Hello all!
I have been a bit quiet as of late, partially due to being busy with real world stuff. But I have been busy on things behind the scenes.

I had been working on trying to figure out some decent UX choices for a platform that could serve FTN style networked messaging over a more modern interface that would suit both the Phone experience, and a good desktop/laptop use case. I hit a few roadblocks with design and technical decisions there, and will have to circle back once I get a few closely related projects done...

So I slightly changed gears and over the more recent past I've been working on writing my own BBS software in order to fill some of the holes in my own wishlist between the available platforms. I figure once that gets to a decent level of usability I can start wrapping in and continuing development on some of the other avenues.

While I am not quite ready to put something up for public testing on the BBS software, it's starting to get close. But on that end I am looking for a bit of input if people have it.

First, some context:
I've been writing modules in a way that they allow for
easy scaling of different text "resolutions" and look good at 132x37 16:9, for instance. Similarly, I think I've cracked the nut of being able to auto-detect utf8 vs cp437 terminals.

So the first question I have, is whether to prioritize position and size translation, like for instance automatically centering and letterboxing door games in "High res" scren modes, whether to prioritize on the fly translation between cp437-utf8 for externals like doors.... OR, whether to start implementing RIP.

All three of those options sound appealing and fun to me, but which one I choose to work on may affect what I get ready for testing and the timeframe of such.

Anyways, feedback and thoughts would be appreciated.
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Underminer - The Undermine BBS
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
* Origin: The Undermine - bbs.undermine.ca (1:134/101)

Sounds like fun. Is this something for you, or can the rest of us try it out
at some point?

door games in "High res" scren modes, whether to prioritize on the fly translation between cp437-utf8 for externals like doors.... OR, whether
to start implementing RIP.

By cp437 do you mean ANSI? Or is it different? RIP is neat, but does anything use it anymore?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The Epoch BBS - 1:134/302 (1:134/302)

Re: Re: Development and Testing
By: Crono to Underminer on Tue Apr 04 2023 06:40 pm

Sounds like fun. Is this something for you, or can the rest of us try it out at some point?

I'll definitely setup an accessible test board if you're asking from a user perspective, and will likely make the repo semi-available if people want to try out the system itself once it's a little more mature.

By cp437 do you mean ANSI? Or is it different? RIP is neat, but does

Yes, CP437 is the old dos codepage. Most modern systems use UTF8.
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Underminer - The Undermine BBS
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
* Origin: The Undermine - bbs.undermine.ca (1:134/101)