Adding a new command for new folks to the conferences

Mar 5 02:29 UTC 1996

   Misti and I (mostly Misti, I assure you) have been working
on the "Wizard in Training" manual for the JCC sale later this
month.  There was something she'd put in the manual that wasn't
right, but should be.  We'd like to see if we can start implementing
this across all the conferences.

   In Agora, there is a "selections" command that will show the
new person to Agora some 'interesting' things in that conference.
Thats really neat, and we'd like to see if folks think thats
a neat enough concept to start going for in all the conferences,
such that the conferencing part of the WIT can say "use selctions
to see some neat stuff" in any conference.

   Technically, its trivial.  In the conference config file the
line

    sel_ections 129 read 1 2 3

is added.  That all.  The hardest part of course is figuring
out which items to throw at new people.

   I think this would be a really good thing to implement.
We can't have all the conferences updated with the selections
command by the JCC, but some could and that would be great.

   What do folks think?

response 2 of 16:

Mar 5 07:04 UTC 1996

It's also possible to define range macros, that will work like
"read selections" or "read selections new" or "read selections all"
and so forth.  I forgot how though.

response 4 of 16:

Mar 5 11:30 UTC 1996

Having it on a cf-by-cf basis would prevent users from defining their
own versions in .cfonce, wouldn't it?

response 6 of 16:

Mar 5 17:17 UTC 1996

Re 4: Yup.  Picospan reads the .cfonce file once, as it starts up the
conferences.  It reads each conference's rc file as the user joins each
conference.  So each conference rc file would supersede any user's own
definition in a .cfonce file.  However, I kinda doubt many users have
defined their own personal command called "selections", so I can't see
it being much of a problem to have such a command in each conference's
rc file.

Each user can create a .cfrc file, in addition to a .cfonce file.  The
.cfrc file is run as you join *each* conference, while .cfonce is run once
when you first start Picospan.  I'm not sure whether Picospan runs the
conference's rc file before or after it runs your personal .cfrc file, but
it's possible that someone who was really set on having their own version
of the "selections" command could define the command in their .cfrc file.

response 8 of 16:

Mar 6 09:53 UTC 1996

User has final say - so the order is /usr/bbs/rc, .cfonce, $CONF/rc, .cfrc,
stdin.

response 10 of 16:

Mar 6 13:40 UTC 1996

You can create a file called .cfrc that is run once each time you join a
conference.  If you have a .cfdir directory, your .cfrc file needs to be
there.  Otherwise it goes in your home directory.  There's no easy way for
a user to set up something *different* in each conference.

Thanks Marcus, for the sequence on that.  I'd wondered exactly what it was.

response 12 of 16:

Mar 7 05:02 UTC 1996

Of course, you could put something in your .cfonce redefining the join command
such that it would call some program that would edit your .cfrc, and then do
the actual join.

response 14 of 16:

Mar 7 14:46 UTC 1996

   I don't think so.

response 16 of 16:

Mar 9 03:16 UTC 1996

No way. People might understand,  The parameter canal is bounded on the south
by Picospan, and on the north by Macros.