• Once apon a time...

    From bcw142@21:1/145 to All on Saturday, May 22, 2021 17:51:55
    That last post of mine was thinking about hyjinx's question while typing
    out loud so to type ;) Hmm, doesn't sound like a story...

    Once upon a time I had two mystic based bbs up and two nodespy windows
    that had the same titles so I couldn't tell them apart. I did as I suggested
    in that last post and hacked my titles MysticPI and AlphaTest in to
    nodespy on those systems and kept doing that through a number of Alphas.
    Then I asked g00r00, who I knew would have the same issue, to add it to
    nodespy and he added it to a nodespy.ini.

    Thinking about hyjinx's question I looked for the screen and ini files for
    the message index reader and came up with msg_index.ans, msg_index_help.ans, and msg_index.ini. I knew if the L, ESC, & Q weren't hard coded then they'd
    be in the .ini. Long ago g00r00 had been putting such things in .dat files
    in mystic/data. More recently he had been putting them in .ini files.
    OK. it's a very short story ;)

    The point is, it gives you the places to look for all such questions. If
    it's not hard-coded it's in a .dat or .ini for key bindings and .ans for screens. Basically the .ini are .dat written out. Where the .dat is
    basically a binary .ini file. He can comment the .ini files to show where things are, you can't do that as easily with binary .dat files. That's
    why the switch to .ini's.

    Why do I know? Years of hacking and coding. 'In my day there were no
    Operating Systems, we had to code our own...Both ways uphill ;)
    You learn a thing or two doing that, it's like riding a bicycle, you
    don't tend to forget it.

    ...Dory: Follow the shells. Follow the shells...

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/05/17 (Raspberry Pi/32)
    * Origin: Mystic Pi BBS bcw142.zapto.org (21:1/145)