Hi,

is there anyplace where it is defined, what a valid fidonet conference name is (syntactically).

I would suspect, that it has to be latin letters only plus numbers and a few special chars and matching the name is case-insensitve!?

Also, in my world conference names should be presented as uppercase.

Background: I am rewriting part of the areas management code in winpoint and ran into some interesting corner cases ...

Bis denne ...
Tim Schattkowsky
--- WinPoint 374.2
* Origin: Original WinPoint Origin! (2:240/1120.29)

Hello, Tim!

Monday November 15 2021 03:47, from Tim Schattkowsky -> All:

is there anyplace where it is defined, what a valid fidonet conference name is (syntactically).

http://ftsc.org/docs/fsc-0074.001

CONFERENCE is the name of the conference. The
conference name is composed of ASCII characters in
the range 33 to 96 and 123 to 126. The conference
name shall be no more than 60 characters in length.

I would suspect, that it has to be latin letters only plus numbers and
a few special chars and matching the name is case-insensitve!?

Technically, lower case letters are not allowed, but there are plenty of software in the wild which accept any letter case. Basically, echo tag is not case-sensitive.

Also, in my world conference names should be presented as uppercase.

True.

Background: I am rewriting part of the areas management code in
winpoint and ran into some interesting corner cases ...

FTSC can help you.

Best Regards, Nil
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5
* Origin: Linux 2.6.32-042stab145.3 (2:5015/46)

Hello Tim!

*** Monday 15.11.21 at 2:47:18, Tim Schattkowsky wrote to All:

[snip]

Background: I am rewriting part of the areas management code in winpoint and ran into some interesting corner cases ...

Excellent, keep up the good work :-))

Regards,
Martin
--- WinPoint 373.0
* Origin: WinPoint Test Rig - UK - (2:310/31.7)

//Hallo Nil, //

am *15.11.21* um *5:25:14* schriebst Du in der Area *FTSC_PUBLIC*
an *Tim Schattkowsky* eine Mail zum
Thema *"Valid conference names"*.

Hello, Tim!

Monday November 15 2021 03:47, from Tim Schattkowsky -> All:

is there anyplace where it is defined, what a valid fidonet conference
name is (syntactically).

http://ftsc.org/docs/fsc-0074.001

CONFERENCE is the name of the conference. The conference name is composed
of ASCII characters in
the range 33 to 96 and 123 to 126. The conference
name shall be no more than 60 characters in length.

Thanks! I knew it was there but somehow missed it on first sight.

I would suspect, that it has to be latin letters only plus numbers and a
few special chars and matching the name is case-insensitve!?

Technically, lower case letters are not allowed, but there are plenty of software in the wild which accept any letter case. Basically, echo tag is not case-sensitive.

These lower-case systems bother me. At least now I know I can safely upcase the names found in such lists to keep internal management consistent.

Also, in my world conference names should be presented as uppercase.

True.

Background: I am rewriting part of the areas management code in winpoint
and ran into some interesting corner cases ...

FTSC can help you.

<thumbsup!/>

Bis denne ...
Tim Schattkowsky
--- WinPoint 375.0
* Origin: Original WinPoint Origin! (2:240/1120.29)

El 14/11/21 a las 23:47, Tim Schattkowsky escribió:

Background: I am rewriting part of the areas management code in winpoint and ran into some interesting corner cases ...

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Good news! when will you put the code in a git repo to follow the
development? =))))
--- SBBSecho 3.14-Linux
* Origin: Dock Sud BBS - http://bbs.docksud.com.ar (4:902/26)

Re: Valid conference names
By: Nil Alexandrov to Tim Schattkowsky on Mon Nov 15 2021 08:25 am

Hello, Tim!

Monday November 15 2021 03:47, from Tim Schattkowsky -> All:

is there anyplace where it is defined, what a valid fidonet conference name is (syntactically).

http://ftsc.org/docs/fsc-0074.001

FSC-74 was never an adopted FidoNet standard however.

CONFERENCE is the name of the conference. The
conference name is composed of ASCII characters in
the range 33 to 96 and 123 to 126. The conference
name shall be no more than 60 characters in length.

And I thought 50 was the general accepted maximum echo-tag length. :-(

I would suspect, that it has to be latin letters only plus numbers and a few special chars and matching the name is case-insensitve!?

Technically, lower case letters are not allowed, but there are plenty of software in the wild which accept any letter case. Basically, echo tag is not case-sensitive.

If I were to define it, I would also specify that the first character of an echo-tag must be alpha-numeric. Echo-tags beginning with '+' or '%' or other special characters could be problematic.
--- SBBSecho 3.14-Linux
* Origin: Vertrauen - [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net (1:103/705)

Rob,

CONFERENCE is the name of the conference. The
conference name is composed of ASCII characters in
the range 33 to 96 and 123 to 126. The conference
name shall be no more than 60 characters in length.

And I thought 50 was the general accepted maximum echo-tag length. :-(

54

\%/@rd

--- DB4 - Nov 27 2021
* Origin: Hou het veilig, hou vol. Het komt allemaal weer goed (2:292/854)

Re: Re: Valid conference names
By: Ward Dossche to Rob Swindell on Thu Dec 02 2021 10:34 am

Rob,

CONFERENCE is the name of the conference. The
conference name is composed of ASCII characters in
the range 33 to 96 and 123 to 126. The conference
name shall be no more than 60 characters in length.

And I thought 50 was the general accepted maximum echo-tag length. :-(

54

What's the reference for a max echo-tage length of 54?

For 50, I have FMail (tosser) and Mystic BBS software. So that's that length limit that I'm currently imposing in SBBSecho.

This does seem to be a pretty important FidoNet element that should've been well-defined long ago.
--- SBBSecho 3.14-Linux
* Origin: Vertrauen - [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net (1:103/705)

Hello Rob,

54

What's the reference for a max echo-tage length of 54?

D'Bridge technical reference for that item dating back to 1988 about ... That was by Chris Irwin ... maybe Nick can chip-in his 2 cents worth ??

This does seem to be a pretty important FidoNet element that should've
been well-defined long ago.

You are 100% right .... I think.

\%/@rd
--- DB4 - Nov 27 2021
* Origin: Hou het veilig, hou vol. Het komt allemaal weer goed (2:292/854)

//Hello Ward,//

on *02.12.21* at *9:34:12* You wrote in rea *FTSC_PUBLIC*
to *Rob Swindell* about *"Re: Valid conference names"*.

CONFERENCE is the name of the conference. The
conference name is composed of ASCII characters in
the range 33 to 96 and 123 to 126. The conference
name shall be no more than 60 characters in length.

And I thought 50 was the general accepted maximum echo-tag length. :-(

54

I have to admit that during the recent changes to WP I desperatly needed 8 bytes extra data per stored message while maintaining compatibility with existing data (and even old WP versions operating on the data) ...

.. and ended up taking these 8 bytes from the area name field, reducing the fully supported area name size internally to 51 characters+terminating zero. That day I was under the assumption, that I had the 60-character limited self-imposed ...

Since this not really existis in the wild, I should fix it ... but its non-triavial as i REALLY needed those 8 bytes ... Damn!

Regards,
Tim
--- WinPoint 380.2
* Origin: Original WinPoint Origin! (2:240/1120.29)

Tim,

Since this not really existis in the wild, I should fix it ... but its non-triavial as i REALLY needed those 8 bytes ... Damn!

I kinda like Rob Swindel's remark ... but I'm not an FTSC-member ...

Other than that ... Why 'Winpoint' ?

I think I can run a point with most any mailer-software ... what makes WP unique?

\%/@rd
--- DB4 - Dec 2 2021
* Origin: Hou het veilig, hou vol. Het komt allemaal weer goed (2:292/854)

On 06 Dec 21 00:33:35, Ward Dossche said the following to Tim Schattkowsky:

I kinda like Rob Swindel's remark ... but I'm not an FTSC-member ...

Other than that ... Why 'Winpoint' ?

I think I can run a point with most any mailer-software ... what makes WP unique?

WP 5.1 was the best... knew all the shortcuts, all the function keys... whatever term-paper I had to type for class would always printout perfectly.

Nick
--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (1:229/426)

//Hello Ward,//

on *05.12.21* at *23:33:35* You wrote in rea *FTSC_PUBLIC*
to *Tim Schattkowsky* about *"Re: Re^2: Valid conference names"*.

Since this not really existis in the wild, I should fix it ... but its
non-triavial as i REALLY needed those 8 bytes ... Damn!

I kinda like Rob Swindel's remark ... but I'm not an FTSC-member ...

I am a big fan of that, but it kinda feels wrong to lower the number in the standard. What I particularly think of is access to newsgroups that continue to exist and have long names. For Fido itself, 50 would probably do.

Other than that ... Why 'Winpoint' ?

Because its a complete Point package for Windows :) Back in the days the platform was the distinguishing feature compared to something like crosspoint.

I think I can run a point with most any mailer-software ... what makes WP unique?

The basic idea was always to make a complete package thats simple and convenient for "normal" users, who are happy just to enter minimum configuration information (node numbers and passwords) at setup and be essentially ready to go without complex configuration. WP95 already included everything that one normally needed as a point:
- Mailer
- Tosser
- Editor
- Nodelist processor
- File request editor
- Area Manager

THe original WP95 was quite popular with less technical users that preferred to have a GUI. For example, AFAIR all of BeeNet was using WP because those people cared mostly about honey.

However, the current version is halfway stuck on the way from the Original WinPoint 95 to something else. There have been many changes, and most notable a change in the localization system that didnt make it to every part of the software resulting in a product that can (today) only be partially localized. The rest remains german. I am working on that.

Still it seems, that some small part of the functionality is (for reasons I forgot) no longer working. In particular, WP95 included fully automatic node-/pointlist processing. Today, the step where incoming diffs are decompressed into the correct folders is not happing for reasons I still have to find (lack of time). Looking into that as well.

Overall, the current version of WP is IMHO perfectly usable, particularly if you dont mind that some of the less important modules (e.g., area manager, file request editor) are still not localized.

Regards,
Tim
--- WinPoint 380.2
* Origin: Original WinPoint Origin! (2:240/1120.29)

I think I can run a point with most any mailer-software ... what

makes WP

unique?

WP 5.1 was the best... knew all the shortcuts, all the function keys... whatever term-paper I had to type for class would always printout perfectly.

Winpoint ? I don't think so ....

Yah yah yaaaaahhh ... I also used WordPerfect, that was lightyears ago ...

\%/@rd

--- DB4 - Dec 2 2021
* Origin: Hou het veilig, hou vol. Het komt allemaal weer goed (2:292/854)

Tim,

Overall, the current version of WP is IMHO perfectly usable, particularly if you dont mind that some of the less important modules (e.g., area manager, file request editor) are still not localized.

Enjoy the hobby and keep having fun with this ... I'm not ready to move away from my current set-up but I like it when others like yourself, Nick Andre, Rob Swindel, James Coyle and half of the Russian/Ukrainian part of the nodelist are enamored enough by Fidonet to sustain development of software...

\%/@rd

--- DB4 - Dec 2 2021
* Origin: Hou het veilig, hou vol. Het komt allemaal weer goed (2:292/854)

//Hello Ward,//

on *06.12.21* at *8:57:13* You wrote in rea *FTSC_PUBLIC*
to *Tim Schattkowsky* about *"Re: Re^2: Re^2: Valid conference names"*.

Overall, the current version of WP is IMHO perfectly usable,
particularly if you dont mind that some of the less important modules
(e.g., area manager, file request editor) are still not localized.

Enjoy the hobby and keep having fun with this ... I'm not ready to move away from my current set-up

No reason to fix it if its not broken. Also, personal preferences are quite different when it comes to the user experience. I never liked anything involving command line tools, configuration files and text user interfaces. I know other people who prefer the absolute opposite.

but I like it when others like yourself, Nick
Andre, Rob Swindel, James Coyle and half of the Russian/Ukrainian part of the nodelist are enamored enough by Fidonet to sustain development of software...

Your right about this. It nowadays is just a fun thing. Todays Fidonet size surely is not a justfication for spending any ressources. However, I still like the idea and as much as my time and the current situation allow me to, I like to support this.

Regards,
Tim
--- WinPoint 381.0
* Origin: Original WinPoint Origin! (2:240/1120.29)