• BBS and Internet (R)Evolution

    From Ozz Nixon@21:1/144 to All on Sat Mar 23 12:13:24 2019
    Per the NNTP inability to track subscription data - great point. Didn't really think about that one much, but, your right - this machine has my FSX_* newsgroups subscribed, but my primary machine does not.

    Next week (hopefully starting Monday), I am working on a more advanced/custom NNTP client for my Newsgroup server - and I will make sure I incorporate "account side subscription" (server)... and by my design I was already storing "Last Read" based upon ARTICLE commands from the client.

    My challenge has been up until recently, I used to only poll my uplinks once a week or so - now I have it automated, but, the problem was the tosser (today is
    Mon, starts tossing *.MO?, then does not find anything until it gets to *.SA? and *.SU? ... so my Monday messages are stored prior to the previous 48hrs. (Every tosser I have tried has had this issue). So... when I get to recoding my
    old QuickBBS tosser, I am going to do a *.PKT sorter, then migrate from *.PKT->MSG_BASE.

    When I ran PCBoard, I had a tosser that the fact it sorted the PKT files was it's brag point - as it was DOG ass slow... I did a test run, with todays hardware and programming tech, I was able to sort a while month collection of PKTs in 2,800ms... so for a couple of days should be a blink of the eye.

    So this weekend, I am testing end to end 'ExchangeBBS NNTP Server' as a RFC
    compliant implementation, then I will post the source up on github. (its all Pascal, and my JAM API has been rewritten by me to simplify using JAM as the backend for NNTP). [Then I want to start on the other End... Client Engine].

    Per the client engine, I am thinking of implementing RichEdit as my message body, with the ability in config to use OpenGL with a lot of (to be coded) logic to work like a scrollable message body, but incorporating a lot of 2D game features... if this comes off okay, then I will fork it, to focus on porting all of my Door game source to using ANSI & (some catchy name) to support scrolling background layers, sound effects, text graphics, .PNG ANSI Fonts... this will take me a bit, I am sure, as I am *not* a game developer by todays standards... but, I want to bring our tech to the forefront of todays cool platforms! (And I do this full time, 7 days a week) ;-)

    --
    .. Ozz Nixon
    ... Author ExchangeBBS (suite)
    .... Since 1983 BBS Developer

    --- FMail-W32 2.0.1.4
    * Origin: ExchangeBBS WHQ (21:1/144.0)