Hi g00r00

Just starting a thread on this subject.

While you have been away from the echomail areas over the last number of
months we've been seeing reports of issues with echomail content being
reported as being altered by Mystic as packets are tossed onwards by MUTIL
and forwarded to other nodes.

I'm aware theres something up with soft CRs being removed by Mystic, or at least I think that's the report. There are also comments about echomail
content be wrapped incorrectly so on some readers it's not displaying perhaps as the original author intended it.

I'm sorry I can't be more specific but trusting that Al, Oli and others can chip in with more specifics.

Can you look into this please when able to.I'm happy to test stuff as/when needed :)

Best, Paul

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

I'm aware theres something up with soft CRs being removed by Mystic, or
at least I think that's the report. There are also comments about
echomail content be wrapped incorrectly so on some readers it's not displaying perhaps as the original author intended it.

What Mystic does is intelligently wraps text at 80 columns, and this is done for reasons and it was by multiple people's requests. The reason for that is when integrating into things like NNTP often time text is massively longer
than what any text-based BBS software could handle and it caused illegible messages loss of message text.

Mystic isn't truncating anything, its word wrapping extra long lines to fit into the constraints that some BBS packages and readers that will never be updated again (but people still use) have in place.

I suppose its something that I could remove. I'm not tied down to having it that way, but I need to see real world use cases where this is an issue more than it is a blessing.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: |08--[|15!|07dreamland BBS bbs.dreamlandbbs.org (21:1/163)

On 24 Jan 2020 at 03:06p, g00r00 pondered and said...

What Mystic does is intelligently wraps text at 80 columns, and this is done for reasons and it was by multiple people's requests. The reason
for that is when integrating into things like NNTP often time text is massively longer than what any text-based BBS software could handle and
it caused illegible messages loss of message text.

OK coolio, for me running Mystic it's never been an issue but it is for some
it seems running other systems/software...the general gist of what's been reported was

Mail getting changed in transit. Messages are getting changed (word wrapped) when passing through Mystic (or mutil) when they get sent on to other nodes.

The issue of SEEN-BYs that we're working on now.

The Soft CRs being dropped my mystic (mutil). Al reports he sometimes see
dupes of messages that contain Soft CRs because they are left as they are by most tossers but dropped by Mystic.

Mystic isn't truncating anything, its word wrapping extra long lines to fit into the constraints that some BBS packages and readers that will never be updated again (but people still use) have in place.

Yep all good/fine by me. I suppose the thing is does it mess with enough
others FTN packet goodness to make it a pain for non-mystic users to read content etc..

Some may *strongly* suggest nothing in the message should be altered as it's being tossed onwards... but I'm not personally going to die in a ditch over that one... I do think messages should all be readable by as many as can read them aka 'All' else what's the point of writing / sending something that then ends up on another system looking different and/or a bit harder to read...

I'm not sure that's the case that's actually happening but that's the vibe
I'd picked up on from some quarters. I think chat with Oli as he's mentioned some of this stuff before, and as for Al I'm thinking some of those issues mooted above may be related to the way MBBSE?? (is that the name of the bbs software) he was using was looking at things. Al help me out here :) ??

I suppose its something that I could remove. I'm not tied down to
having it that way, but I need to see real world use cases where this is an issue more than it is a blessing.

Fair enough... I'm personally relaxed either way, thanks for the background info behind it as it stands and I can't say I disagree..

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

I suppose its something that I could remove. I'm not tied down to
having it that way, but I need to see real world use cases where this is an issue more than it is a blessing.

Maybe it could be left in as a feature flag for NNTP bases or something? Idk. :)

What I do know is that mail back and forth from, say, a synchronet board will have very confusing line quoting and things of that nature due to how mystic and synchronet handle text displays differently.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/16 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

I'm not sure that's the case that's actually happening but that's
the vibe I'd picked up on from some quarters. I think chat with Oli
as he's mentioned some of this stuff before, and as for Al I'm
thinking some of those issues mooted above may be related to the
way MBBSE?? (is that the name of the bbs software) he was using was looking at things. Al help me out here :) ??

MBSE? That's another wonderfull piece of software. I'm going to spin one
of those up one day soon! Look for The Oracle of Madness at a telnet
server near you soon! I did a good long run with MBSE around 2005 or so
but haven't had a look at it in some time. I haven't heard anything good
or bad from MBSE ops so I can't say how things are there currently.

I do hear from folks from time to time about mail being changed in
transit. I know that Mystic is not doing anything bad per say, it's word wrapping messages to fit in an 80x25 display and that's a good thing but
not everyone is reading mail in an 80x25 terminal.

Today folks are using phones, tablets and PCs all at different display
sizes. It would be better to leave long lines in PKTs and then format the display for the size the user is using. I think that's a big change
though and I don't think it can happen overnight. In my own case I am
using an 80x30 terminal. Even MagickaBBS seems to be limited to an 80x25 terminal so I have 5 blank lines at the bottom of my screen.

It would be good if the BBS could display 80x25, 80x30 or 132x70 (or
whatever folks might be using. I suppose a phone or tablet might be
smaller than any of those.


Ttyl :-),
Al

--- MagickaBBS v0.13alpha (Linux/x86_64)
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

OK coolio, for me running Mystic it's never been an issue but it is for some it seems running other systems/software...the general gist of
what's been reported was

Yeah I mean its been like that for probably most of a decade and one person is bringing it up. Some people try to make mountains out of mole hills.

The Soft CRs being dropped my mystic (mutil). Al reports he sometimes see dupes of messages that contain Soft CRs because they are left as they
are by most tossers but dropped by Mystic.

I can see how this could be an issue, so that might be one of the good reasons to consider removing it.

Yep all good/fine by me. I suppose the thing is does it mess with enough others FTN packet goodness to make it a pain for non-mystic users to read content etc..

No, it does the exact opposite of that. It wraps text so it doesn't get truncated by other software.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: |08--[|15!|07dreamland BBS bbs.dreamlandbbs.org (21:1/163)

It would be good if the BBS could display 80x25, 80x30 or 132x70 (or whatever folks might be using. I suppose a phone or tablet might be smaller than any of those.

Mystic can do various sized terminals, its just disabled because I've never mad themes for it. I've had it going from 40x23 up to 132x50 I think, but the issu is that the majority of content is in 80x25 (at least it was a long time ago) s you really don't get a huge benefit.

I think in 2020 the use cases are much different than 1995-2008 for example, so its time to revisit all of these things. I seem to remember most of the issues coming from non-DOS BBS software (ie really legacy things like Atari) and also DOS QWK offline readers (the latter can be fixed by Mystic wrapping it internally only, not when tossing).

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: |08--[|15!|07dreamland BBS bbs.dreamlandbbs.org (21:1/163)

On 25 Jan 2020 at 11:02a, g00r00 pondered and said...

The Soft CRs being dropped my mystic (mutil). Al reports he sometimes dupes of messages that contain Soft CRs because they are left as they are by most tossers but dropped by Mystic.

I can see how this could be an issue, so that might be one of the good reasons to consider removing it.

Agreed.

Yep all good/fine by me. I suppose the thing is does it mess with eno others FTN packet goodness to make it a pain for non-mystic users to content etc..

No, it does the exact opposite of that. It wraps text so it doesn't get truncated by other software.

OK, yeah like I'd mentioned earlier I'm personally relaxed either way but if some systems are detecting messages as dupes because they see the wrapped content as a fundamentally different message I'd say it's worth taking it
out. Or how about a ini switch for MUTIL to enable or disable the wrapping? That way both sides of the debate can have their cake and eat it :)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

Yep all good/fine by me. I suppose the thing is does it

mess with eno Av> others FTN packet goodness to make it a
pain for non-mystic users to Av> content etc..

No, it does the exact opposite of that. It wraps text so it
doesn't get truncated by other software.

OK, yeah like I'd mentioned earlier I'm personally relaxed either
way but if some systems are detecting messages as dupes because
they see the wrapped content as a fundamentally different message
I'd say it's worth taking it out. Or how about a ini switch for
MUTIL to enable or disable the wrapping? That way both sides of the
debate can have their cake and eat it :)

Just so we're all on the same page, (we probably all are..) but that
problem people having aren't so much the wrapping of messages but the modification of messages in transit. I don't think anyone cares if
mystic wraps the messages generated by it, I think people are unhappy
about if some other system sends a message and it passes through a
mystic system the message is altered, for the most part this is
wrapping.

I think perhaps, avon's suggestion of toggling an option might be the
way to go. Perhaps even to a point of a per downlink option, then for
those using more modern bbs packages can get messages unaltered, but if
for example there was one downlink that used what ever software this
option was made for, paul could flip a toggle for it, and everyone would
be happy.

Andrew

--- MagickaBBS v0.13alpha (Linux/x86_64)
* Origin: HappyLand - telnet://magickabbs.com:2023/ (21:1/126)

26 Jan 20 14:34, you wrote to Avon:

Just so we're all on the same page, (we probably all are..) but
that problem people having aren't so much the wrapping of
messages but the modification of messages in transit. I don't
think anyone cares if mystic wraps the messages generated by it,
I think people are unhappy about if some other system sends a
message and it passes through a mystic system the message is
altered, for the most part this is wrapping.

That's right. If it were only the messages from Mystic BBSes which look shitty that is something everyone would have to live with (or switch to another software). Turning every single intransit mail into a mess is not okay though.


* Origin: 🌈 (21:1/151)

modification of messages in transit. I don't think anyone cares if
mystic wraps the messages generated by it, I think people are unhappy about if some other system sends a message and it passes through a
mystic system the message is altered, for the most part this is
wrapping.

But in the real world, the text can be chopped off and lost forever, and the message CRC changes anyway with some legacy software. The outcome then is you still don't get the dupe protection and you also have now lost actual message content too.

A good example of this was when we tried to send ANSI echomail messages and the would get completely destroyed (depending on the systems it passed through) unless we wrapped them at 79 columns with ANSImation. It wasn't Mystic doing that.

I don't think I'll make it an option, it'll just be one way or another. I haven't looked at how easy it will be to rip it out yet but its on my list of things to do.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: |08--[|15!|07dreamland BBS bbs.dreamlandbbs.org (21:1/163)

That's right. If it were only the messages from Mystic BBSes which look shitty that is something everyone would have to live with (or switch to another software). Turning every single intransit mail into a mess is
not okay though.

Again, its been such a mess no one mentioned it for the entire 10 years its bee that way. Once again, its a non issue (and even a benefit) for 99.99% of BBS users over the past couple of decades.

If all you're going to do is be a drama queen here, then just leave. Or I can just twit filter you and ignore the situation entirely, that works for me too.

Like I said, the content STILL gets altered its just the text gets lost completely instead of wrapped as soon as you hit someone using broken legacy software.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: |08--[|15!|07dreamland BBS bbs.dreamlandbbs.org (21:1/163)

26 Jan 20 16:56, you wrote to me:

That's right. If it were only the messages from Mystic
BBSes which look shitty that is something everyone would
have to live with (or switch to another software).
Turning every single intransit mail into a mess is not
okay though.

Again, its been such a mess no one mentioned it for the
entire 10 years its bee that way. Once again, its a non
issue (and even a benefit) for 99.99% of BBS users over
the past couple of decades.

Not every user is a BBS user (reading and writing mails in a BBS). You call this a non-issue?

https://filebin.net/6o35jiylvpuxliaa/Screenshot_20200127-082914 .png





* Origin: 🌈 (21:1/151)