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Text of TeleFinder Chat from Tuesday, April 21, 1998 11 AM PDT.

In attendance:

From Spider Island: Rusty Tucker

Sysops: Jim Smith, Bob Nunn, Michael Davidson, mikael fredriksson, Daniel
O'Leary, Ken Sutherland, Jim Leary, Rick Palmer

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Rusty Tucker hola!
Bob Nunn It really isn't very user friendly that way it takes a long while
for each message to load from the conference though
Michael Davidson Glad you could join us Rusty Tucker! (more greeting stuff
goes here).
Rusty Tucker :) - hi bot!
Michael Davidson Huh Bob
Michael Davidson TidBITS should be in conference format on a local BBS, not
a huge list of files
Bob Nunn TidBITS as a conference. It takes a while to read through them
because of the size of each file. Best in a text library in some ways
Bob Nunn Mine is fouled right now but I have it that way most of the time
along with MacWay and others.
Michael Davidson I suppose so, in some ways you are right
Michael Davidson that way meaning in conference or meaning in file format
Bob Nunn Try it out off of my system. Even with my ISDN connects on both
ends I am not patient enough.
Michael Davidson :)
Rusty Tucker Might work better to split the issue into separate articles?
Michael Davidson Are you saying 32K files take to long to load in a
conference? :)
Bob Nunn Yup. Splitting it would be okay but you end up with a lot of info.
Almost not useful. MacWay updates sometimes several times a day.
Michael Davidson Rusty, what is the limit of a conference message (32K) ??
Rusty Tucker yes
Bob Nunn Could use some push technology I guess. Only tell me what I am
interested in.
Michael Davidson I know...
Michael Davidson Maybe, on topics like TidBITS, you could extract the header
(table of contents) and then just have the whole file as an attachment
Bob Nunn Might as well make them a text library instead of a conference
then.
Michael Davidson TidBITS would be easy for this because of its Easy View
format, others might not be so easy
Michael Davidson Have both Bob, the conference for the TOC, and then have a
library for the actual files
Bob Nunn Maybe eventually they will send them in HTML and when Rusty add
this to TF Client we can use the indexing to link to the articles we are
interested in.
Bob Nunn Complete with graphics, multimedia etc.
Michael Davidson Probably can do by May 1st
Bob Nunn Now that he has the Mozilla source ;-)
Michael Davidson Jim, what were you getting at when you said you had to move
the folder for my BBS user to read
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat Jim!
Michael Davidson Greetings Jim Leary! (more greeting stuff goes here).
Michael Davidson Can somebody type Michael Davidson or Michael (testing)
Michael Davidson or MD
Bob Nunn Michael
Michael Davidson My notify worked!! Thanks Bob N.
Michael Davidson it notifies if certain words are typed by other users
Bob Nunn does it over work md MD Michael Davidson Michael :-)
Michael Davidson yes....good bot BN...it sounded 3 times
Bob Nunn It is in my nature to think of how things will be abused
Michael Davidson LOL
Michael Davidson Guess, I need to get only the first occurrence for abusers
Bob Nunn 13 years of running a BBS in some shape or fashion has taught me to
think that way.
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat Daniel!
Michael Davidson WhatÕs happening Daniel O'Leary? (more greeting stuff goes
here).
Jim Leary Dan, every folder had the exact same number of items but the total
was 6 less. Explain that Mr. Mac
Daniel O'Leary Sorry I am late.
Daniel O'Leary Argh I hate Bots!
Daniel O'Leary You have missed something Jim. Probably ICON files.
Michael Davidson The last thing I need to do is get the commands to
work...such as changing the "more greeting stuff goes here)" on the fly...by
on the fly I mean, from the chat room input text area
Michael Davidson Hi Daniel! :)
Daniel O'Leary Poor Bill. Doesn''t he know that Demos are supposed to work
and that crashes are for AFTER the windows sale!
Daniel O'Leary Should have used Firewire rather than USB...
Bob Nunn Betcha some heads rolled after that.
Michael Davidson He doesn't need to worry....the "Bots" will buy 98 no
matter how bad it is.
Daniel O'Leary I loved it... "... And this is a std operation...".... "Uh
Oh" and then the blue screen o death.
Jim Smith I think was on purpose so others will not take it so bad when they
crash...:-)
Daniel O'Leary Some think it is to get the DOJ to lighten up on him...
Daniel O'Leary I think it is just standard windows behavior.
Jim Leary Lets see Dan, how many of the 5 million that were about to upgrade
to Win98 changed their minds after that? There must be at least 2 or 3
somewhere.
Michael Davidson Those in the know, know what it was really
Rusty Tucker c-ya
Daniel O'Leary They could not figure out how to uninstall it Jim.
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat Bob!
Michael Davidson Glad to see you Bob Nunn! (more greeting stuff goes here).
Daniel O'Leary Bill never revealed that secret, and they did not want to
reformat and reinstall all that crap.
Jim Smith Just get another PC :-)
Michael Davidson What's on your agenda Rusty?
Michael Davidson Windows version of user! :)
Bob Nunn I've about decided our MIS group has changed our firewall config
just to irritate me and make me hang up during the conferences.
Daniel O'Leary (Yeah, like bill did...) Did you guys see the clarification
from Intuit?
Jim Leary Yea what's on the agenda. I'd hate to think you Mac boys have
something better to chat about than the 5o billion dollar man
Michael Davidson no DO
Jim Leary zzzzzzz
Daniel O'Leary MD Intuit is not dropping the Mac version of Quicken, but
they are watching their sales to see if future Mac releases are in their
best interest.
Daniel O'Leary They are not doing any Mac-Specific releases.
Michael Davidson good to here Daniel ...(and btw, my bot notified me that
you typed Michael Davidson in your statement)
Bob Nunn Perhaps if their releases weren't so buggy the users would upgrade
instead of staying with the older versions.
Michael Davidson MD that is
Jim Leary All is working well over here Bob. Thanks again
Daniel O'Leary So we can look fwd to 2nd rate pulp that windows users came
to expect long ago.
Jim Leary Mac picking up "2nd rate pulp" years after Windows had it. Could
it really be???
Daniel O'Leary RT I have seen no evidence of file corruption here.
Rusty Tucker good, me either
Daniel O'Leary JL, it *IS* when we get crappie windows ports.
Bob Nunn U bet. Glad to help. Been playing with templates. I have a 4 image
across table using the JPG PI with comments set up. Hope eventually to set
up my image archive totally that way working off of a modified dir SPML.
Jim Leary OK enough. I'll see you in Mac vs. Win Dan. Anybody got something
constructive to chat about
Daniel O'Leary BN, I have not been able to get more than one template going.
Jim Leary There was something I had asked about in the past that you just
reminded me about Bob...
Daniel O'Leary I always get an error for file not found.
Daniel O'Leary What is the secret to getting more than one template to work.
Jim Leary We use Iron Mike caption plug-in for Photoshop. We are required to
insert about 8 fields of info for a service we use but...
Rusty Tucker which template?
Daniel O'Leary RT, Dir.spml.
Bob Nunn Put the templates in another folder and make a new path. Make sure
you keep the original folder name on the templates folder.
Jim Leary for our BBS we'd rather just display the first four. Is there any
way of doing that?
Bob Nunn That's what fooled me but it expects to find a folder named
template.
Rusty Tucker the trick is to point to the folder holding the template
templates folder.
Daniel O'Leary BN I tried that and set the directories config entry to use
the new folder, but it does not work
Daniel O'Leary Ah, not the templates folder itself~!
Rusty Tucker right
Daniel O'Leary That is confusing RT.
Bob Nunn I have my images set up with a folder named pictemplates and inside
is templates
Rusty Tucker I know
Daniel O'Leary It should not be indirect.
Bob Nunn Just one of them deals. Hair is now growing back.
Rusty Tucker :)
Rusty Tucker If I change it now....
Bob Nunn Undocumented feature :-)
Rusty Tucker I'd really throw everybody!
Daniel O'Leary It should really point to the path of the templates folder.
Rusty Tucker I thought it was documented pretty good!
Michael Davidson bob's hair would fall out again
Daniel O'Leary I wonder how many like me have NOT figured it out.
Bob Nunn Probably but we never read the docs. We're typical.
Rusty Tucker you're definitely not alone
Bob Nunn I think most of us have only begun to see how powerful dir.spml can
be.
Daniel O'Leary RT, I did look for it, but I would have to really dig to find
it. I keep every related note I have ever received.
Rusty Tucker it should be direct anyway
Daniel O'Leary I got a note say 5.6 is shipping : )
Bob Nunn I just wish most of the html software didn't monkey with the code.
Rusty Tucker cool - more to come
Daniel O'Leary Have you seen "mod.pearl" for Apache? We need something
similar...
Daniel O'Leary perl... not Pearl.
Bob Nunn nope. Been using Claris Homepage because of the FileMaker Pro
linking.
Rusty Tucker JL - TeleFinder displays the "TEXT" field as a description.
Iron Mike is putting all the items in that description. I don't know if you
can get it to be selective
Rusty Tucker what does the perl mod do?
Daniel O'Leary it allows for perl src to be imbedded like SPML, then
interpreted on the fly by the server.
Daniel O'Leary was typing that b4 you asked... grin.
Rusty Tucker make a plug-in out of it
Rusty Tucker any apache mod can be transformed into a plug-in
Jim Leary I thought maybe there was a way to tell it to grab just a limited
number of fields. Like the photo preview grabs a spot of a designated size
Daniel O'Leary JL and RT, I was thinking about that and grabbing a number of
chars...
Rusty Tucker No, because it doesn't look at the fields, it looks at the TEXT
that the PNOT says is the description.
Bob Nunn Is there a way to make it parse to a given field length?
Daniel O'Leary just pass the no of chars to return to it as an additional
parameter..
Daniel O'Leary Just a thought.
Daniel O'Leary would have toe less than 32K of course.
Rusty Tucker it wouldn't quite work that way, they are all very variable in
length
Michael Davidson how bout hiding the other fields somehow? Not clear of what
is going on though
Michael Davidson hiding the display of the other fields I mean
Daniel O'Leary Right, but many "previews" do this also, and leave the rest
of the description out of the listing anyway.
Rusty Tucker U really need to understand the IPTC caption info, its a whole
other deal
Jim Leary How about something in the code that looked for a certain
character to STOP at like a***
Rusty Tucker You could embed a null, that might stop it
Daniel O'Leary JL that is a ctrl @....
Daniel O'Leary I think.
Jim Leary What then would you code to tell it to look for the null and
where?
Michael Davidson But he needs all 6 fields for other stuff
Jim Leary But if TF read the null then the other stuff would stay for the
news service. Only TF would be looking for a STOP sign
Jim Leary If this is possible, how would it be done?
Rusty Tucker Its risky, I don't know what the service is looking for
Daniel O'Leary A user selectable preference for "short" or "Full" display,
set via a form and held as an SPML var. would be cool.
Jim Leary can anyone look into this when time is available?
Michael Davidson And the null may stop the news service too.
Rusty Tucker right
Jim Leary Can always experiment with one file to see.
Daniel O'Leary RT, right???
Jim Leary Why would it have to be null. Couldn't you tell TF to stop at a *
where the news service just reads it as another character
Michael Davidson Can't Jim just insert a null in the TEXT resource of an
example file and see if it works with TF and news service
Rusty Tucker a fixed length option would be OK, but it would not solve Jim's
problem
Jim Leary right, because every one is different
Rusty Tucker He needs a very specific solution of pulling specific fields
out of the IPTC caption
Michael Davidson is it the first 4 fields you need Jim?
Jim Leary I never use an asterisk in any captions. Why can't that be used to
tell TF to STOP
Jim Leary Yes
Michael Davidson or discontiguous fields
Daniel O'Leary What is the field separator?
Daniel O'Leary key on it.
Rusty Tucker I've been talking to a few people about doing a set of Web
Server plug-ins to do online photo databases with.
Jim Leary I'd be happy to set up a TEMP TEMP name and password for you to
take a look
Daniel O'Leary count and stop when you reach the count specified in the
users' var.
Michael Davidson Since only first four, maybe a null will stop TF but not
the news service, then all is solved
Jim Leary how is that done? Just insert or does code have to be placed
somewhere?
Daniel O'Leary What is this "news service"?
Jim Leary Presslink
Daniel O'Leary How does it interface to your system?
Jim Leary Its a BBS for newspapers around the US
Jim Leary I upload using Fetch
Daniel O'Leary Why would fetch look at the data in a res?
Daniel O'Leary would think that would get encoded so that it was safe.
Rusty Tucker Fetch doesn't the database at Presslink looks at the caption
Jim Leary They have a set folder for me to send files to them FTP. They do
whatever processing and post in about a minute
Michael Davidson What's the status of your talks about the PI Rusty
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat Rick!
Michael Davidson Salutations Rick Palmer, glad you could join us! (more
greeting stuff goes here).
Daniel O'Leary OK RT, now I see the problem.
Rick Palmer uugg
Rusty Tucker It will be a number of PI's actually. Will also include a
database for keyword searches, and specialized download handling.
Daniel O'Leary Are the "fields" /r separated, or do they use something else?
Daniel O'Leary or /n... etc.?
Jim Leary ?
Jim Leary I think I saw the last 2 fly about 20 feet over my head
Michael Davidson That sounds promising for TF, how promising are your
discussions so far?
Daniel O'Leary I have not taken a close look at the pics to see how these
"fields" are marked... carriage return, newline, special char sequence,
etc...
Rick Palmer sorry for being late... in one word what kinda DB...PI?
Michael Davidson Rick P., Rusty said "I've been talking to a few people
about doing a set of Web Server plug-ins to do online photo databases with."
Rusty Tucker Good, I'm just working on a prototype now. It will work with
any Mac server.
Daniel O'Leary I just saw lines of stuff in the get info box.
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat Ken!
Michael Davidson Hey Ken Sutherland, how are you? (more greeting stuff goes
here).
Rusty Tucker c-ya
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat Ken!
Michael Davidson Hey hey Ken Sutherland, nice that you could join us! (more
greeting stuff goes here).
Daniel O'Leary Argh, Bots!!!!
Rick Palmer you don't know whether to be polite to them or ignore them!
Daniel O'Leary they decrease the S/N ratio...
Rick Palmer :)
Ken Sutherland help, help, help, help, help, help, help,
Daniel O'Leary Signal to Noise, for Jim L.
Michael Davidson so do some people! :)
Ken Sutherland ms5.7b7 wont launch, has it timed out
Rusty Tucker I'm looking at the DB side right now. Apple has an interesting
technology ( V-Twin ), but its buggy and not well supported.
Bob Nunn FileMaker
Rusty Tucker File Maker doesn't seem to perform well enough
Daniel O'Leary My MS is running Ken.
Rusty Tucker Its not multiuser..
Ken Sutherland mine comes on and just quits
Michael Davidson All image based right Rusty, the database I mean
Rusty Tucker 4D seems to be the closest so far, either that or do one myself
in C++.
Michael Davidson I'll be right back.
Daniel O'Leary RT, Mail server needs a "hi water mark".
Rusty Tucker for what?
Daniel O'Leary needs to stop importing and start trimming when space is
almost full on conference drives..
Ken Sutherland good idea
Daniel O'Leary I hate zero k MSG's...
Rusty Tucker yes, it could be much better about dealing with no disk space.
Ken Sutherland Rusty, when does the ms5.7b7 time out?
Rusty Tucker You can always check the about screen for time outs.
Daniel O'Leary I do not see one listed for ms...
Ken Sutherland only if the app stays up 8-)
Ken Sutherland mine quits
Michael Davidson somebody running b7 look for Ken
Daniel O'Leary I did!
Ken Sutherland ta
Daniel O'Leary It is running fine here.
Rusty Tucker There's something wrong then.
Rusty Tucker :)
Ken Sutherland all I did was a restart
Rusty Tucker tsk tsk!
Daniel O'Leary Hell I just defragmented everything this morning and it is
fine.
Rusty Tucker I gotta run
Daniel O'Leary RT my system has been very stable too, more than the power
around here.
Ken Sutherland I wish I could
Bob Nunn trashed prefs file, just a guess. send me logs
Ken Sutherland catch you all later
Daniel O'Leary KS come here.
Ken Sutherland bye bye
Bob Nunn Next time! Bye
Rusty Tucker will see you all Friday
Rusty Tucker c-ya
Rick Palmer I'm running b7 ok
Rusty Tucker c-ya
Rusty Tucker KS - lemme know if you need some help. Its probably a bad
settings prefs or app file
Rusty Tucker c-ya
Rusty Tucker c-ya
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	April 21, 1998 -- ©Copyright 1998, Spider Island Software