Area Definitions

This section explains in detail how to create an area. An area can be either a FidoNet echomail area or a Usenet newsgroup. It is possible for both FidoNet style users and UUCP style users to be subscribed (as we call it) to the same area. If a message has to be sent to both UUCP and FidoNet style users, WaterGate automatically translates the message.

So, if you want to give your points access to newsgroups, then just create the areas and subscribe the points to them. It works the same the other way around: if you want a UUCP system to receive FidoNet echomail, then just create the area and connect the UUCP user.

This has two advantages. First, you only have to define an area once and, second, WaterGate can bundle the message very quickly. If it is an echomail message, WaterGate first bundles it for all subscribed FidoNet users, then translates it (if there are any connected UUCP users), and finally bundles it for all the UUCP users. (In fact, WaterGate can even be extended to use another formats in the future and was designed with that in mind).

To create a new area, select "Area definitions" from WtrConf's main menu. You will then be presented with a list of all 26 groups (A to Z). Select one group (or more, using tagging with F5, F6 and F7) that you want to see all the areas from. Then press enter.

If you have a lot of areas (1000+), it might take a while before the list with all the areas names has been constructed. It is possible to abort the construction of the list of areas by pressing Escape. But in the end, you will have a sorted list with all the areas and the header line of the lists will show the groups you selected.

You can now press Insert to add a new area, or press the Delete key to remove one. If you want to look at one or edit it, put the cursor on top of the area name and press Enter. If you want to go back to the previous menu, just press Escape.

After pressing Enter or Insert, you are presented with the screen on the following page. It contains all the settings you can change for a certain area. You can use the up and down cursor keys to move through all the fields. If you want to change a field, you have to press Enter first.

If you want to exit the screen, you can press Escape or F10 (escape is more like abort, but they act the same). If you are creating a new area, you are asked if you want to save the new area. If you select Yes, certain fields have to be filled in correctly and WtrConf checks that for you.

Some of the fields contain the text "<press enter to ...>". If the cursor is on one of these fields and you press enter to edit it, you will be presented another screen. The same thing happens when you edit the "In groups" field.

Area Editor

Area name

The first two lines of the screen hold the area names for FidoNet and Usenet. Normally these names will be the same, but is possible to change the name of an area. We could change the Fido name to "WTRGATE.028", for example.

If you enter a name in the "Fido name" field, and there is no name in the "Usenet name" field, it is automatically copied. The same thing happens if you enter an area name in the Usenet name field and the Fido name field is empty. This saves you some typing and prevents errors.

Comment

You can use the Comment field to describe the message flow in this area. This line is put in lists that AreaFix or newsfix create, to make it is easy for your users to see which area might be interesting to connect.

Area type

There are three types of areas: echo, net, and local. "Local" is an area that is connected to a message base on your hard disk (more on that later), "net" stands for netmail. This way you can define other-than-the-primary netmail areas. The usual setting though is "echo", which stands for Echomail. Echo is also the option if you want to say "pass-through", although all areas are pass-through until you connect them to a message base (explained below).

In groups

This field shows all the groups to which this area belongs. If you press Enter to edit this field, the line turns into a list with not only the group letter, but also the full description.

To add another group, press Insert and select (with Enter) a group from the other list that pops up. To remove the area from a group, select the group and press the Delete key. You can also use tagging to add or remove more than one group at a time.

Subscribers

If you press enter on this field, you will be presented with a list of the users connected to the area. You can use the Insert key to add a user or the Delete key to remove a user; you can also tag lists of users to add or remove. If you try to remove a user, WtrConf asks you to confirm your choice.

If you want to add a user, WtrConf scans the configured users and only lists the users that are allowed to connect the area. These users must be allowed in a group that contains this area.

If you are finished editing the list of subscribed users, you can press Escape to exit the list and return to the area screen.

Allow passive

If nobody is subscribed to an area anymore, you can let WaterGate send a message to the provider (uplink) of the area and have it disconnected, thereby saving you transmission costs for an area that nobody reads.

If this options is set to NO, WaterGate will never disconnect the area. This is especially useful for local message bases.

WaterGate assumes that the last person connected to the area (when everybody else has disconnected it) is the provider.

Passive

This field shows the current state of the area. If it has been disconnected from your uplink, WaterGate sets it to YES. If it is still connected, it is on NO. You can toggle this setting manually, but no message will be sent to your uplink. (Future versions will do this, after asking for confirmation.)

Origin

You can select which system origin line will be used for this area. You can also select Custom and enter a special origin line for this area in the next field.

The origin line is put at the bottom of a message when WaterGate translates a message from UUCP to FidoNet, or when it exports a message from a message base and no origin line is present.

Custom

You can enter a custom origin line for this area in this field. To activate it, you also have to set the previous field to "Custom".

Origin AKA

Every area belongs to a certain network. Here you can select your system AKA for the network this area belongs to. When you create a new area, the AKA is copied from the "Default origin AKA" of the first group that includes this area. This AKA is also put at the end of an origin line.

Add SEEN-BY

If your system has more than one AKA in a network and you want other AKA's to be added to the SEEN-BY list, you can select them in this list. You have to press Enter first to see the list. The Origin AKA for this area is always added to the SEEN-BY line and doesn't need to be put in this list.

Moderated and Moderator

These two fields relate to Usenet. If an area is moderated, then all new messages for an area have to be sent to the moderator first. If the moderator approves the message, it is then sent to the newsgroup.

If a new message arrives in a moderated area without an "Approved:" header, WaterGate converts the message into a UUCP e-mail and sends it to the moderator. If no moderator is defined for the newsgroup, it is sent to the backbone defined in the System configuration section, which defaults to "berkeley.edu". For example, a message in ALT.BBS.XYZ is sent to ALT-BBS-XYZ@Berkeley.edu.

If you are unsure about any of this, DON'T USE THIS OPTION; let another system upstream take care of it. If someone you know moderates the area, enter his address in the "Moderator" field.

Fido base and path

If you want all messages in the area to be put in a message base as well as being passed on to subscribers, you can select the type of the message base in the "Fido base" field and fill in the path to the message base in "Fido path". You can select a message base type from *.MSG, Squish, and JAM. For a *.MSG area you need to fill in the complete directory name; for Squish and JAM you also need to include a filename (without extension).

Fido age and limit

You can use WtrUtil to automatically clean the message bases. If certain messages are too old or there are too many messages in an area, they can be removed automatically.

You can enter the maximum age of a message (in days) in the "Fido age" field and the maximum number of messages that can be in an area at any one time in "Fido limit".

Note that when there are too many message in an area, the oldest messages are deleted first. The deletion is not automatic: you have to use WtrUtil to remove them.

If you don't want to remove messages by age or limit, you can see the field to 0.

Decode files

WaterGate can automatically detect and decode UU-encoded, XX-encoded and MIME encoded files from messages. It extract the file and saves it to disk.

It does this when the messages is imported into a message base. This prevents the messages from being split in numerous smaller parts which you otherwise had to put together and decode manually.

Using this option you can enable and disable the automatic decoding of files from messages that are imported into this message base.

Notice that WaterGate currently only support extracting files from messages that are imported into a *.MSG base. JAM and Squish support will follow in a future version.

Files path

The automatically decoded files can be stored in a different location (download area?!) for each message base. You can enter the path to that directory in this field.
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Last updated 13 October 1996