ANSI screens

ANSI screens are raw CP437 + ANSI escape code art shown at lifecycle
events: pre-login welcome, post-logoff goodbye, after registration,
or on demand from any menu item.

Where they live

Admin → BBS Menus → ANSI screens (/admin/bbs-menus/screens).

Each screen has:

Built-in slots used by the BBS lifecycle

File-based override (welcome / goodbye / newuser / custom slots)

Before checking the database, welcome/goodbye/newuser and any
custom ansi slot also look for a plain file drop-in at
data/text/<slot>.ans (and <slot>132.ans for widescreen terminals,
<slot>.asc for plain-ASCII terminals) — this takes priority over the
database screen, so it's the quickest way to swap in art without
touching Admin. No restart required.

Multiple screens shown together (classic multi-logon-screen style)

Drop in more than one numbered file and ANetBBS shows all of them,
in order, every single login — the same idea as Synchronet's
logon1.ans/logon2.ans/logon3.ans convention:

data/text/welcome132.ans      <- shown first (the plain file counts as #1)
data/text/welcome132_2.ans    <- shown second
data/text/welcome132_3.ans    <- shown third

Every visitor sees welcome132.ans, then welcome132_2.ans, then
welcome132_3.ans, all in the same login — not a different one each
time. Numbers don't need to be contiguous — whatever _N files exist
are used in ascending numeric order. This works independently per
screen (welcome, welcome132, welcome.asc, goodbye, etc. each get
their own sequence), and for a single file it behaves exactly as
before — no extra setup needed unless you actually want more than one.

Each variant controls its own pause. ANetBBS doesn't automatically
insert a pause between screens in the sequence — put @PAUSE@ at the
end of a variant's content if you want the visitor to press a key
before the next one loads (see "Display codes" below). Leave it off and
that screen flows straight into the next with no wait.

Random: pick just ONE instead of showing the whole sequence

Want variety — a different single screen each login — rather than the
full sequence every time? Use _ran in the filename instead of the
plain numbered naming:

data/text/welcome132_ran.ans      <- random variant #1
data/text/welcome132_2_ran.ans    <- random variant #2
data/text/welcome132_3_ran.ans    <- random variant #3

With _ran naming, each login shows one of the group, chosen at
random — not the whole sequence. If both a _ran group and a plain
numbered group exist for the same screen, the _ran group wins. Works
for any screen (welcome, goodbye, newuser, custom slots) — mix and
match per-screen as you like: the full sequence for one, random-pick-one
for another.

Custom slots

Create any slot name and reference it from a menu item:

• action_type = ansi
• action_args = my_slot_name

So you can make a "view the rules" item, a per-game intro splash,
a sysop-of-the-day plug, etc.

Editing

The editor has a live preview pane that handles SGR colors + clear
screen + cursor home, so you see roughly what the user will see.

You can paste:

• The text content of an existing .ans file
• Raw escape codes typed as \x1b[1;36m etc.
• Output from ansiedit, Pablo, Moebius, ACiDDraw

ANSI menu overrides (file-based)

Beyond the database-driven ANSI screens above, built-in terminal menus
(IRC chat, sysop tools, etc.) support file-based ANSI overrides.
Place a .ans file in data/text/menus/ with the correct slot name
and ANetBBS will show your ANSI instead of the stock colored menu.

How it works

1. Drop <slot>.ans into data/text/menus/ (create the directory if needed).
2. No restart required — the file is read on every menu visit.
3. The screen is cleared, your ANSI is displayed, then the normal
   prompt appears below it (the sysop is still responsible for the art;
   ANetBBS always appends the live prompt so the user can make a choice).
4. If the file is absent or unreadable, the stock colored menu is shown.

File naming requirements

• Extension must be .ans (lowercase)
• Encoding: CP437 + standard ANSI escape codes (same as any BBS art)
• File name is the slot name + .ans, e.g. chat.ans

Slot names reference

Tips

• Keep art at ≤ 23 rows so the prompt fits on a 24-line terminal.
• If the art is taller than the terminal, the user can scroll up to see
  the full art after the prompt renders — but the prompt always appears
  at the current cursor position, not at the bottom of the art.
• Color pipe-codes (|07 etc.) inside the art are not translated here;
  use raw ANSI escape sequences from your art tool instead.
• The menu slot system is separate from the database ansi_screen field
  on menus — those are for user-facing menu header art and support
  @CODE@ substitution; these file overrides do not.

SAUCE

When you import an .ans file into the ANSI Editor (/ansi/),
the import wizard auto-detects the SAUCE trailer (the 128-byte
metadata block at end), strips it cleanly so you don't get garbage
rows, and shows the title/author/group as a flash message.

Display codes (Synchronet @CODE@ and Mystic |XX)

ANetBBS substitutes a useful subset of Synchronet's at-codes
(https://wiki.synchro.net/custom:atcodes) and Mystic's named
display codes (https://wiki.mysticbbs.com/doku.php?id=displaycodes)
in any ANSI screen rendered through the BBS shell — pre-login
welcome, post-logoff goodbye, post-registration newuser, and any
custom slot referenced by a menu item with action_type = ansi.

The same codes also work inside Synchronet door files served via
console.printfile(...), which uses the same BBS_* env vars that
door_runner.py exports to the door process.

Color pipe-codes like |07 (Synchronet/Mystic light-grey) continue
to be handled by the existing pipe-to-ANSI translator and are
unaffected by the named-code substitution above.

Unknown codes pass through visibly so you can spot what's missing
and ask for it to be wired up.