Help and text
Installation - Help & Text Files
A full set of help files are included with your Color 64 package, but no text files. The Help Files and Text Files work the same, so use the Help Files as a guide when setting up your text files. There needs to be a file in the Help Files disk called "@help files". Notice that instead of having a check mark as the first character of the filename, it has an “@” symbol. This symbol will prevent the file from showing up in the download directory, but still allow your remote SYSOPs to download, scratch and re-upload these files as necessary. As a matter of fact, anyone can download these help files (you will just have to tell them how). This is an easy way for your callers to download them if their terminal program does not support an ASCII file capture.
Both the Help and Text files are optional features for your BBS. I recommend you have at least the HELP files available for new users to the BBS scene.
The "@help files" file is a menu file that when read should tell your callers what number to enter to read the desired file. This menu file can be in any format you want, even use graphics if desired and you can use any number of numbers in any order you want. Each help file on disk should have the filename format of "@help1", "@help2", "@help3", etc. When your caller enters "1", they will read "@help1".
Text files work the same only you use "@text files" to describe “@text1", "@text2", etc. If the "@text files" file is not on the disk when a caller asks for the text files, he will see a message saying that there are not any text files online. Same goes for the "@help files" file. There is not any limit to the maximum number of help files or text files allowed other than the amount of free space on your disk drive. If you think you will need more than the BBS-limited number of message lines to support your text file, then use the stand-alone message editor (+EDITOR) which permits up to 500 lines. Be creative in what you want to have as text files. This can help support the uniqueness of your BBS. For my system, I scour the internet for the latest news and Color 64 BBS Lists and populate those into several different text files. You could do something like recipes, latest movie reviews, trends, etc.
After editing all the system messages, you should use a file copier to copy all the sample help files onto the disk you assigned on the drive assignments screen of SETUP. Then use MSG EDITOR to read (and if necessary, edit) each of these help files. They will tell you and all your new users how to use this BBS to its fullest.
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