[nos-bbs] This BBS Download and Upload command stuff ...

[maiko at pcs.mb.ca]

Skip wrote :

> I guess I'll go on record with the BBS "Download" and "Upload" command
> failures as a bug too.

Since this has been explained in great detail already, I'll just say that
I'm actually glad that you brought it up, since I never did know what the
Upload and Download commands did. After *CHECKING THE SOURCE*, I finally
figured it out, and tried it for myself.

Kind of cool actually, from the OLD days, I could it being usefull in the
case where I'm out in the field (field day maybe) and want to quickly cut
and paste some data to the file back on the home server, where someone
else could retrieve it. Gosh, I love dreaming out these scenarios :-)

> On my jnos2.0d the Download command lists the remote file on the
> terminal, no file is created in the local jnos file directory.

By design, from the looks of it - perhaps not well documented, or is it ?

The original 1.11 docs say 'sends a plain ASCII text file', perhaps a
better wording might be 'dumps the file to current session or display',
anyways, you get the idea.

> On my jnos2.0d the Upload command expects the user to enter the file
> content on the terminal, a file is created on the remote site.

The original document says 'Transfer an ASCII file from your system onto
disk at this host'. This is a bit unclear. Many packet radio software for
instance has an interesting feature that allows you to read in a file into
your *current session*. PR4WIN was (is) a beautiful example of this. You
are connected to JNOS and then you issue the 'U filename' command. After
you are prompted to enter the data, you select an option in the PR4WIN
menu to dump the contents of a file from your local machine. You can
even put the /EX at the end of the file, and voila - it's done.

PR4WIN was one of my favorite terminals of it's time. I thought it
was a very nice package. Perhaps I need to go back and see where it
last left off.

> Before this situation is repaired per the documentation, I'd like to
> pose and alternative action.

I don't plan on changing the functionality. I think it was meant for
those cases were people had the WINPACK, or PR4WIN, or whatever. Actually
quite good feature for those older ways of doing things.

> Documentation now explains the file will be transferred between jnos
> nodes, presumably created under the identical name as the source.

I know what you mean, but now that we understand the D and U and how
it works, it should be a simple matter of adjusting the documents to
reflect that.

Best regards,

Maiko Langelaar / VE4KLM