Subj : FSP-10xx-1: BBSID Kludge Specification
To : Michiel van der Vlist
From : Rob Swindell
Date : Wed Dec 27 2023 06:50 pm
Re: FSP-10xx-1: BBSID Kludge Specification
By: Michiel van der Vlist to Rob Swindell on Wed Dec 27 2023 12:38 pm
> Hello Rob,
>
> On Tuesday December 26 2023 15:05, you wrote to All:
>
> RS> BBSID: <bbs-id>
>
> RS> Where <bbs-id> is a string of between 2 and 8 monocased ASCII
> RS> characters, begining with an alphabetic character (betweeen 'A'
> RS> and 'Z' inclusive). Only MS-DOS compatible filename characters
> RS> may be included in a BBS-ID.
>
> 1) In my logic "between 2 and 8" is the range that starts at 3 and ends at
> 7.
I'll add "inclusive".
> 2) What exactly do you mean by "monocased"?
> A) Upper case only.
> B) Either case but the same case for all characters in the string.
> C) Any case but case will be ignored when processing.
> D) Something else.
A.
> 3) Although I have done my fair share of MS-DOS programming even I do not
> know out of head any more exactly which characters are allowed in an MS-DOS
> file name. It has been too long ago. This will only get worse. It may be
> better not to refer to MS-DOS but to explicitly specify the characters.
Sure.
> 4) But why all these restrictions?
QWK software is largely MS-DOS software, sor for a BBS ID to be QWK-compatible, it generally needs a MS-DOS-compatible base filename.
> 5) But the most daring question is: why should this be a FIDONET standard?
I'm not saying it should be. I'm just documenting this new kludge that you and other FTN nodes will find on their networks now (and over the past few years).
> 6) As a side note I would like to add that the idea is not entirely new.
This is in actual use and has been for years now. It's not just an idea.
--
digital man (rob)
Breaking Bad quote #35:
You ever smoke anything else, Wendy? Sausages don't count - ha ha - Hank
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