Turnbull China Bikeride/Turnbull China Bikeride - Disc 2.iso/BARNET/ACORNET/OLD-VERSIONS/ACORNET020/!Acornet_Apps_!Messenger_!Help

Text File | 1997-08-01 | 27.6 KB | 609 lines

Messenger - An E-Mail & News Client                             V1.02
===================================                             =====

Welcome
=======

Welcome to Messenger, an e-mail and news client for use with Newsbase.

Upgrading
=========

If you are upgrading from an earlier version of Messenger, then you will need
to reconfigure your user choices, as the format of the configuration file has
changed.

Requirements
============

Messenger requires RISC OS 3.10 or later and Newsbase 0.59 or later. Newsbase
is available from http://www.hep.umn.edu/~allan/newsbase/. Messenger also
uses Acorn's Toolbox modules, which can be downloaded from
http://www.locutus.demon.co.uk/messenger/toolbox.spk if you do not have them
already.

Licence
=======

Messenger is © Copyright 1995-7 Mark Sawle and is released as freeware.
Permission is granted to use Messenger on the understanding that this use is
entirely at your own risk.  I accept no liability whatsoever for any loss or
damage arising from the use of Messenger nor do I make any guarantee that
Messenger is fit for any purpose.  You may freely distribute Messenger, as
long as no profit is made from this.  Where a profit is made, permission must
first be sought from me.

Support
=======

Support for Messenger is available via a dedicated web site at
http://www.locutus.demon.co.uk/messenger/ and a couple of mailing lists. It
is recommended that you subscribe to the Messenger mailing list intended for
announcements and general discussion about Messenger. To subscribe send an
empty message to [e-mail] with a subject of 'SIGNON
messenger-l'. The other mailing list has the sole purpose of distributing
Messenger upgrades.  To subscribe send an empty message with a subject of
'SIGNON msgrbinary'.

Should you ever want to unsubscribe from these lists, follow the above
instructions but replace SIGNON with SIGNOFF.

For your convenience, Messenger includes menu options to generate these
requests, on the Misc=>Mailing lists submenu.

WARNING
=======

Messenger uses the same NewsRC file as TTFN to keep track of which messages
have been read, and is compatible with TTFN as long as you do not save any
group settings (i.e. the sort and display options).  Your NewsRC file will be
*seriously* corrupted if you have these settings and use TTFN, or an earlier
version of Messenger.

As a result of this, as distributed Messenger will *not* allow you to save
these settings, unless you first disable the option to write old format
NewsRC files in Messenger's general choices.  If you do disable this option,
you must not use TTFN or any version of Messenger older than v1.00.

User Manual
===========

What follows is a rather rough user manual for Messenger.  This is still
pretty much under development, but should hopefully contain all the
information you need to know.

Installation
------------

Assuming you have a working Newsbase setup, then installing Messenger should
simply be a matter of copying it into the directory from where you wish to
use it.  You will probably want to set up a default user the first time you
use it, which you can do by bringing up Messenger's choices window
(Choices... from the icon bar menu) and clicking on 'Newsbase choices'. Note
however that these choices will be unavailable if your user name does not
have system administrator privileges set in Newsbase.  To remedy this, open
Newsbase's control panel, click on 'Local users', select your user name from
the pop up menu at the top of the dialogue, click Modify and select the
'Admin' attribute before saving.

Logging In
----------

To log in to Newsbase via Messenger, either select the Login... option from
the icon bar menu, or follow the arrow to the right and select the required
user name from the menu.  In the first case, or if a password is required,
then the user login dialogue will appear which has writable fields for the
user name and password, although the password will appear as dashes as you
type it.  The user menu is also available from this dialogue box, which
allows you to choose a user rather than type it.  Press the Login button when
you've finished, and Messenger will attempt to log you in.

It is possible to set a default user which allows you to skip the login
process - see the Choices section for more details.  Where a default user
requires a password, you will be prompted for it as described above.

Mailboxes, Folders and Newsgroups
---------------------------------

There are three types of group in Messenger, mailboxes, folders and
newsgroups.  Newsbase creates one mailbox per user and gives it the name
Email.username.  Folders can be private or public with private folders
created in the Email.username.* hierarchy whilst public folders are created
in the Folder.* hierarchy.  Messenger strips the prefixes from these names to
aid presentation, although anywhere where a folder name must be specified
will also accept the full names as known to Newsbase.  Any other group is
treated as a newsgroup.  Note that throughout Messenger, the term group is
used to collectively refer to mailboxes, newsgroups and folders.

As a special case, Messenger can be told to treat named folders as containing
messages from a mailing list.  Mailing lists are treated as newsgroups and
are displayed in the newsreader.  See the section on mailing list support
below for more information.

Viewers
-------

All of Messenger's viewers share common functionality which is described
here.  Selections can be made using Select to select one item, and adjust to
toggle the inclusion of other items.  Holding down Ctrl allows a selection
box to be dragged to include a range of items.  Double clicking an item
usually opens the item for display or edit, and some viewers support drag and
drop of the items within them by dragging using Select.

Most viewers include a select all/clear selection button (which looks
something like this - [/]).  Clicking SELECT on this button will select all
the entries in the viewer, whilst clicking ADJUST will clear the current
selection.  These options are usually available from the viewer's menu as
well.

Interactive Help
----------------

All of Messenger's button bars include an interactive help bar which will
tell you the function of the button currently underneath the mouse pointer.
Messenger also fully supports Acorn's interactive help system.

The Mailer, Newsreader and Folder Viewer
----------------------------------------

These three windows have a common interface and so are described together.
Each contains a list of groups of the appropriate type (mail, news or
folders) to which you are subscribed, and the number of messages they
contain.  Messenger can be configured to display only groups that contain
unread messages, only those that contain read messages, or all groups to
which you subscribe.  This is called the read mode, and the current setting
is displayed in the title bar.  Counts are displayed of the number of
messages of the required type (unread, read or all) as well as the total
number of messages in each group.  A group can be opened in the current read
mode by double clicking on it.  Note that the read mode is ignored if
settings for that group have been saved previously.

The viewer menu and button bar together give options for setting the current
read mode, for catching up (marking all messages as read) on selected groups,
and unsubscribing from them.  The current read mode can also be saved for
each viewer independently, as can the position of the window.  Also available
are access to the address book, group subscription and search windows.  These
are documented elsewhere.

Group Viewers
-------------

A group viewer lists the messages and/or threads that a group contains. Each
message has its subject, sender and date of sending displayed in this viewer,
as well as a visual indication of whether the message has been read or not
(ticked for read, unticked for unread).  In the case of a threaded newsgroup,
a list of threads will also be displayed in the same window, each of which
has displayed its subject and the number of messages contained within it. A
thread can be opened to reveal the messages inside by shift double-clicking
on its entry.  The thread can subsequently be contracted by shift
double-clicking again on the thread title.  Double-clicking on a message will
open it for display.  Double-clicking a thread will display the first message
in that thread.

The way Messenger sorts the contents of the viewer can be altered by clicking
on the column heading corresponding to the field on which you wish to sort.
Messenger remembers which columns have been used for sorting previously, and
uses this information to implement a multi-level sort.  Hence, for example,
if you wish to sort by author and then by date with each author, you can
click on the Date column followed by the Sender column to achieve this (the
last column selected is always the primary sort key, which is why this is
done in reverse order to what you might otherwise expect).  The current sort
can also be altered from the Display submenu that can be brought up from this
window.  Both ascending and descending sorts are supported, either by
selecting the appropriate entry from the menu, or by clicking on the column
heading with SELECT for ascending, or ADJUST for descending.

It is also possible to change the read mode for the group from the Display
submenu, which will cause Messenger to reread the details for the group.
Messenger allows both the current sort and read mode to be saved and applied
each time the displayed group is opened.  This is done by selecting
Display=>Settings=>Save from the menu.  If you subsequently wish to remove
the saved settings and revert to the defaults, then you may do so by
selecting Display=>Settings=>Reset.  The position of the window may also be
saved, although this will apply for all groups, not just the one being
displayed.

The Message submenu allows you to perform certain operations on messages. You
may send a reply to the sender of a message, or to all the recipients of a
message by using the Reply and Reply to all options.  You may post a followup
to a newsgroup using the Followup option, or forward a copy of a message to
another address by using the Forward facility.

Messages may be saved to disc or another application, or uudecoded.  In both
these cases, if a selection is made then the messages that comprise that
selection will be concatenated and processed together, thus allowing
multipart save and uudecode.  Messages may also be printed, deleted or filed
(copied) into a folder.  Group viewers also support drag and drop message
filing which allows you to copy messages between groups by dragging them from
one window to another.  To move messages using this method, simply hold down
Shift as you perform the operation.

Messages can be locked or unlocked, and marked as read and unread.  Header
only messages can have their full message bodies requested using the Fetch
body option, and news article cancel requests may be sent using the Cancel
option.  Note that you may only cancel your own articles, and Messenger will
check for this.

Creating/Deleting Folders
-------------------------

The folders viewer also allows you to create and delete folders.  Creation of
folders involves clicking on the Create folder button and specifying the name
of the folder, and whether or not it is a private, personal, folder.
Deletion involves selecting the folders you wish to delete and pressing the
Delete folder button.  Note that deletion of folders will also result in the
deletion of all messages within those folders, although you will be asked to
confirm your actions first.

Message Displays
----------------

Each message is displayed in its own window, with or without its header which
can be toggled by clicking on the header button, or by selecting
Display=>Header from the menu.  If a message is Rot13 encoded, you may decode
it by selecting Display=>Rot 13 from the menu.  There are two buttons for
moving through messages, the previous message button will take you back
through the group, whilst the next message button will display the next
message *in the current read mode*, or will close the window if no more
appropriate messages are remaining.

If you have message colouring enabled, then quoted text and attributions will
appear in different colours depending on the level of quoting.  Headers and
signatures will also be displayed in a different colour.  See the section on
display choices to see how to configure the colours used.

Messenger highlights URLs and e-mail addresses (if message colouring is
enabled) in its message displays, and allows you to launch them by clicking
on them.  UUcoded attachments are also recognised and a line representing
them displayed in the message text, rather than the uucode itself.  To
extract the attachment, simply click on this line with SELECT, and Messenger
will uudecode it and allow you to save it to disc or another application.

If a group has been configured to be threaded, then a pop up menu is
available which gives a list of the current message's ancestors, and any
replies to the current message that were included in the group viewer. To
display one of these messages, simply select the required message ID. Also
available in threaded mode are previous and next thread buttons,# which work
like the previous/next message buttons, but allow you to move between whole
threads.  When moving on to the next thread, you can mark the skipped
articles as read by holding down Ctrl.

Finally, all the message operations available from the group viewers are
available here too.

Sending Mail
------------

The send mail dialogue is brought up by clicking on the send mail button, by
choosing the send mail menu option, or by Shift-clicking Select on
Messenger's icon bar icon.  It contains six writable fields, although only
the first two are compulsory.  The To field is a comma separated list of
e-mail addresses to which the message should be sent.  The Subject gives a
title for the message, and should be chosen to reflect the message contents.
The CC (Carbon Copy) field allows you to add additional recipients and is
used in the same way as the To field.  The BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field does
the same thing, but none of these recipients will be listed within the
message, so nobody will know that they received a copy.  The pop up menus to
the right of the address fields allow you to select addresses from your
address book.

The File in field allows you to specify the name of a folder in which a copy
of this message will be filed.  The pop up menu to the right of this field
gives a list of all your folders to choose from should you require it.  The
Reply to field allows you to specify an alternative address to which replies
to this message should be sent.  Note that you do not need to set this to
your own address, as this is automatically assumed.

The Attachments section allows you to include files as part of your message.
Each attachment will be uuencoded, so as to be in a suitable format for
e-mail transmission.  To specify attachments, simply drag the required files
from a filer window into the Attachments section, which will list all the
attachments currently specified.  Should you wish to remove one or more
attachments, then you may select them and choose the Remove option from the
menu that is available by clicking Menu over the Attachments area.

This dialogue box is also brought up when replying by mail to an existing
message.  In this case the To and Subject fields will be filled in for you.

Posting News
------------

The post news dialogue is brought up by clicking on the post news button, by
selecting the post news menu option, or by Shift-clicking Adjust on the icon
bar icon.  For a description of the Subject, Mail copy to (CC), File in and
Reply To fields, see the Sending Mail section above.

The Newsgroups field should contain a comma separated list of the newsgroups
to which you wish your message to be posted, and is mandatory.  You should
ensure that your choice of newsgroups is appropriate given the content of
your message, and that you post it to as few newsgroups as possible.
Excessive crossposting is a form of net abuse, and may contravene your ISP's
AUP.  The Followup To field allows you to specify an alternative, more
appropriate, newsgroup or newsgroups to which followups to your message
should be directed.  If you wish followups to be sent to you by e-mail
instead of to a newsgroup, then you can specify a newsgroup of 'poster' which
will do this.

This dialogue box is also brought up when posting a followup to an existing
message, in which case the Newsgroups and Subject fields will be
automatically filled in.  Note that you should still check that these fields
are appropriate for the content of message, since threads have a tendancy to
change subject as the discussion continues.

Editing Messages
----------------

Both the send mail and post news dialogues have an edit button which opens an
edit session in a text editor.  Note that there is no way to avoid editing
the message at least once, due to the way that Messenger has been
implemented.  Messenger will automatically generate the message header,
attributions and quoted text, and append your signature and a tagline.  Note
that all these may not be appropriate depending on your user choices, and
whether or not you are replying or composing a new message.

Messenger's dialogue box will remain on screen during the edit, although you
will not be able to amend any of the fields.

When you have finished composing your message, then you should save it from
within the editor (without changing its filename) and then close the text
editor's window.  Messenger will be informed that you have finished editing
and will make the fields in its dialogue box editable again.  You may then
make changes to these fields, send the message by clicking Send/Post, abandon
the message by clicking Cancel, or edit the message again.

Searching
---------

When you click on a search icon, or select Search... from a menu, then
Messenger will invoke the NewsFind search tool to perform the search for you.
Please refer to NewsFind's documentation in
!Messenger.Resources.!NewsFind.!Help for more details.

Address Book
------------

The address book allows you to set up commonly used addresses to save you
having to type them.  It offers options to add, edit or delete addresses.
When adding/editing an address, you will be asked for an optional alias for
the address which is a short form by which you wish this address to be known
(although the use of aliases elsewhere in Messenger is currently
unimplemented).  You are also asked for the name of the person whose address
you are adding, and the actual e-mail address.  Finally, each address can be
placed in your personal address book, or the public address book to which all
users have access.  When Messenger offers you choices from the address book,
it will included entries from both, although you may only edit the public
address book if you have system administrator privileges.  The address book
must be saved in order to make any changes permanent, and you may also reload
the address book from disc to abandon any changes.

Group Subscription
------------------

This window allows you to subscribe and unsubscribe from groups.  Along the
top are three radio buttons which select the type of groups that are
displayed.  On the left are groups which are available but to which you do
not subscribe.  On the right are those groups to which you are subscribed.
Subscribing and unsubscribing from groups is a simple matter of selecting the
desired groups and pressing the Subscribe or Unsubscribe buttons
respectively.  The changes take immediate effect.

Choices
-------

Messenger's choices window can be brought up by selecting Choices... from the
icon bar menu.  If you have system administrator privileges in Newsbase, then
you will be able to configure all aspects of Messenger, otherwise you will be
limited to display and editing choices.  Note that choices must be set in
their respective windows and then saved from the main window, in order to
take effect.

Newsbase Choices
----------------

These choices allow you to specify whether Messenger should start up Newsbase
automatically if it is not running, and also which user should be selected by
default.  To specify no user, simply leave this field blank. You may also
access Newsbase's own setup window from here, by clicking on the Newsbase
setup... window.

Mailing List Choices
--------------------

Messenger incorporates support for mailing lists so that they can be treated
as newsgroups and offer separate reply and followup options. To take
advantage of this, you must have messages from the mailing list filtered into
a folder by Newsbase.  Please refer to Newsbase's documentation for details
on how to do this.  Note that the mailing list setup facilities are only
available to users with system administration privileges.

Once a filter (and folder) has been set up, you may inform Messenger of the
list by selecting the Mailing lists option from the choices window and
selecting Add.  You will be asked to give a name for the mailing list, to
specify the folder which contains its messages, and also to give the e-mail
address to which postings to the list should be sent.  You should then click
OK.  The mailing lists viewer will then be updated to include the new list.
From this window, you may edit the details of existing lists and also remove
entries.  You may also reload the mailing list choices and abandon all
changes.

Display Choices
---------------

This window allows you to specify what font, font size, colours, and other
options Messenger should use when displaying messages.  The message colouring
option makes Messenger highlight URLs and colour text in such a way that
quoted text has a different colour to unquoted text.  Up to four levels of
quoting are supported.  Messenger will also colour the header and signature
differently if required.  The colours used for message colouring can be set
by selecting Colours... to bring up the colour selection window.

Display width sets the maximum width of a line in characters, at which
Messenger will split the line if it exceeds this width.  You may also choose
whether or not to display headers and signatures or to underline URLs.

Font Choices
------------

Messenger supports Zap bitmap fonts, and conventional RISC OS outline fonts.
To select a bitmap font (including the system font), select the Bitmap font
option and click Change.... This will open the bitmap font selection window
from where you may choose the required font, and its aspect.  To use an
outline font, select the outline font option instead and you will be
presented with an outline font picker window.

If the Filer has seen a copy of Zap before you run Messenger, then Messenger
will pick up the fonts stored within Zap.  Otherwise, the more limited set
distributed with Messenger will be used.

Editing Choices
---------------

These choices control how Messenger handles edits of outgoing messages that
you originate.  The header options (for advanced users only) allow you to
control whether header editing is permitted, and also to specify any user
defined headers that you would like Messenger to include in the header of
every message.  To specify user defined headers, select this option, click
Edit... and add the required headers to the file which is opened for you. If
you wish a particular header to be only included in mail messages, then
prefix the line with ":M " (excluding the quotes but including the space),
and likewise use ":N " for just news messages.

Also included in the header choices is a facility which will automatically
include the header line 'X-No-Archive: yes' in outgoing news postings to
named newsgroups.  This prevents Usenet archives from adding your messages to
their databases, which you may find desirable for some newsgroups.  To
include newsgroups in this list, click on the Archive disabling... and list
the newsgroups, one per line, in this file, before saving it back.

The 'Use non-OLE compliant editor' option forces Messenger to use the
OLESupport module rather than any OLE capable client (including the supplied
OLEedit) that may be registered.  This allows you to use editors that aren't
capable of OLE such as Edit or its derivatives (DeskEdit, SrcEdit, etc.)  To
use this option, you must install a copy of the OLESupport module into
!System.Modules.  OLESupport is distributed with Impression Style/Publisher,
the ANT Internet Suite, and possibly other applications. It may also be
downloaded from Hensa at
ftp://micros.hensa.ac.uk/micros/arch/riscos/b/b129/b129.arc

This window also includes quoting choices which allows you to enable/disable
the quoting of messages when replying or following up, to specify whether
signatures are quoted, and to specify the prefix to be prepended to each
quoted line.  It is recommended that you keep to the defaults for these
options.

Finally, you may specify whether a signature file is automatically appended
to your messages, and also whether a randomly chosen tagline is also
appended. Click on the Edit... buttons to edit your signature and tagline
files.

General Choices
---------------

Messenger's general choices allow you to configure whether Messenger will
chime when new mail arrives, whether to include private (personal) folders in
the mailer window rather than the folders viewer, and also whether to
maintain a backwards compatible NewsRC file (see elsewhere for more details
on why this might be necessary).  It is also possible to configure whether a
Select click on the icon bar opens the mailer window, or your personal
mailbox.

Drag and Drop Support
---------------------

Messages may be dragged from one group to another in order to copy and move
them.  In addition, all of Messenger's writable fields allow you to drag in a
text file which will insert the first line of the file into the field.

URL Support
-----------

Messenger will respond to mailto: and news: URLs sent from other
applications.

Virtualise Support
------------------

Messenger uses a dynamic area for its large memory allocations, and
automatically enables virtual memory if you are using Clares' Virtualise.

Quoted Printable Decoder
------------------------

Messenger incorporates a quoted printable decoder which is invoked
automatically.

Acknowledgements
================

NewsFind
--------

Messenger incorporates the NewsFind application which is used to perform
searches.  NewsFind is © 1996, 1997 Tony Houghton.  For more details, see the
file !Messenger.Resources.!NewsFind.!Help.

OLE Edit
--------

OLE Edit is © Peter Greenham & Ting Kuei 1994.  Please see the file
!Messenger.Resources.!OLEedit.!Help for more details.

THSound
-------

The THSound module and THPlay sample player are © Tony Houghton.  For more
details, see the file !Messenger.Resources.THSoundDoc.

MD5
---

Messenger's password encryption code is derived from the RSA Data Security,
Inc. MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm and is Copyright © 1996 Thomas Hawtin.

UUExplode
---------

Messenger contains the uuexplode code written by Kevin Yang and Michael
Bergman as kiss, ported to RISC OS by Martin Glanvill and modified for
use with Messenger by myself.

ZapRedraw
---------

The ZapRedraw module is © Dominic Symes and is included with permission.

Impulse
-------

The Impulse module is © Computer Concepts Ltd.

Sprites
-------

Thanks to Darren Salt, David Hobson and James Shiell for contributing
sprites.

Fonts
-----

The bitmap fonts included with Messenger are public domain (and were taken
from the Zap distribution).  Please see the file !Messenger.Fonts.Copyright
for more details.

Contact
=======

Please send any bug reports or suggestions for improvement by e-mail to:

    [e-mail]

or to the Messenger mailing list, if you're subscribed to it, at:

    [e-mail]

My personal e-mail address is:

    [e-mail]

© 1995-7 Mark Sawle