Message Header

┌────────────────────────····                                       Synchronet
│ Subj: Word wrapping                                                ▌▀▌▌▀▌▌▀▌
│ Attr: Replied                                                      █▀▌█▀▌▐▄
│ To  : mark lewis                                                   █ ▌█ ▌▄ ▌
│ From: Digital Man #1                                               ▀▀ ▀▀  ▀
│ Date: Mon Apr 15 2019 03:17 am PDT (23.4 hours ago)                software
└───────────────────────────────────────────────······

Customizing the message header displayed when users read messages (e.g. posts and mail messages) via the terminal server involves either:

  • Modifying the first 9 strings defined in the system's ctrl/text.dat file, or
  • Creating/modifying the system's text/menu/msghdr.* file

The default behavior for users of terminals with more than 40 columns is to use the hard-coded C/C++ Synchronet logic to display the text.dat lines which are appropriate for the current message (the order of displayed header fields can not be changed).

Since a 40-column version of the message header file (msghdr.40col.asc) exists in a default install (e.g. from Git), that file is displayed rather than the text.dat lines for users with 40-column terminals.

If you chose the text.dat file route, here are the strings you'll be interested in:

  • MsgSubj
  • MsgTags
  • MsgAttr
  • MsgTo
  • MsgToNet
  • MsgToExt
  • MsgFrom
  • MsgFromNet
  • MsgFromExt
  • MsgDate
  • MsgVotes
  • MsgHdrBodySeparator
  • PollAnswerChecked
  • ForwardedFrom

If you chose the msghdr.* file route, here are some @-codes that you may want to include in the file for dynamic string values:

  • SMB_GROUP
  • SMB_SUB
  • SMB_AREA_DESC
  • SMB_CURMSG
  • SMB_MSGS
  • MSG_DATE
  • MSG_TIMEZONE
  • MSG_AGE
  • MSG_ATTR
  • MSG_FROM_NAME
  • MSG_TO_NAME
  • MSG_SUBJECT

Synchronet comes stock with:

See Also

custom/messageheader.txt · Last modified: 2022/07/02 12:29 by digital man
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