README (6991B)
1 tii: a Tcl-based suite for working with ii/IDEC protocol 2 ======================================================== 3 This suite implements the client side of ii and (partially) IDEC protocols of 4 distributed, cross-platform, text-based communication (a FIDOnet successor, so 5 to speak). See ii-doc.txt for the protocol documentation. 6 7 The tii suite requires at least Tcl 8.6 to run. Running it inside starpacks is 8 possible but not recommended. 9 10 The tii distribution consists of the following parts: 11 12 * tiifetch.tcl: the core ii/IDEC message fetching library and CLI utility 13 * tiipost.tcl: the core ii/IDEC message posting library and CLI utility 14 * tiiview.tcl: the CLI viewer of the fetched ii/IDEC messages and conferences 15 * tii.db: the SQLite3 database that contains all messages and echo lists 16 * config.txt: the set of parameters for all HTTP requests by the tii scripts 17 * stations.txt: the list of stations to be auto-fetched by tiifetch when none 18 of its command-line parameters is passed (not included in the repo) 19 * auth.txt: the list of station/authstring mappings to be used by tiipost when 20 posting messages to a particular station (not included in the repo) 21 * tiix.tcl: the GUI ii/IDEC viewer that also leverages tiifetch and tiipost to 22 provide fetching and posting functionality 23 24 Readiness status 25 ---------------- 26 * tiifetch.tcl: ready/tested 27 * tiipost.tcl: ready/tested 28 * tiiview.tcl: ready/tested 29 * tii.db (format): ready/tested 30 * config.txt (format/fields): ready/tested 31 * stations.txt (format): ready/tested 32 * auth.txt (format): ready/tested 33 * tiix.tcl: ready/testing 34 * Overall status: basically ready, bugfixing in progress 35 36 Usage 37 ----- 38 This section is a work in progress and will be updated as more components are 39 developed. 40 41 ### Fetching the messages (tiifetch.tcl): ### 42 43 tclsh tiifetch.tcl [station_url] [echos] [dbfile] 44 45 This command will fetch all messages into the dbfile ("tii.db" in the script 46 dir by default) from the station_url (can be empty, see below) based on the 47 echo conference names (can be delimited with slash /, comma (,) or semicolon 48 (;)) and create the corresponding file structure if it's missing. 49 50 Fetching is supported for the following station URL schemes and protocols: 51 52 * HTTP (http://) 53 * HTTPS (https://) 54 * Gopher (gopher://) 55 * Gopher over TLS (gophers://) 56 * Finger (finger://) 57 * Nex (nex://) 58 * Spartan (spartan://) 59 * Gemini (gemini://) 60 61 If the station_url parameter is empty or no parameters are passed at all, 62 tiifetch.tcl will look for a file called stations.txt that lists (each on a 63 new line) all the station URLs to sync from and the amount of IDs that can 64 be fetched from a particular station with a single GET request (this amount 65 can be 12 or more): 66 67 https://url1 389 68 gemini://url2 24 69 http://url3 12 70 71 Messages from all listed stations will be merged into the same echo database. 72 You also can comment out a station to temporarily stop fetching from it by 73 prepending the # sign. 74 75 ### Viewing the messages from CLI (tiiview.tcl): ### 76 77 tclsh tiiview.tcl [echo_name] [filter_string] [line_width] [dbfile] 78 79 If the echo_name parameter is passed, this command will write all formatted 80 messages from the coresponding echo conference to the standard output. 81 You should pipe this message stream to your $PAGER terminal application, like 82 less or most. The messages will be formatted according to the filter_string 83 format (see below). If the filter string is empty or omitted, the messages 84 will appear in the exact order their IDs appear in the echo conference file. 85 86 If the echo_name parameter is empty or no parameters are passed at all, this 87 command will output the list of echo conferences registered in the dbdir. 88 The conference list will be alphabetically ordered and the filter_string will 89 have no effect at all if you pass it. 90 91 If the line_width parameter is omitted, the text reflows to 80 chars per line. 92 93 If the dbfile is omitted, it defaults to "tii.db" in the script directory. 94 95 This component is fully offline and can only work with a compatible message 96 database that tiifetch.tcl can generate. 97 98 The filter string can take one of the following basic forms: 99 100 * [number]: only take [number] messages from the head (start) of the list 101 * r[number]: same but output messages from newest to oldest in the list 102 103 If [number] is 0 then it means no message limit. 104 The reverse operation is always done after limiting the results. 105 106 e.g. r50 will output 50 newest messages in the conference, starting from the 107 most recent one. The default basic value is h0, so no filter applied will mean 108 outputting all messages from the oldest to the newest. 109 110 You can extend the basic form by appending a search regular expression to it, 111 like this: [form]/[regex]. Note that the regex always applies AFTER the basic 112 filtering has been done. Also note that the search is done within all fields 113 of the message. E.g. h100/retro will find the retro-themed messages among the 114 first 100 of them. 115 116 ### Posting the messages from CLI (tiipost.tcl): ### 117 118 echo my_post_text | tiipost.tcl station_root_url echo_name msgto subj [repto] 119 120 The tiipost.tcl script accepts the message body from the standard input. The 121 body must be provided in UTF-8 encoding and all command line parameters except 122 [repto] (reply-to ID) are mandatory. 123 124 The script will look for the auth.txt file in its directory, with the format: 125 126 station_url_1 password1 127 station_url_2 password2 128 ... 129 130 If the station root URL matches one of the lines in auth.txt, it automatically 131 will use the password as the authstring when posting to the station. 132 133 On success, tiipost.tcl will output a message that starts with "Success", in 134 case of an error the line will start with "Error". The server-side description 135 will follow this success or error status. 136 137 As of now, posting is only supported for HTTP/HTTPS station URLs. 138 139 HTTP client configuration 140 ------------------------- 141 For both fetching and posting, you can configure several values in the config 142 file (config.txt in the script directory, the example is included in the repo) 143 that will allow you to set HTTP proxy and override the user agent. As of now, 144 the file is a Tcl dictionary (`key "value"`) and has the following fields: 145 146 * useragent: the user agent string to set for all HTTP requests 147 * proxyhost: the HTTP proxy hostname to use (if empty or omitted, the scripts 148 will connect directly) 149 * proxyport: the HTTP port to use on the proxy (only effective if proxyhost is 150 set to a non-empty string) 151 * net_timeout: the timeout (in milliseconds) for all network requests 152 153 Any of the fields can be omitted, as well as the file itself. 154 You can also use torsocks with any script invocation in order to fully cloak 155 your originating IP address. 156 157 158 FAQ 159 --- 160 - Does tii implement any IDEC extensions? 161 162 Only one: fetching list.txt from the station to get the entire list of echo 163 conferences served by this station. This is something that the original ii 164 spec did not support. 165 166 167 Credits 168 ------- 169 Created by Luxferre in 2024, released into public domain with no warranties. 170