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1992-06-28
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Program history
1992-06-28 The program now supports all AKAs which were found
2.63 in Setup.Fd. Use Ctrl-A or the "Miscellaneous" menu
6C59AF5C to switch to another network address.
But not only AKAs as found in FrontDoor's setup are
available: new, temporary AKAs may be created and used
during a QBBed session.
When changing folders the program automatically switches
to the AKA active in this specific folder. The same is
true if messages are forwarded into another echo folder.
For netmail replies created by QBBed FrontDoor's AKA
matching table will be used.
■ New commandline parameter "-read" or "/read" switches
immediately to message viewing mode. Optionally this
parameter may include an area name to start reading in
a specific echomail area. <area> is an area name as
found in TosScan's setup. Only as much characters as
required for unique identification of <area> are needed.
Attention: there must not be any blank(s) between
"-read" and <area>.
Examples: "qbbed -read" switch to message viewing mode
in the first folder.
"qbbed -readpascal" switch to message viewing
mode in the "PASCAL" echomail area.
■ Message editing #1: if identical message subjects were
altered in the same way the program uses the new, changed
message subject to suggest a new, default message subject.
This makes it much easier to manually change message topics
to common new message topics.
■ Message editing #2: after pressing [ESC] while editing
a message field the program moves back one level into
field selection mode. Previous versions used [ESC] to
immediately abort message editing.
■ Message view mode: Alt-F (switch folder) now always checks
for new messages. Ctrl-F therefore no longer is supported.
Update of the "new messages" tag now works as expected.
■ Messagebase optimization: the average performance for
each folder is shown in a new column called "speed".
Measuring unit is messages per seconds.
■ Alt-F2 create topic list (in message view mode): if all
messages with a selected topic are tagged by pressing
<space> from the topic list window the first message
with the selected topic will be located.
Pressing Alt-E from the topic list window locates
the first message with the selected topic and switches
directly into header editing mode.
■ Alt-F3 create PID list (in message view mode): if a
message containing a selected PID is located by pressing
<return> or all occurances of a selected PID are tagged
by pressing <space> from the PID list window the first
message containing the selected PID will be located.
The PID's location in the message will be highlighted.
■ The program information screen (Alt-I) has been redesigned
to reflect the program's new capabilities. It may be called
directly from the DOS prompt with the commandline parameter
"-info" or "/info".
■ Alt-C File request new version: suggesting the nearest
support site for file request has been improved.
■ I've splitted the program code into much smaller units.
Therefore it was possible to decrease the overlay buffer
by approximately 6 KB.
1992-06-04 FrontDoor's optional macro file NAMES.FD is supported
2.62 everywhere the program prompts for a user name and a
E8C21239 network address. Usage is identical to FD/FM: enter
"*<name>" for any <name> and network address defined
in NAMES.FD; the full user name and the network address
will be inserted by Qbbed.
■ Optionally the program creates receipt messages if
a new echomail message destined for the sysop or the
currently selected user is read for the first time.
See the "Miscellaneous" menu and the corresponding
F1 help text for more details.
■ Added the new option "Add comment to current message"
to the "Edit" menu. The comment message will be a new
echomail message; sending comments via netmail is not
possible.
■ During idle time the program releases time slices which
currently are not needed. This increases the performance
of other active tasks in sophisticated environments such
as OS/2 2.0 or poor man's multitaskers like DESQview or
Windows 3.1.
■ Fixed a bug which occasionally caused the program to
crash during check for unread echomail in all folders
(initiated by Alt-F or Ctrl-F in message viewing mode).
■ Removed mouse support from all menus and dialog boxes.
I never was happy with the way I implemented mouse support
in this program; due to my lack of programming knowledge
and affordable spare time currently I'm not able to write
a completely event driven version of this program.
However, the commandline switch "-nomouse" still may be
useful for some of you. No doubt you'll find out by your-
self what I mean.
1992-05-01 Optimization/Search and Replace: the program stores the
2.61 Search and Replace strings for messages topics if such
5899328A operations are performed while in use. These "old" and
"new" topics now optionally can be saved to an ASCII file
called SUBJECTS.BBS. If this file is present in the same
subdirectory as the messagebase files the message topics
will be changed during optimization of the messagebase.
This is useful for maintaining uniform message threads.
Loss of performance is minimal: messages which have been
changed already are marked in the "times read" field of
the header and will not be touched during further optimi-
zation runs.
■ Optimization: the "lastread" pointers will be kept on the
same message as they were before optimizing and sorting
was started (hi, Bruce).
■ Random origin lines: if the ASCII file ORIGINS.BBS is found
in the messagebase subdirectory an origin line will be
selected randomly by the program after creation of a new
echomail message. See the sample file ORIGINS.BBS in the
distribution archive for more details.
■ New screen layout for message viewing: the "Status" line
has been removed. If message flags are present they will
be shown in the right hand screen corner on the same line
as the line separating the header contents and the message
body. The screen area available for message text therefore
has been increased by one screen line.
■ Some minor bug fixes and Assembler re-coding of low-level
string handling and screen output procedures. Hope some
parts now work faster and better.
1992-03-30 The message flags for netmail replies now can be selected
2.60 from a menu. All standard and extended flags supported by
9EE39D4A FrontDoor and FrontDoor's editor may be used.
■ Now additionally Areafile.Fd will be checked for folders
which were not found in Folder.Fd (the program calls them
"undefined folders"). Also, all message lines like
" * Reply to message in..." or " * Forwarded from..."
now will use the conference name as found in Areafile.Fd
instead of the folder name from Folder.Fd. I think it's
better to identify a netmail reply to an echomail message
or a forwarded message by the unique echotag instead of
the local description found in Folder.Fd, although most
echotags I know seem to be somehow cryptic and not very
suggestive to understand.
However, the program still supports a maximum number of
200 message folders.
Many thanks to Mats Wallin, 2:201/329, for this suggestion.
■ The statistical overview of a message folder now may be
saved as netmail message or into an echomail folder.
Here's how: press F10 from the main screen, select the
"Tag" menu and pick the option "Tag specific messages"
(or simply press "T" from the main screen, that's not so
user-friendly, but a lot faster).
Next, make sure the "From:", "To:" and "Subject:" input
fields are empty (press Ctrl-Y at the first position of
each field to delete a complete string). Use the default
start and stop values for the date range, select a message
folder. After Alt-S for "Statistical overview", answer
"Y" to the question "Create verbose overview". If you're
finished viewing the various tables and charts, answer "Y"
to the next question, "Save report to a message".
Many thanks to Christian Martin, 2:300/122, for suggesting
this feature.
■ If more than one user was found in FrontDoor's setup the
program now checks the access flags for each folder.
Reading, editing and other message related tasks only
are possible if the current user has access to the folder.
While viewing messages the folder selection menu only displays
folders which are accessible by the selected user.
Currently password protection of certain folders is *NOT*
supported by the program.
■ If using the commandline parameter "/optimize<=options>"
the program no longer prompts for a password ;-) Thanks,
Richard Kail, 2:310/25.2, for your hint.
■ Netmail flames generated by the program (such as messages to
handle users, writers of questionably dated messages and
messages with non-ASCII characters in the "From:", "To:" or
"Subject:" field) now optionally may be created from an ASCII
file. Before creating such messages the program prompts for
a filename; if none is entered the built-in default message
texts will be used.
■ All netmail messages created by the program now contain a
"^aTZ: <timezone>" kludge line if "TZ" is set in the DOS
environment. This probably may be useful some day.
■ Changed the "Miscellaneous" pulldown menu to make the status
of the various behaviour flags more visible.
1992-03-22 New "silent" feature: if TosScan's support file Areafile.Fd
2.59 was found in FrontDoor's system directory it is read by the
B0CA63E9 program. The maximum message age for each folder is taken
into consideration if QBBed is used to optimize the message
base.
If a particular message is older than the "days to keep
mail" field of the corresponding folder (see "Tsetup")
"[Outdated]" is displayed in dimmed colours next to the
message date. This is to indicate that this message will
be purged during the next run of "Tsutil maint -r" or
QBBed's messagebase optimization.
Areafile.Fd only will be read if the messagebase used
by the program is the primary messagebase as found in
Setup.Fd. If a secondary messagebase is being accessed
by QBBed (commandline parameter "-p<path>") Areafile.Fd
will not be checked for the "days to keep mail" settings.
So if you use FrontDoor, TosScan and this program fire up
"Tsetup", select the "Area Manager" and check the field
"days to keep mail" -- you don't need "Tsutil maint -r"
anymore to pack your messagebase according to the age
of messages.
■ The process of checking for new mail (started by Alt-F
or Ctrl-F while viewing a message text) has been speeded
up dramatically. This should be remarkable especially
if the program is used on a network.
■ Program information (Alt-I) now reports the free space
on the disk where the messagebase is located. I think
that's more useful than the free diskspace of the drive
used to launch the program. Where required also megabyte
units are used to display free harddisk and EMS space
instead of kilobyte units.
A second screen next to "Program information" optionally
displays some data related to the messagebase: the numbers
of deleted messages, outdated and undefined messages, the
numbers of messages from or to handle users and the number
of messages with illegal (other than 0x20 to 0x7E) characters
in the "From:", "To:" or "Subject:" field. Also the average
message length is computed and displayed. This second screen
only is available of "Program information" was started from
the header display mode (Alt-F9 from message text mode).
1992-03-14 Rewrote the program's mouse handler. The menus now
2.58 should work much faster, even with a serial mouse.
39C012B3 I hope there's no more need for the "nomouse" command
line parameter, although it's still present.
New behaviour while viewing message text: if a topic
table has been created (Alt-F2) and "+" ("next reply")
was pressed on a message which has no reply, the topic
table appears on the screen to select a new topic.
If [right arrow] or [home] is pressed on a folder's
last message the folder selection menu (Alt-F) will
be activated automatically.
1992-03-10 New command in the "Search" menu: pressing the "<" key
2.57 locates the first message of the current reply chain
DA536187 (if the message currently highlighted is part of a reply
chain, of course). Very useful feature, in my opinion.
Changed some help texts, nothing important.
1992-03-01 Included help texts for the message text hex editor
2.56 and the message text hex dump. If the hex editor's
B51B3614 cursor is placed on the length byte of a text record
a pop-up window reminds to pay attention to this
special byte.
Viewing messages: if an attempt to read past the last
message in a folder is done the program switches to
the folder selection menu.
1992-02-27 Editing of message text now is available both in hex and
2.56 ASCII mode: press Alt-H while viewing a message, then Alt-E
AC63A95C to change the message body. Changes may be entered in hex
or ASCII. Of course editing is not possible if the message
base is accessed in read-only-mode.
Forward tagged messages: if the program was used on a point
system it erratically appended the point number to the desti-
nation address during forwarding of tagged echomail. Fixed.
The folder selection dialog box now uses hexadecimal format
to display folder numbers and the number of messages in each
folder if the program is switched to hex mode.
1992-01-12 Included my network address which soon will be changed to
2.55 2:310/90.100. Some other changes regarding dialog boxes,
B9904870 the built-in list of acronyms and some minor changes to
some routines which I unfortunately don't remember anymore
in detail also were implemented.
1991-12-08 Fixed a bug which sometimes caused the option "Tag selected
2.54 name" from the userlist to not work properly.
A608C2B5
1991-11-30 New option in the "Search" menu: create user list (Alt-F2).
2.54 Scans all non-deleted messages in the current folder and
13B5AB0C creates a list of user names from the "To:" and "From:"
fields of the messages header. The contents of this lists
are displayed in two scrollable windows. Similar to Alt-F1
(create topic list, former command: "?") and Alt-F3 (create
PID list, former command: "P") a message from/to a selected
name can be highlighted by pressing <return> or tagged by
pressing <space>.
In message view mode the folder selection box activated by
Alt-F or Ctrl-F now only lists folders which contain some
messages. Folders which contain no messages will not be
included in this list.
1991-11-23 To make the program more familiar for FM users I've changed
2.53 the <home> and <end> keys to work the same as in FM: <home>
E0C2906B locates the first message in the current folder, <end> moves
to the last message. Ctrl-Home moves to the first line of
the current message, Ctrl-End displays the last. All this
is true while in text viewing mode only.
Reshuffled the location of the help texts in the overlay.
Therefore it was possible to decrease the overlay buffer
by approximately 35 percent. Result: more heap memory is
available for larger messagebases and longer messages.
New feature: tagged messages optionally can be forwarded
also into the netmail folder.
Netmail messages created by the program -- regardless if
netmail replies, forwarded echomail or automatically
generated flames -- now use the same netmail attribute
flag as found in Setup.Fd. In non-FrontDoor environments
the default netmail flag is "private" and "kill/sent".
An other default netmail flag may be set using the key-
word "netmailflag = <flag>" in Qbbed.Ini. See the file
Sample.Ini for possible values for <flag>. If this state-
ment is present in Qbbed.Ini it will override FrontDoor's
default netmail flag.
The new keywords "keepPIDs" and "keeptopics" determine
if the files Pids.### and Topics.### will be kept or
deleted before the program exits. The Pids.### and
Topics.### files are stored in the subdirectory located
by the TMP or TEMP environment variable. I suggest using
a RAM disk for this path. Changing these flags can be
done in the "Miscellaneous" menu.
1991-11-21 Fixed a bug which sometimes caused lockups if new echo-
2.52 mail messages have been created in message viewing mode.
A0F837C2 Dynamical memory management is a science for itself :-)
1991-11-19 Patrik Sjoberg, 2:205/208, sent me a very fast CRC32
2.51 routine in Assembler. You'll notice the different
73205E87 speed while the program is checking Setup.Fd, during
the calculation of the program's CRC (Alt-I) and while
the program is altering Setup.Fd (and Fd.Sys) in case
you've used the "-p<other path>" commandline parameter
and Alt-B (external editor) or Alt-L (external linker)
was invoked.
Thanks a lot, Patrik; very much appreciated!
Fixed a braindead bug which sometimes caused heap crash
during reading of messages. I've noticed that already,
but Ralf Pradella, 2:249/6, gave me a useful hint into
the right direction.
1991-11-18 Minor, but useful changes: if Alt-F (select folder)
2.51 was pressed for the first time while viewing a message
00D40DDF a scan for new messages in all folders is started.
This does exactly the same als Ctrl-F in FM: check
all folders for new messages.
Both Alt-F and Ctrl-F can be used to switch for reading
to an other folder. Ctrl-F always does a complete scan
for unread mail (not necessarily destined for the sysop),
while Alt-F does this scan automatically only when issued
for the first time.
Unlike FM also the number of messages contained in each
folder is displayed besides the folder name. Selecting
a folder now also can be done via the first letter of
the folder's name.
While viewing a message text Alt-E now can be pressed
to edit the message header.
Netmail replies now are possible; toggling netmail or
echomail replies is done via the shortcut Ctrl-N.
Message quoting is toggled via the shortcut Ctrl-Q.
1991-11-17 The message text display finally is scrollable.
2.50 Up-arrow, down-arrow, PgUp and PgDn can be used
D53FF3DC to browse through the message text, <home> moves
to the first message line, <end> to the last.
The maximum length of a message text depends on
the amount of memory available; there is no such
thing as a hard coded limit for the message length.
The program stops at the last line of a message;
something I've always missed in FM (hi, Jo).
While reading messages left-arrow or right-arrow only
moves within the folder. Similar to FM Alt-F supports
selecting an other folder while viewing messages.
Hidden control characters and paragraph marks can be
displayed exactly 1:1 as they appear within the message
text. Of course each message also may be viewed in
hexadecimal form.
Creating of new messages or replies also at last
is possible. This is done by executing an external
text editor, because I don't want to write yet another
full screen editor, and because no other editor works
as nice and comfortable as your preferred text editor.
Pressing "?" creates a list of topics from the folder
to which the current message belongs. The topics
will be shown in a scrollable window; <return> locates
the first message with this topic (usually the begin
of a message thread). <space> tags all messages with
the selected topic.
A similar feature is "P", create list of PID's.
All PID's found in the messagebase will be displayed
in a window; <return> locates the message in which
the selected PID was encountered for the first time.
<space> tags all messages containing the selected PID.
With the help of Wilbert Van Leijen, 2:500/12.10956,
who translated a vital function of the program to
Assembler, the dupe checking option has been speeded
up remarkably.
For each option of the program a context-sensitive
help text is available via the F1 key.
1991-11-05 All tagged messages will be cleared before starting
2.32 the dupe checking. If there were already some tagged
B689CDC1 messages but no dupes were found during dupe checking
these tagged messages were considered dupes. Thanks
to Christian Hassa, 2:310/15.4, for reporting this.
A context sensitive help system is available for all
commands supported by the program. If F1 is pressed
from the pulldown menu the corresponding help text
for each highlighted menu option will be displayed.
The "request for help"-message previous versions of
the program generated no longer exists.
The program no longer asks is new settings should be
saved to its .INI file if the settings have not been
changed as it erratically did in previous versions.
1991-11-01 If the messagebase currently being accessed by QBBed is not
2.31 the same as found in Setup.Fd the program displays a warning
in a pop-up window on attempt to execute an external editor
or an external reply-linking program.
Optionally now Setup.Fd may be altered to contain the path
to the other messagebase before the external program is started.
If this option is used the original path to the primary
messagebase is restored in Setup.Fd after returning from
the external program.
If the commandline parameter "-optimize" was used and
QBBed was pointed with "-p<path>" to an other subdirectory
than found in Setup.Fd's QuickBBS path the program changes
Setup.Fd before calling the external reply-linking program.
Afterwards the original QuickBBS path of course is restored
in Setup.Fd again.
For the sake of old fashioned programs each time Setup.Fd is
changed it is also copied to Fd.Sys in the same subdirectory.
This of course only is done is an existing Fd.Sys was found
-- hello, Joaquim :-))
Changed the "Messagebase optimization options" dialog box
to allow selecting if the Msg*.Bak files should be deleted
or should be kept. By the way: this dialog box now is a
little bit smarter (hello, Ralf!) than the previous one.
If the first user defined in Setup.Fd has an associated
password the program prompts for this password. After
three wrong passwords have been entered the program is
terminated. If more users were found in Setup.Fd the
user for the current session must be selected.
A new option in the "Search" menu allows to check for
new echomail. That's basically the same as using the
commandline parameter "-new". However, since there is
also a new option in the "Miscellaneous" menu to change
the current user (Ctrl-U) the search for new echomail
can be done again for the new selected user.
On beginning of the messagebase optimization the program
hung if "Sort chronologically" was *not* selected.
At least on my machine the optimization works flawlessly,
regardless if chronological sorting was selected or not.
If the messagebase is set to "Read only" the "R/O" in
the upper right hand corner of the screen is displayed
blinking. If only a part of the messagebase is in use
after choosing global access filters the asterisk in
the upper left hand screen corner blinks.
The program information (Alt-I) now includes a CRC check
of the program itself. For the current version this
CRC checksum is 1F74940D. If this hexadecimal number
is different than the one appearing on your computer's
screen chances are high that the .EXE has been altered.
1991-10-30 If there's not enough memory available for dupe checking
2.30 of the complete messagebase the program notifies this in
a pop-up window. Use Alt-F to set global access filters
and try again if your system has not enough memory free
for a complete dupe check.
After dupe checking the program didn't dispose the heap
it allocated for the binary tree. Changed this so that
all memory required for dupe checking will be available
again afterwards.
Added both CRC-32 checksums to the file Setup.Fd which
optionally is created by the program if it's used in
a non-FrontDoor environment. Setup.Fd created by the
program now is fully accessible using Fdsetup.Exe.
Added John Barton, 2:257/168, to the file request dialog
box ("Check for new version Alt-C").
1991-10-29 With the help of Ralf Pradella (2:249/6) and Alexander
2.30 Holy (2:310/90) I was able to create a 32 bit CRC routine.
Therefore it was possible to dramatically increase the
speed of the option "Check for duplicate messages (Alt-U)".
Performance of dupe checking: 4953 messages per minute
on an 80386/20 with 1 mb disk cache in extended memory,
DOS 5.0 and no DESQview, Windows or similar stuff.
If the program is used in a non-Frontdoor environment
the ASCII file Qbbed.Ini is required for configuration.
Before terminating the program now optionally saves the
configuration data in FrontDoor's format to the binary
files Setup.Fd and Folder.Fd. If both .Fd files are
found in the subdirectory from which Qbbed.Exe was
started (this is not necessarily identical to the sub-
directory where Qbbed.Exe is located) this files will
be used for primary configuration on the next startup.
I've included this feature because Setup.Fd and Folder.Fd
are processed in a much faster and saver way than Qbbed.Ini.
However, if important system parameters are changed and
Fdsetup.Exe is not available for changing the binary
setup files both Setup.Fd and Folder.Fd must be deleted.
The altered file Qbbed.Ini will be used; optionally the
new configuration data again may be saved in FrontDoor
format before exiting the program.
1991-10-28 New commandline parameter "-optimize" or "/optimize":
2.29 only perform messagebase optimization. If no options
are set the program first prompts for the optimization
options which should be used. Many thanks to Christian
Hassa, 2:310/15.4, for suggesting this switch.
Changed the way the program searches deleted messages
if such messages have been recognized during reading
of Msgidx.Bbs. This should be faster now than in
previous versions. Thanks a lot to the folks at the
Frankfurt-Con :-)
I'm still working on a faster way of dupe checking,
stay tuned...
1991-10-24 The new commandline parameter "-new" or "/new" checks
2.28 for new echomail waiting for the first user defined
in FrontDoor's setup. If new echomail is found it
will be tagged and the scrollbar will be located
at the first unreceived message addressed to this
user.
New menu option "Optimization options Alt-O" in the
file menu: a pop-up dialog box allows to set many
messagebase optimization, packing and sorting options.
This optimization tasks will be performed after pressing
Alt-X, Alt-Q or Alt-F4. The optimization options may
be saved to Qbbed.Ini (or whatever this file is called).
1991-10-21 Expanded the behaviour of the commandline parameter
2.27 "undelete": if deleted messages were found they will
be recovered automatically. If checking for deleted
messages was invoked by Alt-Y or the pulldown menu
and deleted messages were found the program prompts
if they should be recovered.
Text dump (Alt-T) now also works on deleted messages.
1991-10-20 New menu option in the "Tag" menu: tag all deleted
2.26 messages, Alt-Y. No further comment necessary,
I suppose.
The new commandline parameter "/undelete" or
"-undelete" may be used to activate this function
immediately after program startup.
1991-10-19 New option in the "Tag" menu: if the ASCII file
2.25 "Tagnames.Txt" is located in the messagebase
subdirectory messages to or from a member of
this list will be tagged. The maximum length of
a name in this file is 35 characters, the maximum
number of names is 100. Leading or trailing blanks
don't matter; everything including and after a semi-
colon is a comment.
If Tagnames.Txt was not found this name list is
identical to the user names defined in FD's setup.
Menu options which currently are not available will
be dimmed in the pulldown menu.
1991-10-14 The program now again reads deleted messages during
2.24 initial scan of the messagebase. Previous versions
took into consideration only those messages which
were *not* marked as "deleted" in the index files.
1991-10-11 While checking for duplicate messages the program
2.23 reports the number of dupes found in a pop-up window.
No other changes; I'm still working on a much faster
method of dupe checking.
1991-10-10 New option in the "Search" menu: Check for dupes, Alt-U.
2.23 This checks for duplicate messages and tags them for
further processing. Please be aware that the method
I currently use is very slow; you do better by using
Alt-F to select specific messages and then Alt-U to
dupe-check only the selected range. I'm working on
a faster method for dupe-checking, but this taks is
not trivial.
After pressing "Del" the program displays "Deleting
[nn] messages..." if more than two messages have been
selected (tagged) for deleting. Thanks to Christian
Hassa, 2:310/15.4, for this suggestion.
1991-09-29 Fixed a bug which caused a wrong order of messages while
2.22 printing or exporting to ASCII file in reply-linked sequence.
1991-09-27 The index file Msginfo.Bbs now will be opened in "Read only/
2.21 Deny none" mode. If another program or task accessed this
file until this version Qbbed used to abort.
1991-09-25 The program now uses a file sharing method which should
2.20 work with FM and RemoteAccess: Msghdr.Bbs is accessed in
"Deny none/Read access" mode. Before attempting to write
to Msghdr.Bbs this file is closed and opened again in
"Deny write/Read-write access" mode. After the changed
data has been written Msghdr.Bbs again is closed and re-
opened in "Deny none/Read access" mode. This method was
suggested by Mats Wallin; I hope it works as it should.
During exporting to ASCII file the program used a wrong
left margin. Thanks to Bob Snowdon for telling me.
Included Carlo Ballarini, 2:331/316, in the program's
file request facility.
1991-09-24 After resetting the global access filters the minimum
2.19 and maximum values of the message number range were not
restored properly. This should work now.
Modified my keyboard buffer flushing routines so that
no character should remain in the buffer before any
attempt to read the keyboard is done.
1991-09-20 In hex dump mode the table header erratically displayed
2.18 "07 09 09 0A...". Changed this to be "07 08 09 0A...".
Searching for messages now may be combined with tagging:
the prompt "Continue [Y,n]?" has been modified to allow
pressing of [space] to tag the highlighted message plus
continue searching.
Thanks to Ralf Pradella, 2:249/6, for this suggestion.
1991-09-16 The "+" and "-" keys sometimes placed the header pointer
2.17 in Nirwana if used in single header display mode.
Changed all references to FrontDoor from "Frontdoor"
to "FrontDoor" because FrontDoor is a trade mark
and therefore it has to be spelled exactly this way.
1991-09-08 Fixed a bug which sometimes caused an infinite loop
2.16 while printing or exporting to ASCII file in reply-
linked order.
1991-09-05 Added two new menu options: "Forward tagged" ("Edit"
2.15 menu) and "Rebuild index files" ("File" menu).
The first option forwards all tagged messages to a
folder of your choice; additionally all message flags
and kludge lines for further netmail processing may
be set and included in the new forwarded messages.
The second option rebuilds Msginfo.Bbs, Msgidx.Bbs and
Msgtoidx.Bbs from scratch. This is useful if messages
have been deleted, forwarded or moved to other folders.
1991-08-31 A new option in the "Tag" menu allows tagging of all
2.14 messages belonging to an undefined folder. "Undefined"
in this contexts means a folder which was not found
neither in Folder.Fd nor in Qbbed.Ini.
Added Tony Van den Bogaert, 2:295/43, to the list of
request systems ("File" menu, Alt-C).
1991-08-28 Removed the DESQview alert window popping up if the
2.13 program detected DESQview's presence. Anybody using
DESQview should know what and why he does it.
1991-08-26 If "Alt-keys activate menu" was set to "on" and "S"
2.12 for "statistical overview" was selected from the
"Miscellaneous" menu, the "Search" menu was activated.
Thanks to Mats Wallin for notifying me.
If no file called Editor.Bat was found but Fm.Exe
was located via the DOS path FM will be invoked after
pressing Alt-B. Thanks to Roland Mausolf for this
suggestion.
1991-08-25 Modified the program to reflect my changed network
2.12 address, 2:310/2. Also Mats Wallin, 2:201/329, has
been added to the program's built-in request list
which pops up after pressing Alt-C.
1991-08-24 If enough EMS memory for the overlays was found the
2.11 program's overlay buffer will be smaller as on PC's
without EMS. Moving overlays from EMS to conventional
memory is faster as reading them from disk.
1991-08-23 Changed my library routines my programs use to display
2.11 menu text with highlighted letters. The size of the
executable program has decreased by approximately 4 kb.
1991-08-22 Modified the command Alt-W, "Write tagged messages":
2.11 The tagged messages now may be written in either *.MSG
or QuickBBS format to a destination subdirectory of
your choice.
Some commands from the F10 Menu are not available while
viewing a single header. If such a command is selected
from the menu or by pressing the associated keyboard
combination this is indicated by a short screen notice.
The program's mouse support only works well on a machine
equipped with a real Microsoft bus ("inport") mouse.
Serial mice are too slow for the way the program polls
the mouse. Therefore I removed the "mouse info" window,
although mouse support still is available.
1991-08-19 The synchronization of the lastread pointers before
2.11 and after the execution of the external editor (Alt-B)
now may be turned on or off in the "Miscellaneous" menu.
Additionally this flag's status is saved to Qbbed.Ini.
Increased the size of the program's overlay buffer.
After pressing Alt-E to invoke the header editor the
editing field may be selected either by the mouse or
by the keyboard.
1991-08-18 Most menus of the program now support a mouse. If the
2.10 "-nomouse" parameter was entered on the commandline
the line "mouse = off" is included in the program's
INI file. The nearly complete mouse support is the
reason for skipping version 2.09.
Compiled the program to be executable also on 8088/86
machines because this version should be distributed
on SDS within the next days.
1991-08-17 Added a new command to the "File" menu: "Check for new
2.08 program version Alt-C". Obviously in the last weeks
I don't have anything better to do than to produce daily
new versions of this program. Using this new command
helps the poor users of my program to stay up to date :-)
The program information screen (Alt-I) now contains some
additional parameters related to the program's overlay
handling. Oh, yes: the program information screen
now too supports a mouse.
1991-08-17 Removed the "-nolog" commandline parameter. By default
2.07 now the program writes no log messages to Frontdoor's
logfile. Use the commandline parameter "-log" or "/log"
to turn on logging.
Decreased the horizontal mouse sensitivity in the pull-
down menu. Horizontal mouse movements now should be
translated somewhat smoother into menu changes. By the
way: I use a Microsoft bus mouse with Mouse.Sys 7.04.
If you experience a slow moving scroll bar in the pull-
down menu you are probably using a serial mouse, your
other<tm> mouse isn't that Microsoft compatible as you
believed or you are using the MS driver 8.xx which is
designed for the MS laptop mouse exclusively.
Anyway: try the new commandline parameter "-nomouse"
or "/nomouse" if the keyboard response in the
pulldown menu doesn't find your pleasure.
Reshuffled most of the overlay code for lower memory
requirements and higher program performance. Do an
Alt-I to compare the values of "Largest contiguous
block in heap" of this version with the one you
currently use. Oh, yes: now as FD 2.01 hits the
streets if present the site info also is displayed
in the Alt-I screen.
1991-08-16 Added a new menu option to the "Miscellaneous" menu:
2.06 "Switch to hexadecimal base Ctrl-B". Depending on
the setting of this switch numbers are displayed in
decimal or hexadecimal format. The status of this
switch also optionally will be saved to Qbbed.Ini.
The option "Set global access filters" now should work
faster. Due to an idiotic programmer an important
function was placed in an overlay causing a lot of
overlay shuffling. Thanks to Ralf Pradella, 2:249/6,
for pointing my nose to this weak part of the program.
The LZH archive file now only contains one executable.
This version only will run on machines equipped with
an 80286 or higher processor. Please send netmail
in case you require an 8088/86 or 80x87 only version.
1991-08-15 The conversion routines from *.MSG messages to QuickBBS
2.05 format didn't work correct if a *.MSG header contained
a SEAdog date (for example "Thu 15 Aug 91 12:15").
Now they do work correct.
The command line parameter "-norodent" or "/norodent"
no longer is valid. The program's main menu now may
be used by a mouse if a Microsoft or 100% compatible
mouse was found by the program <blush>.
Pressing F1 in all string input or editing routines now
pops up a window showing all commands available while
editing strings. If the DOS country code is 49 (see
your settings in Config.Sys) the keyboard help will be
in German, otherwise in English.
The name of the program's optional ASCII configuration
file no longer is hard coded. It's the same name as used
for the executable program with an .INI extension.
1991-08-14 --------------------- ATTENTION ------------------------
2.04 I've changed the program to work with internal overlays.
The advantages were worth the troubles: the available heap
has increased approximately by 110 kb (do an Alt-I from
the main menu), the resident portion of the program has
been reduced to 7.5 kb. If you're using DOS 5.0 you
may try "mem /c" from within QBBed or a temporary DOS
shell to verify this. Also the amount of conventional
memory required by the program has been reduced.
If there's enough EMS memory on your machine it will be
used for the overlays, so there shouldn't be a loss in
performance. If there's no EMS the overlays will be
read as required from Qbbed.Exe. The program opens this
file in "read only access/deny none" mode, so multiple
copies executing at the same time should make no troubles.
If you do not already please use a disk cache if possible.
Qbbed.Exe may be renamed to whatever name you prefer;
however Qbbed.Ini (if used) still must keep this name.
Drawbacks: the overlays are included in Qbbed.Exe, so
you MUST NOT use Pklite or Lzexe to compress this file.
The compressed Qbbed.Exe won't work.
The archive Qbbed204.Lzh now contains two executables:
* Q80286.Exe for 80286 and above without Intel coprocessor
* Q80287.Exe for 80286 and above *with* Intel coprocessor
Select the file of your choice and rename it to whatever
you prefer. A version for 8088/86 without Intel coprocessor
is available at special request. Please send netmail if you
need such a version.
1991-08-14 I'm a lazy programmer: if the messagebase contained
2.03 less than 23 records (yes, that's exactly the number of
messages fitting on one main screen) the program didn't
work well. Thanks to Joaquim Homrighausen, 2:270/17,
for drawing my attention to this point.
The lazy solution: after reading Msginfo.Bbs the program
now aborts if not enough active messages were found.
I promise to change this some day; let's hope until
that day you can live with this limit :-)
Solved the command key conflict which existed if the
menu option "Alt-keys activate pulldown menu" was selected
and Alt-E, Alt-F or Alt-T was pressed from the pulldown
menu.
On returning to the full, unfiltered messagebase from
a filtered view the scroll bar remains on the same message
number as it was before.
Oh, yes: changed the program's name to Qbbed.Exe!
1991-08-12 "Search" command: in the search item input dialog box
2.03 the input field can be moved with Alt-F to the "From:"
input area, with Alt-O to the "To:" input area, with
Alt-S to the "Subject:" input area and with Alt-T to
the "Message text" input area. If the input field is
changed by pressing Alt-<letter> instead of just moving
to another field by pressing [tab] or [shift tab] the
currently highlighted header's fields will be used as
default input for the corresponding search item.
New "Miscellaneous" menu option: Switch to standard | fast
keyboard (Ctrl-K). Initially the corresponding flag in
Frontdoor's configuration file (see Setup / Global / Use
"fastkey") is used by QBBedit. Pressing Ctrl-K or F10 "M"
and selecting this option allows to switch from a fast
to a standard keyboard and vice versa. This of course
only is possible and allowed if an extended keyboard is
used. If no extended keyboard was deteceted by QBBedit
selecting this command does nothing but beep the speaker.
"Read *.MSG messages" (Alt-R) or "Write to messagebase
in another subdirectory" (Alt-W): while checking for
dupes the new and the header currently being checked
are displayed in a window. This is done to sweeten the
time you spend in front of the screen while the program
is checking for already existing messages :-)
1991-08-11 If the "-p<path>" or "/p<path>" parameter is used to
2.03 open an alternate messagebase in <path> and <path> is
empty (no path name is following the "-p" on the command
line) the current subdirectory will be used to check
for the Msg*.Bbs files.
Example: "qbbedit -p -nolog -norodent" will cause the
program to try to open the Msg*.Bbs files in
the current subdirectory.
The header display routines used in the main screen should
work a little faster now.
1991-08-11 After writing netmail flames to handle users or to
2.02 folks posting questionably dated messages optionally
the echomail message(s) may be deleted. I've added
here also a "flame parameter" toggle dialog box to
avoid multiple, sequential "[Y,n]?" questions.
Added a new option to the "Tag" menu: tag illegal headers.
This will tag all message headers containing characters
outside the range from 0x20 to 0x7E in the "From:", "To:"
or "Subject:" field. Optionally netmail flames may be
generated to the originators of such messages.
Ctrl-Right and Ctrl-Left now are used to locate the
next and the previous tagged message respectively.
Ctrl-T no longer is a supported command.
PgUp and PgDn now should be somewhat more pleasing
to the eye.
Alt-P (print or ASCII file export): 0x00 characters no
longer should be output to the printer | export file.
Alt-B: before executing the batch file associated to
Qbbedit.Ini's "externedit" keyword (Editor.Bat
per default if it could be found in then DOS path)
the lastread pointer for the particular folder number
is set to the currently highlithed header's folder.
This makes it easy to locate the same message while
using the external editor.
After returning from the external editor the lastread
pointer for the currently highlighted header's folder
is compared to the folder's lastread pointer found in
the file Lastread.Bbs. If this two numbers are different
QBBedit moves to the same message number where the external
editor was positioned in that particular folder.
1991-08-08 Added the option to delete the *.MSG message files
2.01 after they have been imported to the QuickBBS message
base (Alt-R). Switched from the sequential "[Y,n]?"
questions to a toggle dialog box.
Added a new command line parameter: if "-p<path>" or
"/p<path>" is present, the subdirectory <path> will
override the path to the QuickBBS messagebase found
in Frontdoor's configuration file or in Qbbedit.Ini.
If no valid QuickBBS messagebase files were found in
<path>, the primary QuickBBS path will be used again.
If a netmail message in QuickBBS format is displayed
in text mode (Alt-T) the origin and the destination
addresses also are displayed in the message header.
After switching back to R/W access mode (Ctrl-R)
the message base is scanned for new messages which
probably have been added by an other program in an
other task during QBBedit's R/O phase.
Fdrescan.Now is created only in Frontdoor environments
after new netmail messages have been written by the
program.
1991-08-06 The user interface has been rewritten completely:
2.0 the program is controlled by a globally accessible
SAA style pulldown menu.
I've added a lot of new features and goodies, among
them the options to import *.MSG format messages into
the QuickBBS message base, to export selected messages
to a secondary QuickBBS message base in a different
subdirectory and to define a selective, parametrized
access view.
With a plain ASCII file called Qbbedit.Ini the program
no longer depends on the Frontdoor and Tosscan system files
for configuration. It may be operated in any environment
using Fidonet *.MSG format for netmail and Hudson style
Msg*.Bbs files for echomail. If used with Frontdoor 1.99c,
2.0 and 2.0x of course no configuration is necessary.
1991-07-14 If the program detects an invalid commandline parameter
1.34 it displays the help screen (same as using "-?", "/?",
"-help" or "/help" as commandline parameter).
The layout of the Alt-F9 help screen has been reworked.
Also, now there are two lines more in the Alt-F9 screen,
because I changed the appearance of the bottom box.
The right hand scroll bar has disappeared: without support
for a mouse it was rather useless. I plan more changes
to the interface in the future.
Pressing Alt-L from the Alt-F9 screen now only executes
"tsutil link -t -a" if writing access to the messagebase
is allowed. I totally overlooked the possibility to
call Tsutil.Exe although the commandline parameter "-ro"
was used or the messagebase was already in use by an
other program. Thanks to Ralf Pradella, 2:249/6, for
this hint.
1991-07-13 Printing/ASCII file export: messages now either can be
1.34 processed sequentially or in reply-linked sequence.
If the second option is selected the messages will be
printed respectively exported according their reply-links
until the end of a message thread is encountered. At the
end of this particular message thread the next message after
this thread's first message will be processed.
Joaquim Homrighausen has promised to include this option
in FM 3.0 :-))
* Thanks to Michael Boettger, 2:310/15.2, for this idea. *
If the time field of a message header was changed,
the hour erratically was written back with a leading
zero if it was <= 10. This was wrong: instead of a
leading zero, a blank character is required.
1991-07-11 Reworked the date and time validation routines used
1.33 in header edit mode (Alt-E). The program's main source
code now has grown to 280294 bytes. Not included in
this figure are my standard, keyboard and message
handling routines.
1991-07-10 The program now optionally generates netmail flames
1.33 if the commandline parameter "-date" or "/date" was
used and dubiously dated messages were found.
Such flames only will be generated if the message folder
containing questionably dated messages is *not* set to
"read only". The same is true for flames sent to people
using handles to post their messages.
The start and end dates defining dubiously dated messages
now can be altered via a menu. The program also asks
if the automatically created flames should be sent directly
and if a cynical message style should be used.
Printing/ASCII file export: changed the position of the
folder name. It will now be printed flushed right at the
same line as the message number and the message date.
If "printing" to an ASCII file is selected, the right
margin of the FM editor is used instead of the printer
page layout.
Looks as if at last I found the bug which sometimes
caused the program not to write a "handle flame"
properly.
Priority of reading the folder configuration file:
Folder.Fd first, if failed Folder.Sys will be used.
1991-07-06 Printing/ASCII file export: if the translation tables
1.32 in Setup.Fd | Fd.Sys contain some entries the program
asks if they should be used.
Most string entering routines now are accompanied by
a brief explanation in screen line #24. This is also
true while stepping through a header's field by pressing
[tab] or [shift tab] in header hex dump mode.
Text view mode: all occurances of a specified search
string will be highlighted if found in the message text.
Priority of reading FrontDoor's configuration file:
Setup.Fd first, if failed Fd.Sys will be used.
Fixed a bug which sometimes caused the weekly message
posting table to appear somewhat distorted.
1991-07-02 The commandline switches "-?", /?", "-help" and "/help"
1.31 show a brief summary of all commandline parameters the
program supports. After any key has been pressed it
cheerfully terminates without doing anything else.
Personally I doubt if this feature is useful, but
Tommy Roeder, 2:244/8001, suggested it, and it's so much
fun for me to code :-)
Enhanced the formatting commands used when writing the
output file in "Sprint" format. Undocumented feature:
if the extension of the output file is .SPR Sprint
output format is assumed by the program.
1991-07-01 Included the option to format the ASCII output file
1.30 for Borland's "Sprint" word processor. You don't know
"Sprint"? Shame on you. I like it and use it heavily
because I am a touch typist and not a three-handed
mouse clicker believing in the lies of WYSIWYG :-)
Requests for support of WinWord's file format will be
forwarded to the NUL device.
Printing/ASCII file output: kludge lines optionally can
be suppressed via the page layout menu. Normally ^a info
suppression is controlled by checking Setup.Fd | Fd.Sys.
Printing/ASCII file output: if more than one message is
being printed | written to ASCII file the progress is
displayed in a bar chart. The word wrap algorithm has
been slightly modified to deal with 0x10 characters.
Search and replace on message subjects with confirmation:
during the question "Replace it?" a small window showing
the full message subject pops up.
1991-06-26 New feature: pressing Alt-P in header overview mode
1.29 (Alt-F9 screen) prints the current message or all
tagged messages. Optionally instead of the printer
an ASCII file may be specified for output. All printer
related parameters from Setup.Fd | Fd.Sys (page layout,
print style switches) will be used. The page layout
(page length, page width, left margin, top margin and
bottom margin) can be changed via a menu (for users
of the non-commercial FD version).
Message text dump mode: if a search for a part
of the message text has been done and the search
string was found in a message, this search string
will be highlighted in the text display.
1991-06-23 When deleting a message existing reply-links to
1.28 the now deleted message will be cleared.
Especially for Sico Bruins: the program now should work
again on 8088/8086 machines. I have no possibility to
verify this, but I did use the right compiler switches.
1991-06-17 Beginning with FrontDoor 2.01.bM, Fd.Sys has been
1.28 renamed to Setup.Fd (if I were Joaquim I would have
chosen Config.Fd). The program now first checks for
Fd.Sys; if this attempt fails, Setup.Fd will be used.
1991-06-15 New commandline parameter "-nolog" suppresses logging
1.27 messages to FrontDoor's logfile. The help screen has
been updated to reflect this change.
1991-06-12 Included logging of status messages and program activities
1.26 to FrontDoor's logfile.
Pressing Alt-D from the Alt-F9 screen prompts for and
executes a DOS command of your choice.
1991-06-09 Revamped the Alt-F9 help screen a little bit. Added a
1.25 mini bar chart to the weekly message posting frequency
table.
1991-06-08 Added the "^aREPLY: [reply MSGID]" and "^aTZ: [timezone]"
1.25 kludge lines to messages generated by the program.
"TZ" will be used if a corresponding entry is found
in the DOS environment (for example "SET TZ=UTC-2").
Also the FM like " * Reply to message in [folder name]"
will be used as first line in the message text.
Updated the program's internal domain table according
to a message thread regarding "Zone-numbers" in the
zone 2 sysop echo.
Played a little with the statistical features of the
program: from the Alt-F9 screen, press "T" for the
tag menu, hit [return], then Alt-S. Answer "Y" to
the question "Create verbose overview for folder?".
After viewing the table showing the messages subjects
and the user names, hit [return]. A little pop-up
table showing the message posting frequency per week
is available by pressing Alt-D. Hope you like it.
1991-06-06 The commandline options are listed on a second help
1.24 screen. Press F1 from header list view, PgUp and PgDn
to switch between the two help screens.
1991-06-04 I've encountered system crashes (exception #13) on
1.24 80386SX machines using Quarterdeck's QEMM 5.12 memory
manager: after pressing Alt-T to view a message text,
the program uses interrupt 1Ch to display a real time
clock in the screen's upper left corner. On startup
now the program checks if QEMM or QRAM are installed
and does not use the real time clock if it looks as if
they are detected. I use 386^Max on my 20 MHz 80386DX
machine and never had similar troubles.
1991-06-01 Removed the blinking attribute from the question mark
1.23 which is used to highlight all "one word only" names.
Fixed a bug which for some unknown reason sometimes
just wrote only message headers without message text
when flaming users with "one word only" names.
The program now may be used to search for a string
in the message text. See the "Search" command on the
Alt-F9 screen for more.
1991-05-30 After pressing "?" to mark all "one word only" names
1.22 the program optionally generates netmail messages to
those folks kindly asking to use their full name when
writing echomail messages.
Made some slight changes to the bottom menu box of
the Alt-F9 screen.
1991-05-27 Joaquim Homrighausen decided to change some filenames used
1.21 by FrontDoor: "Folder.Sys" will be renamed to "Folder.Fd"
in the announced beta version 2.01.bK. I changed the
program to first attempt to open "Folder.Sys"; if this
failed "Folder.Fd" will be used. This should keep the
editor compatible with FrontDoor 1.99c, 2.00, new beta
2.01.bK and later versions.
Included "Joaquim", "Joho", "Joque" and all variations
of "Every" in the exception list of "one word only" names
(see paragraph below).
1991-05-26 Alt-F9 screen: if the "By:" or the "To:" field of a
1.20 message header contains only one word it will be marked
by a red blinking question sign in front of this name.
Of course I've coded some -- smart, I hope -- exceptions.
*Undocumented command* -- Alt-F9 screen: pressing "?"
(question sign) will tag all headers which have been
marked by a red blinking question sign (you're right,
I don't like handles).
Alt-F9 screen: reworked the help screen popping up after
pressing "F1" to include the program's new features.
If a feature is not available the corresponding key
will be displayed black on gray instead of red on gray
in the help screen (yes, I *do* know the Mac).
Replaced the word "Hit" with "Press" in most of the info
boxes.
1991-05-22 If a batchfile called "Editor.Bat" is found in the DOS
1.19 path it may be executed from within QBBedit by pressing
F10 from the Alt-F9 screen (header listing mode).
QBBedit swaps itself to harddisk or EMS memory (if available)
and requires approximately 10.5 kb RAM while resident.
I think this feature is extremely useful to switch between
QBBedit and FM (or any other message editor you may prefer).
1991-05-21 Included a sliding scroll bar on the rightmost position
1.18 of the Alt-F9 screen. Don't panic -- a mouse is *not*
supported (yet).
The box "Press Alt-L to re-establish the reply links"
only will pop-up if more than one message header has
been changed during a search and replace command.
Starting with this version the program only will run
on machines using an 80286 or above.
Switched to PKware's PKlite 1.05 to compress the
executable file. Use "PKlite -x Qbbedit.Exe" if
you encounter any problems related to compressed
*.Exe files on your machine.
1991-05-19 Added the new commandline parameter "-list" or "/list"
1.17 to immediately switch the program into "list" mode.
This is functionally equivalent to pressing Alt-F9
after the program started.
1991-05-16 Found another new message editor which is inserting
1.16 "S: " in front of message subjects. Updated again
the program's junk table...
1991-05-12 A new message editor is adding the junk string "Re "
1.15 in front of reply subjects. Therefore I've updated
the program's internal junk table.
1991-05-10 If the string to be searched is identical to the string
1.14 by which it should be replaced the search and replace
function will be aborted. -- This feature I should have
implemented quite a while ago.
1991-05-05 Changed my string editing library routines to support
1.13 Ctrl-left and Ctrl-right. These keystrokes move the
cursor to the character following the next blank on
the left or respectively right side of the current
cursor position.
Changed the prompt indicating the possibility to press
Alt-L to relink the message base after a search and
replace operation on message subjects.
1991-04-25 Pressing Alt-N from the message list activated by Alt-F9
1.12 will check for lowercase only ("cool") names and change
them to the proper style of writing if necessary.
Browsing starts at the current cursor position and continues
until the end of the message file is encountered or any key
has been pressed.
Tsutil.Exe now is searched in the current subdirectory
prior to searching the subdirectories specified in the DOS path.
1991-01-21 If a message subject is being searched the string to be
1.11 searched for is displayed within double quotes (") in the
"Search for Subject: ... Replace with Subject: ..."
dialog box. This makes it easier to notice leading or
trailing blanks in the search item.
Included my changed network address (2:310/11.100) in some
info boxes.
1991-01-08 The popup window with the note "Tsutil.Exe was found in
1.10 the DOS path. Press Alt-L to re-establish reply links..."
now only appears if the message subject ("Re:" field)
has been changed.
A few minor changes in the source code. Nothing important.
1991-01-07 Looks as if Felix has found the error in the swapfile
1.10 assembler routine. The swapfile no longer should remain
on harddisk after terminating the program. The swapfile
of course only was created on machines without EMS memory,
so you probably may have never noticed this bug.
My programs "Ghostwriter" and "QBBsort" also are affected
by the changes in the assembler source code, so you may
try to get updated versions of this programs.
1991-01-06 There seem to be some problems caused by the new heap manager
1.10 Borland introduced with Turbo Pascal 6.0. Rewrote some
dynamic memory related stuff.
On machines without EMS memory sometimes the program hangs
after pressing Alt-Q. Looks as if there is a bug in the
assembler routine which removes the temporarily created
swap file. Felix Kasza currently tries to locate the bug.
1990-12-30 The real time clock in the upper left hand screen corner
1.09 in message text dump mode now only is available on 80386
systems. On 8088/8086 and 80286 systems the commandline
switch "-noclock" or "/noclock" is not required anymore
to suppress the clock display.
Keyboard speed and keyboard status will remain unchanged
during program startup.
The program no longer looks for Lastread.Bbs; after being
invoked it will always display the message with the lowest
message number.
Switched to the Turbo Pascal 6.0 compiler.
1990-12-27 Fixed again a bug with the "L" command from the Alt-F9 screen.
1.08 In earlier versions "link tagged messages" only worked properly
if the folder number from the tag menu was set to 0.
1990-12-24 The folder name now is included in the result display
1.07 if a verbose folder report is generated (Alt-S from the
Alt-F9 screen after an echomail folder has been selected).
X-mas is quite a lonesome evening; especially if the woman
you fell in love with last night doesn't stay with you.
1990-12-20 Fixed a bug with the "L" command from the Alt-F9 screen
1.06 ("Link tagged messages").
1990-12-16 Included some default "replace with" strings if the
1.05 search and replace function is used on the "By:" or
"To:" field of the message header.
1990-12-11 Fixed some screen update bugs which occured during
1.04 search and replace with confirmation.
1990-12-03 The "OK" button in the "mouse support" window now also
1.03 accepts any keystroke. I've changed this because obviously
not each so-called "Microsoft compatible" mouse really is
Microsoft compatible.
1990-12-02 Before shelling to DOS the program changes the DOS prompt
1.03 to "Type Exit to return to QBBedit". Many thanks to Trevor
Carlsen, 3:690/644@fidonet, for posting a routine to change
the DOS prompt in the "Pascal" echomail conference.
As first step ahead in the direction of a full blown message
editor (oh my gosh!) I added word wrap and a lot of screen
update speed to the text view mode (Alt-T). Currently I'm
working to implement some basic text scroll functions.
New goodie: pressing a key between "1" and "9" in the text
view menu allows to locate a message by number. The program
prompts for a message number and displays the corresponding
message text.
At program start the "Caps Lock" key is switched off, the
"Num Lock" key is switched on and the keyboard is set to
a repeat rate of 30 characters per second and a repeat
delay of 0.25 seconds (I don't like slow keyboards).
1990-12-01 Included the message "There are no tagged messages" if
1.02 "M"ove messages was selected from the Alt-F9 screen and
no messages were tagged before doing so.
1990-11-30 Changed my library routines for switching to a full size
1.02 cursor and flushing the keyboard buffer. The keyboard
buffer now is flushed completely if running under DESQview.
Ctrl-Home and Ctrl-End in the folder selection screen
now moves the scroll bar to the first or the last folder
respectively.
1990-11-28 New commandline switch #1: "/quiet" or "-quiet" suppresses
1.02 any sounds the program eventually generates.
New commandline switch #2: "/norodent" or "-norodent"
suppresses the initial "OK" box if a Microsoft compatible
mouse was found.
Sounds generated by the program now confirm to the "Audio
begin time" and "Audio end time" found in Fd.Sys
(Setup Mailer / Audio control).
1990-11-27 The list of folder names appearing in the tag menu now
1.01 can be left by pressing [tab] or [shift-tab]. If any of
those keys is pressed the currently highlighted board
number is accepted as selected board number. Changed also
the behaviour of the [PgUp] and [PgDn] keys in this list.
1990-11-26 Locally generated messages which are already exported
1.01 now additionally are displayed as "Sent".
If there are no tagged messages to move and the "M"ove
messages option is selected from the Alt-F9 screen the
program prompts to tag some messages first.
The "M"ove message option now doesn't generate new message
numbers for the moved messages. Only the "board" field
in the message header is changed to the destination
board's number.
For increased speed the program does not "bang" anymore
while cleaning up message headers ("R" from the Alt-F9
screen).
Encountered a cold boot including POST after pressing Alt-H
from the single header screen while testing the program
under DESQview 2.31. Therefore I decided to include a
"use it on your own risk" alert screen if the program
detects operation under DESQview.
1990-11-25 New command from the Alt-F9 screen: "M" moves all
1.0 tagged messages to an other destination folder.
Rodent lovers are asked if they have three hands.
The program does not update Lastread.Bbs anymore.
It was a mistake to include this "feature", sorry.
Decided to hatch the program as first release version
into SDS. I'm hungry for more feedback.
1990-11-24 Tag menu: board numbers now can be selected from a
0.29α list of folder names. This makes it easier to select
a specific echomail folder for tagging.
Changed the character to mark tagged headers to a
lightred triangle pointing to the left in column 80.
Added a new command line switch: if "/date" or "-date"
is used all message headers will be checked for
questionably dated messages. Messages dated more
then one day ahead in the future or prior to
1 Jan 1988 automatically are tagged and may be
located from the Alt-F9 screen by pressing ^T.
1990-11-24 Text dump mode: right to the network address in the
0.28ß first screen line a real time clock is displayed.
Unlike FM's time display also the seconds are included.
Use the command line switch "/noclock" or "-noclock"
if there seem to be any troubles with this feature
on your computer. This may depend on the "stacks"
setting in Config.Sys. On my machine "stacks = 0,0"
is included in Config.Sys, but maybe QBBedit's clock
display only works on 80386 systems with this setting.
New menu command "R" in the Alt-F9 screen removes all
braindead junk like "RE:", "RE.", "(R)", "RE :" and "RE;"
from the message subjects. Thanks to Carlo Ballarini,
2:331/316, for this suggestion.
Fixed the wrong initial US date format in the date fields
of the tag menu (thanks, Felix!).
Modified the text display routine to display characters
with an ASCII value > 0x7e in kludge lines also in "lowvideo"
attribute. Henk Wevers, 2:500/1, uses "^aPID: Dutched Versie
2.91eß" (sic) as PID kludge line.
1990-11-23 Changed the text dump mode's bottom line prompt:
0.28α if a prompt option isn't available, its screen colour
is changed to black on gray; otherwise it remains
red on gray.
1990-11-22 Added percentage display to the table "Message posting
0.28α frequency per day". Changed the colour for user names and
message subjects in the verbose folder overview table.
<cursor left> and <cursor right> now can be used also
in the text dump mode to move to the last or the next
message respectively.
The program now updates Lastread.Bbs before terminating.
1990-11-21 Included an option for a verbose overview of the contents
0.28α of a specific message folder. Try this: use Alt-F9 to switch
to the header list screen. Use the tag menu, select a message
folder; clear the "By:" and "To:" field, enter "-365" in the
first date field to tag the messages of a whole year.
Press Alt-S; answer "Y" to the question: "Create a verbose
overview for the message folder [Y,n]?".
Enjoy the next three screens!
Pressing "L" in the Alt-F9 screen now creates reply-links
for all tagged messages within the folder selected from
the tag menu, regardless if message subjects match or not.
Included an "alert" screen for the case that Alt-L (execute
Tsutil link -t -a) was pressed and Tsutil.Exe was not found
in the DOS path.
1990-11-18 The text view has been modified to look like an FM-clone.
0.27ß Included the command Alt-H to view the message text in hex
format in a scrollable window <phew!>
Changed the archive filename to "Qbedxxx.Lzh" to avoid
confusion with the "Qedxxx.*" filenames used for "QuickED"
(thanks to Roland Mausolf, 2:243/43, for this hint).
Didn't do anything else. Today's my son's seventh birthday;
I'm engaged the whole afternoon with the investigation of
a new Nintendo's secrets :-)
1990-11-17 The tag-menu has been completely rewritten. Date range and
0.27α folder numbers now also may be used to tag messages.
If message subject and folder number are defined as "tag keys"
in the tag-menu the program now optionally creates reply-links
on the tagged messages. Since also part of message subjects
can be used as "tag key" this new feature allows reply-links
on different message subjects containing a common string.
For example the message subjects "ZC2", "Why I probably won't
be ZC2", "Zc2???" and "This f*cking new Zc2!!!" now can be
linked to one message-thread by using "ZC2" as tag key.
* I suppose this is a quite nifty feature, dude! * :-)
The statistical overview now consists of two screens:
one screen contains the message numbers, a small bar chart
and the folder names, the other one shows percentage and
a bar chart with higher mathematical resolution.
Fast switching between those two screens is possible.
Pressing Alt-F in the single header screen now is possible
even if no message flags are set. The popup window "Pressing
Alt-F will display..." has been removed.
1990-11-16 Fixed the lousy bug causing the question "Mark this message
0.26ß as deleted [Y,n]?" to remain in the bottom help box of the
Alt-F9 screen. Thanks to Mark Howard for indicating this fault.
Pressing ^T in the Alt-F9 screen advances the scroll bar
to the next tagged message. Reworked the tag key menu and
the Alt-F9 help screen. The default "To:" tag key now is
the sysop's name. The key sequence <Alt-F9>, T, <return>,
^T allows to browse quickly through the message base and
stop at each message addressed to the sysop :-)
If messages have been deleted the program now optionally
updates the files Msginfo.Bbs, Msgidx.Bbs and Msgtoidx.Bbs
before terminating.
1990-11-16 Reduced the program's resident size to 8816 bytes while
0.26α shelling to DOS or executing "Tsutil link -t -a". Had to
re-shuffle most of the source code (approximately 135 kb
main source in the moment) to structure the program into
more and smaller units.
Added a new command to the Alt-F9 menu: pressing "T" brings
up a submenu which allows tagging messages by "By:" and "To:"
usernames and message subjects.
*I think this feature is quite useful!*
1990-11-14 Fixed a bug which caused two scroll bars to remain on the
0.25ß screen if the continuous scroll up/down was stopped.
Changed the archive filename to Qedxxx.Lzh to avoid confusion
with the popular "Qedit" shareware editor.
1990-11-13 The "search" and the "search and replace" commands have been
0.25α speeded up. Screen update only will take place if a match was
found.
In the Alt-F9 screen dubiously dated message headers will be
indicated by a blinking red question mark in front of the date.
Deleted headers will be shown in low intensity in the Alt-F9 list.
Fixed a bug in the statistical overview display (Alt-S from
the Alt-F9 screen). Added also percentage display to statistical
window.
Pressing <space> in the Alt-F9 screen now is used to toggle a
"tag" on the current header. If a header is marked this will
be indicated by a rectangle in column 80. Pressing <delete>
in the Alt-F9 screen now sets the "deleted" flag on the current
or all tagged headers. Pressing "C" in the Alt-F9 screen clears
all tags, pressing "I" inverts all tags.
Network address, site name and site location will be displayed
in the upper right hand corner of the screen if FrontDoor 2.00
or higher is used.
Oops! Today's Fidonet 3rd anniversary in region 31 (Austria).
If I only had known what I've started...
1990-11-12 Mark Howard, 1:260/340, suggested to write this history file.
Quite a good idea.
