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- This announces the latest version of WSGopher, 0.9g. You'll find the
- self extracting archive file 'wsg-09g.exe' on the boombox.micro.umn.edu
- and sunsite.unc.edu in the United States, and demon.ic.co.uk in Great
- Britain; it may wander farther than that, I'm sure.
-
- The file wsg-09g.exe is a self extracting archive. To deal with it,
- first be sure to exit WSGopher if it is running on your system. Bad
- things happen when you overwrite a running program. Then, go to some
- directory on your system (perhaps your existing WSGopher directory) and
- execute wsg-09g from the DOS command line. You should definitely
- replace the existing wsgopher.exe (if any). Whether you replace the
- rest is up to you, but I'd advise you to replace the *.txt files.
-
- If you try to run wsg-09g from the Program Manager, you will probably
- get errors, and it certainly won't work.
-
- -- Important things changed since the last release (0.9f):
-
- * It works with Trumpet! Thanks to Peter Tattam, who corresponded with
- me while he was on travel, and Ray Born of the INEL Technical Library
- who ran constant tests for me (for some reason Trumpet won't work on my
- network).
-
- * I worked extensively with several PC/TCP users (thanks in particular
- to Bob Quinn of FTP Software and Mike Potter of the Los Alamos National
- Lab) on a problem where it seemed that directories were empty. On my
- end, I changed the error message to include the # of bytes returned, but
- more importantly beefed up bookmark parsing. As a result, even partial
- bookmarks are displayed. I also found an error in one of the veronica
- servers that the Unix gopher client displays as 'Gopher error'; I now
- show the two fragmented bookmarks. (BTW, I did report the error to the
- gopher admin last Friday and received acknowledgment this a.m.)
-
- It turned out that using version 1.10 of the DLL, rather than 1.1, did
- the trick for PC/TCP (or so it's been twice reported to me).
-
- * The Show Info window is fixed. I was in the middle of implementing
- that a different and better way, and apologize for posting something
- that was only half done. You can now raise and lower it as many times
- as you like.
-
- * A few users have reported 'Internal Application Error', which really
- surprised me since we've been running Gopher here for months without
- seeing this; however, I've seen it myself now. I've been unable to
- track it down, but I've put C++ exception handling with (hopefully)
- explanatory error messages in my code, so if anyone sees this, I'd
- appreciate a report.
-
- * Fixed a wierd bug where if the first line of a text window was empty,
- it may cause Gopher to crash.
-
- * Found and fixed the divide by zero error; you can now safely click in
- an empty text window. Thanks again to Bob Quinn.
-
- * Disabled the context sensitive help and all invocation of the Help
- file :-( The help file is in pretty sorry shape still, so I'm not
- including it in this release. I'd hoped to have a little time to work
- on it ...
-
- * Added gratuitous support for:
-
- inline type (used in panda)
- GIF type (same as Image)
- GopherPlus types for bitmap, sound and movies (just downloaded images)
- HTML and MIME
-
- HTML is downloaded as <file>.htm, and hopefully the user will view the
- document with their favorite WWW program, such as Cello or Mosaic. I
- tried both as a viewer; only Cello seemed to look at the command line.
- Your milage may vary.
-
- I have no idea what to do with a file containing "MIME data"; if anyone
- can give me a clue, I'd appreciate it.
-
- * There is a _little bit_ of Gopher plus stuff in this release, including:
- support in the bookmark editor, New Gopher window and type display
- understands the Gopher+ wrapper, if present, and handles Gopher+ errors
-
- That's it. See the In the Queue section for more info.
-
- -- Vendor Info
-
- Known to work with SuperTCP (DLL), Netmanage 3.11, Distinct (Lan and
- PPP).
-
- Distinct PPP has one caveat: with some servers binary downloads do not
- always complete. It is not known if this is an equipment or software
- problem.
-
- It's been reported to me that the following vendor stacks work:
-
- * PC/TCP; be sure to use version 1.10 of the DLL, NOT version 1.1
- * Windows for Workgroups
- * Trumpet Alpha #17 (no info on earlier versions)
- * PC-NFS, IF you make sure you have the following patches:
-
- Go to ftp.york.ac.uk:/pub/pc/pc-nfs/Patches
- get winsock.dll 24576 25/10/93
- wshelper.exe 51232 25/10/93
- Thanks to Geoff Smethurst <cca12@cc.keele.ac.uk> for this information.
-
- * Novell Lan Workplace 4.1; the following is from Mark Shapiro of Novell:
-
- Things to check. They should have downloaded LWP168.EXE from NetWire or
- ftp'd to sjf-lwp.novell.com for tcpip.exe, wlibsock.dll, winsock.dll and
- novasync.exe in the directory ftpguest/lwp4dos/WinSock. These files
- should be copied to the LAN WorkPlace bin directory, default is \net\bin.
- The lwpcon.* and snmp.exe files should also be copied there if they're
- running the LAN WorkPlace apps.
-
- The following stacks are believed NOT to work:
-
- Windows NT (there is some problem with NT that may or may not be stack related)
- Wollongong (someone from that company can contact me if they wish)
-
- -- In the Queue (the following have absolutely no guarantees)
-
- * I've been mulling over for weeks how I want to incorporate Gopher+
- stuff, and this weekend the plan unfolded. I hope to start that soon.
-
- * Support for separate viewers for telnet and 3270; also, browser for
- viewers.
-
- * I came up with what I think is a good plan for handling nonmodal
- dialogs in Visual C++, so soon the bookmark editor will be nonmodal.
-
- * I've received a number of helpful suggestions. I try to prioritize
- things by how it will help users get their work done; I really like to
- have this Gopher used on the job in addition to having fun cruisin' the
- Internet.
-
- * I'm still trying to decide if a true hierarchy of bookmarks is
- needed, or if folks would be happy with just dividing them up in
- sections. Any feedback?
-
- * Check whether odd and unexpected network errors are being reported.
-
- -- A useful feature I hadn't thought of
-
- If you've read the 'powerusr.txt' file, or my tips for Power Users, I
- have a section describing how to fetch a bookmark for an item using a
- different type. For instance, if you see a PostScript file in a
- directory that is advertised as a text file, what you really want to do
- is download it as an Image and then run your favorite PostScript viewer
- (such as Ghostview).
-
- Now that the Show Info window is an edit control, there's an easier way:
-
- 1) Select the PostScript item in the directory
- 2) Click on the 'I' toolbar button, if the Info window is not already up
- 3) Select the text in the Info window and copy to the clipboard by
- typing a Ctrl-C (control C).
- 4) Now click in any other window and type Ctrl-N (or select New Gopher from
- the File Menu), click the Paste button, change the type in the droplist,
- and then press Enter.
-
- This is easier than saving the item as a bookmark and using the bookmark editor.
-
- Dave Brooks
- [Soon to be] WSGopher Development Team
-