Opus v1.79 Feature List

Dedicated to the late John Valentyn

• The files database has been overhauled and made more bullet proof.
• The YooHoo/2u2 handshake should be a little more robust now.
• Opus now supports password override on outgoing calls. Wrong password sessions now log both our and their passwords.
• Modem answer should work more reliably.
• Opus supports the following "baud" rates: 300, 1200, 2400, 4800, 7200, 9600, 12000, 14400, 16800, 19200, 38400, 57600. V34+ and VFC modems should report DCE speed rather than DTE speed to Opus. Alternatively, you can still use a front-end mailer like BinkleyTerm.
• Zmodem send has been overhauled. It should be more robust, and the occasional "freeze" shouldn't occur anymore.
• Adopting files now adopts the file in the current area. In Opus 1.73a the file was adopted into the upload area with the altpath pointing to the actual area. This is not what most people wanted.
• Tilde (~) in dial string nows means half second pause. In prior versions it was machine speed dependent, so a faster machine required many more tildes, in some cases, exceeding the length of the allowable modem command string.
• If you need a shorter pause in a dial string, Accent (`) has been added to pause .05 (1/20th) second.
• Added alt-X as a keyboard exit (exit 1). Keyboard exit, ctl-C, alt-Q or alt-X, now also executes the modem busy string before exiting. This eliminates having to execute an external utility to take the phone offhook after exiting. It also reduces the timing problem where a modem would answer an incoming call during the period that Opus was exiting, and the bat file executed the off_hook utility.
• In multi-tasking environments, Opus now creates XXXXYYYY.BSY fileflags in the outbound directory. This is to provide outbound handling compatibility with Binkley, QMail, and CopyMail (among others).
• File requests now increment the download counter if the file is in an Opus area. The requested file will also be logged in the download log if it's configured.
• In order not to add anymore to the online time, files requested are logged to "reqlogxx.tmp" in the status directory. XX is the task number. After the session is completed, the files database file download counters are updated, and the the download log is updated.
• F_NEW (list new files) function skips permanent (CDROM) areas.
• Xmodem/ymodem/sealink downloads should be more reliable.
• FTS fallback (LoTek) mail sessions should be more reliable.
• Opus can be set up to handle all bundles and files received from passworded nodes as secure, and all inbound from other nodes as not secure. This feature means that there will be 2 inbound (filepath) directories. If you enable this option, Opus will process mail only from the secure inbound directory. You will manually have to examine files, bundles and packets in the non-secure inbound, and if they seem ok, move them to the secure inbound directory so that Opus can process them.
• View contents of ARJ now works with type 4.
• A FTS-0001 session which reports a net/node address of 0/0 is now terminated immediately.
• The log file is now being force written (flushed) to disk. This will allow other windows in multi-tasking environments to view the log in "real time", and called/spawned tasks (like ^OH) can write to the same Opus log without grunging the log.
• Support has been added for the following multi-taskers: MOS, MultiLink, and OS/2 DOS box. To verify that the specified multi-tasker was found, Opus displays the name of the multi-taker found during initialization. Opus also uses the multi-tasker present flag to create the inmail busy flag files.
• The standard DOS idle interupt is called when no multi-tasker is specified or detected. This seems to keep Windows fairly happy.
• Opus should be cleaning up memory blocks a little better when a msg is aborted.
• Opus should handle grunged v7 nodelist entries better.
• Opus should detect blank new user logon questions better.
• You should be able to use numeric digits in ^OR menu lists.
• Re-arranged and added some items to the History menu.
• You should be able to run Opus without having a fossil loaded when OUTPUT = LOCAL in the equipment section, or invoking Opus with -k PROVIDED that your video mode is IBM or BIOS, and not FOSSIL.
• The user statistics should now display files upld/dwnld and netmail credits/debits correctly when the amount is greater than 32767.
• Opus now presents a "new look" for the system operator. The local console screen has been divided into 3 sections. The top section is system status information. Date and time, next event, user name or system net/node, connect speed, etc. The center section will scroll the current activity. The scroll section will work best in ibm or dos video modes. Rather slow in fossil mode. The bottom section will contain file transfer status information.
• Menu selection privilege now takes precedence over the other the other configurable variables.
• Changed the login prompt to "please enter you first and last name".
• The following embedded commands have been added:

   ^FD    display user's birthday 
   ^FE    display user's alias/real name 
   ^FF    display user's address 
   ^FQ    display user's answer 
   ^FT    display user's phone number 

• When a user is on-line, the user's name, city, alias/real name, phone number, priv level, keys, upld/dnld totals, matrix credits/debits, and total calls will be displayed.
• When turning snoop on from the keyboard when a user is online will now clear the screen. This should be helpful if the user is entering something (like in an editor) since it won't be jumbled with whatever residue was still on the screen.
• New and improved MNP filter routine.
• The "responding to/as" log msg will now only be output when Opus is responding as other than the default address.
• Forced unpack (command line -u and matrix menu u)npack) should now unpack only from secure inbound directory.
• Killing a msg should now reset the current and high msg numbers when the highest numbered msg in an area is killed.
• Saving a msg shouldn't take "forever" in those rare circumstances where the timestamp/msgid in the event or common file was way out of date.
• Outgoing calls report cost of call.
• The notices screen (CR while idle) is now on a 1 minute timer. After 1 minute the console screen will be repainted.
• Opus menu colors are now configurable. For the SYSTEM section of the CTL file:

   COLOR CONSOLE HEADER Yellow on Cyan 
   COLOR CONSOLE TIME LightBlue on Black 
   COLOR CONSOLE PROMPT Green on Black 
   COLOR CONSOLE PTEXT LightGreen on Black 
   COLOR CONSOLE LOG Cyan on Black 
   COLOR CONSOLE ERROR LightRed on Black 
   COLOR CONSOLE XSTAT Gray on Black 
   COLOR MENU HEADER White on Blue 
   COLOR MENU PROMPT LightBlue on Black 
   COLOR MENU PTEXT Blue on Black 
   COLOR MENU SELECT White on Green 
   COLOR MENU STEXT LightBlue on Black 
   COLOR PROMPT MORE Cyan on Black

• Zones and points should now display properly in netmail messages.
• Outbound directories don't have to be sorted anymore. Opus should be able to find all the outbound stuff.
• Eliminated the fancy box menu for matrix info for video mode ibm since it caused more problems than it was worth.
• The EID: kludge has been eliminated from echo messages. After studying echo traffic, it appeared to cause false dupe detection about 5% of the time. And when the EID is incorrectly generated, like some braindead software does, false dupe detection jumps up to over 35%. Changed the dupe detection logic from a 16 bit crc to a 32 bit crc, and the crc has been expanded to include the from, to, and subject lines. The subject line is first scanned to eliminate the various flavors of RE: that some braindead software likes to insert. The result is that the killdupe.dat file in each echo area will grow from 6k to 8k. You can now also configure a dupe directory, where Opus will toss all duplicate messages that it detects.
• When insufficient disk space exists during mail bundle unpacking, Opus should stop trying to unpack bundles a little more gracefully.
• Loss of carrier during the external mailer string is now detected.
• All initialization errors are now logged to both video and disk during initialization. (Disk log only if log name specified.)
• The date format of stored messages has been changed so that utilities which export Opus messages without inserting an FTSC compliant date will no longer cause any perceived problems.
• A point node now correctly outputs the ^INTL line in matrix msgs.