Text of TeleFinder Chat from Friday, April 10, 1998 11 AM PDT.
In attendance:
From Spider Island: Rusty Tucker,
Sysops: Michael Davidson, mikael fredriksson, Jim Smith, Bob Nunn, Bill Gram-Reefer, Bob Wright, Daniel O'Leary,
Rusty Tucker hola!
Bill Gram-Reefer yo
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat mikael!
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat Michael!
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat Bob!
Bill Gram-Reefer is there some other chat your bot knows about than what goes on in the Chat Room, Rusty?
Rusty Tucker It knows about whatever room I'm in
Bill Gram-Reefer so it could also say, "welcome to the New Releases chat, Bob?"
Bob Wright Anyone here using system 8 and/or a Power Mac 5500? Every time I launch TF User on a 5500 with system 8, it shuts down with a Type 3 error
Rusty Tucker If that were the room name, that's what it would say.
Bill Gram-Reefer son of a...
Rusty Tucker Or you could tweak the script to say anything.
Bob Nunn Throw away the prefs file Bob W.
Rusty Tucker what v of TFUser?
Bob Wright Bob N: I have thrown it out a million times. I have loaded 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7. I get the same error...and its on several of the 5500's
Rusty Tucker ( the new ones will bitch about bad prefs files )
Rusty Tucker I'm using system 8.1
Rusty Tucker on a 9600 ( 604 e)
Bob Wright as soon as the default screen comes up..BOOM...it closes and gives me a type 3 error
Rusty Tucker the best thing to do is install macbugs......
Rusty Tucker yadayadayada
Rusty Tucker c-ya
Bob Nunn Probably an odd extension in the system folder on those machines.
Bob Wright well, I turned off all extensions, too...except for the base extensions
Rusty Tucker So send me the bug log, and I should be able to see what's going on, or suggest the next step.
Bob Wright I don't have macsbug installed on the school machines :/
Bill Gram-Reefer my G3 would do that after a crash. It would restart and go ballistic at start up.
Bob Wright I went to another school, loaded tf User 5.5 on a 5500 with system 8 and it did not crash at all. Its just too weird
Rusty Tucker BW - just copy the MB file into the sys folder, and reboot.
Bill Gram-Reefer no it's 8.1
Bob Wright RT: I will have to do that another time...the school is about 15 min. from here. I was just seeing if anyone else has had any problems with 5500's
Bob Wright The tech department told me that they have had to ship back a lot of our 5500's because they are defective
Rusty Tucker I've started on porting TeleFinder User Win to Win95 native...
Rusty Tucker So 3.1.1 is probably the last Win 3.1 compatible release.
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat Michael!
Rusty Tucker No great loss I guess?
Bill Gram-Reefer You'll keep a copy of that archived? PC people are even worse than Mac people when it comes to using outdated stuff
Bob Nunn That'll make the Windoze people real happy, do you think the 95 will run as well on the NT?
Rusty Tucker Yeah, I'll probably keep shipping it as the Win31 version.
Bob Wright I have NT at home and TF runs fine...would be nice to see native, though
Bill Gram-Reefer but I already have it on a CD someplace, yes?
Rusty Tucker Yes, Win95/NT/ 98 all use the Win32 programming API ( toolbox )
Rusty Tucker yep BGR
Rusty Tucker Anyone able to reproduce the "corrupt file" problem?
Bob Nunn Not me and I have been modeming files back and forth all morning to my system. I do have the odd hang though with Zmodem.
Bob Wright what problem is that?
Rusty Tucker I thought BGR and I had a reproducible situation, then it disappeared.
Rusty Tucker BW - there have been a few reports of 'corrupt files' on downloading.
Bob Nunn sunspots? :-)
Bob Wright The only problem I have had with 5.7b8 is I tried to send an attachment today and for some reason it kept telling me it had an error. When i got rid of the attachment, it sent the email
Rusty Tucker I think it may have something to do with the new BG file xfer.
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat Daniel!
Rusty Tucker oh?
Bob Wright RT: well, someone sent me a file in my mailbox, when I DL'ed it, it was a plain white icon. i could not open it
Rusty Tucker that may be related.
Bob Wright I use Z Modem windowed for TF'ers
Rusty Tucker or it's just a file you can't open.
Rusty Tucker with the attachment, do you recall the err message?
Daniel O'Leary Use Resedit to figure out what type it is.
Bob Wright well, it was a 13k file created by TF that i could not open
Rusty Tucker Please Stuffit, and send me a copy.
Bob Wright RT: I forget the error message....
Rusty Tucker Did the transfer window ever come up?
Bob Wright I threw it out because I thought I had done something out of whack
Bob Wright RT: no, it never did....I saved the email with the attachment...open up the email, and the attachment was not there...when I hit mail it went, but would not go with the attached file
Bob Wright The attached file was a small 12k html file that a student had put in the wrong area of the BBS
Rusty Tucker sounds like saving the mail form caused it to lose the attachment info
Bob Wright yeah, because I saved it, opened it right back up and the attachment info was not saved
Bob Wright I just tried to duplicate that, but it works fine :)
Rusty Tucker That should work, unless there are some low level problems saving the alias of the attachment
Bob Wright any new releases coming soon other than the Win95 native
Rusty Tucker I've got a bunch of debug code added to the BG file xfrs here, so if there are any problems. please let me know right away.
Daniel O'Leary Rusty. Are the new features (sans AppleScript support) available for the PC version.
Rusty Tucker I'd like to release 5.7 asap, but need to get the problem with file transfers fixed.
Bob Wright I want to upgrade the server and UM to 5.7, but don't want to do that if a new version is coming out today or whatever :)
Michael Davidson Have you only seen the xfer problem with 5.7b8?
Rusty Tucker the PC version will get the chat rooms and Win95 features.
Rusty Tucker not sure MF
Rusty Tucker MD
Rusty Tucker BW go for the latest and greatest
Daniel O'Leary Is there anything comparable to the speech support in the PC version? I know that there is something analogous to plaintalk for the PC. It is probably available as a separate program.
Rusty Tucker yes - its separate
Bob Wright RT: :-)
Rusty Tucker The next TeleFinder Server will support POP3 logins using underscores.
Bob Wright RT: is there any way to attach a file that is on the BBS without having to DL it first?
Rusty Tucker This will help Emailer users work around an Emailer bug
Rusty Tucker nope
Rusty Tucker Just tell them where it is I guess
Bob Wright that assumes who you want to email is on the bbs :)
Rusty Tucker Send them a URL to it then
Daniel O'Leary URLs only work for TCP-based connections...
Rusty Tucker welcome to the '90's :)
Daniel O'Leary A different method is needed for POP3 over dialup.
Daniel O'Leary Never tried it, but I know that you can create POP3 dialup nodes.
Bob Wright Some files that could be access via URL are controlled by a realm
Michael Davidson will UM make sure there are no duplicates with the underscores (e.g., If I already have a Bob Dole registered and a new user tries to register as Bob_Dole, will there be problem with UM getting confused--will UM not allow the new registered user)
Rusty Tucker It doesn't go that far.
Rusty Tucker It should treat them as equivalents.
Michael Davidson so my original Bob Dole will conflict with my new Bob_Dole if the former tries to use Emailer, correct?
Rusty Tucker right
Bob Wright have you made the UM plug-in so the access groups can be selected?
Michael Davidson I don't think you should fix the Server with underscores till you fix UM also.
Rusty Tucker not yet --
Daniel O'Leary I agree, there is a conflict waiting to happen there.
Rusty Tucker Its OK MD - it still checks passwords
Rusty Tucker + mail server has -always- treated them as equivalents
Daniel O'Leary RT the web page URLs are the same!
Bill Gram-Reefer gotta reboot cause FM Pro hung up bye
Michael Davidson o, but will UM put it in the first bob dole mail file that it finds, instead of the second one which is where it was supposed to go
Rusty Tucker c-ya
Michael Davidson I was speaking of email above
Rusty Tucker The way Mail Server has always delivered mail to "Bob_Dole" is
Rusty Tucker see if a "Bob_Dole" exists, if so deliver it to him
Rusty Tucker if not look for "Bob Dole"
Rusty Tucker Its been like that since day one
Daniel O'Leary I got invited to beta test alexa... Will let you know how that goes. They are the ones that got screwed up on the spaces Suzie was generating in the users web page list.
Michael Davidson But if I have a Bob_Dole and a Bob Dole, the latter uses emailer, where will email to the latter go---the wrong bob dole
Rusty Tucker that has nothing to do with emailer.
Rusty Tucker any internet email will go to "bob_dole"
Daniel O'Leary RT, what about FIDO and lcl mail?
Rusty Tucker since "bob dole" is not a valid internet mail address
Bob Wright RT: what about this: is there some way of getting the automatic sign up feature of TF to allow the user to CHOOSE from a list of pre-determined access groups?
Michael Davidson true, got ya, but won't Bob Dole's return address (because he uses emailer) end up being Bob_Dole, which is not his true TF mail folder
Rusty Tucker Local mail can be addressed with embedded spaces.
Rusty Tucker I don't know about FIDO.
Rusty Tucker MD - all internet return addresses cannot have spaces, that is not specific to emailer
Rusty Tucker again, any internet email will go to "bob_dole"
Daniel O'Leary Best thing to do is set all of it to treat spaces on outgoing as _ and reverse it on incoming.
Rusty Tucker DO - that's exactly how it works
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat Donald!
Michael Davidson Ok, let me go at it in a different way: If I have a user named Bob Dole already, will UM allow a user to register as Bob_Dole?
Rusty Tucker Yes, the current UM's will allow that. The new one won't.
Daniel O'Leary If a registration is processed using _, then they are converted to spaces also. And same for remote logins.
Michael Davidson Groovy.
Rusty Tucker cool, that's a good way to do it. always strip _
Daniel O'Leary Was just an idea..
Rusty Tucker any existing accounts that have a _ will be broken though
Michael Davidson How bout the other way, all spaces will go to underscore...No longer does UM allow spaces
Daniel O'Leary Will need to "convert them" on the server side but still accept the _ to a " ".
Rusty Tucker I'd rather be "Rusty Tucker" than "rusty_tucker"
Daniel O'Leary The only difficulty is when both already exist.
Rusty Tucker c-ya
Rusty Tucker If I wanted the _, I would have signed up that way
Daniel O'Leary Exactly.
Rusty Tucker So Suzie will need to run a report to id "broken" (_) accounts so they can be corrected
Daniel O'Leary Accept it in the form and convert it on the fly before processing.
Michael Davidson But, now think of it, the simplicity built into forcing no spaces...
Bob Wright I wish we could add another field to the User List (from UM) and call it "Profession" or something. Having just a name and phone number is blah
Daniel O'Leary Yes.
Daniel O'Leary in the HTML format the spaces should be converted to %20s.
Rusty Tucker yeppers
Daniel O'Leary in Suzie.
Bob Wright The way the system is now, there is no way to tell if you are talking to an adult or child or dog ;)
Rusty Tucker I think ~ should be %7e too, I don't think all systems can represent it. Mac and Windows are ok though
Michael Davidson Profiles
Daniel O'Leary I might write a script to send email to all of the holders of accounts with _ and let them know that they need to change their logins.
Rusty Tucker I'm pretty sure I'm not talking to dogs... :)
Bob Wright MD: profiles require that a user have a certain amount of computer skills :)
Daniel O'Leary Unix uses the tilde also.
Michael Davidson Not if we automate them :)
Rusty Tucker That's what the user profiles are for, you can say much more than your age
Bob Wright RT: ruff ruff :)
Daniel O'Leary That's where all these tilde=based paths came from.
Rusty Tucker oh yeah, no video cams, I could be wrong :)
Rusty Tucker c-ya
Michael Davidson Daniel, better to have a script that changes UM users registered with an underscore, then send the email to clients to let them know
Michael Davidson Too bad we can't have picts in the profiles
Bob Wright a lot of users have no clue how to create a text file
Daniel O'Leary MD, that would be part of the process, but you need to also let the user know.3
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat Bob!
Rusty Tucker MD - that's what HTML is for :)
Daniel O'Leary They should begin using the corrected login.
Rusty Tucker So who's going do take Mozilla and make a TeleFinder plugin from it?
Daniel O'Leary RT T/User needs animated GIF capability.
Michael Davidson speaking of creating text files, I wish command-O would open icon instead of trying to open a file
Daniel O'Leary RT I am looking at that now.
Daniel O'Leary Got mozilla source .
Daniel O'Leary Got Codewarrior DP.
Bob Wright RT: I don't see why one more field cant be added to the user List which says profession or something.
Rusty Tucker no room in the DB right now
Daniel O'Leary When I can afford it, will buy the upgrade.
Rusty Tucker MD -- command "down arrow"
Daniel O'Leary Should I look at that before finishing my Java chat thing.
Bob Wright RT: what about having the subject of an email show up in the mailbox list? Is that possible?
Daniel O'Leary I am having some problems with the JVM supplied with CW versus the one in MRJ I think.
Rusty Tucker It would be way cool to take the HTML stuff and make a control out of it.
Michael Davidson really, I didn't know RT...but still for the general user used to the Finder expects the icon to act like Finder...guess the problems is that TeleFinder makes you think you're in the Finder
Daniel O'Leary Get a boatload of "skeleton class not found" errors and related msgs.
Rusty Tucker I guess you could just move the command O to the "Open" command from the "Open..." command
Michael Davidson huh? :)
Rusty Tucker What is the Mozilla license? Can you use that code to make something else?
Michael Davidson o :)
Michael Davidson got it
Daniel O'Leary RT, the license I looked at allowed you can do anything you want as long as you give it away.
Michael Davidson Yeah, I would like that
Daniel O'Leary There are other licenses too.
Rusty Tucker good enough for me
Rusty Tucker Win32 CE has a HTML DLL, very, very cool.
Rusty Tucker You give it some HTML and it displays it.
Daniel O'Leary That was the one I was interested in, since I do not intend to make money from it, just get more capability and awareness that what I do is done on a mac using TF.
Rusty Tucker When it needs a file, it gives you the URL, and you give it the data.
Jim Smith RT: the Mozilla code is for Mac 5.0 (not yet released).
Rusty Tucker Yes, i heard that its not too usable once you get it built
Rusty Tucker I need to find the time to take a look at it.
Daniel O'Leary RT, some are having problems with the build, but the claim is that all that happened was it was "sanitized" to take out the proprietary stuff.
Daniel O'Leary Others are NOT having build problems and variants on it are already out there.
Rusty Tucker hmm.. i heard it wasn't very stable though
Rusty Tucker maybe that's wrong.
Michael Davidson maybe that's why they give it away for free :)
Daniel O'Leary JS I would not wait for a "release" since the whole idea is for NS to make the best of what comes out of the seed and put it into 5.0.
Rusty Tucker I'm only interested in a very small piece of it though.
Rusty Tucker just render HTML
Daniel O'Leary MD it is free because that is the only way for them to beat M$ pulpware giveaway.
Daniel O'Leary They still have Symantec's JVM in there.
Daniel O'Leary I want to replace it with CW's JVM and see what happens just for fun.
Daniel O'Leary Fun.
Rusty Tucker ? that's free now too?
Rusty Tucker must be stubbed out.
Daniel O'Leary Yes.
Rusty Tucker free?
Daniel O'Leary Stubbed out.
Rusty Tucker what about Java Script?
Daniel O'Leary Grabbed 4.05 and it has Symantec JVM also... Let me check on the JS... Hang on.
Rusty Tucker gotta go now. any last q's?
Bob Nunn Do you have the log. I lost a minute or two?
Rusty Tucker yep - I've got an HTML log today
Daniel O'Leary Will let you know RT. The archive is 11.5 MB.
Bob Nunn Great thanks. See you next week.
Rusty Tucker see you next week!
April 10, 1998
-- ©Copyright 1998, Spider Island Software