shelling from Febbs before you decide to turn swapping off. FEBBS leaves only approx. 10k resident when swapping. This will give you maximum ram to do whatever you wish from within FEBBS. Please note that you must not load any TSRs or other programs that doesn't give back all memory when you are finished with them. And also be aware of quirks that exists if you are using DesqView and have set the "Writes text directly to screen" option to false. See the DesqView section of this text for more information. The path and name of the swap file that FEBBS creates is configurable. Go into FEPPLA and select General Setup and set the full path AND filename of the swap file. Just make sure you don't set it to a filename that already exists on your drive or that file WILL be overwritten. A good place for the swap file would be a ram drive. This will speed up the swapping process if you don't have any EMS or XMS, but be advised that the swap file size is around 220k so set your ram drive size accordingly. If you have extended memory and wish to be able to use it as XMS memory install the Device driver called HIMEM.SYS that Microsoft supplies with most of their programs. Edit the file called CONFIG.SYS to look like this in the beginning of the file DEVICE=C:\HIMEM.SYS 44 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs And also see to that the HIMEM.SYS file is located in your root directory (or change the path above to where the file is located). Or if you own a 386 then you can use any other memory manager (QEMM, 386Max) to create XMS memory. But then you can just as well use the EMS memory to swap. Febbs will check the memory like this: First EMS second XMS and last DISK. Shelling to memory is a whole lot faster then to shell to disk. Since i feel i must give my registered users some value for their money i have decided to make the XMS and EMS swap only available to those that have registered. The DISK swap works just the same in both registered and unregistered version. Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 45 FEBBS Vs Viruses and EXE compressors Early versions for Febbs was compressed with LZEXE (c) 1989 Fabrice BELLARD. This was prevent the program from being attacked by viruses since LZEXE performs a CRC check of the file upon execution. But with the release of numerous unpackers for LZEXE this is not a reliable method any longer. Therefore Febbs scans itself upon execution and checks if any changes were made to the EXE files. If there were, Febbs will halt with an error message. Please note that due to the CRC check of the EXE file you can not not not pack this program with LZEXE or PkLite. And also remember that Febbs is an overlayed program and the EXE compressors can not compress the overlayfile so the gain is not very large if you where to compress Febbs with any for the EXE compressors on the market. 46 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs The overlay buffer and slow machines Since many persons still use old XT machines to run BBS systems they usually do not like the overlay part of Febbs. Overlays slow down the program since not all the code is kept in memory , only the parts that area needed. The reason for this is to save memory so that larger files.bbs files can be loaded into Febbs for editing. Since XT machines usually haven't got that big disks and thereby not that big files.bbs files i have made the overlay buffer size configurable. The larger the buffer, the less disk access by Febbs. That is if you do not have EMS or XMS memory, then Febbs will use EMS or XMS memory for the overlays. If you have EMS or XMS then you most certainly never want to tamper with the overlay buffer size. So if you wish to reduce disk access by Febbs use the following switch to set the amount of memory that Febbs should allocate for the overlay. /O:<Buffer Size> The size of the original buffer size is displayed when you try to change the size of the buffer. Now it is up to you to configure the size of the buffer that is the best for your system. Make sure that you have saved enough of memory to load your largest files.bbs file. Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 47 Commandline parameters There are several command line parameters that Febbs accepts. Most of them has already been discussed in the documentation but this is a specification of all of them in one place. /M Use the monochrome colour set of Febbs. /S:<FileName> Use <filename> as setup file. F Create a Full Filelist N Create a News Filelist C Create a Condensed Filelist /X Leave out the name of the registered user from the different lists that Febbs creates. /O:<Buffer Size>Used when changing the overlay buffer in RAM. /D Debug mode. When this mode is set Febbs displays more information on the status line when in the area pick list. This is useful when trying to determine if it is Febbs or Your setup that is not working. ? Display a helpscreen of the available command line parameters. 48 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs Multitaskers and Share Febbs is Multitasker- and Share-aware. That means that Febbs will when opening files try to allow others to access the files at the same time. All files, except textfiles, are opened in deny-write-mode. That is, other programs are allowed to read but not write to files opened by Febbs while Febbs is reading them. Febbs will never have a file open longer than necessary to get the needed information from it. The Screen writes in Febbs is aware about DesqView and asks DesqView (DV hereafter) for an alternative video buffer. Thereby you can set the direct screenwrites option in DV to no. But be aware that if you shell from inside Febbs to a program that uses direct screenwrites, then when you return to Febbs you will most likely not be able recognise the program that you left. This is because the other program that you executed from inside Febbs has fooled DV into changing vidoebuffer. So in most cases i recommend that you have the direct Screenwrites option set to yes inside DV. I also recommend that you assign at least 2 or more text and graphics pages to the window that you run Febbs in. Not that Febbs needs it but if you shell to an external program it might. How much memory you give to Febbs is all up to you but check the memory status with when you decide how much to give to Febbs. Please keep in mind that every line in a files.bbs file occupies approximately 162 Bytes of memory inside Febbs editor. So a 300 lines files.bbs file occupies approximately 48,600 bytes in memory. Try be not to stingy when you assign memory to Febbs. Give the program elbow room to work. Febbs will also, when idle waiting for a keystroke, slice away CPU time to other tasks running under DesqView, Windows 3.xx or OS/2. This has the advantage that Febbs allows other tasks to execute faster and smother while Febbs isn't doing anything in particular. Febbs was developed on machines running OS/2 and Febbs is working very well in an OS/2 DOS box. If access is denied to a files.bbs file then Febbs will inform You of so. Access Denied can occur on multiline systems when several tasks try to access the same files. For this to work you must have loaded the DOS utility SHARE.EXE before you start. If a files.bbs file is missing then Febbs will ask you if you wish to create it or not. Febbs will not report that a files.bbs file is missing just because it is locked at the moment. Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 49 The future The Febbs-package is under constant development. And most of the items that are added, or changed to become more user-friendly, have been made possible only because of the close relationship between the users and the developers of the Febbs-package. That is one of the many advantages of the shareware concept (which this package is distributed under). So if you have any questions or suggestions to further enhance the program that You have been kind enough to support by buying a license, please drop me a line via electronic mail or standard mail at an address found later on in this documentation. Some functions that are pending to be implemented are the following. Add headers in Files.Bbs while creating filelists. A native OS/2 version 50 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs Support If You wish to contact the development team of Febbs You can always reach us at the following addresses. The World except the USA. FenrisUlven Data Attn: Patrik Sjoberg Sorbygatan 69B S-802 55 Gefle Sweden E-Mail : 2:205/208@Fidonet ZyXEL U-1496+ 19200bps Data Line : +46-26-628057 FAX : +46-26-652101 Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs - 51 Copyright, Trademarks PKPAK is a TM of PKWare Inc. PKUNPAK is a TM of PKWare Inc. PKZIP is a TM of PKWare Inc. PKUNZIP is a TM of PKWare Inc. PAK is a TM of NoGate Consulting. ARC is a TM of SEA inc. LZH and LHarc are TM of Yoshi; LZS and LARC are TM of K.Miki H.Okumura, K.Masuyama ARJ is a TM of Robert K. Jung HYPER is a TM of Peter Sawatzki and Klaus Peter Nischke AR is a TM of Haruhiko Okumura ZOO is a TM of Rahul Dhesi. QuickBBS is a TM of Pegasus Software. RemoteAccess is a TM of Continental Software FrontDoor is a TM of Joaquim H. Homrighausen Tubbs is a TM of Mats Bjork TubFile is a TM of Jorgen Olsson Opus is a TM of Wynn Wagner III Maximus is a TM of Scott Dudley Desqview is a TM of Quarterdeck Systems Qemm is a TM of Quarterdeck Systems 386Max is a TM of Qualitas MS-DOS is a TM of Microsoft corporation MTA is a TM of Rob Van.Hoeven TICK is a TM of Barry Geller GIF is a TM of CompuServe Inc. Avatar is a TM of George A. Stanislav LZEXE is a TM of Fabrice Bellard. The FEBBS-Package was written in Borland Pascal 7.0.1 and Turbo Assembler 3.01, with help of the Turbo Debugger 2.01 and makes use of Turbo Professional v5.22, Object professional 1.22 and PSCF v0.09. Also included are some routines of Anders Brink's fine tools called ABUnit which is public domain. Turbo Pascal is a TM of Borland International Turbo Debugger is a TM of Borland International ABUnit is a TM of Anders Brink Turbo Professional is a TM TurboPower Inc. Object Professional is a TM of TurboPower Inc. PSCF is a TM of Patrik Sjoberg 52 - Febbs, filemanagement for your bbs