Beijing Paradise BBS Backup/PARADISE.ISO/software/BBSDOORW/RAM315.ZIP/RAMCONF.DOC

Text File | 1993-02-02 | 9.4 KB | 180 lines

                           RAMail Configuration v1.5
                    Copyright 1990-1992 by Randy Blackmond
                              All Rights Reserved

     RAMCONF is the configuration program for RAMail. Until version 3.0 of
     RAMail, RAMCONF never had any real documentation because I felt that
     it was straightforward enough not to need it. I still feel this way,
     but being the programmer, things that seem perfectly clear to me may
     be confusing to someone else. This file is provided for those people who
     may need clarification on some of the items in the RAMCONF program.

     First, I'll offer a little general information on moving around the
     screen among the different fields. There are three ways to move from
     field to field. These are the ENTER key, the TAB key and the cursor
     keys.

     Pressing the ENTER or TAB key will move to the next field. The up and
     down cursor keys behave a little differently, but experimentation will
     get you used to their actions. The left arrow key will move you to the
     field to the left or the previous field only if the cursor is at the
     leftmost position of the field. The right cursor behaves the same way
     at the rightmost position of the field.

     Pressing Escape from the Main Window will bring up the Exit Window. From
     this window, you have the option of saving the configuration and
     exiting, exiting without saving the configuration or cancelling the exit
     and returning to the program.  Pressing ESCape from any of the
     subwindows will return you to the previous window. Changes made to
     fields inside subwindows are "remembered" so ESCape does not abort
     changes made to fields in subwindows, however, the changes made to those
     fields will be lost if you selected Exit - No Save after pressing ESCape
     from the Main Window.

     Most of the fields are pretty self-explanatory, but I will elaborate on
     some that might be misconstrued and can cause problems if this happens.

     The Path to CONFIG.RA is just that. The drive and directory where your
     CONFIG.RA resides, i.e. your main RA system directory.

     The Path to EXITINFO.BBS is where RAMail should look for this file. If
     you are running a single node system, the entry you make here should
     duplicate the Path to CONFIG.RA entry. If you run multiple nodes, this
     should be the path to the particular node directory for which this
     configuration is to be used.

     The Path to RAUSER.DAT is where you want RAMail to create and look for
     the RAUSER.DAT data file. This can be anything you want.

     The Local Mail Directory is the drive and directory where RAMail should
     place .QWK packets when someone is logged on locally as well as where
     it should look for .REP files when logged on locally.

     The Work Drive is the drive where RAMail will process all QWK and REP
     packets. RAMail will create temporary work directories on this drive
     when processing mail and will remove them when finished.



     The Required Conferences field allows you to specify which, if any,
     boards should be included in ALL users' mail packets. For example, if you
     want boards 1, 3, and 20 to be included in all user's packets, you would
     enter: 1 3 20 in this field. Leave it blank if you don't want to force
     any boards.

     The next five Limit fields allow you to specify the maximum number of
     messages that RAMail will place into a mail packet for each baud rate.
     The five fields to the right of the message limits are messages limits
     on a Per Conference basis.

     The Default File EXT is what most of your downloadable BBS files use an
     extension. For example, if most of your files are compressed with PKZIP,
     the extension would be ZIP. This allows for users to flag files without
     having to specify an extension. This default extension will be used when
     the extension is omitted during flagging.

     The Check # of Messages toggle will allow you to tell RAMail whether or
     not it should determine what the highest numbered message is during the
     Conference Selection. If your users get an unusually long WAIT! prompt
     when selecting conferences, you may want to set this toggle to N. NOTE
     that the New User Pointer Subtractor function (below) will not work if
     you disable this function.

     The Put "RAMail" on Tear toggle allows you to control whether "RAMail"
     will appear on echo message tearlines that are stripped of reader
     taglines. This toggle is only relevant in registered versions of RAMail.
     Unregistered copies of RAMail will always place "RAMail" on stripped
     tearlines.

     The New User Pointer Subtractor field allows you to specify a number by
     which a new RAMail user's last read pointers will be adjusted downward
     from the high message number for the particular board they are selecting.
     For example, if you set this field to 100 and a user selects a message
     board in Conference Select that has a high message number of 1200, their
     last read pointer for that board will be set to 1100. This function ONLY
     operates the first time a user uses RAMail. Setting the subtractor to 0
     disables this function. It is also disabled if you disable the Check # of
     Messages function (see above).

     The Board Toggles will allow you to set the Lo Bit, Hi Bit and Tagline
     Stripper toggle and the short name for EACH message board. The Short Name
     field will be used in the QWK packets generated by RAMail. If you neglect
     to enter a short name, the first 10 characters of your normal board name
     will be used. NOTE that if you change your board name through RACONFIG,
     you must run RAMCONF and change your Short Name as well since the original
     short name would remain and be used erroneously in user packets.

     All of the rest of the toggle fields turn off various menu options on the
     RAMail menu.

     The Compression Method fields allow you to specify which compression
     programs you want to support when compressing the mail packets. The user
     can pick one of these methods from the RAMail menu.

     The first field, Compression Name, is the descriptive name of the method.
     Anything is allowable in this field.



     The Compression Program field is where you place the name, with extension,
     of the compression program. The path is not required, but the program
     MUST reside in a directory that is included in your DOS path.

     The Decompression Program entry follows the same rules as those of the
     Compression Program entry.

     The Compress Command Options allows you to specify command line parameters
     that the compression program will use when compressing files.

     The Decompress Command Options entry follows the same rules as those of
     the Compress Command Options entry.

     The Protocols subwindow allows the toggling (on/off) of RAMail's internal
     protocols as well as maintaining up to 4 external protocols.

     -----------------------------------------------------------------------
     NOTE WELL!: The internal protocols used in RAMail have been known to
     malfunction on some systems. The exact cause of this malfunction is not
     known at this time, but seems to be BIOS related. If you have problems
     with the internal protocols on your system, simply toggle them off and
     use only the external protocols. Hopefully, the cause and solution to
     this problem will be discovered for inclusion in a future version.
     -----------------------------------------------------------------------

     The External Protocols subwindow contains fields that you must fill to
     define your optional external transfer protocols. This will allow you
     to use any protocols you wish for transferring packets and files in
     RAMail (including bi-directional protocols) as well as using custom
     command line parameters for these protocols.

     The Protocol Name field is for display purposes. Enter anything you want
     in this field.

     The Program Name is the name of the protocol program, with extension. The
     path is not required (nor will it fit!), but the protocol program MUST
     reside in a directory that is listed in your DOS path.

     The Send Command String field allows you to enter the command line that
     will be passed to the protocol program. Three macro variables are avail-
     able for you to use. These are #P, which is the COM port number to use,
     #F, which is the file name that will be passed to the protocol, and #S,
     which is the speed (baud rate) that will be passed to the protocol.

     The Receive Command String field is for the command line that will be
     passed to the protocol used for receiving files. The same format applies
     as for the Send Command String field.

     You can define up to 4 external protocols.

     Multi-Node Sysops
     -----------------
     The RA file MESSAGES.RA will be searched for using the RA environment
     variable to locate your CONFIG.RA and read your MsgBasePath info from
     there. You should ALWAYS set this variable. You can also pass the
     path and name of your MESSAGES.RA file on the command line of RAMCONF,
     e.g.

     RAMCONF RAMAIL.CFG C:\RA\MESSAGES.RA