news.software.readers

En , Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz escribió:

> In < @ >, on 07/25/2007
> at 10:09 AM, Abelardo Tordo said:
>
>>I'm not a network expert but on a TCP/IP environment I'd rather use a
>>"native" file transmission protocol such as ftp, http or scp.
>
> If I telnet to a BBS then I'd like to be able to do file transfers
> within the telnet session. That's especially true for files that are
> dynamically generated or that are filed to dynamically generated
> names, ., QWK packets.

I see your point but I think its just a legacy, because the same could be
done selecting your areas in a web interface. Then you could just have a
crontab to wget http://user:pass@ / which would fetch the
new messages in your areas of interest.

Of course the system works as it is and there's no need to reinvent the
wheel, but if somebody designed a messaging system today, I don't think he
considered emulating a serial line over a TCP/IP protocol :)

>>In which way do you find zmodem *over telnet* superior?
>
> I didn't say that I did, but see above for the case where I'm already
> using telnet. What I did find superior was the BBS software itself.

I never ran a BBS so I can't say for the BBS managing, but as a user I
appreciated the messaging systems, which were very polished to save the
last bit and worked quiet reliably considered the limited resources of
amateur networks those days.

One major drawback, however, was the lack of standardization. Which bring us
back on topic: the most populated BBS of my area used only Blue Wave for
new users (no "points" of the Fidonet). So until MultiMail came out, if you
wanted to read BW packets on a Linux/Unix system you had to use a DOS
emulator (I think Mac users had an alternative, but I'm not absolutely sure
as I wasn't one). I don't think the format was even open documented,
because it was a shareware program. I can even imagine that BW author
wasn't very happy when a free (as in beer and as in speech) alternative saw
the light (this is just a speculation, but perhaps if some MultiMail author
read this can give us some insight).

So Usenet can be a complete mess, but at least the RFCs are there and
everybody is free to implement clients, servers or whathever.

All things considered, I'd pick one of those old formats any day over those
web forums crowded with dancing smileys and gigantic flashing sigs :)