WWIV 5.7.0 Preview release

[wwiv]

We are happy to announce a prerelease (aka release candidate, tech preview) of WWIV 5.6 is available
as the stable release of WWIV BBS for Linux and Windows.

WWIV 5.7 is the 7th major release after the long-awaited 5.0 release and in addition to native
WWIVnet support (no more DOS dependencies) on all platforms, supports native Fido Technology
Networking (FTN) Support and fully customizable menus.

System Requirements:

Win32: Windows 7 or later using MS Visual C++ 2019 Community Edition.
Linux: GCC 8.3 (or later) on (Debian10, Centos7 with SCL, or Ubuntu 20.04)
CMake 3.13 or newer

Title	Link
Main Web Site	https://www.wwivbbs.org
Documentation	http://docs.wwivbbs.org
Code	http://github.com/wwivbbs/wwiv

Upgrade notes.

Please read upgrade.txt in the distribution for more specific upgrade notes from 5.6

New Features/Changes

+ Improve autoblocker in wwivd (#1359)
  WWIV's autoblocker now gives variable automatic blocking for fixed
  time periods 4 times before adding a permanent ban to badips.txt.
  The way you trigger the blocking is to have more than X connections within
  Y seconds, where X and Y are defined in wwivconfig's wwivd blocking page.
  ** You may want to delete badip.txt or rename it to something else, it likely
     has more systems in it than you intended to block **
* Removed the following from wwiv.ini:
  CHECK_DUP_PHONES       = N 
  HANGUP_DUP_PHONES      = N 
  The first never worked, therefore neither did the second and also isn't really
  need anymore.
+ Added new setting in wwivconfig for fine grained newuser info.
! Add granular control over which profile information must be provided by new users (#845)
  By default wwivconfig should match what you had in wwiv.ini, but please take a look
  also please remove the following from wwiv.ini since they are confusing and 
  these values are now controlled by wwivconfig:
  * EXTENDED_USERINFO
  * NEWUSER_MIN
  * TEMP_DIRECTORY
  * BATCH_DIRECTORY
  * NUM_INSTANCES  
  * WFC_SCREEN
+ Add new page in wwivconfig for setting which fields are required, optional, and unused.
+ Set newuser to internal fsed not first external editor
+ Added chain pause functionality (#1379) - thanks to DMXrob
* Fix IsPhoneRequired for login. We don't have NEWUSER_MIN anymore.
+ Added yourinfo.msg to the list of gfiles/ wwiv uses.
  This will replace the internal YourInfo hardcoded info that is displayed
   if this file exists, otherwise we'll fall back to the hardcoded one.
+ Added @z macro to display the upload/download ratio for the user.
+ When toggling expert mode, WWIV will now display the status of expert
  mode or not unless "quiet=on" is passed to the menu command as data.
* Still allow HandleControlKey to work with bgetch_event. (#1382)
* Added ACS user.guest, and cleaned up menu and newuser routines a bit.
* Let KEY_SSAVE behave like control-Z (#1360)
+ Added user.validated to acs. (#1387)
+ better asv from valuser command (#1388)
* Fix automessage menu: (A)uto reply not working in default menus (#1389)
* Don't add RE: line to email messages.
+ Fix changing user settings for online user gets overwritten (#960)
* Improve display of 'I' information and FTN networks (#1392)
* Fix node instance messages should use new scratch dir not data dir (#1391)
* Don't check for dupes on FTN emails. (#1395)
* Full screen reader not displaying color right when previous line ends in ^A (#1399)
* System crash when setting Transfer QSCAN (#1394)
* Fix PAUSE prompt from loosing current attribute. (#1398)
+ Add FTN network data in net.log for FTN using Fake Network node # (#1393)
* Fix control-a,d,f key handling in fsed.
* Run network3 automatically after editing a network
! --title must be specified for wwivutil email add
* Modem speed in last callers list (#1381)
* Having no networks to load is not an error anymore. (#1400)
+ Added new wwivconfig page (under (G)) for configuring system toggles
    * Remove FAST_TAG_RELIST from wwiv.ini, it was not useful.
    * Removed CLOSE_XFER from wwiv.ini, it was no longer useful
    * Removed SETLDATE from wwiv.ini, it's always true.
    * Removed FORCE_NEWUSER from wwiv.ini. It was never used and the variable
      for it was removed in 5.0 build 14 (around 2001)
    * Removed CHAIN_REG, now that all of the data is in chains.json, there's
      no need to have this variable (which just kept chain.reg from being used)
    * Added system toggle for showing last network connections at logon.
    * Removed EXTENDED_USERINFO from wwiv.ini, it's always true.
    * Removed NEWUSER_MINfrom wwiv.ini, it's not used anymore.
    * Removed OFF_HOOK from wwiv.ini, it wasn't used anymore.
* Don't store intermediate reference to pass to WWIVMessageApi constructor. (#1402)
+ new files fs_msgread.msg and fs_msgscan.msg control the headers for the full
  screen message reader and title list.  Lots of new pipe expression variables
  are available and documented under "Displaying Text" in WWIV's online 
  documentation.
*  Last nework connections no longer displaying (#1403)
! Removed inetaddr.dat.  The data is already in user.lst
* Fix readmail when you have a message header template
* Removed MAIL_WHO_LEN from wwiv.ini, it didn't work well.
* Fixed qscan display error on expert mode (#1405)
* Fixed issue where setting a date < 1970 can crash the bbs
* Add new setting to allow outbound pipe codes for ftn messages. (#1407)
* Work around large filesystems failing the File::freespace_for_path call (#1408)
* HeartCodeFilter needs to handle pipe codes too (#1410)
+ Let ini files support multi-line strings like TOML does (#1411)
    * Add support for a multi-line ini value. Example
    FOO="""This
    is a multline
    value
    """
    * If value is quoted using ", then strip the surrounding quote characters.
* Progress on merge language + menusets together #1414.  Languages and menus are
  now 1-1 vs. 1 language to N menus.  This simplifies many things in the BBS and 
  better matches how folks expect to change these together.
! move menus to top level - Menus are now peers to gfiles/ in the bbs directory
  layout.  Please consider moving yours (mv gfiles/menus menus) and then updating
  the path using wwivconfig.
+ Added strings for yes, no, quit, NN: and PW:
+ Support system location and name display for FTN networks too when the
  nodelist is available and the nodelist base set for the network in wwivconfig.
* System name and location not showing up for your own system (#1419)
* logs dir isn't created automatically on new install (#1417)
* menus.zip is not unzipped during new install (#1416)
* provide a location/sysname on local posts to wwivnet subs
* use 5d address when presenting M_ADR in binkp
+ Broke out State entry from city state to make it clearer and easier. (#1430)
* Use unique cram challenge (#1429)
* Add validation text for FTN address
+ binkp can't answer with mutliple AKAs presented (#1426)
! |{pause} is now |{pausescr}
* Fix Last callers not displaying correct information (#1428)
* name_and_number() should be proper case not upper cas
* Move to next sub? The default is No and should be yes. (#1431)
* Unable to validate new users while they are online (#1432)
* increase default dir and sub size to 500/5000
+ need "bbs" pipe expressions (#1413)
+ Added new pipe expressions, sleep, backprint, and spin
+ Added rainow pipe expression (#1427)
* Added many more {user.xxx} variables. Please see docs.
* Added help on how to save a message created in the internal editor (#1436)
* Errror on resize_file: 32; (#1438)
* Added ability to format pipe variables
* Fix handling of addresses mixed with and without domain names
* Problems emailng FTN networks from BBS (#1439)
* Log says user "hung up" when user logs off (#1440)
+ Add FTN nodelist support into network bbs list viewer (i.e. (B)bsList then (N)etwork. (#1231)
+ After using (B) to bypass a sub (from the reading prompt), don't ask if we want to post (#1437)
+ |{if expr yes no fmt} can now take a format (like pipe variables now)
! Added new strings FIXED_YES and FIXED_NO.
+ Added new pipe expression |{yesno "expression" "fmt"}
* WWIVNet BBS list not working (#1441)
* Fix crash in displaying a generated menu in wwivconfig
! Defaults is now a menu, not a built-in command by default, please make sure
  to update your wwiv menus with the new defaults menu and update main menu.
+ You can now filter text in wwivconfig listboxes by pressing / and then 
  entering the text to filter by.
* add ways to see and change personal info in defaults (#1390)
* Fix crash in listplus after ~130 files
* Support interestingly formed Tic line with addresses (#1445)
* reset the color to |#0 at the end of each kludge line (#1446)
+ When sending FTN emails, try to match by zone and not ask which network to use.
* delete /Z and /S from default menus, they don't exist anymore
+ Need global menu (#1415)
* Don't try to parse FTN addresses in 4.x
+ Check ACS on menusets, and only show ones that are available
+ Initial cut at support for getting the screen size from the remote terminal.
* FTN: just stop on short read error, don't keep retrying bad packets
* litebar width should be full screen not capped at 80 (#1450)
+ user:menus should select the menuset for the caller if only one matches (#1451)
* throwing exception while scanning new messages (#1453)
* screen size detection broken at local console on linux (#1454)
* fullscreen view, bottom bar gets drawn on same line as command line (#1449)
* Fixed wwivconfig not showing 1st menu item.
+ Filenames can now be of the form: basename.MIN_NUM_COLS_NEEDED.extension for dispay.
  example: logon.132.ans or fs_msgread.132.msg (#1456)

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This discussion was created from the release WWIV 5.7.0 Preview release.