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1995-11-12
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Things to implement
===================
Bug fix: Ensure posting is not attempted if a 201 is received. [nntp 441]
- It seems to get confused when kicked more than once. I can't be much
clearer on this at present, except that it seems to work much better
if it is quit and reloaded before being kicked.
- My service provider returns "502 Permission denied" when some articles
are requested, even if they were just listed in the NEWNEWS list. When
FreeNews (and !TCPIP for that matter) sees this it terminates the
connection immediately, rather than reading the rest of the articles
(many of which *will* be ok) in the list. Could you possibly change
FreeNews so that it doesn't terminate when it sees a "502" message?
Enhance: Go back and put a byte counter after #! rnews nnnnn. Apparently it
makes Newsbase debatch much faster. (low pri.)
Enhance: Stop user being silly and selecting a blank server-line.
Idea: use bigger (different?) pipelines when fetching headers...
Enhance: Make adjust open the status window, and select start transfer. (Iconbar)
Enhance: Put the config window's OK and CANCEL buttons on a toolbar.
Enhance: Make cps figs more accurate by increasing granularity.
Things actually implemented
===========================
Enhance: status slider should increase by 1 for NON-downloaded messages too...
or I finish with a partially slid slider!
Sun 13th August 1995: progressed with Neil for IdFile change.
Done @ Thu 07th September 1995
Bug fix: Close the required files on nntp logout rather than program quit.
Thu 07th September 1995
Bug fix: Attempt to send non-existing messages still sends the POST command,
even after realising there is nothing to post! Done in 0.86.
Enhance: Currently, duplicate ids are stored in the IDs file and checked on
reading. Change to check on writing to save both time and disk. Done 0.86
Enhance: Get config window working so users need no longer edit the config
file. Done in 0.86
Enhance: Small(?) speedup by implementing duplicate checks in memory rather
than on disk.
Sun 13th August 1995: Done in IdFile 1.3/FreeNews 0.87.
Enhance: Let's have a status window giving more info than the iconbar text.
(I'll need it, or something, when I have no iconbar icon under
the freenet front end!). Done 0.87
Enhance: Update status window more frequently - e.g. how many bytes read every second ?
Done Fri 08th September 1995 0.88.
Bug fix: Simply dies if Freenet stack not loaded. Trap this and other fatal
errors, and stay on the icon bar. (like server not found)
Done 0.89
Enhance: Add Housekeep (days) to the config file/window, and call ID_housekeep(n)
on quit/start (user preference). Possibly prompt if requested?
Done 0.89
Enhance: Large speedup by requesting more than one article simultaneously. Done 0.98.
Enhance: Net messages advise Alt-break to quit. Put a Quit button on the box.
Done 0.99 Sun 08th October 1995
Enhance: Handle "400 too busy" and implement retry. Done 0.99 Sun 08th October 1995
Bug fix: Housekeeping isn't working in Days(!). Reported to Neil Mon 11th Sept 1995.
Enhance: Deal better with "unexpected" responses from the server.
Moral: expect anything, and deal with it sensibly.
Let's have less "Fatal Err" messages and even less icon-disappearing.
Release History
===============
0.84 June 95
First alpha release. Doesn't handle POSTing to newsgroups, and leaves
files in rather strange states. Does wierd things with ASCII 13.
Can't cope with pubnews :-(
Didn't release the toolbox/filter modules, so was probably unusable
by anyone without C/C++.
0.85 Sun 18th June 1995
Second alpha release. ASCII 13 bugs fixed. Post support added.
Newsbase posting transport still needs some attention though (News
gets returned to Postmaster sometimes even though it was sent ok).
Config window added, but it doesn't do anything yet.
0.86 Sun 16th July 1995
** Status upgraded from alpha to beta test **
Now using version 1.2 of IDfile submodule (Neil's).
- This is more efficient and gets round the demon server's newnews bug,
- Now adds IDs to the history file ONLY after retrieval. Use of temp file.
Fixed bug that caused FreeNews to hang if outgoing articles are
removed from Mail$Dir (by QEdit or another transport).
The extra <cr> appended to the #!rnews lines has been removed.
Log file will now contain download speed stats on closedown.
Config window now works. User can choose between three news servers, and
set date/time from a window rather than editing files. Auto-retry for connection
not yet implemented.
Added output of an "X-NNTP-Poster" header line to denote that an article was
posted using FreeNews. This is to prove that messages are actually getting to
the News servers via FreeNews, and not any other transport. This will probably
be removed at version 1.00.
0.87 3rd August 1995
Res file updated to stop the iconbar menu appearing at startup.
0.86 is abending as it is receiving a 430 (no such message) code from Demon.
Now handled correctly (if rather messy code!).
Characters in the last string at the end of a "block" (currently 2048 bytes)
between line start and the block end are being dropped. Fixed.
Version number now separated from Res file.
Config option to choose between slow and fast versions of IDfile added.
Clicking select on Iconbar icon now pops up a status window.
Now using IdFile version 1.3:
Version 1.3 contains the following enhancements :-
o Error handling has been tidied up.
o ID files are now created if they cannot be located. This fixes a problem
whereby an error was returned when the program was run for the very first
time.
o The logic can now be run in one of two modes. Disk mode runs the logic as
in previous versions and uses file/disk access to perform the duplicate
check for IDs. This is somewhat slow!!
When run in Memory mode, the IDs are loaded into memory and the check run
from there. This should be significantly quicker.
0.88 Thu 07th September 1995
o Finally (we hope!) fixed read_line bug. Characters were being lost when
we had a large (greater than blocksize) message, and the subsequent block
did not arrive within 3 Wimp_Polls.
o IDFile no longer returns cOK when a message is not added to the new ID file.
This means that the status window slider's maximum is now accurate!
o Icon bar no longer flickers during download.
o Now close files on exit from NNTP, rather than just on exit from the program.
o Now updates the status window on every read_socket() if we're fetching
articles at the time.
o Enabled Status option on the iconbar menu.
o Allow user to set ID mode.
0.98 Sun 17th September 1995
o Implemented housekeeping of ID file entries.
It seems to be housekeeping by MONTHS rather than DAYS. Awaiting Neil
to return from Hols to fix this.
o Implemented error handling on stack errors.
o Noticed that the ANT stack (derived from Acorn code, which Acorn are
allegedly fixing) causes duff returns to Internet code. Handled this
by showing a window with the error on it for information, and
continuing to multi-task download in the background. According to ANT,
this needs a new version of Netlib to solve it. According to Tom, this
problem won't occur when using the Freenet stack. Tom seems to be right.
Messages advise Alt-break to quit. Put a Quit button on the box later!
o Now uses pipelining technique to *DRASTICALLY* improve speed when
fetching articles. Need to change status code to highlight that.
0.99 Tue 03rd October 1995
o Changed Res file so "NNTP Kick" on iconbar menu now reads "Transfer News",
and "Congiguration" is now "Preferences".
o Fixed bug that caused an update of news server to be noticed on load only.
This is now updated on "OK" from config window.
o Changed the sprite to something a little more flashy to highlight the change
from beta test to full release. Sorry Ian!
o Changed the format of the "AllGroups" file. Appended "<tab>mode" to each line.
The mode indicates what to fetch. 0=Nothing(!), 1=All, 2=Headers only.
Support for file format only done. The mode number is currently ignored, and
everything is treated as type 1.
o Put some code in to explicitly trap the 400 response code as I thought I had
a chance to test it as Demon was being busy... but it was all ok again once
I compiled it :-( If anyone finds a bug in this, please let me know.
Because of this, auto-retry is STILL not implemented. Sorry.
o Status window now only updates if no previous update has occured for 0.7
seconds. This speeds up the program. Unfortunately, it also means that FN
can come to the end and not update the window saying so. Mods made to fix this.
o Status window will auto-appear if configured in preferences.
o Preferences window now has number adjusters rather than writables.
o Finally discovered how to implement multi-line text, so tided up the
Warning box. It looks rather good now, but VERY tacky before!
o Increased width of display fields in Status window, as the full text didn't
fit when in Homerton.Medium. Corpus is still a way bit too big for
the maximum string, but surely that won't happen! (Sits back and waits for
the howls of protest.)
1.00 Released with all 0.99 features Sun 8th October 1995
1.01 Sat 14th October 1995
o Newsbase transport: "status" changed. This fixes the "NewsBase$ReturnCode not
known" bug.
o Preferences window now allows "-" and "_" characters in server names.
o Fixed bug that caused news server names to swap around in the preferences
window.
o !Run file no longer causes an error if NewsBase has not been seen. FreeNews
itself now produces a non-fatal warning.
o Res file now modified (again) to allow RISC OS 3.10 system font in all windows
without overflowing.
o FreeNews will now (optionally) ignore "502 Permission denied" messages.
According to the NNTP spec in RFC977, I should abort, but that is causing
problems with certain (non-standard?) servers. Advanced config option
"ignore_502". You'll need to edit the config file manually for this...
o More advanced options added: "pipeline_min" and "pipeline_max". See "Advanced"
file for full details.
o Worked on status_cps... now the status window returns the average cps, but
only over the last 8 calls to status_cps (approx. 7 seconds).
Still shows the old rate in brackets for comparison (this will go).
o IdFile is now writing the correct month(!) to the History file, and is now
performing housekeeping of ID history correctly. {using IdFile 1.5}
o Added config options "auto_kick" and "auto_quit" to allow for automatic
download.
o Added "-batch" command line option to override config. options auto_kick and
auto_quit to true for this run only.
o Added "-nomaildir" command line option. This will warn the user in a friendly
way that posting cannot continue, as FreeNews can't find <Mail$Dir>.
o Changed to use InternetUtils_ rather than Internet_ on calls to Syslog on
Stewart's request.
***THIS MEANS THAT ALL USERS MUST NOW USE !SYSLOG VERSION 0.06 OR GREATER***