********************************************************************** FTSC FIDONET TECHNICAL STANDARDS COMMITTEE ********************************************************************** Publication: FRL-1039 Revision: 1 Title: Tic file format. Author(s): Administrator Date: 2016-11-07 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Status of this document ----------------------- This document is a Fidonet Reference Library Document (FRL) This document preserves FSP-1039 which is promoted to FTS-5006.001 This document is released to the public domain, and may be used, copied or modified for any purpose whatever. ====================== Original document ============================= Publication: FSP-1039 Revision: 1 Title: TIC file format. Authors: Michiel van der Vlist, FTSC members. Date: 2015-11-08 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents -------- 1. Definitions 2. TIC file system. 2.1 Introduction 2.2 The TIC file format 2.3 TIC Keywords 3. CRC-32 Algorithm A. References B. History ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Status of this document ----------------------- This document is a FidoNet Standard Proposal (FSP). This document proposes a FidoNet standard for the FidoNet community. This document is released to the public domain, and may be used, copied or modified for any purpose whatever. 1. Definitions -------------- The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [FTA-1006]. 2. The TIC file system ---------------------- 2.1 Introduction ---------------- The TIC file system is a way to distribute files via Fidonet technology. It is also called the file echo system in analogy with the echomail system used for messages. To distribute a file, it is always accompanied by a control file, called the TIC file. TIC files are created and processed by file processors. When a system that is configured for file processing receives a TIC file it calls the file processor. The file processor acts on the keywords in the TIC file and it may move the file to be distributed to dedicated directories and/or send it on to other nodes. The details of this process are beyond the scope of this document which is limited to the format of the TIC file. 2.2 TIC file format ------------------- A TIC file is a text file with a name in 8.3 DOS format with the extension .TIC. The name of the TIC file should be unique enough to ensure that systems receiving TIC files never have two TIC files with the same name in their inbound. How this is done is left to the implementation. The line separator is a CR,LF pair. It is recommended that applications reading TIC files can read TIC files that only use a LF or CR as line separator. Application must only write files with a CR,LF pair. Each line in a TIC file consists of a keyword followed by one or more parameters. Parameters can be a string of text, an FTN address in 4D or 5D format or a (hexadecimal) number. Keywords are case insensitive. Keywords are not position dependant with the exception of the the Path, Desc and Ldesc keywords. If there is more than one, they must be grouped and ordered. New implementations should be tolerant of unknown keywords. If a line with an unknown keyword is found in an incoming TIC file, the preferred way of dealing with it is to pass the line "as is" to outgoing TIC files and optionally log the encounter. Existing software may or may not act in this preferred way. 2.3 TIC Keywords ---------------- Area The tag of the area in which the file is to be distributed. Example: Area REGION28 This is a required keyword. Areadesc A short description of the area. This may be used when auto- creating a new area. Example: Region28 nodelist segment. This is an optional keyword. Origin This keyword specifies the FTN address of the system that has hatched the file. Example: Origin 2:28/0 This is a required keyword. From This keyword specifies the FTN address of the system that has sent the file to be distributed and the accompanying TIC file. Example: From 2:280/5555 This is a required keyword To This keyword specifies the FTN address of the system where to send the file to be distributed and the accompanying TIC file. Some File processors (Allfix) only insert a line with this keyword when the file and the associated TIC file are to be file routed through a third sysem instead of being processed by a file processor on that system. Others always insert it. Note that the To keyword may cause problems when the TIC file is proecessed by software that does not recognise it and passes the line "as is" to other systems. Example: To 292/854 This is an optional keyword. File The name of the file to be distributed. The name must be in 8x3 DOS format. If an Lfile keyword is also specified, the 8x3 file name may be automatically derived from the long file name by the file processor hatching the file. The algorithm is left to the implementation. Example: File REGION28.208 This is a required keyword. Lfile The name of the file in long file format. Note that few file processors will recognise this Keyword. Your milage may vary when attempting to distribute files with long file names. Example: Lfile Longfilename.extension This is an optional keyword. Fullname This is an alias for Lfile. It is recommended that applications always use Lfile when writing TIC files but recognise Fullname as an alias when reading TIC files. Size The size of the file in bytes. Example: Size 5000 This is an optional keyword. Date The date and time the file was created in Unix form. Example: Date 1415567298 This is an optional keyword. Desc A one line description of the file to be distributed. Example: Desc Region 28 nodelist segment for day 208 This is an optional keyword Ldesc This Keyword may occur more than once. If there is more than one they should be grouped together. Together they form a long description of the file to be distributed. Example: Ldesc This is a utility that everyone must have. Ldesc It beats all and everything you ever had. This is an optional keyword. Created This keyword identifies the software that created this TIC file. There is no rigid format for this Keyword. Example: Created by Mtick 1.4 beta 20070731, (c) 1995-2007, Michiel van der Vlist, PA0MMMV (2:280/5555) (Split over two lines in this document, one line in reality) This is an optional keyword. Magic This specifies the magic word that file request processors may use as an alias for the file to be requested. Example: Magic REGION28 This is an optional keyword. Replaces This specifies that the file replaces one or more files that were sent previously. It is up to the receiving system if it honours this keyword. The wildcard characters '?' and '*' may be used with the usual meaning as in MS-DOS. Some tic processors do not support wild cards and use of wild cards with this keyword may cause unexpected results. Example: Replaces REGION28.??? This is an optional keyword. Crc This keyword specifies the CRC-32 of the file to be distributed. The CRC an eight digit hex number, preferably written in upper case, but application should be able to handle CRC's written in lower case. Example: Crc B0A29EE6 This is a required keyword. Path This specifies the node number and the date and time of a system that has processed the file. The time parameter is expressed as a unix style timestamp, optionally followed by the date and time in human readable form. Unix timestamp is UTC. Human readable format may be local time (including UTC offset) or UTC. File processors may add additional information. For example a signature identifying the software generating the path line. Example: Path 2:2/20 1415567298 Sun Nov 9 21:08:18 2014 UTC Each system should add its own line to the TIC file. Path lines should be grouped and in order of processing. This is a required keyword. Seenby This lists the systems that have "seen" the file. It is similar to the seen-by in echomail messages, with the difference that it is one line per node number and the node numbers are 4D or 5D. The seenby information may be used for dupe prevention. Seenby lines should be grouped and may be sorted by node number. Application must be able to deal with unsorted seenby lines. Example: Seenby 2:2/20 Seenby 2:280/5003 Seenby 2:280/5555 Seenby 2:280/5555.1 Seenby 2:292/854 This is a required keyword. Pw This specifies the password agreed upon between the sysops of the link. There are no restrictions on the length and the allowed characters of the password, it is a matter of what the sending and receiving sysops agree. Most file processors however will only accept a maximum of eight characters and treat them as case insensitive. Example: Pw PASSWORD Although it is not recommended to distribute files between systems without agreeing on a password, this keyword is optional. Technically it is possible to accept files without a password. 3. CRC-32 Algorithm ------------------- This paragraph was copied from FTS-1030.001 par 2.4 The author is Tobias Ernst. The checksum algorithm that is used is CRC-32 following ITU-T's specifications. For further information refer to the literature list given below. The following pseudocode shows how to calculate such a checksum for a file of N bytes indexed from 0 to N-1 and stored in BUFFER. The XOR, AND and NOT logical operations are to be executed bit-wise. In C, for instance, XOR equals ^, AND equals &, and NOT equals ~. // CRC, I, J, K are unsigned integers of at least 32 bits. UNSIGNED LONG CRC, I, J, K // Preconditioning CRC = FFFFFFFF // Loop through all bytes in the file FOR J = 0 TO N-1 K = (CRC XOR BYTE#J) & 000000FF // (*) FOR I = 8 DOWNTO 1 IF K AND 1 <> 0 THEN K = (K SHR 1) XOR EDB88320 ELSE K = K SHR 1 ENDIF END FOR // (**) CRC = ((CRC SHR 8) AND 00FFFFFF) XOR K END FOR // Postconditioning: Flip all bits CRC = NOT CRC; Note that as in the line marked as (*), K can initially only get values in the range from 0 to 255. Therefore it is a good idea to replace the inner loop over I with a lookup table routine, i.E. generate a lookup table for the outcomes of K after the loop with initial values of K from 0 to 255, and then replace lines (*) up to and including (**) with something like K = LOOKUPTABLE [ (CRC XOR BYTE#J) XOR 000000FF ] Author: Tobias Ernst A. References ------------- [FTA-1006] Key words to indicate requirement levels, Fidonet Technical Standards Committee administrative. FTA-1006. [FTA-1030] Binkp optional protocol extension CRC Checksum. [ITU-T V.42] International Telecommunications Union, Error-correcting Procedures for DCEs Using Asynchronous-to-Synchronous Conversion, ITU-T Recommendation V.42, 1994, Rev. 1. B. History ---------- Rev.1, 2015-11-08: First release. ================= End Original Document ============================== Contact Data ------------ FTSC Administrator Fidonet: 2:2/20 E-mail: administrator@ftsc.org History ------- Rev.1, 2016-11-07: Initial release. **********************************************************************