Category : BBS Programs+Doors
Archive   : QWKSPC12.ZIP
Filename : MESSAGES.TXT

Format of the exported messages in Messages.Dat


This file contains records with a length of 128 bytes. There
are 3 types of these records: (1) Packet Header, (2) Message
Header, and (3) Message Text. All unused fields in the
records are normally filled with spaces, although you will
sometimes find the final Message text record will be filled
with nulls (#0) after the last text.


Packet Header

Packet Header - is always the first record in the file and
only occurs once. It contains only normal ascii text
(limitted to at most 128 characters) and should always
start with "Produced by ". The remaining text normally
includes a product name and copyright message.


Message Header

A message header immediately preceeds zero or more message
text records. Each Message header has the following
format:

Start
Pos Length Description
------ ------ -----------------------------------------
1 1 Message status flag (see below)
2 7 Message number (ascii left justified)
9 8 Date (MM-DD-YY)
17 5 Time (HH:MM)
22 25 To (left justified space filled - uppercase)
(Be sure to check the to field to spot
configuration type messages)
47 25 From (left justified space filled - uppercase)
72 25 Subject (left justified space filled - uppercase)
(a subject starting "NE:" should not be
echoed into a network)
97 12 Password (not really used leave blank)
109 8 Message reference number (ascii left justified)
117 6 Number of blocks (ascii left justified - number
of 128 byte blocks including 1 for the message
header)
123 1 Message activeÿ(á or #225 = Active,
â or #226 = Inactive)
124 2 Conference number (Binary Word) (Lo in 124, Hi
in 125). Note that some older programs only
supported conferences 0 thru 255 and left byte
125 as a "blank" unused field. I recommend
checking the word value and if it is over 8191
to only use the lower (0 thru 255) part of it.
I've also seen notes that this field is really
a 4 byte LongInt field, although with the above
limitation (and 8000 conference seeming sufficient
for a while), I documented it this way.

128 1 Indicates whether the message has a Network
tagline or not. A value of "*" indicates that
a network tagline is present, a value of " "
indicates there isn't. Messages sent to readers
(non-net-status) generally leave this as always
blank since only net utils need this info.

Message Status Flag has the following possibilities:

'`' Comment to sysop, read '~' Comment to sysop, unread
'-' Public, read ' ' Public, unread
'*' Private, read '+' Private, unread
'^' Password protected, read '%' Password protected, unread
'#' Group password, read '!' Group password, unread
'$' Group password to all



Message Text Records

The message text records immediately follow the the message
header. They contain straight ascii text (lines are
normally limitted to 72 chars/line although you may see
longer lines). Each line is followed by a "ã" or #227
character to mark the end of the line (in place of the normal
CR/LF that would exist in a straight text file). The text
continues consecutavly and text lines do continue across
block boundaries. Some systems or readers may have problems
with messages longer than 99 lines or 199 lines, although more
recently this no longer seems to be a limit. The last block
should be padded with blanks to fill the block, although on
input you may find it padded with nulls (#0).