About File Areas
About File Areas
A Different Approach
ENiGMA½ has strayed away from the old familiar setup here and instead takes a more modern approach:
- Gazelle inspired system for searching & browsing files.
- No conferences (just areas!)
- File areas are still around but should generally be used less. Instead, files can have one or more tags. Think things like
dos.retro,pc.warez,games, etc.
Other bells and whistles
- Temporary web (http:// or https://) download links in additional to standard X/Y/Z protocol support. Batch downloads of many files can be downloaded as a single ZIP archive.
- Users can rate files & search/filter by ratings.
- Users can also create and save their own filters for later use such as “Latest Artscene Releases” or “C64 SIDs”.
- A given area can span one to many physical storage locations.
- Upload processor can extract and use
FILE_ID.DIZ/DESC.SDI, for standard descriptions as well asREADME.TXT,*.NFO, and so on for longer descriptions. The processor also attempts release year estimation by scanning aforementioned description file(s). - Fast indexed Full Text Search (FTS) across descriptions and filenames.
- Duplicates are checked for by cryptographically secure SHA-256 hashes.
- Support for many archive and file formats. External utilities can easily be added to the configuration to extend for additional formats.
- Much, much more!
Modding
The default ENiGMA½ approach for file areas may not be for everyone. Remember that you can mod everything your setup! Some inspirational examples:
- A more traditional set of areas and scrolling file listings.
- An S/X style integration of message areas and file areas.
- Something completely different! Some tweaks are possible without any code while others may require creating new JavaScript modules to use instead of the defaults.