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Cream of the Crop 20 (Terry Blount) (1996).iso
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HISTORY.TXT
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1996-07-09
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1. HISTORY FILE (reverse chronology)
====================================
NOTE: RMB is Right Mouse Button.
Changes included in v1.05
-------------------------
WARNING: I have totally reworked the attachment subsystem. Not only
does this improve overall performance significantly, but it also
provides seamless MIME and BinHex (Binhex is detach only at this time).
HOWEVER, with any new code, there can be problems. I am considering
the attachment subsystem "in beta" ... just this mechanism.
I expect to release v1.1 on 08/01/96 with MIME support that includes
user-definable viewers, an improved CP translation table with added
support for ISO-Latin-10 and KOI8-R (Russian) character sets. In
addition, a user will be able to select a specific Code Page
translation for any message.
BIG NOTE: The // command parameter, used in testing, should NOT be
used. In fact, the program now warns you if it is used. AND, in fact,
the // flag's function has been reversed. Using //, at least for now,
will cause MR/2 ICE to revert (mostly) to the old "attachment text
viewable in the message" mode. Just as a precaution.
o Progress with attachments. Support for the basic MIME mechanism
has been added. MR/2 will now recognize and parse MIME message,
displaying text sections and replacing "attachments" with markers
that represent the attachment. The Message->Detach function will
now detach uuencode, MIME and BinHex attachments transparently.
Attaching files also supports MIME messages. The Message->Attach
menu now is a conditional cascade with UUEncoding still being the
default (plans to user-configure). The sub menu lists other options,
including MIME/base64. BinHex outgoing is not yet supported.
The Text option is an experiment, but I believe it will be useful.
o Drag file into reply window - becomes MIME attach. Beginnings of
drag/drop support, just to say it exists, somewhere :)
o RMB menu over an attachment is different. Not yet functional, tho.
o Detaching from a message index (RMB menu) now handles MIME parts, too.
Previously only detached uuencoded attachments.
o /X and /XS fixed. I had to rework this quite a bit to get the timing
right for ALL cases.
o Fixed a possible heap corruption bug. Extremely long TO lines
(>1K), when filtered, would (sometimes) overwrite one byte past
the allocated buffer.
o I've fixed it so that the deleting of MOST files is done
"permanently". In other words, those using the DELDIR option in
config.sys were having ALL deleted files "backed up". This has
been changed, by default, to NOT backup deleted files to your DELDIR.
Some specific cases have been left untouched.
For those of you that want to remain cautious at the expense of
speed, I have added the command line option "/W" which will use
the old delete method, in most cases.
o New command line switch /Qfilename. Will add the names file to the
MR/2 ICE outbox and exit. File is assumed to be a properly formed
message file. You can force MR/2 to attempt to send the message via
use of the /XS flag.
o New command line switch /Euser@domain.com. Starts MR/2 ICE and
immediately invokes a new message to the address specified. For use
by a third-party address book program still in the works, but it
surely has other applications.
o Command-line control of a running copy of MR/2 ICE. The commands
above will actually cause an existing instance of MR/2, if found,
to do the desired work. I went the extra step of support this for
multiple accounts, so specifying an account should talk to the right
copy of MR/2 ICE. So, using the /Q option to queue a file actually
puts it in the outbox of a running copy, and proceeds to send it.
Using the /E option causes a New Message header screen to pop to the
desktop from a running copy of ICE. Also:
/Qfile - as described above
/Euser@domain - as described above
/+ will restore and bring focus to a minimized/burried
copy of MR/2 ICE.
/- will minimize an existing, running copy of MR/2 ICE.
Other commands can be added as the need arises. I'm open for
good suggestions!
NOTE that if a running copy of ICE is not found, a new copy is
started and the work is done. In the case of the /Q option,
MR/2 ICE will exit after queuing. /XS can be used to force it to
send, too. The /E option will start a new copy of MR/2 if one is
not running, and the application remains active.
o POP3 server interface ... when an invalid password is given, will
prompt you *only if* the config password is blank. Otherwise,
it just reports the error in the status window. This prevents the
prompting from interfering with auto-fetch scripts and procedures
where the ISP might time out.
o Using /S could end up racing the send thread with nothing for it to
do, under certain conditions. Fixed.
o Closing Editor would "close" the app completely. This was actually a
crash condition in v1.04a. Fixed.
o Pop3 logon errors now show message returned from the server.
o Long free-form search strings (over 500 chars) could overwrite the
stack of the incoming mail thread (crashing). Fixed.
Changes included in v1.04
-------------------------
Didn't get to the massive bug-fix pass I had intended over the weekend;
real-work duty called. Here's what I have to-date.
o Text color in folder select when hilighted is now white on grey.
o "Sending ..." message when /S param is used has been suppressed.
o Save to file selection dialog changed back to enable file list.
Title was changed to say "Save to File".
o Minor cosmetic fix to Folder RMB button.
o Changes to menu ID's to aid in accomodating HELP engine revisions.
o Fixed the polling thread lockup when a Rexx filter failed due to
error.
o Added a new filter type: "Pre-Send" to the filter mechanism. Not
yet GUI selectable.
o Rexx filters can now be forced to the foreground by simply adding
a "*" to the beginning of the command sequence. For example:
*maillist icemail.lst
would run the MR/2 ICE mailing list in the foreground. This allows
REXX to prompt and accept input.
o MIME coding started. This also includes recognition of UUEncoded
files and the treatment of them as "non-displayed text". This is
not auto-enabled in this release, but will be shortly.
o Kludge. You can now add a char(1) to the end of the quote string,
and this character will force a SPACE into the string. Press ALT
and then the numeric pad 1 ... you will see a smiley face character
(CP850/437).
o PreSend filters. You can define a set of filter match criteria. Each
message to be sent (queued messages) pass through this filter, and if
found to match, can be passed through a REXX script. Most other
options do nothing in this case, or have extremely minimal use.
After the filter(s) is/are executed, the message is sent.
This was implemented specifically for PGP signing and encrypting.
It has other applications.
o You may now specify a single filter to be BOTH an inbound and outbound
filter.
o Added support for internal MIME base64 decoding. It even works :)
Again, this is not automatically enabled at this time; I still have
some work to do on ATTACHING files with this new system. Detaches
work very well, tho!
o Editor temporary names are now forced to be compatible with FAT 8.3
naming conventions.
Changes included in v1.03
-------------------------
o Problem with temp file names that are not FAT compatible when printing
marked text. Fixed.
o Indexing problem with filtered message to open folders fixed (apparent
dupes, reindexing needed to match index with message). Fixed.
o Stealing of addresses via both the Message->Save address and RMB address
functions improved and corrected.
o Titles changes on a couple of file open dialogs to better match the
real function ("Save as" or "Append to" instead of "Open").
o Ctrl-+ plus works again, and Ctrl-= still works as an equivelent.
o Bug in saving routine for Address Book, Group list, Filters and
Templates fixed. If you attempted to exit with unsaved changes MR/2
warned you and appeared to give you a chance to save. It actually
would throw out yoru changes anyway. Fixed.
o Moving messages from one folder into the same folder ignores you.
Previously, the messages would get deleted. This seems to have
happened to enough people that figured I should "fix" it.
o New way to register - via Compuserve's SWREG service. MR/2 ICE is
SWREG #11797. From a Compserve command prompt: GO SWREG.
Changes included in v1.02
-------------------------
o Date header timezone is now corrected for daylight savings time.
o Filters that start REXX commands do so minimized now. If a REXX
process is called fro my a filter, it is performed FIRST, before
any copying to folders or other actions are performed.
ALSO, if the Rexx process modifies the file at all, the index entry
for that message is rebuilt. This allows for REXX to massage the
incoming message and the index will reflect any of these changes.
o Tools->Edit Externally now checks to see if the file is modified,
and will rebuild the index entry, of needed. For example, you can
change the subject of the message and the index entry for the message
will immediately reflect the new subject.
o MsgUtil.cmd is invoked via CTRL+Fkey. The same "has message been
modified" checks are performed on return from this process, and the
message index entry is updated, if needed.
o Oops. Ctrl-Fkey would load msgutil against a message from the viewer.
Initiate it against a reply and you'd get the original. Fixed.
Initiate it against a new message and you'd crash. Fixed.
- the four previous items took tons of code and should be considered
new "beta" features. I'm sure there are some bugs to shake out before
depending on this to be flawless. But, if you don't use them for
these "advanced" functionality, you won't care :)
o Fixed that pesky garbage-in-quote problem. Again.
o Index-to-Messages mismatch diagnostic beep now checks FROM in
addition to SUBJECT for a match.
o Text Editor now honors configured FTP and WWW commands from RMB.
o Session Manager thread (the one added in v1.01 to monitor external
session threads) now starts up immediately (no delay). Previosuly,
a delay was invoked which could caused any rexx-action filter to
fail until after delay (termination queue did not exist until then).
o Problem with attachments - sometimes got truncated (bug I put in
v1.01 only). Fixed.
Changes included in v1.01
-------------------------
o Outbound filters now function. These are applied to each message
*after* it is successfully sent.
o Formatting printing now correctly prints backslashes and {} curly
brackets.
o The /X parameter has always started MR/2 ICE in "poll for new mail
and exit" mode. You can now add a modifier to this parameter to
get it to poll for mail, send all queued mail, then exit. Use /XS
o Better handing of filename collisions for messages being filtered.
Files were never overwritten, but occassionally the index entry
would get recorded incorrectly. Reindexing would be necessary.
o Made the message index RMB popup menu's PRINT submenu a conditional
cascase (menu with boxed-arrow). This now honors the Printer
Setting's page RMB option box. Clicking on "Print" will take the
default action defined on this page.
o Outbox's Save Address menu now works correctly. It was bringing up
the rebuild index confirmation dialog.
o Added READ, UNREAD and REPLIED to the outbox/folder index RMB menu's
"Mark As" sub menu. NOTE that these operations will only work on
INCOMING messages, and SENT, UNSENT will only work on Outgoing messages.
For example, Marking an Incoming message as sent will be ignored.
However, a folder can contain either type of message, or both.
o Freeform filters now will strip any hard linefeeds the user has
entered before saving the filter to disk. This created problems
in the previous version.
o Minor revision to the QP conversion in outgoing message headers.
Spaces were sometimes misplaced as defined in the RFC for QP in
headers.
o Message viewer/editor, Edit->Write to file option now works as it
was supposed to.
o Login/Logout now locks the POP3 service thread while transitioning.
"Leaking" of messages while switching accounts was reported.
o Message Editor: Pressing the Delete icon when in a reply-in-progress
would result in the original message being deleted, too. Now it
only deletes the reply.
o Pressing CLOSE while in a reply-in-progress now honors the "stay on
same message after reply" configurable parameter. This might take
a little getting used to for long-time users.
o External Editing now does a better job of creating file names unique
for the current window. There's still a bug with the OS/2 IPC Queue
mechanism that I can't get right (messes up when doing multiple,
simultaneous external edits)
o Ok, I figured out the "bug" with OS/2's DosStartSession and Queues.
I now have a new "session manager" thread that does nothing but
manages external sessions. Multiple editor sessions work nicely
now, as will any other external viewer window when needed.
o Display of Group addresses chopped strings at 32 chars. Fixed.
o Printer Setup selection dialog selected the wrong "current" printer
sometimes. It matched the "current" printer by LPT port, which
could have picked the wrong printer when two printers shared the same
port. Changed the headings on this form to reflect the *real* data
displayed.
Changes included in v1.00
---------------------------
I fixed so many things, so fast, without writing them down, that my
change list is not worth listing.
Official Release v1.0.
Trying to remember the changes:
o Added user preferences: DEL key active in viewer, Show account
in title.
o Printing in text editor, both draft and formatted. Printing
now can use real Courier font, and accomodates backslashes.
o Pick Address now includes group entries.
o Welcome message now pops into inbox on first load.
o Pop3 "wrong password" will prompt you again until you get it right :)
o Detach files now preserves message window state (position in
particular).
o Inbox and Outbox RMB popup menus filled in. Still no demand filtering,
but marking as read/unread, detaching files, and saving addresses to
address book/group/file now works.
o New "pick group" form used in saving address prompts. Includes "new"
button.
o Closing a folder now protects against lost data.
o Group maintenance: group pick button removed as pick address book now
includes groups. Also, European names in tags work correctly.
o Extra garbage in quote-paste cleaned up.
o Updated help file (still work-in-progress)
o Hid some buttons/switches that weren't being used but causing
some confusion.
o Other items fixed as they were reported: Filter problems come to
mind (boolean algebra and unquoted phrases).
BETA Program change log:
Changes included in v0.99z1
---------------------------
o HELP! No, HELP TEXT! This is still work-in-progress, but there is
much more real text than there was!
o Font option from main notebook can be used to change message list
font. A few problems setting initial font ...
o Web/Speller RMB invocations will now work when cursor is at the
END of a word.
o Mr2files.txt is now included (was missing). These are instructions
on how to get the speller and thesaurus addons. If either of these
is invoked and the files aren't there, the instructiosn pop up.
o All RMB speller options should be active.
o Template maintenance and managner object massively rewritten. It is
now possible to add a new template and *should be* safe to edit
existing templates <grin>.
o Many utility maintenance lists now have up/down arrows for moving an
items position in the list. These function only in filters and
templates. The others will probably have these buttons hidden.
o To, Cc and Bcc form fields now can hold a max of 2048 chars, as can
the address book field for address(es). Hardly usable this long for
normal address maintenance, but it will accomodate larger REPLY-TO-ALL
lists this way.
o Add a host of new options to the config object, all of which are
waiting to me implemented.
o Parsing issues with addresses containing commas inside quotes resolved.
Also, "address (real name)" parsing left some space. This has been
removed (SMTP sends failing for some servers).
o Header searches for fields were semi-case sensitive. Still. Fixed.
o Icon changed. I'll be playing with all of the contributions. The
one I build was made different for each resolution. Thanks everybody!
Changes included in v0.99z
--------------------------
NOTE: Secant's POP3 Server was released 4/28/96. If you are
interested, see http://www.secant.com.
o In the previous release but not documented: Reply to all is now
an option when using the RMB within the TO and/or CC fields. This
function MAY choose to use both fields (To and CC) to distribute
the addresses, depending on the size of the list.
o HUGE speedups in tcpip operations. In particular, receiving and
sending mail. I was using silly-size tiny buffers. Not any more!
More noticable on large messages and/or faster connection speeds,
but faster overall regardless.
- NOTE that as an "advanced option", I added a /B command line
parameter to allow control of the buffer size used. The default
is now 20K (512 bytes previously :). Specifying /B32000 gets you
a larger buffer and /B512 gets you the old "tiny buffers". Value
is forced between 512 and 32K.
o Speedups on loading. I spent WAY more time than I wanted to (how
typical :) and the benefit was, well, relatively minor. I shaved
tenths of a second off of here and there. I may have saved
4-5-6 seconds of load time on my loaded-with-messages 486DX33.
o Context Menus reworked. Some parts may not yet be functional.
I disabled most non or partially working items. Reply and Forward
work but need some input. How should these work? I may add a
"quick reply" and a "quick forward" that jumps right into the
reply w/out hesitation. Hmmm. Wonder what edit-header-before
turned off would do ...
o I removed the message header from draft printing and left the summary
header. Also, time now should print on both types of messages
using the OS/2 settings for time.
o MR/2 will no longer hog the CPU (and effectively lock up) when it
is dragged partially off the screen.
o Color dialog has a pushbutton for "default" which will set the
original EDITBOX colors for the viewer and editor.
o External Editor specification will now allow for exact placement
of the file-to-edit, allowing parameters AFTER the file name. Use
a "%s" to designate where in the command string to insert the file
name. If %s is not found, the file name is simply appended to the
end of the command line (as it did in previous versions).
o Address parsing now handles nested parenthesis.
o Modifying the header of messages with long addressed would crash.
Fixed.
o Filters and real-time text searches: Phrases containing spaces no
longer have to be enclosed in double quotes to be handled correctly.
o Printer Settings has a default for new RMB print menu parent item.
AND, the printer setup button is functional on this form, as well
as in the RMB popup menus.
o Not that help exists ... yet <grin>, but the help engine now will
bring up help panels when in the SETTINGS notebook window.
o Modified the printing DLL slightly to try and eliminate the extra
EOJ formfeed with some drivers. Seems it didn't work, but I'll
keep the change.
o Minor change that prevented resending of INCOMING messages that
have been moved to folders (sounds weird, but I do it often :).
o MailTo.exe had a problem with message bodies > 32K (as I tried to
the body as one packet, and tcpip limits packet size to 32K. Fixed.
o Improvements to broken connections on receiving from POP3. I have
a little more to do, but I do understand what's going on now.
A broken connection will result in the poll for mail to stop.
The polling will attempt to start at the SAME message next time.
Changes included in v0.99y
--------------------------
Short list this week. I have more code to show than this <grin> but
none of it ready for prime-time.
o Quoting messages is MUCH faster. More notable on long messages,
but faster overall.
o I made the = key mean the same thing as a + in the viewer (next
message), as I saw someone pointing out that a PLUS is a shifted
key on keyboards with no numeric keypad.
o Printing DLL upgrades for real this time :). Better paper size
matching to printer driver sizes. Fixes 107 errors.
o Reply-to garbage in header on new messages (affected only those with
no reply-to set).
o I added dozens of small optimizations. None of them seems to have
amounted to much, but they're there. Perhaps enough of these and
we'll slowly see a difference.
o You can now force a particular code page for translations to/from
your machine. I'm not sure if this is really what's needed, but
it was very easy to do and *might* help in the cases where a
keyboard/video translator is installed. To force MR/2 ICE to
*think* you are using CP866, for example:
mr2i /C866
Changes included in v0.99x
--------------------------
Release date for MR/2 ICE v1.0 will be May 8, 1996.
Mailing List add-on package will be available later today, 4/17. We'll
call it an "early beta", even though it's working for me.
o Enhanced msgutil.cmd, mostly by using all the code supplied by
Jason Gottschalk <os2@tir.com> :). I took his whole code structure
and added in his "unpack AND view" code. I did pull out many of
the hard-coded executable names and moved them to the front where
they can be more easily reconfigured.
CTRL-F1 will now create an attached directory if one does not
exist. It will attempt to run munpack AND xbin against the
current message. These will either need to be in your path OR
in the attached subdirectory of MR/2 ICE (get them from my web page).
THEN, in its default form, the script will attempt to run a viewer
against the resulting file IF it matches a predefined set of file
extensions. It's Rexx, so it's easily extended!
Thanks, Jason.
o Additionally, msgutil.ccc has been renamed to msgutil.org and if
you do not have a copy of msgutil.cmd in use, msgutil.org will be
copied to msgutil.cmd. You will need to copy the file over by hand
if you want the new copy and hae been using this feature.
o Modified printer.tf for "variable margins". Should print better on
A4 tray systems.
o Printer DLL updated (equivelent to cpdll.zip patch released earlier
in the week). This should fix MANY of the recently created printer
problems.
o Message lines starting with the period character are now sent and
received properly.
o Folder sort order is now preserved when reindexed.
o Attribution line does not appear in reply if "no quoting" is selected.
o The crash caused by use of the /X comand line argument has been fixed.
o Fixes to the MIME headers when using BCC's. Also, MIME headers were
being produced with the incorrect CTE types of 7-bit and 8-bit. Now
correctly uses 7bit and 8bit.
o More code to deal with improper blank lines in the message header that
previously would result in blank or incomplete index listings.
o Duplicate header problem with external editor AND edit headers option
resolved.
o When forwarding, the subsequently re-editing the header, the
reply-to line would be removed. Fixed.
o One more SMTP open step added. If all else fails, a low level
connection is forced with port 25 (bypassing services file). This
solved at least one strange problem :)
o Opening of large messages is now faster by a dramatic margin.
I may still have a little more I can do, but this was a big leap.
o Saving of large messages is also now massively faster.
o Ha! I found the problem where To/cc/bcc lines would get truncated
at 160 or so characters. You could add up to 512 chars when first
editing the header, BUT, if you reedited the header, it would get
chopped. This was deep inside the ObjectPM core, and I removed the
limitation. In fact, I also discovered that 512 bytes IS NOT
the limitation of the OS/2 Edit field as I had thought.
MR/2 ICE now supports address collections of up to 1024 characters
per field. That's roughly 30 well-formed (full, with real names)
addresses. By using the To and CC fields, 60 addresses can easily
be handled; double that if real name comments are not important.
This is the way it will remain for now, with the option of using a
distribution list available for longer lists (but the distribution
list is not displayed in the message).
There may be more room to play here, but I still want to spend more
time with this issue. The situation is at least "much better" until
that happens.
I also adjusted the address book's address field to allow 1024 bytes
to accomodate a maximum address list.
o Changing accounts now corrects status line message counts.
o When an external edit session is started, a ".Type" attribute is
of "Plain Text" automatically assigned to the message file. This
will save a step or two when using the E editor :).
Changes included in v0.99w
--------------------------
A big THANK YOU to all of those mentioning MR/2 ICE in newsgroups and
BBS conferences. The ICE Mailing list is up to 250 users, volume is
still high, but not as bad as the first couple of days. I'd say 60-100
messages a day? <grin>.
I'll make the mailing list code available next week. I should also have
some enhanced REXX stuff. More donations, but not in time to include
with this release :)
o Filters enhanced. I've opened up the REXX and Special options.
Minimal testing, but they SEEM to work.
The example file testmail.ccc is provided as a simple example of a
rexx test. I'm still researching the rexx interface, but for now,
I'm using a kludge to return the results from rexx (Rexx is being
called from a cmd.exe session). If the file "mr2_rexx.$$$" is
created by the named script, the message is assumed to match.
SPECIAL includes tests for message size, line count and attached
files.
Autoreply is now functional. You must specify a template section
to use in creating the auto reply. This is tricky, since you cannot
create a new reply template from within ICE, yet. Sorry. It's an
easy edit, tho ... edit your mr2i.tf and splice in the lines from
mr2iorg.tf. If you haven't customized your mr2i.tf file, you can
simply copy mr2itf.org to mr2i.tf and be all set. Currently,
autoreplies are added to the outbox for sending, but deleted on send.
I'm considering some options here.
MR/2 added a header value for AUTOREPLIES as an aid in preventing
endless loops of auto-replying. Any filter that auto-replies should
test for the existence of "X-AutoReply: Yes" and NOT autoreply if
found. Filter like: (whatever) & !{H:X-AutoReply}"Yes".
... Autoforward is next.
o Printer setup lockup fixed.
o Search/Replace lockup. It doesn't lock up anymore. Replace all
works, replace one-at-a-time is still bad (but harmless).
o Several problems with editing externally on-demand fixed. Also fixed
bug when editing header AFTER and cancel was pressed. It now keeps
you in the message with all of your text :)
o Message are saved to disk with CR/LF's, and subsequently sent out
this way. (helps with some rare SMTP servers that require this)
o Incoming messages. Insertion into open folders was horribly slow.
Fixed (ok, it's at least MUCH better :). Also, fixed another place
where index was being updated unnecessarily on message open. I see
some other areas that can be improved ... I'll address these as we
move along.
o Fixed several small bugs with QP conversions. Outgoing header
translations for hi-ASCII values are performed. Still a few items I
want to add, but this is about done.
- Also, I believe I've made QP working with the external editor options
correctly. ALTHOUGH, if you edit an "incoming" message externally,
it WILL NOT be translated from QP nor from the source char set.
This is the way it will work ... I should show, tho, outgoing messages
(modifiable) in "readable" form when editing externally.
o New sort option for message index: Message status. Sorts in unread,
read, replied, unsent, sent order.
o Right Mouse Button (RMB) popup menu in message indices now has a
"select to" entry. Click on a startng message, find an "end" message,
RMB->Select-to. Highlights these two message and all message between
the two.
o Spelling checker now takes into account your own quote string when
deciding which text is quoted (and should not be spell-checked).
o Bugs with several menu items crashing when invoked on "new message".
o Template file would not be referenced if "edit headers before" was
not checked. Fixed.
o Opening 7-8 folders at once would crash. Fixed.
o The CheckInstanceExists() routine now uses the full path of the
running MR/2 when testing. This allows for multiple copies of
MR/2 ICE without specifying mail configs, as long as they are
based in different directories.
Changes included in v0.99v
--------------------------
I release this with a small bit of hesitation. There has been some
discussion of problems with the new build of the support DLL's,
which I have chosen to use. If there are too many problems, I will
offer a separate version linked with the "old" DLL's.
o Outgoing MIME Quoted Printable and CTE Character set conversions.
Your choice of 9 outgoing ISO sets, or US-ASCII. Other options.
(See new settings page). Conversion of header strings is not in,
yet, but will be quickly. [Incoming conversions have been in place
for awhile now].
o New Settings page "Advanced features" ... MIME QP options and
settings for Web Explorer and FTP commands spawned from Right
Mouse Button (RMB) inside viewer/editor.
o More Filter options started, but I disabled the controls for these
again, as I didn't get to finish them. They're next.
Fixed dozens of smaller bugs:
o Last character of formatted print output chopped. I cannot find
the reason for the extra formfeed some users are experiencing.
o Edit Externally did not always save current work to file
before spawning editor.
o The UUDecode logic would loop forever on error or if no attached
uuencoded file existed. Path prefixes are stripped (better) from
embedded file names.
o I've added an experimental area in the title bar for account
name.
o Stabilized the threads a bit so that "false starts" should no
longer occur.
o Modified cleanup code on exit so that threads all commit suicide.
This seems to have fixed the "failure to exit" bug.
o Minor address book and group address book issues fixed.
o Made subjects prefixed with "Re: " logically equivelent to "Re:".
o Network Settings: modified the FROM and REPLYTO fields to have
mnor validations. Also modified the initila import of TCPOS2.INI
data to guess better at the FROM string.
o Creating a new user profile failed to add this to the "valid" list,
so logging on with that name was not possible until you exited and
reentered.
o Folders now reset the "new" count to zero on close.
o Printer errors now display to the user with a popup window.
o Text searching and body-text oriented filters were broken. Fixed.
o Logging off sometimes messaged up the current INI. Fixed.
o Logging into a new account would leave empty grey area on right.
o Split screen editor now allows "header" button to work correctly.
o Cell boxes for outbox and folder index will now remember fonts
dropped on them.
o STILL NEW!! An MR/2 ICE mailing list. Send email to
mr2ice.list@secant.com with a subject of SUBSCRIBE. Discussions
of MR/2 ICE bugs, problems, solutions, tips and tricks!
Changes included in v0.99u
--------------------------
NEW!! An MR/2 ICE mailing list. Send email to mr2ice.list@secant.com
with a subject of SUBSCRIBE. Discussions of MR/2 ICE bugs, problems,
solutions, tips and tricks!
NOTE, LAST TIME!: If you've registered MR/2 ICE and are not getting
email notifications of new version (and want them, I guess), please
drop me a note specifying your serial number, real name and email
address.
I may actually wait TWO WEEKS for the next update. I want to track down
some strangeness, and keeping the same released code out longer may
help. Not sure yet, but just to prepare you! For those getting the
occassional SYS3184 (devide by zero), please report the crash address
again. I will keep an EXACT DEBUGGING COPY of version U around for the
purpose of finding this one.
o That anoying "beep" and hour-glass cursor often when opening a
message? Gone!
o Message viewer Tools menu now enabled External Editor for read-only
messages. Changes saved to disk (e.g., to incoming messages) *are*
reflected in the message window. For PGP users and other folks
wishing to edit incoming mail for whatever reason (I need it on
occassion :).
o Some Quoted-Printable character translation bugs fixed.
o Addresses with commas inside comments (parenthesis) failed. Fixed.
o Most import text/save text standard file dialogs now remember there
previous paths and file names. By request :)
o Blank message may now be sent. MR/2 had trouble with these before.
o Ooops, BMT Micro's phone under "help" was listing their FAX number.
o Printer template: modified big time. Played with the footer spacing.
Added some new @variables.
o Printer Settings page revamped. Now has Paper Size, simple font
and font size selection. NOTE that I still have some work to do
with right margins (A4 paper size still has Letter size's right
aligned headings), but this is minor.
So, the special A4 template I sent to some of you is obsolete,
use the printer.tf file supplied in this release, and set your
paper size to A4 in Options->Settings->Printer.
o Almost forgot! By request, and something I've needed myself.
Support within viewer for "Move to folder, Next/Prev message".
Navigate menu shows these options with keyboard connections to
CTRL+UP and CTRL+DOWN. No toolbar icons or menu quick-folder
lists, but I should get to these soon.
o Modified the print thread to delay in starting. There was a
hint that this thread might be involved in the exit-while-loading
problem. You won't be able to print for the first 4 seconds ICE
is running :)
o Minor revision to msgutil.ccc, prompted by Jason Gottschalk's
<os2@tir.com> post to the MR/2 ICE mailing list. Ctrl-F3 has
been made to support viewing of HTML embedded within a message.
I only stole a small part of his code (with permission, of
course!) but like his code layout better than mine and will model
the next release after that. Thanks Jason!
Changes included in v0.99t
--------------------------
NOTE, AGAIN!: If you've registered MR/2 ICE and are not getting email
notifications of new version (and want them, I guess), please drop
me a note specifying your serial number, real name and email address.
OS/2 Shareware's system does not provide an email address, and I sometimes
miss the BMT Micro carbon copies (but do get email addresses later).
o More printing issues. Polling my list of registered users, we came
up with a majority confirmation that long descriptions passed to
various drivers caused trouble. I've fixed a limit of 40 chars to
spooled file descriptions (detail printer view document
descriptions). This should help tremendously. Some other printing
changes ... I'm hoping to hear of great results, but I assume I'm
not quite done yet.
NOTE: Form change dialogs. I added these in and expect some of the
remaining problems to be with these. If the driver knows you last
printed on Legal paper, or on Envelopes, the Job Properties dialog
will pop up. There still seems to be a problem here (it still
doesn't print after changing the settings) and I am looking into
this. If this message comes up, try setting the properties outside
of ICE, then reloading and printing again. BTW, the default paper
size is LETTER for printed messages. I am curious as to if this
causes problems for European users. Let me know and I will try to
address them.
UPDATE: I modified things a bit at the last minute <oh no! gasp> and
the popup job properties seem to be recognized now. We'll see.
o Modified printer.tf some. Removed the $HEADER dump of raw headings,
cleaned up spacing and alignment a bit.
o Sorry. I had inserted a new formatting loop in versions S/S2 that
was invoked on pressing the SEND button. Very slow, very
inefficient. Caused long message (e.g., attachments) to slow so
badly that you would think the system was locked. Fixed (rewritten,
then written in assembler).
o Printer settings use the same code in all 3 places it can be
invoked.
o Added some code to the HELP menu for "Registration info" and added a
new "View read.me file" option. Works OK, except I now realized
that the internal editor has no print capabilities (can't print the
registration form!) so it still needs some work.
o Yes, I fixed several tiny bugs, but I can't recall them at this
time. Humph. I'm getting old :) Most of the focus *was* on
printers, tho, and now that I'm close on this (I think?), I'll spend
less time on it and get some other stuff done.
Changes included in v0.99s
--------------------------
NOTE 1: If you've registered MR/2 ICE and are not getting email
notifications of new version (and want them, I guess), please drop
me a note specifying your serial number, real name and email address.
OS/2 Shareware's system does not provide an email address, and I sometimes
miss the BMT Micro carbon copies (but do get email addresses later).
NOTE 2: Groups. I'm working on some instructions, as this is creating
much confusion. At the same time, I'm thinking about ways to improve
this.
Printing took an incredible amount of time this week. QP, configuration
issues (Explorer, ftp, code pages, etc) and the a blitz on RMB menus are
next; lots of great ideas!
o Printing? I believe it's fixed ... at least the BIG problem with
formated printing. It turned out to be a driver-specific problem,
which I knew before but couldn't place any logic behind it. I have
an office HPIII and HP4Plus that work perfectly. Others had HP's
that wouldn't. It all depended on how the driver handled a
seldom-used FORM specification. This parameter is usually ignored,
so it is now removed and I've managed to print to my collection of
dot-matrix test drivers.
IF YOU STILL have a problem with formated printing, please let me
know. I'd like to know the version of WARP you are using (I've
found that this matters in this case), the printer driver used, and
and trap address and source. I NEED ONLY the address as in
"generated an access violation at xxxxxxxx" and the module (MR2I.EXE,
PMSPL.DLL, etc).
o Other printer additions: settings. The "Other port" option for draft
printing has been enabled. You can now specify any weirdness you want,
although error checking is at a bare minimum. Specified file/device
is opened in "append text" mode.
Also, a new draft setting that controls the end-of-print form feed.
Sometimes it's needed, sometimes it produces a blank page. Now you
can pick which one you want.
o I added some code to make printer selection persistent. Testing will
be very limited, and I'll know quickly if something doesn't work.
It's simple enough, tho.
o The formating problem with outgoing text has been fixed. It had
to do with left over LF's, usually in pasted text whose lines were
previously wrapped longer that MR/2's wrap column.
o The Message viewer window now has a menu entry for
"Edit->Copy message file name". This copies the fully qualified
file name for the current message to the clipboard.
o Minor bugs: Auto-split window should now work when replying from
a folder.
o I tried to switch the filter system's REXX stuff to not load
the command processor by calling RexxStart() directly. Still
needs work.
o Ctrl-Fkey invoked REXX functions ... oh well, I didn't get a chance
to finish for this release. Basically, a REXX file is invoked with
a key code and the file name, so you can do ANYTHING you want,
including detaching binhex and mime attachments. This isn't what
I'll depend on for this ... it's just an escape for "special
processing". There's a msgutil.ccc file that can be renamed to a
cmd. UNDERSTAND, please, that this whole thing may be reworked in
the next release. Consider it a toy/prototype at this time. Ctrl-F9
is not processed, Ctrl+F1->F12 are available other that that.
Stay tuned.
Changes included in v0.99r
--------------------------
March is almost here. I have committed to release a v1.0 sometime in
this month, and it is important to do so. This will undoubtable mean
that v1.0 will not have all of the features on my to-do list. That
list has been growing at a fast pace, and some long-time entries have
not yet been addressed.
Releasing a v1.0 is a mere formality to me ... work will not cease, and
I will continue to upgrade the product quickly. I'm pushing it with
once-a-week releases, I will probably drop back to every 2 weeks, with
"specials" in between, when warranted.
I anxiously await the release of the two major competitors' updates. Right
now they have a bit of an advantage, as my work is out in the open and
there's still a bit of mystery as to what to expect from "them". I can't
wait to have some visible and relatively static new targets :). And there's
the key ... I do not believe that the competitors can maintain the pace
that I intend to keep. Only one has the resources, but they also have the
most overhead. We'll see. It will be interesting.
Rest assured. If you see a v1.00, v1.01 will be out in another week or
two, v1.02 shortly after that. That's how I've reached a version level of
2.26 with the QWK reader, usually at a .01 release at a time :)
I've been beating back bugs. Lot's of them. Again, not documenting too
well:
o Editing template sections is now more reliable. Problems with changing
the size of a section have been fixed.
o TCP/IP updates w/regards to SMTP sends ... minor bug with one
user's host. Some other changes with POP3 receives and odd packet
sizes.
o Replies crashing on send from folders AND navigation being disabled
upon incoming mail. This was a tricky one to fix, but I believe it's
reliable now. When a message was being copied/moved to a folder
(including the copies done by incoming filters), the entire folder
index was reloaded, invalidating the previously loaded memory image
of any one that was open. Fixed.
o Ah. I have dusted off my assembler books. MR/2 ICE now includes
two small assembler routines for manipulating message contents.
This code was applied to some new areas, so existing code will not
increase in speed. However, I see many places where things can be
made snappier with some assembler applied. I will start to do this
over time, probably more realistically AFTER v1.0. I once wrote a
database code generator and report writer (under CTOS/BTOS) that
blew away all the competition w/regards to speed (and features, too
:). I accredited the speed to a small core set of assembler
helpers. I will apply the same technology to MR/2 ICE.
o ALT-Q, paste with quote, now wraps better (by removing previous line
breaks).
o Minors: RMB invocation of explore.exe will clean up URL's better.
Updated the default template file for forwards. Preparing for the
support of selectable sigs and secondary-account specific support
files. Edit menu would disable entries when switching "back" to
the source message ("<" button) that were never reenabled. Fixed.
New reply-time variable: @SignatureFile@ that doesn't yet have
a use :) Spell checker buglets, a couple accelerator issues, etc.,.
o POP receives. Yet another strange case where lost data occured was
plugged. This was due to a connection disconnect and a subsequent
hurried closing if ICE my the user, but it still had ugly results.
This effected PURGE mode only. I have cleaned up the warning
message so as not to invoke unneeded panic and fixed it so that the
same actions will not lose messages. NOTE that I have also removed
a "cleanup by purging old messages" loop that may result in dupes.
Maybe. Better this than lost data, IMO.
o Oh, yes! Almost forgot (Cheryl :-). I added persistence when
dropping a font on the INBOX. If this works OK, I'll add
it to the others. This is a test ... colors are pending, but
dragging a font to the inbox should "stick". There are some kinks,
most w/regards to non CP850 fonts that will be fixed next release.
o I have added some code to Filters that enables a REXX script to be
executed upon a filter match. This is preliminary and spawns a
command shell for now, until I rework it. I also have an example
script that I will use to maintain, over time, an automated mailing
list. The file is provided as maillist.ccc ... you should copy
this to a .cmd file. I will only update the .ccc file, so that
overwriting any modifications you may make will be avoided. To
invoke this file at this time. I use this as so:
Link to Rexx: maillist.cmd maillist.lst
The mail message file name is appended to this command line and
the script is run. Maillist.lst is the email address list I
want to create ... it can vary based on your needs. Naming the list
in this manner allows multiple lists to be supported. The script
support two commands at present, SUBSCRIBE and UNSUBSCRIBE, both as
the first word of the subject line. Obviously this is work-in-progress,
but it will fill a long-standing personal need :).
You would then use it by defining a group, where the group consist
of At Least this file (maillist.lst) as an entry. I *do* intend
on continuing until ICE can work as a list server (receiving posts
and routing them to all members on the list).
GENERAL NOTES!
1. The movement between open folders issue was brought to my attention
again just now. This, after a bit of a rough discussion on Usenet
not long ago. As I explained that I didn't, personally, like PM Mail's
setup for folders, I remembered another gadget I had coded to help here.
The Windows menu. Has anyone ever looked at this with a bunch of
windows/folders open? You should! It's a quick and dirty index into
almost any open and accessible MR/2 Window. The same menu is on the
main notebook as well as each message window. Editor windows are not
listed, but are on my todo's. Just a subtle "fun fact".
2. Installation over existing setups causes constant concerns. And
questions. I have built the ZIP files so that the risk of overwriting
user-modified files is slim. So, USUALLY, it is safe to simply unzip
a new distribution set over an existing setup. I WILL RECCOMMEND, as
always, to backup the MR/2 ICE base directory, as a precaution. This
also gives you protection against a newly introduced bug that might
render your mail system unworkable.
Changes included in v0.99q
----------------------- ---
SIMPLE HELP NEEDED: I would like to see some examples of ISO-8859 based
messages that are not *-1 or *-2 character sets. Does anyone receive
messages in one of the other char sets that can forward a copy to
nick@secant.com? Thanks!
ALSO, I'm looking for suggestions for OTHER ftp sites on which to place
MR/2 ICE initially on release. Places that will benefit large numbers
of people and ease the strain on my site. I'll gladly crosslink my web
page to these sites. Gary Hammer's page would be a great choice, I'll
write him, but he's pretty quick about grabbing released anyway!
Specifically, a place in Europe would be ideal. I've had some
suggestions, but upon logging into these 2 sites, had no idea where I
would even place the files! Just trying to spread things about some, and
improve access.
o Unsynchronized SEND and RECEIVE threads. From the beginning, I coded
it so you could not do both at once. Not sure why, but I spent the
week with them de-synched and all worked well. I received messages
while waiting for my last MR/2 released notice was going out. I see
even more possibilities here :)
o A host of bug fixes ... bugs introduced in the P version. Sorry!
includes /L crashing, Read/check marks having a mind of their own
and others. Once again, I wasn't too careful about remembering them
all. Oh, also the new install blank-page-if-no-data-to-list bug
was fixed.
o Improvements to Multiple Account support. Passwords now work <again!>
as do the menu options for change password and delete profile.
Oh, ya, pathing bug fixed when a default profile is created by simply
starting with the /Mnewprofile.cfg flag.
I've got just a couple minor issues to handle this week to call this
"done". The biggest issue is how to allow each account to have sigs,
filters and templates with the least negative impact on existing setups.
A couple of other ideas, too ...
o I've created a reindex.exe utility, not included this time but will
be next release. This will aid in the creation of more other-mailer
to ICE migration tools, as I've externalized the hardest part of
MR/2 ICE messages ... the message index creation.
o Printing is still struggling, although I've made headway. If I can't
close out the largest of the bugs in the next week, I may back off and
code up a simpler system, worrying about all the fancy features later.
Sorry this has continued on so long ...
Changes included in v0.99p
---------------------------
I've included the listings for a couple of interrim v0.99o fixes
in this list, since only a couple of folks collected the patched releases.
I also didn't do any better with documenting smaller bugs that were
fixed. I know I did quite a few. I should be handling the smaller ones
more quickly.
o Code Pages - I handled Latin-2 conversions, but my libraries always
used a CP850 font. Fixed to honor the systems current CP.
o CP conversions STILL weren't done unless quoted-printable was
specified. Fixed. Also, "quoted-printable" was tested for too
tersely, and was not found if prefixed with too many spaces.
o Minor menu disabling for folder index fixes.
o Conversion of QP and Base64 codes in message headers. There are
still a few quirks, but they are minor.
o Folder indices may now be closed simply by clicking on the "Close
Window) icon, third from the left. It seemed more handy to change
the meaning somewhat. We'll try it and see.
o Folder message count fixes. Again.
o More menu items disabled when not appropriate.
o Two more viewer navigation options ... open next/previous INDEX search
hit. I'm sure I'll find plenty more of these, and I'll probably add
the "delete" versions, too.
o Some minor fixes to Multiple Accounts. I expect to delve into this
more this week. That, and finally, formated printing.
o Reworked this read me so that change logs are at the top of the file.
The
Changes included in v0.99o
--------------------------
I had hoped to have more "results" in this release, but the process of
debugging the printing is still underway. I understand the problem(s)
much better, but don't (yet) have concrete, blanket results.
o How to say this ... printing sometimes works again :). If you were
able to print formated before, then couldn't, you probably can again.
The major problem with formated printing still exists ... but I've
narrowed it down.
o Miscellaneous filter issues handled ... saving, modifying, initial
entry activation. What's there seems to be stable now.
o Folder issues with marking read messages, handling counts, etc.
Some fixed, a few more to track down.
o Quite a few bugs that I don't remember ... it was one of those weeks
where I tried to fix some things as soon as I heard about them, but
failed to write them down. For example: Web Explorer was launched
as a child of MR/2 ICE. So, exiting MR/2 ICE would close any
internally launched WEB links. Fixed so that WE's are separate
independent session.
o Translation cleanups. ICE now recognizes the MIME quoted-printable
header regardless of the charset and performs escape char translations.
o Character set conversions. I massively rewrote this into the
ultimate conversion engine (IMHO :). MR/2 ICE now supports 45
code pages / character sets, including ISO-8859-1 thru 9. It
supports more code pages than standard Warp does at this time, but
I've planned for the future :).
No DBCS code page conversion is supported at this time.
All MIME ISO headers (1-9) should be properly converted for display.
I still have send-side conversions to handle. I'd like to hear,
either positively or negatively, if display-side conversions are
working for you (this goes out to non-US users mostly, I guess!).
Is this working OK for you or not?
o I've removed the DBCS flags from all ENTRY fields ... pasting should
now work. Investigating better fixes ...
o Multiple Instances of MR/2 ICE may now be started, as long as EACH
instance references a different mail configuration file. This allows
the monitoring of different accounts. For example, if you've created
a second "account" to monitor mail at a different ISP, and that
account is called ISP2 (thus, a file ISP2.CFG exists), you can monitor
mail for both the "default" account, mail.cfg and ISP 2 this way:
start MR2i
start MR2i /Misp2.cfg
Changes included in v0.99n2
---------------------------
o Filter bugs. First, I left filtering out of SMTP "read" mode. Fixed.
o Filters would actually NOT filter some messages. This was due to
the unobvious occurence of a name collision. What this proves is
my filter-error recovery works great (if an error occurs, message
stays in the inbox). I've fixed the name collisions ... I could
explain what happened, but it doesn't matter ... it's fixed. This
problem arose when TWO or more messages filtered within the
same second to the same folder. All but the first one would fail
and remain in the inbox.
o Filter maintenance ... saves sometimes weren't performed. Fixed.
Changes included in v0.99n
--------------------------
There is MUCH new code in this release. Please, save your v0.99m
executable as a precaution, just in case something doesn't work right
for you. Previous MR/2 ICE version are usually available on my ftp
site in the mr2i sub directory.
o Added inbound support for quoted-printable message (simple MIME
messages using the ISO-8859-1 character set). Display only support
at this time (no outgoing translations). Messages sent in ISO-8859
with proper headers will automatically be converted to your default
code page. Only code pages 850,437,860,863 and 865 are supported at
this time.
This means that those anoying "=0D" symbols in certain messages should
be converted, and hi-end ASCII should display language-specific
characters properly. Let me know how this works ...
o Filters? You bet! Consider this a "real beta", as this code is all
new and messes with the heart of my email delivery engine. It still
has worked flawlessly here. The Filter Maintenance form gives away
many of my ideas, and there were even some I believe to be original!
It all starts under the Utility menu.
There are many areas of the Filter form that are disabled, as the
code to support them is not there yet. What you have at this time is
a pick of simple or freeform search criteria. You can copy/move a
matching messages into a specific folder, if desired. You can then
choose to keep the message in the inbox or delete it from the inbox.
If no folder is specified, and you delete the message, it is the
same as "killing" it.
Simple searches let you pick the area(s) to test, and a simple keyword
or phrase (multiple words inside double quotes!). Boolean symbols are
allowed, but this mode is meant for users having simple search needs.
Freeform searches follow the syntax spelled out for text searches,
below (see version L). This allows for very complex search criteria
to be specified. For example, it is possible to test a user-defined
header line and match against its content.
Only Inbound filters are supported at this time. You can see from
the other options on the form hints of my intended direction.
o Font selection and application to the Message Viewer/Editor. Certain
outline fonts were shown in the font selection pick list, but were
not actually used when selection. This has been corrected, and the
Russian font example kindly supplied by a user works just fine :).
I also fixed the font selection dialog to display with the currently
active font displayed. A bug remains with the outline fonts where
point size is not selected correctly. I'll work on that ...
o Folder Index has been enhanced to show a count of "new" messages and
to display folders with new messages in red.
o Folder message listings now work better ... icons correspond to the
original status of the message, and status-line counts tend to be
more accurate :). May still be some strangeness, but much of what's
been reported is fixed.
Changes included in v0.99m
--------------------------
o Another UUencoding bug fixed ... actually a bug in the MLE text
import code that would have the largest effect on attached files.
Occurred when a partial section being imported ended with a LF.
o Double click on a word in the editor no longer invokes popup menu.
o Double click to close a window would press an underlying toolbar
botton. Fixed.
o Filters have been started and are mostly "in", although you can't
see them yet! I have spec'd out what I believe to be an extremely
comprehensive filter system. I looked at quite a few "other
mailers", and read all user comments I have received to date (NOTE
that I could not find filters within Eudora ... but I'm no expert!).
All of this will be implemented in due time, although a subset will
probably be offered to get everyone started.
o New configuration option: Queue unsent message on program start.
Does just that ... a popular request!
o I laxed off on the nag screen a little. I moved it back so as to
start popping up after 120 days instead of 60. This will move
back to 30-60, once I release, but I felt funny bugging people this
early. ALSO note that, once released, unregistered users' X-Mailer
line will be marked with "(unregistered)" after the grace period.
This isn't enabled yet ...
o Worked on code to handle individualized group sends ... something
that will allow groups to be used with POP3 sends too. Not ready
yet, but just so you know what I'm working on :)
Changes included in v0.99l
--------------------------
o You can now register via the OS/2 Shareware BBS, online with any
major credit card! Use your modem to call the OS/2 Shareware BBS
at (703) 385-4325 or telnet into os2bbs.com.
o Resending a message multiple times now only sends it once. A message
can exist in the send queue only once. After the queue is cleared,
it can be readded, but not until.
o Address book doubling fixed.
o Folder deletion would not remove the folder directory if it was ever
reindexed. Fixed.
o Yet another POP3 server variation ... server never reports size of
a message. I now have a mechnism that expands the message buffer
before overflow. Should have done it this way to begin with ...
o Pasting-with-quote strangeness fixed up. Also Remove CR's (CTRL-F9)
tendency to chop tail carraige return off.
o Marked source-message text is used as the source for a reply's quote
if more than 40 characters are marked.
o Delete-and-Next now works correctly on the LAST message in the list.
o Forwarding a message now respects the "always use external editor"
setting.
o Logout now confirms with a message box before clearing the current
profile.
o OK, I added some new search code in. While it doesn't yet show,
there are a TON of new features in the program :). For those of
you familiar with MR/2 Classic, the complete Virtual Conference
string-match engine is now in, waiting to be thoroughly exploited.
This code will be the basis for filters, too.
o I've added to the main index FIND menu ... Text search options.
This will allow you to text search through the contents of ALL
message in the currently displayed index. This begs for some
polish and options (and I'll get these in quickly). The search
is currently NOT MULTITHREADED and will make you wait, but will
pop up the first "hit" message and highlight all hits. There
are new "Navigate" message-menu options for next hit, previous hit.
In all, a basic "grep" system.
Now, for text search strings, ICE supports full boolean expressions,
parenthesis for grouping, forced case sensitivity (case is ignored
by default) and exact word matches. Oh, and soundexing. Thanks to
MR/2 Classic again :)
I have many. many other ideas ...
I'll steal some samples from MR/2 Classic's docs and include here
to provide some "quick start" instructions for those that want to
try this out.
x Boolean match logic is now available ...
Keywords can be OR'd together, AND'd together and/or NOT'd. In
addition, parenthesis can be used to control the evaluations of
the test. There is also an operator that will match a word,
remaining sensitive to case. I've also added support for quoted
strings so that spaces and the special boolean operator symbols
can still be searched for. Some simple examples:
(OS/2 | OS2) & !WARP (OS/2 or OS2) and not warp
Windows & OS/2 Windows and OS/2
Windows | OS/2 Windows or OS/2
^warp warp, but ONLY if all lower case letters
The "operator" symbols follow the conventions used by C and C++ for
boolean operations:
& is the AND operator
| is the OR operator
! is the NOT operator
() cause the expression inside to be
evaluated as a single expression.
and two others that I added:
^ causes a case-sensitive match to be performed.
The word that follows must be found with
matching capitalization to be concidered a
"match".
~ causes an exact word match to be required.
String/phrase that follows must be found with
standing on it's own; not imbedded within another
strings.
The following will find all messages that contain one or two
different words referencing OS/2 that also mentions "bugs".
if the message doesn't match under this criteria, then it is
tested for the words "Windows" and "slow" in the same messages:
((OS/2 | OS2) & bugs) | (Windows & slow)
The following is somewhat similar. It will also find all messages
that contain one of two different words referencing OS/2 that also
mentions "bugs". If the message is found to match, then it is
tested for the words "Windows" and "slow" in the same messages.
If these words are both found, however, the message is eliminated
(compliments of the "!" NOT operator):
((OS/2 | OS2) & bugs) & !(Windows & slow)
A few more examples:
ObjectPM | "Object PM" spaces are ignored unless witin quotes
"R&D" operator characters must be in quotes
if part of a search string.
R&D finds the single letters R and D,
anywhere in the message. This *isn't*
what you want!
"(ch | 0xFF)" more special characters within quotes.
The operator characters will be treated
as any other characters.
"""Windows""" Looks funny? It will find the Windows
in message but only if between quote
marks. Two quotes together are treated
as a single " mark, but they must still
be part of an entire quoted string.
Tricky? Maybe. Just know that ...
""Windows"" WILL NOT WORK, and that ...
"can you say ""neighbor""?" will find the prase 'can you say
"neighbor"?' The word neighbor must be
within quotes to be concidered a match.
"&Windoze" Soundex search for anything sounding
similar to "Windows".
^warp | phasers Looks for the word "warp" in all lower
case ONLY, or the word "phasers"
^NT | ^Nick Looks for the capital letters "NT" or
the string "Nick" where only the N is
capitalized.
x Further enhancements to the text-string search function. Support
for selecting message-specific areas to check within a search
specification. For example, you can now ask for all message that
have "OS/2" in the SUBJECT field, but not in the message itself.
You may tag any word, or set of words within matched parenthesis,
with a set of areas to test. The default is to test all parts of
the message. For example:
{S}OS/2 Matches "OS/2", only checking SUBJECT
{F}"jim@gilliland.com" Finds ONLY message FROM Jim Gilliland
{M}"Tim McClanahan" & !{FT}"Tim McClanahan"
Finds references to Tim McClanahan
inside any message text, but excludes
messages FROM or TO him.
{S}(MR/2 | MR2 | MR-2) Matches any of these three strings when
they exist in the SUBJECT field.
{Conclusion} Probably won't find what you want :)
"{Conclusion}" Probably is what you want. Finds any
occurence of the word "Conclusion" that
is enclosed between curly-brackets.
Valid areas are From, To, Subject, Message and Header,
represented by the letters F, T, S, M and H, respectively.
The value 'H' may be followed by a header field "tag" to specify
a specific header line. For example:
{H:Cc}nick@secant.com will match all email cc'addressed to me
!{H:X-Mailer}"" will find all messages without an
X-MAILER header line.
{H:X-Mailer}"MR/2" will find all messages with an
X-MAILER header line containing "MR/2".
{H:X-Mailer}"" & !{H:X-Mailer}"MR/2"
will find all messages with an X-MAILER
header line that does NOT containing "MR/2".
Another search string modifier ... the tilde (~). This, when
placed at the very beginning of a keyword, requests the match be
qualified as an "exact word match". If the strings is embedded as
part of some other word, it will not match. For example, searching
for the word "owl" will match "owl", but also words like "knowledge"
and "scowl". Using the search string "~owl" will match only with
"owl" as a standalone word. Beginning and end of line cases
are handled correctly in this mode.
Changes included in v0.99k
--------------------------
o Fixed a dozen or so little bugs, most of which I didn't record.
Mostly smaller items. In particular, I remember the logging out
bug that left folders open.
o Problem with POP3 polls in purge-from-server mode. Under certain
circumstances, the internal start counter would get corrupt and
the risk of losing mail was possible. I've fortified this
code, making sure the count is always remembered conservatively.
o FP16 kludge/fix. I spent alot of time with a couple of select
users creating intermediate version with more logging built in.
During this process, I determined that the exit problem appears
to be originating in the formatted printer object of MR/2 ICE.
I don't know why yet, and I probably won't look harder under the
FP16 fix is out. I've got to rework the printer code anyway.
NOTE that I'm not POSITIVE this is the problem, but the logs
indicate it probably is. I also made soem thread code changes
that might help.
If MR/2 ICE exits under Fp16 for you, try running with /V. This
suppresses the formatted printer driver. I'll await further feedback
(as to whether this allows ICE to be loaded reliably).
Changes included in v0.99j
--------------------------
o Logging into a account would automatically poll for mail. This
has been changed to respect the "automatically poll for mail"
flag of the newly loaded profile.
o Modified startup logging to flush the output buffer after every
line. This will prevent 0 length log files and perform the
function it was meant to do in the first place.
o Resizing of open folder pages now works correctly.
o Reorganizing the index of an open folder would leave the folder
selection entry in an inconsistent state. This caused a crash if
it was reopened. Fixed.
o Wow. The option to edit the header AFTER editing never really
worked. I guess most people (except for the 2 folks that
reported this problem :) don't use the after options! Changes
made on the "after" header form were totally ignored. Fixed.
o Related somewhat to the above, I removed the inconsistencies I
could find with the insertion of the "Re:" prefix in Subjects.
This was getting inserted far too often. Small nit, but it
bothered me :)
o Split screen editor resets to single screen once reply is sent.
o Reworked the Inbox and Outbox popup menus a bit. Removed things
that weren't implemented and/or didn't make sense here. Add the
abitlity to rebuild the message index for each of these lists.
Rebuilding a major index is something that shouldn't be done
without a reason. I will add more text to the confirmation screen
in order to explain more thoroughly.
Changes included in v0.99i
--------------------------
This is a quick intermediate release targeted towards fixing a few
items I broke in the last two release. That, and to make LaMail imports
cleaner.
o File names generated by MR/2 ICE are always full 8 digit names with
3 char suffixes. Shorter base names did not previously function
correctly under ICE. Now they do. The only suffixes officially
recognized for messages are still .RCV and .OUT.
o Multiple Accounts. The new password logic prevented account configs
made with older version from working. I now check the DATE the config
(the profile) was created, and if before 12/26/95, the password is
tested against the user name (the OLD way). Otherwise, the password
must match that chosen at creation time. There's a grey area here
that isn't handled, but it's small.
o Beeping on SEND attempts subsequent to a failure are suppressed.
Changes included in v0.99h
--------------------------
Bad week, but I still managed to fix many bugs ... and I believe I'm
ready with OS/2 Shareware registration utilities. I have a on of code
items started, but can't add them until I've had more time to test.
o Logging was changed quite a bit (error/event logging, invoked by
the command line switch /L). The output is directed to a file
named "mr2i.log" ... redirection is no longer neccessary and, in
fact, will no longer have any effect.
I've added logging for the entire startup process of MR/2 ICE.
This in an attempt to track problems with fixpack #16 and ICE.
If your program exits starngely upon startup, please run:
mr2i /L
and try again. If it exits again, please email me the file
"mr2i.log". Thanks.
o Focus issues, fixed as they were reported.
o Yet-another attached file problem, caused by the MLE import routines.
Adjusted one more time.
o Pop3 purging is now performed by the mail fetching thread. This means
that the rest of the interface is functional while purging.
o I modified some procedures related to the key system.
o Refixed the POP3 receive thread for message size reports that are
not what was previously expected. The G fix didn't work, this one
does (as reported by two test subjects :).
o Flush send queue after successful POP3 poll. This happens
automatically, but only if a previous send failed because of a
missing internet connection failed. Only mail queued in this
session is resent. I've got some other ideas, but this will
provide most of the functionality that has been frequently requested
here recently.
o Modified all ENTRY type fields to allow DBCS sequences. Thanks to
Matt Smith (ala Prominaire Designer) for the inside scoop. This may
not solve all of the DBCS issues, but I'm working on them!
o On a side note, I managed to figure out how to convert character sets
to the "current" code page so that non-US displays can show message
correctly. This code is not currently in, but I've been enlightened :)
o Better error handling of "disk full" and other write-type errors when
trying to record new mail. These were not properly accomodated
previously.
Changes included in v0.99g
--------------------------
o The BIG news, athough I can't take credit for it! CONVERSIONS!!
Dave Martin has provided two well-done REXX scripts that will
convert PM Mail and LaMail addresses and folders to MR/2 ICE
format. They worked well with my test setups! See my web page
at http://nick.secant.com for more info.
I received another smaller REXX file converted, but did not get
a response from the author when I asked if I could post it. Will
try again, but these two look very capable!
o BMT Micro is now carrying MR/2 ICE. Credit card orders can be
placed with BMT Micro at 1-800-414-4268 or visit their WEB page
at http://www.wilmington.net/bmtmicro, or email them at
orders@bmt.wilmington.net.
I will also be taking advantage of the OS/2 Shareware BBS
registration system set up by Peter Norloff. I just have to
get busy and write a small utility! ...
o Bug where POP3 server sent back message size in an unusual
place/format. All the info is there, but the SIZE of the message
isn't where MR/2 expect it. So, it "defaulted" to 96K. When this
happens, large message would cause trouble. I now have beefed up
the size parsing and I think I've got all the bases covered now.
o Also saw some extra work being done by MR/2 ICE, because of the
buffer size I chose. By increasing my buffer size internally by one
character, I've cut down the number of packets transfered on some
system ... by half! My bet is that the size issue is common
o POP3 receive ... closing of messages invoked a cleanup filter
that was horribly inefficient. I spent a short time on this and sped
it up tremendously, most noticable with large (uuencoded) messages.
o Persisitence of POP3 counter on failure ... MR/2 ICE will now save
the last-read counter on each successful read. Previously, on error,
MR/2 would reread many successfully improted messages when restarted.
o Folder sorting has been implemented (the form was always there, but
no code was behind it). Rebuilding a folder index no longer does
the strange things it used to (although I'm aleways watching for
other stange things to appear :)
o Counts on folder index screens, folder edits (name, tab text) now save;
were previously not flushed to disk.
o Open Folder lists now update when added-to using MOVE or COPY message.
o Move/Copy on RMB menu have been enhanced to be "conditional cascade"
sub menus. You can still click on the COPY or MOVE text to invoke
the pick-list dialog. Alternately, you can now click on the arrow
symbol to get options for NEW folder, or to pick from a list of
commonly used folders.
o You have always been able to edit Folder info from the folder screen
by highlighting a folder and using the RMB to "edit" the folder.
This form has a "include in MOVE/COPY submenus" checkbox. Checking
this for folders of you choice will include them in the submenu
mentioned above. The Y/N flag is now shown on the Folder List, and
I'll eventually allow toggling of this flag from there.
o Multiple Account improvements. While not completely finished, things
work a little bit better. For example, any NEW account created will
remember and enforce the specified password. Folder lists are now
correctly modified and displayed as accounts are changed. Accounts
that already exist still have a password that matches the user name;
I'll allow you to change this next time.
o I almost forgot ... I added some code to the logic that is triggered
the very first time you run MR/2 ICE. The program invokes the
settings notebook, then immediately explains the common Cirrus Logic
video bug that exists, and asks you if you see the settings tabs.
If you respond that the BUG does indeed exists, MR/2 ICE sets up
a "forced /F9" command line flag. You can override this with a
command line switch, and I'll have this option on the settings form
next version.
o ALSO, if you invoke the speller and/or thesaurus, and the necessary
files do not exist on your system, MR/2 will now pop up a text
file (via an editor window) that explains how it works, and where to
get the files. It also suggests using the RBM to load my home page
into the browser.
o Fixed a problem with some URL's that wouldn't load from the RMB
"Web browser" option. Had to do with them starting with tab
characters. Fixed. Converted the ftp logic to also load the
browser, at least for now!
Changes included in v0.99f
--------------------------
I did alot this week, but I don't have much to list. I spend tons of
time finalizing the registration scheme. I will start sending
registration keys via email very soon. I fixed a dozen or so bugs,
but I wrote no details down. I started several really neat ideas,
but can't even hint at them until I'm further along :).
I expect the next 2 weeks to consist of filling in gaps and crossing off
items on my bug list. This includes the uglies in the area of Folders.
I have started "filters", but this is a biggie and will take a bit of
time. At least for what I want to do :). I worked more than I should
have trying to get printing problems resolved. I made progress, I was
able to identify much of the problem ... waiting for Secant's Component
division to give me some time to fix it. I expect this to be soon :)
o Pop-up "context" menus in the viewer and message editor. Use the
RMB to quickly cut, copy, append, paste, reply, forward and send.
There are some other options, and some disabled items waiting for
completion. Oh, the speller and thesaurus entries are enabled,
but appear only on the Editor side.
NOTICE, please, the Web Browser and FTP entries on this menu.
Click on any fully qualified URL and select one of these to invoke
a separate session. Configuration is called for, but it is
functional as it stands. I launch the commands EXPLORE or FTP,
depending on what you select. If you use some other browser or
FTP client (I use ncFtp), simply make an EXPLORE.CMD or an FTP.CMD
in the MR/2 ICE directory. For example, my ftp.cmd file looks like:
ncftp %1
NEVERMIND. It appears this doesn't work (creating an ftp.cmd file).
I know why. I'll leave it like this until next release, where I'll
at least convert to CMD files so you can do what you want. Better
if this can all be configured from a dialog ...
So, if your mail includes a web page URL, left click once, RMB,
Web Browser and you're loading it. There's a listing for a
file you want, with a fully qualified URL (for example,
ftp://nick.secant.com/mr2i099f.zip), a couple of clicks and
another session is loading it.
o Fixed a case where the accent character (`) was used in a subject
field and blew up my cell box (inbox) code. I selected this code
as my field delimiter. All of my index entries now filter for this
character.
o Groups: The address field is no longer required before allowing
a pick-list button to work. Other minor fixes.
BTW, groups do not work with POP3 sends. I have to think about
this, but the current technique for exanding groups requires that
MR/2 lists the recipients, and the To: line is ignored. This is
contrary to how POP sending works.
o External Edit: I was ignoring the option of hiding headers in the
editor window. If this is checked, the external edit does not have
access to the message header.
o New Registration dialog under the main HELP menu. Will allow me and
other distributors to supply key codes for "instant registration", or
at least "quick email registration".
o More fixes ... I just can't recall them at this time.
Changes included in v0.99e
--------------------------
o Address Groups are now "in" and seem to be functioning well. There
has been a minimal of testing, tho. I personally created a couple
of small groups that worked well. I also created three larger
groups, all external-file based. One contained all of my original
beta testers, one contained all users who have registered to-date,
and the third combined these two by "including" the two lists by
tag.
I have tried to come up with a very flexible group-addressing scheme,
but in doing so, may have made it look a little more complex than
it really is. Groups can be simple lists of individual addresses,
all maintained online. Groups can also be mixes of individual
addresses, address book tags, other group tags, and "address from
file" entries. I have included code to prevent circular references,
but the error messages/warnings are weak at this time.
An address file is simply a text file (I started using the file
extension ".lst") that contains one address entry per line. Great
for those of us who keep lists generated from "other" programs.
Oh, yes, these entries can also be address book tags, group tags or
other file references.
THE one thing sorely missing is a "pick group" button on the header
entry form and the Pick Group button on address entry needs to be
hooked to the same code. Next release. Groups WILL popup in the
RMB menu, if the appropriate checkbox is marked.
As a short example, you could easily create a group that references
three other groups. Each of these groups could reference whatever
they needed to ... more groups, addresses from a file, address
book entries and/or individual addresses.
I'm open for comments. Try it out, let me know what you think, and
feel free to give me your ideas :).
Oh, one last note. Group address entries can be disabled. To toggle
the checkmarks, you can euse the "edit" button on each, but clicking
ON THE LISTBOX CHECKMARK will also toggle it.
o Importing text CLOSE to 64K would chop a small portion of the text.
This became acutely apparent when I tried to send a UUEncoded file
that was about 63K. The problem was the import into the MLE ... I
had the "switch to my pieces-parts import" threshold set too close
to the MLE's chop-point. Fixed.
o Font selection ... for some silly reason I was showing only BitMap
fonts. That will teach me to steal code from sample programs
without studying it closer :). Fixed.
o Template processing would sometimes remove the "@" symbol in email
addresses and other tokens that were supposed to have them. I believe
I fixed this, but it warrants some time-testing.
o Hint Bubbles!!! (Tool Tips, whatever you want to call them).
They're fixed, at least as far as speed goes. I was able to get
some of Mike's time (Mike is Secant's OS/2 Control "guru" :) to look
at what was going on. A couple of code snips here and there, and
we're operating at blinding speeds. You should be able to turn these
on without noticably effecting performance. NOTE that for MAXIMUM
performance, they should still be off ... even faster, creating
20 tiny windows still takes time.
o Crashes on program load. Some of these (all? Too wishfull a thought,
I guess) were caused by my changes to the way the printing system
is initialized. If your system had NO OS/2 PRINTER DRIVER installed
you would probably crash. If you had a driver with an internal name
that did not have a '.' as part of it ... sme thing [My home system
had an old IBMNULL with no '.', and when I switched to that printer,
crash!]. These have been fixed, although printing itself is still
being worked on.
o NOTE: an early report of Object Desktop's Tabbed Launchpad crashing
ICE on load. This started with a recent update/path to their v1.02
level. Running ICE with the /T switch worked-around this, as did
not invoking the tabbed launchpad. They've been notified, write to
them if this incoveniences you.
o Thesaurus and Speller limits were still in a few obscure places
(reported as "Unregistered User" limits). These weren't supposed
to be there, and I've removed the ones I can see. I don't believe
there are any more.
o Message received from some UUCP gateways were crashing ICE on reply.
This was due to invalid date formats in the source message's header.
I would assume I had a good date and crash on trying to use it.
MR/2 now takes precautions and defaults to a zeroed-out date (1/1/1900)
if the date is invalid. Maybe not the best technique, but certainly
better than crashing :)
o Calculator now accepts keystrokes matching the button keys.
o Pop3 messages reported to MR/2 as "Error" were previously simply
skipped. This would happen here if/when a message was just being
recieved by SendMail, the pop server could see it, but the file was
still in use by SendMail. Now, MR/2 will retry the message, trying
up to 20 times at one second intervals before giving up.
o Notebook "back arrow" will no longer show blank pages when invoked
from the Inbox screen.
o Dozens of other minor fixes too tiny to itemize.
Changes included in v0.99d
--------------------------
o Well, address groups are close. The whole idea, because I wanted to
do it a certain way, is taking longer than I guessed. With a couple
of more hours, I would have included it. The menu option for
Address Group Maintenance is disabled. It is relatively functional,
barring a few bugs, and can be enabled by running with the "//" flag
on the command line. This is just so those interested can comment
on the overall layout. It is NOT meant for real use, and may change
before finalized. SENDS do not recognize Groups yet.
In general, groups will allow for lists of raw addresses, aliases,
other groups and/or lists of all of these contained within an
external file. Resolution will be fully recursive/nested, so that a
group can be defined as a set of other groups, and each of those can
contain more groups. Address Book entries can contain group names,
also. I will add code to prevent circular references.
There's a chance I may release a mid-week version, if I can complete
and test all of this. I must also finalize my registration key system
in the next day or two.
o Speedup and memory leaks plugged. Found these while looking for
the reason the message window opened so progressively slower.
Found that I had left in some debugging code (checking the heap)
2-3 times each message was displayed. Removing these has sped up
the message opening greatly.
o Added code to SMTP import process to better recover from file
in use errors. (LDA is still delivering when ICE tries to import).
o Progression indicator on pop receive. Resized both indicators
to be smaller and allow more text to show.
o Country date settings are now used for most (all?) date/time
displays.
o External editor is now functional. You can alwasy use the editor
by checking the box on Options->User Preferences, or you can invoke
it on demand via the Tools->Edit externally menu item from within
the message viewer.
o SMTP mode would still include LaMail's NDX files. It was a case
sensitivity issue. Fixed.
o Pressing DEL in the message viewer, then cancel, closed the message.
o Suppressed auto poll on startup if auto-poll is off
o Toolbar display toggle bug. Toolbar would sometimes appear twice.
o Pop3 long UIDL server error messages handled better
o Fixed Text searches inside any editor window. Again. This time
I believe it's fixed for good :)
o Ouch. I accidently hit ALT-C in the reply editor and the message
closed w/out warning or chance to save. Fixed.
o Mail tab is now set correctly when login to another account.
o Internal editor: now gets focus on startup.
o Better detection and resolution when tcpip services file is wrong.
o Removed pop3 check before optional password prompt.
o Mesage window: Close via sysmenu, cancel would crash. Fixed.
Changes included in v0.99c
--------------------------
What a week. It started off with almost immediately finding that several
key features of MR/2 ICE were broken by the B release. I believe this one
to be in much better shape.
I've got groups/lists pretty close, and the external editor code was
yanked at the last second because of a crash in one spot. Next week,
I'm sure.
BEEP on window open. I tried to get rid of this, but couldn't wait
any longer. Sorry! It's only when you double click and the
message part is over the click spot. I'll get it, but it will be
annoying for a week.
o Fixed problems with checking for mail under various user settings.
o Pasting text with quoting cleaned up. Still needs another pass :(
o Addresses of the form "nick knight <nick@secant.com>" are now
normalized so that picky SMTP server's should no longer complain.
o Ctrl+, Ctrl-, shift del should now work as they're supposed to.
o Cursor pos when header is scrolled off screen starts at current line.
o UUEncode process wasn't closing source file.
o Complex multi-addresses can now be up to 512 bytes. Still working on
groups/distribution lists.
o Crash when sending and status displays too long (rare). Fixed.
o SMTP Receive and all related file-type problems have been fixed.
Sorry! Includes "can't create folder" problem and user not registered
on multi-accounts.
o AutoSave and sending would sometimes conflict and crash. I do believe
this was the crash that was so prevelant, yet random enough to not
be recreatable "on demand". My mail has been stable for a couple of
days; I'm sure you guys will tell me if something's still loose in the
code.
o Ctrl-E is now an accelerator to the internal text editor. This
is available on both the mail index and message windows. The Message
menu's "Edit file" item is now hooked to this editor window.
o Notebook page buttons a tad larger
o Toolbar FIND on MW no longer loses text highlight.
o Problem with POP receive when lines *started* with a '.'. Fixed. Was
messing up around 1 out of every 77 uuencoded messages.
o Did I mention the calculator? No?? Well, I added a simple, integer-
only (no decimal points) calculator to the Utilities. I use this
thing often, but can never find it fast. Now I know where it is.
This item is an almost snap-in part from Secant Technologies'
ObjectPM toolkit, provided there as a sample. I plan on spending
very little time improving this, except to add a keyboard interface
and full decimal support (all easy). If you find it useful, great,
if not, don't use it :)
o More fields opened up for hi-end ASCII. Folder form in particular.
o Templates are now editable via the Utilities menu. This is brand
new code, so I'm watching for bugs. Still can't make a NEW
template, but I ran out of time.
o Text Editor fix ups and enhancements.
o Tons of tiny nats squashed.
Changes included in v0.99b
--------------------------
Again, my todo list above didn't get all the attention I had hoped to give
it. Still, it was a pretty productive week. The best news is that many
crashes have been eliminated. There seems to be one more pesky crash
scenario that I'm having trouble catching (the crash-on-send), but I've
added some code to try and help. Ironically, since doing this, I have
been unable to make it crash. I may have fixed it while making other
code changes, but only time will tell. Reporting crash addresses is
very important with this release. Thanks!
QUERY: Has anyone created any from-other-mailer conversion tools that
they'd like to share? I've had many requests for conversion tools, and
I'd certainly like to supply them, and I know I can. Time is the
problem. I can see how to convert PMMail's stuff to my format, but if
I stop to do this, I don't get to add important features to my own work.
Any REXX guru's want to show there stuff off and get some recognition?
Of particular interest are scripts that would convert address books and
folders from PM Mail, Post Road Mailer, Ultimail/LaMail and things like
PINE.
o Added a command line switch: /- which tells MR/2 ICE to minimize
on load. There's still some screens displayed, but then it does
minimize.
o The /S command line options was broken. Fixed. Also, configuring
for NO POLLING was ignored. Fixed.
o Crash scenario: When paging through message using the next/prev
menu command or toolbar options, MR/2 ICE did not properly set a
complete message state for each message. This could case crashes
under some circumstance.
o Crash scenario: Folders not opening, exiting the program abruptly and
without explanation, and crashing. This was a big error on my part.
Each folder would actually create another copy of the SEND thread,
and this would do some very strange things. Fixed.
o Crash scenario: Address Book maintenance. Tags/Aliases longer than
a couple of characters would cause a crash when the address book
as closed/saved. Fixed (sorry!).
o New prompt option: disable pop3 counter reset warning/prompt.
o Send toolbar icon now has correct bubble hint. Send is no longer
disabled in the menu for "new" message.
o Bubble hints now use smaller font ... this is possible because:
o All 3 Secant-based DLL's are "new" and offer several low level bug
fixes, including better font handling. Was not able to "fix" the
Cirrus chipset bug, but smaller fonts now space correctly. I hope to
freeze these DLL's soon and be able to release updates without the
DLL's.
o Index cellbox: highlighted text is now WHITE on black background.
o Address book listings now show tags/aliases.
o Tried to increase secaondary thread robustness. Increased all stack
size slightly. More error checking; more overflow detection code
added to low-level TCPIP interface code.
o Password on POP3 prompt form is now masked from the user.
o Opened up many form fields to hi-end ASCII character for the European
and Chinese (and other, I guess) uses that have requested this. Please
let me know if this helps!
o ALT-Q pasting would often crash. I rewrote this routine, and while it
does not crash, it still needs work. Next release for sure.
o Sig editor added and functional. This will change some next release,
but at least you can edit the default SIG file. I missed having the
complete template editor ready by an hour or two ... next release for
sure.
o Simple file editor included on utility menu. Simple? Don't know
about that, but I've got more to add to it. I got tired of using
the E editor to open files for "clipping" sections. This will work
more gracefully, particularly when I add some persistence and
history to it. In the meantime, I'm open for comments.
o More tiny little changes that I forgot to document. More to come ...
Changes included in v0.99a
--------------------------
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your angle :), my todo
list above didn't get the attention it deserved. Too many "new" problems
were reported that required immediate attention. I expect to have more
time this week to "fill in the blanks". I expect weekly-or-so updates
until I release v1.0.
o Removed the Edit signature file menu item. I added much code to
this feature, but it isn't yet workable (made a bigger monster
than originally planned out of the editor). This will be readded
in the next release, complete with the editor.
The signature file can be manually edited with the E editor. Look
for "mr2i.sig". Note that the sig file itself is just a very simple
file that's "included" by reference into the various template file
sections. *This* is where MR/2 ICE gets much of it's power,
although not yet documented. *This* is where you can have as many
selectable reply templates are you want, each with custom
attribution lines, multi-line sigs, information blocks or complete
documents as "canned replies". I currently use my own template file
to offer canned literature replies for ObjectPM and some of Secant's
other products. Just FYI, so the feature doesn't go unnoticed by
those of you who might find it useful. Templates are in "mr2i.tf".
o SMTP package is now part of the distribution zip. See mr2ilda.doc
for more information.
o Many bugs and nits fixed ... too numerous to even remember. This
version is much more stable than the previous. Still one crash
scenario seems to elude me. Perhaps I'll catch it by next release.
o Empty template sections now work correctly and don't include parts
of the next template section.
o Pop sends and "no save" would update the index anyway and cause
problems. Fixed.
o Removed spell checker and thesaurus limits inherited from me/2.
I may reinstate more laxed limits in unregistered programs after
60-90 days.
o Resending a message after modifying message would crash most
consistently. Fixed.
o Protected other multithreaded message handlers so that no harm is
done if message is deleted or moved with another thread is processing
same.
o Some systems have missing default fonts in special windows including
the bubble hits, the settings notebook (tabs squashed and no text) and
in the calendar. I'm still chasing this one, but to "work around" the
problem, those users can now use a sepcified font using the new command
line option /F. From the new MR/2 ICE FAQ www page:
There seems to be a bug in the class libraries I'm using where, on
some systems, the system proportional font fails when used as the
"default". I have a system in-house that exhibits this problem, so
I'm in search of "the answer". In the meantime, I have added a
"default font override" command line parameter:
Mr2i /F9
Where a zero is used to denote the System Proportional Font, and a
number 1-30 can be used to override this setting (for the
problematic windows ONLY). Using /F1 will cause the text to show up
and make the application functional. For those that are more
particular about their fonts, you can select one of these following
numbers:
0 - SystemProp 16 - HelvOLB
1 - Courier8 17 - HelvOLBI
2 - Courier10 18 - TmsRmn8
3 - Courier12 19 - TmsRmn10
4 - CourierOL 20 - TmsRmn12
5 - CourierOLI 21 - TmsRmn14
6 - CourierOLB 22 - TmsRmn18
7 - CourierOLBI 23 - TmsRmn24
8 - Helv8 24 - TmsRmnOL
9 - Helv10 25 - TmsRmnOLI
10 - Helv12 26 - TmsRmnOLB
11 - Helv14 27 - TmsRmnOLBI
12 - Helv18 28 - SysMono10
13 - Helv24 29 - SysMono12
14 - HelvOL 30 - SymbolOL
15 - HelvOLI
o While it was possible to use a different POP3 port by editing the
TCPIP etc\serviced file and changing the POP entry, I added a
command line /P option. Specifying "Mr2i /P1111" will cause ICE
to try the port number 1111 for POP3 services.
o When the settings were changed to turn word wrap off, MR/2 would
fail to quote text correctly. Also, the word wrap column changes
were always reset to the default, nomatter what you changed them to.
This works much better now :)
o I calmed the aggressive rewrapping of text somewhat in an effort to
stop MR/2 ICE from messing up user sigs.
o SMTP users: Remove *.ndx from SMTP new message list so that
LaMail setups would quit importing its inbox.ndx file.
o Toolbar: The Reply bitmap is now replaced with a Send bitmap when
in Reply or new message mode.
o SMTP read settings now do not require POP settings. You may leave
these blank, as long as the SMTP Host has been filled in and SMTP
reading and sending are used.
Changes included in v0.99
-------------------------
First widely distributed beta. The adventure begins.
o Message Index counters (notebook status windows) now update.
o Various bugs: Re-editing header used to cause extra CR's in messages;
paste from clipboard w/quote format improved. Others ...
o Settings notebook: more prompt options, more config options.
SMTP read choice activated.
o Shrunk several forms down to better show on standard VGA systems.
Still could use another pass, but at least the settings notebook
is mostly on screen :)
o SMTP reading is now offered in preliminary form. Write me for the
instruction sheet, as I need to know who's using it and what problems
are encountered (write nick@secant.com).
o Multiple account support added/enhanced. Won't document this until
next release or so.
o Message window: Toolbar display options functional. New "Pushbutton"
option to hide/display bottom buttons. Font toggle on menu. Other
minor menu additions.
o Tiling and cascading of message windows is in, although some time-
testing is required on my end to assur usefulness.
o Address book tags now expand! For example, you can attach a tag of
"nk" to my default name in the address book (if you are a new user,
the starter address book lists me). When creating a new message or
sending a reply, you can enter "ice" as a user name and it will expand
to my full address upon exiting the field.
o Major notebook tabs now default to a "hidden" state. Option on the
main index menu enables tabs. Since "news" was not yet functional,
these tabs simply wasted screen area. Tabs were also reduced in size,
for when they *do* display.