re mgr naplps gui bbs frontends hi all i am looking into methods i can use to turn my linux based bbs into a full color graphical bbs that supports pc mac linux and amiga callers originally i was inspired by the naplps graphics standard a summary of which hit this group about weeks ago i posted that document forgot part etc but it was more than a summary it was a complete technical description of the protocol it can be ftped from simtel or from wuarchive wustl edu in mirrors msdos naplps following up on software availability of naplps supporting software i find that most terminal programs are commercial the only resonable shareware one being pp which runs soley on msdos machines leaving mac and amiga users to buy full commercial software if they want to try out the bbs i know i wouldn t next most interesting possibility is to port mgr to pc mac amiga i why not write a naplps decoder for your choice of platform and release the code to the net then other willing souls can help port it to other platforms naplps was designed for this type of online interactive graphics much the same as x but while x is intended for high bandwidth network connections naplps was optimized for low bandwidth modem connections is there a color version of mgr for linux does anyone have any other suggestions for a linux based gui bbs i m sure you will receive other suggestions but look at it this way if you wanted to provide a full network connection to linux over a modem would you use slip ppp or would you invent some new way most people would say that slip ppp exist and are reasonably well designed protocols so lets just implement them i see it the same way with naplps it is an existing well thought out extensible protocol for online graphics so why not implement it if you need any advice on implementation just e mail me i am currently getting a beta version of my coreldraw to naplps converter working well enough to release it by may if you or someone else does not get going on a freely available naplps decoder then i intend to do it after i get a my conversion program out of beta and get a couple of other things done michael dillon internet mpdillon halcyon halcyon com c powerhouse fidonet rr armstrong bc v e b voice canada bbs
