159 lines
5.8 KiB
HTML
159 lines
5.8 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
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<HTML>
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<HEAD>
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<TITLE>Sigrot: BBS Taglines for the Net</TITLE>
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<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Mozilla/3.01Gold (X11; I; Linux 2.0.18 i486) [Netscape]">
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<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Paul Anderson">
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</HEAD>
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<BODY TEXT="#000000" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" LINK="#0000EF" VLINK="#55188A" ALINK="#FF0000">
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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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</H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<H1 ALIGN=CENTER>Sigrot: BBS Taglines for the Net</H1>
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<CENTER><P ALIGN=CENTER>By Paul Anderson, <paul@geeky1.ebtech.net></P></CENTER>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<P>Have you ever called BBSes and downloaded QWK packets? If you have,
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then you most likely will have either seen or used a tagline. For those
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of you who haven't, a tagline is one line of text for a witty saying. It's
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usually at the bottom of a persons signature. QWK packets, by the way,
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are like UUCP for DOS in that you downloaded this zipped file with all
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your mail in it, then you open it in a QWK mail reader, and upload your
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replies. The QWK mail reader often supports the ability to change taglines
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with each message. </P>
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<P>These short witticisms are nice to have at the end of a message, and
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sometimes they prove to be the best part! This brings me to the program
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featured in this article. Sigrot is currently in version 1.0 and is maintained
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by Christopher Morrone, <<A HREF="mailto:cmorrone@udel.edu">cmorrone@udel.edu></A>.
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It can be obtained from gilb5.gilb.udel.edu:/pub/linux/sigrot_v1.0.tar.gz
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</P>
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<P>Got the tar-file? Good. Untar it with: </P>
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<PRE>tar -xzvf sigrot_v1.0.tar.gz
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</PRE>
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<P>Look in the current directory and you'll find a directory named sigrot_v1.0/
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Change into that directory, read the README and INSTALL.help files, then
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run make </P>
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<PRE>geeky1,1:~/tar-stuff/sigrot_v1.0% make
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done
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geeky1,1:~/tar-stuff/sigrot_v1.0%
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</PRE>
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<P>You'll have a program named sigrot in the current directory, sigrot.1
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is the manpage. Then you can test it: </P>
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<PRE>geeky1,1:~/tar-stuff/sigrot_v1.0% sigrot -w testfile
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testfile copied over signature archive.
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Type "sigrot -r" to restore the previous archive.
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geeky1,1:~/tar-stuff/sigrot_v1.0% sigrot
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geeky1,1:~/tar-stuff/sigrot_v1.0%
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</PRE>
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<P>Well, what have we just done? We've put the signatures in testfile into
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sigrot's signature archive, and we've just nuked your ~/.signature file.
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Check it out and you'll see that it contains: </P>
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<PRE>This is the first signature entry.
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</PRE>
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<P>Okay, so if we check testfile we see that the first line contains the
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first signature. Let's run it again. Okay, what's in ~/.signature now?
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Check it out and you'll see: </P>
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<PRE>This is
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the
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second signature
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entry.
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</PRE>
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<P>So what good is this to me, you say? Plenty. Create a new file called
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'mysigs' with couple of your favourite one-liners. Now we run our dear
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friend sigrot again: </P>
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<PRE>geeky1,1:~/tar-stuff/sigrot_v1.0% sigrot -w mysigs
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</PRE>
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<P>Okay, run sigrot with no command-line options and check ~/.signature.
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Is one of the signatures from mysigs in ~/.signature? If so, put the following
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in your crontab: </P>
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<PRE>00 * * * * sigrot
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</PRE>
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<P>That'll run sigrot once every hour. Now, you're ready to send e-mail
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with your new cool .sig! </P>
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<H3>Of prefixes and space reduction.</H3>
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<P>Sometimes, when you've got .sig like mine, the majority of my .sig never
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changes. If you get a significant number of one-liners in your signature
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archive, it can became quite large. What a waste of space. But, wait! There's
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a way to reduce the amount of space it takes! To show you what I mean,
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Here's my .signature: </P>
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<PRE> ---
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Paul Anderson
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Author of Star Spek(a tongue in cheek pun on Star trek)
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e-mail: starspek-request@lowdown.com with subscribe as the subject
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I hear it's hilarious. Maintainer of the Tips-HOWTO.
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http://www.netcom.com/~tonyh3/speck.html
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Manuals out, after all possible keystrokes have failed.
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</PRE>
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<P>Only the last line ever changes. Why waste disk space when you can use
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a more efficient method? Here's what I've done, you see sigrot creates
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a directory called ~/.sigrot, and it lets you specify a prefix. A prefix
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is what's put before the .sigs from your .sig archive, it's used for stuff
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that doesn't change. So, I created a file named ~/.sigrot/prefix, and put
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the following in it: </P>
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<PRE> ---
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Paul Anderson
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Author of Star Spek(a tongue in cheek pun on Star trek)
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e-mail: starspek-request@lowdown.com with subscribe as the subject
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I hear it's hilarious. Maintainer of the Tips-HOWTO.
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http://www.netcom.com/~tonyh3/speck.html
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</PRE>
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<P>See? Sigrot picks a .sig from your .sig-archive, then it appends it
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to the file ~/.sigrot/prefix. </P>
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<P>
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<HR WIDTH="100%">
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<P>Now you know how to spiff up your e-mail with a wonderful program called
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sigrot. I have a file of 1,000 signatures for use with sigrot, send me
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some e-mail at <A HREF="mailto:paul@geeky1.ebtech.net">paul@geeky1.ebtech.net
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</A>if you want a copy, or some help on setting up sigrot. </P>
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<P> <hr> <P>
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1997, Paul Anderson <BR>
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Published in Issue 15 of the Linux Gazette, March 1997</H5></center>
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