CS656@OUACCVMB.BITNET (05/03/88)
A note for all of you communication program writers out there. I am helping the local Public radio station convert it's method of handling AP news. As it is the AP link is wired directly into a printer. Each morning one of them gathers up the pile of printout and then reenters it into an Apple //E. Pretty redundant, eh? Here's the deal, we're running a line to a SSC in one of the Apples which they've installed a hard drive on. I would like to capture the input (1200 baud, 8-n-1) to a file throughout the night. There is quite a bit of software around that will do this but it all contains a lot of things that obviously aren't needed for this particular job. Another problem is that there doesn't seem to be any handshaking involved. An even bigger problem is the people who will be using this stuff don't "know" computers. It has to be made as simple as possible. Here is what I would like. A program that would (1) Start capturing to disk afrom the SSC as soon as it was ran. The user could select it from the RunRun menu (or whatever) and forget it. Then a simple comma nd to write the buffer to disk and quit when the user came in the next morning. (2) Autosegmenting of files. They have been using PFS write so far. They would like to keep using it but I told them they may have to go to WORD PERFECT to handle large files. (as to why they bought a hard drive for this particular job, your guess is a good as mine) There are headers for the different news items. It would be great if these could be used in part as the title for the new file. Using the closing statement included with each news report as a signa l to close this file and start a new one would cut down on character loss as there is usually a lag between these transmissions. (3) This is Public radio. They had to do some digging to find the money to even enhance their machine (the hard drive was some sort of grant) so the price will have to be less that what the author really deserves. Anyone interested in this project please contact me at CS656@OUACCVMB.Bitnet Thanks in advance, Bob Church