MSGID: 1:18/200.0 5d99700a   
   REPLY: 1:261/38.0 e3c07e71   
   Hi Janis,   
      
    JK>   I use a bash script I wrote ages ago to   
    JK> 'print' the fidogazette to the echo, create the    
    JK> archive, make the reports in   
    JK> the 'zine, and hatch it out.. it all looked like greek to me :)   
      
   When I switched my BBS over to ArcaOS from Slackware, I rewrote a lot of my   
   scripts from bash over to REXX.  With Arca, however, a lot of your basic core   
   programs have been ported over, such as sed and awk.  Many of the little   
   scripts I wrote, such as one that grabs a weekly newsletter from an amateur   
   radio website and converts it to CP437-based text, were basically a direct   
   port.   
      
   Now the script I wrote that runs MakeNL, creates the nodelist and infopack for   
   Micronet, copies the nodelist over for my nodelist compiler, and runs NEF to   
   hatch and announce the files as well as run cURL to upload the two archives to   
   my website was ported directly to REXX.   
      
   I have a script that scrapes the text-based local forecast for my area from my   
   local NWS's website, converts it to CP437, and posts it hourly as a text   
   bulletin to my BBS.  I also wrote one that grabs the Telnet BBS Guide monthly   
   list and hatches it out in Micronet.   
      
   There is only one that I cannot port unfortunately and that is because   
   "expect", part of the Tcl/Tk toolkit, hasn't been ported to OS/2-Arca.  I am   
   trying to find a workalike but so far I don't see one.  I did add Pete   
   Norloff's entire OS2BBS filebase, about 11 GB worth of files or around 22,000   
   files, into my BBS.  It was pretty easy since Pete ran Maximus 2.02 and I run   
   Maximus/2 v3.01.  Just copied the file areas onto my hard drive, set them up   
   in FILEAREA.CTL then ran "fbp -a". :D   
      
   If you want, I could share some of these smaller scripts I've written.    
   They're nothing fancy or difficult though the one for the Micronet weekly   
   maintenance is a bit hectic (and I am hesitant to share that one).   
      
   I have found that my curiosity about writing scripts has helped me immensely   
   in many things, not only just BBSing, but working in IT in general.  It's nice   
   to know how to automate some rather boring and mindless tasks :)   
      
   Later,   
   Sean   
      
   P.S. I use "links" heavily in scraping websites.  Its built-in capacity to   
   properly "dump" HTML to text as well as converting the text to CP437 is a huge   
   help.  "Lynx" does the same and it will automatically create footnotes with   
   the full dumps of all URLs listed on a page.  I don't need that for now so I   
   use "links".   
      
      
   --- Maximus/2 3.01   
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