So, if you want to give your points access to newsgroups, then just create the areas and subscribe the points to them. It works the same the other way around: if you want a UUCP system to receive FidoNet echomail, then just create the area and connect the UUCP user.
This has two advantages. First, you only have to define an area once and, second, WaterGate can bundle the message very quickly. If it is an echomail message, WaterGate first bundles it for all subscribed FidoNet users, then translates it (if there are any connected UUCP users), and finally bundles it for all the UUCP users. (In fact, WaterGate can even be extended to use another formats in the future and was designed with that in mind).
To create a new area, select "Area definitions" from WtrConf's main menu. You will then be presented with a list of all 26 groups (A to Z). Select one group (or more, using tagging with F5, F6 and F7) that you want to see all the areas from. Then press enter.
If you have a lot of areas (1000+), it might take a while before the list with all the areas names has been constructed. It is possible to abort the construction of the list of areas by pressing Escape. But in the end, you will have a sorted list with all the areas and the header line of the lists will show the groups you selected.
You can now press Insert to add a new area, or press the Delete key to remove one. If you want to look at one or edit it, put the cursor on top of the area name and press Enter. If you want to go back to the previous menu, just press Escape.
After pressing Enter or Insert, you are presented with the screen on the following page. It contains all the settings you can change for a certain area. You can use the up and down cursor keys to move through all the fields. If you want to change a field, you have to press Enter first.
If you want to exit the screen, you can press Escape or F10 (escape is more like abort, but they act the same). If you are creating a new area, you are asked if you want to save the new area. If you select Yes, certain fields have to be filled in correctly and WtrConf checks that for you.
Some of the fields contain the text "<press enter to ...>". If the cursor is on one of these fields and you press enter to edit it, you will be presented another screen. The same thing happens when you edit the "In groups" field.
If you enter a name in the "Fido name" field, and there is no name in the "Usenet name" field, it is automatically copied. The same thing happens if you enter an area name in the Usenet name field and the Fido name field is empty. This saves you some typing and prevents errors.
To add another group, press Insert and select (with Enter) a group from the other list that pops up. To remove the area from a group, select the group and press the Delete key. You can also use tagging to add or remove more than one group at a time.
If you want to add a user, WtrConf scans the configured users and only lists the users that are allowed to connect the area. These users must be allowed in a group that contains this area.
If you are finished editing the list of subscribed users, you can press Escape to exit the list and return to the area screen.
If this options is set to NO, WaterGate will never disconnect the area. This is especially useful for local message bases.
WaterGate assumes that the last person connected to the area (when everybody else has disconnected it) is the provider.
The origin line is put at the bottom of a message when WaterGate translates a message from UUCP to FidoNet, or when it exports a message from a message base and no origin line is present.
If a new message arrives in a moderated area without an "Approved:" header, WaterGate converts the message into a UUCP e-mail and sends it to the moderator. If no moderator is defined for the newsgroup, it is sent to the backbone defined in the System configuration section, which defaults to "berkeley.edu". For example, a message in ALT.BBS.XYZ is sent to ALT-BBS-XYZ@Berkeley.edu.
If you are unsure about any of this, DON'T USE THIS OPTION; let another system upstream take care of it. If someone you know moderates the area, enter his address in the "Moderator" field.
You can enter the maximum age of a message (in days) in the "Fido age" field and the maximum number of messages that can be in an area at any one time in "Fido limit".
Note that when there are too many message in an area, the oldest messages are deleted first. The deletion is not automatic: you have to use WtrUtil to remove them.
If you don't want to remove messages by age or limit, you can see the field to 0.
It does this when the messages is imported into a message base. This prevents the messages from being split in numerous smaller parts which you otherwise had to put together and decode manually.
Using this option you can enable and disable the automatic decoding of files from messages that are imported into this message base.
Notice that WaterGate currently only support extracting files from messages that are imported into a *.MSG base. JAM and Squish support will follow in a future version.
Comments or questions? Send an e-mail to editor@wsd.wline.se.
Last updated 13 October 1996