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MR/2 PM - A QWK Compatible Mail Reader for OS/2 PM. 03/08/93
Copyright (c) 1992, 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 $20 US. This will increase to $25 when the final
release is officialy distributed. Register now and avoid the price
increase! Register MR/2 PM also registers you for MR/2 character
mode, and visa versa.
Existing MR/2 registered users are automatically registered users
of MR/2 PM. The same MR2.ID file can be used by both versions.
------------------------------------------------------------------
MR2.INI - your MR/2 PM parameter file
-------------------------------------
This is where you tell MR/2 PM all it needs to know about your system
and the way you'd like it to work. If you don't have an MR2.INI file
from MR/2 classic (character mode), or you've never modified one for
MR/2 PM before, MR/2 will attempt to place you into the E editor
with a starter INI loaded. Make any necessary changes and save the file.
NOTE: Problems ... you'll have to edit MR2.INI, then exit out of MR/2 PM
and reenter for any changes to take effect. My "reload INI" code needs
some looking at.
** If it can't or doesn't load the editor to create the initial MR2.INI
file, it's best that you do this by hand, from the command line:
copy mr2ini.org mr2.ini
e mr2.ini
***************************************************************************
NOTE: You may use an existing MR2.INI file, if you have one. The only
change that's really required is that your editor and zipper/unzipper
file names be fully qualified. Use a complete path and add the appropriate
file extension (e,g, "d:\os2util\pkunzip.exe"). These changes *will* work
with MR/2 classic, also.
****************************************************************************
Oh yea, I have the thing logging some messages to mr2pm.log. This file
may aid me in solving problems that occur in testing. It *will not* be
part of the final distribution reader.
KNOWN BUGS AND STUFF
====================
THIS IS BETA, PRE-RELEASE SOFTWARE. THE BUG LIST IS QUITE EXTENSIVE
AND ALL KNOWN PROBLEMS ARE BEING ADDRESSED. USE THIS PRODUCT AT YOUR
OWN RISK - THE AUTHOR ASSUMES NO LIABILITY FOR LOST OR DAMAGED DATA.
For instance, I *know* that the unzip and zip functions should be
in a separate thread, and that the output should be piped to the
screen. I'm getting to it :) Right now, if the zipper/unzipper fails,
it often locks up PM until the "not responding" dialog box pops up.
I've got a big hit-list, and I'm anxious to start hitting. I'd like to
get as much feedback as possible while I'm in this process, though.
Feel free to report bugs or offer suggestions. MR/2 PM is based on my
seemingly solid QWK routines from MR/2 "classic", but the user
interface is all new.
Version 0.95 - Original ALPHA release 10/12/92
Version 0.96 - Second release - BETA 10/25/92
----------------------------------------------
There is no way to view the bbs news, new file listings or bulletins
at this time, nor is there any way to enter "new" messages (w/o replying
to a message and changing the To and Subject manually).
No ANSI code support exists.
Message display is relatively slow, particularly on long messages.
Forget about resizing any windows for awhile, as well as "maximizing"
any. Also, no font support exists. No color configuration.
No online HELP exists at this time.
Just for fun, here's my "to do" list in its current form. Note that these
notes aren't intended to make sense to you ... don't worry, they do to me :)
Listing these may help identify problems I'm already aware of. There seems
to be alot, but the thing works fairly well.
To Do's (Bugs/Fixes):
=====================
o Pipe PKZip/Unzip into dlg, multithread
o Reorder Message read buttons?
o Expand message index, horizontal scroll bars.
o Hit counter for searching (checking ... )
o Repaint conference select when canned search is done.
o WPS Associations & command line parameter processing.
o Online help
o Manual
o Returning to last read position
o Find across ALL conferences
o News, New files, bulletins.
o Writing a NEW message
o Edit Reply Header:
Start editing at TO user if NEW.
o Keep focus out of message box - reset focus to NEXT?
o Keep focus in list box for OpenDlg?
o Make all confirm dialog boxes one and change text as appropriate.
o no qwk button weirdness, reset path on CANCEL (is now mr2-dir)
o Tagline window needs Ok, Cancel ... others?
o Edit button on Save dialog doesn't work
o Version on front screen.
o Save files - remember last path / filename - ditto w/packets
To Do's (Long term enhancements):
=================================
o Toolbar(s) instead of pushbuttons.
o Get rid of listbox for message viewer and write to window myself,
paging, scroll bars much faster.
o Make 32 bit and use v2.0 controls (eg, settings in a notebook).
o Font control - colors? Moveable/sizeable windows?
o Multiple open packets - multiple open conferences.
o Speed up conference load, control.dat load.
o Speed up thread list building.
o Internal editor?
There's more - like long file names, but those ideas aren't "immediate"
problems.
Changes included in v0.96
-------------------------
o Personal messages now beep if configured to do so.
o The "find" text is cleared when a new conference is selected. Old way,
the text locator would still be in effect when a new conference was
entered.
o Packet path was previously lost when a packet was exited, resulting in
an empty packet selection list. This has been fixed.
o If the FROM user is changed when replying, this change is remembered for
all subsequent replies, until a new packet is selected.
o Message viewer keyboard interface enhanced. Up/Down arrows now scroll
message by line; Page Up/Down by page. Home jumps to beginning,
End to end. Insert key calls up INDEX (still trying to stay SLMR
keystroke compat for some reason :) Paging improved somewhat.
o Added a more direct way to get message lines from the QWK engine. The
previous method involved querying the message line by number, walking
through increasing number requests. Each call resulted in the entire
message being traversed until the line was found. Now, the new call
oStart = GetNextMessageLine(char *target, int oStart) speeds this up.
Filling the message list box is now faster.
o Columnized listboxes now display selected item in a more "correct"
color.
o Bookmark flags were not getting set and/or being read. This has
been corrected.
o Message window now displays the bookmark flags in a minimal fashion.
If a message has been read, a "√" is displayed next to the reference
number. After this, an "R" appears if the message was replied to,
an "S" if it was saved, and a "K" if it's a reply that's been killed.
o Taglines are now selectable via the "taglines" button. Hot key of
F2 not yet implemented.
o Save Header button on reply message header now functions.
o If using an existing packet, flags to save replies and bookmark flags
were not being defaulted to TRUE. This caused problems - now fixed.
o When modifying or killing a reply, the message header and message text
are now updated on screen when the action is complete.
o When spawning to the editor, the path was *not* inherited from MR/2 PM.
You would usually end up with a default path of C:\. This cause
problems with reply files named "reply.msg" (not fully qualified) to
appear to be missing. You now start editing while pathed into the
tmp$$ working directory.
o Enabled the "T" key when viewing a message. This now steals the current
message's tagline. As with MR/2 classic, the arrow keys let you scroll
through the message lines. Pushbuttons are also provided for this
purpose.
o Save-to-file has also been enabled. Press "S" while viewing a message.
A file dialog screen comes up for save-file selection. There are some
inconsistencies here that I hope to clean up quickly ... but it does
work.
o Enabled the F2, F3, F9 and F10 keys on the Reply Header Edit screen
to function as in MR/2 classic; Pick tag, Toggle to, Save Header Only,
Accept, respectively. F10 won't register for some reason (it's a PM
special "menu" key - I'll have to read up :), so I've assigned F11 as
the "Accept" hot key (in addition to F10, which I hope to get working).
o The "Save Header" botton when editing the message header is enabled
only when editing an existing reply. This allows you to modify
the destination data w/o editing the message content. This makes no
sense unless the message already exists.
o The "R" replied mark wasn't showing up immediately after a message was
replied to. Fixed.
o The Page Up/Down "buttons" on the message viewer no longer obtain the
focus when clicked on.
o Private/Public buttons now work correctly while editing a reply's header.
Conference name is now static text - no user editing can be performed.
o Expanded the conferences w/mail listbox width a tad.
o Most pushbuttons now have associated hotkeys that are underlined. I
may have went a little overboard, but I dunno.
o When modifying a reply, old tagline is extracted and becomes the
default tagline for the "new", updated reply. This was previously
broken.
o There was some crazyness happening with WM_CHAR messages (keyboard
characters) that I've kludged around. For example, with a message
displayed and a secondary dialog box up (pick thread, reply header,
etc.,.) and a pushbutton highlighted, pressing the "X" key would
prompt you to exit. The "S" key would bring up the save dialog.
Even stranger things would happen. I'm not sure what I'm doing
wrong when nesting dialogs, but I put a simple filter in that
disables keystrokes to the message window when another dialog box
is on top.
o Double clicking on the system menu button, or ALT-F4'ing from either
of the programs main screens now exits cleanly. It used to trap.
o MR/2 classic uses TAB/BACKSPACE while viewing a message to move
forward/backwards an entire thread. Since TAB is used by the PM
dialog routines, this key is logically unavailable. I've attached
the same functionality to the CTRL-PAGEDN (fwd) and CTRL_PAGEUP (back)
keys. These work the same way in MR/2 classic - they're a carry-over
from SLMR-compatibility days.
o Often MR/2 PM would leave a file or conference unselected by default.
When this occurred and ENTER was pressed, the program would process
it as if ESCAPE was hit, either closing the packet, or exiting the
program. I've now taken steps to always have something selected by
default when the dialog box is initially displayed.
o Thread summary - message count is now columnized.
o Custom conferences now align the line containing matching text on
the second line of the message listbox. Also, the alignment process,
which is shared with the "Find" search function, now parses compound
search strings and matches any one string. (Previously, the PM
listbox message LM_SEARCHSTRING was used - this was for straight
word-for-word matches only).
o The "Find" dialog box now displays any currently active search string.
o The "L" key (find LAST search hit) did not function properly. Fixed.
o Played around with WinMessageBox to post the "Replies Exist" message.
This is what I'll use for most confirmations, since I'm supposed to :)
o Played with changing the color of text/quoted text in the message
viewer. It worked, but I'm not very happy with it. I'm leaving it
at this time to do quoted test in "halftone". I'll make this optional,
or allow a wider selection of color options.
o The "hit" status (Hit nn/nnn) is now displayed on the message viewing
screen if the message is part of the current search results.
o Logging of messages (my "remote" debugging trail) is now off by default,
but can be invoked by supplying a command-line parameter (anything).
o The "Config" button now functions to edit the MR2.INI file. I place
a dialog box up that requires an "OK" when editing is complete. This
will be removed when I get to reading the editor's exit queue.
o If no MR2.INI file exists, an initial one is made and you're placed in
the E editor to make any necessary revisions.
o If you answer NO to "use the existing open packet?", the packet is
actually deleted. Before, this prompt could come up several times.
o While building the message header index (short pause on a fast machine,
more significant on a slower machine), a "waiting" dialog is displayed.
I need to find that snippet about setting the hour-glass mouse pointer.
No, actually, I need to add some secondary threads to this stuff ...
maybe this weekend.
o Most all of the message viewer letter command found in MR/2 classic
are now functional in MR/2 PM. The exception seems to be the "B"
command, read backwards w/in thread. I'll fix this one soon :)
The "Z" key now works (zip to first non-read in conference).
o The "B" key (read backwards w/in thread, go to thread summary at
beginning of thread) now functions correctly. Note that selecting a
thread from the thread summary places you at the FIRST message in a
thread, not the last.
o There's a new button on the Conference Select dialog box labeled
"Write". This is for composing new messages w/o a message to
reply to. I just have to put some code behind it now :)
o The No QWK button is now operational on the packet select screen.
If you depress this button, the "Pick BBS" dialog pops up and allows
you to select a BBS. From then on you're in "write new" mode.
o The reply header edit dialog now has a "Conferences" button for
selecting a different response conference. The MR/2 classic hotkey
F4 also maps to conference selection. Also, the conference number
may be plugged in by hand. MR/2 now validates the number supplied and
displays the conference name, or "Unknown" if a bad conference number
is specified.
o The Message Index dialog box now has horizontal scrollbar. There's
nothing to scroll yet, but the scrollbar's there :)
o I changed the way messages are displayed when unpacking a packet and
checking for existing replies. This still isn't right, but it's better
than it was. I still need to multithread and pipe the PKZip/unzip stuff.
That'll be first thing on the list for the next beta.
o The Config button now properly resets the packet path, if it is changed
in the INI file. Previously, the path would not be changed.
o OK, so my message index listing has a horizontal scrollbar, and I've
got stuff to scroll. Hmmm, I must have to actually do the scrolling,
too. I thought all this stuff was magic? I guess not.
o OK, Cancel buttons added to message index dialog.
Changes included in v0.97
-------------------------
o Buttons on the Message Index dialog box are now functional.
o Removed some unnecessary screen repaints that would occur when a
function (e.g., Pick Thread) was canceled and the same message was
left on the screen.
o If CTRL-PAGEDN was used to page forward by thread, pressing the NEXT
button would redisplay the same message immediately afterwards (only
once).
o Focus for reading messages now starts on the NEXT button.
o The SPACEBAR now functions as it does in MR/2 classic (page down,
next message if at end of current message). NOT YET !!!! BROKEN
o Origin recognition enhancements inherited from MR/2 classic. Custom
Conference now recognize the "origin" section of a message better
whe using the "check = origin" option.
o After "reList"-ing packets, the focus is set on the OPEN button.
o Thread summary listbox - sometimes the last entry would be malformed
(characters missing from the front of the thread text). Fixed.
o You can now (again) double click on a packet name to open it, save file
to save to it.
o Pressing the Tagline button while editing a reply header would crash
MR/2 PM. This now works correctly.
o Color is supported in the message viewer listbox. I wouldn't call
it pretty, but it's there. A new MR2.INI entry has been added just
for specifying PM viewer colors. PMColor=1,2,3 ... where 1 is the
color for quoted text, 2 the color for normal text and 3 is the
background color. The defaults are half-tone, black and default
entry field color (half-tone yellow, sorta). You may specify one,
two or all three and let whatever's left default. See the MR2INI.ORG
file for colors possible.
o Many improvements inherited from MR/2 classic. The speed of conference
name sorting has been dramatically improved. Some obscure control.dat
file problems cleared up. Personal message beeping problem fixed.
Minor tagline problems fixed (?).
o Packet selection dialog sometimes had the file date/time clipped.
This has been corrected.
Changes included in v0.98
-------------------------
NOTE: Version 0.97 never really made it into distribution.
o Relinked with many of MR/2's latest features being added automatically.
Others needed some minor code adjustments. Deferred messages are
functional, as is the new "template" feature. I'll include MR2READ.ME
for anyone that wants to get a feel for what else *might* be new.
Also, the "TwoLine" TagStyle is now available.
o I played around with saving window positions. It works OK, but isn't
quite right, particularly with regards to secondary dialog boxes. Work
will continue. MR/2 PM now creates and maintains an "MR2PM.INI" file
in the software's base directory.
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: Echomail messages to me 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 and some others I can't remember.
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.
Nerd's does support file requests (157/2 or 157/3)
Optionally, I call into PC-OHIO regularly.
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.