DP Tool Club 12/CD_ASCQ_12_0294.iso/vrac/robom13u.zip/README.1ST

Text File | 1994-02-13 | 20KB | 430 lines

RoboMail 1.3 Upgrade Kit                                        02/14/94
------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Welcome to RoboMail 1.3!

    This file contains upgrade instructions as well as a listing of all
    changes to RoboMail since the 1.2 release.  This upgrade has been a
    long time coming, and I hope that you will enjoy the many new
    features it contains.

    I'd like to extend a big thank you to the beta testers who really
    pounded away on this version to make sure it is the most solid
    release ever and to everyone who contributed suggestions for
    enhancements.  The primary goals for this release were improved
    memory management and Internet mail handling. I think we have
    accomplished both of the goals with the switch to protected mode,
    improved support for very long messages and the addition of many
    Internet-specific addressing features.

    Development on the next release, which will expand RoboMail's
    ability to read other mail formats is already under way, so please
    be sure to let me know about any additional features you would like
    to see.  When trying to contact me, please keep in mind that the
    "echo conferences" are primarily for user-to-user communications.
    For a prompt response, use any of the following methods:

    Email:      [e-mail]
                [e-mail]
    CompuServe: 72167,3662
    FAX:        [phone]
    BBS:        312-752-1258 or 312-752-6528  (Use "C"omment command)

    Thanks very much for your continuing support!

        -- Dan Parsons


IMPORTANT NEWS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    ROBOMAIL IS NOW A PROTECTED MODE EXECUTABLE! - This means that the
    program will now use a built-in DOS Extender to access extended
    memory (any memory above the 1 megabyte mark) to execute both code
    and data.  This new method of operation provides significantly
    enhanced speed as well as increased reliability.

    In order to function in protected mode, your machine must be able
    to provide the following resources to RoboMail:

        o   A 80286 "AT" or higher CPU.

        o   At least 1 megabyte of free "extended" memory. Extended
            memory is any memory installed in your machine above one
            megabyte.  RoboMail can use almost any type of free memory,
            and contains a built in DPMI server which will be used in
            the event your memory manager does not already provide DPMI
            or VCPI services.

    NOTE:   If you are a registered user and your machine is unable to
            run this protected mode version, leave a message on Group
            One BBS asking for access to the special "real mode"
            version of RoboMail 1.3.


INSTALLATION
~~~~~~~~~~~~

    To upgrade to RoboMail 1.3 from any previous version of RoboMail,
    perform the following steps:

        1 - Make a complete backup of your existing RoboMail directory!
            The 1.3 version will convert the format of several data
            files the first time it is run and you will need your
            backup if there should be any problem during the conversion
            process.

        2 - Unzip the ROBOM13U.ZIP file into your existing RoboMail
            directory.  Answer "Y"es to over-write the previously
            existing files when prompted.

        3 - Run the INSTALL.BAT file by typing INSTALL at the DOS
            prompt in your ROBOMAIL directory.

        4 - Start RoboMail by typing ROBOMAIL at the DOS prompt in your
            RoboMail directory.

        5 - Be sure to review this file to learn about the new features
            and changes in the release.  There are several new
            configuration options discussed below that you will want to
            set up right away!


    PERFORMANCE AND CONFIGURATION ISSUES
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

        When running in protected mode, all of ROBOMAIL.EXE is loaded in
        memory at once.  The amount of conventional (below 640K) memory
        available when you start the program is not very important.  As
        long as there is at least 320K of conventional memory and
        sufficient extended memory the program will run very well.
        People using many TSRs, DesqView, Windows or running in a
        network environment will now find that RoboMail runs much better
        and provides greatly improved memory management.

        Previous versions of RoboMail made extensive use of EMS memory.
        If you are certain that no other programs on your system will
        need EMS memory, and you have verified that your system will
        support protected mode operations, you may want to set up your
        system so that EMS memory is disabled.  Doing so will provide
        you with an additional 64K of high memory which can be used by
        other programs.  Please consult your DOS or 3rd-party memory
        management documentation for details.


    RUNNING UNDER DOS
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
        Just run ROBOMAIL.EXE from within the same directory as your
        RoboMail data files.  The program will examine your hardware and
        memory environment and verify that protected mode operations
        are possible. All available extended memory (up to 8 megabytes)
        will be used.


    RUNNING UNDER WINDOWS
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
        By default, RoboMail will request up to 8 megabytes of extended
        memory before resorting to a disk swap file.  This all happens
        automatically without you needing to do any special
        modifications of any settings.  In effect, RoboMail will be
        using Window's own swap file mechanism for its own virtual
        memory operations.  This is very efficient and fast.

        If you are running other applications simultaneously and want
        to stop RoboMail from using a full 8 megabytes of Windows
        virtual memory, you can add a MAXMEM:nnnn switch to your
        ROBOMAIL environment variable.  However, don't do this unless
        you feel RoboMail's appetite for memory is adversely affecting
        the performance of other programs running at the same time.  For
        example, to limit RoboMail to 4 megabytes of extended memory,
        you would use the environment variable:

            SET ROBOMAIL=MAXMEM:4096

        If you need help setting up a program item for RoboMail on your
        Windows desktop, use the sample ROBOMAIL.PIF that has been
        supplied in this upgrade kit.


    RUNNING UNDER DESQVIEW
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

        To run successfully under DesqView make sure that the minimum
        program size is set to at least 400 and that you specify at
        least 1024 in the PIF setting for Expanded memory usage.  A
        sample RM-PIF.DVP file has been supplied that contains the
        settings needed for normal operations.  If you have sufficient
        resources, you should increase the amount of Expanded memory to
        4096 for optimal performance.

        If you find that you are unable to open other windows while
        RoboMail is running, you may want to place an absolute limit on
        the amount of physical memory that will be requested by adding:

            SET ROBOMAIL=MAXMEM:2048

        ...to your environment.


    RUNNING UNDER OS/2
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

        You should edit your DOS settings to provide at least 4
        megabytes of DPMI memory (8 is better) and 640K XMS (for
        fastest swapping to external programs).  Because of a conflict
        between RoboMail, OS/2 2.1 and PKZIP's usage of DPMI memory, it
        is important that you do not remove the supplied PKZIP.CFG file
        from your RoboMail directory.  The file disables PKZIP's DPMI
        usage when shelled out from RoboMail.

        Under OS/2 2.1 GA, the TAME21 utility (available on Group One -
        The RoboMail support BBS) is required for correct timeslice
        yielding.


WHAT ELSE IS NEW?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    o   Added an Internet Settings configuration screen.  This screen
        allows you to specify a primary Email conference that will be
        used for your Internet Email.

                              >>> IMPORTANT <<<

        IF YOU READ INTERNET EMAIL IN  ROBOMAIL, MAKE SURE TO IDENTIFY
        YOUR PRIMARY EMAIL CONFERENCE ON THIS NEW SETUP SCREEN. (Screen
        #4)  From the control panel, Press F2, and select "RoboMail
        Settings" then press PgDn three times to get to the new screen.

        RoboMail 1.3 has many new features that make use of this
        setting to make intelligent handling of all Internet related
        messages much easier and more convenient:

        o   INTERNET SIGNATURE FILE: You can now specify a special
            signature file that will automatically be appended to any
            message you send to a conference with the "Internet
            Conference" flag set.

        o   INTERNET EMAIL CONFERENCE: Added intelligent handling of
            reply addresses when responding to mailing-list type Email.
            RoboMail will now look for a "Reply-To:" address when you
            tell it to reply in your configured Internet Email
            conference.  If one is found, and if it differs from the
            "From:" address in the message, you will get a pop-up menu
            asking which address you wish to reply to.  This allows you
            to easily reply in private to the mailing list contributor
            (From:), or publicly to the whole list (Reply-To:).

        o   INTERNET "NEWSGROUP" CONFERENCES: When you reply to an
            article in any "Internet" conference that is not configured
            as your primary Email conference, RoboMail will ask if you
            want to post a public follow-up article to the group or if
            you want to respond to the article privately via Email.  If
            you post a follow-up to the newsgroup and have the new
            "Include Message ID reference in Newsgroup follow-up
            articles" option selected, RoboMail will pull the
            Message-ID information out of the message you are replying
            to and insert it at the beginning of your outgoing reply.
            This will keep your reply from become "fragmented" from the
            ongoing thread on the unix systems which handle the
            newsgroups.   In addition, RoboMail automatically changes
            the addressee of the message to ALL when creating newsgroup
            follow-up messages.

        o   ALL INTERNET CONFERENCES: RoboMail is now more intelligent
            about grabbing addresses when you are in a conference that
            has the "Internet Conference" flag set.  If you elect to
            add the message sender to the address book, RM will scan
            the current message for a FROM: line and take the default
            routing address from that line.  If an address is found, RM
            will ask about assigning your default Internet Email system
            and conference to the address book entry.

        o   NON INTERNET CONFERENCES:  Added easy Internet Email
            routing in any conference.  If you are reading a message in
            a non-internet conference that contains an Email address,
            highlight the line containing the address and press "R" and
            you will be asked if you want to reply via Email to the
            address contained in the line.

        o   ANY CONFERENCE INTERNET ADDRESS GRABBING:  If you have the
            highlight bar enabled on the message viewing screen, you
            can highlight a line containing an internet address and
            press F3 to add the sender or recipient to the address
            book.  RoboMail will examine the current line to see if it
            contains an internet address, and if so, it will ask if you
            want to assign that address to the new address book entry.

    o       HINT:  Are you Using UQWK to create Internet NewsGroup
            packets?  If so, did you know RoboMail will handle
            conference names up to 25 characters long?  Be sure to add
            a "-l25" switch to your UQWK command line to enable longer
            conference names in your packet.

    o   Added the ability to control high-ASCII stripping in Internet
        conferences on a conference-by-conference basis.  A new option
        allows you to disable RoboMail's global high ASCII stripping
        of Internet conferences.  When this option is disabled, the
        individual conference high ASCII options will be used.  This
        will be very useful in countries who's languages require these
        characters.

    o   Added PASSWORD PROTECTION at program start-up.  Use the new
        setting on the System Configuration screen if you want to enable
        this.

    o   Added a new option to the "Message Setup" configuration screen
        to default all forwarded messages to private status.  If you do
        a lot of forwarding of confidential information, you will want
        to make sure this option is selected.

    o   Added a configuration option for a RIP GRAPHICS viewing program.
        The "V" key when viewing messages will now automatically
        display the message with the RIP viewer if RIPscript code is
        found in the message.  The default utility for viewing RIP
        graphics is DEADVIEW, which is available on Group One BBS.

    o   Added quoted text highlighting to the internal editor.  Changed
        the default color scheme to improve legibility of inverse video
        on the highlighted text.  If you are using a custom color
        scheme, you might want to use the ALT-D command on the color
        settings screen to try the new defaults.

    o   Added an "Attach" column way out on the right side of the
        message index (Press [Ins]) screen.  (you did know the cursor
        scrolls off the right side of the screen, right?) It will
        contain the word "Attach" if the message has an attached file.

    o   Added Ctrl-Y as a duplicate for Alt-D (Delete Line) in the
        internal editor.

    o   Added the following quick-merge macros: {DAY}, {MONTH} and
        {YEAR}.  For example, including: {MONTH} {DAY}, {YEAR} in
        a message on 1/8/94 would yield: January 18, 1994

    o   Added the ability to process quick merge macros imbedded in
        messages created with an external editor.

    o   Added message creation time to text output message header
        information.

    o   Added a Cam-Mail Gold mail door driver.


IMPROVEMENTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~

    o   Improved support for Big and Long messages!  Two new
        configuration options have been added to the message importing
        configuration screen: "Maximum allowable bytes in an individual
        message:" controls the number of bytes allowed in individual
        messages.  Any imported messages which exceed the number you
        input here will be split into multiple parts during import.

        When running RoboMail in protected mode, the maximum bytes
        option should be set to its highest value of 60,000.  RoboMail
        can now manage an unlimited number of messages each up to
        60,000 bytes long!

        The new "Maximum number of message lines to display:" can be
        set to any value up to 4000.  Any messages which exceed this
        length (pretty unlikely -- they will most likely exceed the
        byte limit first) are stored properly, but truncated during
        display.

    o   Improved display of ANSI news, welcome, goodbye, file list and
        bulletin files.  RoboMail will now pause for a keystroke before
        executing clear screen codes embedded in ANSI display files.
        In addition, a little "More" message is now displayed on the
        screen when RoboMail is waiting for a keystroke.

    o   Improved the F3 pop-up address book when addressing a message.
        If you press F3 while the message addressing dialog box is
        displayed, RoboMail will attempt to locate an entry for the
        current recipient of your outgoing message.  If none is found,
        the address book will be displayed starting with the first
        entry.  This will make it even easier to direct a private reply
        from a non-Internet conference to Internet Email.

    o   Improved the global Quick-Scan routines so that lines containing
        search matches are now highlighted when viewing messages
        collected via a Quick-Scan from the control panel.

    o   Improved tagline manager routines to allow tagline files with
        the same name as a BBS ID.

    o   Improved conference reconciliation routines to better trap
        invalid packets which contain multiple listings for the same
        conference number.

    o   Improved error-trapping code to handle QWK packets from the
        PCBoard 15 Internal QWK routines which contain invalid (NULL)
        status information for messages.

    o   Improved the "HELP INDEX" help screen you can now use the
        [PgUp], [PgDn], [Home] and [End] keys to navigate through the
        long related topics list.


WHAT'S CHANGED?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    o   The switch to protected mode has eliminated the need for many
        of RoboMail 1.2's exotic configuration switches.  The following
        are now obsolete and should be removed from your ROBOMAIL
        environment variable if you are using them: E:nnn, /CX, /CE,
        /OP, and /OU.

    o   Changed the default ZIP and UNZIP commands to:

            UNZIP:  "PKUNZIP -+-)3 -o %S %T"
            ZIP:    "PKZIP -+-)3 %T @%S"

        The 1.3 version will update your existing settings when you
        install it.  If you have made changes to the RoboMail defaults,
        you may need to go back in to the configuration routines and
        update them again.  If you are using an older version of PKZIP,
        you will need to remove the "-+-)3" part from the ZIP command.

        If you are using PKZIP version 2.x and call systems which
        cannot accept REPly packets created by PKZIP 2.x, then change
        your configured ZIP command to:

            PKZIP -+-)3 -e0 %T @%S

        If you are still using PKZIP version 1.x, change the command to:

            PKZIP %T @%S


WHAT'S FIXED?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    o   Fixed a bug in the pop-up directory display routines that made
        it impossible to select a file that was flagged as read-only.

    o   Fixed a bug that would create an attachment record in the
        attachment manager even if an attachment was not included in
        the QWK packet.

    o   Fixed import problem that caused messages with an empty TO
        field to be assigned personal status.  Empty TO fields are now
        converted to "ALL" during import.

    o   Fixed import problem that caused all messages with an empty
        FROM field to be filtered during import.  Messages with an
        empty FROM field are now converted to ANONYMOUS during import.

    o   Fixed bug that caused an out of memory error when importing a
        file larger than 64K into the internal editor with ALT-F.

    o   Fixed rare problems with intermittent incorrect matches and
        bizarre results with the "Q"uery and "Q"uick-Scan functions.

    o   Fixed a rare problem with low level file i/o routines that
        could cause the problems some people encountered when importing
        QWK packets containing messages that needed to be split into
        multiple parts.

                                    # # #