Fri Feb 25 10:15:07 2000

Hello world!

This is a Beta release of GoldED for Linux.

Please see the notework.txt file for release notes.

There are some things you must know before trying out the Linux
version, especially if you are used to the DOS, OS/2 or Win32
versions:

* You should be familiar with GoldED for the other operating systems
  and know your way around at least a basic golded.cfg.

* Linux is an OS with CASE-SENSITIVE file systems. GoldED now uses
  lowercase filenames internally, because this is costumary for Unix.
  When accessing msgbases on case-insensitive file systems such as FAT
  or HPFS under Linux, filenames might not be lowercase on the disk.
  If this is the case, you must rename them so that they are (and hope
  they stay lowercase).

  This will probably be the part that will give you the most grief if
  you try to run a system with a mixture of Linux, DOS, OS/2, and/or
  Win32 software.

  IF IT DOESN'T WORK OR COREDUMPS, TRY CHECKING IF ALL FILES ARE
  LOWERCASE, BOTH ON THE FILESYSTEM AND IN THE CONFIGURATION FILES.

* The directory separator (slash) char is '/', not '\'. However,
  GoldED automatically translates the "wrong" slash char to the
  "right" slash char in most cases, so you probably won't notice it.

* Unix has no drive letters (C: etc), so you have to map DOS-style
  paths to Unix-style paths using the MAPPATH keyword to make
  AREAFILE's work.

* If you want to use the same golded.cfg file for all platforms, you
  can use the conditional statement "IF LINUX" or "IF UNIX" around
  Linux specific parts of it, typically paths or filenames.

* I recommend to start with a tiny golded.cfg (see below) with only
  the basic setup and a few areas that you have a backup of. The
  msgbase support of GoldED for Linux should work exactly as
  3.00.Beta3, which is NOT known to trash msgbases, but it's compiled
  and built with a compiler and tools that I'm not very familiar with,
  and there may be compiler quirks and flaws introduced in the porting
  which may have affected otherwise working code.

* Currently only the *.MSG, JAM, Squish and Hudson formats have been
  tested, but it should work with the other formats too.

* There is not yet any support for Unix-style mailboxes or news
  spools. If you want to access those, you need to use a utility that
  can create/unpack SOUP packets. GoldED can import/export those to
  the msgbases that are supported (JAM or Squish is recommended for
  this).

* File attach may not work so well.

* Sound support doesn't work. That's because Linux doesn't offer an
  API to access the PC speaker. The .WAV file support is not yet
  implemented.

* Characters with ASCII values 0-31 are currently remapped to 'x' or a
  visually similar character before being written to the screen.

* The default XLATLOCALSET is LATIN-1 for the Linux version, as
  opposed to IBMPC for the other OS'es. You should setup character
  translation between IBMPC and LATIN-1 and use the correct XLATEXPORT
  for each echo. See the GoldED manual for details. Most FidoNet
  echoes assume IBMPC or another IBMPC-based sets as default if there
  is no CHRS or CHARSET kludge. For areas where IBMPC is assumed, you
  should set both XLATIMPORT and XLATEXPORT to IBMPC or CP850.

* Screen color changes and cursor movements are made with ANSI
  sequences similar to the way ncurses and slang does it. GoldED does
  not use ncurses or slang, but has it's own windowing library which
  works in a similar manner. GoldED for Linux will also work in X
  terminals, but this is not recommended because of keyboard
  limitations. Telnet sessions should work, if they support the ANSI
  sequences and produce usable keycodes.

* Standard distributions of Linux do not define all the keys that are
  usually available on DOS, OS/2 and Win32. Specifically, cursor
  movement (arrows, page, home/end) keys don't have separate keycodes
  when combined with the shift, control or alt keys. It is possible
  (in the keytable maps in /usr/lib/kbd/keytables) to define
  non-standard keycodes to make Ctrl-PageUp, Alt-Left etc. work, but I
  haven't had time to do this yet.

* There may be odd quirks in the keyboard handling. Please report if
  you find any.

* The printing feature prints via a pipe to "/usr/dev/lpr".

=== Cut, a basic golded.cfg ===

// example minimal configuration
username Odinn Sorensen
address 2:236/77
areadef netmail "Netmail" 0 net opus /usr/ftn/msg/netmailx . (pvt loc k/s)
areadef net.fidoz2 "FidoNet Z2" 0 net squish /usr/ftn/squish/fidoz2 . (pvt loc)
areadef zzz.jtest1 "JAM test" 0 echo jam /usr/ftn/jam/test/jtest1 . (loc)

// typical character translation
xlatpath /fileserv/com/golded/xlat/
xlatimport ibmpc
xlatcharset  ibmpc   latin-1 ibm_iso.chs
xlatcharset  latin-1 ibmpc   iso_ibm.chs
xlatcharset  latin-1 latin-1 iso_iso.chs
xlatcharset  ibmpc   ibmpc   ibm_ibm.chs

=== Cut ===

Greetings,
  Odinn Sorensen