Your Choice 1

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Your Choice 1 / your choice.zip / your choice / OS2 / MR2 / READ.ME < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1994-04-07 | 39KB | 770 lines

MR/2 - A QWK Compatible Mail Reader for OS/2. 04/06/94 Copyright (c) 1994, Knight Writer Software Company. All rights reserved. =================================================================== N O T I C E =================================================================== This IS a shareware package, and does require a registration fee if you choose to continue using it after 30 days. The registration fee is currently $25 US. Eventually, the product MAY have a "begging" screen with a key-file that will register the software and suppress it. The more interest I get, the more likely I am to continue with improvements. ------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTACTING THE AUTHOR ===================== You can contact me in a number of ways. Unfortunately, I can't provide a phone number at this time. US Mail: Nick Knight 1823 David Ave. Parma, Ohio 44134 Fido netmail: 1:157/2 to "Nick Knight" Internet: User "Nick Knight", (nick.knight@pcohio.com) Fido Echomail: Find the Fidonet OS2PRODSUPPORT conference. I'm there. Echomail messages to me in more general conferences are discouraged, as keeping them "on topic" and interesting to the masses would be difficult. I do read OS2, OS2PROG, C_PLUSPLUS and DR DEBUG daily, though. OFFLINE echo also (deals with mail readers), this might be THE place to ask public questions, eh? I recently have acquired access to a host of other networks with OS/2 conferences. These include RIME, SmartNet, Uninet, Intelec, Nanonet, Racenet and some others I can't remember. I also do poll the Fidnet OS2PRODSUPPORT echo. Direct BBS: Leave a message on the Nerd's Nook BBS (1:157/2) at (216) 356-1772, 356-1872 or 356-1431. I check in here multiple times a day. I will also keep the most recent copy of MR/2 posted here. Other boards (non-local) will get updates at my convenience. ************************************************************************** ************************************************************************** ** NOTE: Nerd's now supports an MR/2 conference ** ** and file area. Conference #208 is dedicated to ** ** MR/2 support and files. File area #45 contains ** ** MR/2-related files. Any file uploaded into ** ** conference 208 will be placed in file area 45. ** ************************************************************************** ************************************************************************** Nerd's does support file requests (157/2 or 157/3) Compuserve: I check in here only when I have to. Try mail to my user ID - 76066,1240, although this isn't the best approach. Changes included in v2.02 ------------------------- o Modified the after-packet-selection processing so that a local INI might be loaded *before* the unzipper is called. I've always held that MR/2 can't know the true BBS name until the packet is unzipped and the control.dat file is parsed. What happens now is, as soon as a packet is selected, a "base name" is derived from the packet name. For example, "e:\dl\pc-ohio.qwk;12" would be whittled down to "pc-ohio". If an INI file is found with this base name, it is instantly loaded. Again, this is *before* the packet is opened, so that BBS-specific unzippers can be identified. If an INI cannot be found matching this derived name, then MR/2 tries again, the old-fashioned normal way, after the packet has been opened. If one is found on the first try, no secondary loading is performed. This *should* work in most cases, particularly when OS/2 comm packages are used. NOTE that this is *still* too late to identify a different "working" directory. MR/2 has already changed the default path by this time. o Mouse hot spots on message viewing screen changed a little. I made clicking on the word "Subject:" equal to pressing the "Q" key and anywhere after the ":" and up to the "Conf:" word is still the same as pressing "H". This adds easier access to the Q key. Previously, the entire area was mapped to the "H" key. While I was at it, I added three more hotspots. The only correlation between work and feature is that the word starts with the same letter as the feature. That's how I picked the area :). Click on the "Ref#" area to "R" Reply. Click on the "Date" area to "D" defer. Click on the "Status" area to "S" Save. o That pesky lockup that occured when marking and deleting a block up to and including the EOF marker has been squashed. I could easily recreate it here, now it seems to be handled. I simply make sure that the end mark can't be placed on or after the EOF triangle. o Bug: With PositionOnMatch set to NO, the key-word highlight would also be suppressed for virtual conferences. Now the keywords hilite regardless of the setting of this switch. o By request ... remapped the numeric keyboard "5" key, when not in numeric mode (arrows are active) to be equivelent to the ESCAPE key. As was pointed on, one can now do most message selection and reading/movement functions from just the numeric pad. Changes included in v2.01 ------------------------- o Trying to open the WELCOME.QWK packet in the home MR/2 directory caused a trap and terminated the program. This was caused because of an error in the code that checks for the "\" character in the packet file name. If one wasn't there, it would crash. Fixed. o If a bad "working directory" was set in an icon, MR/2's background searching virtual conference builder would crash. I've fixed this, although some questions remain. Changes included in v1.99cx thru v2.00 -------------------------------------- Well, this is the long awaited v2.0 release! As usual, I wish I would have had *just another week*, but I'm already 10 weeks late from my original Jan 1 target. I'm sure there will be some quick updates as this hits the streets and some more bugs shake out. I've got to at least get to v2.03 soon, so as that Steve fellow that still uses v1.03 in Fido's OS/2 conferences will finally upgrade :) Lots of exciting things still to come. I just added CLONING as an experiment, and there's lots of potential here. Multiple sessions for different BBS's has been working ok; also has more potential. I'm personally in desperate need of a more complete folder setup. This means some type of database capability - entirely optional and user defined. I will be collecting ideas, requests and suggestions for subsequent versions. If I didn't get to something you want or need, feel free :) I *do* have every piece of correspondence ever sent to me, and I will pass through this yet again. o More work on the manual - 91 printed pages. Updated several sections and the corresponding table of contents entries. No index yet, but I plan on keeping this more up-to-date than it's been in the past. I also plan a more nicely formatted version for those that want more than just ASCII text. o Modified MR2INI.ORG extensively. This is the default INI file that is copied to MR2.INI the first time you bring up MR/2. Mostly a rearrange; I divided the file into sections: Basic setup, Reply/Quoting, Intermediate, Advanced and Misc. Some explanation at the front of the file, with notes to reference SEARCH.INI and EXAMPLE.TF where appropriate. Much cleaner. I hope this helps new users get going more smoothly. o Added more examples to SEARCH.INI, focusing on some of the newer and more power virtual conference features. o Added mr2icons.zip to the distribution zip (7k). Several misc. MR/2 and MR/2 PM icons provided compliments of long-time registered user John Bales. Thanks John! o Fixed a bug where, when killing certain replies, MR/2 would seem to hang, but then come back. There was an uninitialized counter under certain circumstances. This caused a loop to "do nothing" for some random amount of time until the counter ticked down. In the debugger session where I discovered this, the counter was set to 27,000+. It took about 2 minutes to come back. Fixed. o Spaces within an address-book "tag" field would keep the address from being selectable from the pick-list. Fixed. o WPS Associations referencing .REP files would fail, as would referencing a .REP file on the command line (same thing). This works now. o Fixed a problem where the reply packet would often be rezipped even though no changes were made to it. This happened when using no-packet entry and when selecting a .REP file directly from the packet selection screen. o Fidonet addresses that had two digit ZONES (e.g., 40:383/1) were not working properly. The zone was seen as only the last digit. Fixed for two digit zones - sorry, I didn't even know they existed :) o Address book: when selecting an address specified as private, either through the pick-list of by direct "!tag" identifier, the private flag would often remain public. Fixed. Changes included in v1.99bx --------------------------- o When using the /I or /W command line parameters (to open a second MR/2 session, for example), MR/2 would exit when the first packet was exited. Now it correctly returns to the packet select screen. o A user noticed that the highlighted item on the message index screen was a little difficult to read. In checking, I found that I used "light red" for foreground. Normal "red" is now used and the text appears slighlty sharper and easier to read. This effects most Blue selection boxes and confirmation prompts. o I *really* didn't want to do this so close to a scheduled major release. In fact, I don't know if I'll even try to finish this for v2.0, as to get it just right may take some time and experimentation. Cloning a session. It works, but there are tons of "how should this be handled questions". Read the next two entries. o New command line switch - /Clone or just /C. This *assumes* that a packet is already open in your default (or overridden with /w) working directory. This mode simply "uses existing packet", sets "go to last read position" and opens MR/2. When the packet menu is exited, you exit the program without cleanup. This is for use with an already running MR/2, so as to allow reading of the same open packet in another session. o Added some preliminary function keys to the MR/2 message viewer. CTRL-F1 "clones" a windowed session. CTRL-F3 clones full screen. This opens a second copy of MR/2, using the existing packet. This allows for multiple windows or session reading independently. The cloned window will not cleanup files, will not have bookmarks recorded (they are currently lost when session is closed). I just cloned three additional sessions from one "main" session. That's 4 windows into the same packet. This is *too* neat. This will take more thinking, but it's already been useful to me, so I'll let this out for others to experiement with. Some problems for me to resolve (and that means others should feel free to influence me :). Is it too restrictive to only let replies be generated from the "master" session? Hmmm. I've having some brainstorms here. I'm going to sleep on this one. NOTE: I've already thought this out to a level that's way too complicated to finish for v2.0. I will complete this code after v2.0 is released, and I will take suggestions in the meantime. So, while this feature will be left for those who wish to explore it, it will remain undocumented and "unsupported" for v2.0. I just don't want to rush to fix bugs in this right now. ALSO NOTE: Each cloned window is a child of the session doing the cloning. If you close the parent, the clildren disappear, too. There are so many possibilties here, and so may possible problems :). o Fixed a minor problem with selection lists where, when paging down at the end of the list, the cursor would sometimes move up or down the list, but not land on the last entry. o Mouse cursor would sometimes leave a "black hole" on blue prompt boxes. In fact, mouse cursor was not visible for these boxes unless first moved. o Read.me file: removed pre v1.95 material. I will make all complete modification logs available on Nerd's Nook sometime after v2.0 is released. Changes included in v1.99Ax --------------------------- o Phantom "killed" status would sometimes show up in the corner of the messge viewer when reading inbasket/logged messages. The messages was often active, and the status report in error. I've fixed this. o More manual work. Checked for spelling mistakes and generated a preliminary table of contents. o Thesaurus - cleaned up all the fancy features. They didn't always work as advertised :( o Fixed a bug where, upon reentering an "existing", previously opened packet, the local INI file was not loaded before parts of the packet where reloaded. This caused things like conferences that were declared as hidden to be displayed. They would be hidden when the packet was open the first time, but ALT-X, go back in and they'd be listed. o Added S-Save and P-Print to Bulletins, Files and News viewers. Careful, as ANSI codes *are not* stripped before saving/printing. Help screen also updated. o I scrunched the message header form one more time, getting 3 more characters for taglines. That makes a max tag of 69 chars. When I get more energy I'll expand this again. I figure I can get 3-4 more, but I'd have to rework the whole form. Not something I care to do at this time. o Ouch! Big problem with ADD/DROP logic; whether using the default door name or a INI-declared name. Both Subject and To fields in the message header received C-type (zero terminated) strings instead of QWK formatted, fill-with-spaces strings. I'm sure this confused many a mail door and was probably the reason I received so many "not working" complaints. Heck, it confused my message index screen! Sorry :(. Thanks you to Marc Bourassa for getting me enough info to find this! Changes included in v1.99x -------------------------- o More manual work, of course. I'm up to 81 pages and still more to do. o Help screen touch-ups to reflect new keys added in the last release or two. o Added new reply-time replacable template variables: TargetTo, TargetToFirst and TargetToLast. These are the same as the "TO" series, except that TO is replaced by the original messages TO and is useful mostly for attribution lines. It was brought to my attention that accessing the target user's name was not available. It is now! Still thinking about Subject and others along those lines ... o Removed MR2.HST from the distribution zip list. I read it over and every feature it describes is now documented. o Added Hotkeys back to the Edit Message Header screen. F4 used to bring up the tagline picklist, and for awhile F6 brought up the Address pick list. I removed these keys and received some complaints. I've added alternate ways to get to the picklists on this screen: ALT-T to select taglines, ALT-C for conferences and ALT-A for addresses (these work from *any* field). o Added some options for accessing external utilities differently. This was partially in an attempt to solve some rare problems with either 4os2 or booting from the D:\ drive, or both. These may offer a performance boots in other cases. Since I just spelled this all out in a messages, I'll use that: For all of MR/2 classic's external utility access, I used the system(command) call. This is a C function that says "load the command processor and give it this command". This is all dependent on the comspec being set correctly, and on ZTC's runtime code (which did look ok, BTW). Still, BW/2 mentioned being able to run an editor and/or pkzip directly, w/o loading CMD.EXE. I thought for a second, and remembered that MR/2 PM does exactly this. So, I scarfed the Run() function out of my MR/2 PM code and made it optionally accessible. Now, mind you, this gets a little silly and is subject to one final change :). I still call external EXE's the same old way ... UNLESS you prefix it with a code or two. For example: Editor=q loads q.exe the same old way. Editor=!c:\qe3\q.exe loads a windowed Q.exe on the desktop, running q.exe directly (no cmd.exe involved). File must be fully qualified with full path specifications. Editor=!!c:\qe3\q.exe loads a full screen session w/o loading cmd.exe - q.exe loads directly. Fully qualify the file name. Editor=!$c:\qe3\dos\q.exe loads a DOS windowed session, loading Q.exe directly. CMD.exe is not accessed, but command.com is. May still cause D:\ booting problems, but it's an option. Editor=!$!c:\qe3\dos\q.exe Loads the DOS Qedit into a Full screen DOS session w/o accessing cmd.exe. NOTE that these work with the zipper/unzipper, too, as well as PreEdit, PostEdit, F2-F10, etc.,. Anytime an external util is called, I check for these prefixes for special processing. I should have done this a long time ago :) Since CMD.exe is removed from the loop with these commands, the programs should load more quickly. In fact, they seem to, but it's very hard to measure. o Problem with BackDropMaxLines. If this maximum line count was GREATER than the actual lines in the file, MR/2 would end up searching/displaying *past* the end of the buffer. This caused garbage to the screen at best, crashing in most cases. The GCO ANSI Goodbye screen was only 20 lines long, and with the max lines set at 24, horrible things would happen. Fixed. Changes included in v1.98x -------------------------- o Manual work. It's growing fast. Enclosed is a new "preliminary" MR2.DOC file. The old manual was 22 pages, this one is 70 or so and there's still plenty to add. Some sections are incomplete. No, I haven't checked for spelling errors. I'm open for comments, but don't dig too deeply, please. o PurgeAfterDays and PurgeAfterCount now actually function. Here's how it works: When you close a packet, MR/2 has always "packed" your InBasket, if any. This process simply involved passing through the InBasket and removing "killed" message by writing over them with active ones. When the ReplyLog was added, the same process was performed. Since the reply log grows with each reply, I added code to control the number of messages kept, by maximum age or by maximum count, or by both. If PurgeAfterDays is not specified (or set to zero), no age check is performed on replylog messages. Otherwise ... The Reply log is first packed the old way with a slight additional check. If a message is found to be active and older that the cut-off date (older that PurgeAfterDays old), then the message is marked as killed. The normal removal process follows after this check. If a message is killed and it has a "source" or "original" message after it (these have special MR/2-internal markings), this is also killed. Once this pass has been completed, all manually killed and "old" message have been removed, along with any "source" messages recorded with them. A count of active messages is returned to the packing process. If PuregAfterCount is not specified, or set to zero, no maximum message checking is performed. Otherwise ... Now, MR/2 compares the active message count to the specified maximum (PurgeAfterCount). If found to be greater, then the number of messages to delete is calculated. A new pass is made through the folder, and the oldest messages are marked and deleted until the number of messages to delete has been reached. Again, if a message is removed, so is its source/original message, if one exists. I will add a way to mark a reply as "permanent". This will keep the packing routines from removing it. A permanent message will not be deleted until you manually kill it. As an additional feature, I want to add an "unkill" key. I've killed a couple of replylog messages that I didn't want to, and saving them was a real pain. And I even know how! I wouldn't expect anyone else to be able to figure this out. o Double confirmation prompt on exiting the editor w/out saving. I lost my last long-winded reply to this gotcha. If you would press ESCAPE too many times, too fast, while in the internal editor, you would often end up losing any/all changes. This was because ESCAPE is seen as a request to exit the editor, and the "would you like to save" question, when ESCAPE is pressed, says "No". Two escapes and you've lost any changes. I've done this more than once by accident. It angered me; I apologize for causing anyone else this frustration. Now, if you escape out of the editor and changes have been made, it asks you if you wish to save them. If you press ESCAPE, it askes if you're sure, and ESCAPE says "no, I'm not sure" and saves your work. You must press YES or press ENTER to abort changes. o Cutting from a DOS windowed session and pasting to MR/2, using ALT-* fails. Previous versions would actually crash, leaving the clipboard open and locking up any program that tried to access it afterwards. I'm still trying to find out why this fails, but in the meantime, I removed the crashing, and the subsequent lockups. o Packing the folders (Inbasket, ReplyLog). A informative popup window now is displayed while this process performs it's work. o Added a "Make Permanent" key for use within the Reply Log. Pressing "!" will mark the Reply Log message as a "keeper" and the Folder packing routine will no automatically delete this message, nomatter how old it is or how many messages over the maximum exist. o Added an "UnKill" keystroke. Pressing "U" will remove the "Killed" marking from any message. o New INI parameter - BackdropMaxLines. This controls the maximum number of lines from the WELCOME and GOODBYE screens will be flashed to the screen. Some BBS's have ANSI Welcome screens that are multiple pages long. MR/2 would proceed to flash these messages completely at various times. Set BackdropMaxLines to 25, for example, to flash only the first screen. Setting this parameter to zero will suppress the Welcome screen altogether. The default is set to -1, which will flash any and all lines of the file to the screen. o I think I fixed the problem with crashing when trying to finish out of MR/2 *before* the background searching was finished. This would not happen if all virtual conferences had been created but, if you would open a packet by mistake and try to quickly get out of it, crash! This was because I was deleting all the work files before the background process was told to stop ... and it was trying to read messages.dat. o New INI parameters: F2 through F10. Used to attach command-line actions to function keys. Changes included in v1.97x -------------------------- o I forgot to list the INI options SavePointerFiles, PurgeAfterDays and PurgeAfterCount in the MR2INI.ORG file. These are now listed. More INI's, as I try to clean up some smaller user problems and requests: o "DoorName" may now be used to identify the target BBS door "user name" to which to address ADD/DROP messages. This not only aids in the case where a BBS door provides no DOOR.ID file, but also when trying to perform ADD/DROP functions from no-packet entry or reply packet maintenance. For example, DoorName=RoseMail will address all ADD/DROP messages TO: RoseMail. o "CursorSize" may now be specified for the normal internal editor cursor. Many users complained that, in certain video modes (large number of lines/screen), and under some setups, the cursor could not be seen. By default, MR/2's normal editor cursor is 1 scanline high (maybe two?). When lines/screen is 34 or more, MR/2 changes the cursor to 6 or 7 scanlines. This was reported to still not be visable sometimes. So, You may now specify the number of scanlines for a normal cursor - from 1 to 13. MR/2's "overtype" cursor is 13 (14?) scanlines tall and is not configurable at this time. Example: CursorSize = 10 o I did manage to finalize the thesaurus data file. The "officially released" thesaurus wordbase will consist of 9242 "key" words with a total of 70,101 synonyms. The technique I'm using makes it easy to find synonyms, even if the word is not found to be a key. o There was a problem with using a MessageOrder of anything BUT subject. A variable remained uninitialized in all cases except by subject, and this caused crashing as soon as a conference was selected and the message index sort was started. Fixed. o Selection lists had a bug that wouldn't allow you to select the LAST entry (if the "page" was full). Clicking on the bottom line of the box did nothing (it's supposed to page down), and clicking on the slot for the last entry on the page paged-down. Fixed. o INI file now includes a default virtual conference. This will help new users "discover" this key feature much quicker. o Manual has actually been worked on! No, it's not in here. It's not in *that* great a shape yet, but it's progressing :) Changes included in v1.96x -------------------------- Still lots left to do, I'll try to get a summary list together and post it next time. I'm getting close, tho. Bug reports seem to be light, which makes me happy. I wanted to hit Feb 1st, but I'm not sure now. If I can get a couple of good days in I can call it soup. It will be *very* soon, the manual being the last major "feature" to address. o New and Improved help screens. Added definitions for dozens of previously-unlisted keystrokes and functions. HELPS include 20 or so completely *new* screens, too, covering many of the newer enhancements. NOTE that mr2.hlp is a simple editor file with [TAG] markers to tell me where a help section starts. The section ends at the next tag marker. If you don't like my HELP text, you *can* create your own text (modify my descriptions). A section must fit on the screen, tho, with a char/line or two reserved as border. Hey, if you end up with something you think is better, send it to me and if I agree, I'll use it :) I start on the manual next - actually already have, but now I have to be serious! o Updated MR2INI.ORG with a section that describes the newest INI variables. o Tab expansion in the message viewer. I default this to 4 characters, but allow you to toggle this value via ALT-TAB. Sequence is 4,8,0,2 where "0" means show the tab character and don't expand. o I discovered that searching while in the INBASKET or the REPLYLOG didn't work. Searching within an INBASKET has never worked. Fixed this (modified QWK.Getfh()). o By request (several), the spacebar may now be used as an alternate to ENTER for selecting a conference w/mail to read. This was a tough call, as the ' ' is a valid typing character, and I can see some folks trying to do a conference name prefix jump to the "main board" conference by typing "Main ". Where this would previously work, and it still *might*, the spacebar press will cause the highlighted conference to now be selected. Open for comments, I think this will be OK, tho. o It was pointed out to me that many keyboards don't have an F11 key, and that's what I chose as the "mark" key on selection list. (At this time, "marking" within a list only has a purpose on the packet selection screen, for merging QWK packets.) After some thinking and experimentation, I made the "*" key a synonym for F11 on pick lists. It was suggested to use + and - to mark, unmark, but the minus or dash often comes up as part of conference and packet names. So, "jump to prefix" would be affected. The "*" key will toggle the mark on and off. This key is easily selected w/o shifting by using the one on the numeric keypad (eeek! Assuming you have one :). o UNQWK.CMD bug - my first user "fix" to this routine! Thank you Wolfgang von Thuelen for pointing this out. In the check for long file names, I ignored the case where file names were exactly 12 characters long BUT were still non-FAT names (e.g., "mwcst.qwk;11"). The first 'if' statement was changed from "if flongnames < 0" to "if flongnames <= 0". o More thesaurus work - mostly minor cosmetics. I've almost got what I want, although I know the ALT-S and ALT-L are buugy now. I'm letting it out with these bugs, as it's still functional and I doubt many are using this feature (yet?). Keys you may press with descriptions are placed above editor window. Changes included in v1.95x -------------------------- I'm calling this v1.95x, as I consider myself "close" to what I wanted in a v2.0 release. I do have a few features to add; although not many. Believe me, I've got plenty of ideas for v2.01 and beyond. Existing users know that this has never been a static product :). I've created quite a few monsters here ... huge new features that are going to take some "shaking out" to get them working perfectly. o Clipboard: When doing an "append" (ALT-GREY-= or ALT-GREYENTER) to an empty clipboard, MR/2 would crash. The first text copied to the clipboard had to be done with the ALT-+ command, then appending would work. Fixed. You can now append to an empty clipboard. o Reply log messages can now be "Copied" and/or "Replied to". The message is then copied into the reply conference as to be "sent again". o INI parsing problem prevented FolderPath from being recognized. (Discovered when relinking and testing MR/2 PM). o Mouse could not be used to select the very first entry in a selection list. This was broken recently - now fixed. o Template Sections labeled as "New" using routing lines: I had previously noted in this document AND personally corresponded electronically with a few of you about this. Specifically, *before* this version, the $Body line was needed *before* the routing line, as for "new" messages, only the "signature" sections was placed in the reply file. THIS HAS ALL BEEN CHANGED. The 'New' Sections now work the way you would expect; the entire section is placed in the reply file, and the $Body (while still necessary) should be placed where you would normally start your reply. In other words, these sections should be setup the way you would expect from using the "normal" sections as an example. o Packet selection screen: You may now MARK two or more packets on this screen and actually MERGE them together as one QWK packet. Use F11 to mark the packets to combine, then ALT-M (Merge) to merge them together. This process calls upon my new and improved MQWK.CMD REXX command file to do most of the work. This makes the process configurable/extendable, as long as you want to tinker with REXX source code. Multiple/automatic archiver detection is not supported at this time; the archiver name is hard-coded in the script to be "pkunzip -n" and the zipper is 'pkzip'. Modify these in MQWK.CMD if necessary. When you press ALT-M, and if 2 or more packets are marked, MR/2 will prompt for a target packet name. If a name is supplied, all marked QWK packets will be merged into one with this name. If no name is supplied, MR/2 simply combines the packets in the TMP$$ work directory, where they can be read as a combined packet. NOTE, however, that bookmarks will be lost, as there will be no "target" packet to record them to. I suggest always allowing MR/2 to repack the combined QWK packet. FURTHER NOTE: I've now modified the script so that there is very little reason *not* to repack the combined messages into a new QWK file. If a name is supplied as a target, MR/2 combines all marked packets and jumps right into "read" mode. AT THE SAME TIME, I spawn another session, in the background, to archive the combined packet. This becomes invisible to you and should not impede your normal reading operations. If the combined packet does not show up on the packet selection screen, you may reference MQWK.LOG for possible error messages. All output from the archiving process is redirected to this file. Index files (*.ndx) are discarded by the merge process ... MR/2 will create index files when it opens the combined packet. I've tested this procedure with QMail and CamMail doors. I expect that other doors may created cases that call for a little adjusting. Keep me posted. ALSO, no error checking is performed to assure that all the packets you are merging together are of the same BBS. THIS IS IMPORTANT, as merging dissimilar packets WILL NOT WORK CORRECTLY. ALSO NOTE that this takes alot of free disk space. A set of QWK packets totaling 2MB might require 4-5 MB additional free disk space to function. o INTERNAL: Messages.dat is now opened in READ-ONLY mode. This allows the file to be accessed in a background task for archiving. o INTERNAL: Modifications to zDList, zDLSelect and zDirSelect (linked list and selection from list(s) routines) to further support "marking" of members and retrieval of "marked" status in various forms. o I received a packet via CIS email from the Channel1 BBS. This board has been a great logic-breaker for me ... they ought to quit growing! Anyway, their control.dat files finally made it over 64k, which has always been an MR/2 limitation (due to an initial design flaw on my part). This is now fixed so that there is *no* maximum control.dat file size limitation. I now handle/parse this file one line at a time w/o loading it all into memory up front. Channel1 packets once again work! o HideConferences can now be specified multiple times within a set of INI files. The hidden conferences list is now cumulative where before only the last HideConference line was effective. o I expanded the packet selection screen even more and added columns for Per (Personal) and Rep (Replied-to) message counts. I know that I'm constantly trying to remember which packet had all the personals to me in it, so this helps me out. The reply count may also help tell you something about a particular packet. o Modified ZTC's library routine system(). Command line was deemed invalid when > 128 characters. OS/2 allows much more; I changed the max to 256. This will allow more QWK packets to be merged together (it broke today at 4 fully qualified packet names). o Changes to the way the built-in thesaurus functions. I've still got some fancy things to do, but it's getting closer. Invoking the thesaurus for a word that was not a "key" in the word base previously did nothing; it just ignored you. Now, MR/2 posts a message and jumps into a sequential "match" search. When you request a further search of the database using ALT-S, a similar message is posted. Both messages mention that you can now press ESCAPE to hault the search. Also, when a search completes with out finding any new words, MR/2 keeps the previous word list on the screen. Before, you would be placed out of the thesaurus. KNOWN BUGS AND STUFF ==================== The TEMPORARY directory MUST remain a subdirectory of the MR2 home dir. You can't use "\" or "&" as part of any search text (since MR/2 uses them as delimiters). You can't cancel a search until the first "hit" is displayed. This is particularly irritating when soundex searching, since soundexing is noticably slower. If you set "SkipReadMessages" to true, you cannot gain access to a conferences where all messages have previously been read. Other frills that have not yet been addressed: Bulk marking, twit filter. There are probably others. Feel free to bombard me with requests.