Information AboutQwk |
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QWK was originally developed by Mark "Sparky" Herring in 1987 for systems running the popular PCBoard bulletin board system, and was based on PCBoard's layout for message and forum files. QWK was essentially a way to collect up messages from PCBoard's internals and re-package them into a single file. Architecture Like other offline readers, QWK was similar in concept to the Fidonet as a whole: messages for a particular user are gathered up by the BBS-side QWK software, compressed using an application such as PKZIP , and then transferred to the user. This is usually accomplished via a "door" program running on the BBS system, which collects up mail and selected forum messages into a single file, compresses it and several "control" files into a single archive with the .QWK File Extension (and typically the BBSes "id" name as the filename), then sends it to the user automatically using the self-starting feature of the ZModem protocol. Once the resulting file has been received by the user, the steps are reversed to extract the files from the archive and then open then in a client-side "reader". Again, these individual steps are typically automated to a degree, meaning that the user simply has to invoke the door software on the BBS and then run the client, the intermediary steps being automated. QWK originally did not include any functionality for uploading replies, but this was quickly addressed as QWK became more popular. QWK placed replies in a .REP file (again, typically with the BBSes "id" as the name) that was exchanged automatically the next time the user called in. Another problem with the QWK system was a number of hard-coded limits to various fields, notably things like the subject line. This made it less than useful for non-FidoNet messages, and led to the creation of the SOUP format. SOUP was essentially a version of QWK with support for much longer fields, as well as the addition of several new fields as standard to support things threading and routing. Use QWK clients varied widely in functionality, but all of them offered basic e-mail and public forum support. QWK was aware of the difference between these two functions, whereas FidoNet sent public messages, known as ''Echomail'', by sending a "special" e-mail to the BBS. Prior to the introduction of QWK and similar systems, it was not uncommon for users with large message volumes to set up their own FidoNet nodes to quickly gather up their mail, but QWK dramatically reduced the required setup to almost zero, and dramatically increased the number of users of offline mail. QWK Format is also used and has been used for years similarly to FTN as a means of message forum syndication. This software include Synchronet, Wildcat Winserver and others. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS |