I'm wondering if , in a modern context - it would be easier just to be able to make static rooms that would display a static webserver in a message.
Kind of like an embedded YouTube video - but you could have a Citadel Wiki room, with the message in the wiki containing an embedded redirect to another (local) server, and that sever could be running .js DOSBox games...
It would be the same net effect - a room where you could play a game without "leaving" the BBS. The message would basically be a browser within your browser.
Wed May 05 2021 00:40:38 EDT from ASCII ExpressI agree, this development happens at the right time, and it excites me as well.
I posted this in the main Citadel support room but I'll put it here as well. How about some kind of support for BBS doors?
And if Citadel exposed that code - it would be up to the admin to work out the details on their back-end for what that Wiki page would be serving up.
I mean, you could probably embed *Facebook* as a door inside a Citadel if this was implemented. :)
I posted this in the main Citadel support room but I'll put it here as
well. How about some kind of support for BBS doors?
Interestingly, we had a "doorway" command from the very first version in 1987. It was deprecated in 2007 and removed entirely in 2010. The reason for its removal was that we could not provide a consistent user experience across text, web, and client software users if we had doors running on only one type of login.
On a retro BBS site, it might actually make more sense to put Citadel on the *far* side of the doorway.
So, you're suggesting something more like having a Retrobbs software be the front-end - with Citadel running as a door off of it?
It seems like there *is* a way to skin this cat - and that it is probably in breaking the paradigm that we feel comfortable approaching it from (Citadel is the main BBS - the doors come off of it.)
Wed May 05 2021 10:48:47 EDT from IGnatius T FoobarI posted this in the main Citadel support room but I'll put it here as
well. How about some kind of support for BBS doors?
Interestingly, we had a "doorway" command from the very first version in 1987. It was deprecated in 2007 and removed entirely in 2010. The reason for its removal was that we could not provide a consistent user experience across text, web, and client software users if we had doors running on only one type of login.
On a retro BBS site, it might actually make more sense to put Citadel on the *far* side of the doorway.
What about a separate program, a door server, that could authenticate against Citadel and play the games? Users would still have to telnet or SSH to another port. Or to make it even lazier they would have to create an account on the game server. Just brainstorming.....
Hosting it in a room reminds me that I would want it called the Game Room, in keeping with the room-based concept. I imagined a command to play the games as in a traditional BBS.
Or the room on Citadel would serve as the place for discussion, and people would have to telnet to play the games, but that sort of breaks the flow.....
Running Citadel as a door has the problem going the other way. A user would have to create a second account on the Citadel.
Sat Apr 03 2021 11:09:11 EDT from IGnatius T FoobarCould you add petscii (commodore) to the text served by citadel over
telnet? I know the petscii character encoding is well defined and
documented. I just don't know how to make citadel do it.
Hmm. That's an unusual ask. I used a Commodore 64 as my primary computer in the mid 1980s, so I know quite a bit about how PETSCII is laid out. What I don't know is how one would map it on a modern display. There seem to be Unicode equivalents to most of the special characters.
What is the use case you are trying to solve for?
There are many commodore bbs systems up and running via telnet to this day (for example the ones listed on http://cbbsoutpost.servebbs.com/)
Some systems are original hardware that are interfaced via modified rs232 and modem emulator software like Leif Bloomqvist's BBS server, or Jim Brain's TCPSER, to a linux or windows box to handle telnet connections. Some systems perfom this all through emulation without hardware patches to external telnet servers run on other machines like raspberry pi.
Anyhow, without going down the rabbit hole, If I could get the citadel's text client server to speak petscii, I could use citadel for quite a powerful bbs software "engine" if you will. Pete Rittwage (c64preservation.com) has done what I am describing, but did not use Citadel to do it.
Mapping to a modern display is the responsibility of the c64 terminal software. Simply asking the user at login "use commodore petscii?" and on an affirmative response, switch the output to petscii values. If no, standard utf-8 or whatever citadel spits out as it is written.
PD is well aware because he's seen it first hand, but Citadel IS a "door", of sorts, on my system (http://smashbot.com)
I have been working day and night trying to integrate Citadel as the message base center. As expected, the issue is who authenticates who? (or is it whom?)
My chat site and citadel live as separate selections glued together by phpBB. They are all on the same system, so all three (chat, citadel, and phpBB) have access to the others files.
Integration will be the death of me but I will figure it out, I make breaktrhoughs every time I pull an all nighter on it.
I guess techically, the citadel I run is NOT a door by door definitions, since a user can hit the citadel simply by entering at https://citadel.smashbot.com
Wed May 05 2021 13:53:54 EDT from ParanoidDelusionsSo, you're suggesting something more like having a Retrobbs software be the front-end - with Citadel running as a door off of it?
It seems like there *is* a way to skin this cat - and that it is probably in breaking the paradigm that we feel comfortable approaching it from (Citadel is the main BBS - the doors come off of it.)
Wed May 05 2021 10:48:47 EDT from IGnatius T FoobarI posted this in the main Citadel support room but I'll put it here as
well. How about some kind of support for BBS doors?
Interestingly, we had a "doorway" command from the very first version in 1987. It was deprecated in 2007 and removed entirely in 2010. The reason for its removal was that we could not provide a consistent user experience across text, web, and client software users if we had doors running on only one type of login.
On a retro BBS site, it might actually make more sense to put Citadel on the *far* side of the doorway.
Speaking of text client, I just got my citadel to answer telnet on port 23.
I really need to sic fail2ban in the role of Deputy Dog, since the amount of bullshit scanners tying up my port 23 is hell on my resources. But, that's a problem to fix tomorrow.
BUT- but, but But---
I got the citadel to answer connections and present the bbs... but I can't get it to authenticate. It doesn't give me the opportunity to enter a password, for a new user account, or for one that I know exists (mine). Here's is a screenshot of what it's doing. Can someone shed light on the probable simple oversight I have made?
Yeah - I'm counting you as our best bet to develop a way for the rest of us to run doors of some fashion on Citadel - you've just got to make it easy enough that a guy who can get a Citadel up and running can ALSO get doors up and working. :)
I don't care if there are HTML tricks. New platforms require new paradigms of achieving the same goals.
Fri May 14 2021 23:41:38 EDT from smashbot64PD is well aware because he's seen it first hand, but Citadel IS a "door", of sorts, on my system (http://smashbot.com)
I have been working day and night trying to integrate Citadel as the message base center. As expected, the issue is who authenticates who? (or is it whom?)
My chat site and citadel live as separate selections glued together by phpBB. They are all on the same system, so all three (chat, citadel, and phpBB) have access to the others files.
Integration will be the death of me but I will figure it out, I make breaktrhoughs every time I pull an all nighter on it.
I guess techically, the citadel I run is NOT a door by door definitions, since a user can hit the citadel simply by entering at https://citadel.smashbot.com
Wed May 05 2021 13:53:54 EDT from ParanoidDelusionsSo, you're suggesting something more like having a Retrobbs software be the front-end - with Citadel running as a door off of it?
It seems like there *is* a way to skin this cat - and that it is probably in breaking the paradigm that we feel comfortable approaching it from (Citadel is the main BBS - the doors come off of it.)
Wed May 05 2021 10:48:47 EDT from IGnatius T FoobarI posted this in the main Citadel support room but I'll put it here as
well. How about some kind of support for BBS doors?
Interestingly, we had a "doorway" command from the very first version in 1987. It was deprecated in 2007 and removed entirely in 2010. The reason for its removal was that we could not provide a consistent user experience across text, web, and client software users if we had doors running on only one type of login.
On a retro BBS site, it might actually make more sense to put Citadel on the *far* side of the doorway.
All of the other BBS software currently in use supports doors.
When I wanted to set up a BBS again I considered them all, but I love Citadel's elegance.
I got the citadel to answer connections and present the bbs... but I
can't get it to authenticate. It doesn't give me the opportunity to
enter a password, for a new user account, or for one that I know
exists (mine). Here's is a screenshot of what it's doing. Can
someone shed light on the probable simple oversight I have made?
Strange. I tried connecting, and had the same issue. I saw some characters before my name, and when I entered it I got:
'"'#ASCII Express' not found.
So it recorded the characters in the string. The single key response didn't work either. I hit Y <enter> to create the account, then it whipped past the password prompt. Strange! Can someone help?
Damnit. I wish I could remember what caused this and how I fixed it - but I did have the exact same thing happen.
citadel.rc is in the path, right and being launched under the right account? I know I had this issue and it freaked me out - and I thought it was something to do with Putty - but maybe it ultimately wasn't - it was something silly I had done on the...
Ok... where do you set up the Telnet daemon commands in Linux? Is it inet.d or initd or something like that? Or maybe it is the config in the . folder in the home directory of the account you're using to launch citadel.rc
It is having something set wrong there, maybe. Like, the wrong command or a typo or something else. I think I vaguely recall that I found it was OE/fat-fingers in one of my config files. I probably mentioned it here on Uncensored - but I'm not sure how you would find that message here.
I got the citadel to answer connections and present the bbs... but I
can't get it to authenticate. It doesn't give me the opportunity to
enter a password, for a new user account, or for one that I know
exists (mine). Here's is a screenshot of what it's doing. Can
someone shed light on the probable simple oversight I have made?
Strange. I tried connecting, and had the same issue. I saw some characters before my name, and when I entered it I got:
'"'#ASCII Express' not found.
So it recorded the characters in the string. The single key response didn't work either. I hit Y <enter> to create the account, then it whipped past the password prompt. Strange! Can someone help?
Oh, that's another thing I plan to add to citadel.smashbot.
Grep. Its going to take some time though, because I will need a worker to dig in and present what needs to be parsed.
I probably mentioned it here on Uncensored - but I'm not sure how you would find that message here.
The ability to grep the database *would* be a godsend. Once I gronked Grep - it became probably my favorite thing about *nix.
Oh, that's another thing I plan to add to citadel.smashbot.
Grep. Its going to take some time though, because I will need a worker to dig in and present what needs to be parsed.
I probably mentioned it here on Uncensored - but I'm not sure how you would find that message here.
Ig...
If you haven't gotten over to Smashbot's Citadel - you should visit it. He has done some interesting things with the visuals that make me think that maybe you could work with him to set up some "themes" that are easily selected in the Advanced/Administration menus to customize the look on either a sitewide or per-user basis without needing to know about .xml stylesheets?
I think it would help Citadel adoption - both from an administrative and user perspective.
Thanks PD, Glad you liked it. TBH, my motivation to change what I did was somewhat self-serving. I have not changed the structure of the stylesheets (/usr/local/webcit/static/styles) as of yet, but it's on The List(1). My reasoning behind what I have done so far kind of follows this meandering path:
1. Anyone with skills akin to reading a recipe in a cookbook can spin up their own citadel. For the SysOp's investment of $0 to license the software, an enterprise-grade package is merely just a download away. The documentation is included. This is a far cry from when I first started running BBS systems (citadel-128 in cp/m mode of a commodore 128) and to get working usable BBS software, I had to spend my teenage hard-earned money (Blockbuster Video clerk). $100 might as well have been a million dollars back then.
2. Like the proliferation of Color 64, Image, C-Net, Wildcat, WWIV, and well... name any BBS package ad nauseam, these packages were merely transports. The real value of any BBS is the original ideas, it was in the content contributed by the users. Albeit how far-fetched, or how far to the left, right or criminally insane these user contributions may seem, without this active, engaged content contribution, a BBS is nothing more than a museum presented in digital format.
2.1. I probably violated the software license terms as I have modified the Citadel logo as it is displayed on my site.
3. As I mentioned in 2, in my geographic area as a teenager, every kid in my high school computer class had a "home computer". A home computer was a commodore 64, an Atari ST, an Apple //c, or a 6502 based machine I forgot to mention. Remember though, this was a time when secondary education in the United States still considered the Xerox MemoryWriter (an 85-pound typewriter that could remember things to delete using pre-installed expensive correction tape) to be part of Computer class. I guess the educators in charge envisoned "Gal Fridays" being more comfortable and productive with these modern typewriters. Perhaps mistakenly but probably not, I always thought that all "teachers" suffered from some genetic hindering condition that caused them to envision the future exactly 30 years behind the present we lived in. It wasn't until junior (1988 I think?) year that some maniac talked the school board into purchasing an AT&T 3B2 Unix SVR4. The "computer teacher" was quickly outwitted by those of us that knew what the newly purchased architecture would bring.
4. I am pretty drunk while entering this post, not unlike most of my 4 am rants. I may have lost the original thought behind what I was trying to convey.
5. Oh yeah, there it is. Back to #2... All those BBS systems that came online, the transport looked the same. The users were the same. There was overcrowding of BBS's to call and the ONLY thing (that I can think of) that inspired users to post content on different boards was not so much how a board was dressed up, but more because the caller hit busy signals. ATDT13237415100 BUSY NO CARRIER
Well, Fuckit then? so... ATDT1301ID10T... CONNECT 2400 YAY! Now I can post all about buying 1/4 wave antenna parts at radio shack and see if anyone else knows how to use a signal-to-noise meter and I think I saw a message from a new user with a female name. And someone is selling a dodge diplomat, I do need a car.
6. I changed up the color gradients on my citadel and made some navigation text larger. After careful insight (I found more alcohol), I remember now why I did so. I am pushing 50 years old, and my vision ain't what it used to be. As an end-user of my own BBS, I needed certain elements to stick out, and others to be clearly where I expect to find them.
7. When I start numbering the points I am making, it is in your best interest to zone out, much like if you were being forced to listen to some TED talk that you didn't sign up for.
8. I do think that an easier way to edit the style of webcit should be made easier to the SysOp, but I have noticed that a great deal of effort has been made to keep the webcit and textcit (did I just name something?) experience inline, and consistent. The "textcit" experience is not affected by what happens in the webcit experience. I happen to love citadel because of its hybrid interface. With this in mind, my guess is that someone (me I guess) should contribute a standalone editor that can be called from the administration tab in webcit just as PD has mentioned. I am thinking of making one that simply has starting and ending points for the gradients already in the default styles, or something a simple as a color picker. What you saw on my citadel, in my estimation could be best described as a "high contrast" theme. Citadel's docs do provide some resources on style editing. Unfortunately, I don't know where to find a deployment of citadel that doesn't look like all the others, except mine. My artistic idea factory burned down years ago. The workers sought to unionize and management wouldn't have it. That's another story.
9. We can make all the citadels we want, even until we run out of IP addresses. The real challenge we face is against the enemy we are fighting: centralized social media. Sysops of ANY systems fight an uphill battle, and it is only on one front: Engaging users to contribute their thoughts, ideas, failures, misgivings, triumphs, disease, and share all of these things in our forums. The largest enemy (lowercase F) gets the sheeple do this in their sleep, but we were the ones that invented this type of sharing. It is WAY too easy for someone to "share" content on Fecesbook, simply because smartfones come with Fecesbook preinstalled and ready-to-eat, dumbed down and idiot proof for anyone to use. What we do here, is HARD. Go find some rando on the street and try to explain to them that you have meaningful exhange of ideas online. Then try to explain to the same rando of just how to do it. Don't know about you but I think I would have a better time putting together complex Ikea furniture. Root canal.
10. https://youtu.be/W8r-tXRLazs
Notes:
(1) The List is a big collection of shit I really need and want to complete. The List is funded wholly or in parts using the Round Tuit crypto currency. For each Round Tuit I get, I will check another item off The List. Sarah MacLachlan holding an abused unadopted puppy is a Registered Trademark of AnInformercialTookMyMoney.duh
they should make a .duh TLD.
Sat Jun 05 2021 12:44:11 EDT from ParanoidDelusions
Ig...
If you haven't gotten over to Smashbot's Citadel - you should visit it. He has done some interesting things with the visuals that make me think that maybe you could work with him to set up some "themes" that are easily selected in the Advanced/Administration menus to customize the look on either a sitewide or per-user basis without needing to know about .xml stylesheets?
I think it would help Citadel adoption - both from an administrative and user perspective.
You had me at point 4.
�😂
Sun Jun 06 2021 05:10:58 EDT from smashbot64
4. I am pretty drunk while entering this post, not unlike most of my 4 am rants. I may have lost the original thought behind what I was trying to convey.
But I do agree, the high contrast theme of Smashbot is easier on my old eyes and I find it easier to find the buttons.
I really wish there was a mobile-browser friendly Citadel format - or better yet, Android and iOS front end apps for it. I know you can point a mail client at it, and I guess that would get something like the same result - but a mobile app or mobile web version would be awesome.
Some of these things, I've discussed with Ig in the past - and his argument - and I can see it - is that he doesn't want to add the same kind of vapid features that are present in most mainstream social media sites, like "like" buttons - or that the way that Citadel handles message stores and what not makes it difficult or impossible to implement some of these features without rewriting all of the core logic.
If i remember right, a 'responsive' webcit is coming.
Sun Jun 06 2021 11:52:24 AM EDT from ParanoidDelusions
I really wish there was a mobile-browser friendly Citadel format - or better yet, Android and iOS front end apps for it.