Looks like the sysop of "ANARCHY" has misconfigured QWK and is dumping
fsx_gen posts into Dove-Net Sysops.
--
End Of The Line BBS - Plano, TX
telnet endofthelinebbs.com 23
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
* Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (21:2/101)

Nigel wrote (2023-01-08):

Looks like the sysop of "ANARCHY" has misconfigured QWK and is dumping fsx_gen posts into Dove-Net Sysops.

QWK is the most annoying stuff that happened to FTN. What do you expect? That it works flawlessly?

⁂

---
* Origin: War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. (21:3/102)

Hello Oli,

Looks like the sysop of "ANARCHY" has misconfigured QWK and is
dumping fsx_gen posts into Dove-Net Sysops.

QWK is the most annoying stuff that happened to FTN. What do you
expect? That it works flawlessly?

QWK networking works well. QWK is not the the issue here, someone misconfigured something and crossed up DOVE-Net and fsxNet got linked up somehow.

It's a good idea to keep different networks in different directories.. ;)

Ttyl :-),
Al

... Always listen to experts, hear the impossible, then do it.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20220504
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106.2)

Looks like the sysop of "ANARCHY" has misconfigured QWK and is dumping fsx_gen posts into Dove-Net Sysops.

Well, that IS a bit of anarchy, huh?? :P

Hopefully the sysOp reads this or we can reach out to them.



|07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
|08.........

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/15 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)

Al wrote (2023-01-09):

Hello Oli,

Looks like the sysop of "ANARCHY" has misconfigured QWK and is
dumping fsx_gen posts into Dove-Net Sysops.

QWK is the most annoying stuff that happened to FTN. What do you
expect? That it works flawlessly?

QWK networking works well.

Does it?

I wonder why I'm seeing lots of mails without a REPLY kludge in FSX_NET.

(But I guess you mean BBS to BBS QWK networking and not faulty QWK clients or horrible QWK gateways)

QWK is not the the issue here, someone
misconfigured something and crossed up DOVE-Net and fsxNet got linked up somehow.

But how does it happen? Did someone name the DOVE-Net Sysops conference fsx_gen on disk? Or is it related to the ingenious QWK Conference numbers?

⁂

---
* Origin: War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. (21:3/102)

QWK networking works well.

Does it?

Absolutely.

I wonder why I'm seeing lots of mails without a REPLY kludge in FSX_NET.

I just took a quick look back in the FSX_NET area and every message I looked at had a REPLY kludge. It can happen though that messages posted with a QWK reader don't get a reply kludge because the QWK implementation doesn't know what the MSGID of the original message is. That's a short coming of the impementation.

That doesn't happen on Synchronet BBS. If you reply to a message with an offline QWK reader Synchronet will add a reply kludge.

Here's a look at the kludges I see here in a recent post in the dovenet general area on my Synchronet BBS, viewing the headers.

To MRO
Subject Re: Knowing Neighbors
Sender Moondog
SenderNetAddr VERT/CAVEBBS
SenderNetType QWKnet
Message-ID <63BD9801.80470.dove-gen@cavebbs.homeip.net>
In-Reply-To <63BD3954.11056.dove-gen@bbses.info>
X-FTN-PID Synchronet 3.20a-Linux master/dbc10c0f6 Jan 4 2023 GCC 12.2.0 X-FTN-CHRS CP437 2
OtherHeader WhenImported: 20230110120157-0800 41e0
OtherHeader WhenExported: 20230110134626-0800 41e0
OtherHeader ExportedFrom: VERT dove-gen 126797
SenderNetAddr VERT/CAVEBBS
SenderNetType QWKnet
when_written 63BDC21C 412C Tue Jan 10 11:53:00 2023 EST
when_imported 63BDDCB4 41E0 Tue Jan 10 13:46:28 2023 PST
type 0000h
version 0300h
attr 0000h ()
auxattr 00000000h ()
netattr 00000000h ()
header_offset 0AC020h
header_fields 14
header_length 461 (calc: 461)
number 1000
thread_id 964
thread_back 998
data_offset 0E3D00h
data_field[0] TEXT_BODY, offset 0, length 1605
data_field[1] TEXT_TAIL, offset 1605, length 73

(But I guess you mean BBS to BBS QWK networking and not faulty QWK clients or horrible QWK gateways)

Yes, I was talking about QWK networking. There is horrible QWK gateways to stay away from.

QWK is not the the issue here, someone misconfigured something and crossed >> up DOVE-Net and fsxNet got linked up somehow.

But how does it happen? Did someone name the DOVE-Net Sysops conference fsx_gen on disk? Or is it related to the ingenious QWK Conference numbers?

I'm not sure how it happened. I suspect someone used area number 3002 when they meant 2002. Those area numbers are important. Area 2002 is just as unique and the area tag ASIAN_LINK, if you enter it wrong something wrong will happen.

I don't think we'd implement QWK the way it was implemted back in the late 80's or early 90's today.

In it's day QWK was ingenious. I suppose it could have been done differently but Synchronet implements QWK beautifully. It works well for any old QWK reader like SLMR or the like from the BBS and QWK networking works well between BBSs.

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-6
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

Al wrote (2023-01-10):

QWK networking works well.

I wonder why I'm seeing lots of mails without a REPLY kludge in
FSX_NET.

I just took a quick look back in the FSX_NET area and every message I looked at had a REPLY kludge.

View it in a threaded reader and FSX_NET is a mess. Fidonet and Usenet from the 90s as I know it was way better. But in Europe QWK was not that popular and most people used real FTN (point) software.

It can happen though that messages posted
with a QWK reader don't get a reply kludge because the QWK implementation doesn't know what the MSGID of the original message is. That's a short coming of the impementation.

Yes and no. Of course it can be done, but for some reason it regularly breaks. It might be the horrible format that makes your brain hurt or lack of good documentation.

Look at SOUP. That's a simple/understable and well designed. QWK is stuff like:

Header Field
Position Length Description
-------- ------ ----------------------------------------
22 25 Uppercase name of person message is TO
47 25 Uppercase name of person message is FROM
72 25 Subject of message
[...]
117 6 Number of 128-byte chunks in the actual
message (includes header and is coded in
ASCII)

Start Field
Byte Length Description
---- ------ --------------------------------------------
1 4 This is a floating point number in the MSBIN
format. This number is the record number of
the message header in MESSAGES.DAT that
corresponds to this message.
5 1 This byte is the conferece number of this
message. This byte can (and should) be
ignored as it is duplicated in the message
header in MESSAGES.DAT. This is especially
important for conferences numbered higher
than 255.

Let's stray just a moment to talk about the MSBIN floating
point format. This is the format used by the older Microsoft
Basic compilers and interpreters. Most compiler manufacturers
have switched to the more efficient IEEE floating point
format. Therefore, we must have a method of converting to and
from MSBIN format. Included at the end of this article are
two routines in C that accomplish this quite easily.


And then there have to be some extensions to work around the limitations (e.g. 25 chars fields). Were is this documented? Is this the "standard" everyone should be using?
http://wiki.synchro.net/ref:qwk

Do we have a list of good QWK readers? (= long name/subject fields, reply-id, ...)

How are other charsets than CP437 (and UTF-8) are transmitted?

Is there other software than Synchronet which supports all these HEADER.DAT extensions?

It's easy to network within the monoculture of Synchronet's QWK, but how reliable does it work with other BBS software?

QWK is not the the issue here, someone misconfigured something and
crossed up DOVE-Net and fsxNet got linked up somehow.

But how does it happen? Did someone name the DOVE-Net Sysops conference
fsx_gen on disk? Or is it related to the ingenious QWK Conference
numbers?

I'm not sure how it happened. I suspect someone used area number 3002
when they meant 2002. Those area numbers are important. Area 2002 is just as unique and the area tag ASIAN_LINK, if you enter it wrong something wrong will happen.

Tada!

Conference numbers were a bad design decision. It might be okay for downloading QWK packages by users, but for networking it's a recipe for exactly that kind of errors and mistakes (and I wouldn't be surprised if it often enough breaks with offline reading too).


⁂

* Origin: War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. (21:3/102)

Oli wrote to Al <=-

I'm not sure how it happened. I suspect someone used area number 3002
when they meant 2002. Those area numbers are important. Area 2002 is just as unique and the area tag ASIAN_LINK, if you enter it wrong something wrong will happen.

Tada!

Conference numbers were a bad design decision. It might be okay for downloading QWK packages by users, but for networking it's a recipe for exactly that kind of errors and mistakes (and I wouldn't be surprised
if it often enough breaks with offline reading too).

If you enter a QWK number wrong, something wrong will happen.
If you enter an FTN tag wrong, something wrong will happen.

I don't see the "tada" moment there, unless you are saying they are both
bad decisions, which you don't appear to be.



... Internal Error: The system has been taken over by sheep at line 19960
--- MultiMail/DOS
* Origin: possumso.fsxnet.nz * SSH:2122/telnet:24/ftelnet:80 (21:4/134)

I just took a quick look back in the FSX_NET area and every message I
looked at had a REPLY kludge.

View it in a threaded reader and FSX_NET is a mess. Fidonet and Usenet from the 90s as I know it was way better. But in Europe QWK was not that popular and most people used real FTN (point) software.

I don't see much QWK in fsxNet, and when I do it hasn't been a problem.

Yes and no. Of course it can be done, but for some reason it regularly breaks. It might be the horrible format that makes your brain hurt or lack
of good documentation.

Yes, lack of documentation can be an issue. If there is no documentaion there can be no understanding of how to make it work.

Look at SOUP. That's a simple/understable and well designed. QWK is stuff like

Back when regular folks like me had no internet connection I used to dial into the library in Vancouver. They were running a community net.

I had three choices on the menu, lynx (I still have lynx close by today) to look around the net, Pine to read/write email and an option to download email and news in soup format. I used that in those days for email but I have never seen soup format in the BBS world.

Header Field
Position Length Description
-------- ------ ----------------------------------------
22 25 Uppercase name of person message is TO
47 25 Uppercase name of person message is FROM
72 25 Subject of message
[...]
117 6 Number of 128-byte chunks in the actual
message (includes header and is coded in
ASCII)

Start Field
Byte Length Description
---- ------ --------------------------------------------
1 4 This is a floating point number in the MSBIN
format. This number is the record number of
the message header in MESSAGES.DAT that
corresponds to this message.
5 1 This byte is the conferece number of this
message. This byte can (and should) be
ignored as it is duplicated in the message
header in MESSAGES.DAT. This is especially
important for conferences numbered higher
than 255.

Yes, that's why I say we would do it differently today!

Let's stray just a moment to talk about the MSBIN floating
point format. This is the format used by the older Microsoft
Basic compilers and interpreters. Most compiler manufacturers
have switched to the more efficient IEEE floating point
format. Therefore, we must have a method of converting to and
from MSBIN format. Included at the end of this article are
two routines in C that accomplish this quite easily.

You've lost me, I don't know what this is about.

And then there have to be some extensions to work around the limitations (e.g. 25 chars fields). Were is this documented? Is this the "standard" everyone should be using?
http://wiki.synchro.net/ref:qwk

That is how QWK is implemented in Synchronet. Rob put that out there for others if they are interested.

Do we have a list of good QWK readers? (= long name/subject fields, reply-id, ...)

I don't think there are readers that implement things like headers.dat. They could if they choose to do that.

When I am downloading QWK packets for personal use I use the QWKE format when it is available. If not I get uppercase names and short description fields.

How are other charsets than CP437 (and UTF-8) are transmitted?

I am not sure. When online with Synchronet it's ascii, if CP437 is encountered it's CP437, if UTF-8 is encountered it's set to UTF-8. I am not sure if that happens with offline mail packets.

Is there other software than Synchronet which supports all these HEADER.DAT extensions?

Not that I know of although the information is available to others to use if they choose to do that.

If someone needed clarification they'd have to contact Rob. Rob can often be found idling in IRC on irc.synchro.net so you could talk to him in real time.

It's easy to network within the monoculture of Synchronet's QWK, but how reliable does it work with other BBS software?

The only other software I have experience with is Mystic. Mystic doesn't support headers.dat (as far as I know) so I have Mystic's qwkpoll utility set to send and receive QWKE packets. The result is the same. There are no upper case names or short subjects.

Reading qwk nets is quite comfortable with either Synchronet or Mystic.

I'm not sure how it happened. I suspect someone used area number 3002
when they meant 2002. Those area numbers are important. Area 2002 is just
as unique and the area tag ASIAN_LINK, if you enter it wrong something
wrong will happen.

Tada!

Conference numbers were a bad design decision. It might be okay for downloading QWK packages by users, but for networking it's a recipe for exactly that kind of errors and mistakes (and I wouldn't be surprised if it often enough breaks with offline reading too).

Yes, it can happen but if you are careful with your filenames on disk and be sure to use the correct area numbers it works well. In my experience anyway.

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-6
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

Blue wrote (2023-01-11):

Oli wrote to Al <=-

I'm not sure how it happened. I suspect someone used area number 3002
when they meant 2002. Those area numbers are important. Area 2002 is
just as unique and the area tag ASIAN_LINK, if you enter it wrong
something wrong will happen.

Tada!

Conference numbers were a bad design decision. It might be okay for
downloading QWK packages by users, but for networking it's a recipe
for exactly that kind of errors and mistakes (and I wouldn't be
surprised if it often enough breaks with offline reading too).

If you enter a QWK number wrong, something wrong will happen.
If you enter an FTN tag wrong, something wrong will happen.

I don't see the "tada" moment there, unless you are saying they are both bad decisions, which you don't appear to be.

But the namespace for a couple of numbers is much smaller and numbers are not self-explanatory. How easy is it to spot a mistake? Just imagine Usenet would have used 16-bit numbers instead of names.

Btw, you reply message is one of the examples that does not have a REPLY kludge and therefore breaks message threading. Even the simplest things (copying a field/kludge into another) seems to be hard or error prone with QWK.


⁂

---
* Origin: War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. (21:3/102)

Oli wrote to Al <=-

I'm not sure how it happened. I suspect someone used area number 3002
when they meant 2002. Those area numbers are important. Area 2002 is just as unique and the area tag ASIAN_LINK, if you enter it wrong something wrong will happen.

Tada!

Conference numbers were a bad design decision. It might be okay for downloading QWK packages by users, but for networking it's a recipe for exactly that kind of errors and mistakes (and I wouldn't be surprised
if it often enough breaks with offline reading too).

If you enter a QWK number wrong, something wrong will happen.
If you enter an FTN tag wrong, something wrong will happen.

I don't see the "tada" moment there, unless you are saying they are both
bad decisions, which you don't appear to be.



... Internal Error: The system has been taken over by sheep at line 19960
--- MultiMail/DOS
* Origin: possumso.fsxnet.nz * SSH:2122/telnet:24/ftelnet:80 (21:4/134)

On Tue, 10 Jan 2023 11:47:03 +0100
"Oli" <oli@21:3/102> wrote:

Al wrote (2023-01-09):

Hello Oli,

Looks like the sysop of "ANARCHY" has misconfigured QWK and is
dumping fsx_gen posts into Dove-Net Sysops.

QWK is the most annoying stuff that happened to FTN. What do you
expect? That it works flawlessly?

QWK networking works well.

Does it?

I wonder why I'm seeing lots of mails without a REPLY kludge in
FSX_NET.

(But I guess you mean BBS to BBS QWK networking and not faulty QWK
clients or horrible QWK gateways)

QWK is not the the issue here, someone
misconfigured something and crossed up DOVE-Net and fsxNet got
linked up somehow.

But how does it happen? Did someone name the DOVE-Net Sysops
conference fsx_gen on disk? Or is it related to the ingenious QWK
Conference numbers?

And nobody has ever dumped a whole load of dupes back to fidonet, ever
right?
--
End Of The Line BBS - Plano, TX
telnet endofthelinebbs.com 23
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
* Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (21:2/101)

Oli wrote to Al <=-

QWK networking works well.

Does it?

I am replying to an old message with BBBS's offline mail in BW mode just to see if the end result will include a REPLY kludge..

We'll see.


Ttyl :-),
Al

... The chief cause of problems is solutions.

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-6
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

Al wrote (2023-01-19):

Oli wrote to Al <=-

QWK networking works well.

Does it?

I am replying to an old message with BBBS's offline mail in BW mode just
to see if the end result will include a REPLY kludge..

Yes!


⁂

---
* Origin: War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. (21:3/102)