March 12, 1995


Dear AppleNET User,

It is with great relief and some trepidation that I present to you what will
probably be the final version of AppleNET.  It's a great relief because it is
finally being released to the Apple II community.  It's with some trepidation
because it marks my exit from the Apple II realm and because there are many
things in AppleNET that remain unimplemented.

There IS a reason why AppleNET just died out.  There wasn't any support for
it from the users.  The more I talked about AppleNET, the more people tended
to shy away from it.  If there WAS any interest in it, I couldn't tell.  The
lack of shareware fee payments from AppleNET 1.5a and the lack of interest
which I perceived were enough to convince me to call it quits and try to
concentrate on my studies instead.

AppleNET Pro v2.0 began sometime in 1992 when METAL became a public domain
product.  METAL represented a major improvement over Applesoft BASIC (which
was what AppleNET was written in, at the time).  Originally, I had promised
that the new BBS software would be out in 1993; unfortunately, you're only
seeing it now.

Actually, AppleNET Pro has been finished since January 1994.  The only reason
it wasn't released back then was because I was determined to get through the
daunting task of writing full documentation for it.  (The Applesoft version's
docs numbered about 100 pages.  This version was set to number double that
amount.)  Unfortunately, the docs never progressed far past the 40th page
when I realized I just didn't have the juice to continue with it.

And so here is my final offering to the Apple II community -- a fully-
functional BBS program.  No features are disabled and best of all, no money
to pay.  The only terms which apply are those of the GNU Public License,
which is enclosed with this archive.  Originally, AppleNET was to be $25
shareware, but seeing as how I'm no longer going to be supporting the
program, I figure it's in the best interests of everyone involved to just
have this be free for everyone.  Feel free to abuse the system as much as you
want.

There are a few people I must thank.  I don't know if any of these people are
still involved with the Apple II anymore since it's been so long that I've
been out of touch with them, but their names deserve mention anyway.

Thanks first and foremost to Michael Potter for letting me use his GEnie
account.  Since I left GEnie, I've been completely out of touch with the
Apple II community and it just showed how important his generosity really
was to keeping me in touch with the A2 folk.

Hats off to Dean Esmay and the rest of the GEnie gang circa 1992.  Dean
was pretty patient with all those missed (self-imposed) deadlines for the
release of AppleNET Pro v2.0 (which was the only reason I was on GEnie at
the time).

Thanks to Erik Kloeppel for just talking about life.

Also, I must mention Doede Boomsma who was really patient with me even after
I had repeatedly delayed the release of AppleNET Pro v2.0.  Doede, if you're
reading this, I still have your disk and would love to mail it back to you.
But I've lost your address, so please mail me!

Finally, thanks to everyone who supported me with their shareware payments
for both AppleNET 1.5a and my Voting Booth (the whole two of them!).



Although I've used AppleNET Pro on my BBS since late January 1994 with few
problems, there ARE bugs in this version.  And there are some places which
look obscure.  Some other features remain unimplemented.  It is up to YOU to
work them out.  Sorry.

What follows is a primer on AppleNET and some of the things which are more
obscure about it.

To toggle your chat status, press Open-Apple-Shift-1 to make yourself
unavailable for chat.  To make yourself available for chat by the user,
press Open-Apple-1.

Sysop status can be toggled the same way.  To give a user temporary sysop
status, press Open-Apple-4.  To remove it, press Open-Apple-Shift-4.
(AppleNET oldtimers will recognize that the "4" comes from the old user
status code of sysops in previous versions of AppleNET.)  BE SURE TO DISABLE
SYSOP ACCESS AFTER THE USER LOGS OFF OR SUBSEQUENT CALLERS WILL ALSO GET
SYSOP STATUS!  The status flag is NOT reset when the user hangs up.

To break into chat, press Open-Apple-C.  To leave chat, use the same key
sequence.

To run a background task (i.e., hide all output and prevent all input from
the remote user), press Open-Apple-L.  Use the same key sequence to bring the
user back.

Sysop passwords are not implemented anywhere.  It should be relatively simple
to rectify that, however.

You SHOULD be able to figure out how the menu system works by looking into
the menus which are already available to you.

AppleNET Pro v2.0 REQUIRES METAL 1.09.02.  I don't believe it will work with
any other version.

Keep a RAM Disk of at least 256k for best performance.


That's all I can think of off-hand.  If you have any basic questions, feel
free to contact me at the address below.  I'm afraid I can't offer technical
support (which is the main reason AppleNET is now free), but I'll try my best
to help as best I can.

The Emporium (which used to be the flagship for AppleNET) is still up and
running as of this date, but we have gone to using FirstClass for the
Macintosh.  Nevertheless, you are all welcome to drop by and say hello.

In the meantime, have fun and keep the spirit alive.  Merci et au revoir.


Sincerely,

Derek Fong
derek_f@vega.concordia.ca

Eagle-Eyes' Emporium BBS
St. Laurent, Quebec, Canada
(514) 337-8844


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The GNU Public License has been included in this archive.  You can only
redistribute AppleNET if it has both this file and the GNU Public License
enclosed.  (In other words, please only redistribute the original archive.)
