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From: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc
Subject: Re: BBS project !!
Message-ID: <19915@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Thu, 30-Jul-87 19:23:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.19915
Posted: Thu Jul 30 19:23:38 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Aug-87 11:13:46 EDT
References: <sV3T6Ay00WAKMUc1En@andrew.cmu.edu> <1242@ius2.cs.cmu.edu>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster)
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley
Lines: 40


Speaking of needless re-transmission, when will BBS systems realize
that I've got a computer, with a disk, and I've called this BBS
before. My home computer is perfectly capable for remembering not only
the menus for the BBS but also which messages I have seen and all of
the directories I've listed.  All the BBS has to do is ask my home
computer if it already has a current XX, and if it does show it to me.
If it doesn't, it should send it to my home computer, which in turn
will show it to me.  

With a proper asynchronous BBS front-end running in my home machine, a
lot of this could be happen while I was still reading the menus and
deciding what to do.

the following protocol:
1.) check to see is the user is using a computer, (not a terminal)
2.) ask for a the root of a tree checksum from the last session
3.) if the root checksum doesn't match, recursively ask for sub-tree
checksums.

Many Macintosh programs allow added new, custom code segments to
themselves, even after they are compiled. You can add a new data type
picker an editor to ResEdit, you can add a new digital filter to
SoundWave. We are beginning to see commercial programs with a "Custom"
menu, that shows the names of all the custom code resources the
program has had added to it.  (These resources get called with a
topmost window belonging to the application with a published data
structure.) What we need is a terminal program that would let me plug
many custom resources in, a different intelligent interface for each
different BBS. That way, I need buy only one terminal program, and
developers of the custom code resoureces for the BBSs would only have
to worry about the details of the BBS: the details of modem control,
serial port programming... would al be services provided by the
terminal program. That way I could plug new terminal emulators into my
terminal program without having to replace it: I've got ansi, but I
need a data general emulator, no problem, just paste this in here.

--- David Phillip Oster            --My Good News: "I'm a perfectionist."
Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --My Bad News: "I don't charge by the hour."
Uucp: {seismo,decvax,...}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu