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FDDEV 2.02 FrontDoor Developer's Kit For FrontDoor 2.00 and above Table of contents 1 LEGAL NOTICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 PASCAL.ARJ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 C.ARJ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 FDDEV.DOC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3 Data types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 4 Unix-style dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 5 CRC values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 6 The FD environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 7 Country specific information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 8 DOS versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 9 Miscellaneous files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 SETUP.FD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 EVENT.FD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 FOLDER.FD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 PASSWORD.FD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 INBOUND/OUTBOUND.HIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 NODIAL.FD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 REQUEST.FD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 LASTCALL.FD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 MODEM.FD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 TERMKEYS.FD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 TERMPHON.FD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 TERMPROF.FD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 10 Reserved space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 11 The log file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 12 Communicating with FrontDoor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 FDRESCAN.NOW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 FMRESCAN.NOW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 FDINSESS.nnn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 FDINEXIT.nnn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 FDNOUSER.NOW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 FDNOSCAN.NOW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 FDNOEXIT.NOW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 NODIAL.FD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 FDEXIT.nnn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 FDRENUM.nnn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 ROUTE.FD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 13 Service requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 14 .MSG file format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 15 The LOCAL bit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 16 Packet format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 17 Nodelist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 18 Getting in touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1 LEGAL NOTICE The FrontDoor Developer's Kit and information attached hereto, hereafter referred to as FDDEV, is protected by applicable copyright laws and international treaty provisions. FDDEV is provided as is, without warranty of any kind or fitness for a particular purpose, either expressed or implied, all of are hereby explicitly disclaimed. Advanced Engineering sarl only guarantees that FDDEV will occupy disk space. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of FDDEV is with you. Should FDDEV prove defective or incorrect, you assume the entire cost of all necessary servicing, repair, and/or correction. In no event shall Advanced Engineering sarl or Joaquim H. Homrighausen be liable to the you or anyone else for any damages or costs, including, but not limited to, any lost profits, lost savings, lost income, lost information, loss of the right to use FDDEV, or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use FDDEV. Additional statements by agents, employees, distributors, and dealers of Advanced Engineering sarl do not constitute warranties by Advanced Engineering sarl and do not bind Advanced Engineering sarl. The information contained in this document was assembled from source code and various data definitions from the FrontDoor E-Mail system. I don't guarantee the accuracy of this information and it's subject to change without further notice. I will try to keep this information as up-to-date as possible. If you decide to write an application with explicit support for FrontDoor, feel free to use this information as long as you understand that you're on your own. There is no support available for this package. It's intended to be used by programmers and developers. FDDEV may be published and distributed to other people as long as no part of it is modified by any means, this includes translation to any other language (technical or social), and as long as no charges are applied, this includes trading. FDDEV information may not be used to reverse engineer FrontDoor, or any related utility, nor may it be used to commercially compete with Advanced Engineering sarl or Joaquim H. Homrighausen. All Advanced Engineering sarl and Joaquim H. Homrighausen products are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Engineering sarl or Joaquim H. Homrighausen. Other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Copyright 1990-1991 Advanced Engineering sarl. All rights reserved. Documentation and Software written by Joaquim H. Homrighausen. 1 2 Files PASCAL.ARJ A collection of include (.INC) files for use with Turbo Pascal 5.5 and later. C.ARJ A collection of include (.H) files for use with most ANSI C compatible C compilers. FDDEV.DOC This file. 3 Data types The file definitions in this package make references to several data types, such as integers and bytes ('U' is used to indicate the C notation "unsigned"). These are as follows: Pascal C Description --------------------------------------------------------------------- integer int A 16-bit signed integer. If the high bit is set, the number is negative, otherwise it's a positive number. word Uint A 16-bit unsigned integer. The high bit is used for data and does not represent the sign. longint Ulong A 32-bit unsigned (long) integer. The high bit is used for data and does not represent the sign. byte Uchar An 8-bit unsigned byte. The high bit is used for data and does not represent the sign. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 Unix-style dates A Unix-style time/date stamp is a 32-bit integer containing the number of seconds since midnight (GMT/UTC), January 1, 1970. 5 CRC values CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) values (CCITT variant) are used frequently in the FrontDoor environment to ensure data integrity, etc. How you generate a CRC value is beyond the scope of this documentation. 2 6 The FD environment variable If the FD environment variable is set, FrontDoor will use the drive and directory pointed to by it to retrieve the information in the SETUP.FD file. If the FD environment variable is not set, FrontDoor will assume that SETUP.FD is in the current directory. I strongly advise you to follow the same pattern for your own application. Note that the directory where SETUP.FD is located is not necessarily the FrontDoor system directory. You should read the contents of SETUP.FD and use the SYSTEMPATH field to determine where the system directory actually is. 7 Country specific information FrontDoor and several related utilities display the date and time in the format indicated by the COUNTRY setting in CONFIG.SYS. I suggest you do the same. All you have to do is to use the DOS (INT 0x21) call to retrieve information about the current country (0) and DOS will fill the passed structure with the proper information. 8 DOS versions Since FrontDoor require that the user has DOS version 3.10 or above, it's safe for your own FrontDoor utilities to require the same. 9 Miscellaneous files File SETUP.FD Loc See above. Def CTL.H/.INC Desc The core system file for FrontDoor. It has to be present before FD will operate. You have to read data from this file to retrieve the SYSTEMPATH field, where FD keeps most of its other files. File EVENT.FD Loc System directory Def EVENT.H/.INC Desc Contains information about events. File FOLDER.FD Loc System directory Def FOLDER.H/.INC Desc Contains information about the message editor's (FM) folders. The NetMail folder is stored in SETUP.FD. File PASSWORD.FD Loc System directory Def SESSION.H/.INC Desc Session level passwords and specific behavior, relating to protocols and handshake methods, when calling other systems. 3 File INBOUND/OUTBOUND.HIS Loc System directory Def MAILHIST.H/.INC Desc Inbound and outbound mail history. File NODIAL.FD Loc System directory Def UNDIAL.H/.INC Desc List of undialable systems. File REQUEST.FD Loc System directory Def REQUEST.H/.INC Desc Password protection for inbound file/update requests. File LASTCALL.FD Loc System directory Def LASTCALL.H/.INC Desc Last inbound and outbound mail call as well as recent system activity. File MODEM.FD Loc System directory Def MODEM.H/.INC Desc Data to send to modem prior to dialing a system. File TERMKEYS.FD Loc System directory Def TERMINAL.H/.INC Desc Terminal macro key definitions. File TERMPHON.FD Loc System directory Def TERMINAL.H/.INC Desc Terminal phone directory definitions. File TERMPROF.FD Loc System directory Def TERMINAL.H/.INC Desc Interactive EMSI profiles for the terminal. 10 Reserved space Arrays or variables marked "Reserved" or "Reserverat" is RESERVED storage and may NOT be used for your own purposes. This is for your own good. The obvious situation would be if I release a new version of FrontDoor that uses that space and you don't have time to release an updated version of your utility. 4 11 The log file FrontDoor, TosScan, and AirMail uses the same logging format. Here's a sample of three different programs all using the same log format: ---------- Wed 02 Oct 91, FD 2.02 = 11.28.17 RING = 11.28.30 CONNECT 14400/ARQ/V32/LAPM + 11.28.32 Online Communications Inc., 1:132/300 ~ 11.28.32 SysOp: James Smith ~ 11.28.32 Using: FrontDoor 2.10/OC00003C : 11.28.32 Tranx: 28E9AD5E / 28E969D2 ~ 11.28.32 Flags: XA,CM,HST,V42B,V32B ~ 11.28.32 Phone: 1-207-990-3511 11.28.32 sType: EMSI 11.28.32 Password protected mail session * 11.28.39 Rcvd C:\FD\FILE\NET\000693C8.PKT; 4826b, 1206 CPS * 11.29.16 Rcvd C:\FD\FILE\NET\FF76011B.WE1; 33365b, 926 CPS * 11.29.29 Sent C:\FD\FILE\OE\A3DAB809.WE1; 7664b, 1916 CPS + 11.29.32 Mail transfer completed $ 11.29.32 From 1:132/300, 1.00, 0. 11.29.33 Truncating sent file: C:\FD\FILE\OE\A3DAB809.WE1 11.29.36 Msg 56 from 1:132/300 to tomas bremin - 11.29.36 Mail received, errorlevel=255; exiting ---------- Thu 22 Feb 90, TSUTIL; Link # 21:26:12 505 messages linked ---------- Thu 22 Feb 90, TSMAINT; EMPTY # 21:26:26 0 "empty" area(s) found The 'dash line' is created whenever FrontDoor is brought up from DOS. If you want to insert information about which program is running, do it like the samples above. The time format used in the log file is always in 24 hour format, but the separators (':' for USA, '.' for Sweden, etc.) should be taken from DOS' country structure. The century of the year is never written to the log. Please try to use a format similar to or exactly like the above samples. There are several log analyzers out there for FrontDoor. Also, please don't use any of the 'symbols' (first character on the line) that are used by FrontDoor or TosScan as that could probably confuse some log analyzer. 5 12 Communicating with FrontDoor If FrontDoor is running in a multitasking environment, such as DESQView or on a LAN such as Novell, the contents of the NetMail folder can change quite easily. A program on one workstation could create new mail that has to be sent out immediately, another program could unpack mail received from a Usenet feed, etc. FrontDoor's mailer (FD) and editor (FM) can be forced to rescan its NetMail folder by using semaphore files. FM and FD check for the various semaphore files periodically. How frequently this occurs depends on how much the program has to do and what it is doing. All semaphore files are checked for in the SYSTEMPATH directory in the noncommercial version. In the commercial version, the RESCANPATH directory is used if it's defined, otherwise the SYSTEMPATH directory is used. The noncommercial version of FrontDoor ignores the RESCANPATH directory completely. The size of the semaphore files is ignored and several of the files are never removed. Instead, the program reads the timestamp of the file and simply checks for an updated timestamp. The following files are supported: FDRESCAN.NOW Forces FD to discard all mail packets (NOT messages) from the temporary packet directory and rescan the contents of the NetMail folder before rebuilding the packets. FD updates this file by itself after mail sessions, etc. to allow other (possible) copies of FD to take notice of the changes in the NetMail folder, this does, however, not cause a rescan on the machine that updated it. FMRESCAN.NOW Forces FM to rebuild its internal list of messages in the NetMail folder. This is only acted upon by FM if the user is in the primary NetMail folder. FDINSESS.nnn FD creates this file whenever a mail session is initiated, and when it is dialing a system, attempting to establish a mail session. If FM detects this file, it will not let you renumber the NetMail folder. "Nnn" is the task number (0-255). This is not supported in the noncommercial version. 6 FDINEXIT.nnn FD creates this file whenever a human caller is detected and passed onto a BBS or other on-line service. When FD returns, it compares the timestamp of FDINEXIT.nnn with the timestamp of FDRESCAN.NOW, and if they do not match, a complete rescan (see FDRESCAN.NOW) is performed. "nnn" is the task number (0-255). In the noncommercial version, this file is not task aware, and is always called "FDINEXIT.NOW". FDNOUSER.NOW Forces FD to refuse human callers. This has the same effect as setting the "Human callers" option, under FD's "Your profile" menu, to "NO". The visual indicator for this semaphore file is "NU". FDNOSCAN.NOW Forces FD to ignore FDRESCAN.NOW. FDNOEXIT.NOW Prevents FD from exiting because of received mail. This has the same effect as setting the "Exit on mail" option, under FD's "Your profile" menu, to "NO". The visual indicator for this semaphore file is "NE". NODIAL.FD While this is not a semaphore file per se, it triggers the display of a visual indicator, "UD". FDEXIT.nnn Forces FD to UNconditionally exit with the errorlevel "nnn". Before FD exits, it removes the file. FDRENUM.nnn FM creates this file whenever you press <Alt-B> to renumber the NetMail folder. When FD detects this file, it will not place any outgoing calls until the file has been removed. This prevents FD from initiating an outbound session while FM is renumbering the contents of the NetMail folder. "nnn" is the task number (0-255). This is not available in the noncommercial version. ROUTE.FD While this is not a semaphore file per se, it is used to determine if the NetMail folder has to be rescanned (see FDRESCAN.NOW). If the timestamp of this file has changed since FD last checked it, a rescan is forced. 7 13 Service requests When FrontDoor is processing a "Service Request" (please refer to the FrontDoor documentation for a description of Service Requests), it creates a file containing information about the remote system. The following structure is used: <RemoteInfo> <RemoteIDCount> <RemoteIDList> The <RemoteIDCount> field is a 16-bit unsigned integer containing the number of valid entries in the <RemoteIDList> field (the number of bytes written is constant). For a description of these structures, please refer to SREQ.H and SREQ.INC respectively. The name of the created file can be obtained from FrontDoor and passed on the command-line to the external application. 14 .MSG file format FrontDoor uses the Opus (1.03) convention for .MSG file formats. Ie. the binary date_arrived and date_created fields. If it can't successfully parse any of those fields, it will use the ASCIIZ date string. 15 The LOCAL bit FrontDoor requires that the LOCAL message attribute bit is set before it will send the message(s). If the LOCAL bit is missing, FrontDoor will not forward the message to its destination unless an appropriate forwarding instruction is found in its route file. 16 Packet format FrontDoor uses the FSC-39 packet header proposal when creating packets. When reading received packets, FrontDoor supports both the FSC-39 and FSC-45 ("Type 2.2") proposals. 17 Nodelist The FrontDoor nodelist structures have not been released as of yet. 18 Getting in touch Advanced Engineering sarlPhone+352 358725 8, am ForFax+352 355938 L-5351 OetrangeModem+352 355936 Luxembourg E-Mail: 2:270/17@fidonet, 2:270/7@fidonet, ae@fido.rmi.de 8