*** Answering a msg posted in area UTF-8 (UTF-8).

Hello Michiel!

Thursday September 10 2026 13:04, you wrote to me:

I’ve had a lot of problems with FMail.

MvdV> Othe than most Fidonet software Fmail is till under development. Just
MvdV> contact Wilfred.

Yes, I’ll do that. But for now, we need to take things step by step. First, bring GoldED+ to a stable branch. Second, restore the functionality of node 2:5020/400 (which, by the way, is the main reason I started working on GoldED+ in the first place: I plan to make this Usenet gateway fully UTF-8 compatible, but I didn’t have a tool that would let me test it across different encodings, so I have to write it from scratch first). Okay, that’s all off-topic, let’s get back to the main subject.

First, it doesn’t support BSD systems for building (this is easy
to fix, but requires testing).

MvdV> The linux version is relatively new. Apparently there has not been
MvdV> much demand yet among the Fmail users or else someone would have
MvdV> picked that up...
MvdV> AFAIK the source is available...

Exactly. I even tried making some changes to its code so it would compile on a BSD system. And I actually managed to do it.

I had to replace “linux” with “unix” in many places, but in the end, some parts actually worked. However, as hpt’s experience shows, BSD systems have their own quirks that need to be taken into account. I think I’ll work on refining FMail later, at the same level as I’m currently doing with other software. At the very least, I’d like to use it on my own system.

Second, there’s no support for Amiga Style Outbound.

MvdV> Wilfred is the head of what is left of Amiga net. So once again there
MvdV> does not seem to be a demand for that. Apparently even the head of
MvdV> what is left of the Amiga crowd dows not need it. So why do you need
MvdV> ASO? Does anyone still use it?

Oh! And here’s something from my personal wish list. I actually like ASO much more than the classic Binkley-style. And for a very long time now, I’ve been using only this type of outbound format on all my systems, even those that have nothing to do with the Amiga. It turned out to be a very well-designed file storage format, and, most importantly, the files are named in an intuitive way.

Third, there’s no option to import from the husky fidoconfig/hpt
config file.

MvdV> Never needed that either... ;-)

Well, I'll have to, since I use hpt or fidogate everywhere. And in R50, it's the most commonly used tosser. So support for its configuration files for conversion definitely needs to be added. This isn't difficult, since hpt uses a text-based configuration file.

And yes, it also can’t handle character encodings, whereas hpt
already has some code for that.

MvdV> Of course in the 8 bit age - which regarding Fidonet we have hardly
MvdV> left behind - there never was a need for handling character encodings
MvdV> in a TOSSER. On the contrary a tosser that is fully 8 bit transparent
MvdV> is all you need and want. If it is 8 bit agnostic, it can deal with
MvdV> messages in ANY encoding. Or so I thought.

MvdV> But now with UTF-8 it goes wrong when long strings need to be
MvdV> truncated. I never realised there was a problem with that, up until
MvdV> now I thought that full 8 bit transparency was enough to deal wit
MvdV> UTF-8. But now I discover that Fmail also truncates when converting
MvdV> from a base with large headers to *.pkt.

MvdV> I think Wilfred can fix that...

But here, yes, the decision is up to Wilfred first and foremost. UTF-8 works with characters rather than bytes, so the old mechanisms are largely inapplicable. And I've run into this many times while developing GoldED+.

In addition, it would be a good idea to add support for SQLite3 message databases.

Here's an important point: unlike hpt—whose code is now difficult to modify since its maintainer is no longer active online — FMail's code is active and under development.

Eugene

... It's full of stars!
--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20260905 (NetBSD 11.0 Intel Core Haswell)
* Origin: FireFox Station (2:5075/35)