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EnigmA Amiga Run 1995 October
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EnigmA AMIGA RUN 01 (1995)(G.R. Edizioni)(IT)[!][issue 1995-10][Aminet 7].iso
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1995-04-22
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NewsUpdate 2.1, © 1994 to 1995 by Kevin J. Phair.
FREELY DISTRIBUTABLE
About NewsUpdate
NewsUpdate is an updated version of my (previously unreleased)
program, NextUpdate. I know there's already a program called
NextUpdate, but that wasn't it (although it did something
similar.)
What my version did was to also strip out unnecessary header
information from articles, since the newsgroups were being made
accessible through the BBS. Stripping out the information means
that there is less clutter at the top of a news article if it's
being read online, or if you get it via FIDONet.
Special Features
So, here's version 2.1, with a new name (NewsUpdate, in case that
wasn't clear), and the ability to specify names/part-names to look
for in the From: header, to see if the message should be killed.
So now you can remove bandwidth-wasting posters from your message
base, and even people like myself who use GRn will benefit, if
only in terms of reduced blood pressure.
At some stage, I would hope to add support for killing articles by
subject, and perhaps other things too.
NewsUpdate has been tested with Enforcer and has produced no hits.
Using NewsUpdate
Usage is pretty simple, the first argument must be a filename, and
it must be the filename of your active newsgroups file (the one
you use for NNTPxfer), and then you can follow that up with some
options.
Memory requirements:
If you have T: assign to somewhere in RAM:, then you should make
sure that you have enough RAM to cope with the largest article
that will be processed, or assign T: elsewhere.
The command template is as follows:
NewsUpdate Active-file [QUIET] [NOISY] [KILL] [CLEAN] [COLOUR] [NOBIN]
Keywords are not case-sensitive.
What's an 'active' file?
The active file is the newsgroup control file that your are using
with NNTPxfer (or similar) to transfer news articles. The format
should typically be along the lines of this:
rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5 36785 36605 n
ieie.announce 330 22 n
ieie.comments 936 181 n
ieie.help 713 297 n
ieie.test 349 164 n
comp.sys.amiga.hardware 14798 14721 n
comp.sys.amiga.programmer 8723 8693 n
comp.sys.sinclair 3452 3433 n
alt.sex.wizards 5619 5603 n
alt.tv.x-files 29140 29090 n
alt.tv.melrose-place 7114 7103 n
I.e. lines of "Newsgroup high-pointer low-pointer flag"
You MUST provide an active newsgroup list or this program can't do
anything for you.
Command line options
QUIET
Will prevent any normal output from cluttering your CLI window or
accidentally opening one up from your script.
NOISY
Will provide more detailed information on what the program is
doing (i.e. it will list articles as it cleans them, and also as
it kills them, if necessary)
KILL
Will make the program read in a list of specifiers from the file
'UULib:KillFile.From' when it starts up, and as it scans each
article, it will see if any of these specifiers are contained in
the From: header. If there is a match, then the article is
deleted. NOTICE that this only needs to find the string WITHIN the
From: line, so you can specify a source address to search for, or
even a partial address, e.g.:
'anewton@alturia' would match posts by user 'anewton' at machine
'alturia', in any domain. '@loser.com' would match posts from any
user at loser.com. 'Robodude@' would match posts from a user
called "Robodude" posting from any site.
'(Kevin Phair)' would match any of my posts, whether it's me using
my own account, or posting from the BBS.
You can get a bit of added safety, by putting in the whole
address, and even including the "From: " at the start of the line!
This is a very powerful option, and you should be as specific as
possible in terms of origin addresses you want to kill articles
from.
CLEAN
This is one of the reasons the program was first written (since an
ARexx script can quite happily look after updating those little
.next files anyway!)
What it does is it buffers each article through a temporary file
in T:, and keeps only the From:, Organi[s|z]ation:, Message-ID,
References:, Subject: and Date: fields. Everything else in the
message header is discarded. Once the header has been parsed, then
the body of the article is pushed straight through, and then the
original article is overwritten with the new, leaner article.
The reason I leave the threading fields in is that I, or someone
else, may decide at some stage to convert these to FIDO threading
kludges.
NOBIN
Will skip any newsgroups with 'binaries' in the name, so that
large numbers of large files will not be thrashed to-and-fro
betweenthe hard disk and RAM, as there is little point in making
large encoded posts a few lines shorter.
Note: Using NOBIN will still update the .next pointer!
COLOUR (or COLOR)
Will enable ANSI colour codes (limits itself to the first four)
Return codes:
The program will return an error code of 30 if there are any
errors, and a return code of 0 if all has gone well.
Example usage:
NewsUpdate UULib:News/Active KILL NOISY COLOUR
Will scan articles, using killfile to remove unwanted posts,
and will provide a running commentary on what it's doing, as
well as putting colour in the output, so you can see things a
bit more clearly.
NewsUpdate UULib:News/Active QUIET CLEAN NOBIN
Standard usage for SysOps; No output, trim article headers,
don't process articles in any binary newsgroups.
Future:
Anyone interested in an option to ARCHIVE posts by certain people,
or subjects, into a separate directory, or even run a user-defined
command on the articles?
I think I'll probably release the source code with the next
version.
History:
Version 1 has been in use for the last 6 or 7 months with no ill
effects, hopefully this version will be just as reliable.
Version 2.0: Pretty much the same as this version (2.1) but with no
colour.
Version 2.1: Fixed bug where it wouldn't update newsgroup with only
one new article.
Author information:
I've written other stuff, mainly for DLG BBS SysOps:
DLGFM. Small program to manage simple file area maintenance (i.e.
remove orphaned .fd files, rebuild quick file description
table...)
DLG-Edit. Slightly larger program, which provides a GUI interface
for editing User records, File/Message areas (names, access
levels, import text files to create new areas...)
Vec (not yet released). Small WB toy which sits in a window
displaying shaded rotating 3D polygon-based shapes.
If you find bugs, or have suggestions, then e-mail me at Kev@Scorpio.ie,
or you can send fido netmail to me at 2:263/150.6