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  • New Synchronet BBS List (v4)

    From Digital Man to All on Tue Dec 12 22:07:50 2017
    I started working on a complete re-write of the old Synchronet BBS List (SBL) a couple of years ago (April 2015, it's hard to believe it's been so long). The biggest changes were:
    1. Completley written in JavaScript (using the Synchronet JS obj model), not C
    2. Using a JSON database format, not a proprietary binary file format: sbl.dab

    I wrote most of the code, handling conversion/upgrade from the old SBL (v3), importing-from and export-to message bases, and (most interesting to me at the time), HTML generation (http://synchro.net/sbbslist.html) with previews of BBS answer screens.

    I spent several weeks working on all that and had Vertrauen re-upgrading the sbl.dab every night, performing system auto-validations, and generating the HTML every night. But I didn't write the auto-verification results back to the old sbl.dab.... so entries began to expire and be auto-puged due to lack of update or validation (including my own for Vertrauen). The once long official Synchronet BBS list shrank down to 60 some entries.

    Anyway, I recently picked back up the task and have new "door" is now live on Vertrauen and I'm not maintaining or synchronizing with my old sbl.dab any more. The ols SBL will be moth-balled. If you're still running the SBL, good news: you can keep on running it if you want and you'll still get compatible networked entries via the SYNCDATA conference and if you export entries, those too will be imported into those running the new sbbslist.js (v4), including Vertrauen.

    I imported entries from the 5000+ messages I have stored in SYNCDATA and so now I have a good data set and though many of the BBSes listed are long since gone, they'll be auto-purged eventually (when I implement that feature!).

    If you want to see the door in action, login to Vertrauen -> External Programs
    Main -> Synchronet BBS List.

    Some of the cool new features:
    - search by any field
    - sorting by any field (and reversing the sort order)
    - view a capture or live preview of each BBS's answer screen
    - auto-synchronizatoin of your BBS entry with your system's statistics
    - more TCP service/protocol details (auto-detected and manually entered)

    If you want to set it up on your own BBS (warnings, it's still considered experimental), see wiki.synchro.net/module:sbbslist for details.

    digital man

    Synchronet "Real Fact" #65:
    Synchronet can dynamically compress and uncompress message bases (using LZH). Norco, CA WX: 67.8°F, 8.0% humidity, 1 mph SW wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs