response 93 of 115:

Feb 18 15:53 UTC 2005

No, not really.  Backtalk itself more of a programming language than a
conferencing system - it just happens to have lots of special commands that
are very useful for conferencing.  The interfaces you see, Abalone and
Pistachio and Bubblegum and Papaya and Vanilla are specific programs that run
on Backtalk.  Abalone and Pistachio are part of the core Backtalk
distribution, so their version numbers are identical to the Backtalk version
numbers, but all others are distributed separately.  The behavior of the
interface has a lot more to do with what version of the interface you are
running than on what version of Backtalk you are running.

Fronttalk is a separately distributed package.  It contains two components,
a server, written in the Backtalk Script language, and a client written in
Perl.  The behavior of Fronttalk depends on the server version and the client
version, but hardly at all on the Backtalk version or the Perl version.  Now
if you are using the client on Grex to access the server on Grex, then
typically the client and server will have the same version number.  If you
are using the client on Grex to access a server on another system, then the
version numbers will very likely differ.  There's a lot of forward and
backward compatibility built into the client, so it will work with different
server versions, but some functionality may not be available on an older
server.  Anyway, it is the version number of the fronttalk scripts on the
backtalk server that determine their behavior, not the version of the backtalk
server, so reporting the fronttalk server version number is the right thing
to do.

I just said way too much about that.

response 95 of 115:

Feb 18 17:39 UTC 2005

Hmm, it would be nice to have the grexsoft commit messages logged into
BBS.  Currently, I'm using the log_accum.pl and commit_prep.pl scripts
that the FreeBSD people use to send myself emails with commit messages;
it'd be nice to wrap that into BBS as well.

response 97 of 115:

Feb 21 01:25 UTC 2005

Hmm, is there a way to get fronttalk to set the process title to something
more meaningful than, ``/usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/ft'' ?  A perl
equivalent to secroctitle() or something?

response 99 of 115:

Feb 27 08:48 UTC 2005

Regarding #94, #95; I figured out enough of fronttalk to write a
minimal `post' command for logging CVS commit messages into the
BBS.  I've hooked it into the log_accum.pl stuff I'm using for the
grexsoft CVS repository; see item 9 in the garage group for an
example.  Note that this is in addition to email.

This is all actually pretty easy and cool; the FreeBSD people did
a reasonable job of modularizing everything such that log_accum.pl
and commit_prep.pl use a configuration file to figure out where to
send their output.  I wrote a simple shell script that acts as a
wrapper around sendmail to capture log_accum.pl's output and then
(a) email it to the address, `cvs-grexsoft' here on grex, and (b)
post it into item 9 in garage.  I then changed the configuration
file such that log_accum.pl invokes my shell script instead of
sendmail.

The intention is that cvs-grexsoft should be a list of people
interested in getting these things via email, while others can read
them via BBS.

I'm fairly pleased with the result.

response 101 of 115:

Mar 8 17:57 UTC 2005

At the moment, Picospan and Fronttalk/Backtalk have radically different
ideas of how many newresponse items I have in Agora.  Pico says 151,
FT and BT both say 21.  I've been reading the conferences mostly with
Backtalk recently.

response 103 of 115:

Mar 9 02:35 UTC 2005

I think if you do, `set nomodestay' in your .cfonce file, it will
have the behavior you desire.  That's what I did when I wanted to
do the same thing.

response 105 of 115:

Mar 14 20:40 UTC 2005

I've modified the bbspost.pl command to do error checking, and put it
into grexsoft.

response 107 of 115:

Mar 31 19:58 UTC 2005

Another fronttalk bug (or unimplemented feature).  In picospan, if I join a
conference I haven't previously joined, I am asked:

> You are not a member of /bbs/someconferenceorother
> Do you wish to:
> 
> Join, quit or help? 

Entering "join" (or "j") creates my participation file (& maybe some other
stuff), setting me up as a participant in the conference.

Entering "quit" gives me an "Ok:" prompt but (I think) back in whatever
conference I was in before.  There's a "registration aborted" message.

Entering "help" gives the following:

> You have three main options at this point:
>         join -- become a new member of this conference
>         observe -- look in at this conference (you will no
>                 be able to enter anything new)
>         quit -- quit out of this menu and select another conference
> There are also some other things you can do, try "help misc"
> for notes on those.
> 

I frequently use the "observe" option.  I do this when there's an item
I want to look at in a conference I normally don't want to read.  I can
read, but no participation file is created & I can't post.

fronttalk appears to lack all this.  I think the "resign" command is
broken as well.

response 109 of 115:

Apr 5 07:37 UTC 2005

I can't see the response that i've "hidden" using fronttalk.  "hide' seems
to be interpreted as "scribble"

response 111 of 115:

Nov 10 02:36 UTC 2005

In Fronttalk, when using semicolons, 

---
n;r
---

runs through the list of conferences, and if I don't have any with any new
items, it says "No items found in range." Picospan doesn't execute the "read"
command when the "next" command doesn't actually change conferences.

response 113 of 115:

Nov 11 18:31 UTC 2005

Just noticed this: "help read" includes the following:

" The using pager is "more" which will pause the display after
each full screen."

That seems rather awkwardly worded.

response 115 of 115:

Jan 14 03:41 UTC 2006

In reading some *really* old items I came across to a reference to a help
section in picospan that I think would be helpful in ft but should be trivial
to add: the "help etiquette" section.