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[1;37m                            ABOUT CASTAWOTE
[34m                            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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     The CastAWote project was started back in June 1994 when I 
     saw the LiveSystems voting door for RemoteAccess (a PC BBS 
     system). I thought to myself, I can do that. Well, after 
     months of testing and tweaking and a massive number of hours 
     in front of my computer, I present to you CastAWote.

     The first versions were not to hot. You could have more than 
     one vote, but it was possible for a user to vote as many 
     times as he/she wanted for any question. Ricky Sarge showed 
     me his innovative RLS door (RLS being his initials I think) 
     that allowed only one vote and users couldn't vote more than 
     once for anything. RLS door was part assembler for speed.
     RLS door included provision for an innovative feature. If it 
     was run as a door from the BBS, it would act as a door. If 
     run by the user, it would act as a votes viewer/editor type 
     of thing. In retrospect I'm glad I opted for seperate 
     programs otherwise things would get really confusing.

     Well, I soon set about tidying up CastAWote. I sped up the 
     aging PROCcolour routine and added a file to act as a list 
     of users and questions they've voted on. First tests were 
     horrendous. I'm not much good at maths either :-) and I'd 
     gotten a formula in reverse order.

     It didn't take long to sort that out. So then, at the 
     expense of TTY and VT52 users (shame on them!) I replaced 
     the totally slow PROCcolour with PROCdoors_tx, a 
     modification of PROCdoors_sendstring. 

     Then both Steve Pursey and John Stonier [my invaluable beta 
     testers] complained non-stop about a horrible clash with 
     the doobs. I recently put in a myriad of Wimp_Poll's to 
     reduce system loading as much as possible.
     It transpired that the doobs would try to connect to a door 
     request that wasn't answered within a certain time. I tested 
     this by running ArcBBS and the doobs, entering the BBS's CLI 
     and typing "DOOR 123". Them horrible doob things complained. 
     Ugh!
     I removed a few Wimp_Poll's and sorted that out.

     Next up was having to tidy up the rest of the program. To 
     cut a long story short - it developed pretty slowly to 
     version 2.05

     I got fed up of the archaic file structure mess and I wanted 
     to add a few things to CastAWote myself. Expanding upon the 
     internal storage system, I created a hybrid file system 
     whereby the questions, results and other data were stored in 
     the one file. A user on Digital Databank suggested that the 
     question line was simply too short, and why not have an area 
     for additional information?

     The current specification has one question line, unaltered, 
     and a three line additional information section. The format 
     included extra room, though this was unallocated.

     I suspect the user to make that suggestion was Loretta, 
     because one of her questions contains the neatest vowel 
     dropping I've seen this side of amateur radio. :-)

     Version 2.10 to 2.24 included a mad mix, the old data 
     format, a bridge format (old style with new extensions) and 
     the new format. It would automatically switch as needed.
     Luckily that didn't get tested too hard, except by Steve 
     Pursey who installed CastAWote and forgot the data files are 
     no longer transferred automatically. :-)

     Along then came the obscenity filter, the new file format,
     new menus, and an even better graphical results output.

     But all the way, CastAWote was getting hairy and rather
     overcomplicated. So I took the step to recode CastAWote.

     Many of the original routines were retained, tidied and
     condensed. For example there are a third as many routines
     in add_a_vote as there used to be.

     Also, the additional features of the file format were
     pressed into service with two extra options and NVP - with
     no changes to the structure of the file.

     
     In the Summer of 2007 it was decided to release the project
     source codes so that SysOps and those interested in how the
     software operates can 'play' with the program, add custom
     bits to it, and if there are any quirks/bugs, correct those.
     From my point of view, I left the UK in May 2002 and do not
     have a phone line, so effectively development of CastAWote
     ceased. It is now considered 'abandoned', which is why I
     have released the sources. Any of you can take over, or
     poke fun at my coding. Whatever. :-)

     You might be thinking "I could have sworn it was called
     'CastAVote'". Well, it was. Until Autumn 2008 when a bloke
     from CMS sent me a rather unpleasant email to inform me
     that the name "CastAVote" is theirs. This is a topic of
     potential debate as if you go look, you will find that the
     only instance of it you can attribute to CMS is the
     registration of the domain name - which means LITTLE in a
     legal sense. Neither of us have registered the name as a
     trade mark, and if he did it could be argued given that it
     is an existing name in use (by myself) for some half a
     decade before his company provided such 'solutions'. I have
     experienced all the emotions - fear at the "cease and
     desist", to anger upon doing my homework and finding that
     I *could* have thrown it back in their faces. But now I'm
     afraid I just feel boredom. Like, whatever. So I will take
     an hour to rejig my software to be "CastAWote" with a 'W'
     (feel free to use Germanic pronunciation!), and I will put
     it back on my website like that.
     Neither of our projects are related in ANY way other than
     a name and "it's something to do with voting".


     And that, dear reader, brings us to "Present Day"...
