Hello all,

I am running Mystic BBS 1.12 on a Debian Linux VPS. I have a situation where I need to display plain text files of variable length from main menu hotkeys. Some files are short (27 lines, a weather briefing). Others will be long (news articles, potentially 200-300 lines).

Currently I am using command type GD (Display a file) with a data field pointing to text/weather (which resolves to text/weather.asc). The file displays correctly and pipe color codes are rendered. However the ANSI viewer window is constrained by Coord1 and Coord2 in ansiview.ini, currently rows 6 to 23, giving only 18 usable lines. When the viewer reaches the bottom of the window it prompts More: (Y)es, (N)o, (C)ontinuous. When any option is selected the viewer exits immediately back to the main menu, and any remaining content below the window boundary is never shown.

I expanded the window to rows 1-24 in ansiview.ini. This helps slightly but does not solve the fundamental problem for long articles. A 2500-word news article would page many times and still exit abruptly.

I looked through the full command type list and I can see:

GD Display a file
GV ANSI File viewer
GZ Execute Python 3 Script

There is no obvious plain text pager command that handles end-of-file cleanly and waits for a keypress before returning to the menu.

My questions:

1. Is there a command type in Mystic that displays a plain text file, handles paging gracefully for files of any length, and returns cleanly to the calling menu after the user has read the full content?

2. If the answer is GZ with a custom Python script handling the display and EOF, is there a standard pattern or example script the community uses for this? I am comfortable writing Python but I want to make sure I am using the correct Mystic terminal I/O methods rather than raw stdout, which may not behave correctly over Telnet/SSH sessions.

3. Is there a way to configure the GD ANSI viewer to wait at EOF rather than returning to the menu immediately after the last page is dismissed?

Context: The BBS is The Montreal Greek Times BBS (bbs.greektimes.ca, telnet, port 23). The display files are generated automatically by external Python scripts every 40 minutes (weather) or every 6 hours (news). The files use Mystic pipe color codes (|14, |15, |07) and are plain ASCII with LF line endings.

Any guidance appreciated.

Dimitri Papadopoulos, SysOp, The Montreal Greek Times BBS

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The Montreal Greek Times (21:3/225)

I would suggest either using the internal bulletin functions, or using one of the many Bulletin doors that are available. And if the only problem you're having is with the ANSI files, maybe just don't use them.

-Dallas Vinson, SysOp
-Legends of Yesteryear
- loy.hopto.org:2323

... Live every day as though it were your last. One day, you'll be right

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/64)
* Origin: Error 404 BBS (21:2/105)