TeleFinder Chat Log

Text of TeleFinder Chat from Friday, October 28, 1997 11 AM PST.

In attendance:

From Spider Island: Rusty Tucker,

Sysops: Bob Nunn, Jim Smith, Andy Daws, Daniel Parker, Michael Davidson, Jim Leary, Kevin Shearon, Daniel Raguse, Jonathan Paisley.

Jim Smith: Hi Bob

Bob Nunn: Hey Jim, get your ISDN working?

Jim Smith: Bob: I have had nothing but problems with WebRamp. on my 2nd one.

Bob Nunn: I am in the process of setting up. My ISP is pushing me to go Pipeline. What would you do now?

Daniel Parker: Yay, now the chat is at a good time :-), 8am instead of 6am

Jim Smith: POTS line 1 does not work, incoming OK.

Jim Smith: I think I will return WebRamp and get Pipeline, which one?

Andy Daws: We use a Netopia it works very well

Bob Nunn: I am not sure what to do now. I guess the Pipeline 85 since it has the POTS and the 4 port ethernet. He says I can get up to 8k transfers since he is using an Ascend box for his connections, I can benefit from the compression.

Jim Smith: Is the Netopia a router with POTS?

Andy Daws: No we can't get POTS in the UK yet

Andy Daws: But the US version has POTS

Jim Smith: WebRamp support response took 2 days to call back.

Daniel Parker: huh POTS, Plain old Telephone Service?

Andy Daws: Yup

Bob Nunn: My ISP has set up both the WebRamp and the Pipeline. He likes both but since he is on Ascend boxes he says the compression is worth the harder set up of Pipeline.

Andy Daws: The Netopia works with Ascend and is really easy to set up

Andy Daws: I mean ascend compression

Bob Nunn: It would depend on what your ISP is on though.

Jim Smith: Setup on WebRamp (software is junk). Windows is ok.

Andy Daws: I've heard bad thing about Pipeline setup from HP and they should no. I think?

Bob Nunn: Sorry to hear that since I told you it was the one I was going with. My ISP is coming over to set mine up for free. We use Ascend at work here. I think the main trouble is the set up but that won't be a problem for me and they have web accessibility now for the router config now.

Jim Smith: I have had to reset the WebRamp as DNS quit working.

Andy Daws: Does WebRamp have a DNS built in?

Jim Smith: Spoofing for local network.

Jim Smith: I have also lots of known crashes, in Finder and everything else.

Andy Daws: We use Quick DNS PRO 2 which will work through a firewall using forwarding

Bob Nunn: Jim, is your ISP working with you on configuring?

Jim Smith: No. The ISDN works good, except for a few time necessary to reset for lost DNS.

Jim Smith: My ISP also recommend Ascend, and others.

Bob Nunn: I can't tell you that the pipeline will be any better. He talked me into it but like I say he has set up both but on Windows based systems. Perhaps you should send it back to Data Whse and try a Pipeline .

Bob Nunn: If you want to wait a few I will be ordering today. It will take a week or so to get my line in etc.

Rusty Tucker: Mail-PI .95 seems to be working well here.

Rusty Tucker: You may need an updated reg code, my first expired 10.10

Andy Daws: And while on the subject of mail has anyone tried receiving signed E-Mail

Rusty Tucker: Andy - I need to get 2 files from you.

Rusty Tucker: the POP3 file that TF puts in your mailbox.

Andy Daws: Ok shot

Bob Nunn: Rusty, I couldn't get the sound to work completely on Netscape 3.02 but I haven't messed with it yet.

Andy Daws: Ok got that where do you want me to send

Rusty Tucker: and a POP3 copy ( of the same message ) that is OK

Bob Nunn: Other than that Mail PI 9.5 works well for me as well and Jon sent me an extended code.

Andy Daws: POP3 copy how do I get that?

Andy Daws: Ok you've got the POP file that was in my Mailbox

Rusty Tucker: thx

Rusty Tucker: I'm not sure where to get a "good" file, maybe a copy from a Eudora mail box

Andy Daws: What I'll try is sending out to a PC E-Mail System and see if I can archive there

Rusty Tucker: sounds good

Andy Daws: I'll be back

Jonathan Paisley: hi all! I'm a bit late, it would seem

Michael Davidson: me too Jonathan :)

Jim Leary: It seems like the group in here is a bit different than the last one, so I'd like to introduce my problem to see if there are any suggestions....

Jim Leary: We supply downloadable photos and want to put ourself on the web with TF 5.5. However, our clients need to see previews before downloading and we can't link to every photo, because we have 4000

Jim Leary: It is also too time consuming to do a new link every time we scan a new file. We scan 30-50 per day. Any suggestions

Michael Davidson: Rusty, did you find any internal solutions?

Rusty Tucker: No, i tried showing the PICT, but IE for Windows would not display it.

Michael Davidson: Would the FMPro database method be of use in Jim's case

Jim Leary: Michael, would you care to take a look at the setup?

Michael Davidson: Microsoft makes it hard for everybody

mikael fredriksson: Hi!

Daniel Raguse: good morning, good afternoon

Jim Leary: I'll take a MAC solution for now. Most clients have Mac

Michael Davidson: I could, I don't know if I could be of great help

Michael Davidson: Aren't previews PICTs Rusty?

Rusty Tucker: yes they are

Michael Davidson: Can you live without an IE solution Jim?

Michael Davidson: So we need preview to be in gif form Rusty...anything easy about that?

Kevin Shearon: Mr. Paisley, how much will your HDS Mail for TF be?

Michael Davidson: Mr. :) ............do you know how old Jonathan is???

Kevin Shearon: I emailed you for a new code, mine expires in early Nov.

Jonathan Paisley: Jim: can you give us a URL to see what kind of things you want your users to see?

Kevin Shearon: Just a sign of respect...

Kevin Shearon: I'm only 14, so...

Rusty Tucker: Build a PI , earn your MR.

Jim Leary: We had no PC solution before with TF 2.5. We can just tell our PC clients to use TF still. I suppose we can let them know that they need Netscape. Its better than nothing, but with IE usage growing, I'd like to solve that problem too

Jonathan Paisley: KS: We don't have a price fixed yet... but I'm interested to see what people think might be appropriate

Bob Nunn: I have more than 4000 and add quite a few each day. I use graphic converter to make a small gif using the batch features. Leave em in the same dir. The .gif low res and the tif or whatever format high res.

Michael Davidson: So is there any easy way for TF to convert picts to gifs and store them in the archive

Kevin Shearon: I think free is appropriate, but barring that I think $25-50 is fair

Rusty Tucker: :)

Rusty Tucker: I think the Graph converter batch method should be pretty fast

Bob Nunn: $75 would hurt me but it is probably worth that. What do you think Rusty?

Jonathan Paisley: I have a plugin that can can make GIFs on the fly. I suppose it could convert PICTs to GIFs on the fly

Michael Davidson: One solution is to use Applescript (and Graphic Convertor) to automate the pict to gif and the links

Kevin Shearon: Jonathan, did you get my email asking for another registration code?

Rusty Tucker: I'll wait to see the final feature set, it could have a good deal of value.

Michael Davidson: There you go, Jonathan to the rescue once again...will it work with IE Jonathan?

Bob Nunn: Graphic Converter is darn fast but it will not handle files over 8 Meg or so no matter how much ram I give it.

Jonathan Paisley: not yet Kevin (I have about a four hr delay on my mail)

Kevin Shearon: ok, thanks

Jonathan Paisley: If you like you can test out my new email address (send mail to both for now until I verified it works)

Daniel Raguse: Does anybody have a problem with their clients connecting to their BBS with AOL as the TCP/IP carrier? Rusty, we haven't found an answer to this problem yet.

Jonathan Paisley: Old address: Jonathan_paisley@highlander.net.uk

Jonathan Paisley: new address: jon@jon.ml.org

Jim Leary: Yes Daniel. I cannot connect via the internet with my TF on my PC thru AOL

Rusty Tucker: AOL is probably blocking the "non-standard" ports

Bob Nunn: Timeout before the connects.

Michael Davidson: Applescript could get the preview, convert it to gif, store it in a resource in the file but then I'm not sure how it would get previewed by TF

Rusty Tucker: You'd want the script to make a preview from :

Rusty Tucker: "photo.jpg" and store it as "gifs:photo.jpg.gif"

Bob Nunn: I think my solution is best. I do it now and it works and it doesn't require any special setup on TF uses the standard web bbs format. You just have to educate users not to click on an 8 Meg tiff but to look at the equivalent gif instead.

Rusty Tucker: then you could modified "dir.spml" to link that into the directory display

Jonathan Paisley: rusty: you can't

Jonathan Paisley: I tried similar thing a while back

Jonathan Paisley: I wanted just the URL and then to tag something on to the end of it, but unfortunately SPML would only output the whole reference for me

Jonathan Paisley: [this was for my plugin that generates a gif for the real icon (big or small) for any given file]

Rusty Tucker: brb

Bob Nunn: I would love it if someone could figure out a way. Most solutions I have seen are too complex for anyone handling large quantities of files and file sizes. I know that is the problem Jim is having.

Rusty Tucker: ok

Rusty Tucker: I'll play around with that.

Rusty Tucker: It may be a problem since the SPML code can't be nested within other SPML commands

Michael Davidson: would there be any problem if IE could read PICTs??

Bob Nunn: Would be an asset to anyone handling a large photo database. Perhaps FM4 will have some solutions.

Rusty Tucker: What about "Fetch"?

Jonathan Paisley: assuming that the SPML is adjusted to allow links to variations on the normal path, I could have a plugin that automatically does the conversion to GIFs from the PICT preview in the original file

Michael Davidson: I said that earlier Bob, but I don't know if it would work for previews

Rusty Tucker: that was originally designed to solve this problem on a LAN

Jonathan Paisley: ie you would link to '/images/subcategory/image.tiff.PREVIEW' for the preview and '/images/subcategory/image.tiff' for the real file

Jonathan Paisley: and 'image.tiff.PREVIEW?width=100&height=100' etc for different sizes

Bob Nunn: I can't figure out how Fetch Catalogs work. perhaps the thumbnail conversion they do would be accessible?

Rusty Tucker: I was thinking of changing this:

Rusty Tucker: 

Rusty Tucker: to this

Jim Leary: I appreciate the effort guys, but I must admit, I am not enough of web design expert to grasp all you are saying. If a solution is reached, I'll have to ask you to explain a bit

Rusty Tucker: 

Rusty Tucker: anything you put in the dirlist command gets spit out for each entry

Rusty Tucker: "<img src="gifs/" FILENAME ".gif>"

Jonathan Paisley: That looks kinda cool.

Rusty Tucker: would tell the browser to display "gifs/name.jpg.gif" for example

Jim Leary: Is this code that I will personally use, or something you would install within TF?

Jonathan Paisley: That would mean I could use my icon plugin instead of 'ICON' as in '<img src=" FILENAME ".icon>"

Rusty Tucker: yep

Jonathan Paisley: Jim: you would have to make the changes to the templates as you like, but once you get the hang of it its fairly straightforward

Rusty Tucker: its up to each webmaster to customize this stuff to his own needs

Rusty Tucker: I just provide the raw tools

Kevin Shearon: Do you have a tool time girl?

Rusty Tucker: love it!

Jonathan Paisley: as I have said (lots of items now) I would be happy to write a small plugin that would AUTOMATICALLY generate the previews for you, so you wouldn't have to run any batch conversions at all

Rusty Tucker: lemme see if FILENAME is a supported var or not

Jim Leary: OK, but where in which HTML document is this code used to properly execute the previews/captions? homepage.html?

Michael Davidson: So, you would either have to great a gif preview for each file or you could use a gif extracting plug in (like Jonathan's

Jonathan Paisley: Just put the files online (which they are anyway for the BBS), and change the single dir.spml template file to reference the plugin

Jonathan Paisley: Michael: it's actually PICT to GIF convertor...

Jonathan Paisley: Jim: it's in your templates folder: dir.spml

Rusty Tucker: hey FILENAME is even supported already!

Michael Davidson: Ok, so with that, Jim is all set

Jim Leary: what is?

Jonathan Paisley: cool!!

Rusty Tucker: I'd test the code by hand first with a few sample files, then look to automating it

Jim Leary: ok, I have the file open. Are you telling me to use Rusty's code or code that you will write Jonathan? and where in dir.spml is it inserted?

Jonathan Paisley: I'm gonna try out my icons just now...

Jim Leary: And how do you test it?

Michael Davidson: Jonathan's motivated!!

Rusty Tucker: Follow the programmers creed

Kevin Shearon: Jonathan, your beta 5 of the HDS email plugin, is it mainly the plug in that was modified (from the beta 3 version) or was some of the code in the html and spml pages altered?

Rusty Tucker: write, compile, test, debug until finished

Bob Nunn: Jon, try a whopping big.tiff for me.

Jonathan Paisley: Kevin: mainly the plug

Bob Nunn: Jim, what format are your large format files?

Kevin Shearon: ok, thanks

Jim Leary: all are jpeg

Jonathan Paisley: The main changes to the pages themselves occurred between b3 and b4

Jonathan Paisley: Bob ?

Bob Nunn: Yes?

Rusty Tucker: hmm

Jonathan Paisley: "try a whopping big.tiff for me" ?

Rusty Tucker: seem to have lost some files here

Jim Leary: Our files are all over 8mb before being jpeg'd and all much lower, once condensed

Bob Nunn: If you are working on a plugin to convert hi res to low res for preview I would like .tiff

Michael Davidson: Rusty, the code you gave above would only work if Jim had a gif preview file for each file, correct?

Jonathan Paisley: rusty: How do I include a " in the dir template? A double quote "" ??

Andy Daws: Rusty I think i found the problem

Jonathan Paisley: bob: The way it would work is you run a batch prog like Graphic Converter to create PICT previews in the resource fork of each file, and the PI would serve up the PICT resource as a GIF

Bob Nunn: We leave all of our files in .tiff format for printing. My sales force use lower res .gif files to make up sale sheets and presentations. I have over 30,000 items.

Jim Leary: tiff is out of the question. Too long to download

Bob Nunn: Yep, we don't let them download but I want the gifs for them to use. Would be nice to have them automatically created and served with previews. but Graphic Converter already does that for me. I just have to keep to complete databases one full of tiffs and one full of gifs.

Rusty Tucker: how sweet, Suzie just wiped out my files area :(

Andy Daws: Yea I noticed that on the way in

Rusty Tucker: I think so Jon

Jonathan Paisley: I did wonder where it had gone

Bob Nunn: Norton Utils

Kevin Shearon: I always had my suspicions about that Suzie

Jonathan Paisley: rusty: I just tried that, and it terminated the whole template.

Michael Davidson: so, with Jon's plugin, Jim would still have to batch convert all his files and save the picts (as Filename.pict) in a separate directory, but the correspondence b/w the orig file and the pict/preview file would be auto and so too would the display of pict to gif

Jonathan Paisley: NO!

Jonathan Paisley: All you have to make sure is that the file has a preview embedded in it

Jonathan Paisley: (ie like a quicktime preview you get in an file open dialog box)

Michael Davidson: I was hoping you would say that Jonathan

Jonathan Paisley: Cool! I just got my ICON plugin to work now

Bob Nunn: So a standard Photoshop file with previews would work with this straight up and it would display a small preview and would let you download the higher res jpg.

Jonathan Paisley: I now have my dir.spml template showing up the *real* icon as it would appear in the finder (custom icons 'n' all) next to real files

Jonathan Paisley: bob: exactly!

Bob Nunn: Cool does it slow up redraw much?

Andy Daws: Yea good isn't it

Bob Nunn: But now I have to have all the applications installed on my server for the icons to show up, unless there is some trick?

Rusty Tucker: once the gif is made the speed should be about the same

Andy Daws: Rusty I am about to run out of time

Rusty Tucker: Jon- did you figure out how to put " in?

Rusty Tucker: Andy, just hang up and call back

Bob Nunn: Don, have you tried using a different port number for you AOL users to log onto instead of 1474.

Rusty Tucker: I'd try port 23

Jim Leary: I tried Bob. Port 23. No dice

Bob Nunn: If AOL is filtering 1474 it may be the problem.

Michael Davidson: Rusty, quick one: if a 822 formatted mail message gets a X-Local-To appended to it at the beginning, does MS disregard any other TO: information? Must the X-Local-To be before the TO:?

Rusty Tucker: I don't think the order would matter

Jonathan Paisley: computer froze! What have I missed?

Rusty Tucker: did you figure out how to put " in?

Andy Daws: Rusty I think I have found the problem with signing

Rusty Tucker: ?

Michael Davidson: but Yes about the X-Local-To over-riding any other TO info??

Rusty Tucker: yes Michael, if it finds the X-Local-To I think it will use that

Andy Daws: Rusty I've sent you the Digitally signed files I think the problem is there is no signature in the message

Bob Nunn: Gotta run guys catch you later. Off to reset my HDS I expired.

Michael Davidson: Bye Bob!

Andy Daws: even if instructed to include it. The MIME section are there but no attachment

Andy Daws: Bye Bob

Rusty Tucker: I did notice that there seems to be an attachment : filename="smime.p7s"

Andy Daws: That's it i think

Michael Davidson: Jonathan, is your Pict to gif plug in completed?

Rusty Tucker: There's not data for it though.

Andy Daws: I think good old Microsoft aren't sending this attachment

Rusty Tucker: that's probably it Andy

Rusty Tucker: OK Guys, time to see if I can recover the files area :(

Andy Daws: They'll probable fix it in 2 years time ;-(

Rusty Tucker: I'll be shutting the server down for a few (?) minutes

Andy Daws: Time I had some grub and paid a visit to my wife

Andy Daws: Bye all

Rusty Tucker: bye

Jonathan Paisley: back in a mo

Jim Leary: ok