🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <819133969snz@smof.demon.co.uk>, Tim Illingworth
<tim@smof.demon.co.uk> writes

>Is information available on these subjects?

by which you mean the format of mail files...

Not at present. There is no real reason why they should not be
published, except that we do not have this information in a suitable
document, so we will have to extract it from the code where it currently
resides. It is unlikely that we would publish the code - a fair bit of
which is in assembler anyway.

Perhaps people who might be interested would let me know so that I can
judge how much interest there would be. Writing code to unpick these
files is not IMHO for the dilettante, so serious interest only please.

>So: in the interest of Being Prepared:
>Incoming mail: stored where?  what format?
>Outgoing mail: ditto.

both of these live in MSPOOL (where the records are compressed and then
encrypted). The data is actually found using the indexes (which are
BTrees) in MAILBASE. You'd need to add information into several such
indexes...  you may be beginning to see the complexity of what you are
proposing to do.

>Encryption: I caught a reference in another newsgroup to Turnpike
>storing mail in an encrypted form.  Since SmofList needs to read mail
>to process it, is this selectable by user, or is an
>encryption/decrytion system available?

we always encrypt. It won't hold up a major government, but I expect it
will stop people on a network reading mail which they should not.

-- 
richard                      Richard Clayton         T U R N P I K E  Ltd
                                                     tel: +44 1306 747747
"Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind" quoted in ZAMM

In article <819133969snz@smof.demon.co.uk>, Tim Illingworth
<tim@smof.demon.co.uk> writes
>(posted to D.i.developers and mailed to Richard)
>
>Is information available on these subjects?  As Demon are now
>offering this software (apparently: my copy of DISpatches 2 hasn't
>arrived yet) some users of SmofList are bound to move to it.
>
>So: in the interest of Being Prepared:
>Incoming mail: stored where?  what format?
>Outgoing mail: ditto.
>

I'm also interested in getting access to incoming mail in order to count
total and unread messages. I did ask Richard a while ago if the file
formats were published, but at the time he was not very forthcoming...

Any chance now?

=======================================================================
|  /\  | <Julian Bond> julian@shockwav.demon.co.uk | Ducati 900SS '93 |
| /<>\ | uses Disclaim                PGPKey @ MIT | MZ ETZ250    '80 |
|/____\|        So many words, so little time      | DoD# 65535       |
=======================================================================

In article <j6P1bdB8ky0wEAP5@turnpike.com>
   Richard Clayton <richard@turnpike.com> writes:
> 
> Perhaps people who might be interested would let me know so that I can
> judge how much interest there would be. Writing code to unpick these
> files is not IMHO for the dilettante, so serious interest only please.

I'm certainly interested - any move over to Turnpike myself at a later 
stage would certainly depend on knowing how things work. News formats 
would be helpful for similar reasons, although I suspect that they're 
fairly similar.

> we always encrypt. It won't hold up a major government, but I expect it
> will stop people on a network reading mail which they should not.

I've mentioned this to Richard before, but this is a significant 
disincentive to me. An option to have the mail/news stored in a standard 
text format (albeit with binary index files) would be much appreciated. 
Something for the wishlist for future versions?

As someone who runs a few mailing lists, I would imagine that Turnpike is 
a non-starter anyway (Richard?). 

The problem with a tightly integrated package (as Turnpike appears to be) 
is that anything it doesn't offer can't easily be added in later. This is 
fine for as long as Turnpike does everything the user wants, but an 
experienced user it is likely to be very frustrating. I'm sure, however, 
that Demon have made a good choice on the basis of what they were trying 
to achieve; the fragile newusers should be a lot better off.

Mark.
-- 
int MeaningOfLife (void) { return 42; }   // mcr@holly.demon.co.uk
function MeaningOfLife :integer; begin MeaningOfLife := 6 * 9 end;

In article <819414802snx@holly.demon.co.uk>, Mark Rogers
<mcr@holly.demon.co.uk> writes

>> we always encrypt. It won't hold up a major government, but I expect it
>> will stop people on a network reading mail which they should not.
>
>I've mentioned this to Richard before, but this is a significant 
>disincentive to me. An option to have the mail/news stored in a standard 
>text format (albeit with binary index files) would be much appreciated. 
>Something for the wishlist for future versions?

No. It was one of the fundamental design decisions. The cost would be
extremely high to make such a change. You can always export the
mail/news to ASCII form if you need it like that for some purpose.

>As someone who runs a few mailing lists, I would imagine that Turnpike is 
>a non-starter anyway (Richard?). 

I would not recommend it for that purpose.

>The problem with a tightly integrated package (as Turnpike appears to be) 
>is that anything it doesn't offer can't easily be added in later.

We are finding it quite easy :)

> This is 
>fine for as long as Turnpike does everything the user wants, but an 
>experienced user it is likely to be very frustrating.

If what they want to do makes sense (not necessarily the solution they
propose, but the problem which they want solving); then it will be
sensible of us to tackle it.

> I'm sure, however, 
>that Demon have made a good choice on the basis of what they were trying 
>to achieve; the fragile newusers should be a lot better off.

There's a remarkable number of non-fragiles using it too.

-- 
richard                      Richard Clayton         T U R N P I K E  Ltd
                                                     tel: +44 1306 747747
"Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind" quoted in ZAMM

In article <819414802snx@holly.demon.co.uk>, Mark Rogers
<mcr@holly.demon.co.uk> writes

..
MR> disincentive to me. An option to have the mail/news stored in a standard
MR> text format (albeit with binary index files) would be much appreciated.

When I first saw the way Snews stores its news files, I
thought "Ugh, how crude!".  Yet, as time goes by, I find
it more and more to my taste, and hard to think of a
scheme I'd prefer for my own use.

MR> Something for the wishlist for future versions?

On Wednesday, in article <HBP0T5B1pC2wEA46@turnpike.com>
     richard@turnpike.com "Richard Clayton" wrote:

RC> No. It was one of the fundamental design decisions. The cost would be

Fair enough.  There've certainly been times when my
Snews newsbase has taken my disk down to its last
few meg, so an organisation that doesn't have duplicate
copies of cross-posts, and compresses the text, has
undeniable benefits.

Personally I'm always a little worried about compression,
the way that, on the rare occasion when it does fail, it
fails catastrophically.  I'm one of those who's never let
Stacker/Doublespace/etc near my drives, no matter how much
the extra room would be welcome.

However, even without knowing the details, I think that
Turnpike made the right decision for most users.

..
MR>  This is
MR> fine for as long as Turnpike does everything the user wants, but an
MR> experienced user it is likely to be very frustrating.

RC> If what they want to do makes sense (not necessarily the solution they
RC> propose, but the problem which they want solving); then it will be
RC> sensible of us to tackle it.

I agree with Mark because I find it hard to see how you
can possibly cater for the wierd desires of a user (experienced
or not) equipped with source and programming ability.
I've hacked Snews for my personal use to solve:

1. How do I get a mailing list to thread sensibly (i.e. by
   subject) when every subject line starts "(SC22WG14 msg xxxx)"
   before the actual topic?  The 'xxxx' is a unique message
   number created by the reflector.

2. I like to have 'unusual' header lines drawn to my attention,
   but I don't want to see run-of-the-mill headers.  So a
   line like "Summary:" or "X-Beer-Token:" is displayed for
   me.  Whereas something like "X-Newsreader: Turnpike"
   (congrats on how commonplace it's becoming!) is easily
   concealed.

3. I'm currently tinkering with my 'name'.  At first everything
   went out from 'john' (unless I manually amended it) even if
   it was a reply to mail to a different user (I have several
   dozen 'users' at wash.demon, to keep track of different
   mailing lists, support, etc).  Now I reply using the 'user'
   that was addressed.  But even that is proving not as flexible
   as I wish.  Eventually I'll have it to my taste.  For a
   while.

But I find it hard to imagine that any of the wishes
I've described are shared by more than a tiny minority
(often a minority of just one).  Would you want to
tackle any of the above, Richard?

MR>  I'm sure, however,
MR> that Demon have made a good choice on the basis of what they were trying
MR> to achieve; the fragile newusers should be a lot better off.

RC> There's a remarkable number of non-fragiles using it too.

I don't doubt it.  I imagine Mark's reference to fragility
was to some of the earlier Windows newsreaders available
for Demon users.  Put it like this: after I tried a free
Windows newsreader and had it trash my newsbase (the only
time ever) I reckoned I'd paid far far more than I wanted
to!

--
John Washington

In article <819560963snz@wash.demon.co.uk>,
          john@wash.demon.co.uk (John Washington) wrote:

> When I first saw the way Snews stores its news files, I
> thought "Ugh, how crude!".  Yet, as time goes by, I find
> it more and more to my taste, and hard to think of a
> scheme I'd prefer for my own use.

Out of interest, how *does* Snews store its news?

> Fair enough.  There've certainly been times when my
> Snews newsbase has taken my disk down to its last
> few meg, so an organisation that doesn't have duplicate
> copies of cross-posts, and compresses the text, has
> undeniable benefits.
> 
> Personally I'm always a little worried about compression,
> the way that, on the rare occasion when it does fail, it
> fails catastrophically.  I'm one of those who's never let
> Stacker/Doublespace/etc near my drives, no matter how much
> the extra room would be welcome.

A system that compresses each article separately, however, is
nearly as robust as one which doesn't compress at all, and
is certainly "sufficiently" robust for news storage. (You're
not going to lose the entire news spool from a single byte's
corruption, just a single article.)

Cheers


Jon
____
\  // Jon Ribbens // jon@doggysoft.co.uk   //
 \// http://www.csv.warwick.ac.uk/~esveb/ //

In article <819560963snz@wash.demon.co.uk>
   John Washington <john@wash.demon.co.uk> writes:
> 
> Personally I'm always a little worried about compression,
> the way that, on the rare occasion when it does fail, it
> fails catastrophically.  I'm one of those who's never let
> Stacker/Doublespace/etc near my drives, no matter how much
> the extra room would be welcome.

I've used Stacker for some time now for non-critical stuff, and had very 
few problems (very few = a similar level of problems to those on a non-
Stacked drive). Maybe my time will come, but there isn't too much to lose 
if it does. All my news/mail is stored compressed in this way. Any 
development work I do, however, is on uncompressed drives.

> 2. I like to have 'unusual' header lines drawn to my attention,
>    but I don't want to see run-of-the-mill headers.  So a

This would be a useful addition for many users. Also, something which 
catches follow-ups so you know where you're posting to is a good idea.

> 3. I'm currently tinkering with my 'name'.  At first everything

Most mailreaders allow this, I think. I reply to different mailboxes with 
different .sigs, different From: lines, etc.

Mark.
-- 
int MeaningOfLife (void) { return 42; }   // mcr@holly.demon.co.uk
function MeaningOfLife :integer; begin MeaningOfLife := 6 * 9 end;

In article <HBP0T5B1pC2wEA46@turnpike.com>
   Richard Clayton <richard@turnpike.com> writes:
> 
> There's a remarkable number of non-fragiles using it too.

Fragile was probably the wrong word to use. Most of the people in this 
group will appreciate the idea of seeing a problem and being in a 
position to fix it. That said, biased as I am in favour of being in this 
position, I accept that the number of people in this group is small, and 
is probably representative of the small number of people who benefit from 
poorly integrated packages.

As I said, Turnpike is probably a very good choice for Demon. No more 
users called E:DEMONSPOOLMAIL if nothing else :-) I would imagine that it 
makes Demon one of the user-friendliest operations (for Windoze users at 
least), when in contrast it was one of the worst before. 

It's just a pity I don't like it :-(

Mark.
-- 
int MeaningOfLife (void) { return 42; }   // mcr@holly.demon.co.uk
function MeaningOfLife :integer; begin MeaningOfLife := 6 * 9 end;

In article <819560963snz@wash.demon.co.uk>, John Washington
<john@wash.demon.co.uk> writes
>
>1. How do I get a mailing list to thread sensibly (i.e. by
>   subject) when every subject line starts "(SC22WG14 msg xxxx)"
>   before the actual topic?  The 'xxxx' is a unique message
>   number created by the reflector.

there's a lot to be said for "In-Reply-To:"

>2. I like to have 'unusual' header lines drawn to my attention,
>   but I don't want to see run-of-the-mill headers.  So a
>   line like "Summary:" or "X-Beer-Token:" is displayed for
>   me.  Whereas something like "X-Newsreader: Turnpike"
>   (congrats on how commonplace it's becoming!) is easily
>   concealed.

I'm not sure that I wish to encourage putting more and more material
into the header. The body is the place for jokes, and saves the poor
overworked MTAs from having to parse them.

You could probably say we were being hypocritical in putting in an 
X-Newsreader line; perhaps so; but we do put some identification in
there as well.

>3. I'm currently tinkering with my 'name'.  At first everything
>   went out from 'john' (unless I manually amended it) even if
>   it was a reply to mail to a different user (I have several
>   dozen 'users' at wash.demon, to keep track of different
>   mailing lists, support, etc).  Now I reply using the 'user'
>   that was addressed.  But even that is proving not as flexible
>   as I wish.  Eventually I'll have it to my taste.  For a
>   while.

This is designed in as standard - each mailbox or newsstand can have its
own personality as required.

>Would you want to
>tackle any of the above, Richard?

we were very keen on number 3.

-- 
richard                      Richard Clayton         T U R N P I K E  Ltd
                                                     tel: +44 1306 747747
"Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind" quoted in ZAMM