KDE BBS Client is a modern KDE client for old school telnet based BBS systems.
The easiest way to get going is to install the uv tool from the awesome folks at astral.sh.
Then, to run the client without installing anything more, type:
uvx kde-bbs-client
Or alternatively, to install the client to your machine and run it locally, type:
uv tool install kde-bbs-client
and run:
kde-bbs-client
to start the client.
On startup, the client checks for the existence of its configuration file located at $HOME/.config/kdebbsclient/client-config.yaml.
If that file does not exist, a nicely styled dialog appears that has prompt fields for BBS name, BBS internet address (which accepts a FQDN or an IPv4 or IPv6 address), an optional port, username, and password (the password is hidden on entry).
When the user clicks Submit the configuration file mentioned above is created with those values.
Once the necessary configuration is in place, the client displays a list of BBS systems to connect to including name and address, and allows the user to choose one and click the Connect button.
TODO: Add screenshots!
Once that happens, the client makes a telnet connection to the address given, displaying the output in a nicely styled text display window suitable for reading large volumes of text.
TODO: Screenshots! TODO: Figure out how to detect when a user creates a new post and offer to spawn their editor of choice - as defined by the $EDITOR environment variable to edit it.