-=> Maurice Kinal wrote to Alan Ianson <=-

 MK> As long as it is agreeable with the DOS-think ghosts running the FTSC
 MK> then I'm inclined to think it is a done deal.  Near as I can tell the
 MK> crc was the only outstanding issue and the rest can easily be handled
 MK> with tools close at hand on any true linux-gnu distribution.

That's pretty much the size of it.  Yes, the rest of the TIC format was easily
handled on my Raspian system.  The variables I use are:

Area - supplied to script via environment
Origin - Supplied to script via environment
Src - Supplied to script via environment
Replaces - Defaults to the file itself, unless specified.
File - Supplies to script from environment
Size - Calculated using "stat --printf="%s" $HATCHFILE"
Path - Source address plus a timestamp generated using `date "+%^a %^b %d
%H:%M:%S %Y UTC%z"`
Seenby - 2 seenby lines generated - source address and destination address.
Crc - Calculated using the crc32 binary that's been discussed here. :)
To - Destination node address supplied via environment.
PW - Used if password specified via environment, otherwise omitted.

And as for the filename of the .tic file, I just used a timestamp
(DDHHMMSS.tic) to generate that (with 1 second resolution), to ensure a unique
filename.  I'm only hatching one file at a time at this stage.

Yep, the rest can easily be done on a GNU/Linux system. :-)

The reason I ended up using environment variables is because it's easy to use
multiple "wrapper" scripts (one for each FTN) to setup the variables and run
the main script, without having a gazillion command line options.  It's
theoretically even possible to hatch to different TIC processors on the same
system, if there are multiple FTN nodes running on the one box, because all
paths and even the command to run the TIC processor are all variables.

While I've only tested on Mystic, I've tried to make this as generic as
possible, and it _should_ work with any TIC processor.  I won't know how
successful that has been until it's out in the wild (hopefully later today :)
.


... The light at the end of the wormhole is an incoming photon torpedo.
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