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MR/2 - A QWK Compatible Mail Reader for OS/2. 05/02/93 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. 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. 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) 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 v1.49x -------------------------- o Read.me is now shifted around so that most recent changes (from now on, at least) list at the top. o Welcome and Goodbye screen now list on the Bulletins select menu. You can view these, unobstructed and at length, any time you choose. o Minor change to the parsing of the @Fidonet@ variable. Removed any @fidonet suffix that exists in the origin line. o Ooops. When using the internal editor, and editing mr2.ini, the read clock string would pop onto every edit screen. The clock display is now suspended/resumed correctly. o Clock would still pop up if you would request HELP while inside the editor, then CANCEL to clear the help screen. Fixed. KNOWN BUGS AND STUFF ==================== Mouse support is missing from some of the "inform user" screen. 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. If you don't like my internal editor. You'll have to find your own or use E or EPM. QEdit for OS/2 works nice as an inexpensive, character-mode editor/ Also, there's an OS/2 editor TE-something that I heard was OK. You can't send ADD/DROP conference messages yet. This seems easy enough, so I should be able to add it in soon. Other frills that have not yet been addressed: Bulk marking, carbon copies, twit filter, function key assigning. There are probably others. Feel free to bombard me with requests. No long file name support. Since QWK is a DOS thing, the only place I can see using it is for packet names (if the user renames it). Any ideas? Changes included in v1.01 ------------------------- o By request, 43 and 50 line mode are now supported via a new .ini entry. You can supply a VideoMode=xx parameter in MR2.INI, where xx can be 25, 43 or 50. Any other numbers will be ignored. All Selection lists and displays are adjusted to match the screen dimensions. For those with vision better than mine ... :) o Clicking the mouse on the Subject area while viewing a message still simulated hitting the 'T' key. This key no longer moves forward by thread, it steals taglines. Now, clicking on Subject is translated properly to an 'H'. o When filling a field in a "form" (e.g., the Subject field of the Message Header Edit form), overtype-mode would sometimes echo characters that weren't there. This happened after some characters were deleted; the "ghost" characters appeared at the end of the string. This is fixed. o The automatic splitting of long replies is now controlled via a MR2.INI parameter SplitLongReplies (set to Yes or No). If set to yes, MR/2 will split replies up so that no more than 100 lines are in each message. If set to no, then no splitting is performed and one large message is create. The default is to split message. o Previously, long replies were always split. The "cut-off" point was 95 message lines, and a "<cont'd>" line was appended with a blank line. I've seen some message processors cut the first part by one lines, making the second message consist of 1 or 2 meaningless lines. I've changed the "split at" number to 92 lines. o And another MR2.INI parameter has been added: AllUpperCase controls how the Subject, From and To lines are treated after editing a message's header information. Previously, all fields were converted to upper case. Now, if AllUpperCase=No, the case is left as entered. (By request...) o The message header editing form now allows you to "up arrow" into the From field and modify it. NOTE: many BBS's will reject messages whose FROM line do not match the user's logon name. Changes included in v1.02 ------------------------- o Bug fix: User reported a problem with conference numbers showing incorrectly. Turns out that some packets have a single byte conference field in the header, and the other byte used by newer mail doors was set to a space (hex 20). This caused conference numbers to be report as 8192 more than their actual value. Changes included in v1.03 ------------------------- o Fixes to tagline logic. If tagline file was non-existant, MR/2 would crash. If file was empty, added tags would not show up until you exited and reentered. o Selection list problems fixed. Highlighting of the line above displayed list on occasion. Selection bar will no longer move into unfilled areas. Scrolling up and down through list no longer displays end-of-list "ghost" entries. o Added some tests for over-length taglines. Previously, a tagline longer than 120 character would lock the session. o Forms display routine would show an over-length tagline w/o truncating it. Display of tagline extended to column 80, then would wrap to the next line. This has been corrected. o Actually added in 1.01 is the ability, from the packet selection screen, to toggle video modes. The "V" key will toggle from displayed lines from 25 to 43, from 43 to 50, and then from 50 back to 25. o MR/2 would lock up when saving a reply (or a new message). This happened only with BBS doors that would pad the user name (in control.dat) with spaces. The lockup occured after pressing F10 to accept the message header information. This shouldn't happen any more :) o NOTE - NOTE - NOTE: The problem with packets proclaiming "no mail to read" seems to be related to missing .NDX files in the packet. The QMAIL door in particular lets you suppress these files, and some mail readers (SLMR/OLX) don't use them, anyway. MR/2 requires these file, at least today. I WILL provide an index building function in the very next release, figure by 5/22 worst-case. o OK, so I added the routine to create NDX files if they aren't there. (See above) Testing on this was minimal, so please report any problems. Packets without .NDX files should no longer report "no mail found". Changes included in v1.04 ------------------------- o You may now create a supplemental "INI" file for any/all BBS's that you get mail from. MR/2 still loads its options from MR2.INI, but you may now change some of these options automatically by BBS, when a packet is opened. Once the packet is unpacked and the BBS "ID" is extracted, MR/2 checks its "base" directory (where MR2.INI resides) for a file named after the BBS, with a ".INI" suffix. For example, after unpacking a QWK packet from PC-OHIO, MR/2 will load options from a file named "PC-OHIO.INI", if one exists. Obviously, some options will have no effect (e.g., PacketPath has already been used and is no longer pertainent, as is WorkPath), but things like tagline files and quoting styles can be changed on a BBS basis. If a "BBS" .INI file is accessed, MR/2 will reload the global MR2.INI file when the current packet is closed. o New INI parameter "TagStyle" has been added. You may specify either FIDONET (the default) or PCBOARD. If Fidonet is specified, taglines will use "*" characters to delimit MR/2's signiture. If PCBOARD style is requested, the "block" character used by SLMR/OLX will be substituted. o Read-ahead by thread (the "H" key) has been enhanced to recognize subjects prefixed with "RE:" or "RE: " as matching. Messages will also match if the subject matches the original *less* the "RE:". o Install now includes Register.Doc for easier user registration. - That's it for this revision. I *almost* added a large section of code for twits and canned searches, but this is going to take some time to code and even more time to test and debug. I'll make that available in a week or two, along with fixes for any other reported bugs. BTW - a PM version is in a very primitive form, anyone interested in giving me some useful feedback? First, should it be MR/2 PM or MR/PM? Changes included in v1.1 ------------------------- o The Reference number field was not being set and maintained properly. If you replied to a message, that message's reference number would get copied into the replies Ref#. Then if you would re-edit the reply later, the Ref# would be set to the conference number. I've now staightened this mess out and it seems to work properly. o Added a new MR2.INI parameter "WrapLinesAtColumn" that defaults to 80. This should ease the problems with users that depend on the system "E" editor and its "word wrapping" function. MR/2 will let no line extend beyond the value supplied here, and will insert a CR/LF between words to keep text in bounds. o You may now set the MR2.INI variable "VideoMode" any of the values 25, 28, 34, 40, 43, 50 or 60 to represent the number of lines to display. Also, the V toggle while on the packet select screen has been enhanced to toggle through all of these values. o MR/2 now accepts one or more file names identifying .QWK packet as command line parameters. For example, typing: MR2 E:\DL\NERDNOOK.QWK will invoke MR/2 and automatically select the named packet for reading. More than one packet may be specified, MR/2 simply opens the "next" packet when the previous packet is closed. When all packets on the command line have been read, MR/2 returns to the packet selection screen and waits for a new selection. If you wish to have MR/2 exit after all specified files have been processed, set the INI variable "ExitAtEndOfParameters" to YES. This also allows for an "association" to be set up using WPS settings. If a new ICON is created to invoke MR/2 and "*.qwk" is set as an association, then clicking on a QWK packet inside the file manager is all that's necessary to read a packet. o Cosmetic: "Pick a Conferences" when writing a "new" message now reads correctly. o Cosmetic: when using video lines other than 25, the search status message would update always on line 25. This now moves with the number of lines displayed. o When editing the message header, F4 may be used to select from a list of available conferences. This is useful when moving a message from its source conference into another. By request. o The master conference list now displays in alphabetical order by name. Previously, conferences listed in the order they occured in the BBS's configuration file. o NOW, there's a new INI parameter, "SortMasterConferences" which defaults to NO (old-style non sorted list). Specifying YES will sort the master conference list alphabetically. o The "Z" key, used when viewing a message, now allows you to "Zip" to the next "unread" message in a conference. o Threaded reading has been greatly enhanced. First, a new INI option must be set - "MessageOrder=Subject" (the default is "None"). This enables all sorts of new goodies :) Basically, setting this to YES will sort the messages by thread before reading begins. Care was taken to "clump" all "RE:" type messages in with their original non-RE'd subjects. o If MessageOrder has been set to "Subject", some new keys are available. While viewing messages, the TAB key will skip ahead to the next thread. The BACKSPACE key will skip backwards to the previous thread. Even better, pressing "Q" will invoke the Quick Thread Summary screen. This list all threads in the conference, in alphabetical order, along with the count of previously read messages vs. total message in the thread. All threads that have been read completely are marked with an "*". This is a full feature "selection" screen, so you can page around, pick and peck at only the subjects that interest you. o I added another option - I'm not very happy with it, but you may find it somewhat useful. The INI parameter "ThreadChangeTone" accepts two numeric parameters (e.g., "ThreadChangeTone=20000,10"). These parameters are passed to the OS/2 kernel procedure DosBeep() and represent the frequency and duration of the tone to make when you "page" into a "new" thread. The values 20000,10 make a quick "clicking" like sound that isn't *too* anoying. I'm open to ideas on this one ... :) o Default tagline file is now MISC2.TAG in an attempt to minimize anti-Windows discussions in OS/2 related conferences. OS2.TAG is still in the distribution zip, you'll just have to set it yourself, if you want it. o Minor bug: List Selection processing would exit a list if HOME was pressed on the "first" page of records. Now, user stays in the selection list and the cursor moves to the first entry. o When Sorting by Subject, the 'H' and the 'B' keys used the old way (searching forwards/backwards by subject) aren't that useful. I've changed their behaviour slightly in this case. The 'H' key will move forward a message, and if the "thread" changes, will display the Quick Thread Summary screen. The 'B' key will move backwards one message pull up the summary screen if you move into a "new" thread. NOTE that the selecting a thread from the summary screen moves you to the *first* record in the thread, even if the 'B' key was previously used. There currently is no way to jump to the last message in a thread. Is this capability desirable? o The default for the setting of ExtendedAttributes is now YES. If you do not use the E editor, some minor speed increases may be achieved simply by setting this to NO. Note that this is only an issue with users creating their INI file for the first time (existing INI's are not affected by this change). Didn't get to twits and canned searches yet - Sorry! I think the threading stuff will satisfy more of you, anyway :) Changes included in v1.2x ------------------------- o Thread sorting/grouping would sometimes misplace a message because the last character was chopped. I've modified thread matching to check 24 characters instead of 25. I can't see where this could be a problem. o Disabled many keys (Q, I, Tab, Backspace) while searching all conferences. These weren't functional under searching-all conditions, and caused strange things to happen when invoked. o Pre-defined searches have been added. I did this for myself, but I'm sure many will see the benefit. Basically, you can build your own conferences by defining search criteria. All messages found to match will he included in the defined conference. The "MakeConference" parameter is added in the MR2.INI file, or can be added into the BBS specific INI file. See the included file "Search.Ini" for an example. You can have criteria listed in the MR2.INI *and* the BBS ini, and they will be combined correctly. The following set of lines: MakeConference = MR/2 String = MR/2 will result in MR/2 searching (in the background, multithreaded) all message for the string "MR/2" and creating a custom "MR/2" conference that will appear in the Conferences w/Mail menu. Once the defined custom conferences have been built, and you return to select a conference, these new conferences will be listed. The number of search result conferences is "unlimitted" - at least in a practical sense. Memory is the issue, and valid file names. I use prefixes of A00 thru A99, up to Z99. That's 2600 possible conferences. If someone needs more, please let me know :) A single pass is made through the message base - for each message, all combinations of search criteria are evaluated and the message is recorded in any/all of the conferences it's found to belong to. MR/2 will "beep" (low sounding tone) when it's done searching. I'll INI-ize this sound later. As another example: MakeConference = DR DEBUG/C/C++ & OS/2 Conferences=93,99,111 String = OS/2 defines a conference that will display with a rather verbose name, and will contain all message from conferences 93, 99 and 111 in which "OS/2" was found. A conference number of "*", or a missing conference line will cause ALL conferences to be searched. This feature is particularly handy for me. I'm a diehard CTOS fan, and I code a commercial bar coding software package. If these topics ever appear anywhere, I'd like to know. Since they rarely appear, I rarely bother to search for them. With a pre-defined search, these words are always checked for, and I'll never(*) miss an occurence due to laziness. I can simply add the lines: MakeConference = Miscellaneous Conferences=* String = Barcode\Bar Code\CTOS o Other INI parameters have been added to compliment the new MakeConference option. The parameter "ShowEmpties" controls whether empty custom conferences are to be displayed with message counts of "(0)". If NO is specified, empty conferences do not appear at all in the conference list. "DisplayStatus" will show the message search/hit counter on the bottom of the screen if set to YES. "SeparaterBar" will place a line between the normal and custom conferences if set to YES. o Fixed a bug in the logic that used to split long messages. I messed this up when I put in word wrapping - it wouldn't really split messages, it simply put all lines in the first message and created an empty "cont'd" message. o In testing the message splitting, I discovered that replies over 32K in size weren't even registering. This equates roughly to 800 lines of message text. The reply builder now accomodates messages up to 64K in length. This is roughly 1600 lines of text, or 15-16 messages "cont'd" from the first. o AND still while testing the message splitting logic, I found an even bigger problem with replies. If the reply file ever reached a total size greater than 32K, replies would be ignored. This had to do with using an integer to hold the file size, and having it overflow. It now uses a long value and will function correctly. I'm suprised no one caught this - or maybe they did and didn't report it. o Conferences for which MR/2 was left to build NDX files for could not be searched due to a problem with the way the searching functions used the internal NDX files. This became apparent when I tried to search through the new custom conferences. This has all been corrected. o Removed the annoying beeps when selecting from a list and you hit the uparrow or downarrow too many times. o Converted all thread code to use _beginthread/_endthread. Previously, I was using DosCreateThread and mixing in some C runtime library calls. While this seemed to work OK, I figured I'd play it safe and convert, especially considering the strange trouble some folks are having (although I'd like to blame the E editor :). o Modified tons of code to support 4 digit numbers for index file. Most BBS's carry under 1000 conferences, but some (Channel 1 in particular) boast over 1000 and have NDX files like "1654.NDX". All old code was geared to fixed 3-digit numbers. A benefit (?) of this is that custom "made" conferences now are numbered A0000-Z9999, which gives us more breathing room (as if 2600 custom conferences weren't enough :) Now you (theoretically) have up to 26000. EditHeader now functions just a little differently when specifying a conference number. o On Custom-made conferences, by default the search string is found in all conference messages and aligned as if a search was performed. If you wish to suppress this action, set the INI file parameter "PositionOnMatchLine" to NO. o When "Replies exist, keep?" is denied, the .rep file is now actually renamed to a .old file. I've had happy fingers too often and lost reply(s). This is not optional and is automatic - I'll add an INI parameter to control it later. o Split out all pre-1.0 data from this file into oldread.me. I'll reorganize the whole thing later - probably with version 2.0. o Mouse cursor would not hide properly when placed past line 25 (in non-standard video modes). Cursor would cause streaking and generally misbehave. This has been fixed. Changes included in v1.3 ------------------------ o Scroll bars are now integrated into DLSelect (the selection list routines). You can use the mouse to scroll through lists. I've also made clicking on the divider line directly above the first entry to mean "page up". Clicking on the bottom line of any selection list box means "page down". The scrolling routines need some work - mostly cosmetic. One annoying problem is the lack of a mouse repeat when holding the LMB down. I'm not sure why I don't get this - I'll have to fiddle with ZTC's low level event handling functions again :(. (In other words, holding the mouse down on the up or down arrows only registers once per click - if you hold it for half and hour but only "click" once, the display moves only one line.) o I've used ZTC's event "timer" to get a mouse repeat. Works pretty well. Now to test it against time :) o Selection lists now allow for "jumping" to a letter prefix. For example, while viewing the Master Conference list, pressing "O" will jump to the NEXT conference that starts with an "O". Immediately pressing "S" will jump to the next conference that starts with "OS". Pressing any non-printable key (e.g., up arrow) will reset the prefix string to nothing. Prefix search starts at the current cursor position and works forward only. o The thread sort, which I thought to be "static", turned out to be pretty votatile. This was pretty obvious, I just didn't connect with what was happenning. I've fixed it so that identical subjects are sub-sorted by message number. This ought to keep everything in "order" within each thread. o Line wrapping for replies has been fixed to "trim" leading spaces from next line. Previously, if a line wrapped so as to end with more than one space before the next line's word, these extra spaces would be left in front of the line. This has been corrected. o Clock: And another ZTC bug wiped out. Zortech's strftime function messed up the %I parameter for hours in 01->12 format. The display would progress from 11:59 to 01:00 at midnight. Wrong! I've corrected this and all clock displays seem to now work correctly. o If using PCBoard style taglines, I now use three dashes instead of underlines for the tearline. If Fido mode, underlines are used. We'll see if this makes everybody happy. o I've included two icons with the distribution zip: mr2.ico and email.ico. MR2.ico is a Nick Knight original and I'm not very proud of it :(. Maybe I'll play with it some more and purty it up. EMAIL is a modified ICON I scarfed and looks IMO nicer. Maybe I'll add some more possibilities ... o If all replies from an "existing" reply file were killed the original reply file was not deleted. MR/2 counted zero replies, so it figured there was nothing to do, and any old file remained untouched. Now, I rename the old .rep file to a .old file. o The 'V' key, while viewing a message, has always been there to change video modes while reading any message. I never documented this because of various bugs. Well, someone discovered it and reported the bugs, which I now believe to be fixed. 'V' will now toggle through the video modes (number of lines) while viewing any message. o To remain fairly keystroke compatible w/SLMR, I've made Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn translate to Tab and Backspace, respectively. This is during message reading only; these keys perform next-thread, previous thread functions. o Fixed a bug with the resetting of the original video mode upon exit. Also, added the ability to specify ANY video line mode in the INI file. This line count gets added to the video toggle round robin loop. If you specify a video mode of 52, MR/2 loads this way (no error checking is done - you'll stay in 25 line mode if 52 is invalid). If you keep pressing ALT-V on packet select, you'll cycle through 25, then 28, through 60 line mode. After 60 line mode, you'll toggle back to 52, then 25 again. Get it? o Also, I "fixed" it so that if no VideoMode is specified in the INI file, MR/2 defaults to whatever the current Video Mode is. o Default Word Wrap column for replies is now 80 (was 78). I'm testing this to see if quote-wrapping problems diminish while message-wrapping problems remain in check. If you specify a value in your INI file, this change is irrelevant. o OldRead.Me (pre-1.0 history log) has been renamed to mr2.hst. I'll shuffle off older entries from read.me into this file as they become kinda old. o Fixed some bugs with the "To" field getting confused when EditReply Header was set only to AFTER. o Reformatted the Quick Thread Summary screen so that all subjects line up, even if the read/message counst go to 2 digits. This was also necessary so that typing letter keys properly jump to the correct spot. o 3 New INI parameters. BeepOnPersonals defaults to Yes and controls the beep that is made when personal messages are displayed. GoToLastRead defaults to No. If set to Yes, the "do you wish to return to your last reading position" is suppressed and MR/2 just goes there automatically. BackupOldReps defaults to true and controls the renaming of .rep files to .old files instead of deleting them. o Another new parameter, by request. You may optionally specify an alternate editor command for use when creating NEW messages. The INI token NewMessageEditor may be set just as the Editor parameter is, and this command will be used whenever writing a new message. This allows for differing startup macros. The "new" editor is used for ALL non-reply editing (including MR2.INI, News, Files, Bulletins, Save files, etc). If a "new message" editor is not specified, the default Editor command is used for everything. o Modified the message formatter to tack on [M][][] to the end of the "===" divider bar. These are new mouse click areas. The arrows cause scrolling down and up. Clicking on the M invokes the new "mouse menu". NOTE: I was also going to assign the mouse menu to the middle mouse button, if available, however, my middle mouse button doesn't seem to function even after tweaking the MouSetEventMask parameters. Hmmm... o The new mouse menu can be displayed and used for keystroke simulation while viewing a message. Click in the new [M] box, and the mouse menu is displayed offering 16 options. Click on any of these options to invoke that function or use the right mouse button to cancel. The older mouse hot areas are still functional. For instance, clicking on the message SUBJECT area simulates pressing "H" and clicking on the CONF: area simulates an I. o I've also implemented double-clicking on selection lists. This is currently a must-do; the old method of single clicking simply highlights the entry. You must double click to select it. I may let you pick which method to use (single or double-clicking) via INI param. o If a packet is already open and you answer NO to the "use this one" prompt, MR/2 now deletes MESSAGES.DAT. Previously, the work directory files remained undeleted until a packet was selected. This caused the "use this one" prompt to come up after any other function. For instance, each time the video mode was toggled, you'd have to answer this prompt again. Not any more! o I've changed the status line on the bottom of the packet select menu and added a "mouse menu" on the right hand side. Single click on a packet name and then click on "[D]" to delete this packet. o If you used "X" to fast-exit MR/2 and a BBS "local" INI file was in use, I still reloaded MR2.INI. This step is now skipped resulting in slightly faster exit speeds. o New INI parameters: MouseMode=Single sets the mouse "click" mode to Single or Double. The NEW default is double clicking. For those of you who liked it the old way, set the mode to SINGLE. Also, MouseClickSpeed can be set to the maximum number of milliseconds allowable between mouse clicks to still be considered a double-click. The default is still being figured out - it'll be somewhere between 40 and 500. OK, it's 500 :) AND ... MouseScrollSpeed sets the delay for scrolling when you park the mouse with the left button down on a scrollbar arrow. The default is set to 1. If this is too fast for you, change it to a higher value. o Made the same "out of bounds clicks are just ignored" change to the menu routines. Clicking out-of-bounds on the main menu canceled still. o Had to fix a timer to simulate mouse clicks for scrolling the message viewer when parked on the mouse scroll arrows. o I've added a new canned-search parameter, "CHECK". This enables you to check for text in any combination of From, To, Subject and Message. Message may be further sub-divided into Body and Origin. I consider the "origin" section to be anything after and including the first "tear" line. For Example: MakeConference = MR/2 - Tagline Check = Origin String = MR/2 will check only the message section, and only below the first "---" or "___" found in the message. Further: MakeConference = MR/2 - No Taglines Check = Subject,Body String = MR/2 will check message up to the first tearline, and will also check subject. No sense in this case checking From and To, although I could have added this. You can find all message from Jim Gilliland this way and build a conference of them. NOTE: The message viewer will align the display on the first hit in the message. It will NOT ignore the body if the search was defined as ORIGIN only. Leaving the CHECK string out will result in ALL areas being checked. This code was partially implemented before, I just had to add the INI parameters and the origin splitting. This will be the base code for my twit filters - a little tweaking and you'll be able to twit any message combination for which you can build a custom conference. o Optimized the message section searching a little. It *was* converting the message to upper case for each search criteria record, even though the first check had already converted it. Now it only converts the message on the first check, and only if the message body is to be checked. o You can now forward the message you are reading to another user and/or conference. Simply press "W" (SLMR-compatible key) and the Message Header Edit screen will appear. Fill out the To field and change anything else as needed. Accepting this form will create a forwarded copy of this message in the reply conference. NOTE: MR/2's tagline does not appear in these messages UNLESS you modify it later. Making revisions toa forwarded message will cause MR/2 to place/replace its tagline on the message. o When modifying a reply, MR/2 now extracts and reuses the original tagline. Previously, a new tagline would be automatically picked to replace the original. o Modified the packet open logic to use an insert sort when creating the list of Master Conferences. Sorting after-the-fact was very slow. PC-Ohio packets (w/600 conferences) load much faster now. o I tried setting the background conference builder to IDLE priority and it would not work properly with PMInfo loaded. Changed it back to regular priority with a -30 delta. o I've implemented some basic "ANSI animation" code in the message viewer. Press "A" while viewing any message with ANSI escape sequences and see if it works. Scrolling of the screen is hokey - I'll work on it some more. Some screens look OK, though :) o Ooops - big bug. If Control.Dat was > 32k MR/2 would fail to read the master conference list, and no mail could be read. This limit is now 64k, and I can easily just remove any limit with the next release. The sample packet I was presented with had 2500 conferences available and Control.dat was around 40K. o A "Working" message now displays while a packet is being opened by MR/2. There was a substantial pause on packets with 600 conferences, and a couple of seconds pause on the 2500 conference packet above. It appears that there's trouble (as all is quiet), and then the main menu pops up! o Trimmed the end of replies a little. It was possible to get an extra blank block (128 spaces) at the end of the message. Changes included in v1.31 ------------------------- o Modified the packet select clock display to show centered on the screen. It was centered for short month names, but September (it *is* the longest name) made it look lopsided. o ANSI animation is much improved ... I've still got some work to do. Some of these ANSI messages are incredible! Toggle MR/2 into 34 line or greater mode to read stubborn messages. o OK, I've enabled "ANSI detect" for News, Bulletins and New Files. Actually, if I would have enabled it, this would have worked well in version 1.3. Unfortunately, I only tested it with message reading, and it didn't make any sense for these - if a message had ANSI codes, it was a good bet it wanted full control of the screen, which I didn't want to give unless requested by the user (the "A" key). Now I find, after sampling several BBS's (Wildcat's were suggested, then I find that PCBoards with Graphics menus enabled sends ANSI codes also :), that the non-message ANSI stuff tends to be much more behaved. Anyway, test it out, let me know of any problems. o For ANSI animations, had to enable the "blinking" attribute. I then set it back off for regular operations. Changes included in v1.32 ------------------------- o Blinking attribute still didn't work in the message/file viewer. News files with blinking text showed reverse video in some starnge color. o Custom conference search was still started on message entry w/o any existing packets (ALT-E from the packet select screen). There are no message to search in this mode, but the thread was started and the beep would occur almost instantly. This has been fixed. o Modified the "ShowEmpties" default flag from YES to NO. Set it to YES in your INI file if you want empty custom conferences to show. o KeepMessageMarks would sometimes get corrupted and set to NO. This was caused by an error in the INI.CPP code that "dropped" into the "K" parameter processing after doing the "H" processing (missing break statement). For some reason, the corruption was more sensitive to opening a packet using WPS "associations" that direct MR/2 selection. o But then, there was still a problem with using WPS associations to open a packet. Problem also occured whenever simply passing a file name on the command line. MR/2 tried to save Bookmark EA's, but used an invalid file name. This is now working correctly. o Added NEWMR2.ICO to the distribution zip. This is an MR/2 icon submitted by Dennis Powell. He claims it's better looking than mine, and I guess I'll have to agree :). o The ANSI file viewers would clear the screen to the user-defined message color before showing the file/screen. This resulted in the "wrong" background color. I now clear the screen to black before showing text using ANSI escape sequences. o Also, MR/2 left all ANSI display routines with the default screen colors set to whatever the ANSI display last set. I now set normal white on black upon exiting these functions. o I made some changes to try to speed up the scrolling of selection lists. The mods where to the video display routines, but seemed to do nothing. I don't really see any slowness, unless I stand on the downarrow key. These may be more a case of slow keyboard repeat. I'll see if I can modify this somehow. o When you change the FROM user when editing the reply header, the new "from" name is remembered and becomes the default for as long as that packet is open. Once the packet is closed, the user name defaults back to the one found in the control.dat file of each QWK file. o I removed survey.txt from the distribution zip. I think I know what the majority of folks want, and the zip file needs to be pruned a little. Also removed Misc1.Tag, leaving Misc2.Tag and OS2.Tag. These may get trimmed or disappear altogether at some time ... o Also removed MR2.DOC from Welcome.qwk, the default, "I'm lost" new-user packet. I've replaced it with a small note about seeing mr2.doc as a separate file. This file was actually packed twice, now only once. That's it for now ... I'll work on adding some actual enhancements as soon as I get MR/PM out and somewhat stable ... that'll probably take a week, or two, or three. Look for MRPM_095.* Changes included in v1.33 ------------------------- o Forwarding messages had a problem with taglines. The forwarded preface was placed in the edit-header tagline field and could get corrupted. Forwarded messages get no tagline; this field now displays blank and any entry here is ignored. o On some messages, lines would be highlighted as quotes that were obviously not. This was from ghost characters from previous lines and has been fixed. o Fixed a problem with the MR2.ID recognition routine. Basically, if any of my checksums calculated to a CR or a EOF (0x1A), the file would not be recognized as valid. This has been fixed. o If a zero length reply file was for some reason saved, then reedited, MR/2 would throw a second tagline on the file. Fixed. I wonder if I can reasonably detect the cases where the reply has been saved w/o any user-added modifications and warn?? o In the INI file, MouseMode now supports the keyword "Off" in addition to SingleClick and DoubleClick. All "Off" does is tells MR/2 to hide the mouse cursor (the mouse is still active, just hidden). ... by registered user request. o New INI parameter SuppressVersionInTagline defaults to NO. If you're a registered user, you may set this to YES and the version number(s) will be suppressed when MR/2 generates a tagline. This allows more room for your tagline message, particularly when used in conjunction with "SerialInTag" set to NO. Changes included in v1.34 ------------------------- o The custom conference search "check" keyword ORIGIN has been modified to recognize a lines starting as " * " as the "origin". Also sees the line as the start of the origin area if the "*" is instead an "X" or a ASCII block char (0xFE). o The 1.33 tagline modifications to suppress the VERSION string worked OK, but the new code messed up the non-suppressed version string for registered users. This has been fixed. o Added PMColors to the INI file processor. This adds nothing to MR/2 classic - this is for the PM version :(. o Removed the file Read.Me from the Welcome.Qwk default packet. This was just a duplication of the file read.me that's distributed separately. Duplicating the file just made distribution zip's larger and made extra work for me when packing up new versions. Now, all that's in the .qwk packet is instructions to read the read.me file. Changes included in v1.35 ------------------------- o Another control.dat problem was found pertaining to a specific BBS (or BBS software/mail door?). A registered user sent me a packet where control.dat had the user name padded to about 40 characters max. This overwrote some internal variables (specifically, the BBSID) and the system tried to create replies in a file named " .msg". This is not legal and MR/2 would puke. Since this has now caused trouble twice, I've rewritten the routine to handle virtually any length of user name. Changes included in v1.36 ------------------------- o Beeping on personal messages did not always work. The comparing of names was case sensitive, and worked only if the message name and the user name in control.dat matched EXACTLY. This has been corrected. o Modified the tagline "random" seeding in an attempt to make things more "random". Someone reported that the same taglines were coming up even when set to RANDOM. I could not recreate this, but an examination of my code revealed that there were only 60 possible seeding combinations. (I used time(NULL)%60). I've changed this to offer a broader range of starting seeds. o Tagline style now defaults to PC-Board. This is 3 dashed as a tearline and hi-end ASCII block characters as MR/2's signiture delimiters. I also added the keyword "TagStyle" to MR2INI.ORG. It's been there for a while, but I missed it when documenting and setting up this starter INI file. o Fixed a thread-name formatting problem in the quick thread summary logic (originally fixed in MR/2 PM). The very last thread name would sometimes be blank or some initial characters missing due to a previous "RE:" being detected. This has been fixed. o Modified the conference "sort" (when Alpha-sorted master conference names are requested <the default>). Previously, conference names where inserted into the final linked list used by the QWK class in insertion-sorted order. In other words, I'd plow through the linked list and find the right spot for a conference name and plop it there. This was extremely slow for large lists. Now, names are recorded (sorted) in a BTREE structure, then transfered into linked-list format. The increase in speed (using PC-Ohio's 1000+ and Channel 1's 2200+ conference lists as tests) is dramatic. I'm happy, I hope you are too. Changes included in v1.37 ------------------------- o The selection box logic had some problems when working in modes with a large number of display lines (e.g., 60 line mode). Pressing enter on the 32nd listed entry or beyond was treated by MR/2 as being a letter-character command and the "ENTER" would be ignored. This has been fixed. o Added a new member of zEq, the event class. The event function rehidemouse() can be used after a video mode change. If the mouse flag says it should be hidden, MouRemovePtr() is called with the current screen size. If the mouse flag says the mouse is *not* hidden, nothing is done. o The changing of video modes (number of display lines) caused the mouse cursor to sometimes become visible when it shouldn't. This has been corrected. Also, if MouseMode was set to OFF and you replied to any message, the mouse would appear upon return from the editor (the mouse flag was reset to "show" upon return). This has been fixed. o In an early and primitive attempt to support long file names, I've switched to the linker distributed with the MS v1.2 toolkit. It seems blink (Zortech's linker) doesn't like the LONGNAMES keyword in the .def file. Hopefully, nothing strange will happen :) Changes included in v1.38 ------------------------- o If EditHeader was set to AFTER only and an existing reply was modified, "your" name would appear in the TO field as well as the FROM field. This was the result of a 9/2/92 patch for AFTER mode, but the patch should not effect editing of replies. Fixed. o While working in Header Editing "AFTER" mode I also discovered that the subject of a "Write new" message was often filled in with the last read message's subject. Subjects are now blanked out when writing a "new" message. o Write new: conference numbers > 1000 would only show last 3 digits. Display now is widened by one and 4 digit conference numbers displayed. o Conference select when editing the message header has been expanded in width by one character to match Write new conference select. o My testing of BBS's with 4 digit conference support failed to find one possibility. It was reported that, at least once, some QWK door produced 4-digit index files for conference numbers < 1000. For instance, conference 1 would be indexed by 0001.ndx. "Normal" doors seem to use 3 digits *until* the conference number grows to 1000 or more. MR/2 now supports and auto-detects both types. o Enhanced the tagline stealer to recognize taglines made by the BlueWave mail reader. Added recognition for Speed Reader's method, also. o A packet was provided to me that had strange, extremelly long conference names; actually conference names followed by comment-like descriptions. These long names were causing strange screen-wrapping problems. I've now got a 60-char maximum box width set for conference names. Names longer that this will be truncated ... they won't look pretty, but they'll look better than what I just saw :) o My new/faster btree sorting method would toss out duplicate conference names. This wouldn't normally be a problem, but OS/2 Shareware's QWK door truncates all Usenet news feed names to "Comp.Os.Os2.". Versions using the old sort method (or new ones with Alpha sorting OFF) would show multiple conferences all with the same name. New version show the conference only once, if at all. Collisions (duplicate names) are now handles as unique records and added - so all conferences show up. They're still named the same. I've netmailed OS/2 Shareware with a description of the problem. o Conference name boxes on "Write new" and header-editing selection now adjust their width to accomodate long conference names. (Kind of a continuation of the fix above). o I've been making alot of minor changes and improvements and haven't been too careful about remembering them. Let's see, I found a minor bug with adding replies. Every time you replied, a 30 byte chunk of memory was allocated for the conference listing, and any older conference record was never freed. You'd have to make quite a few replies before this would create a problem - but it's fixed anyway. The "Read" indicator on the message index and quick thread summary has been changed from "*" to "√". I think it looks nicer. o Tagline stealer can now steal wider taglines - 76 chars in length max. o Added some code to detect "&" symbol in BBS name. This was causing the OS/2 CMD.EXE to do strange things when passed to PKZip and PKUnzip. MR/2 now wraps all BBSID-based names that contain a "&" in quotes. Changes included in v1.39x - BETA --------------------------------- Folks: I'm calling the next few versions "beta-level" releases. Most of my releases are anyway <g>, but the next couple of cuts are going to have many new functions and lots of rewritten sections. Most of these are scheduled for version 2.0, but I'm thinking that I'll release them in steps instead of holding back (i.e., 1.4, 1.5 ... 2.0). Stick with v1.38 if your craving for adventure is low :) o INTERNAL: Renamed RemoveKilledReplies() to RemoveKilledMessages(). This function will be used to later pack message "folders" and the new name better reflects its more generic purpose. o INTERNAL: Added folderfh to QWK class and modified all message access routines to check the freadingfolder flag. o INTERNAL: new routine fix_path() in INI.cpp. ReplyPath and PacketPath now pass through this call, as well as FolderPath. o INTERNAL: Massively modified Inbasket/Folder logic - I didn't like the way it was working. o Packing of replies has been reworked. Previously, all replies were copied to a temporary file, with killed replies being filtered out. Then, the reply file was deleted and the temporary file renamed to the reply file name. Now the reply file is packed "in place". This is faster, does not require a temporary file AND has been made generic to allow for future use with folders. o Mouse is now semi-function on "form" type entry screens. Functional as far as clicking on any informational "keystroke" bar will simulate that keypress. For example, when saving a message, clicking on "pick from list" will simulate an F2 keypress. This was probably more coding than it was worth, but it works :) Tagline stealing, save file select and reply header editing were effected. o Added an " ENTER = ESCAPE " key bar to save file name entry to aid in mouse use. o New TagStyle value has been added. If the INI file contains the line "TagStyle=TwoLine", then a tagline in the form of: .. your funny tagline here -- MR/2 v1.38 NR will be produced. Originally, I called this the "BlueWave" style, but something didn't sit well with me, so I changed it to "TwoLine" :). o You can now "Defer" any message to a QWK save area independant of the current packet for later processing. This will create an "InBasket" conference which will contain all messages for the current BBS that have been deferred and never manually deleted. This allows for you to reply to the message later, when time permits, without having to keep the entire packet around, trying to remember why, and which message it was. Press "D" or "/" while viewing the message you want to defer. *** THIS IS BETA-LEVEL CODE - USE WITH CARE *** ALSO: Inbasket code is subject to change ... read the next version's read.me file to make sure inbasket messages saved with this version will work with the new. You may have to "clean up" old inbasket message with the old (this) version MR/2. o Added FolderPath as an INI param. This is where folder directories will be created. The default is "..\", so that subdirectories off of the MR/2 "home" directory will be created. o ALT-E can now be used to enter NEW messages for any known BBS even when the "no packets found" dialog box is displayed. I thought I'd done this before, but it wasn't working. Now it does :) o Forced REPLYLOG variable to NO - this wasn't finished and I'd inadvertently documented it in the default INI file. It did very strange things. I'll try to finish this off soon so it works the way it's supposed to. Sorry? o The internal editor is now functional. Simply set the Editor specification in your INI file to "INTERNAL". The editor is fairly simple; press HELP (F1) for a summary of available keys. NOTE: This is also beta-level code. Expect bugs, but the basic editor works OK. Single window, no import/export text functions, yet. ALSO!!! Set your word-wrap margins in MR2.INI to *76 or greater* for the best results. Smaller numbers work fine, except previous "quoted" sections get mangled (at least you can now see this *while editing* the message, though :). The editor is wide open for ideas. I *still* don't want to spend alot of time writing editor code, but if an idea makes sense, I'll think about it. 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