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Oberon PMQWK Offline Mailreader ** BETA ** Version 1.00, Release #7 19 January, 1993 Oberon Software 518 Blue Earth Street Mankato, MN 56001-2142 USA Voice: 507-388-7001 Fax: 507-388-7568 BBS: 507-388-1154 Fidonet: 1:292/60 MCI Mail: oberon/413-5847 CIS: 72510,3500 GEnie: B.FLOWERS NOTE: Except for this note, this file has not been updated since the previous version of PmQwk. Please see the online help file for any new information, and the whats.new file for new features. ** CAUTION *** The accompanying software is a BETA TEST version. It is NOT guaranteed to be complete or free from defects. This software and documentation are subject to change and do not in anyway imply a commitment on the part of Oberon Software or the author. If you use this software, you do so at your own risk. Oberon Software will not be liable for any losses or damages to property, data, time, or business which arise as the direct or indirect result of the use, misuse, or failure to be able to use this software or documentation. Your acceptance of these terms is implied by your use of this software and documentation. Although this is a BETA TEST version, Oberon Software has released this version for wide distribution. All of the above disclaimers apply and you are cautioned to not use this software if you do not agree to the disclaimers in this file. Your use of this software will imply your acceptance. You are free to distribute this package as you would any other shareware program under the provision that no changes are made in any way to the software or the accompanying documentation and that the entire package, complete with this documentation is distributed together as a unit. If, while using this software, you should discover any program errors or omissions which are not otherwise mentioned in this document (please read "Features and Functions Absent in this BETA TEST Version" below before submitting a problem report), please contact Kimberly Bobrow at Oberon Software by one of the methods given below and alert us to the existence of the problem so that it may be corrected. If the problem results in a system error popup (i.e., a TRAP 000D or other system trap) please make note of the values of "CS" and "IP" from the system error display. Also, please indicate the version and release number of the software which experienced the problem. ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Contact for bug reports and enhancements requests: │ │ │ │ Oberon BBS or OS/2 Shareware BBS to Kimberly Bobrow │ │ Fidonet to Kimberly Bobrow at either 1:109/347 or 1:292/60 │ │ Internet to kimberly.bobrow@f347.n109.z1.fidonet.org │ │ Voice phone: 212-465-3367 │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ **** CONTENTS **** Caution I. Overview II. Installation A. Files B. First time startup 1. Paths and Options 2. Your first QWK packets III. Using PMQWK A. Unpacking QWK packets B. Reading messages 1. The "List" function 2. The "Copy" function 3. The "Replies" conference C. Replying to messages 1. The editor a. Word Wrap 2. Messages which are not replies D. Packaging replies for upload E. The Address Book 1. Copying information to the Envelope window F. Options 1. Fonts 2. Colors 3. Paths 4. Editor 5. Preferences a. Beep on personal messages b. Attribute quotes c. Wrap Column for Quotes d. Prepend "Re:" to response subject lines e. Strip existing "Re:" from subject lines f. Prev/Next buttons on right in message reader g. Use Taglines h. Use PMQWK Cutline i. Show only active conferences 6. Save options 7. Icons ************** I. Overview PMQWK is a 32-bit, Presentation Manager (tm) based program for use with OS/2 version 2.0 or later. Its purpose is to facilitate the reading and reply process for messages downloaded from bulletin boards and other sources which employ the "QWK" format for mail packets. You may use PMQWK to: Unpack new QWK mail packets which have been downloaded from a bulletin board or other service into a format which is readable by PMQWK. QWK packets from any arbitrary number of bulletin boards or services may be examined simultaneously. Read your unpacked messages. Each bulletin board or service may transmit any number of messages, grouped into 'conferences', and all are handled via a tree-like mechanism within PMQWK. Any number of conferences for any number of bulletin boards may be opened simultaneously within PMQWK. Reply to any message or enter new messages into a conference and prepare them for retransmission to the bulletin board or service. PMQWK handles such things as quoting the original message, attributing quotes, maintaining reply links and other bookkeeping details while you use the editor of your choice to edit the replies or messages. Entire messages or portions of messages may be saved to alternate files either directly or via the system clipboard or may be integrated via the clipboard into other documents or files. Pack replies and messages into a format suitable for retransmission to the bulletin board or service. PMQWK currently supports the following compression programs for purposes of packing and unpacking mail packets: PKZIP2 (and PKUNZIP2), LH2 (LHArc for OS/2) and ARC2 (SEA ARC for OS/2). More will be added in the near future. PMQWK will NOT do the following: Upload or download QWK mail packets to and from the bulletin boards and/or on-line services. A separate telecommunications program is required for this purpose. We recommend Oberon Software's Terminal Emulator/2 (TE/2) as a good, general purpose, terminal program for use with PMQWK and with OS/2 in general. Pack or unpack QWK mail packets without the presence of at least one archiving program on your system. Archiving schemes are, in some cases, proprietary to the vendor of the archiving software and, in almost all cases, subject to change at the vendors discretion. For this reason, PMQWK relies on the presence of one or more of the following programs on your system: PKZIP (and PKUNZIP) from PKWare, LH2 (LHArc for OS/2), or ARC2 from System Enhancement Associates. (PLEASE NOTE: the INFOZIP utilities for zipping and unzipping files do NOT work correctly with PMQWK as they lack a key command line feature which PMQWK requires. Oberon Software has developed a small utility which will be of assistance in working with these programs however. Beginning with PMQWK Beta #7 ZFRONT.EXE is packaged with PMQWK; refer to the file ZFRONT.DOC for further information regarding using ZFRONT.) PMQWK does not include a built-in message editor. Most everyone has his or her favorite text editor and, at the very least, all installations of OS/2 should have E.EXE. PMQWK will use E.EXE by default but you may specify the editor of your choice and it will be automatically invoked for you. Features and Functions absent in this BETA TEST Version: ******************************************************************* This version of PMQWK is tested on OS/2 2.0 "GA" and OS/2 2.0 with the Service Pack (XR6055) installed only. We have experienced problems running this version of PMQWK under the OS/2 2.1 BETA release dated 12/9/92 and do NOT recommend using it in this environment until we have determined the cause of these problems. The March beta seems to have cleared up the problems. ******************************************************************* Paths are not checked for validity in the "Paths" dialog nor are the specified archive programs checked for validity at this point. The paths and programs ARE checked for existence and/or validity before an attempt is made to use any of these however. This feature will be enabled before General Release. Memory allocation checking is not complete in this version of PMQWK. It is possible to "run out of memory" by opening too many conferences and cause PMQWK to abend with a protection violation. Define "too many conferences" in the vicinity of ten or more. This feature will be made bulletproof before General Release. The Color Settings dialog is not fully functional in this release; it is not possible to change the color of highlighted text in message displays although the setting for it appears in the dialog. This feature may or may not be enabled before General Release. The settings for PMQWK allow you to specify paths for ZOO and UNARJ as packer/unpackers but neither of these programs are supported for actual use by this release of PMQWK. An automated setup procedure will be added before General Release. The current method of setting personalized icons for BBSes and conferences is completely manual and infers a certain amount of skill with the file system on the part of the user. This procedure will be automated and simplified. PMQWK will not always sense when an archiving program has problems packing or unpacking a file. If a new packet is mysteriously creating problems, try unpacking the QWK packet by hand to see if it might be a damaged file. Error checking here will be made more robust before General Release. Because this is a BETA TEST release, we expect that you may encounter other program omissions or errors. Please alert Oberon Software to these problems as you encounter them. ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ For bug reports and enhancements requests: │ │ │ │ Oberon BBS or OS/2 Shareware BBS to Kimberly Bobrow │ │ Fidonet to Kimberly Bobrow at either 1:109/347 or 1:292/60 │ │ Internet to kimberly.bobrow@f347.n109.z1.fidonet.org │ │ Voice phone: 212-465-3367 │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Other important notes and considerations: As mentioned above, the INFOZIP packing and unpacking utilities require use of the included program ZFRONT.EXE for use with PMQWK. See ZFRONT.DOC for details. Certain editors will cause problems with PMQWK. The OS/2 Enhanced Editor (EPM.EXE) will work correctly with PMQWK if and only if there are no other copies of EPM running on your machine at the time you begin an edit session via PMQWK (this includes other PMQWK edit sessions). The IBM IUO editor, LXPM, does not function correctly for use with PMQWK. If you have used an earlier (16-bit) beta version of PMQWK, you MUST delete your PMQWK.INI file before running this version and then use the current version to reset your options. II. Installation A. Files For best results, a dedicated directory should be made for PMQWK. We suggest that you make a directory, on the disk of your choice, by the name PMQWK and copy PMQWK.EXE and TagLines.txt into that directory. You should ensure that this directory is your current working directory while you are running PMQWK as PMQWK will maintain subdirectories for each bulletin board underneath this directory. Copy the file REGEXPUT.DLL into a directory named in the LIBPATH statement from your CONFIG.SYS. Install PMQWK into PM or WPS as you deem fit. As mentioned above, you should ensure that the directory containing PMQWK.EXE is the designated "Working Directory" for executing PMQWK however. B. First time startup 1. Paths and Options You may start PMQWK from the OS/2 command line by first ensuring that the disk and directory containing PMQWK are current and typing "PMQWK" at the system prompt. If you have installed PMQWK into your desktop setup (following the rules for current directory) you may start it that way. Example batch file for starting PMQWK assuming that it is installed in to directory 'D:\PMQWK': @echo off D: CD \PMQWK START /PM /N PMQWK Example of the first page of the 'Settings' Notebook for a PMQWK installation assuming that it is installed into directory 'D:\PMQWK': ┌──┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬──┬──┐ │ │ PMQWK Offline Mail Reader - Settings │ │ │ ├──┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴──┴──┤ │┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ ││ │┐ │ ││ ││┐ │ ││ │Program │ ││ ││││ │ ││ ││Session │ ││ Required ││││ │ ││ Path and file name: │││Assocation │ ││ ┌───────────────────────┐ ┌───────┐ ││││ │ ││ │D:\PMQWK\PMQWK.EXE │ │Find...│ ││││General │ ││ └───────────────────────┘ └───────┘ ││││ │ ││ ││││ │ ││ Optional ││││ │ ││ Parameters: ││││ │ ││ ┌───────────────────────────────────┐ ││││ │ ││ │ │ ││││ │ ││ └───────────────────────────────────┘ ││││ │ ││ Working directory: ││││ │ ││ ┌───────────────────────────────────┐ ││││ │ ││ │D:\PMQWK │ ││││ │ ││ └───────────────────────────────────┘ ││││ │ ││ ││││ │ ││ ┌───────┐ ┌───────┐ ││││ │ ││ │ Undo │ │ Help │ ││││ │ ││ └───────┘ └───────┘ ││││ │ ││ < >││││ │ │└────────────────────────────────────────────────┘│││ │ │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────┘││ │ │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────┘│ │ │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ │ └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Immediately upon entering PMQWK for the first time, select the menu item labeled "Options" and the submenu item labeled "Paths". Set the following items: Inbound QWK Packets: set this item to the name of the directory in which new QWK packets will appear after they have been downloaded from the BBS or on-line services. In general, this will be the download directory which your telecommunications program uses although you may wish to create a new directory specifically for this purpose and move QWK packets into this directory by other means after they have been downloaded. [NOTE: in this version of PMQWK the validity of this path is NOT checked at this point.] Outbound Reply Packets: set this item to the name of the directory where you wish PMQWK to deposit packaged reply packets to be uploaded back to the BBS or on-line service. In general, this will be a directory in which your telecommunications program expects to find files for upload. [NOTE: in this version of PMQWK the validity of this path is NOT checked at this point.] Packers and Unpackers: fill in as many of these as are applicable with the drive, path, and name of the appropriate archiving program or programs. If they exist in a directory referred to in your PATH environment variable, you may omit the drive and path specification and give only the name of the program file. [NOTE: in this version of PMQWK, these programs names and paths are NOT checked for validity at this point. FURTHER NOTE: in this version of PMQWK, only the first three archivers are supported: PK(UN)ZIP, ARC, and LH. Entries exist for ARJ and ZOO for future use only, they are not used by this version of PMQWK.] [General note for beta release version: the previous three items have disclaimers stating that validity on these items are not checked during this dialog. The validity IS checked later at appropriate points. If your "InBound" path is invalid or if you have specified no valid archiver programs, PMQWK will find nothing suitable for unpacking when that option is selected. If your "OutBound" path is invalid, PMQWK will default to the current directory for this function after alerting you to the problem. If no valid archivers have been specified by the time you select the option to package reply packets, PMQWK will alert you to the problem.] [Further note: As mentioned above, the INFOZIP utilities for zipping and unzipping files are not supported in this release of PMQWK.] After setting the paths, you may investigate the other items on the "Options" menu for setting your favorite editor as default, setting colors and fonts, and other options or you may leave these settings for later. After setting at least your "Paths", select "Save Options" from the "Options" menu and your setup will be saved. [Technical note: options are not saved in the system files; a file named PMQWK.INI will be made in the same directory as PMQWK.EXE.] If you attempt to exit PMQWK before you have saved your options, PMQWK will query you for this. 2. Your first QWK packets If you do not have any QWK packets available, you must first access a bulletin board or on-line service and obtain at least one QWK mail packet. Make sure that all QWK mail packet in which you are interested are in the directory which you specified as your "InBound" path above. If you have exited PMQWK, restart the program now. Select "Unpack QWK Packet" from the menu. A dialog will appear listing the valid QWK packets which were found in your "InBound" directory. Select the packet in which you are interested and press the OK button. The QWK packet will be unpacked and the name of the BBS should appear now in the "BBS List" window. Repeat this procedure for all packets which you wish to unpack. [Note: the first time you start PMQWK with a valid "InBound" path, or the first time you select "Unpack QWK Packet" with a valid "InBound" path, there may be some delay as PMQWK scans the inbound directory for the first time. This delay will only be significant if there are many files matching the pattern "*.qw*" in that directory. Only "new files" are scanned so the delay should not be significant on subsequent invocations.] III. Using PMQWK A. Unpacking QWK packets Make sure that any and all QWK packets in which you are interested are located in the directory which you specified as your "InBound" path (see section II.B.1 above). Select "Unpack QWK Packet" from the menu or press the "Unpack" button in the "BBS List" dialog window. You will be presented with a list of valid QWK packets which PMQWK was able to locate in your "InBound" directory. Select one to unpack either by double clicking on the file name and info or by selecting it and pressing the "OK" button. The packet will now be unpacked (if you are about to overwrite another packet, you will be given to opportunity to abort the action). Repeat this procedure for every QWK packet you wish to unpack. If you have never unpacked a packet from this source before, a new item will appear in the "BBS List" window at this point. B. Reading messages To begin the process of reading messages, first select a BBS from the "BBS List" window (if this list is empty, you must first unpack at least one QWK packet! See "Unpacking QWK packets" above). After selecting a BBS, another dialog will appear which will list the available conferences for that BBS. Conferences which contain messages will be indicated with a '+' sign in this list while empty conferences will have a '-' as the first character. Each conference also has an indication, in parentheses, of how many message are available and your "current position" in the list. For example: +4/Netmail (5/15) indicates that area #4, called "Netmail" has messages, that it has fifteen messages and that you will enter viewing the fifth message. Please note that, by default, areas which contain no messages (and would thus have a '-' as the first character in their listing, are not shown at all. To enable their visibility, use the "Preferences" dialog and toggle the checkbox labeled "Show only active conferences" to OFF. When you select a conference to view, you will be presented with a window which contains a "message header" at the top of the window, a scrollable region in the central area containing the message text, and a set of buttons at the bottom of the window for initiating various activities. The "message header" contains the following information: the message number, the number of the message it refers to (if any), the position in the list of messages (in our example above, it would read "#5 of 15"), the sender's name, the addressee's name, the subject of the message, its time and date stamp, whether it is a private or public message, and whether the bulletin board has marked this message as "Seen by you" or not. If this is a net mail message, the sender's net address will be given after his/her name in parentheses. Most of the activities are self-explanatory: "Next" and "Prev" will view the next and previous message in the conference respectively, "Quit" closes the window, "Help" invokes the help display (NOTE: "Help" is NOT active in this BETA release!). "Reply" and "Enter" will invoke the reply editor (see "Replying to messages" below) the difference being that "Reply" will preset much of the reply header information with data from the current message while "Enter" will begin the creation of a new, unrelated (as least as far as the QWK format is concerned) message. The other two functions deserve a little more information which follows immediately. 1. The "List" function This invokes a dialog window which, initially contains a list of all messages in the area, their message number, subject, sender, receiver, and time/date. Messages addressed to you are marked with an asterisk "*". You may select a message from this list and press the "OK" button to go immediately to that message. The "Filter" button in this dialog allows you to view a subset of the messages in the list. You may search for text in "envelope" fields (Sender, Receiver, and Subject) or in the message body itself. The filtering is for purposes of the "List" dialog only, it does not affect the behavior of the message window at all (except as regards jumping to a message). 2. The "Copy" function You may mark areas within the message text using the mouse pointer and copy them to the system clipboard using CONTROL+INSERT or you may use the "Copy" dialog. This dialog allows you to refine how you export the data to a greater degree. You may chose to copy the entire message or just the marked area (if any), you may optionally include header information about the message in the export, and you may copy it directly to a file or to the system clipboard. 3. The "Replies" conference There is one extra, pseudo-conference which appears at the beginning of each BBS's conference list named "Replies". This is where all of your entered messages and replies will be kept until they are packed for retransmission to the BBS. It behaves in most ways exactly like a "normal" message window. However, the "Reply" and "Enter" functions are replaced with "Edit" and "Delete". "Edit" will allow you to reedit the message, possibly just the "envelope" information or the entire message text, while "Delete" will erase the currently viewed reply. If this is a netmail message, the Receiver's net address will appear in parentheses after his/her name. C. Replying to messages To reply to a message, simply invoke the "reply" button while you are viewing the message in question. The message will be placed into a file in "quoted" form and your editor will be invoked on that file. You may edit any part of this file and/or append to the file. While your editor is in the process of editing the reply, a new icon will appear in the main client window. "Active Edit Sessions" contains a list of all current invocations of the editor and a button which will allow you immediately switch to any of the listed editor sessions. When you finish editing your reply, you will be returned to PMQWK and given the opportunity to edit the "Envelope" information. This will already have your name, the receivers name, net address (if applicable), the conference for the message, and the subject filled in. You may edit any of these items except your own name. If "TagLines" are enabled (see "Options") you may select a tagline to use from this dialog. If you press "OK" and all of the required fields are filled in, the reply will be saved. If you press "Cancel" the message will be discarded after you confirm that this is your desire. Should you need to reedit a reply message or delete a reply message, invoke the "Replies" pseudo-confernce and perform the desired action from there (see "The "Replies" Conference" above). 1. The editor By default PMQWK will invoke E.EXE, the OS/2 system editor to edit your replies and other outgoing messages. If you have an editor which you prefer to use, use the "Editor" dialog from the "Options" menu (see "Options" below) to specify your editor of choice. a. Word Wrap Because messages are reformatted based on your setting for "Wrap Column" both when quoting a message before a reply and when importing your message from the editor back into PMQWK, you should be aware of the algorithm used for message formatting so that you can achieve a pleasing result. The message formatter is paragraph based. It assumes that a new paragraph has started when it encounters either a blank line or an indented line. It will pull the entire paragraph together to make a "best fit" within your defined wrap column. For example, assuming you have the (unlikely) wrap setting of 30, the following text: |---|----|----|----|----|----| Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. would be reformatted as: |---|----|----|----|----|----| Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. While the following: |---|----|----|----|----|----| Table data: Column 1 Column 2 -------- -------- Apples Oranges would not be reformatted at all because of the indentation. If you are not aware of the way this behaves, you may end up with undesirable results. For instance, if you entered the following: |---|----|----|----|----|----| Hello Joe! Whatcha know? I just got back from Kokomo! Yours truly, Ira it would end up looking like: |---|----|----|----|----|----| Hello Joe! Whatcha know? I just got back from Kokomo! Yours truly, Ira Use blank lines and indentation to avoid having lines pulled back for you when you don't want this to happen. 2. Messages which are not replies Sometimes you may wish to enter a message which is not a reply to any existing message. There are two ways to do this: via the "Enter" button while viewing a conference, and via the "Message" button from the Conference List dialog. In both cases, the procedure that follows is almost exactly that of creating a reply message with the following exceptions: * The "Envelope" dialog will appear both before AND after you edit the message. * No default information is filled in in the "Envelope" dialog the first time; you must specify all fields. Otherwise, for all intents and purposes, a message of this sort is treated exactly like any other reply. D. Packaging replies for upload Select "Pack Replies" from the menu or press the "Pack" button is the "BBS List" dialog window. You will be presented with a list of all BBSes which have unpacked reply messages defined. Select one or more from this list and press "OK". For each selection from the previous list, you will be given a dialog wherein you may select the archiver to use for packaging this reply packet and, if a file by the target name already exists in your "OutBound" directory, the option of overwriting that file or appending the new messages to it. There are possibly two buttons in this dialog labeled "List Replies"; one which always appears and another which will only be present if there already exists a reply packet in your "OutBound" path. This second button appears inside of a group box labeled "Existing Replies" in this case. The first of these buttons will provide a list of "Reply Headers" (the conference number, receiver, and subject) for each message in the group of new messages the second will do the same for the existing replies. Note, if the existing reply packet was not created using PMQWK, PMQWK will not attempt to list its contents. The button labeled "Change Path" will invoke a dialog wherein you may override the currently set "OutBound" path (or reset it to the default value if you have changed it). Press the "OK" button to begin the packing process, press "Cancel" to abort the process. E. The Address Book The address book feature of PMQWK is activated by choosing "Address Book" from the "Files" menu in the main client window of PMQWK. This is a small database wherein you may keep an organized list of names, netmail addresses, and notes for future reference. Each data record in the Address Book consists of four fields: a 'Search key', and 'Name', and a 'Net Address', each of which may be up to 25 characters long plus a 'Notes' field which can hold up to 949 characters of information. The reason for having the 'Key' field separate from the 'Name' field is so that you may enter the name as it is to appear in your reply envelopes (i.e., Name: "Barney Rubble") and still have your list sorted by something other than first name (i.e., Search Key: "Rubble, Barney"). There are five buttons in the Address Book window, each of which will initiate an action. 'Close' will close the address book window, 'New' will insert a new, empty record and place the Address Book in edit mode for that record, 'Edit' will place the address book into edit mode for the currently viewed record, 'Delete' will delete the currently displayed record (NOTE WELL: in the BETA release of the program, the user is NOT queried at this point whether or not to really delete the record!), and 'Help' will display help for the Address Book functions (NOTE: in this BETA release, the 'Help' button is not active.). By default, the Address Book comes up in 'lookup mode'. You may view the details for any entry by either selecting its key from the listbox at the left of the window or by typing the first character or characters of the key into the entry field labeled 'Search Key' in the upper left of the window. The latter performs an 'incremental search' through the list of keys, that is, if you type 'F', the listbox highlight moves to the first entry which begins with an 'F' (this is not case sensitive), if you then proceed to type an 'L', the highlight moves to the first entry in the listbox which begins with 'FL'. You enter 'edit mode' by pressing either the 'New' button or the 'Edit' button. The 'New' button inserts a new, blank record and allows you to edit that record; the 'Edit' button is only available if a valid record is currently displayed and it allows you to edit the currently viewed record. In 'edit mode', the listbox is replaced with a short, informational message and all four of the entry fields (Search key, Name, Net Addr, and Notes) will now accept input. You may type anything into these fields you wish; you may use all of the standard OS/2 editing keys and clipboard functions (i.e., Shift+Delete, Ctrl+Insert, and Shift+Insert for Cut, Copy, and Paste). To save the record as edited, press the "Save" button, to cancel changes press the "Cancel" button (NOTE: in this BETA release of the program, the "Help" button is not active). If you have edited the 'Search Key', the listbox in the 'view mode' window will be rearranged as needed. 1. Copying information to the Envelope window As mentioned above, the OS/2 editing keys which allow you to access the system clipboard are active, that is, you may 'Mark' the name in the Address Book with the mouse or the keyboard, copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+Insert) and paste it into any OS/2 application which will accept clipboard data. This, of course, includes the the fields in PMQWK's Envelope windows. For direct communication with the Envelope window, however, you may elect to use the built-in "Drag and Drop" interface. If you press and hold Mouse Button Two (usually the right mouse button) while the mouse pointer is over the 'Name" field or field label in the Address Book window, the mouse pointer will change into a small rectangle with the word "NAME" in it. Still holding mouse button two, move the mouse pointer to the Envelope window in which you wish this name to appear until the superimposed circle with a slash disappears and release the mouse button. The name will replace whatever text is currently in the "To:" field in the envelope window. If you begin this operation from the "Net Addr" field or field label in the Address Book window, the mouse pointer will instead read "NET" and the data will be placed into the "Net:" field in the envelope window. If you begin from anywhere else in in the Address Book window other than directly over the above mentioned fields or their labels, the mouse pointer will appear as two rectangles, "NAME" and "NET", and the data will go to both fields in the Envelope window. To cancel the drag and drop operation, simply release the mouse button anywhere where it DOES have the circle-slash visible. There is no corresponding drag and drop mechanism for copying data from the Envelope into the Address Book in this release of PMQWK. You may, of course, use the system clipboard to accomplish this as outlined above. F. Options There are several user settable options which you may specify via the various items on the "Options" menu. 1. Fonts This dialog will allow you to set the fonts which PMQWK will use for message displays and list boxes. 2. Colors This dialog will allow you to set the colors which PMQWK will use for message displays and list boxes. [NOTE: In this BETA release of PMQWK, entries appear for "Message HiLited Text" and "Message HiLited Text Background". These setting are NOT functional in this release, the highlighted colors in message displays are a function of the normal, non-hilighted colors.] 3. Paths This topic has already been covered elsewhere in this document. Please refer to Section II.B.1 for information on these settings. 4. Editor You may select your editor of choice here for purposes of editing reply messages. Type the name of the editor in the indicated field, if the program file is not in a directory referred to in your PATH environment variable, you must include the entire drive and path specification for the program. Once you have specified a valid program name here you will be given the opportunity to select how the program will be executed, i.e., as a Presentation Manager program, in a full screen session, or in a windowed session. 5. Preferences Preferences is a catchall for a number of semi-related settings. a. Beep on personal messages If this setting is checked, PMQWK will alert you with a tone whenever you view a message addressed to you. b. Attribute quotes If this setting is checked, you specify that you want PMQWK to provide an "Attribution" to the quotes in your reply messages and you may further specify how you wish this Attribution to appear. Type any text you wish into the associated entry field and it will be echoed into your reply messages. There are several special character sequences which you may embed into this text which will cause PMQWK to insert relevant information from the message header: %s inserts the SENDER's name from the original message %r inserts the RECEIVER's name from the original message %j inserts the SUBJECT of the original message %d inserts the DATE of the original message %t inserts the TIME of the original message %_ inserts a line break in the attribution string %% is used to insert a '%' character in the string. Please note, these codes ARE case sensitive! "%S" will NOT work like "%s", instead it will simply insert the characters "%S" into the attribution string. c. Wrap Column for Quotes The column at which lines will be broken for purposes of quoting original messages. PMQWK attempts to be intelligent about word boundaries and will try to wrap lines at word breaks. d. Prepend "Re:" to response subject lines Automatically place the characters "Re: " at the beginning of subjects lines in replies. "Re: " will NOT be prepended if those characters are already present at the beginning of the subject. e. Strip existing "Re:" from subject lines Remove the characters "Re:" and any white space following from subject lines in replies. Note that this option and the previous are NOT mutually exclusive! If they are both checked, subject lines in replies will always contain one and only one "Re:", if neither is checked, no subject line is ever altered by PMQWK. Note further that you have the ability to add or remove any characters you wish from a subject line via the "Envelope" dialog; these setting are provided as a convenience. f. Prev/Next buttons on right in message reader You may prefer it if the "Next" and "Prev" buttons appeared on the right side of the message reader window and closer to the scroll bars which govern the message text. If so, set this option ON. Be warned, however, that if you move the focus in this window using the TAB or arrows keys that the focus will appear to move out of order with respect to these buttons! g. Use Taglines If this option is checked, PMQWK will look in the same directory that contains the PMQWK.EXE file for a file named "TagLines.txt". If it is found it will use this for it's source of tag lines (humorous or provocative short quotes which will be appended to your outgoing messages) and the "TagLine" drop-down list will be enabled in the various "Envelope" dialogs. From there you may select a line from the list, type in a fresh one "on the fly", or erase it entirely. The TagLines.txt file is a flat ASCII file containing one tagline per line of file; you may edit this file with any text editor. Taglines should not be longer than about 60 or 70 characters. h. Use PMQWK Cutline If this option is set OFF then PMQWK will not append it's own "signature line" to your outgoing messages. i. Show only active conferences If this option is set ON (the default), PMQWK will only display those conference names belonging to conferences containing more than zero messages in the "Conference List" dialog. Use this setting if you have a large number of empty conferences listed by a BBS and you do not wish to navigate past them to find the active areas. 6. Save options All options discussed in this section may be saved semi-permanently in an initialization file by selecting this option. You may always change an option again and resave it. If you change options and do not select "Save options" before you attempt to exit PMQWK, you will be alerted to this fact and given the opportunity to do so at that point. Options are saved in a file named PMQWK.INI in the same directory as PMQWK.EXE. If you've really made a mess of your settings and wish to "start from scratch" just delete this file while PMQWK is not running and restart the program (see section II.B.1 for first time startup directions). 7. Icons Though not on any menu within this version of PMQWK, you may specify your own custom icons and attach them to any "BBS Conference List" dialog or to any "Conference" dialog. You must use OS/2 version 1.3 compatible color or black and white icon files (.ICO). To do this, create a directory underneath the directory containing PMQWK.EXE named "PMQIcons" and place all of your custom icon files in this directory. PMQWK will determine how to use these icons by the names you give the files: To attach an icon to a BBS (Conference List Dialog) give the icon file the same "first name" as the BBS id and an extension of .ICO. (Example: A BBS id might be "FERNWOOD", name the icon file "FERNWOOD.ICO"). To attach an icon to a specific conference for a specific BBS, use the same first name as above but give the file an extension which is the conference number, left padded to three characters with zeros (Example: to attach an icon to conference #5 for the "FERNWOOD" BBS, name the icon file "FERNWOOD.005"). To attach an icon to the "Personal Messages" conference, do as above but give the icon file the extension ".PER". To attach it to the "Replies" pseudo-conference, give it the extension ".ANS". [NOTE: This procedure will be built into the program and made more easy for the average user in the future. Do not attempt this procedure if the above discussion made little or no sense to you!] Happy Mail Reading! Brady Flowers Kimberly Bobrow Oberon Software 19 January, 1993