The TOM/Ayourk BBS Client has many advanced features, some of which are unique to this client, and require specific user actions to activate. Most of the features covered in the Configuration Options are automatic,a and require no user interaction. Only two features which requires specific user actions are not covered here. The Friends list is covered in both The Basics and Configuration Options. Macros are described in detail in Configuration Options.
One of the most useful features of the client is its ability to capture text from the BBS. Captured text is placed in a special temp file, which is placed in your .tabbs Directory. This file can be used to send a post or group of x'es to a user's Mail>, to a friend's email address, or to let you keep a copy of something special.
Once something has been Captured, it's usually best to get to a shell, or something to copy it to anywhere you want first. This is because the temp file is also used in creating posts. Anytime you post, you must either clear the temp file, or put its contents into the post. If there's something in the temp file, the client will ask if you want to delete it. Answering No will place the stuff in the temp file into the post, while answering Yes will delete it. If you answer No, and use the external editor to delete the stuff, you will lose the information.
If you've captured something you want to save, or send via email, then you'll probably want to copy the file to a safe place, and give it a name that makes sense. Please see the BBS Specific Files section to figure out what the temp file is named.
AutoReply is one of the most used, and most desired client features. It originated in the IO ERROR client, back in 1995, and the TOM/Ayourk BBS Client was started to add that feature to the Isoroku client, the most popular client alternative at the time.
The AutoReply feature will automatically reply to any eXpress Message you receive with a short note which you define. There are some limitations, however. If you receive more than one eXpress Message at a time, only the last eXpress Message will be replied to. This doesn't usually happen, though, so it's unlikely you'll have people missing replies.
As with most things, though, TOM didn't like the way AutoReply worked in the IO ERROR client, so he changed to suit his own tastes. With other clients, the AutoReply feature is more of an Away From Keyboard feature. Pressing any key with the feature turned on turns it off automatically. The TOM/Ayourk BBS Client doesn't work like that. It's a generic AutoReply, that is turned off only under specific conditions.
First, you can press the key sequence to explicitly turn it off, second, you can press <x> to send an eXpress Message, or lastly, pressing <ctrl-X> to read old eXpress Messages will turn it off. This lets you read and enter posts without the worry of replying to eXpress Messages.
To activate the AutoReply feature, you must press the Macro Key, followed by <i>. The same key sequence can be used to turn it off.
Before you can activate the feature, though, you need to define a message for it to send to other users. This message should be only one line long, and end with two <ctrl-M> characters. You create this message by creating a macro for the letter 'i'. Follow the directions on creating a macro here.
Version 2.16 introduced a new feature for autoreply. This new feature will automatically set you as "away" when you've been idle for a specified amount of time, and will turn it back off when you press any key.
To aid users in replying to eXpress Messages, the TOM/Ayourk BBS Client has five special keys which insert names for sending eXpress Messages, profiling users, and sending Mail>.
First are the <ctrl-N> and <ctrl-P> keys. Pressing <ctrl-N> will insert the name of the user whose post or eXpress Message you last read. Repeatedly pressing this key will scroll through the last 20 names in reverse order. Pressing <ctrl-P> will go through the same list of names in forward order. The TOM/Ayourk BBS Client provides both of these since it's very easy to hit <ctrl-N> one too many times, and end up on the wrong name. Pressing <ctrl-P> will take you back to the one you missed.
Second are <ctrl-F> and <ctrl-G> which are unique to this client. Pressing <ctrl-F> will insert the first name on your Friends list. Repeated presses will go through the Friends list in alphabetical order. <ctrl-G> goes through the Friends list in reverse alphabetical order. You are probably wondering what's so great about that. Well, sometimes TAB completion, described below, doesn't always yield the name you wanted. If the user completed is a friend, and you wanted a friend near that, you can quickly use <ctrl-F> and <ctrl-G> to get to the right user.
Lastly, and probably most useful is TAB completion. This lets you type the first part of a username, press TAB, and get the rest of the name. TAB completion works by looking at the list of all the users in your friends list, your enemies list, the list of names available by pressing <ctrl-N> and <ctrl-P>, and, if you've checked which of your friends are online, the entire list of online users (at the time you checked for online friends).
When you make a post, you have the option of running an external editor to make changes, correct spelling mistakes, etc. When writing an eXpress Message, you don't have that option. Well, the TOM/Ayourk BBS Client provies some features which aid a little with that stuff. Ayourk got tired of the normal limitations, and added a bunch of new goodies. Ayourk also dislikes going into an external editor for simple changes, so this stuff applies to posts, as well.
First, the caveats. The line editing features work in INSERT mode by default. That means that if you move the cursor backwards, and start typing, the stuff you type will be placed before the old stuff. The old stuff won't be lost. You can turn off INSERT mode by pressing <ctrl-T>. Doing that will cause the old stuff to be overwritten by the new stuff. This provides editing of a single line only. If you try to insert stuff beyond what will fit on one line, the client will simply stop taking input. Most of the keystrokes follow an EMACS style, like pico and jove, two very popular editors do. I know many of you prefer vi, but implementing vi-like controls would have required a lot of extra work, and Ayourk doesn't like vi, anyway.
PING and .line, etc.
The .import feature is currently a BETA feature, and as such may not be available if you compiled the client yourself.
This feature is used to import text files into your eXpress Messages. It cannot be used to send a large text file to a user, since the other user might not find it nearly so pleasant as you. The text is taken from your temp file; the same temp file that's used for capturing. You can specify a separate file to get the text from, too.
To use this feature, simply place
.import
on a line by itself. To specify getting text from a different file, use:
.import filename
where filename is the name of the file to use.
There's some other stuff that can be done with this feature, but won't be documented for now, as it's still considered a BETA feature.