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The history of FEBBS
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1.70 1991-03-14
■ Here we go again. ( All new Stuff at the End )
■ SuperBbs 1.06a have a different structure on the Areafile
called FLSEARCH.BBS. Febbs has changed to reflect this change.
Reported by Aki Antman.
■ If you made a filelist from the menu and after that wished
to enter an area for editing then the Arealist had been
partialy lost from memory. The other way around Edit first
lists after that was no problem.
■ I realised that allthough Febbs supports descriptions up
to 150 Characters per line it chopped of them to 80 when
you added the DL counter.
■ Febbs now removes Avatar codes when creating filelists in
Remote Access mode as well. This is due to the fact that
RA v1.00 will be able to handle the Avatar codes.
■ Febbs didn't recognice Avatar codes sometimes when you
where editing in the editor. It acted just like all
codes was spaces.
■ < F5 > Added a viewer for how the Files.Bbs looks to the user.
It displays the page your standing at in the editor and it
is aware of some Avatar codes. Press < F5 > to have a look at it.
■ Added support for The ^Y<Char><Repeat> Avatar code in both
the viewer < F5 > and when creating lists. That way your
users will get a filelist that looks just like the list they
saw on the screen while they where online.
■ < Ctr-P > Add character literal at cursor position.
Press < Ctrl-P > and then Any key ( or use Alt-Keypad ) to
add any character to the Files.Bbs. Even if it is occupied by
a function usaly.
■ < Alt-F9 > Added an easy way to add some nice Avatar colours
to your file lists. Simply press < Alt-F9 > and choose colour
from the colour chart. Press Enter and the Proper Avatar code
is inserted at the cursor position.
■ < Ctrl-L > Copy description from line your standing on to
file below. Nice when youre adding same description to multiple
files.
Suggested by Andreas Birgerson
■ Febbs now fully supports the listpath option most BBS packages
have. Before the Files.Bbs file had to be called Files.Bbs but
now it can be called anything. With a few restrictions ofcourse.
The name of the Files.Bbs compatible file must include both a
name and an extension and the extension must not be .BAK.
Otherwise that there should be no restrictions. This also cures
the fact that if the path to Files.Bbs wasn't terminated with
a backslash then Febbs would go a directory level to high.
Suggested by Lars Hellgren.
■ The texts "Matrix File request possible" etc under the header in the
filelist have been made configurable. This is so that you can put
a message in your own language there.
Suggested by Klaus Breuer.
■ < Ctrl-N > Touch all tagged files. Works just like < Alt-N > that
touches the file on the current line, allthough this one touches
all tagged files. By touching i mean setting current date and time
on the file.
Suggested by Ludvig Norin.
■ Support for the 43/50 row mode on EGA/VGA adapters added. Febbs also
supports other modes of Screen length as long as you doesn't shell
to dos and reset the screen to an other mode. If you do that youre
on your own!
■ The first try to get Febbs into some sort of mode where you can
edit the whole line has been made. Now you can edit the whole
150 Character description line.
■ I have upgraded to Turbo Pascal 6 and at the same time i upgraded
Turbo Professionals Toolboxes. I have also dropped CFi that was
the Unit i used to access the archives. The reason for that was that
i didn't have the source to it and i couldn't use it with TP6.
So i built my own interface to the archives.
Febbs now supports the following Archivers.
LHArc 1.13 -> 2.11 SFX
AR 0.20 SFX
LArc 1.33 SFX
ARJ 1.00 SFX
PKZip 1.10 SFX
ARC 6.02
PKArc 3.61
PAK 2.51
Hyper 2.50
ZOO 2.01 SFX
The Archives programs with the SFX flag are Febbs also able to
peek into the so called SelF-Xtracting files made by these Archives
■ Added support for a monochrome mode of Febbs. If you're running on
a non colour screen then supply the /M parameter and Febbs will
use it's set of B/W-Colours. Of Course you can edit the colours
with Feppla as well but if you wan't to run Febbs temporarily
on another machine then this is the way to go.
Suggested by Tommi Jansson.
■ The Column that the TAB key indents the line your standing on is
now configurable. This is because some people like the second line
of description to begin to the right of any Download counter.
Suggested by Paul Leffler.
■ Febbs now remembers what lines that where tagged when you shell to
DOS or to any other external support program.
Suggested by Ludvig Norin.
■ A check to see if a DL Counter already is present is performed when
you try to add a DL Counter. The Check is very hard to do, due to all
the different styles of the DL counter. Hopefully it works
satisfactory most of the time.
Suggested by Mark bayles.
■ When Shelling to external support programs Febbs will change directory
to the directory where the files are before executing any external
program. Works just like the DOS-Shell. This is because some programs
doesn't support full path to the files.
Suggested by Paul Leffler.
■ The number of Files displayed in the Best Download list is now
configurable. A value between 5 and 50 is valid.
Suggested by Paul Leffler.
■ Five new slots for external support programs installed.
These programs can be anything you like. They are assigned the
Ctrl-F1 to Ctrl-F5 keys. Just like all the other external programs
these can be accessed via the DOS path. And if not in the path
please supply full path name.
The following meta strings are availiable on the command lines:
~C = Current directory
~P = Path and Name of Current files.bbs
~N = Name and full path to file on current line
~@ = Text list containing full names of all tagged files in area
~D = The description of the file on the current line.
~A = The Areaname of the current area as found in the Areafile.
The meta strings can occur more than once on the same line.
Ex1. If Febbs is executed from C:\FEBBS with this commandline
MTA /@~@
Would execute Make Them Anything <Tm> Rob Van.Hoeven with a
commandline looking like :
MTA /@C:\FEBBS\FBTAGG.TMP
The FBTAGG.TMP file is the file where Febbs puts the list of
all tagged files in the editor.
Ex2. If your standing on a line looking like this:
FENRIR.GIF Nice Picture of Your SysOp.
And the Command line looked like this :
HATCH /cTIC.CFG /f~N /d~D
Then his would expand to :
HATCH /cTIC.CFG /fFENRIR.GIF /dNice Picture of Your SysOp.
Allowing you to easily hatch files into different File echos.
( Hatch <Tm> Barry Geller )
■ You may now configure if you want Febbs to pause before returning
from a shell to let you see the last screen of the program that
you shelled to. This function however does not affect the "look
inside archives" function.
■ When you use the ALT-W to sort a section, it is now possible
to use the PageUp/PageDown keys as well to tag the block to sort.
Suggested by Mark bayles.
■ Febbs now wrapps the descriptions in the fileslists if they are to
long. This is done i all three list types.
■ Squashed a bug that resultet in double entries in the filearea over-
view list if you created both a total and a condensed filelist at
the same time.
■ If you try to move a file to path, which does not exist, FEBBS will
ask if you wish to create the directory. The same goes for when you
try to load a Files.Bbs and the path is missing.
Suggested by Janne Ristavaara.
■ When you're looking inside archives Febbs will use any external
viewer that you have defined, instead of like before, the internal
viewers allways. To make this operation as fast as possible Febbs
will creata a BATCH file in its home directory and from that batch
file execute the programs, Both the Unpacker and the viewer.
Otherwise Febbs would have to shell twice. If no external viewer
is defined Febbs will use the Internal ones. Works just like when
your using the viewer in the editor.
Suggested by Paul Leffler and the Author.
■ Added the possibillity to Hurl files and descriptions to any directory
you wish. Tag as usual the files you wish to hurl and the use the
F10 hurl and while browsing the areas of your areafile press
< Ctrl-Enter >. A new box will appear that let you type in the
full path to where you wish to hurl the files. If the directory
doesn't exist Febbs will ask you if you wish to create it first.
Allthough the same restrictions as the MD command in DOS must be
observed, that is Febbs can't create a whole path
Ex: C:\FILES\PASCAL\ cant be created but if C:\FILES\ existed
already then the subdir PASCAL would be added.
Febbs will also try to create a new Files.Bbs if one doesn't exist
in the directory your hurling to. All the descriptions will be
placed in this Files.Bbs.
Suggested by several.
■ A display of the Xternal programs that you have assigned in the
setup was added. < Ctrl - F10 > displays a list of the five DOS
programs that you have a possibillity to install.
Suggested by Paul Leffler.
■ When shelling Febbs has the ability to swap itself out of memory
to make room for other programs to run. When swapping, Febbs
can swap to Disk, EMS and now also XMS. If you have extended
memory and wish to be able to use it as XMS memory install
the Device driver called HIMEM.SYS that MicroSoft supplies
with most of their programs. Edit the file called CONFIG.SYS
to look like this in the begining of the file
DEVICE=C:\HIMEM.SYS
And also see to that the HIMEM.SYS file is located in your root
directory (or change the path above to where the file is
located ). Or if you own a 386 then you can use any other
memory manager ( QEMM, 386Max ) to create XMS memory. But then
you can just as well use the EMS memory to swap. Febbs will
check the memory like this: First EMS second XMS and last DISK.
Shelling to memory is a whole lot faster then to shell to disk.
Since i feel i must give my registered users some value for
their money i have decided to make the XMS swap only availiable
to those that have registered. The EMS and DISK swap works just
the same in both registered and unregistered version.
■ Febbs will no longer save current Files.Bbs before switching area
with < Alt - S > unless you have made changes to it.
■ When running in batchmode Febbs has now the ability to create a
logfile. This log file lets you know a thing or two about your
unattended operations. If you do not want a log file then simply
leave the LogFile field in the setup empty. Today the logfile is
in a FrontDoor <Tm> style but if you feel that you need a
different style let me know.
■ Added Remote Access 1.00 CD-Rom Support. Febbs must because of the
new RA support for CD-Roms also open the file called Config.Ra.
Because some info about your Files.Bbs files reside in this file.
■ Fixed a glitch considering the condensed list.
Also hopefully fixed some stuff regarding the videomodes on some
cards.
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