FidoNews is the official newsletter of the International FidoNet
Association, and is published weekly by SEAdog Leader, node 1/1.
You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in
FidoNews. Article submission standards are contained in the file
ARTSPEC.DOC, available from node 1/1.
Copyright (C) 1987, by the International FidoNet Association.
All rights reserved. Duplication and/or distribution permitted
for noncommercial purposes only. For use in other circumstances,
please contact IFNA.
Table of Contents
1. EDITORIAL
What's IFNA Up To?
2. ARTICLES
BROADCASTING Echo Conference
Copyright warning, re: FidoNews and on-line info theft
SeaDog has arrived !
What's in a name?
The End of FidoNews?
Amateur Radio Novice License: A Better Bargain
And Now for the Rest of the Story!
Convoy to the Wall
3. COLUMNS
Column Without a Name
Technical Topics - Getting It From There To Here
4. FOR SALE
Magazine on Disk for IBM PC and Compatibles
5. NOTICES
The Lost Issue
The Interrupt Stack
What has IFNA been doing lately? The big public hooraw for
longer than I care to think about has been the bylaws, but that's
over now. Onward!
Plenty of things have been happening. Here are a few:
1) Some more political junk. Now that we have bylaws, we have to
start electing a Board of Directors. Lucky for me I don't
have to do anything about it. A Nominations and Elections
Committee has been appointed, with Bob Morris (141/333) in
charge. I gather that, much to my surprise, he is actually
well on his way to having a full slate for folks to vote on.
I would have sworn that we'd never find twenty people willing
to sit on the board, but it's starting to sound like we might
just make it.
2) The next conference is starting to take shape. A group has
formed to host the event (probably somewhere in the
Washington, DC area), and has even found a commercial backer
to provide most of the front money.
3) The Technical Standards Committee is continuing its fine work,
and building on the excellent foundation it started with the
Basic Protocol Standards Document. A subcommittee has been
formed to investigate and evaluate 9600 baud modems. No
vendor seems to quite have a modem yet that will work with our
existing software on typical phone lines, but they are coming
close. At least two modem manufacturers are working actively
with IFNA to modify their hardware for our needs.
4) While we don't have the resources (yet) to start our own
lobbying group, Kurt Reisler (109/74) is working on
establishing a legislative watchdog group to keep us informed
on pending Federal legislation which may affect us.
5) International mail isn't fixed yet, but the mechanism for
handling it has been worked out, and the pieces are slowly
being put in place. More on this in a future issue.
In short, IFNA has been making like the proverbial duck. You may
not see much activity up top, but we're paddling like mad
underneath!
Broadcast_Software BBS
9026 Natural Bridge Rd
St Louis, MO 63121
Fido 100/517
data:314-427-4064
voice:314:427-4720
Echo operated by Glen Jackson
We are looking for FIDO's that would like to participate in a
national Broadcast Echo. This Echo will be used for
engineers,radio programmers, and market executives.
Very much in the infant stage, even at our net, we feel that
there could be more interest developed if implanted on a National
level. This echo could also be made available to the general
public in order for them to ask questions of the broadcast
industry.
100/517 will handle all of the polling for the Echo.
We will set up our echo conference under BROADCAST.
Any SysOps interested, please contact Glen Jackson at the
Broadcast_Software Fido 100/517. Target date is March 25th.
Copyright, FidoNews, and on-line information theft
from Mark J. Welch, Fido 161/459
Berkeley, California
I read the March 2, 1987 issue of FidoNews (volume 4, number 9)
with some interest (partly because one of my articles appeared in
it).
However, I was surprised to find that a copyrighted article from
InfoWorld magazine was also "dropped into" the issue in the
notices section ("Trojan PC-Write Can Trash Your Disk," page 15),
without any note that the reprinting of that article was by
permission [or not].
This, my friends, is a copyright violation (unless InfoWorld had
given permission to reprint the article; usually, when magazines
give such permission, they require a tag line noting that the
article was "Copyright 1987 by Mag_Name, reprinted with
permission").
The reason I mention this is not to get anyone in trouble, and I
doubt that InfoWorld would take any action except to send a
polite (or maybe nasty) letter if they found out (I, for one,
don't consider it worth mentioning to them).
Still, I'd like to point out that we, as BBS sysops, programmers,
and writers, should take more care to respect copyright laws.
You don't want your commercially-released computer program, which
took you 18 months of 16-hour days to write, to be posted on
every bulletin-board in the country. As a professional writer,
you don't want your copyrighted article, written for one
publication, to be republished by ten other magazines unless they
pay you for the privilege. And as a BBS sysop, you probably don't
want to be defending a copyright case and have the opposing
attorney confront you with the fact that you had dozens of
illegal copies of copyrighted articles and programs on your BBS,
and took no action to remove them.
So what *should* we do? In the case of the InfoWorld article,
someone (e.g,, the person who sent it to Thom) should have called
InfoWorld (800-344-4636) and asked for permission to reprint the
article, and affixed the appropriate permission notice to the
article. Mentioning the author's name (Jeff Angus) would also
have been a nice, polite thing to do.
If InfoWorld had refused to grant permission (or if there wasn't
time to comply with their usual desire for a written request),
the information in the article could have still been used, by
paraphrasing it or by calling QuickSoft or the LA sysop quoted in
the article to independently obtain the information. (Even though
only two paragraphs were posted, they included virtually every
word of the original article and no new material, and thus don't
count as "fair use.")
Fidonews Page 5 23 Mar 1987
Again, I don't think that this incident is significant except to
point out the conflicts that exist between on-line and print
media, and between various on-line media. This certainly was not
the first time that copyrighted information has appeared on-line
without authorization; I have seen many newspaper and magazine
articles, and many CompuServe news items, copied generously onto
public BBSs without any thought that it might not be legal to do
so.
If CompuServe or InfoWorld writes a news item, and then the
author's efforts in obtaining and writing the item are stolen and
posted on "free" BBSs and newsletters, fewer people (eventually,
no one) will bother to read or pay for the "legitimate" copy, and
theoretically the firm gathering the information will go broke,
resulting in no information-gathering at all. As a professional
journalist who relies on words for my food, clothing and housing,
I'm more than a little bit scared by this scenario, however
remote.
In the U.S., like it or not, information is an asset and people
have a right to be paid for their words. If we, as sysops and BBS
users, fail to respect copyright laws, we can't expect others to
respect the laws either.
Also, by violating copyright laws, knowingly or not, we invite
the wrath of publishers desparate to save their jobs and profits
and, even more frightening, of legislators concerned about tax
revenues and the emerging information-based economy.
"Let's be careful out there."
Mark J. Welch Fido 161/459 [private node]
P.O. Box 2409 BIX 'mwelch'
San Francisco, CA 94126 CompuServe 76137,2643
(415) 841-8759 [voice, Berkeley, CA]
(Yes, I know I'm beginning to sound like a pest, since all my
FidoNews articles seem to complain about something. My concern
this time comes from *everything* I do, though: I'm a
professional journalist [formerly at BYTE and InfoWorld, now
freelance], a computer programmer [author of the Generic
Adventure Game System], and a law student [!].)
(Disclaimer: this article does not constitute legal advice.)
(This article may be reproduced without permission, but may not
be excerpted out of context or in a misleading way. -mjw)
Jerry Hindle, 123/6, MemphisNet
2400 baud MAX, 901-353-4563
Notes from MemphisNet
Well, I finally got SeaDog (version 4.0) in and set up on
the system here. What this means to the rest of the FidoNet is
easy to figure out. You are now able to do file requests from
the Distribution Areas for both Fido and Opus. If you wish to
find out what files are in these areas then you will need to
request the file "distrib.arc" from 123/6 (or 123/0). I will
honor file requests up to 0200 Central Standard time (ie 1 hr
BEFORE the National Mail Hour) and will resume honoring them at
0430. You will be wasting your money to try requests any time
between 0200 and 0430. Any file in the Fido, Opus, or (in one
instance) General file areas is available.
Ok now that I have that out of the way I would like to
comment on a few things that have happened since I stopped
writing a couple of months ago to give the issue to the ByLaws
stuff.....
I GOTTA agree with Mr Thom Henderson on the fact that Fido
(opus,Collie, etc) is supposed to be FUN ! If you take the FUN
out of it then it simply becomes ANOTHER JOB (which I don't need
right now) and ANOTHER PAIN in the keester (again I don't need
this). I had a sneaking hunch the Thom wrote those By-Laws that
appeared in Fnews with the rumor-mongers, and the Grand High
Executioner. Something told me it was just his style. I say that
if Fido is going to become a corporate giant in this world (like
some of you out there want it to) that I wanna buy STOCK and at
least get a return for my investment (of time and equipment). If
we are going to run this like big business maybe we better start
hiring people to do the managing and PR and office stuff, maybe
we better apply for a TAX number, maybe we better start filing
corporate returns and hire a CPA full time to manage the books,
maybe we oughta start advertising. Sounds ridiculous doesn't it?
Well for a big corporation the above stuff is NECESSARY, for a
hobby it is not only not necessary, but downright STUPID! I for
one don't give a @#$%$%^ if they do decide to go corporate, to me
it is, always has been, and ALWAYS will be a HOBBY, not a
business. If we start running things like a business then we are
bound to attract attention to ourselves in the form of government
regulation and snooping into records (again something I don't
need OR want). As examples (and I am not picking on anyone here)
if Mike wanted to run his net like a business, let him register
his net with the state corporate comptroller, if I wanted to run
MemphisNet like a business I would certainly HAVE to register the
company with at least the county tax office and file tax returns
etc. This could really get to be more then even a 5 or 6 girl
office could handle for IFNA since they would have to file
reports with ALL 50 states to comply. I say stop all this BYLAWS
crap, election crap etc. Sure collect dues (donations or
whatever you wanna call them) to help defray the costs of
administration, but don't add to those costs by doing exactly
Fidonews Page 7 23 Mar 1987
like the government does and adding a bureaucracy to it. the old
adage of KISS applies here (Keep It Simple Stupid).
Now on to other news....
Seems as though Tom Jennings has decided to depart from
APPLE (at least according to the rumor-mongers <hehe>) and go
into business for himself. Great, but the only thing I know of
that Tom has that I think could even be a money making
possibility, other then his computer smarts, is FIDO. Who knows
maybe version 12 is being held up for no other reason then to
build a distribution chain to sell it. I applaud Tom for daring
to leave the "relative" security of APPLE and quote "go for it",
all I question is the rumor (and please Tom correct me if I am
wrong) I get here, that we may wait till 1988 for 12a to arrive
on the scene. Tom open your eyes and look at the
nodelist.....more and more nodes are converting to OPUS for a
variety of reasons, the least of which is lack of feedback from
the author about bugs, we report this bug and that bug and the
same thing is always given as the answer "yep that's a bug". If
this keeps up then by the time you do have your skateboard
technique down pat, this will be know as OPUSNET instead of
FidoNet. every day you wait is that much less chance you will
have of making 12 a commercial success, if in fact this is what
you are shooting for.
Now to the last of the news items...and this is more a
request than news.
ANYONE KNOWING THE WHEREABOUTS of one BILL BOLTON, (late of St
Ives NSW Australia) PLEASE have him contact me ASAP. I sent him a
set of 34 disks out over 3 months ago and have heard NOT a PEEP
from him since. This despite the fact that I have requested
other callers from down under to contact him asking him to let me
know if he even got the disks (I checked with the post office and
they are presently TRACING the package to see if it was
delivered). I sent those disks out free with the PROMISE from
Bill that they would be returned to me with the latest stuff for
Fido from down under. I have gotten this stuff from my other
users from Aussie land already, however I would like to know why
there has been no return contact. Bill I have tried everything
else short of getting on Quantas and flying down to see ya (wish
I could, but alas the $$$$ ain't there) and still nothing, how
about it, huh? TALK TO ME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There has been a lot of talk around the net, intentional or
otherwise, about the implications of the names people log in
under. As it has been said before, we are part of a great medium
here and, as it can never be said too often, A VERY POWERFUL one,
Fidonet! With this means of communication comes many
responsibilities, one of which is taking responsibility for what
one writes. I could have easily written this note under a
pseudonym that gave no indication of who I was, but that would
have made this comment essentially worthless.
What I'm trying to say is if one is part of a single or
local BBS, then alter egos are fine, but if someone writes msgs
that travel across the country or even the state then the sender
should be identified! For Net business (i.e. IFNA, SYSOP or By
law feed back echo) it is essential that a real name is used!!
It is very discourteous if one obscures ones identity when
trying to have any form of communication with someone. I have
been the victim of not responding to msgs from people I did not
know only to find out later that they were people I knew (and
owed a favor to), but under an alter ego and therefore not
identifiable.
Please, heed this warning, if you have some thing to say, don't
hide behind a name, say it using your given name! People will
respect you for it and the ones that don't aren't worth the
bother.
PS. Don't send mail as SYSOP, most of us are already a sysop and
sending mail as SYSOP just adds to the confusion.
Is This The End of FidoNews?
----------------------------
Here it is, Wednesday night and still no sign of this week's
FidoNews. After Thom's Editorial in Volume 4, Number 7, I am
beginning to wonder if this is the beginning of the end for our
beloved newsletter. I don't know about you, but I want to see it
continue!
How many of you remember back to September 1986 to "The Day
FidoNews Didn't Come Out"? A pretty disturbing time for us
"FidoNews Junkies", wasn't it? Well, that is NOTHING compared to
the present situation and the very real possibility that the
newsletter will be discontinued without our support.
I have read (in the FidoNews Article Submission Guidelines) that
the estimated readership of FidoNews is SEVENTY THOUSAND. Where
are you all? Surely there are a few of you that have
considerably more literary talent than I have that can submit
something of interest for publication. The Submission Guidelines
clearly state that "All of the articles which appear in FidoNews
are written by users of FidoNet(tm)". Note that this said
"users", which means you don't HAVE to be a SysOp to submit an
article. I have seen a number of Bulletin Boards with a special
file area devoted to "Articles & Stories", and have seen some
excellent work there. Why not share it with the rest of us?
Perhaps some of you are saying to yourself, "But I don't know
what to write about." That's easy. Simply choose a topic that
you are interested in, or something that is affecting the way we
operate our systems, or something that you want the rest of us to
know about. How about topics like the recent PC Magazine
decision to allow their software to be posted on BBS's and how
that affects the BBS community, a review of a new product like
the Commodore RAM Expansion, or maybe just some Tips & Tricks.
These are all articles that I would like to see here.
It has been said that many of you are opting to post your
articles in the EchoMail areas rather than submitting them to
FidoNews. Perhaps this is one reason why a number of the
EchoMail conferences are becoming too large to handle or follow.
I look forward to reading the FidoNews every week because it
usually gives me a brief rundown on a number of topics and I
don't have to sort out the interesting and useful information
from the "flames".
It is my feeling that this newsletter belongs to all of us
(despite the Copyright notice on the cover) and is in danger of
going under if WE don't contribute. WE means you and me. This
is my contribution, where's yours? With a readership of seventy
thousand, that should leave at least sixty-nine thousand of you
that we have yet to hear from. I look forward to reading your
Fidonews Page 10 23 Mar 1987
articles in FidoNews for a long time to come. Thank-you.
Many of the users of Fido are amateur radio operators. This
should come as no surprise, since there is much in common between
modeming and the hobby of amateur radio. Both are basically
communication with peers who have a common interest; only the
mode of communication is different.
Amateur radio is the only hobby which is licensed by the Federal
Government. This is a mixed blessing. Without some form of
"weeding out" process, amateur radio would degenerate into the
chaos which marked Citizen's Band radio a few years ago. The
high standards of conduct and self-regulating of amateur radio
have long been a source of pride to the fraternity. Most current
operators feel that the requirement to learn Morse code to obtain
the entry-level Novice license should not be compromised.
On the other hand, this requirement to learn Morse code may
discourage too many potential ham radio operators. Why should
someone who wants to use radio with a PC and modem take the time
to obtain a Novice license, which only allows the privilege of
using Morse code? To address this issue, changes have been
approved which improve the entry-level Novice license. Beginning
March 21, Novices can use voice and computer modes in addition to
the code privileges that they previously earned.
Packet radio is a recent development in the hobby. Using AX.25,
the amateur-radio implementation of standard X.25 computer
protocol, it is possible to connect computers using radio instead
of telephone lines. There are radio-based BBS's, and
conversation between operators in different countries is possible
and becomming common. The protocol supports relaying a message
through several stations; thus it is feasible to communicate
through a large area.
On a segment of the ten meter band, Novices can use up to 200
watts of power. (This compares with the 5-watt maximum for legal
Citizen's band transmitters.) This frequency, 28 MHz, is close to
the Citizen's Band. Conditions depend upon the 11-year sunspot
cycle, which is currently at its minimum, so the range of this
band will be limited for the next few years. During the years of
sunspot maximum, it is an excellent band for worldwide
communication, and during the summer it is likely to "open up"
for nationwide communication even now during the sunspot minimum.
On a segment of the 220 MHz band, Novices can use up to 25 watts.
Packet-radio activity is growing on this frequency band, espe-
cially in urban areas. An influx of new operators will make it
more popular. Range is limited to line-of-sight, but the flexi-
bility of packet radio provides coverage throughout metropolitan
areas.
In short, the Novice license is a better bargain than ever. For
Fidonews Page 12 23 Mar 1987
information about classes in your area, contact the American
Radio Relay League, 225 Main Street, Newington CT 06111.
In the last couple of months FidoNews has published numerious
articles about the plight of the poor ShareWare authors. We have
listened to the Mark Welch's pleaded their cases looking for our
sympathy.
I found it quite interesting when the Sysop of The Fox Valley
Techinical Institute's bulletin board, a local BBS, posted the
following message on my board:
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Notes from the 1st Annual Shareware Conference, by Judith Brown
I was lucky enough to attend the 1st Annual Shareware conference
in Houston on February 21st for authors, librarians and system
operators. The following are some notes which I thought may be
of interest.
Jim Button has been "locked in a closet for the past year,
existing only on Twinkies and Coke which have been passed to him
through the door." He has thrown out the source code for
PC-File III and is completely rewriting it in another language.
PC-File + will be announced in the first half of March. It will
run 5 times as fast as PC-File III and be twice as easy to use.
Last year Button's income was in excess of $2,000,000.
Marshall Magee's commercial version of Automenu 4.0 will be
released March 26th as shareware. He now has over 15,000
registered users and is receiving an additional 500-700
registrations per month. Not bad for a young man whose dad told
him to forget about computers because they were a passing fad!
Bob Wallace who wrote PC-Write just recently released
version 2.7. He employs 20 people and currently recieves
$40,000-$50,000 per week. Version 3.0 will be going into Beta
testing in March or April and the final version will be released
in May or June. There will be no manual included on the disk due
to space limitations, however extensive on-line help will be
available.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Surprised? I'm not. I would imagine that Smith & Barkelew, the
authors of PROCOMM, along with many other quality shareware
Fidonews Page 14 23 Mar 1987
authors enjoy similar rewards. I think if you have a Shareware
product that's really worth something compensation is really not
a problem.
Plans are well underway and continue for a nationwide convoy
to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. All convoys
are scheduled to arrive in D.C. for a July 4th memorial service
at the Wall. According to Bob Castagna, Organizing Chairman of
the Convoy to the Wall, an estimated two million vets and their
families are planning to be there. The following timetable is
reprinted without the permission of Penny Decker, Editor of
Pathfinders EVAC (Effective Vietnam Veterans Action Center),
Klamath, Oregon (but nothing but good can come of its further
distribution to the hundreds of veterans are active in the
International Vietnam Veterans Echomail Conference [yes...it is
now being hosted in Europe!], not to mention the countless vets
who read the Fido Newsletter, so I hope she will forgive me).
For further information, please contact Bob Castagna, VVA
Chapter #179, P.O. Box 823, Medford, Oregon, 97501, or just send
a message to me at Fidonet (tm) node 143/27 in San Jose,
California (I have Seadog running here so you can crash it to me
anytime of the day or night). Make your plans now...the
departure date is less than 4 months away!
CONVOY TO THE WALL
ROUTE AND TIMETABLE
Northern Route
-----------------------------------------------------------------
CITY ARRIVE DEPART HWY/ROUTE
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Medford, Or. 6am 6/26 I-5, 44, 395
Reno, Nv. Noon 6/26 2pm 6/26 I-80
Salt Lake City, Ut 2am 6/27 6am 6/27 I-80
Denver, Co. 8pm 6/27 6am 6/28 I-80
Omaha. Neb. 8pm 6/28 6am 6/29 I-80
Chicago, Ill. 4pm 6/29 6am 6/30 I-65, I-70
Pittburgh, Penn. 7pm 6/30 6am 7/1 I-76, I-70, I-81
Winchester, Va. 1pm 7/1
(Staging area until July 4th)
Central Route
-----------------------------------------------------------------
CITY ARRIVE DEPART HWY/ROUTE
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Los Angeles, Ca. 6am 6/26 I-10, I-15
Gallup. New Mex. 1pm 6/26 3pm 6/26 I-15
Cedar City, Ut. 7pm 6/26 6am 6/27 I-15, I-70
Denver, Colo. 8pm 6/27 6am 6/28 I-70
Kansas City, Kan. 8pm 6/28 6am 6/29 I-70, I-64
Louisville, Ky. 7pm 6/29 6am 6/30 I-64
Fidonews Page 16 23 Mar 1987
Charleston, W. Va. 2pm 6/30 6am 7/1 I-79, 40, I-81
Winchester, Va. 3pm 7/1
(Staging area until July 4th)
Southern Route
-----------------------------------------------------------------
CITY ARRIVE DEPART HWY/ROUTE
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Los Angeles, Ca. 6am 6/26 I-15, I-40
Gallup, New Mex. 9pm 6/26 6am 6/27 I-40
Amarillo, Tx. 4pm 6/27 6am 6/28 I-40
Little Rock, Ark. 7pm 6/28 6am 6/29 I-40
Nashville, Tenn. 5pm 6/29 6am 6/30 I-40, I-81
Roanoke, Va. 5pm 6/30 8am 7/1 I-81
Winchester, Va. 1pm 7/1
(Staging area until July 4th)
My wife Nancy and I plan to take the Central Route (we HATE
I-80!) and will be forming our own convoy departing San Jose, Ca.
at 9am 6/25 and to ariive in Los Angeles, Ca. at 7pm 6/25, Hwy
101, I-5. We will be ready to depart 6/26 at 6am. Hope to see
as many of you there as possible!
Well, it's been a busy week so this may turn out shorter
than the previous columns. Monday night the local net had it's
monthly meeting and we covered a lot. We had several new boards
start since the last meeting, all of which needed to be educated
in our net's routing and echomail. We've also had a few people
switch over to OPUS, and several are waiting for SEAdog 4.0 to
come out. All in all, it made for a busy meeting. Work kept me
fairly busy the rest of the week, with Saturday being the only
day I had a good part of free.
Sunday was shot because of a Hamfest being held in the area.
If you've never attended one of these, I strongly urge you to go
to the next one. Despite the name, there is quite a lot available
for computer buffs in addition to amateur radio operators. Most
of the stuff is usually marked down quite a bit also, I picked up
a few books by QUE at $8.00 apiece and a box of paper for $20.00.
You can usually find a few good bargains at every show. One more
thing I'd like to mention about the show, one of the people there
was selling Public Domain/Shareware/whatever (nothing wrong with
this, as they had okayed it with the respective authors and were
only charging $5.00 a disk). On most of the packages there was a
sticker which urged you to pay the author's licensing fee. All to
many of us tend to ignore the license on these type of programs,
and we should try to pay for those programs we use before the
programmer's stop writing shareware type programs.
I didn't have a chance to look over any new programs this
past week, so I'm going to go over some programs I've had and
used for awhile. This first of these programs is Certificate
Maker from Springboard (list price $59.95). This program has seen
a lot of use in the past few months, mainly by others in my
family who needed or wanted to give out certificates to others
for a variety of reasons. It comes with a wide variety of
certificates to fit any given situation; from church groups
(support for most of the major religions) to the office Christmas
party (Most Coffee Breaks award), Sports awards (almost any
sport) to the outright ridiculous (Backseat Driver, Party Animal,
etc.). I only have two complaints about the program, the first is
that you have no way to preview the certificate. The only way to
see what will print is to actually print the certificate, I've
gone through too much paper through lack of being able to preview
a certificate. My other complaint is that you have no way to
design your own certificate, you're dependent on Springboard to
come out with Certificate disks or go with a very general
certificate (No pictures, "seals" or anything interesting). I
think this is a very serious limitation on an otherwise fantastic
program. You are able to do an equivalent of a form letter by
creating a list of people for which to print a certificate, this
could be very useful for grade school teachers (just enter the
names of those who have completed the multiplication tables and
have the computer print each one a personal math award) or anyone
else who needs several identical certificates with only the name
Fidonews Page 18 23 Mar 1987
changing.
Since Certificate Maker comes with over one hundred
certificates and Springboard is supposedly working on certificate
disks, I don't see any immediate need to be able to design your
own certificates. I know I'd be hard put to come up with a
purpose not covered by the certificates included with the
program. It is very easy to use, and I'm sure many of you will
find uses for it that Springboard hasn't even thought of yet. I'd
strongly recommend this program to any grade school teachers,
people associated with any of the scouting programs, and youth
group leaders. Other groups that I can see using this program
include business that have an inhouse training program, parents
who are involved with their children's education (room mothers,
teacher assistants) and anyone who would like to award a friend
with one of the stranger certificates (look at the previous
paragraph for some examples).
Another program that has been a favorite of mine is XTREE
from Executive Systems (list price $ 49.95). This is one of the
most useful programs I've ever come across. It's a visual DOS
shell, but don't let those fancy phrases confuse you. When you
start it up it shows you a visual picture of your directory tree,
as you move the highlight bar up and down the tree (using the
arrow keys) you can see some of the files in each directory at
the bottom of the screen, press return and you can look through
the files in that directory. Press return again and the directory
tree vanishes and it uses most of the screen to show you the
files in the directory. In addition to the DOS functions rename,
copy, delete; you can view a file in either a debug type format
or in ASCII, move a file to a different directory, and tag and
untag files. Tagging files is a way of marking them for XTREE
only, you can then perform a file operation on a whole series of
files. My biggest use for this is when I clear off space on my
hard disk, XTREE keeps track of how many bytes have been tagged
so I can tell at a glance how much space I've "freed up." Once
I've gotten things down to a reasonable level, I have XTREE show
me every file on the hard drive and have it delete all tagged
files. I've also tagged files for copying to floppies, I've had a
few requests for my entire download library and XTREE can copy
the tagged files and preserve the directory structure. This way
everything is organized on the floppies the same way it is on my
hard disk, if the person is looking for the word processors he
finds the floppies with the subdirectory "\WORDPROC" and looks at
the files in the subdirectory. It could also be used as a way to
backup a hard drive and have executable files on the floppies
instead of files only useful to the restore program.
There is a demo version of the program available on a few
bulletin boards, I originally got interested in the program from
the demo that was sent across USENET. The demo is limited only by
the fact that it can't write to a disk, and this isn't that
serious of a limitation. Most people should be able to decide
from the demo whether or not to buy the program. It can still be
used for a variety of housekeeping purposes such as looking over
text files (documentation, system logs, etc.), seeing how much
Fidonews Page 19 23 Mar 1987
space a program is taking up and printing the directory tree.
Several of my friends have bought the program on my
recommendation (or seeing it run on my machine) and now swear by
it!
No new games this time around, I'm still busy with
StarFlight and Leather Goddesses of Phobos. I've gotten a little
further in each of them, but still haven't beaten either of them.
A friend was kind enough to laminate the starchart from
StarFlight for me, and it's helped a lot since I feel better
about drawing on it now. I've heard that quite a few graphic
shops or printers can do this for you, and I picked some grease
pencils up from an office supply store in the area. It can make
navigating a lot easier because of the short cuts available, and
I can tell at a glance if I'm near any known mineral rich
planets. I've been beating my head against the wall on Leather
Goddesses, Infocom has come up with some pretty bizarre problems
and solutions for this game. It is still very entertaining and
has provided me with many hours of enjoyment, although any chance
of believability went out the door a few days ago. Both these
games are still highly recommended, although if you don't care
for text adventures you probably won't enjoy any of the Infocom
games. (Yes, I know they have a graphic game. I just haven't
bought a copy at this time.)
Best book this time around is not a computer related book,
although it deals with computers. It's "Hackers, Heroes of the
Computer Revolution" by Steven Levy. I've found it very enjoyable
reading and it gives me a new perspective on the home computer
market. The book is divided up into three sections on different
times and places in this "revolution." The first goes into the
early days (how early? how about a DEC PDP-1!) of computing at
MIT and can be fairly amusing at times. The second section goes
out to California and the "Hardware Hackers" who built and
designed machines like the Altair, Sol, and Apple computers. The
third section pretty much follows around the beginnings of Sierra
On-Line and the Apple II computer. The trailing minisection can
cause a little bit of self-examination, and out of curiosity if
anyone has a recent copy of the public domain EMACS, I would
appreciate it you could send me a copy of it along with source
code.
Once again I welcome your own comments on anything I've
mentioned in my column, or something you think I should see (and
possibly write about). My US mail address is below along with my
net/node number and USENET address. If you're a user of a BBS,
please mention to your sysop that mail to me must be routed
through either 157/0, 157/502, or 157/1. They should understand
what that means, and sysops please take note of the previous
statement. These nodes will also forward files to me and are
running SEAdog so you shouldn't have to worry too much about mail
schedules. Hmmm... this wasn't really shorter than the other
columns, must be getting easier to write 'em!
Many sysops know that files can be transferred between widely
differing machines and stored for further transmission. What many
people fail to realize is that (more or less) ASCII files can be
exchanged AND USED on almost any system.
Why I said more or less above is the subject of this column.
ASCII codes are NOT necessarily used intact on other computer
systems. For example, the old Atari 8 bit line uses a Decimal 155
as the carriage return as well as several other non-standard
characters. The entire Commodore line (except for the Amiga and
the new PC compatible products) are even stranger still. Another
problem is the various word processing programs used. Even in the
PC/XT/AT world, WP programs use their own unique storage methods.
For example, a file created under Multimate is in NO WAY directly
compatible with WordStar or almost anything else.
Having multiple computer systems here I've learned a considerable
amount about getting files from one system and WP program to
function on a totally different system and program. I'll cover
some of the basics first.
You'll need a utility that will let you look at the file AS IT
RESIDED ON THE DISK. I suggest NU from the Norton Utility
package but others are equally suitable.
With this type of utility take a look at the file and see just
how bizarre it might be. If you're lucky, the file will be in
standard ASCII with at least carriage returns (or some other
unique character) either at the end of each line or paragraph. If
not then you may be in trouble.
What you do next depends on just how the file will be used when
you're finished with it. If it will appear as a bulletin or be
used on a BBS then you'll need to make sure that it's limited to
no more than 80 characters per line, has ALL characters in 7 bit
ASCII (the 8th bit must be off) and that each line must end with
a carriage return and a line feed (CR/LF) character.
This will ensure that when the file is typed or displayed that it
will look as intended. How, you ask, do you change a file around?
As a starting point, try your trusty WP program. If it will load
the file you can do the required editing by hand and in a few
rare cases this might be the ONLY way. If you're lazy (like me)
and do a considerable volume of material on a regular basis,
you'll want to automate as much of the process as possible. I
found an old BASIC program on an local BBS and ported it from
CP/M to PC-DOS using UNIFORM to read my Kaypro's DSDD 390K disks.
Since MBASIC under CP/M and BASICA or GWBASIC are almost
identical in syntax I saved the file as an ASCII file on the CP/M
Fidonews Page 22 23 Mar 1987
disk using MBASIC's ",A" option and load it into the GWBASIC I
use on the clone. Yes, if you didn't know, Microsoft BASIC on
many diverse systems usually will load directly, or has a
provision to convert, a standard ASCII file into a BASIC program.
The original BASIC program was written to convert text files that
were terminated in a carriage return only at the end of
paragraphs into files where each line was 55 characters or less
long marked at the end by a "soft" carriage return and each
paragraph was terminated by a normal return. This is the standard
AppleWriter to WordStar document mode convresion. The program
runs well but it's slow, handling about 1k a minute. Compiling
with BASCOM under CP/M speeded things up considerably.
Fortunately for me, the PC-DOS BASIC conversion ran exactly as
had the CP/M BASIC version so no serious modifications were
needed for that particular problem. Compiling it with QuickBasic
increased the speed here too.
With a simple BASIC framework like this it's possible to change
the program to do almost any type of conversion as long as the
file is reasonably standard ASCII with no bizarre storage method
used. I've modified it so many times that my working copy bears
little resemblance to the original program. Other techniques are
needed for files using strange storage formats.
A case in point is an ongoing project involving a file created on
Multimate. This program stores the files in blocks of 512 bytes
with block and format information inbedded in each block. It
doesn't even store a document in the proper order if you've done
any editing on the file. It's almost impossible to convert this
raw file to another format such as WordStar document mode without
considerable manual effort or a complex conversion utility that
would take too long to write.
The answer? I printed the file to disk using the PRINT section of
Multimate and then ran a modified version of the conversion
program on it to remove imbedded codes intended for the daisy
wheel printer the file was printed on. The original 150K file was
stripped down to a bit less than 110K using the various utilities
involved in the conversion.
This is a topic that can occupy an entire newsletter and still
not cover all of the situations you can run into so I'll outline
some of the basic steps involved in the typical conversion:
1) Understand the format of the SOURCE FILE using some type of
disk editor utility to look at the raw file. Simply typing it
on the screen or loading it into your WP will NOT give you all
of the details you need to know. Look for unique characters
that mark the ends of lines and paragraphs and check to see if
the file has any characters with the 8th bit on. Make sure
that the file is stored in the proper order and that its not
scrambled into blocks out of sequence.
2) Compare the SOURCE format against the DESTINATION format and
Fidonews Page 23 23 Mar 1987
see exactly where the differences are. If there are but minor
differences then by all means use a WP to correct the file.
If the differences are great and it would take considerable
time to do a manual conversion then grab that trusty
conversion utility and do some modification on it to do the
job.
3) After conversion by whatever means possible, verify that the
file is indeed in the destination format by using the disk
editor utility. Small changes may be needed and can easily be
done with your WP program. All conversion routines are not
perfect! There will almost invariably be a situation that
shows up that you haven't dealt with before.
4) If all else fails, try to find out what program created the
file and see if there is a way to have the original file
printed to disk by that program to make a "standard" file.
As an example of how this all works, I wrote this on WordStar's
document mode with the justification on. I'll print it to disk
when I'm finished but this particular version of WordStar doesn't
turn off the high bit when it prints to disk. I'll run the file
thru a conversion utility that strips off the high bits, makes
sure that each line is limited to the length specifications as
set forth in the article info file that Thom Henderson provided
and that each line has a CR/LF at the end. I then take a look at
the file by using the DOS TYPE command and if all looks good I'll
forward it by netmail/netfile to 1/1.
Seems like a long way to go doesn't it? There's a way to get
almost any ASCII file file created on one system into another and
have it useable. You just have to look for it a bit.
As a sysop, next time you get a file sent in for display for your
system from an Atari or Commodore owner just take a few minutes
to analyze it. You might find the conversion to standard ASCII
will be minor and you've got another usefull contribution to the
system instead of a worthless file.
As for the BBS users out there, ask your sysop if he/she can
convert files from other computers and don't be afraid to
contribute interesting items to both your own local system and to
the FIDO newsletter.
I'll do file conversions for material intended for newsletter
submission here at 260/320 and forward them on to Thom if you're
using another type of computer that doesn't generate standard
ASCII files. Just send me a netmail message FIRST and ask because
I expect to get swamped and may have a backup of files to
convert.
=================================================================
FOR SALE
=================================================================
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BIG BLUE DISK, the magazine on disk for the IBM PC and
compatibles, is currently available at Waldenbooks stores and
many other retail locations, as well as by mail subscription.
It is contained entirely on a floppy disk. Each issue contains
programs, articles, feedback from subscribers, program reviews
and demos, and more.
For example, issue 6, on sale soon, contains 2 disks full of
features, including:
- Foolagain's Island: In this April Fool parody section, we take
a peek (and a poke) at PC-STRIFE, the ONLY magazine on disk.
- Kalah: A computerized version of an ancient strategy game.
- Political Preference: Are you "left," "right," or just left
right out? Find out with this program.
- The Reminder System: Remember appointments, anniversaries, and
other important dates with this handy program.
- Color Test: Determine monitor color combinations.
- The MV Command: Move files around between subdirectories.
In addition, there are other programs, articles, and regular
features, including feedback from our readers.
You can order this issue by direct mail by sending $9.95 (check,
money order, or Visa/Mastercard/American Express accepted) to:
BIG BLUE DISK, DEPT F2, PO BOX 30008, SHREVEPORT, LA 71130-0008.
Mail subscriptions are also available: One year (12 monthly
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price.) A six-month subscription is available for $39.95.
Lots of interesting stuff is coming up; issue 7 contains a full-
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Alfredo. Subscribe now and don't miss anything!
BIG BLUE DISK requires an IBM PC or compatible, with at least
256K and MS-DOS 2.0 or later. Color graphics is recommended.
Send questions/comments to Daniel Tobias on FIDO 380/2.
Due to a glitch that developed in our system when we changed
machines, we seem to have sent out an empty newsletter last week.
Accordingly, Volume 4 Number 11 has been officially delayed until
this week. We'll try not to let it happen again.
27 Apr 1987
Start of the Semi-Annual DECUS (Digital Equipment Corp. Users
Society) symposium, to be held in Nashville, Tennessee.
17 May 1987
Metro-Fire Fido's Second Birthday BlowOut and Floppy Disk
Throwing Tournament! All Fido Sysops and Families Invited!
Contact Christopher Baker at 135/14 for more information.
21 Aug 1987
Start of the Fourth International FidoNet Conference, to be
held at the Radisson Mark Plaza Hotel in Alexandria, VA.
Details to follow.
24 Aug 1989
Voyager 2 passes Neptune.
If you have something which you would like to see on this
calendar, please send a message to FidoNet node 1/1.
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