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┌────────────┐ │░░░░░░░░░░░░│ │░░░┌────┬───┴────────┐ │░░░│ │░░░░░░░░░░░░│ │░░░└────┴─┐░┌───────┬┴───────────┐ │░░░░░░░░░░│░│ │░░░░░░░░░░░░│ │░░░┌────┬─┘░└──────┐│░░░┌────┐░░░├──────────┐ │░░░│ │░░░░░░░░░░││░░░│ │░░░│░░░░░░░░░░│ │░░░│ │░░░┌──────┘│░░░└────┘░┌─┘░┌────┐░░░├───────────┐ │░░░│ │░░░│ │░░░░░░░░░░│░░░│ │░░░│░░░░░░░░░░░│ └───┘ │░░░└───────┴┐░░┌────┐░└─┐░└────┘░┌┬┘░░┌────────┘ │░░░░░░░░░░░░│░░│ │░░░│░░░░░░░░││░░░│ └───────────┬┘░░└────┘░░░│░┌────┐░└┴┐░░└────────┐ │░░░░░░░░░░░░│░│ │░░░│░░░░░░░░░░░│ └──────────┬─┘░└────┘░░░├───────┐░░░│ │░░░░░░░░░░░░│ │░░░│ └───────────┬┴───────┘░░░│ │░░░░░░░░░░░░│ └────────────┘ THE File Area Manager for RemoteAccess 0.04a/1.10 Maximus 1.02/2.00 Tubbs 1.00ßeta Opus 1.1x QuickBBS 2.6x/2.7x SuperBBS 1.1x Copyright (c) 1990,91 by FenrisUlven Data & Patrik Sjöberg To my Grandmother Birgit Lindström. I will always remember you. Table of contents Disclaimer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 What is FEBBS ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 How to get Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 SETUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 BBS System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 General Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Flag toggle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Colours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 The Filelists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Choose Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 External Support programs . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 The external viewers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 The Archive programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 The free of choice external utilities . . . . . . 21 The Text "macros" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Keyboard setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Entering the registration code . . . . . . . . . . 23 Compile helpfile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Save the changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 EDITOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 How to Edit Your Files.Bbs . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 How to read the function part of the manual . . . 26 The functions that can be used inside the editor . 27 Avatar Control Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Runtime Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 The Filelists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Avatar Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 General items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 The Directory list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 When, How, Where? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Headers/Footers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Sample batch file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Different Filelists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Memory Swapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 FEBBS VS Viruses and EXE packers . . . . . . . . . . 49 The overlay buffer and slow machines . . . . . . . . 50 Commandline parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 1 Multitaskers and Share . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 The future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Copyright, Trademarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 2 Disclaimer The FEBBS-Package is subject to the following license terms and conditions. The FEBBS-package is supplied as it is. The author disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability and of fitness for any purpose. The author assumes no liability for damages, direct or consequential, which may result from the use of the FEBBS-package. The FEBBS-package is a "shareware program" and is provided at no charge to the user for evaluation. Feel free to share it with your friends, but please do not give it away altered or as part of another system. The essence of "user-supported" software is to provide personal computer users with quality software without high prices, and yet to provide incentive for programmers to continue to develop new products. The FEBBS-package, all programs, the documentation and support files are copyrighted 1991 by Patrik Sjöberg. All rights are reserved. You may copy this package for backup purposes. You may also copy and share unmodified copies of the whole package, providing that the copyright notice is reproduced and included on all copies. You may not sell the product for a fee and/or distribute the product along with other products without written permission, nor may you modify or remove the Copyright Notices from the programs or the documentation files. User clubs, if they are NOT commercial, are allowed to ask a small amount of money for distribution and storage when they want to share this package amongst their members. It is forbidden to modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, decompile and/or disassemble the software in the FEBBS-package. Patching the medium at places that carry the software is seen as a program change and is also forbidden. Non-commercial users can get a licence for the usage up to this release of the FEBBS-package for a small amount of money. Look into the details in HOWTO.REG. Previous registered users will receive a big reduction to upgrade to the newer versions. These users should also look into the details in HOWTO.REG. For Non-commercial users there is a POSSIBILITY to submit to one of the special contracts as explained in the same file. Commercial usage of FEBBS will cost somewhat more. Also, a so called 'closed' Bulletin Board System (a system where Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 3 the user must pay direct to the SysOp to get full access) has to pay more than a Non-commercial user. Usage of the Febbs-Package on a BBS with 3 (three) lines or more is considered as 'closed BBS' usage also. You'll find the details of all this in the file called HOWTO.REG. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 4 What is FEBBS ? Febbs is a File Area Manager for your favourite BBS. It will help you keep your file areas in shape and create Your daily filelists. How many times have you not edited those Files.Bbs files. And how many times have you not been "running" around in your directory-"tree" just to get to each of them. Copying files cross drives just to forget to move descriptions as well. This is where Febbs comes in. Just sit tight and edit each and everyone of the Files.Bbs files from a directory of your choice. No more changing directories and unloading/reloading your editor. Hurl files and descriptions easily between areas. Look inside Your archived files to determine what is in them, create Your daily filelists and statistical files and much much more... Febbs will save You, the busy System Operator, countless of hours as You would have spent maintaining the file area part of Your system. It is a small investment that will repay itself with a couple of weeks. (If You value Your own time in any way). Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 5 Features * Support for Remote Access 0.04a and 1.10 / Maximus 1.02 and 2.00 / Tubbs 1.00ßeta / Opus 1.1x / QuickBbs 2.6x and 2.7x / SuperBbs1.12. * Edit all Your Files.Bbs from one spot. * Full screen editor with standard edit Commands. * Fully user definable keys for allmost all functions. * Enter Avatar / control codes within the Editor. * Supports SAA/CUA in program design. * Adopt missing files to Files.Bbs. * Add GIF info to the description automatically when adopting files. * Add GIF resolution easily to files already in Files.Bbs. * Create Your daily lists. * Create overView of all Your areas ASCII/ANSI/AVATAR flavour. * Create a list over frequable directories for Your Mailer. * Create a list over the 50 most downloaded files. ASCII/ANSI/AVATAR flavour * Strip Avatar codes from filelists. * Tag files randomly ( not random tag though :-) ) in the editor. * Tag missing files that exist in Files.Bbs. * Tag dupe entries in Files.Bbs. * Delete tagged files. * Hurl/copy files to other areas. Description moved as well. * When hurling/copying place the hurled/copied files at Position you like in the new Area, or if you wish hurl without changing area. * Hurl files to any directory you wish. * Sort tagged blocks inside editor. * Look inside all major archives and at files inside archives. * Look at GIF files resolution. * DOSshell with built in swap to EMS, XMS or Disk. * Support for internal viewers of Archives, Text- and Binary Files * Support for external viewers of Archives, TextFiles, Binary files and GIF Files. * Delete missing files from Files.Bbs * Mouse support. * Search for files local and if not found local, global. * Touch files to make your users notice "new" files. * Rename files. * Date format configurable in filelists and in editor, or use DOS date style. * 5 slots for any external support program. And more ... Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 6 How to get Started 1 Unpack the Archived file containing FEBBS. 2 Read all the documentation files contained in the Archive. 3 Put FEBBS in a directory you fancy. 4 Fire up FEPPLA (The Febbs Setup Utility).Feppla will now create a file called FEBBS.CTL. This file contains the setup info needed for FEBBS. If your upgrading from an version older than 1.00 of FEBBS you must delete the old FEBBS.CTL then redo the Setup. And if You are upgrading from version 1.80 to 1.90 then You simply run FEPPLA and save the configuration file to upgrade to the new format. And if you wish to create different setup files for different occasions just add the switch /S:<Name> to the Commandline and the config file <Name> will be used instead. Just remember to do the same with Febbs when you wish to use it later on. Why would You want a different Setup? Imagine that You wish to create different lists for different areas. Lets say you have One List containing PC programs and one containing Amiga programs. Then in Your batchfile simply state... FEBBS N F : This one uses standard config Febbs.ctl FEBBS N F /S:Amiga.Ctl : This one uses the Non Standard Amiga.Ctl And, you can create Different Filelists. Just remember to name them differently in the Config so that they do not use the same name when creating the lists. More on the filelists later on in this document. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 7 SETUP The configuration program is the heart of the Febbs- Package. If it is not set up properly it will not work properly either. So it is essential that you take your time and walk through the whole set up program. Through out the Setup program You can always press F1 for some On-Line help. All items, except the most obvious, has some On-Line help. The Setup program also tries to adapt to the SAA/CUA (Common User Interface) interface that most new programs use nowadays. That means that F1 will always be help and F2 will always be save. Except when You leave the program. Well, time to fire up Feppla - The Setup Utility for the Febbs-Package. Have a look at the magnificent entry screen (Made by Ludvig Norin) and then press any key... What you will see is this : Febbs «» Febbs « Fe┌─────────────────┐bs F│ BBS System │bbs » │ General Items │ebb «»│ Toggle Flags │Feb «│ Colours │ Fe s │ List Setup │» F bs│ Areas to List │«» bb│ Password Areas │ «» eb│ Xternal Support │s « Fe│ Text "Macros" │bs F│ Keyboard Setup │bbs » │ Registration │ebb «»│ cOmpile help │Feb «│ Save Setup │ Fe s │ Exit Setup │» F bs└─────────────────┘«» bbs «» Febbs «» Febbs «» Fig. 1. BBS System SETUP BBS type. What type of BBS Software do you use? RemoteAccess, Maximus, Tubbs, Opus, QuickBBS or SuperBBS? This menu option let you tell Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 8 FEBBS what Area files it should be looking for. Either Config.Ra/Files.Ra for Remote Access, Area.Dat for Maximus, Axaareas.dat for Tubbs, a Bunch of SystemXX.Dat files for Opus (where XX is a Hexadecimal Number), FlSearch.Ctl for QuickBBS 2.6x or FilCfg.Dat for QuickBBS 2.7x. Or why not Flsearch.Bbs for SuperBBS. Would have been nice with some sort of standard. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 9 General Items SETUP Path to BBS files. This is where your area files reside. That is where your Config.Ra/Files.Ra, Area.Dat, Axaareas.Dat, SystemXX.Dat, FlSearch.Ctl, FileCfg.Dat or Flserach.Bbs resides. (Depending on if your BBS software is Remote Access, Maximus, Tubbs, Opus, QuickBbs or SuperBbs). Febbs can handle up to 300 areas in Your BBS. Most of the BBS packages can't handle any more either. Adopted files. This is the comment that will be added to files adopted to Files.Bbs by Febbs. Febbs can handle one meta string in the adopt description. This meta string is ~D (tilde D) and it will insert todays date. (A meta string is a small string that when Febbs finds it he will replace it with something more relevant). An adopted file would look like this after it has been adopted if You had entered '[0] (v0.00)' in the setup. ┌─────────────────────┐ ANYFILE.ZIP [0] (v0.00) └───────── Ordinary ZIPfile └─────┬─────┘ └───────────── Comment chosen by You. Fig. 2. Adopted GIF Files. This is the comment that will be added to adopted GIF files. It works the same way as the above adopt function. But it also honours the ~G meta (GIF information) string as well as the ~D meta string. If You had entered '[0] ~G Adopted : ~D' in the setup and the file was adopted on the first of december the adopted GIF would get the following description. The date style is of course configurable (later on in this document). ┌─────────────────────────────────────────── Ordinary GIF file. ANYFILE.GIF [0] (640*480*256) Adopted : 91-12-01 └─┬──────────────────────────────────┘ │ │ Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 10 └──────────────────── Resulting description. Fig. 3. The DownLoad counter. This is used when you when you add the DL counter manually inside the editor. That is if you use any. Febbs does NOT do any download counting of its own. You must install another third part utility to handle the counters. Febbs only reads them when creating the list of most downloaded files. Date style. To be able to make the whole world happy the date style is configurable. Choose the style you fancy and all lists and all dates inside the editor will look like that. Or let Febbs figure it out from what You normally use in Your daily DOS environment. Name of Swap file. This option there to let you place the Swapfile that Febbs creates when swapping to execute an external program or just shelling to DOS on a RAM disk or maybe a disk that is fast to speed up the Swapping. Febbs has the ability to Swap most of itself out of memory when accessing external programs or just Shelling to DOS. If you have EMS or XMS memory then of course it doesn't matter what you write on this line since no physical swap file is generated. All swapping is done via memory. Which is also a whole lot faster. Read more about swapping in the "Memory swapping" section of this manual. Indent value. This is how many spaces that Febbs will pad to the left of the description when you press <TAB> inside the editor. Read more about the function in the "How to edit Your Files.Bbs" section of this manual. Logfile. When you are running Febbs in batchmode to create your daily filelists Febbs can keep a log file of what has happened during this unattended event. This is good if you wake up one morning to find that your nightly events didn't work as you thought they would. I have tried to keep the log file as trimmed as possible so that it won't grow to Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 11 much. Here You specify what to call the log file and where to place it. GIF Information. When adopting GIF files or when using the "Add GIF information" function Febbs will add the HEIGHT, WIDTH and PALETTE of the GIF image. This is Your opportunity to design the style of this information. You can use three meta strings to design the style of the information. The default is (~W*~H*~P). That is an ordinary SuperVGA image would look like this (640*480*256). But if you wish to have some other style use the following meta-strings and create your own info style. ~W = Width of GIF Image. ~H = Height of GIF Image. ~P = Number of Colours in GIF Image. Where ~ is a Tilde (#126). Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 12 Flag toggle SETUP Exploding Windows Do you wish to use Exploding windows when inside Febbs? Just some aesthetic stuff, but nice for the Eye. Date/Size Display Febbs has the ability to show date and size of the file on the line that the cursor is on at the moment. The size and date will be displayed on the statusline. This option sets the default start value for this option. This can later be toggled ON / OFF from inside the editor. Backup Files. Do you wish to keep BAK files of your Files.Bbs. That is Files.Bak of every saved Files.Bbs or not. FEBBS always creates a BAK file when saving. This option only chooses wether or not to delete that Bak file after completed save of the current Files.Bbs. This option has no affect when you use Remote Access 1.00 new CD-Rom support since all Files.Bbs resides in the same directory and is called the same except for the extension. So when Febbs renames the current Files.Bbs to Files.Bak it will overwrite the last Files.Bak that was in the same directory. Noise when Explode. This will let you choose wether or not to use some sound effects when exploding the windows onto the screen. This flag has absolutely no meaning if the Exploding windows option is set to OFF. Swap. Swap out of memory when Shelling is a very powerful feature that Febbs has that allows almost any program to be run in a DOS Shell from inside Febbs. Here you decide if you wish to use this feature. On an old machine with little memory and a slow disk it can be painfully slow to swap out Febbs. So if you know that you will never use any large programs (The PAK and ARJ archivers are considered to be large programs) you may turn this feature off. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 13 Columns in Area list. When choosing area from the File Area pick list you can select how many columns that you wish to have displayed on the screen at the same time. Possible values for this item is 1-3. Delay When Explode. When Exploding windows is set to true then this item also effects the way this is displayed. You can fine tune the way you wish your Windows to Explode. This is all depending on how fast machine you have got. So try what settings you prefer on your machine. In Area list from start. Mostly you wish to end up in the Area Pick List when you fire up Febbs. Set this option to ON and Febbs will push an enter into the keyboard buffer and thereby leaving you in the Area Pick List when you enter Febbs. This option has only been tested on AT machines and upwards. It may not work on older machines. Virus check. If you rest assure that no virus will ever get near your machine You may want turn of the Virus check at the start up of Febbs. Screen mode. 43/50 EGA/VGA Mode. Let's you choose if you wish to run Febbs in a higher line mode then 25 rows. This only works on EGA/VGA adapters and monitors. 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 you are on your own! Febbs will when exiting after completed task try to restore the screen mode to what it was before you entered Febbs. And if You have started in 132 line mode then Febbs will not know how to get back into this mode since that is a graphic card specific mode. Pause after DOS Shell. You may configure if you want Febbs to pause before returning from a shell to let you see the last screen of the program that you Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 14 shelled to. This function however does not affect the "look inside archives" function. Colours SETUP After this it's time to be creative. Choose Colours, This is your change to get seasick :-) Have Fun. Remember that if you are upgrading from version 1.50 (or prior versions ) then you need to set the Colours of some new items. Otherwise these will be black on black. Not to viewable i must say. If you wish to temporarily use Febbs on a monochrome monitor and you have no wish to change the setup then fire up Febbs with the parameter /M. C:\> FEBBS /M Will temporarily put Febbs in a monochrome mode. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 15 The Filelists SETUP Total List. This is the name of the global filelist that will be created for you when you either in batchmode (see later on in this document) or from the menu order a filelist. News List. The same as the above is valid for Newslist. Although this is a list of New files the "Days for News list" number of days. How old. Enter how old files that should be included in the list of new files. Condensed list. This list is a mix between the News list and the Total list. All files are included just like the Total list but only the names and the descriptions after the names. Any descriptions between two files will be omitted. Areas DIR list. This is a list containing the directories of all your areas that is included in the filelist (and the areas that are tagged for a password). This is to create a directory over Frequable directories for your mailer. See the list part of this manual for more information. Style of Areas DIR List. Febbs supports two styles of Areas DIR list. The styles supported are called FrontDoor and Binkley. The names are taken from then both programs that uses the different types of list. When in FrontDoor mode Febbs will write each line in the following Style : C:\FILES\FEBBS and when in Binkley mode it will write the following : C:\FILES\FEBBS\*.* Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 16 Missing files. If a file is Missing this will be displayed instead of Date and Size in the filelist. (or if a file has Zero length). Overview of areas. The overviw list is a little overview of all your areas. Nothing fancy but it still an overview. ASCII Version Overview ANSI. This is the ANSI version of the area overview list. Maybe nice to have on display in your bbs so that all those twit users will see how much files there really is and upload something (for a change) to get hold of the other areas. Overview Avatar. Avatar version of the area overview list. The same list as the above but with Avatar colour codes instead of ANSI colour codes. Best download lists. When creating the Total filelist Febbs can also take a look at what files that have been downloaded most. Nice to have online to show your users what files that are the most popular. You can create both an ASCII,ANSI and AVATAR version of this list. The 50 most downloaded files on your system can be placed in this list. For this to work you have to have a program that maintains download counters in your files.bbs. NICENICE.GIF [10] (640*480*256) Really nice picture. The part of the description with the digits 10 is the download counter. And it has to start at position 14 in your Files.Bbs. But if it doesn't Febbs will adjust this for You at runtime. Both when creating lists in batchmode and when loading a Files.Bbs for editing. Febbs can handle Download counters of a variety of styles. [](){}<>0123456789 are all valid as download counters. Note that also just numbers works. NICENICE.GIF 10 (640*480*256) Really nice picture. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 17 The list is created when you run a total list and you have named the ASCII, ANSI or AVATAR versions in the Setup. Febbs does NOT do any download counting on its own. You must use another program to maintain your DownLoad counters. Febbs simply use them when it creates this list. Number of items. You can decide how many items you wish to appear in the "Best Download" list. Values between 5 and 50 are valid. Messages to the users. The messages that appear under the head in the Filelist is configurable. The two messages the appear is linked with the areas that you tag as password areas (see below) and those that you don't. It doesn't have to be solely for file request that you can use these little messages. It works just as well if you just want to inform that this area is only for registered users or something like that. Header of Total list. This option let You specify if You want to have a header of the total list. Perhaps a textlogo of some description about the containts of the list. Header of News list. This option let You specify if You want to have a header of the list of new files. Perhaps a textlogo of some description about the containts of the list telling the user how old files are included or something like that. Footer of Total list. This option let You specify if You want to have a footer of the total list of files. Perhaps the ASCII version of the area overview. Or just some advertisment about You and Your system. Footer of News list. This option let You specify if You want to have a footer of the list of new files. Perhaps the ASCII version of the area overview. Or just some advertisment about Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 18 You and Your system. Choose Areas SETUP Areas to list. This item will bring up a list of all the areas specified in your areafile(s). Here you tag which areas that will be included in the lists. Password areas. This item will let you tag those areas that needs a password to be accessed. Either for Freq or On-Line. This will put the text that You already has specified above in the list setup under the header of the filelists. If an area is tagged then the text from the "Password Freq message" will be put under the header and if not tagged then the "Freq Possible message" will be put there instead. And as mentioned above you can put any message that you find suitable there. There is no need for it to be a password message. External Support programs SETUP All external programs can be accessed via the DOS Path. If a program is in the path then simply write same command in the config as you would from the dos command line. But if not in the path please state full path and name! Ex. D:\PATH\PKUNZIP.EXE. Please read the part about swapping and turn it on if you are accessing any large programs from inside Febbs. The external viewers SETUP The external viewers are accessed like this : If You have specified an external viewer then that one will be loaded when you press the appropriate key (see "How to edit Your Files.Bbs" later on in this manual). It will be loaded with a commandline which is the name and full path to the file you where standing on inside the editor. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 19 Ex. of CommandLine : C:\DIV\DP.EXE C:\FILE\FENRIS.ZIP └──┬──────────┴────────┬──────────┘ └ Your Setup └ Part added by FEBBS. Fig. 4. If no viewer has been specified in the setup then Febbs will use the built in viewer. This goes for all viewers except the GIF viewer. Febbs supports the following types of viewers : - Archive viewer. - Text file Viewer. - Binary file viewer. - GIF viewer. The Archive programs SETUP Febbs has the ability to peek inside all major archive types to look at the files that reside inside the archives. What Febbs can't do is to unpack a file inside an archive that you wish to look at. This is where the external archive programs comes in. If you do not want to look at files inside archives then you won't have to configure any archive programs. There is NO need for any parameters for the Archivers. Febbs will, when executing them, supply the needed parameters. Febbs supports the ability to look at files inside the following archive types. Archive Type Version SFX PKZIP 1.10 Yes LHA 2.13 Yes LHArc 1.13 Yes AR 0.20 Yes LARC 3.30 Yes Hyper 2.50 ARC 6.02 PAK 2.51 PKPak 3.61 ARJ 2.21 Yes Please note that LHA 2.13 is used to unpack LHarc 1.13, AR 0.20 and LArc 3.30 archives. And PAK 2.51 is used to unpack any ARC and PAK files. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 20 The Archivers marked with a 'Yes' on the SFX option can Febbs also look inside the so called Self Extracting Archives that these archivers can produce. Please, take a look at the Swap option if you intend to use either PAK or ARJ since both of these packers require a lot of memory to operate properly. If you are missing an Archive type then please let me know. And if you supply me with the technical info about archives i will be able to add that archive type in a later release. The free of choice external utilities SETUP There are five slots for external support programs. These programs can be anything you like. 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 available 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 = Area name of current Area as found in areafile. The first character in the meta strings is a so called tilde (#126). The meta strings can occur more than once on the same line. Ex1. Febbs has been executed from C:\FEBBS. And the commandline in the setup for Your external program looks like this : MTA /@~@ If You execute this, the commandline would expand to : MTA /@C:\FEBBS\FBTAGG.TMP The FBTAGG.TMP file is the file where Febbs puts the list of all tagged files in the editor. * Make Them Anything (MTA) is an Archive converter by Rob Van.Hoeven Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 21 Ex2. If your standing on a line looking like this: FENRIR.GIF Nice Picture of Your SysOp. And the Commandline in the setup 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 is a part of the FileEcho package called TICK by Bary Geller. The Text "macros" SETUP Macros. Often used text strings can be entered here to speed up editing of Your Files.Bbs files. These texts will be inserted at cursor position inside the editor. That is if you have pressed the appropriate "HotKeys". Febbs does not support any real macros. That is recording of keyboard strokes. Keyboard setup SETUP Keyboard redefinition. All key assignments of functions in Febbs can be defined by the user on which keys he would like them. This has the advantage that You can streamline Febbs into Your computer environment. This also affects the manual that will not refer to functions via their key assignments rather their functions. All functions can have to key sequences that assigned to them. But You do not have to assign more then one if You do not wish. To assign a key simply place the cursor on the key You wish to reassign and press <ENTER>. A small box will pop up and then You press the key You want to assign to the function. If The key sequens is already occupied You will be notified. To remove an assignment Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 22 press <ENTER> and then press <BACKSPACE> to remove the assigned key sequence. Entering the registration code SETUP Keynumber. If you decide to use Febbs after the trial period you must register (see the HOWTO.REG doc) and this is where you enter the registration Info after you have received your Keynumber. Your Name. Your Name must be exactly as you spelled it in the registration form and remember that it is case sensitive. BBS Name. The name of your BBS is the Background that is used in Febbs. This one can be changed after registration without the need of a new Keynumber. Compile helpfile SETUP Compile. When You have made changes to Your key assignments You will most likely be wanting to update the help in Febbs to reflect Your new key assignments. To do this You have to have the file called FEBBS.TXT in the same directory as Feppla-The setup program. FEBBS.TXT is the source code of the binary helpfile that Febbs uses. When You select "Compile" in the menu, Feppla will first create a temporary file wich it inserts all Your key assignements in and then it will compile the binar helpfile from this temporary file. It is beyond the scope of this manual to describe how to program the helpfile. But if You are interested contact FenrisUlven Data to recive the needed information. Save the changes SETUP Save. You have now reached the final decision. To Save or Not to Save. Do as you please but hurry up ! Febbs is Waiting to be tested :-) Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 23 Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 24 EDITOR The maintenace menu in Febbs is not much to talk about. And this is so on purpose. Now all you have to do is press Enter twice to find yourself in the first area. If we look at the Choose Area list you will see a list of the areas represented in your Areafile. From the list presented to you can choose which area to work on. Use either your cursor movement keys (PgUp/PgDn/Arrows), the mouse or press a number. If you press a number watch the lower left corner of the window, Press for example 19 <Enter> to be transferred to area no 19. This will greatly improve the speed when choosing area if you are at the bottom of the list and want to go to area 1. Then just press "1" and enter. Sometimes, if you wish to go to an area that is in the range 1 - 9 then maybe you need to press <AreaNumber><Space> so that Febbs understands that you wish to go to area 4 and not to an area in the range 40 - 49. A small mark in the Area Pick List, between the areanumber and the areaname, shows if the area is to be included in the File lists or not. That way it is easier to see 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. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 25 How to Edit Your Files.Bbs EDITOR When you have chosen an area to edit then you will find yourself inside an "ordinary" ASCII editor with your Files.Bbs loaded in it. From here it's just plain old boring editing <Smile>. If you are running FEBBS with a BBS package that supports Avatar codes then perhaps you use them in your Files.Bbs to make the lists more interesting. Febbs has no problem with these except for the character #13 which is considered as carriage return. But any other code just enter them in the editor as you did before in your old editor. Or why not use Febbs built in Avatar colour picker. Choose any colour from a nice colour chart and have the appropriate Avatar Colour code added at cursor position. When inside the editor use either the cursor keys or a MicroSoft compatible mouse to manoeuvre. Press <F1> for an instant help from anywhere in the editor. How to read the function part of the manual EDITOR Febbs has the ability to let You assign all functions to keys that You prefer. This in return means that there is no easy way to show You in this manual which keys which function is assigned to. Therefor we have decided that only the functions names are used as reference and not the assigned keys sequences. But You have all the Key-Function assignments in the availiable in the Febbs help system. And the Febbs help system can be updated by You when You make changes to the Key-Function assignments. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 26 The functions that can be used inside the editor EDITOR Add Avatar colour codes This is an easy way to add some nice Avatar colours to your Files.Bbs. You will be able to choose colour from a colour chart. Press Enter and the Proper Avatar code is inserted at the cursor position. Add character literal Add character literal at cursor position. Execute Character literal and then Any key (or use Alt-Keypad) to add any character to the Files.Bbs. Even if it is occupied by a function usually. Good to have when you adding Avatar codes or some other Control codes that your BBS supports. Some control codes can be added without you using this functions but as more and more control codes are occupied by functions inside the editor it is often easiest to use this one all the time. Add DownLoad Counter as specified in setup If you execute add download counter it will be added first to the description. You may specify the style of the counter in the setup. If no counter specified the description will be justified at position 14. 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. If You are unable to add a DL counter to a specific line try inserting a few spaces to the description, just so that the check for a download counter is temporarily fooled. Add GIF info to description If you are editing an area that has GIF files in it and you are standing at a line with a GIF file that looks like this ... NICENICE.GIF A Really nice picture. and you execute Add GIF info you will get this... NICENICE.GIF (640*480*256) A Really nice picture. That is, the Resolution and how many colours will be Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 27 added to the description of that particular file. Nice if you have GIFs in your Files.Bbs that where there before FEBBS Adopt function came along to add the resolution for you. Febbs Supports both the GIF87a standard and the new GIF89a standard. The (X*Y*Pal) value will be inserted at cursor position but if you are standing on the filename it will be inserted as the first text in the description. And if you are a registered user have a look at the setup where You can style the added GIF info the way you like it. Adopt Missing Files to Files.Bbs When you press execute the adopt command Febbs will compare the files in the current Files.Bbs with the files found in the directory connected with the current Files.Bbs. Any file found on the disk and not inside the current Files.Bbs will be added to the bottom of the Files.Bbs with the description choosen by You in the setup. Binary Viewer If You have specified an external binary viewer then that one will be loaded when you press the key sequence that is associated with this function. It will be loaded with the commandline that exists of name and full path to the file you where standing on inside the editor. Ex. of CommandLine : C:\DIV\DP.EXE C:\FILE\FENRIS.ZIP └──┬──────────┴────────┬──────────┘ └ Your Setup └ Part added by FEBBS. Fig. 5. If no Binary viewer has been specified in the setup then Febbs will use the built in viewer. Copy description from line Above This one Copies the description from line your standing on to file below. Nice when your adding the same description to multiple files. Copy tagged Lines/Files to different Area This option will let you copy the already tagged lines Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 28 to a different area. The select area window comes up again and all the commands described in this window above is working. Then, when you have chosen a area to hurl to the files will be moved there and then the old files.bbs will be saved and the new one loaded. When the chosen area has been loaded just move to the position you would like to give the hurled files descriptions and press the <Copy function> key again. The descriptions will now be placed where you where standing on. Febbs is all the time trying to determine that enough diskspace is left on the drive that you are hurling to. If not enough room on the destination Febbs will stop and only let You hurl the files that will fit. But as always there can be things that might go wrong if you are getting short of diskspace so try not to get into this dilemma. If a file that you are copying already exists in the area you are copying to FEBBS will ask you if you wish to overwrite the file. If you answer Yes the file will be overwritten. To save memory, Febbs will when copying create a temporarily file called FEBHURL.TMP. This file contains the descriptions from Files.Bbs that are to be hurled. Creating this file has an advantages, It adds extra safety to the copy. What if something happens to your system before you have had a chance to place the copyied files and you had to restart your computer ? The descriptions would be lost forever. But now you can simply look at the file FEBHURL.TMP in the home directory of Febbs and there are the descriptions. If you try to copy a file to a path which does not exist, FEBBS will ask if you wish to create the directory. Although 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. See Also : Copy/Hurl Files descriptions Anywhere and without area change. Copy Files descriptions Anywhere and without area change This version of the copy will not let you place the descriptions in the area that you area copying to. That is when copying you will NOT be transferred to the new area. The descriptions of the files will be placed last in the area you are copying to. Also this version of the copy will let you copy files and descriptions to any Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 29 directory you wish. Tag as usual the files you wish to copy and then 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. Although 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 copying to. All the descriptions will be placed in this Files.Bbs. See Also : Copy/Hurl tagged Lines/Files to different Area. Copy Line Pressing <Copy line> will Copy the line you are standing in to a buffer. And pressing <Copy line> again will transfer the buffer to line you are standing on. A status indicator in the lower right of the screen will indicate if something is in the buffer. This function only works inside the current Files.Bbs. You can not use this one to copy text between areas. See Also : Move line Display Files.Bbs as the BBS would When you execute this command Febbs will let you look at the Files.Bbs just like the user would see. It displays the page your standing at in the editor and it is aware of some Avatar codes. The Avatar codes that it is aware of is discussed in the Avatar section later on in this manual. Display the External support programs A display of the External programs that you have assigned in the setup. It displays a list of all the external support programs in the setup. Including the five DOS programs that you have a possibility to install. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 30 DOS Shell This option works just like any other shell, although the DOS Shell option will only load an extra copy of Command.Com (or whatever command processor you use) into memory. No Commandline is passed. You will find yourself inside the directory you where editing inside the editor. To return to Febbs simply type EXIT at the DOS prompt and press return. Febbs will also change the DOS prompt to remind you of this. And as in all shell you are not allowed to load any programs that doesn't release all memory after execution. External Archive Viewer This one works just like the binary viewer although the internal Archive viewer is located on a different key sequence. See Also : Binary Viewer, Look Inside Archive/GIF Info. External GIF Viewer Febbs has no internal GIF viewer so only the external is used if you trigger the <Alt-P)eek> option. Remember that if You are in some none standard text mode when You peek at GIF images then Febbs will not be able to switch back to that mode after You have finished to look at the GIF image. As standard text modes are 25,43 and 50 row modes. See Also : Binary Viewer. Global Unmark of tagged Lines This option clears all tags in the current Files.Bbs See Also : Tag line for later action. Hurl tagged Lines/Files to different Area This option will let you hurl (move) the already tagged lines to a different area. This function works in most parts as the Copy version of this function, only the differences are used. If the file areas you are hurling between is on the same Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 31 drive no physical moving is done. Only at directory level are the files moved. This makes the Hurl process extremely fast. If a file that you are hurling already exists in the area you are hurling to FEBBS will ask you if you wish to overwrite the file. If you answer Yes the file will be overwritten but the description won't transferred to the new area. This is to prevent dupe descriptions in the area. FEBBS simply assumes that the description already in the area is the correct and simply kills the new one. See Also : Copy/Hurl Files descriptions Anywhere and without area change. Hurl Files descriptions Anywhere and without area change This version of the hurl will not let you place the descriptions in the area that you area hurling to. That is when hurling you will NOT be transferred to the new area. The descriptions of the files will be placed last in the area you are hurling too. This file works just as the copy version of this function. See Also : Copy/Hurl tagged Lines/Files to different Area. Indent comment to position specified in the setup Sometimes when descriptions of files that take more than one line it is nice to be able to indent the following lines at a position that will look nice when your BBS displays them. Pressing tab will do that for you with the line you are standing on. If the line doesn't fit it well be wrapped to the next line. Please not that you cannot indent a file. So if the line you wish o indent is starting at position 1 then Febbs consider that one to be a file. Inserting a space as the first character on the line will let you indent it with <TAB>. Kill All tagged Lines / Files Just as the header says this function kills (erases) all tagged lines (and the associated files) in the editor. If a file is missing it simply works as <Ctrl-Y> - Remove line. See Also : Remove Both line and File. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 32 Look Inside Archive / GIF Info Febbs has the ability too peek inside most of the major Archives that are so popular on BBS systems. Archived files save both time when Downloading and space on the System Operators disk. And in the same time it sees to that all files in a package is kept together. That is documentation and the Executables will never part. When you execute this function You will see a window with the contents of the archive you where standing on with the cursor. If the file is a GIF file instead of an archive you will see an info-window containing relevant info about that particular GIF picture. After Febbs has scanned the entire file you will be able to scroll around inside the window just like when choosing a filearea. And if you wish to look at a file inside the archive just press enter and that particular file is unpacked and loaded into the either the internal viewer or external. All depending on wether or not you have configured any of these in the Setup. Febbs will load the Binary viewer if the file has an extension of EXE, COM or OVR. And load the texviewer if any other extension is found. Febbs will behave just as when you use the viewers from inside the editor. Please note that for this function to work you have to install the external archivers in the Setup. Febbs do NOT do any unpacking of its own. Febbs supports the ability to look at files inside the following archive types. Archive Type Version SFX PKZIP 1.10 Yes LHA 2.13 Yes LHArc 1.13 Yes AR 0.20 Yes LARC 3.30 Yes Hyper 2.50 ARC 6.02 PAK 2.51 PKPak 3.61 ARJ 2.21 Yes The Archive programs with the SFX flag are Febbs also able to peek into the so called SelF-Extracting files made by these Archives Please note that PAK 2.51 needs approximately 185 Kb to work properly. And the ARJ Archiver is also a real memory hog so consider Febbs abilities to can swap Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 33 itself out of memory if You plan to look at files inside ARJ,PAK or ARC Archives. When your looking at Files inside archives Febbs needs to extract the File to be able to let you have a look at it. If you do not wish to use the standard temporary directory that Febbs has hardcoded into itself, then specify an environment variable called FBTMP and use the DOS command SET to set it to a directory that Febbs will create and afterwards delete. From the DOS command line type the following before executing Febbs. or put it into your Autoexec.Bat. SET FBTMP=C:\TMP\ The example above would force Febbs into using the directory C:\TMP\ as the directory where files that where temporarily unpacked would be stored. When you are looking inside archives Febbs will use the viewer that you have defined or not defined if you wish to use the internal. If you have installed an external viewer Febbs will, to make this operation as fast as possible, create 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 and if you have not got any XMS or EMS memory then the swap operation can take a while. See Also : External Archive Viewer. Memory Status The function memory status will display both disk status and memory status. Also a nice graph over the space left on current disk versus total Size is Shown. Menu in editor If You are not that familiar with Febbs and the Key assignments You have selected You can rest calmly because there is a menu in Febbs wich has all functions that are availiable via "hotkeys". So simply invoke the editor and browse the menus to decide what function You want to perform. Move Line Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 34 Move line works just like Copy line although the line you are standing on will be moved to the buffer instead of copied. And the next time you press <Move Line> it will be transferred to the line the cursor was on. Please note that if you move something into the movebuffer and then switch filearea the line inside the buffer will be lost. See Also : Copy Line, Move tagged Lines inside editor Move tagged Lines inside editor This function moves the tagged lines inside the editor. When execute this function all the tagged lines in the editor will be moved to the line you are standing on. Nice if you wish to move a number of files. A bit too much job to do that with Move Line. See Also : Move Line Remove Both line and File This function will Delete the file and description not only from the list but from the disk as well. FEBBS will ask you if you are sure when deleting files. No harm done if you choose the wrong file. Although Febbs will not ask if the Files is missing and its only a textline. Then this function works just as if you had pressed <Ctrl-Y> - Delete Line. See Also : Remove File but leave description in Files.Bbs. Remove File but leave description in Files.Bbs Removes the file but leaves the description. This one can be used when you are short of diskspace but wish to leave the description in the list and thereby make it <MISSING> when your users view your Files.Bbs. See Also : Remove Both line and File, Kill All tagged Lines / Files Remove missing files from Files.Bbs When you execute this function Febbs will check that all Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 35 the files in Files.Bbs really exists. If an entry does not exist on disk then it is removed from Files.Bbs. See Also : Tag All Missing Files Rename File on Current line When executing rename you will be able to Rename the file on the current line. Febbs will automaticaly update the Files.Bbs file for You as well as renaming the file on disk. Save current Files.Bbs When saving Files.Bbs Febbs will handle any upcomming errors. If an error should occur then Febbs will prompt You for a new filename so You may save the file elsewhere. Search for Filename When executed this function will pop up an entry field where you enter a search string to look for. Please note, no wildcards or anything like that. If You wish to find "NICEGIRL.GIF" just enter "GIRL". Then Press <Enter> to start search. Febbs will first search in the current area for the name. Starting at row below the cursor position and to the end. If Febbs find "GIRLS.GIF" and stops at that but you know that one is not the right one use <Search Again> to continue Search. But if not Found then a Question will pop up on the screen asking if you wish to search Global. If you answer yes you will see Febbs strawl down all your Areas looking for the file. Only Files listed in Files.Bbs is taken into the search. After completed search or after you have pressed a key to stop search You will see the found (if any) Files in a Scrollable window just like the Choose area window. And if you position yourself upon a File and press enter you will automatically be transferred to that file. If in another area, a new Files.Bbs will be loaded. And the cursor will be placed on the File you wanted to go to. See Also : Search again. Search again Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 36 As described under the <Search for filename> function <Search again> continues the search after the first "hit". Ex. A nice way to use search is like this. You have just received the latest DSZ protocol by Chuck Forsberg and wants to hurl it from the UL area to its appropriate area. But you do not remember where the old versions area. Simply press <Search for file> enter the Search argument DSZ press enter and Febbs will start looking for any DSZ files for you. When you see the old ones popping up in the search window press any key to stop search. You Now see where the old file is, what it is called, what area and area number. You remember the number and presses Escape to abandon the Search completely. You tag the New DSZ. Press <Hurl file> for Hurl. Enter the area number where the old ones where. For example 15 and press Enter. You will find yourself inside the Files.Bbs of area 15 at the top. Now to get to the old DSZ files simply press <Search Again> to Continue search and viola there you are. Press <Hurl file> to "put down" the new DSZ and use <Remove file> to get rid of the old one. Simple and Fast. What more could you want. See Also : Search for Filename Sort Block This one will let you sort a block that you first mark with the direction keys. The direction keys are Up- /Down-Arrow and PageUp/PageDown. When You have marked the block that You wish to sort press <Enter>. Please not that Febbs do not support sorting of multiline descriptions. Show text "macros" This will pop up a little box on the screen showing what macros you have defined in the setup. Good to have when your memory isn't what it ought to be :-) Switch Area When you are inside the editor it would be very clumsy if you had to leave it and return to the main menu every time you wished to change area to work on. Therefore Febbs has the ability to let you choose a new area to Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 37 work on from inside the editor. This function works just like the choose area item from the main menu. Just cruise between your areas and select a new one with enter. (or use the HotKeys ! That is if you wish to go to area 19 simply press 1, watch the lower left corner of the window, press 9 and press Enter. As fast as it can be) You will upon selection be transferred directly to the new area. The Files.Bbs you leave will automatically be saved if you have done any changes to it. If you wish to discard your changes you will have to choose F3 (or ESC) to abandon your changes. And take of from the main menu for new adventures in Files Land. Tag All Missing Files Maybe <Remove all missing files> is a bit too strong for you. You wish to have files Off-Line" due to lack of disk space. But you do not wish to keep all that junk lying around as Off-Line. Easy, Simply press <Tag missing> and all missing files will be tagged and then untag those you wish to keep and the others use <Kill tagged files> See also : Remove missing files from Files.Bbs, Kill All tagged Lines/Files. Tag dupe Entries in Current Files.Bbs This function will compare all file names in the Current Files.Bbs to see if any Duplicate entries exist. If any, they will be Tagged and you are able to see which are dupes and afterwards take appropriate actions. See Also : Kill All tagged Lines / Files Tag Line for later action Tag line will simply tag the line you are standing on. It will change colour to the colour chosen by you in the setup to indicate that it is tagged. If the line is already tagged then the line will be non-tagged. Simply a Tag-Toggler. See Also : Global Unmark of tagged Lines. Tagged files status Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 38 This function will display how many files that have been tagged and the total size of the tagged files. Text Viewer Febbs internal textviewer has some limitations. It can only handle 2000 lines and it can only handle as much lines that can be stored in memory. It can't wrap lines either. But it is in my opinion fully functional for its purposes. The external text viewer works just like the Binary. See Also : Binary Viewer. Text "Macros" as defined in Setup These texts, that you have specified in the setup, will be inserted at cursor position when you press the appropriate "HotKey". Toggle Display File-size / -Date on statusline This toggles the option to display size and date of file on current line on the statusline. The default state of this toggle is already chosen in the setup. Touch file on current line If you execute this function the file on the current line will be stamped with the current date and time. Nice if you have manually copied in some new files from floppy and wish to let your users now that these are new files. See Also : Touch all tagged files Touch all tagged files Touch all tagged files. Works just like <Touch file> that touches the file on the current line, although this one touches all tagged files. By touching i mean setting current date and time on the file. See Also : Touch File on Current line Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 39 Xpress way out of editor When your in a hurry to leave Febbs use the Xpress way out of the editor. When inside the editor and in editing mode a press of <Xpress way out> will transfer you directly to DOS. Although if you have made changes then Febbs will ask you if you are sure. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 40 Avatar Control Codes Febbs is aware of some Avatar codes. Avatar stand for Advanced Video Attribute Terminal Assembler and Recreator and is a <TM> of George A. Stanislav. I will not go in to deep here on the Avatar codes but if you wish to examine them closer i suggest you get hold of the following FidoNet technical Standards documentations : FSC-0025 FSC-0037 They should be available on most Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) but if you can't find them contact me and i will supply you with them. The Following codes are supported by Febbs. ^Y<Char><Repeat> - Repeat Character. ^V^B - Turn Blink on. ^V^A<Colour> - Change Colour. Where ^ stands for Control (Ctrl). Press down Ctrl and then Press the Character after ^ to create the Control character. These codes are supported in both the Files.Bbs viewer and when creating lists. When looking at the current Files.Bbs with the viewer Febbs will translate the Avatar codes into proper colours, blinks and expand any repeat char sequens. And when creating the filelists Febbs will strip the Colour and Blink codes and expand the repeat char sequens. That way your users will get a filelist that looks just like the list they saw on the screen while they where online. Well almost anyway. There will be no colours... Runtime Errors Built into Febbs is an errorhandler for Runtime Errors (God forbid that there are any). Febbs will tell you what is wrong in plain English and will also create a file in the current directory called FEBBS.ERR with the same info. Please forward this file with a detailed explanation of how you managed get the Error to the author. Otherwise i won't be able to fix it. But before you report it to me see to that you can reproduce the error on your machine. I Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 41 can not correct any errors if i cant reproduce them. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 42 The Filelists A very Important feature of Febbs is the ability to create filelists for your daily maintenance. Febbs is able to create a variety of lists. Those are : - Total Filelist of all chosen areas. - A Newslist of new files in all chosen areas. - An Overview list of all chosen areas. - A list over the physical directories that your areas resides in. - A list over the 50 most downloaded files on your BBS. These files can be created from the menu or by calling FEBBS with commandline parameters. The Overview of chosen areas and the best download list is available in both ANSI, ASCII and AVATAR flavour. Avatar Codes The Filelists If you are running Febbs with a BBS package that handles Avatar codes, or with the Files.Bbs Browser from FenrisUlven Data then maybe you use Avatar Codes in your Files.Bbs to increase the viewability. Febbs will when run strip all Avatar codes from the lists and expand any Repeat Char Codes. (See the Avatar part of this manual) Thereby make the lists very viewable in text also. Gone is all those happy faces that the users hate when they tried to read the lists or even worse, Print them! Have you ever seen what Avatarcodes does to a Printer? It isn't a pretty sight i might tell you. Well Febbs will take care of it all, so Happy Filelisting and to your users Have a Nice Reading! General items The Filelists Febbs wraps the descriptions in the fileslists if they are to long. This is done i all three list types (Full, news and condensed). 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. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 43 The Directory list The Filelists The directory list is meant to keep your Frequable directories up to date. That is this file that is used by Your mailer to determine which directories that are frequable. Haven't you sometime redesigned the physical location of your file areas? And did you, at that time, remember to modify to modify the list over frequable directories? The answer is most likely to be NO. Well, Febbs will now take care of that for you. But maybe you got a few areas that you do NOT want to be included in the filelist but you wish to be frequable anyway. An example is my Beta directory where i keep Beta versions of my software. I Still wish this directory to be frequable but i do not wish to display to the public what is going on here. So therefore you simply create a file called FEBBOK.TXT ! This file will automatically at creation time for the directory list be added to the above mentioned list. Mine looks like ... C:\FEBBETA ... Nothing Fancy at all. Another way of doing this, if you have the directories that you wish to include in this list set up in Your area file, is to tag areas in the list of areas that should have the password message added to them. And not tag them in the areas to list option. Febbs will include the areas that are tagged in the areas to list as well as those that 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. When, How, Where? The Filelists Three files, Overview list, Directory list and most Downloaded files, will automatically be created when you choose the Total list from either the main menu or via the commandline (of course also the Total list will be created). If you do not wish to create these lists simply leave them out of the setup. That is do not give them a name just leave the input field blank. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 44 The commandline parameters are "N", "F" and "C". Where "N" stands for Newslist, "F" for Full list and "C" for the Condensed list. Ex. C:\FEBBS> FEBBS N Would create a newslist. And ... C:\FEBBS> FEBBS F Would create a Full list over all your areas. An overview list and a directory list. Of course can you do it like this ... C:\FEBBS> FEBBS F N C This is my recommendation if you wish to create both a Full list, a news list and a condensed list. Since all lists area created at the same time. That way Febbs doesn't have to scan all your areas twice this way. Headers/Footers The Filelists But what is a filelist without some nice advertising in the beginning? Yes let's have some nice info about your BBS in the beginning of the Filelists. So simply create a header in a style you fancy and enter the the filename of the header in the setup. You can put different headers into the Total list and the news list. Still the Total list, and the condensed list,uses the files the same header and the News list will use its own header. Put the header files at the same location as FEBBS.CTL, FEBBOK.TXT and the rest of FEBBS and it will automatically be inserted at the beginning of your file lists. The same goes for the footer files. Febbs has the ability yo put textfiles as footers the same way that it can put headers in the filelists. Sample batch file The Filelists Now you are ready to start creating those nice lists that everyone just loves to download. I would recommend that you somewhere in your nightly maintenance add the command to create the lists and then simply after creation Zip them up and copy them to your Filelist area. Maybe something like this : Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 45 CD\FEBBS FEBBS F N PKZIP FENRIS FENRIS.TXT COPY FENRIS.NEW D:\FILE\TEXT COPY FENRIS.TXT D:\FILE\TEXT COPY FENRIS.ZIP D:\FILE\TEXT CD\RA This is my batchfile for creating my lists. Nothing Fancy at all. Different Filelists The Filelists But wait a second! I want to create different lists for different users. That is the PC users doesn't like to download filelist that contain Amiga files and vice versa. That's easy! Simply create a new config file with Feppla like this. FEPPLA /S:Amiga.Ctl Set up the areas you wish to include and name the filelists. Then Run ... FB N F /S:Amiga.Ctl and that Setup file will be used. For more info see the setup part of this document. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 46 Memory Swapping 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 XMS. FEBBS will check for the presence of EMS and use that for the swap file. If there is no EMS or not enough free EMS, FEBBS will try to allocate XMS memory, and if there is no XMS or not enough Febbs will try to swap to disk. You have the ability to toggle swapping on or of in the setup. If you are using a system with slow disks and no extra memory then it can be good to turn of swapping to speed things up. Please keep in mind that PAK for instance needs approximately 185 Kb of memory to operate and ARJ even more, so therefore check how much memory you have when shelling from Febbs before you decide to turn swapping off. FEBBS leaves only approx. 10k resident when swapping. This will give you maximum ram to do whatever you wish from within FEBBS. Please note that you must not load any TSRs or other programs that doesn't give back all memory when you are finished with them. And also be aware of quirks that exists if you are using DesqView and have set the "Writes text directly to screen" option to false. See the DesqView section of this text for more info. The path and name of the swap file that FEBBS creates is configurable. Go into FEPPLA and select General Setup and set the full path AND filename of the swap file. Just make sure you don't set it to a filename that already exists on your drive or that file WILL be overwritten. A good place for the swap file would be a ram drive. This will speed up the swapping process if you don't have any EMS or XMS, but be advised that the swap file size is around 220k so set your ram drive size accordingly. 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 beginning 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 Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 47 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 and EMS swap only available to those that have registered. The DISK swap works just the same in both registered and unregistered version. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 48 FEBBS VS Viruses and EXE packers The versions before 0.06 of FEBBS was packed with LZEXE (c) 1989 Fabrice BELLARD. This to prevent the program from being attacked by viruses since LZEXE performs a CRC check of the file upon execution. But with the release of the unpacker for LZEXE this is not a reliable method any longer. And also LZEXE isn't all that reliable on programs that has to shell to DOS to execute other programs. Therefore FEBBS scans itself upon execution and checks if any changes were made to the EXE files. If there were, FEBBS will halt with an error message. Please note that due to the CRC check of the EXE file you can *NOT* pack this program with LZEXE. And you can't alter the code in any way. (Which the license forbids you to any way). Another reason why you can't pack Febbs is because it is overlayed to save memory. And LZEXE can't pack overlay files. But PKLite by PKWare can do so but You will not gain that much since the packable part of the EXE file is approx 80Kb and the rest is the overlay file wich can not the packed. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 49 The overlay buffer and slow machines Since a lot of persons still use XT machines to run BBS systems they usually do not like the overlay part of Febbs. Overlays slow down the program since not all of the code are kept in memory, only the parts that area needed. The reason for saving memory is that larger Files.Bbs can be loaded into Febbs for editing. But since XT machines usually haven'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 certainly 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 amount 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. But make sure that You have saved enough of memory to load Your largest Files.Bbs. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 50 Commandline parameters There are several command line parameters that Febbs accepts. Most of them has already been discussed in the documentation but this is a specification of all of them in one place. /M Use the monochrome colour set of Febbs. /S:<FileName> Use <FileName> as setup file. F Create a Full Filelist N Create a News Filelist C Create a Condensed Filelist /X Leave out the name of the registered user from the different lists that Febbs creates. /O:<Buffer Size> Used when changing the overlay buffer in RAM. /D Debug mode. When this mode is set Febbs displays more info on the status line when in the area pick list. This is useful when trying to determine if it is Febbs or Your setup that is not working. ? Display a helpscreen of the avaliable command line parameters. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 51 Multitaskers and Share Febbs is Multitasker- and Share-Aware. That means that Febbs will when opening files try to allow others to access the Files at the same time. All files, except textfiles, are opened in Deny-Write-mode. That is, other programs are allowed to read but not write to files opened by Febbs while Febbs is reading them. Febbs will never have a file open longer than necessary to get the needed information from it. The Screen writes in Febbs is aware about DesqView and asks DesqView (DV) for an alternative video buffer. Thereby you can set the Direct screenwrites option in DV to NO. But be aware that if You shell from inside Febbs to a program that uses direct screenwrites, then when you return to Febbs you will most likely not be able recognise the program that you left. This is because the other program that you executed from inside Febbs has fooled DV into changing vidoebuffer. So in most cases i recommend that you have the Direct Screenwrites option set to yes inside DV. And also that you assign at least 2 or more text and graphics pages to the Window that you run Febbs in. Not that Febbs needs it but if you shell to an external program it might. How much memory you give to Febbs is all up to you but check the memory status with when you decide how much to give to Febbs. Please Keep in mind that every line in a Files.Bbs occupies approximately 162 Bytes of Memory inside Febbs Editor. So a 300 Lines Files.Bbs occupies approx 48,600 Bytes in memory. Try be not to stingy when you assign memory to Febbs. Give the program Elbow room to work. Febbs will also, when idle waiting for a keystroke, slice away CPU time to other tasks running under DesqView, Windows 3.xx or OS/2. This has the advantage that Febbs allows other tasks to execute faster and smother while Febbs isn't doing anything in particular. If Access is Denied to a Files.Bbs then Febbs will inform You of so. Access Denied can occur on multiline systems when several tasks try to access the same files. For this to work you must have loaded the DOS util SHARE.EXE before you start. If a Files.Bbs is missing then Febbs will ask you if You wish to create it or not. Febbs will not report that a Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 52 Files.Bbs file is missing just because it is locked at the moment. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 53 The future The Febbs-package is under constant development. And most of the items that are added, or changed to become more userfriendly, have been made possible only because of the close relationship between the users and the developers of the Febbs-package. That is one of the many advantages of the ShareWare concept (wich this package is distributed under). So if You have any questions or suggestions to further enhance the program that You have been kind enough to support by buying a license, please drop me a line via electronic mail or standard mail at an address found later on in this documentation. Some functions that are pending to be implemented are the following. * Import text files into Files.Bbs * Add headers in Files.Bbs while creating filelists. But when You ask for new functions, try to be realistic and remember that I am not doing this for a living. If i would have done that i would have starved to death by now. So try to be realistic. I will not implement Fossil support and i will not turn it into a complete BBS system! Yes, people have asked this of me :-) But maybe, The name fits (FE-BBS) so who knows what will happen <Big Grin>. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 54 Support If You wish to contact the development team of Febbs You can always reach us at the following addresses. The World except the USA. FenrisUlven Data Attn: Patrik Sjöberg Sörbygatan 69B S-802 55 Gefle Sweden E-Mail : 2:205/208@Fidonet US Robotics DS 14.4 42b Data Line : +46-26-628057 FAX : +46-26-652101 The USA Febbs Support Attn : Paul Williams 701 Laurel Drive Aiken, South Carolina 29801-3391 E-Mail : 1:3624/1@Fidonet US Robotics DS 14.4 42b Data Line: (803) 649-9612 The latest version and support in Your country is availiable at the following sites. Most only availiable via E-Mail or by logging on to their BBS systems. Germany Carsten Wimmer +49-241-524204 E-Mail : 2:242/45 The Netherlands Daniel Docekal +31-10-4157141 E-Mail : 2:285/608 Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 55 Copyright, Trademarks PKPAK, PKUNPAK, PKZIP and PKUNZIP are trademarks of PKWare Inc. PAK is a trademark of NoGate Consulting. ARC is a trademark of SEA inc. LZH and LHarc are trademarks of Yoshi; LZS and LARC are trademarks of K.Miki H.Okumura, K.Masuyama ARJ is a trademark of Robert K. Jung HYPER is a trademark of Peter Sawatzki and Klaus Peter Nischke AR is a trademark of Haruhiko Okumura ZOO is a trademark of Rahul Dhesi. QuickBBS is a trademark of Pegasus Software. RemoteAccess is a trademark of Continental Software FrontDoor is a trademark of Joaquim H. Homrighausen Tubbs is a trademark of Mats Björk TubFile is a trademark of Jörgen Olsson Opus is a trademark of Wynn Wagner III Maximus is a trademark of Scott Dudley Desqview is a trademark of Quarterdeck Systems Qemm is a trademark of Quarterdeck Systems 386Max is a trademark of Qualitas MS-DOS is a trademark of Microsoft corporation MTA is a trademark of Rob Van.Hoeven TICK is a trademark of Barry Geller GIF is a trademark of CompuServe Inc. Avatar is a trademark of George A. Stanislav LZEXE is a trademark of Fabrice Bellard. The FEBBS-Package is written in Turbo Pascal 6.0 and Turbo Assembler 2.01, with help of the Turbo Debugger 2.01 and makes use of Turbo Professional v5.11, Object professional 1.12 and PSCF v0.07. Also included are some routines of Anders Brink's fine tools called ABUnit which is Public Domain. Borlands System unit has been replaced by Eagle Performance Sys unit 6.20. Turbo Pascal is a trademark of Borland International Turbo Debugger is a trademark of Borland International ABUnit is a trademark of Anders Brink Turbo Professional is a trademark of TurboPower Inc. Object Professional is a trademark of TurboPower Inc. PSCF is a trademark of Patrik Sjöberg SpeedPack I is a trademark of Eagle Performance Software. Febbs - The File Area Manager Page 56