I have a small bug report to file for the "bbs" program. I hope this is a good
place for this.

Amongst the lines that are displayed with the Ok: prompt when you first start
"bbs" and every time you return to the Ok: prompt is the following

"Join confname (type "help conf" for a list of conferences)"

If you follow this advice, you get the following result:

>Ok: help conf
>Unknown help topic: 'conf'

On the other hand, the document displayed when you enter the "help" command
states correctly the following:

"For a list of all available conferences on the current server, type
"DISPLAY CONFERENCES".  To select a conference use the "JOIN" command."

Could the text accompanying the Ok: prompt be updated to recommend the proper
command "DISPLAY CONFERENCES" (maybe even in lowercase) instead of "help
conf", which doesn't work?

My two cents are that having the wrong command in the text that accompanies
the Ok: prompt make it difficult for a beginner to start navigating the bbs
Conferences system. (I am speaking from my own experience.)

Thanks for reading!

2 responses total.

Great find
Thanks!

You're welcome! I'm not sure if I'm being helpful as I just read elsewhere
on FrontTalk that working on it may not exactly be a priority at the moment.

But, while we're at it, I found a similar bug when you reach the end of
reading an item and are greeted with "Respond, pass, forget..."

>Respond, pass, forget, quit, or ? for more options? ?
>I don't understand "?" - type HELP for help

Typing "help" does indeed display the help contents.

I don't even know if "bug" is the right term for these, but again, as a
beginner in FrontTalk, they make learning how to use it just slightly more
difficult than it needs to be.

Thanks to all who are running Grex and keeping it going!

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