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Grex Info Item 173: Customizing Picospan Screen Output
Entered by vegas on Mon Aug 22 09:45:58 UTC 1994:

In which we discuss the various ways of customizing the Picospan screen
output for your reading pleasure.

11 responses total.

#1 of 11 by vegas on Mon Aug 22 09:54:24 1994:

I've ported this over from Item 1, where it really didn't belong....

 Hi! My name is Lenadams Dorris, and I'm here from the WELL,
 where I host the Cooking conference and also work with the
 WELLMuse. I was going to post this in another item, but saw
 that y'all were discussing header customization here, so
 here goes:

 In an attempt to make this environment more understandable
 to me, I have modified my item headers using the same rsep
 sequence I have on the WELL (printed below with line breaks for
 clarity; this line is, of course in the .cfonce file):

 define rsep 2 "\n%(M*linked*%) %j: %i - %h \n%a (%l)
  \n%r of %n: %s line%S %2d %4d %3d %5d %10d:%8d:%9d%11d
 \n%((W|V)%(W\n <Scribbled>%E%(V\n    <Hidden>%) \n%)%)

 Now, on the WELL, it produces output that looks like this in a
 linked conference (it would look the same in a non-linked conf with
 the exception of the word *linked*)

 >Topic 291 [cooking]:  What to do with leftover meat
 >Started by: Saul Feldman (sdf) on Thu, Sep 16, '93
 >        33 responses so far
 >
 >   <linked topic>
 >1 new of 33 responses total.
 >
 >*linked* cooking: 291 - What to do with leftover meat
 >Mike Farren (farren)
 >33 of 33: 2 lines Sat 13 Aug 94 11:08:45am
 >
 > If you post here, you'll be home by now.

 Here on grex, the same line produces output that looks like this:

 >Item 1: Welcome to Summer
 >Entered by Katie Geddes (katie) on Tue, Jun 21, 1994 (22:21):
 >
 >2 new of 183 responses total.
 >
 >
 > j: 1 - Welcome to Summer
 >TS Taylor (tsty)
 >182 of 183: 1 line  Fri 12 Aug 94  1:08:34am
 >
 > remmers, go to your room ...... <g>.

 Note that the big difference is in the item header, where instead
 of the name of the conference, there is the letter j. Any suggs
 for fixing this? (I find it makes the responses make much more
 sense to a) know what conference and item each response is in and b) to know
 when it was written and c) to have a linespace between the header and
 the response.

Why does my define rsep line work differently here, and how can I modify
it to get the same results shown above?

#2 of 11 by davel on Mon Aug 22 10:29:39 1994:

I haven't ever really played with these enough to understand how to set
them up, but from a quick scan it looks to me like you probably want
%s instead of %j for the conference name.  I'm not trying this out or
anything, so you'll have to play with it.  Try HELP CONFFUNC for the list
I found that in.  HELP SEP gives some general instructions, and
HELP CONFDEF gives a listing of defaults - but I think actually different
defaults are set up in the general bbs rc file (not to mention the ones
FWs set up for their conferences, or users set up for themselves), so the
defaults are somewhat misleading.  Maybe someone who actually likes playing
with these things can give more help.

#3 of 11 by carson on Mon Aug 22 17:30:57 1994:

(thanks, davel! That's VERY helpful! I didn't know there was 
help for the separators!)

#4 of 11 by vegas on Mon Aug 22 22:43:40 1994:

OK...I'll read up...btw, I tried the %s, and this is what I got:

Item 21: Slang
Entered by Jill McMahon (greenops) on Sat, Jul  9, 1994 (01:50):
   <linked item>

3 new of 48 responses total.


*linked* 6: 21 - Slang
Grace Lovelace (gracel)
46 of 48: 6 line s Sun 21 Aug 94  9:48:07pm

 My father uses the expression fairly often, when appropriate.

*linked* 3: 21 - Slang
Dave Lovelace (davel)
47 of 48: 3 line s Mon 22 Aug 94  6:32:24am


God knows what *that* means...a changing number for each response.
Anyways, , like I said, I'll rea dup.

#5 of 11 by davel on Tue Aug 23 00:40:00 1994:

Hm.  That would appear to indicate that the "conference separators" are
not valid at that point - I was looking in the wrong list, I guess.  Sorry!
Keep looking around, but there may or may not be anything.

#6 of 11 by davel on Tue Aug 23 00:45:25 1994:

(I wonder if there's a way you could store the value of the conference name
when you change conferences (or whenever the conference separators are
valid), and then embed the stored string in your response separator
later.  I'm afraid this is an area of Picospan I've only nibbled at the
edges of, & the help text seems to assume you have a basic idea of how
it works but need the specific values.)

#7 of 11 by bubbles on Sun Aug 28 23:50:04 1994:

#4, is it coincidence that that changing number seems to agree with how 
many lines are in the response?

#8 of 11 by mdw on Mon Aug 29 02:21:44 1994:

In responses and items, %s is indeed the line count, not the conference
"short" name.

#9 of 11 by vegas on Tue Aug 30 07:17:59 1994:

Marcus, you're teasing me. Yes, of course, I figured that out...but I still
haven't figured outhow to get the short name....

#10 of 11 by mdw on Wed Aug 31 07:54:54 1994:

Same answer as I gave just the other day here - put something in .cfrc
to dump the shortname to a file, edit the file to turn it into
a define command, source the define command, kill the file, and
put something in the rsep to pull in the thing defined.  Just
like magic.

#11 of 11 by vegas on Sun Sep 4 09:57:52 1994:

oh you programming whizzes! ;')

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