Customizing FINGER

FINGER has a great many customizations you can do. This short document
is meant to give some idea of a few of them.
	All locations with site-specific selections are commented
and begin with the string "site-specific".

1. To select default fields for display, you edit FINGERCLD.CLD.
	You have to edit FINGER.FOR to change widths of individual
	display fields, however.
2. Most other edits are to FINGER.FOR
	The places are mostly marked with the comment "site specific".

Minimum_match_characters
	By defining this parameter, you set the fewest characters
	permitted in a wildcard match. If it's 0, then the %
	character will give a total user list, and short queries
	such as vowels can be used to obtain lists of users.
	If it is defined to be some larger number (e.g., 3)
	then when you request users and give that many characters
	of their names, Finger reports full account names. For
	shorter queries, Finger only tells if an account that is
	exactly the string given exists. Thus, if it's 3,

Finger A
	will say "no such account: A"

	whereas if it's 0, Finger would list all accounts whose
	usernames or account names contained the letter A.
	Edit Get_Username to change this.

Public directories:
	Finger can be set up to report only images in specific
	"public" directories (so if image names are sensitive, it
	won't report them unless they're in "open" directories
	like sys$system. You have to define which are public directories
	on your system and uncomment the code that checks them.

MAIL:
	Finger can report unread mail. There are selections that
	cause it to report or not report counts of unread messages.
	In addition you can have Finger report the From: field of
	either the most recent Mail message, or the From: fields
	of all unread mail messages. This should be tailored on a
	per site basis; some folks will feel that allowing anyone
	else to know who sent them mail is an invasion of privacy.
	On the other hand, it permits a sender to see whether the
	recipient has read HIS mail message yet. There's no code
	to let Finger discriminate based on who's doing the fingering
	at this point, though the network Finger command could have
	the /NOMAIL switch if desired. (VERY partial protection; a
	person could use the /MAIL switch over the net). This is in
	the Personal_Info subroutine.

BYPASS
	Finger can be built, by uncommenting all the BYPASS logic,
	to filter all control characters in FINGER.PLN files.
	If users at your site have a habit of inserting escape
	sequences into their FINGER.PLN files that turn on "organ
	mode" in VT100, or lots of non-DEC terminals that VT100
	escape sequences could confuse, select this. The resulting
	Finger will normally filter control chars out, unless the
	/BYPASS switch is given. If this is done, it will pass these
	characters normally. You have to edit the FINGERCLD.CLD
	file also to define the BYPASS qualifier or you'll never be
	able to turn it on.

LAT Info

	Some experimental code has been added that calls LAT_INFO
	if the terminal seen begins with LT. It is designed to
	obtain the server and port of the LT terminal in the location
	field of Finger. It has not been tested, so try it with care
	the first time at least. However it may make it possible to
	do a better job of locating a real terminal on a LAT system.

Load Averaging device
	The load averaging device name can be selected as LAV0:
	or whatever else is appropriate. If you don't have the
	LAV driver, load averaging will not be displayed.

The USER_INFO routine can be modified on a site specific basis to change
	field widths and select what default information should be
	displayed.

The name of the FINGER.PLN file can be chosen on a per site basis. The
	current version will try both FINGER.PLN and PLAN. You can
	change these as you like. You may also choose to have Finger
	use privilege to open Finger.PLN but beware! If your users
	then use SET FILE/ENTER they can get finger to print any
	file on the disk to which they have E access to the directory.
	If they have no E access to any directory other than their
	own, this may be OK however. The problem is only for files in
	their login disk.

Terminal types PT are recognized as pseudo terminals. Also, terminals
	with names beginning in PX are treated as PC network terminals.
	This can be altered on a per site basis as needed.