VBBSMenu Documentation Author: Ian Gunn Phone: (403) 293-7102 Bix: gunzo Address: 51 Martingrove Pl NE Calgary, AB Canada T3J 2S8 VBBSMenu is released into the Public Domain. I only ask that the entire disk's contents be kept together, so that the next person will have it as easy as you had. Credits: Thanks to Stephen Vermeulen for creating VBBS. Thanks to Ken Wallewein for the VBBS script and of course thanks to the folks at Inovatronics for producing CanDo and for their help on BIX. What is VBBSMenu? VBBSMenu is a launching pad for the many VBBS applications. VBBS is a revolutionary bulletin board system created by Stephen Vermeulen. VBBSMenu allows a new user as well as a veteran to quickly customize the VBBS environment to their liking. What do I need to run VBBSMenu? You require an Amiga! Obvious, but thought I would mention it :-) You require a minimum 1 Meg of memory to run VBBSMenu and at least two floppy drives. If you have 512K memory then do NOT run VBBSMenu. You can run Term and most of the other programs found on the VBBS disk, but you will have to select the icons themselves. Please read the documents of the individual files, if you have less then 1 Meg of memory. If you have only 1 floppy and 1 Meg of memory, be prepared for a LOT of disk swaps. To get VBBSMenu to run from the -CLI-. Type 'Deckbrowser VBBSMenu". Make sure you have done a cd to where the VBBSMenu is residing. You might want to setup an alias in your Startup-sequence like: alias vbbs cd work:terminal/vbbs I have tested this program under 1.3 and it works. I would imagine it would also work under WB 2.0 (2.04 and higher). The only problem under 2.0 is the colours are backwards on the buttons. Look for an upgrade once 2.0 is available for all machines. Starting up: Just double click on the VBBSMenu to start it. Functions: Customization: NewUsers or First Timers: By selecting 'First Time' from the main VBBSMenu panel, you will be walked through a series of questions in how you wish to set up the programs that log you into a VBBS BBS and the programs that enable you to manipulate the messages from VBBS. If at any time through out this process you require help, just press on the 'text' of the field (located left of the actual field itself). A small help window will open up and supply you with a brief description of what is expected to be typed in. There is usually an example to go along with the help. I've included some defaults for the beginning user, but this does not mean you have to use these. Just delete what is there and input your own choices. NOTE: This process should only be done once as it will destroy any previous settings you had. If you wish just to modify what you currently are using, see Configure below. Configure By selecting Configure from the main VBBSMenu panel you will be given a list of options that affect the VBBS enviroment. If you have run 'First Time' already, then most of these options will be the same. You'll notice that most if not all of the options already have some information in them. This is the information you have either indicated when you selected 'First Time' or when you modified the ToolTypes of Term yourself. In either case, you are able to change some or all of the options to indicate a change in your VBBS environment. If at any time through out this process you require help, just press on the 'text' of the field (located left of the actual field itself). A small help window will open up and supply you with a brief description of what is expected to be typed in. There is usually an example to go along with the help. Unlike 'First Time', 'Configure' saves what was your VBBS environment from before and only changes what you have asked to be changed. Change SIGs: By selecting Change SIGs, you will be able to add/delete SIGs for multiple BBSs. Once you have selected Change SIGs, a new panel will be displayed showing all the BBSs you have logged onto at least once. Select one of these BBSs. A list of Message SIGs will be displayed on the left hand side. There may or may not be any SIGs on the right side. Using the mouse select a SIG you wish to have included in the ones you wish messages sent to you from the indicated VBBS BBS. You will notice the SIG you select disappears on the left side and is added to the right side. Continue doing this until you have selected all the SIGs you wish. If for some reason you do not want a SIG you had selected, just select the it (it's now on the right side remember). It will disappear from the right and reappear on the left side. (This process is deleting SIGs from the right) Some people may wish to read ALL the SIGs on a particular BBS. Instead of being forced to select all the SIGs one by one. You can select the 'Select All SIGs' gadget. This will reload ALL of the SIGs available on the indicated BBS to the right side. This is also useful, when you figure you want most of the SIGs, but not all of them. Just select 'Select All SIGs' and then delete the ones you do not want, using the process mentioned above. When you're ready to Save your changes, just select Save. This will modify your MySIGs file with your changes. As always you may select Cancel to return to the previous screen. Launchings: Term: Term is the main program to connect to a VBBS BBS. It is created by Stephen Vermeulen. By selecting the Term button you will be given a list of BBSs to call. If the one you wish to call is not in the list, then just select 'ADD'. A new panel will appear asking for the BBS name, the phone number(s) of the BBS and whether or not you have a Tone dial or a Pulse dial phone. (ie Tone is DT and Pulse is DP or another way at looking at it is Tone is usually the touch buttons to dial out and Pulse is the rotory dial). Please remember to include the area code if necessary in the phone number(s). NOTE: The support line for VBBS (and home) is (403) 284-2048. Select Accept to save the new BBS you have just entered. The list of BBSs will be shown again and just by clicking on the BBS you wish the Term program will be started. If you are running this from floppy this will take a couple of moments as Term is loaded from floppy. If a BBS is no longer available and you wish to remove it from your list, just select 'DELETE' and select the BBS you wish deleted. You can CHANGE a BBS script. To do this, you need only to select the Change button and the BBS script you wish to change. Just modify the BBS Name, phone numbers and/or dial/pulse and ACCEPT your changes. You will be returned to the BBS Script panel. By selecting the 'MAIN' button you will be sent back to the main VBBSMenu Panel. Read: This is Stephen Vermeulen's version of the message base reader. Most of the messages are sent to your system so you can selectly keep what messages you desire and get rid of the rest. This enables you to starting building a library of messages. See the Read.doc for more information on Read or select 'Help Files' from the main VBBSMenu and select Read VBBSReader: This is my version of the message base reader. I created this because I felt a 'different' reader was necessary to read the messages bases. Try both and see which one you wish to use. See the VBBSReader.doc for more information on VBBSReader or select 'Help Files' from the main VBBSMenu and select VBBSReader. Age: Age is the program to go through your message base and delete unwanted messages. It leaves the ones you have 'Protected' in VBBSReader and 'Archived' in Read alone. It deletes messages that are X days old, where X was what you indicated when you selected the number of days to keep messages in 'Configure' or 'First Time' (see above for description of these two). See the Age.doc for more information on Age or select 'Help Files' from the main VBBSMenu and select Age. Help: By selecting 'Help Files' you will give a new panel listing all the available help files for the various buttons on the main VBBSMenu panel. Just select one and the document file will be shown in a custom text program. By using either the up/down arrow keys or the buttons you may scroll the documents. Just select 'Return to Main Menu' to get you back to the main VBBSMenu panel. Misc: Other Terminal Program: By selecting the 'Other Terminal Program' either a requestor asking you for the path name and name of the terminal package will appear or if you have already indicated your terminal package of choice, the terminal package will be executed. If you wish to change terminal packages, then single click on the VBBSMenu Icon and select Info from the workbench menu (Information under 2.0). Change the name in the ToolType. Make sure you select SAVE from the Icon's information screen to save your changes. Now reselect 'Other Terminal Program' from the VBBSMenu main panel. NOTE: I'm using a 30K stack for the other terminal packages. If this is not enough, please let me know and I'll up it for the next release. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Possible Problems: 1) Problem: My Hail/Tail Strings are changed when I save from either Configure or First Time. Solution: When selecting Conference Mode when you have logged in, just hit the ESCAPE key in front of all the '['. Not a clean fix, but it will do until Inovatronics can fix the bug. 2) Problem: Messages are going to my sys: disk, yet I have changed my MESSAGE DIRectory to somewhere else. Solution: Check to see if you have a message disk named VBBS: if you do, change it to VBBSMessages: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Versions: 1.0 - First public release. 1.1 - A number of small bug fixes. Cleaned up some of the direction of flows. Added the capability to add/delete SIGs to your SIG listing for multiple BBSs. 1.2 - Fixed more bugs and other annoying things. The ability to change a BBS Script has been added to this version. Fixed the bug that only allowed 10 days of saved days. The limit is now 100. If people require more than that, please let me know. 1.3 - Fixed a number of bugs, so reconfiguring VBBSMenu to open a TERM on WorkBench should work now. CanDo is copyrighted by Inovatronics Inc VBBS is copyrighted by Stephen Vermenulen