Displaying Text


When you logged in, you saw several places where some placeholder messages were displayed. These messages are all specified in files located at \wwiv\gfiles. In this directory, there are a number of .MSG and .ANS files which are the messages and menus displayed you users as they use your WWIV BBS.

You can customize all of these as you wish. They can be edited with NOTEPAD or another text editor. .MSG files are used by default and .ANS files are displayed to users if their client supports ANSI. You should definitely have an ANSI version wherever you want to show off some art or where you can enhance the look and feel of your board. This is one of the ways you can make your WWIV BBS your own.

Text

WWIV supports multiple ways of displaying text to users. You may use straight ASCII text, ANSI color codes (which most ANSI-BBS terminal programs support), Traditional WWIV Heart Codes, Extended Editor Heart Codes, or newer style pipe codes.

Heart Codes

Heart codes are the traditional "heart" + number codes that map to one of the user-configurable colors defined in the user preferences in WWIV. The heart is a control-C (aka ascii value #3) and has been around along as WWIV has. It may be used in any place WWIV is displaying text.

Customizing User Heart Codes

By using the //COLORS menu option, users can customize how color codes are displayed to them and only them. For example, by default |#5 is GREEN on BLACK. A User can change to MAGENTA on WHITE and anywhere |#5 or CTRL-P+5 have been used .MSG files or SUB messages it will display the users chosen color instead. Here is a screen shot of //COLORS. The character in the cell is the one you press to customize that color.

ColorEditor

Extended Editor Heart Codes

These are the color codes you can use when posting messages, sending feedback and email on WWIV BBS. To use a particular color type CTRL-P + the letter or number that represents the color you want. You can then use CTRL-P+0 to return to the default color.

WWIVBBSColors

Pipe Codes

Pipe codes are a newer invention on the BBS scene, only around for 20 years or so (maybe longer), and is supported by the majority of BBS software still in existence. Pipe code support was added to WWIV in 5.0 beta-1 around October of 2002. It is a implemented as a vertical bar '|' followed by either numbers or letters to implemente either a color change, formatting change or even user macros. Pipe codes may be used in any place WWIV is displaying text to the user in prompts, messages, even ANS, B&W or MSG files.

These are the default 0-9 Pipe colors used in the menu system and other UI pages. You uses them by specifying |#5 when you want to start GREEN and then |#0 to switch back to GRAY. Look in some of the .MSG files in \wwiv\gfiles for more samples.

defPipeColors

Pipe Colors

Two-digit pipe colors are a more widely-accepted "normal" way to define colors. If you use them in your messages, they are the most likely to be displayed properly on other systems that might see them (gated subs, etc).

Let NN be a 2 digit color code, and

|NN is the way to display a pipe code to set the color.

You can stack the foreground and background colors, too. If you want to have White on Red, for example, you can use |15|20

NN Foreground Color BackGround Color
00 Black
01 Blue
02 Green
03 Cyan
04 Red
05 Magenta
06 Brown
07 Gray
08 Dark Gray
09 Bright Blue
10 Bright Green
11 Bright Cyan
12 Bright Red
13 Bright Magenta
14 Yellow
15 White
16 Black
17 Blue
18 Green
19 Cyan
20 Red
21 Magenta
22 Brown
23 Gray

Pipe Code Macros

WWIV pipe macros are the canonical way to embed session information into display text.

Let X be a single digit character, and @ be a literal '@' character

|@X is the way to display a pipe code macro to display session information..

Code Information to display
~ Total e-mails and feedbacks sent.
/ Today's Date
% Time remaining
# User number
$ File points
* WWIV registration num
- A$$ points
! Display a pause.
& status of ANSI or ASCII
@ Current directory name
: Current Message area #
; Current File area #
A User's age
a User' language
B User's Birthday
b Minutes available in the TimeBank
C User's city
c User's country
D Number of files downloaded
d User's DSL
E # of E-mails sent
e # of network E-mails sent
F # of Feedbacks sent
f Date of first call
G # of Messages read
g # of gold
I User's callsIgn
i # of Illegal log-ons
J Current message conference name
j Current File conference name
K Kb uploaded
k Kb downloaded
L Date of last call
l Total number of logons
M # of e-mail waiting
m # of messages posted
N User's name
n Sysop's note
O Times on today
o Minutes on
P BBS phone number
p User's phone number
R User's real name
r Last baud rate connected
S User's SL
s User's street addr.
T User's state
t Current time
U # of files uploaded
V # messages in sub
X User's gender
Y This BBS Name
y User Computer type
Z User's zip code

Files

Creating new display files is the easiest way to customize your BBS and make it your own. WWIV supports displaying files at many places throughout the BBS.

File Extensions For Files

Here are the various file extensions WWIV will look for when displaying a text file to a user. This is the order in which they are checked, and if one doesn't exist or isn't applicable to the user because of a constraint (like color), then the next one in the list will be checked.

Extension Description
ans Used for clients who support ANSI-BBS colors.
b&w Used for clients who support ANSI-BBS without color.
msg Used fror all clients. It may contain both heart and pipe codes. This is the most common type of file extension used in WWIV since colors may be used with both heart or pipe codes.

File Names

While there are many others, as a new SysOp, the following MSGs are where you should start.

FileName Description
welcome.msg Displayed to every user before they LOGON or start the new user process. Used to welcome people and show off the style of your board. Usually this has the name of your BBS, A LOGO, other artworks and something to lure people to sign up.
logon.msg Displayed after every logon. Contains anything you want users to see before they start using the board.
logiff.msg Displayed after every user logs-off. Used to say Goodbye, thank them for visiting, suggest another BBS they might visit.
system.msg Contains system information to display to your callers. Displayed after login.msg and after newuser.msg
noansi.msg Displayed to users who have clients that do not support ANSI. It should let them users know there are ANSI clients out there they
feedback.msg Displayed before sending feedback to the sysop.
newuser.msg Displayed to new users after they have signed up for the bbs. Use it to thank them for signing up. Point them to anything in particular that is awesome. There is also a new user email, so be brief here.
chat.msg Displayed in the chat room
editor.msg Internal editor help screen
email.msg user email menu
smain.msg sysop menu
sonline.msg sysop online command menu
smain.msg sysop main menu (//sysop)
suedit.msg sysop menu in user editor
swfc.msg sysop menu in WFC

Art Tools

ASCII Art Studio is a great tool for making the B&W versions of your .TAG lines, Welcomes, Logons, etc. Then you can add the color codes in notepad.
Pablo Draw is a great tool for doing full color ANSI artwork, used by many of the top artists.

Known Issues

  • Microsoft stopped including ANSI.SYS in Windows VISTA.
    Because there's no ANSI support on some OSes you won't see well rendered ANSI on the local system. You'll see all those square brackets and extended ASCII characters.
  • Windows 10 includes support for ANSI color codes in cmd.exe again, so you can type welcome.ans and see the color in welcome.ans.

Notes

Just some notes to use when working on this page