• Bulletin MPL program

    From Dennis Katsonis@1:229/2 to All on Friday, January 21, 2022 12:09:00
    From: nospam.Dennis.Katsonis@f1.n770.z88.fidonet.org

    As part of the prelogin for Mystic, we execute the MPL program "Bulletin" as such
    bulletin bulletin bullet check

    The problem I have with the latest, Mystic 1.12 Alpha 47 on Raspberry Pi is the check for new bulletins doesn't seem to work. In fact, it doesn't seem to run.
    I createa new bulleting (bullet6.ans) and update bulletin.asc in my theme directory
    /mystic/themes/neon/text/bulletin.asc

    I have "(GX) Execute MPL program" in the prelogin menu, with "bulletin bulletin bullet check" in data, but if I createa new bulletin in the themes text directory, it doesn't get picked up on login as a new bulletin. It doesn't appear the check is run at all. I can see the check for New Electronic Mail, but there is no indication that a check for new bulletins occurs. I recall that I would see this check even if there were no bulletins.

    Nothing appears in the error log about this. I upgraded from A46 to A47, and I think this is when this check stopped working.

    Is there a way to run this MPL program manually? If I can do that, I can see if there is an error or something blocking it from running. At least then, I can start troubleshooting.

    ... Dennis

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
  • From Dennis Katsonis@1:229/2 to All on Friday, January 21, 2022 13:13:29
    From: nospam.Dennis.Katsonis@f1.n770.z89.fidonet.org

    Re: Bulletin MPL program
    By: Dennis Katsonis to All on Fri Jan 21 2022 12:09 pm

    As part of the prelogin for Mystic, we execute the MPL program "Bulletin" as such
    bulletin bulletin bullet check

    The problem I have with the latest, Mystic 1.12 Alpha 47 on Raspberry Pi is check for new bulletins doesn't seem to work. In fact, it doesn't seem to r
    I createa new bulleting (bullet6.ans) and update bulletin.asc in my theme directory
    /mystic/themes/neon/text/bulletin.asc

    I have "(GX) Execute MPL program" in the prelogin menu, with "bulletin bulle bullet check" in data, but if I createa new bulletin in the themes text directory, it doesn't get picked up on login as a new bulletin. It doesn't appear the check is run at all. I can see the check for New Electronic Mail but there is no indication that a check for new bulletins occurs. I recall that I would see this check even if there were no bulletins.

    Nothing appears in the error log about this. I upgraded from A46 to A47, an think this is when this check stopped working.

    Is there a way to run this MPL program manually? If I can do that, I can se if there is an error or something blocking it from running. At least then, can start troubleshooting.

    ... Dennis

    I have found I can run it manually, but it doesn't detect that the files are newer than the user last login date.

    FindFirst (Root + PreFix + '*.*', 63);

    While DosError = 0 Do Begin
    If DirTime > UserLastOn And Upper(Copy(DirName, 1, Pos('.', DirName) - 1)) <
    'BULLETIN' Then Begin
    InStr := Copy(DirName, 7, Pos('.', DirName) - 7) + ' '


    Is there a way to print the "DirTime"? I'm not too familiar with Python, but I suspect this is where things are going wrong. The DirTime and UserLastOn are not what they are expected to be.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
  • From Dennis Katsonis@1:229/2 to All on Friday, January 21, 2022 14:55:41
    From: nospam.Dennis.Katsonis@f1.n770.z91.fidonet.org

    Re: Bulletin MPL program
    By: Dennis Katsonis to All on Fri Jan 21 2022 01:13 pm

    FindFirst (Root + PreFix + '*.*', 63);

    While DosError = 0 Do Begin
    If DirTime > UserLastOn And Upper(Copy(DirName, 1, Pos('.', DirName) - 1 <
    'BULLETIN' Then Begin
    InStr := Copy(DirName, 7, Pos('.', DirName) - 7) + ' '

    I have found that changing "UserLastOn" to "DateU2D(UserLastON)" seems to bring about the desired behaiviour.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
  • From Dennis Katsonis@1:229/2 to All on Saturday, January 22, 2022 10:31:00
    From: nospam.Dennis.Katsonis@f1.n770.z96.fidonet.org

    g00r00 wrote to Dennis Katsonis <=-

    @MSGID: <61EAECFE.92.fidomystic@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    @REPLY: <61EA07E7.88.fidomystic@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Nothing appears in the error log about this. I upgraded from A46 to
    A47, and I think this is when this check stopped working.

    Did you follow the update instructions in upgrade.txt for A47? There
    is a step specifically for the default bulletin MPL program:

    - If you use the default bulletin system (bulletin.mps) then you
    should
    replace it with the newer one otherwise you will probably get an
    error
    trying to compile it:

    install extract bulletin.mps c:\mystic\themes\default\scripts

    Afterwards you will need to recompile it using "mplc -t"

    Is there a way to run this MPL program manually? If I can do that, I
    can see if there is an error or something blocking it from running. At least then, I can start troubleshooting.

    You can run MPL programs from the command line if you wanted to, but
    first lets confirm the above step. It looks like the upgrade
    instruction steps actually tell you to run "mplc -t" before the step to copy over the new bulletin.mps so that could explain it too.

    ... Reward for a job well done: More work

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/01/19 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: Sector 7 * Mystic WHQ (1:129/215)

    Thanks, I did follow the instructions. With a bit more digging I was able to change a line of code in bulletin.mps to get it to seem to work. See my later follow up post. A bug in bulletin.mps perhaps?

    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)