CHAPTER 8 PERSONAL BIX This chapter discusses your profile and your resume. 109 BIX User Manual Part 1: Introduction 111 What is a Profile? 111 How to See Your Profile 111 The Parts of the Profile 111 How to Add Options to Your Profile 112 How to Suppress the .More.. Prompt 113 How to Add a Transfer Protocol 113 How to Adjust the Recent Command 114 Cookie 114 Echo 114 Newline 114 Nonewline 115 Customizing Your Profile 115 Part 2: Your Resume 117 Resume 117 110 BIX User Manual Part 1: Introduction What is a Profile? Your profile is a command file that tells BIX how to operate for you. You may add, subtract, or arrange your profile commands. Commands can be made permanent so that BIX automatically executes them each time you sign on. How to See Your Profile You can see your profile from the main ( : ), Mail:, or Read: prompt. To do this, first enter: show profile BIX will display your current profile settings. The Parts of the Profile Here's what your profile might look like if you entered show profile. The profile commands are on the left, and the explanations are on the right: Profile Explanation 1-> news Displays the system news 2-> opt verbose Enters Options; selects verbose prompts 3-> edit verbose Selects Verbose editor; still in Options 4-> term width 80 Sets terminal width to 80; still in Options 5-> term pagelen 20 Sets terminal page length to 20; still in Options 6-> q Exits Options 7-> mail status, q Displays mail status; leaves mail 8-> show new Displays a summary of new messages in conferences 111 BIX User Manual How to Add Options to Your Profile Do not add any command to your profile until you've tried it from a system prompt. This will save you time and trouble. See Chapter 7, "Environment Options," on page 97, for an explanation of various options and how to try them out. Also, be careful of deleting items from your profile. Be certain that you know what the effect of any change will be. When in doubt, the BIX staff will lend you assistance. See Chapter 11, "Where to Get Help," on page 165. To make a change to your sign-up options, use your editor to add or sub- tract entries. For example, to use the Quiet editor, you would substitute "verbose" on line 3 with the word "quiet." To do this, follow these steps: edit profile l s 3 /verbose/quiet/ x To see who is on BIX each time you sign on, append the command who to the end of your Profile. To do this, you would enter: a to append text. Type in: who and press Return. Then, you would type a period at the start of a new line and press Return (to stop appending text). Finally, you would type: x to exit and save the addition to your profile. Now each time you sign on, BIX will show you a list of who's on-line. 112 BIX User Manual If you change your mind about the changes you've made to your profile, type: q instead of x, and BIX will disregard the changes. How to Suppress the .More.. Prompt You can suppress the .More.. prompt so that a message scrolls by without interruption, stopping at the next Read: prompt or at the read/action: prompt. To do this, change to 0 the number 20 in the line that reads "term pagelen 20." NOTE: To interrupt a message when the .More.. prompt is suppressed, use Control-S. Press Control-Q to resume. Control-C serves as your abort key. Your telecomm software's Break key should also work. Make sure that it is set for no more than 350 ms. How to Add a Transfer Protocol To add file-transfer protocols to your profile, you would append the fol- lowing lines to your profile: opt upload xmodem q opt download xmodem q Upload protocols supported are Kermit, XMODEM, and YMODEM. The download protocols are Kermit, XMODEM, YMODEM, and ZMODEM. You can add one of these protocols between line 2 and 6 in your original profile. If you do so, place the strings: upload xmodem download xmodem before the q in your Profile. For example: 2-> opt verbose 3-> edit verbose 113 BIX User Manual 4-> term width 80 5-> term pagelen 20 6-> upload xmodem 7-> download xmodem 8-> q How to Adjust the Recent Command To adjust your recent setting, append this line to the end of your profile: opt recent maximum xx q opt recent minimum xx q opt recent days xx q where xx is the number of new messages or days you want to see when you first join a conference. Cookie The cookie command displays an epigram, homily, or pithy saying. You can enter this command from the main system prompt ( : ), or it can be added to the end of your profile so that you'll see a "cookie" everytime you log in. Echo Use the echo command to customize your log-on screens. Echo followed by some text inserted in your profile will cause BIX to display that text at log on. For example, you might add: echo ---Conference Messages-- to your Profile just above the show new command. The next time you log on, ---Conference Messages--- will appear as a header to your new message summary. Newline If your text is writing over lines and you have been unable to adjust your communications software, enter newline from the main system prompt. It should take care of your problem. 114 BIX User Manual If it does, add this line to the end of your Profile: newline If it does not, check your communications software settings. Adjust the carriage return/linefeed setting to carriage return only. Try switching your communications settings. If you are at 8 bits, 1 stop bit, no parity, change to 7 bits, 1 stop bit, even parity. Nonewline If you receive double line spaces whenever you press Return and you have been unable to adjust your communications software, enter nonewline from the main system prompt. It should take care of your problem. If it does, add this line to the end of your Profile: nonewline If it does not, check your communications software settings. Adjust the carriage return/linefeed setting to carriage return only. Try switching your communications settings. If you are at 8 bits, 1 stop bit, no parity, change to 7 bits, 1 stop bit, even parity. Customizing Your Profile Many BIX users customize their profiles. Here's an example of one: echo Hi, handsome. You've logged on to BIX echo ============ The time is ============ time opt terse edit verbose term width 80 term pagelen 0 upload xmodem download xmodem 115 BIX User Manual naplps yes q nonewline echo ============ (Who's on) =============== who echo ============ (Cookie) ================= cookie echo ============ (Mail) =================== mail inbask opt term pagelen 20 q NOTES: 116 BIX User Manual Part 2: Your Resume Resume BIX creates a resume for you after you register. You may change it using your usual editor. You can do this from the main ( : ), Mail:, or Read: prompts. The command string is: edit resume You can then use the editor commands to list, change, add to, or delete information from your resume. You may wish to include your employer, affiliations, special interests, hobbies, and so on. Here's an example of a creative resume, written by Joe McManus, an early BIX user. It wasn't my fault the kid was dying. Hell, our job was to clear the fifth moon and we did it. The Zoots were driven back to Sector YUT and the line was holding. But I was holding the kid and there was no way he was going to be heading back to Terra and work in his father's deli. "You did good, kid." "I..I did? Thanks, Joe. That means a lot coming from a professional Belter." "I'm no pro, kid. Back on Terra I was a software designer. I did consulting to pay the bills and I taught seminars to people who didn't know the first thing about computers. I'm good at it, too. But y'know, my dream is to someday design a game where more than one person can play at the same time. It's a big project and I had just started using C when the Zoots landed." "N...N...NAPLPS?" "Yeah, some of that too. I'll make you a deal, kid; when we get back, I'll give you a demo disk of some of my stuff. Okay?" But the kid was dead. I'd had a bellyful of this stuff and went off looking for Zoots. 117 BIX User Manual NOTES: 118 BIX User Manual