THE BABYLON 5 RANDOM QUOTE GENERATOR FAQ http://www.reed.edu/~horde/b5/b5quote.html Last modified: Friday, 21-Jul-95 10:39:00 PDT By: Mr. Heiji Horde, horde@reed.edu The Babylon 5 Quote FAQ was originally maintained by: Michael "The Admiral" Zecca, zecca@starfury.cgd.ucar.edu Upcoming Releases It's the *long* wait until October. I'll probably wait until the first break during the third season before releasing a new version. The current version is 2.2 This contains quotes from the TV movie "The Gathering" through the second season episode "Confessions and Lamentations". _________________________________________________________________ Topics: * What is it? * Why did/didn't you include this line? * Where can I get my copy? * How do I unpack the program? * Why this strange program? * What are all these other files? * Release schedule * What about my Macintosh or DOS box? * Possible problems _________________________________________________________________ What is it? A homemade fortune program that will generate a random quote from an episode of Babylon 5. The program is currently designed to run under standard Unix and DOS environments. _________________________________________________________________ Why did/didn't you include this line? I try to capture quotes that: seem significant to the overall Babylon 5 plotline, tell us something about one of the characters, sound really funny, or sound really cool. Of course, I might be a little biased towards the lines that I pick. So if you'd like to make your own modifications for your own personal use, I have no problem with that. _________________________________________________________________ Where can I get my copy? If you want the complete distribution of the B5 random quote generator can be found at either of the following anonymous FTP sites: * ftp.hyperion.com:/pub/Babylon-5 * ftp.uml.edu:/Babylon-5 * ftp.ctrl-c.liu.se:/babylon5 The filenames you're interested in are: "b5quotes.tar" - if you're a Unix user "b5quotes.zip" - if you're a DOS user They contain the *SAME* files. So you don't need both of them. If you just want the updated quotes, you can get them from: ftp.reed.edu:/users/horde/quote The updated files are be there in various formats for you to download. Get the one that is appropriate for you. _________________________________________________________________ How do I unpack the program? To extract the files from the TAR file, type the following: tar -xvf B5quotes.tar For more information on tar, see your man pages. To extract the files from the ZIP file, type the following: unzip b5quote.zip _________________________________________________________________ What are all these other files? Version 2.2 contains several other files: * General Files + HISTORY: the version history of the B5 quote generator + README: a little info for you to help you get set up. + list-b5.cnf: the configuration file needed by quote ,quotesh, or quote.exe + quot-b5.0: (uncompressed) quotes from the TV movie + quot-b5.1: (uncompressed) quotes from the 1st season + quot-b5.2: (uncompressed) quotes from the 2nd season * For Unix Users + quotesh: the shell executable for a quote files. + Makefile and quote.c: C source code for an alternate way to generate the random quotes. This runs much faster than quotesh. * For DOS Users + quote.exe: The quote executable + b5.bat: A batchfile to run quote.exe with the B5 quotes Depending which program you decide to use, you'll have you make some changes to quotesh, quote.c, or b5.bat to make them run properly on your machine. This is covered in the README file. _________________________________________________________________ Why this strange program? The template for the quote generator is based on an old Star Trek: The Next Generation quote generator I wrote several years ago. Over the years I've played with various formats for the quote files, trying to figure out the best way to get what I wanted done. What you see in this program is the result of all that. The new format I'm using for the quotes files should make it easy to port them into the standard Unix fortune program. Why not just use the standard fortune program? Because when I release updates, I want people to be able to just drop the new files in and not worry about rehashing a database like you do with the standard fortune distribution. _________________________________________________________________ Release Schedule v 1.0, March 1994 First release by zecca@starfury.cgd.ucar.edu Added quotes from TV movie "The Gathering" Added quotes from first season episodes "Midnight on the Firing Line" through "And the Sky Full of Stars" v 1.1, June 1994 Added quotes from first season episodes "Deathwalker" through "TKO" v 1.2, December 1994 Added quotes from first season episodes "Grail" through "The Quality of Mercy" v 1.99, December 1994 Taken over by horde@reed.edu Added quotes from first season episode "Chrysalis" Added quotes from second season episodes "Points of Departure" through "Soul Mates" v 2.0, January 1995 Cleanup and actual release of version 1.99 v 2.1, March 1995 Add quotes from second season episodes "A Race Through Dark Places" through "Hunter, Prey" Starting this version there will be 2 distributions. One for Unix platforms (.tar) and one for DOS platforms (.zip). The distributions contain the same files, it's just that not all DOS users have tar and not all Unix users have zip. v 2.2, July 1995 Add quotes from second season episodes "There All The Honor Lies" through "Confessions and Lamentations" _________________________________________________________________ What about my Macintosh or DOS box? It's been a while since I did any programming on a Mac, but if I get a chance I might do a port...but then, I might not. Starting with release 2.0, there is a DOS executable which will read the same quote files as the Unix version. _________________________________________________________________ Possible Problems Problems? What Problems?