PERRY%nuhub.acs.northeastern.edu@RELAY.CS.NET (07/28/87)
pP--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PKpPATTENTION BBS USERS, PROGRAMMERS !!!
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BBS USERS:
I'm now in the process of doing research and starting to
develop a ShareWare BBS program. The goal of my project is to
build the "Ultimate" BBS! Now is your chance to give your input
into this project! I want to hear your ideas! What complaints to
you have about the BBSes you call? What do you like about them?
What don't you like about these systems? You have some ideas for
features? Great! Don't limit yourself. Please let me know (no
matter how exotic or complex the idea!) Please mail me any ideas,
questions, or comments at the address below. Thanks again. Your
comments and ideas are sought and greatly appreciated!
THANKS!!
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PROGRAMMERS:
I need YOUR HELP NOW! I'm writing a ShareWare BBS program.
My goal is to create the "Ultimate" BBS: A BBS with many fea-
tures, that is easy to use, easy to maintain, and that is very
flexible. I am requesting opinions of users of BBSes (as you can
see above) and will try to take them into account. I know some-
thing about communications and programming but I can use all the
help I can get on this large undertaking. Any information about
modems, communication routines, questions, or comments would be
greatly appreciated. (See below for my Address) I know BASIC and
Turbo Pascal. Would C be a better language to use for this? (It
would be nice if I could make this BBS run on as many machines as
possible) Any comments, questions, suggestions (including source
code), or requests to be involved will be greatly appreciated!!
(See below for my Address)
THANKS!!
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USnail: Jeffrey F. Perry NOTE: Please send responses directly to
67 Angelica Drive me. (I don't read this list)
Framingham, Ma 10701
ARPANET: PERRY%NUHUB.ACS.NORTHEASTERN.EDU@RELAY.CS.NET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------aad+@andrew.cmu.edu (Anthony A. Datri) (07/29/87)
Are you still in high school or what? You know basic and turbo. While basic has its uses, it's obviously not the language to write a bbs in, and turbo isn't the language to write *anything* in. Have you ever heard of things like Fido and Opus? You're gonna have to write a damn good product to compete with them.
ralphw@ius2.cs.cmu.edu (Ralph Hyre) (07/29/87)
In article <sV3T6Ay00WAKMUc1En@andrew.cmu.edu> aad+@andrew.cmu.edu (Anthony A. Datri) writes: >... Have you ever heard of things >like Fido and Opus? You're gonna have to write a damn good product to >compete with them. Note that the goal wasn't competition, but quality. Most BBSes are woefully inadequate in the user interface area, so something that was compatible with the Fido/Opus/Echomail message exchange protocols but capable of doing nifty graphics and avoiding needless retransmissions when sending to user with a real computer rather than a terminal will be very popular. -- - Ralph W. Hyre, Jr. Internet: ralphw@ius2.cs.cmu.edu Phone:(412)268-{2847,3275} CMU-{BUGS,DARK} Amateur Packet Radio: N3FGW@W2XO, or c/o W3VC, CMU Radio Club, Pittsburgh, PA
oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) (07/31/87)
Speaking of needless re-transmission, when will BBS systems realize
that I've got a computer, with a disk, and I've called this BBS
before. My home computer is perfectly capable for remembering not only
the menus for the BBS but also which messages I have seen and all of
the directories I've listed. All the BBS has to do is ask my home
computer if it already has a current XX, and if it does show it to me.
If it doesn't, it should send it to my home computer, which in turn
will show it to me.
With a proper asynchronous BBS front-end running in my home machine, a
lot of this could be happen while I was still reading the menus and
deciding what to do.
the following protocol:
1.) check to see is the user is using a computer, (not a terminal)
2.) ask for a the root of a tree checksum from the last session
3.) if the root checksum doesn't match, recursively ask for sub-tree
checksums.
Many Macintosh programs allow added new, custom code segments to
themselves, even after they are compiled. You can add a new data type
picker an editor to ResEdit, you can add a new digital filter to
SoundWave. We are beginning to see commercial programs with a "Custom"
menu, that shows the names of all the custom code resources the
program has had added to it. (These resources get called with a
topmost window belonging to the application with a published data
structure.) What we need is a terminal program that would let me plug
many custom resources in, a different intelligent interface for each
different BBS. That way, I need buy only one terminal program, and
developers of the custom code resoureces for the BBSs would only have
to worry about the details of the BBS: the details of modem control,
serial port programming... would al be services provided by the
terminal program. That way I could plug new terminal emulators into my
terminal program without having to replace it: I've got ansi, but I
need a data general emulator, no problem, just paste this in here.
--- David Phillip Oster --My Good News: "I'm a perfectionist."
Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --My Bad News: "I don't charge by the hour."
Uucp: {seismo,decvax,...}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edumjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) (07/31/87)
Keywords: ralphw@ius2.cs.cmu.edu (Ralph Hyre) writes: > Note that the goal wasn't competition, but quality. > Most BBSes are woefully inadequate in the user interface area, so something > that was compatible with the Fido/Opus/Echomail message exchange protocols > but capable of doing nifty graphics and avoiding needless retransmissions > when sending to user with a real computer rather than a terminal will > be very popular. Opus does provide full IBM ANSI support, so that people using IBM PC's or suitable software (I have a program for my Amiga that suitably displays PC color ANSI) will get various video attributes on their display (color or bold/underline/inverse on a monochrome display). The major failing of Opus is that it does not use a curses library and understands only how to talk IBM ANSI. Opus is a very full-featured BBS package, and is the result of a lot of work. It would be very difficult to produce a package of the same caliber. My biggest suggestions for a BBS package are the following: * Provide some sort of termcap/curses support so that various types of terminals/PCs can be accomodated. * Opus has a number of file transfer protocols built in, with ten slots for external protocol drivers accessible (Kermit is an external protocol in Opus). You may want to have this capability in your BBS. * Mail between BBS users and message bases should be two separate entities. One of my nits about Opus (and nearly every other BBS package) is that it places mail between users in the message groups themselves, so that you can see message 35, but not 36 through 45 because they are private mail (as an example). * Providing the capability to run external programs is a good idea. You could set up the main menu so that it can run either a pre-defined function built into the BBS software or an external program. * You could offer the users a choice between menu-oriented control or a command interpreter. There are others, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head. -- Mike Portuesi / Carnegie-Mellon University Computer Science Department ARPA: mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu UUCP: {backbone-site}!spice.cs.cmu.edu!mjp BITNET: rainwalker@drycas (a uVax-1 run by CMU Computer Club...tons o' fun) "Paradise is exactly like where you are right now...only much, much better" --Laurie Anderson, "Lanugage is a Virus"
mh@killer.UUCP (Mike Hobgood) (07/31/87)
Why make it shareware? Why not public domain or just plain old copyright? I personally dislike all shareware authors. They usually have 2K of text begging for money every time you run the program. If this is your intent I'd rather you didn't!