Hi all, I've been much busier than I expected to be this summer, and as
a consequence, I'd like to get caught up on the boards, but I'd like to get
caught up off line.  I've talked about Grex getting some sort of off-line
door, but unless something has happened that I don't know about, this is
still just an idea.  This is not a big problem; I'll just adopt the
do-it-myself-and-hope-it-works method.  To do this, I need some information
about how Picospan stores the messages.
     1.  Where are the raw conference files and their associated indices?
     2.  From outside picospan, is there a way to tell which messages I've
read?  Is there some sort of bookmark file for each user to hold the
last-read pointers for each item in each conference?
     3.  What about for Usenet news?
     4.  What about Email?
     5.  For all of these, I'd like to be able to drop off messages written
off line.  Where would text-files have to get copied to be incorporated into
Picospan, the Usenet feed, and Email?
     6.  Does anyone want to help?  I thought not.  <grin> Looks like I'll
be brushing up on my C after some months without using it.
     Chris

15 responses total.

(A)  If I can get some more info, I'll certainly help with the programming.
     Can't hurt my resume.  >8)

(B)  I've got a pseudo-offline-mail-handler already set up for myself.  With
     the Elm filter program sorting my mail, it's a simple shell script to
     download those files.  If that's what you had in mind, let me know and
     I'll show it to you.

I can answer some questions, though I mostly don't know enough to really help.
The conferences are in directories under /bbs (which is actually a link to
a link).  In each dir there are files named _1, _2, etc., which have the
text for the items & their responses.  This is in some kind of parsable
form, but I don't know the details.  Information on what you've read is
in a file (by default in your $HOME dir, but the real hotshots seem to
segregate their bbs stuff into a subdirectory) for each directory.  For
example, I have a file called .agora4.cf (the ghost of a past agora, I think).
There's one such for each conference you've joined (& not resigned).  The
first record is gibberish to me.  The second seems to give my name for that
conference.  Then there's a series of records containing 3 fields, which
I'd guess are: item #, last item # read (?), and a timestamp of some sort -
an 8-digit hex number.  ("Last item #" being highest, that is - & I'm
speculating.  And on an item I "forgot", it is -1.  I don't know if it's
always -1 or not.)

There are certainly people around who know the details, though.

A few days ago, I got uqwk compiled and running on the Unix machine
at school.  It is able to assemble and index mail as well as Usenet
news.  I wonder if it could be modified to work with Pico cfs?

This response has been erased.

I had meant to suggest that myself, but got carried away.  OTOH, when the
system is slow, the formatting may take some time, & I'm fairly sure that
it adds to the # of characters involved.

If you do "read new > filename" make it "read new pass > filename" so as
not to hang at "respond or pass" prompts that you don't even see.

If you put something like "respond 4" at the head of your response, you
can (from a Unix shell prompt, not a Picospan prompt) do something like
"bbs aaypsi < filename".

Need I say that in downloading or uploading all this stuff, some kind of
file compression is highly desirable?

Yeah, you need to say it.  If you make a lot of replies, wouldn't that
'bbs aaypsi < filename" trick get a bit cumbersome?  That's one of the
neat things about qwk packets...their all indexed and replies are posted
automatically to the right groups/conferences/items.
  Even so, it looks like we already have a fairly reasonable alternative
to any major programming project built into Picospan.

This response has been erased.

I was trying to keep it simple, but yes, it would be a pain to have lots
of replies in their own files.  What you'd want is a whole series of
commands & responses all in one file - the exact stuff you'd type if you
were on line.  Can be done, but if you make mistakes it can get pretty grim.

Uh, popcorn, shouldn't that be "bbs aaypsi > filename"?  Or am I just
missing something?

     If the idea is to read from a file, then `<' is what you'd want.  But
what in the world is `aaypsi'?
     I'm always eager to simplify a programming task.  If we can get .qwk
working here, I'd be very happy, since I use .qwk on several other boards.
     Chris
P.S.  Thank you Popcorn.

I thought she was trying to get the contents of the aaypsi conference
into a file.  Maybe I missed something...

BTW, "aaypsi" is the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti conference.

You can read items into files & then send the files to your machine.  You
can then prepare responses, including "resp" commands, send these files
to Grex, and not have to type it all in at 2400 baud.  I think Valerie
switched from one to the other & I followed suit.  Sorry for the confusion!

This response has been erased.

Okay, got it!

I am currently working on this project for M-Net.  You can mail me at
jared@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us and I'll send you info when I'm done.

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