home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
- The history of FEBBS
- ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
-
- 1.80 06-Aug-1991
-
- ■ Here we go again.
-
- Features with the {+} mark is only availiable for registered
- users.
-
- ■ Feppla, The setup utility for Febbs, has been rewritten from
- scratch. Not a single line of code from the old was used
- (except from my usual libraries of code). It has been written
- using OOP ( Object Oriented Programming ) and was my first
- go in larger scale at OOP.
-
- I have also added a better On-Line help system and all items
- that i consider needs a help page has been given one. Just
- press F1 from anywhere in Feppla.
-
- This rewrite was necesary because the old Feppla was an
- excerpt from Febbs in the early days when the setup was built
- into Febbs. Since the setup wasn't intended to be a standalone
- unit of Febbs from the beginning it was a very dificult job
- to add new items to Feppla. And since Febbs is growing, Feppla
- was rapidly becomming a pain. So i wrote a new one, You should
- be able to handle it in the same manner as the old since it
- was moduled after the old ones style.
-
- ■ When sorting Febbs would chop of any description to 80 chars. Fixed.
-
- ■ Febbs was checking if the File existed for every keypress when you
- had the "Display File Info" option set to ON when editing. This
- didn't do so much on systems with some cache but on slower systems
- it was a pain. Fixed.
- Reported by several.
-
- ■ Squashed an Ugly bug in OPUS mode. When Febbs had read all
- the SYSTEMXX.DAT files from disk it sorted them to get the
- areas in order. This sort routine didn't work to well so
- the File Directories and the Files.Bbs paths got all mixed
- up. Fixed.
- Reported by several.
-
- ■ Reorganized the overlay files a bit. Some stuff that didn't belong
- in an overlay had been transfered there and thereby slowing down
- performance on some slower systems.
-
- ■ A lot of internal restructuring of the filelist part.
- Nothing the end user should notice.
-
- ■ The routine that that displays the Date and Size of a file on the
- statusline has been rewritten and no longer accesses the file.
- Instead all that is done is a directory level inquirie. This results
- in an increase of speed on slow machines.
-
- ■ Fixed some display bugs in the Sort routine when you where tagging
- lines and used PageUp.
-
- ■ Redused the size of the footer of the filelists. Now it only contains
- the copyright information and who the copy is registered to.
- Suggested by Fred Horner.
-
- ■ Changed the way that Files.Ra (Remote Access Area File ) is read from
- disk and improved speed on slow systems with 1200%
-
- ■ When trying to erase a read-only file Febbs would terminate with
- a Runtime Error. Fixed.
-
- ■ Added Avatar style lists when creating the List of the most downloaded
- files and the FileArea overview list. No RLE compression since i am
- not sure all BBS types can handle that.
-
- ■ Fixed a small bug in PSCF, the routines that handles Archives.
- Febbs wasn't handling LHa header 1 archives correctly if they
- contained a path inside them. Fixed.
-
- ■ Added LHa Header 2 support in PSCF. And since Febbs is using PSCF
- Febbs also handles those archives now.
-
- ■ When creating the filelists Febbs didn't do the same "cleaning up"
- of the Files.Bbs as it does when loading it into the editor. That
- is making sure that the description starts in position 14 and
- stuff like that. But since many of the routines in the FileList
- part relys on the fact that the Files.Bbs is standard, Febbs now
- does the same clean up when creating the lists. This is only
- done in memory no saving of the cleaned up files.bbs is done.
-
- ■ {+} Added definable style of the GIF info that Febbs is able
- to add to GIF files. Use the following meta commands in the
- setup.
-
- ~W = Width of GIF Image.
- ~H = Height of GIF Image.
- ~P = Number of Colours in GIF Image.
-
- Example : [~Wx~Hx~P] would be translated into the following
- for a standard SVGA GIF Image, [640x480x256].
-
- If No Style is defined the style (640*480*256) will be used.
- Suggested by Saar Blitz.
-
- ■ Added a small mark in the Area Pick List that shows if the area
- is to be included in the File lists. That way it is easier to
- se if some area by accident have been included that shouldn't have
- been.
-
- You may also tag and de-tag areas to be included in the
- Filelists with <space> from the same list. If you changed any
- tagged areas from within Febbs then Febbs will ask you if you
- wish to save when you exit the program. If you answer yes then
- the changes will be saved to the config file.
-
- ■ Since a lot of perssons still use XT machines to run BBS systems
- they didn't quite like the overlay part of Febbs. The overlays
- saves memory so that larger Files.Bbs can be loaded into Febbs.
- But since XT machines usualy hasn't got that big disks and thereby
- not that big Files.Bbs files i have made the Overlay buffer size
- configurable. The larger Buffer the less disk access by Febbs.
- That is if You do not have EMS memory, then Febbs will use EMS
- for the overlays. If you have EMS then you most certenly never
- want to tamper with the overlay buffer size.
-
- So if you wish to reduce disk access by Febbs use the following
- switch to set the ammount of memory that Febbs should allocate
- for the overlay.
-
- /O:<Buffer Size>
-
- The size of the original buffer size is displayed when you try
- to change the size of the Buffer. Now it is up to you to
- configure the buffersize that is the best for Your system.
-
- ■ The length of the path to the File Area that Febbs can handle
- has been increased to 79 characters. That is as long path as
- DOS allows so if you have a longer then it is time to trim it.
-
- ■ If a line starts with a plus sign (+) then it is treated as a
- comment instead of a file as before.
-
- ■ If a directory had the archive bit set then it would be adopted
- just as if where a file when adopting missing files. Fixed.
- Reported by Anders brink.
-
- ■ Added a new prompt when you have edited a Files.Bbs and
- have pressed Esc. You will then be able to save and exit
- emidiatly instead of going back and save and then exit.
- Suggested by Mats Birch.
-
- ■ This is vital infromation. Please read!
-
- When creating the Directory list not only directories
- associated with the areas that are put in the filelist
- will be included, but also those that has the password
- tag set. This is so that areas not in the filelist can
- be accepted as frequable by Your mailer. See the docs
- for more information about the list of directories.
- Suggested by Mats Wallin.
-
- ■ When using a screen size that is larger than 25 rows Febbs
- will adjust the number of rows that PgUp/PgDn jumps to an
- appropriate number of rows.
- Suggested by Mats Wallin.
-
- ■ {+} If You for some reason would like to keep Your name out
- of the lists that Febbs creates then add the switch /X to
- the commandline when you create the lists.
- Suggested by Fred Horner.
-
- ■ Added support for Quickbbs 2.75.
- Suggested by Steve Gabrilowitz.
-
- < End of File >
-