What is webconvers? 
------------------

webconvers is a web-based interface to the amprnet World Wide Convers system 
that only requires a browser capable of supporting frames. With the addition 
of Javascript (selectable by the installer or by the user at login time) a 
lot of additional facilities become available that improve performance through 
caching proxy servers, improved display and more functionality.


I wrote it so that I could get into convers from work where there is a very 
solid firewall that passes port 80 only :-((. The packet system at home
has an ADSL connection so no problem with the 'net side and the convers
server is running on that already anyway (as well as the club mailman list
server and other web pages) so a few days of hacking and here we are...

webconvers is written in the PHP language, which is fairly cross-platform
and available for many different web servers. The code is available under
the GNU General Public License Version 2 (see included LICENSE file).

How does it work?
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It consists of a front page that provides access to the interface by
opening a window using Javascript(*) (index.html). This would normally be 
accessed by the user as being the default page for the webconvers directory.
This points at the default page (frames.php) in the webconvers directory. 
This prompts for a user name and starting channel number and sets a cookie 
containing the user value. It then builds a set of frames for the convers 
display, user input, a line of option push buttons and the list of users 
online(*).

Each of the windows of the frame is handled by its own php script. They
communicate via the cookie (user name) from the browser and via a database
(actually a sequential file) that is used to pass option and user
input to the main display script.

The output script is the heart of the system. It is the one that establishes
the link to the convers server, echos data to the user and gets user input
from the database to send to the convers server (and echo to the user
display). It also sends a 'magic word' to the javascript refresh script to 
force the userlist to refresh if it sees the string '***' at the start of a 
line (which indicates a status change, most likely a user joining or leaving).

The input script simply takes user input and puts it in the database. It can
also 'kick' a refresh of the hidden Javascript refresh page. This means
the user perceives a better response!!

The option script is set up to autorefresh at half the timeout period so that
it keeps the link alive as well as reacting to the various buttons being
pushed! It can also 'kick' a refresh of the hidden Javascript refresh page.

The userlist script sends a status message to the main loop via the
database to ask for a refresh. The main loop uses a state machine to extract
the data returned by a '/w *' command which is passed to the userlist
script (via the database again) which parses the text to extract callsigns,
channel number and personal texts. These are built up as links to the
private frame script and the text label on the 'tip hint' so that
personal text is displayed when the cursor is hovered over the callsign.

The private script takes the callsign and personal text from the link
in the userlist and creates a pop-up that takes the user input and prepends
the string "/m <callsign> " to send a private message to another user. The
personal data is used in the title bar of the private pop-up.

The Javascript refresh frame is a hidden frame that asks its script for
output data on a regular basis from the main database file. It can also be 
'kicked' from the user inputting data. The output data is then contained 
within a complete frame which passes through proxy servers much better than 
the continually open main output page text. The content of the frame uses 
the Javascript write method to write directly to the output frame and to 
scroll it when necessary.

There are several utility scripts to handle configuration, access control,
database access, and common tasks such as display colouration, string
language translation and cookie handling.

There are seperate string files for each language (only English at present...)

(*) Javascript mode only - it can also just use frames but the quick refresh
and the user list are missing.

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webconvers was created and is Copyright 2000-2018 by Robin Gilks, G8ECJ/ZL3ROB.