TeleFinder Chat Log

Text of TeleFinder Chat from Tuesday, October 7, 1997 11 AM PDT.

In attendance:

From Spider Island: Rusty Tucker,

Sysops: Michael Davidson, mikael fredriksson, Jim Smith, Ken Sutherland, Jonathan Paisley, Bob Nunn, Ken Sutherland

Michael Davidson: Hi guys

Rusty Tucker: Jon - I'm putting support for the "label" read/unread in TF User and Server.

Michael Davidson: Rusty, I created a script that properly parses the header that I sent you.

mikael fredriksson: Jonathan, in what files are there links to 'logout.asimail' in the mail plugin?

Jonathan Paisley: great! What does the TF/user support entail? Doesn't TF user already display label colors?

Jonathan Paisley: 'bottombanner.mail'

Jonathan Paisley: Something similar to that.

mikael fredriksson: thanx

Rusty Tucker: The "essential" label is applied when the message is read.

Jonathan Paisley: label number 7 then?

Rusty Tucker: yep

Rusty Tucker: The mail box will sort by read/unread, then date when the "mod date" sort is used.

Jonathan Paisley: cool. I'll change that in the mail plugin to use 7 as well. Currently the pi uses number 1

Jonathan Paisley: wonderful!

Rusty Tucker: I'm working out the drawing details now.

Rusty Tucker: I think I'll apply a bullet or something similar in the list view.

Michael Davidson: Rusty, will this read/unread sort be true for dial-up users' mailboxes...or am i misunderstanding it?

Jonathan Paisley: sounds cool however you do it! Perhaps just for the mailbox the new mail could be in bold and old mail in plain?

Rusty Tucker: Yes, for viewing using TF User.

Michael Davidson: Great, while you're at it, could you add one little thing?

Rusty Tucker: The bold/plain is what I'm testing with. But I'd like something more graphical.

Jonathan Paisley: How about a different mail icon, like (he dares to say it) in FC?

mikael fredriksson: Yes! that was the file I fixed it and it now works!!! :-)

Michael Davidson: As it is now, when a user has "read" mail in their mailbox, the sound for "You have Mail" is invoked, it would be nice to have it so we could have a sound that said "You have NEW mail"

Jonathan Paisley: .

Jonathan Paisley: eg a flag or something similar

Rusty Tucker: yeah, but something different :)

Jonathan Paisley: Why not record a new sound Michael?

Rusty Tucker: good point M

Michael Davidson: The point is old mail will invoke the sound...I want only new mail to invoke the sound

Rusty Tucker: got it

Michael Davidson: Lovely! :)

Rusty Tucker: Is anyone still using Mac TCP?

Michael Davidson: Now we just need a sound that says "You have so much mail in your mailbox that you are taking up valuable bbs disk space; CLEAN IT UP PLEASE" :)

Jonathan Paisley: nope

Michael Davidson: I MAY go back to it rusty

Rusty Tucker: I've had a problem reported with TF/User and Mac TCP.

Rusty Tucker: But I haven't confirmed it.

mikael fredriksson: No

Rusty Tucker: It could be a setup problem.

Jonathan Paisley: Although I don't use OT in TF user, since I always seem to have trouble that way. I have OT installed, but have TF user using Mac TCP...

Michael Davidson: I was using it on my server, but not with TF/User

Michael Davidson: until recently that is

mikael fredriksson: Use OT1.3b3c1 (and system 8.1)

Bob Nunn: Let me borrow your copy for a few minutes??

Bob Nunn: Want the HFS+ real bad

Michael Davidson: Rusty, a while back you said that 68030 processors should run Mac TCP instead of O T, what was the main problem O T had?

Jonathan Paisley: bob: steer clear of it for now

Bob Nunn: Am patient but will have to erase something soon. Thanks I will wait until they work out the bugs a bit more.

mikael fredriksson: I don't use that part wait for a beta not the current alpha version of HFS+

Jonathan Paisley: bob: have you used Mailbox Cleanup in OAT?

Bob Nunn: To be frank, I am scared of it. But I definitely see the need. Would help a bunch. Afraid of losing web sites etc.

Jonathan Paisley: it doesn't do anything to web space folders. What you can do to test it is make a new user with an access group of their very own

Michael Davidson: Maybe that's why we need the sound I mentioned above, Bob! :)

Jonathan Paisley: Then copy all the contents of a big mailbox into the new user's mailbox

Jonathan Paisley: and run mailbox cleanup on that one access group...

Bob Nunn: I am sure that it works out of the box or you guys wouldn't have sent it out. I just don't want to find any gotcha's later on.

Jonathan Paisley: quite right

Bob Nunn: Are there many people using it now?

Jonathan Paisley: in fact, there's even a special bug in (heh) at the moment that prevents it from working on more than the first access group you define

Michael Davidson: Rusty, what is the "connect to server cycle" for smtp mail when there is no mail to be sent (just asking the server if it has any) {I'm testing ETRN support}

Jonathan Paisley: Speak to John Agapitos, it was his idea, and I think he is using it extensively

Bob Nunn: I think I will try it on my low level group. They don't get much spam but I don't care if they lose their mail. That level of user left out info in the app.

Rusty Tucker: The "cycle" is the schedule that you define for SMTP.

Bob Nunn: Jonathan, what gave you the idea to use the insert file command to build your headers and footers for your pages.

Michael Davidson: But then, say I "Allow SMTP" connections for 20 minutes, smtp looks at minute 1 but then mail comes to the server say at minute 10 and no mail goes out during that time or during the 20 minutes; smtp doesn't get the mail waiting on the server????

Jonathan Paisley: bob: It just plain makes sense; since I was changing the headers all the time and didn't want to have to update each template file. In addition, the header include file sets up some variables that are used later on in some of the pages

Rusty Tucker: When the schedule starts, TF sends the ETRN command. You can verify that in the log file.

Michael Davidson: It seems to me that smtp should cycle (on a few minute cycle) for mail on the server during those times that "Allow SMTP connections" are allowed. Don't you agree?

Michael Davidson: I have verified the ETRN at start time

Bob Nunn: Cool idea, I will be using that along with the random to make my pages change almost every time someone visits.

Rusty Tucker: If you're up, and mail comes, it should come to your server without an ETRN.

Michael Davidson: Just as MS cycles for mail on a 1 minute cycle (I think 1 min)

Rusty Tucker: The ETRN is really notification that you're up now. It doesn't need to be repeated.

Michael Davidson: That makes sense Rusty...it seems it didn't though

Rusty Tucker: Check the log file results on the scheduled time.

Michael Davidson: Maybe my ISP did something wrong...I'll test it again.

Michael Davidson: Yes, I'm keeping an eye on the log files.

Rusty Tucker: Please - Show me a sample.

Michael Davidson: I wish it logged the exact response of the server on ETRN

Michael Davidson: I will send you logs when I get a chance to test it again (which will be soon). I'm not certain the ISP did their part right, but I can get that straightened out easy enough.

Michael Davidson: Hi JIM!

Jim Smith: Hi

Rusty Tucker: Any comments on the OS8 style list views?

Michael Davidson: (no comment)

Ken Sutherland: hi all

Rusty Tucker: Hi Ken!

Michael Davidson: hey Ken

Michael Davidson: Any progress on the popsicle, Jim?

Jim Smith: Have not been doing anything it.

Michael Davidson: Rusty, what does MS do with the long headers once it has delivered the mail to a local bbs user (are they dismissed or are they stored in a resource?)

Michael Davidson: :(

Jim Smith: Will get back to it next week.

Michael Davidson: :)

Jonathan Paisley: Michael: you mean if the user is using TF-style mailbox?

Rusty Tucker: it tosses the unused headers in a "TF format" message

Michael Davidson: yes Jon

Michael Davidson: I don't understand rusty

Rusty Tucker: in POP3 format, it keeps them in RFC822 format

Michael Davidson: now I understand

Jonathan Paisley: although Chris was kind enough to put the 'X-Local-To' header into a resource 'XLTO' I think

Bob Nunn: Gotta run see ya later....

Rusty Tucker: see ya Bob

Michael Davidson: what do you mean Jon

Michael Davidson: O, Chris Silverberg, got ya Jon

Jonathan Paisley: A while back I asked Chris whether he would put the X-Local-To header inside the mail message resources since I had some need for it at the time..

Jonathan Paisley: What would be kinda cool is if mail server were to put the whole headers into a resource as well--the headers aren't exactly going to take up that much space

Michael Davidson: that could be handy

Jonathan Paisley: [probably make no difference, given the block size that would be allocated for the resource fork anyway]

Rusty Tucker: It would be handier to do away with the native format all together :)

Michael Davidson: I was thinking that maybe it did that Jon with the tf-format messages, but I guess not

Rusty Tucker: just use R822 for all mail

Michael Davidson: YES RUSTY

Jonathan Paisley: but then TF User users don't get all the handy mail handling...

Michael Davidson: but hide the long headers that can be accessed by user if desired by pushing a "Show headers" button

Ken Sutherland: please create RFC822+ format that would allow TF styles to be included in tf-tf mail transfer, it would allow any styled posts and email to survive the mailserver exchange

Rusty Tucker: yeah, something like that. The problem is handling styled messages

Jonathan Paisley: rusty: why not just base64 encode in a separate (x-) part the 'styl' information?

Ken Sutherland: nice timing or what

Michael Davidson: :) Ken

Michael Davidson: Put the long headers in a resource that the button "Show headers" makes available.

Rusty Tucker: I promoted that for a while. I think Chris ran into problems recreating the text byte for byte due to line wrapping.

Michael Davidson: It would be nice now if "Show headers" button for POP3 boxes were implemented

Rusty Tucker: The style rez's map by character position.

Jonathan Paisley: I suppose that would cause trouble with line-breaks and the likes as the message goes through various gateways on its way to delivery?

Rusty Tucker: So if you add or remove a Return or two, the format gets really messed up.

Rusty Tucker: yep

Michael Davidson: rusty, just thinking, right now, does mail server do the same thing with enclosers for pop users as it does for tf-format users (i.e., pu them in attachment folder)??

Jonathan Paisley: bummer. Only solution really is to completely encode the body of the msg as well

Jim Smith: That happens in simpletext also, not too good looking:)

Jonathan Paisley: Michael: attachments in POP3 stay encoded in the POP3 message

Michael Davidson: That's what I was think Jon

Ken Sutherland: if u encoded the body you would reduce return problem

Michael Davidson: O, wonderful to hear that Jon, that gives me an idea

Rusty Tucker: in the end you want rich formatting that can be read by any other client.

Ken Sutherland: everyone duck

Rusty Tucker: Like the Rich Text MIME format, or maybe even HTML

Jonathan Paisley: why not have MS double-encode the text then, both with plain text and then HTML/TF etc.

Jonathan Paisley: I wrote a simpletext to HTML convertor a while back. It worked pretty well

Ken Sutherland: html would be nice

Jonathan Paisley: Remember that the mail PI correctly shows HTML-encoded POP3 messages in proper HTML :)))

Michael Davidson: would support for IMAP work here or am I way off base

Ken Sutherland: as this is a standard that is growing more popular

Rusty Tucker: hmm. that would be interesting to try

Rusty Tucker: What clients support HTML messages ? Just Netscape?

Jonathan Paisley: I'll see if I can look out the conversion code if you like rusty

Jonathan Paisley: It's pretty straightforward

Rusty Tucker: Can you go the other way around?

Jonathan Paisley: html to simpletext? Sure, that shouldn't be too hard, provided the HTML doesn't use any crazy tags (like tables!)

Ken Sutherland: with implementation of html would this be a start of a changeover in structure

Michael Davidson: Wouldn't encoding the entire message be much simpler to deal with than conversion?

Ken Sutherland: for email and posts

Ken Sutherland: or am i way offline

Rusty Tucker: I'm still surprised that HTML isn't a native OS type yet, like SimpleText...

Jonathan Paisley: Michael: How do you mean?

Ken Sutherland: Rusty, why not start a trend

Rusty Tucker: Yes, Michael, but its no use outside of TeleFinder.

Michael Davidson: yes, I got it now rusty, I just thought of that

Jonathan Paisley: i c

Michael Davidson: I think he should go with PPP between server and client, and then work on Html

Michael Davidson: A lot of this kind of innovation would be easier if the TF/user talked to the Server using PPP, don't you all think?

Jonathan Paisley: doesn't make that much difference to be honest

Michael Davidson: I'm thinking there is a lot of software out there that is developed already for ppp/tcp/ip connections that we could take advantage of

Rusty Tucker: like TF? :)

Michael Davidson: It might not help with the html conversion directly, but then again, maybe it

Jonathan Paisley: bye folks

Rusty Tucker: There's a lot of PPP Serving solutions already.

Rusty Tucker: See ya Jon

Michael Davidson: Yes, TF itself would be more integrated if it didn't have the schism between Web server and BBS server.

Rusty Tucker: Any last Q's before we wrap up for today?

Michael Davidson: It could become my clients single newsreader, mail, network connection, and maybe browser all rolled into the easiest to use interface and easiest setup known to the computing world!!

Rusty Tucker: A good "communicator" ?

Michael Davidson: The BEST

Jim Smith: bye all

Rusty Tucker: see ya!

Rusty Tucker: Catch you all later, I'll be back in at 6!

mikael fredriksson: Bye!

Daniel Parker: Hi

Ken Sutherland: Rusty, ever felt like recoding everything 8-)

Daniel Parker: Did I miss it?

Ken Sutherland: yup

Daniel Parker: This is weird, Ken, Chat logger & I are in this room twice

Ken Sutherland: yup

Ken Sutherland: 1 hr late

Daniel Parker: Yup to being in here twice

Daniel Parker: They need to make it an hr later!

Ken Sutherland: ask

Daniel Parker: Anyway, I have to go, Later

Ken Sutherland: l8r