OS/2 Shareware BBS: 2 BBS/02-BBS.zip/PTKTDOC3.ZIP/README.200

Text File | 1990-07-06 | 15KB | 317 lines

The following list the changes to msged from 1.99 to 2.00.  It's a
fairly significant list.  Most, if not all, of this stuff is mentioned
in msged.doc, this is mostly here as a quick reference.  It's basically
in reverse order of appearance.

find now quits if you enter a zero length search string

you can no longer scan all areas from the area menu.  you can
still do it via the '*' command in the reader though.  the
areas menu is cleaned up and laid out a bit better (at least in
my opinion). the biggest implication is that autostart macros
that go to the areas menu and scan for new messages should be
changed to scan for new messages and THEN go to the areas menu..

msged attempts to avoid writing a new message over old ones.  i
don't multitask so i have no idea if this will work or not. the
biggest problem i can foresee is that it may be susceptible to
'race' conditions where msged and the tosser fight over the
highest message....

msged now remembers the last file name you wrote a message to...

msged no longer clears the cost field or the times read field.  and now
increments the times read field when you read a message to you the first
time.

changed the clear line key in the field editor from <ESC> to <ctrl><X>.
you can abort a message whilst entering the message header by pressing <ESC>.
additionally you can abort from fields in the settings screen.

if you don't have a config file msged will go directly to the settings screen.
additionally, you'll have to play with the settings functions to
determine exactly how it works.

settings screen is back.  now better than ever before.  you can
change just about everything (except the video addressing
segment).  this includes colors, area information, switches,
attributes, everything that can be changed in the config file.
and msged will write out a new config file for you as well...

<alt><r> rotates text when entering a message, same as the < or > key
when reading messages.  first press is rot13, second is rot10, third
returns text to normal.  be warned!  the text is echoed rotated, so it's
tough to read what you type...

msged now compares area paths instead of area tags. this allows you to assign
multiple attributes (like uucp and netmail) to the same area.  the first
description given for an area is the one that is used.

changed the way exporting to a textfile is handled.  if in the editor,
things work essentially as they did before.  however, msged no longer asks
if you want to rplace or append to the destination file.  you specify this
the same way you specify you want to append to the tosslog... if you want
to append to the file, put a plus sign (+) in front of the file name. this
applies to the <alt><w> command in the reader as well... however, there
are some additional changes to this command, you can specify how you want
the text export.  if you append the string ",q" to the filename, msged
formats the exported text the same way it does quoted text in a message.
this lets you quote from a number of messages by quote exporting several
messages into the same file (with append), then importing the file into
a new message. the other option is ",t" or text.  this tells msged to
append a newline to the end of each line and puts a text header at the
top of the message.    this makes the file useful for exporting to other
software. finally, if you specify no options at the end, the message is
written out to the file with newlines only at the ends of paragraphs and
no text header... this makes it useful for re-importing into a msged
message.

underscores (_) in the quote string are now converted to spaces

hidden lines are not quoted unless you turn them on before quoting
the message. unfortunately, this also turns on seen-by lines.

full usenet/internet addressing is now supported in areas tagged as uucp
or news. one caveat... msged looks for an @ sign to determine that what
is being entered on the to line is an address instead of a name. if you
are entering a bang path with no @, prefix it with a @, msged will strip
the leading @ before writing the address to disk.

since to, from and date are shown properly in the message header above the
text, msged doesn't display them a second time in the actual message text

quoting and replying to usenet/internet messages uses the correct addresses.

usenet/internet address display is now done correctly. additionally, the true
date a usenet/internet message was entered is now parsed from usenet header.

message numbers are done slightly differently for consistency between
quick and msg message bases. the number displayed on the top corner is
which message out of how many, the real message number, i.e. the filename
of a .msg file is displayed in parens after the area description

removed all the secondary ways of  doing things in the config file.   if
the sample config warned that a keyword was obsolete, it's probably gone
in this version.

removed support for the binkley colors statement (needed the space)

the boss keyword is no longer supported in the config file.  use a fully
qualified address and the privatenet keyword.

one more command has been added to the reader, scan.  scan is initially
bound to the * key (either will do).  this command scans all areas for new
messages.  used in conjunction with next and prev area, you can check for mail
without ever hitting the areas menu.

added two new commands to the reader, next_area (+) and prev_area (-). if areas
have been scanned (via alt-s on the areas menu), the commands go to the
next and previous areas with unread messages in them, if no areas have
new messages or if areas have not been scanned, then they move to the next
and previous areas.

config files are broken again.  i've changed the way areas are declared
in the msged.cfg file.  the syntax is shown below:

fido    mail ATTRIB "description"   path    areatag
quick   uucp                        board #
    news
    local
    echo

each line indicates an alternative value for a field.
ATTRIB is zero or more of p,c,k,d and h indicating the default attributes
for the message area, p being privileged, c crash, k kill/sent, d direct
and h hold. the description must be enclosed in double quotes, unlike
previous versions, single quotes no longer work here. path applies only
to fido style message bases, if the area is a quick message base, this
field is interpreted as a board number. areatag only applies to echomail
areas.

not only am i breaking config files, i'm breaking batch files too... msged
now returns MUCH more information in the errorlevel.  the following are
additive...

    type of message entered            errorlevel
        netmail                         1
        echomail                        2
        uucp mail                       4
        uucp news                       8
        local messages                 16

so, if you enter a netmail message, a uucp news message AND an echomail
message, msged will exit with errorlevel 11.  as you can see, this gives
you great flexibility in what you run when exiting, but it is going to
require a significant batch file change.  i'm including my readmail.bat
in the distribution..

writing a message to disk now puts the area description in as well

msged now lets you design the usenet style attribution line. it is done
with the new command "attribution" in the config file.  essentially, you
put the attribution keyword followed by the string you want used into your
config file.  the default is:

    attribution In a message of <%m %d %h> %f (%a) writes:\n

the percent (%) signs indicate a special format character follows.  the
format characters have the following meanings:

    %t      name of person original message was two
    %f      name of person original was from
    %a      address of sender of original message
    %w      day of week original was sent (3 letters)
    %d      day of month original was sent (1-31)
    %m      month original was sent (3 letters)
    %y      year original was sent (00-99)
    %h      time original was sent (hh:mm)
    %%      a percent sign

if you want a blank line separating the attribution line from the text,
make sure you add the \n at the end...

if you seem to be having trouble with your userlists, make sure that you
don't have tabs in them, that will confuse things..  a common way of screwing
up a userlist is to use an editor that converts multiple spaces to tabs

added the area a message was forwarded from into the origination line on
a forwarded message.  this doesn't mean that you can automatically forward
across areas (although you could easily write a macro to so) but it makes
it easier to forward a message then move it somewhere else.

delete word right is bound to <ctrl><t>, if you're on a word, deletes the
word and trailing whitespace to the next word.  if you aren't on a word,
deletes whitespace to the next word.  a word is anything surrounded by
whitespace

an intl line is put in the message whenever the destination zone is not the
same as that in your primary address (the first one listed in your config
files).  if this is a problem i'll make it optional

put in the infrastructure for fidozone support, will complete
it as soon as i find out the proper formats

opusdate format is now included. to turn it off use NO OPUSDATE, it will
be mutually exclusive with FIDOZONE

msgid's are now placed in echomail as well as netmail

when you start a subject line with D:\ where D is a drive letter, msged will
assume a file attach and set the attach bit accordingly.

<ctrl><home> and <ctrl><end> go to start and end of message respectively
when in the editor.

<ctrl><pgup> and <ctrl><pgdn> go to the top and bottom of the screen

backspace and delete now automagically reformat as you use them.

a feature that deserves a bit more documentation is the paste buffer.
when you use <alt><a>...<alt><c> to cut out a block of text, that block
remains in the paste buffer until you cut another block out.  this includes
across editing different messages.  this is useful when quoting from
multiple messages, quote the first message and cut out the text you want,
then abort the edit with <esc>.  next quote the second message, you can
now paste the quote from the first message into the quote of the second
message using <alt><p>

BROKEN CONFIG FILE ALERT!!!   some of the configuration options have been
changed.  the following keywords have been eliminated:

    softcr, seen-bys, tearline, shownotes, confirm

they have been replaced with a new keyword called "No".  all of the above
options now default to ON.  to turn them off, use "No " followed by one
of:

    softcr, seen-bys, tearline, shownotes, confirm, msgids, eids, strip

msgids will turn off the automatic generation of a msgid and eids will
turn off automatic generation of eids.  strip will prevent msged from
stripping pre-existing <ctrl><a> kludge lines from the message when it
is written to disk.

added support for secondary lastread pointers using the "lastread" config
keyword, syntax is:

    lastread <filename>

where <filename> can be any filename.  it'll be the same in every message
area though...

video fossil support has been added to all versions of the program. one problem
is that it means msged no longer compiles with production ZTC.  #ifdefs will
be added before release to compensate

the "username" config keyword has been removed. use "name" or "sysop" instead

this has been in a while, but i forgot to document it.  if you list
multiple addresses in multiple zones in your config file, when entering
a message, msged will look for the first address with a zone matching the
destination of the message and will use that as the originating address.

added the "dos" command and bound it to ! when in the reader (sorry, not
available from the editor).  basically, this command executes a single dos
command and returns to msged. it requires a keypress to return.  this could
be used to implement an external editor interface when combined with a macro.

to have msged append to confmail.out instead of rewriting it, prepend
a '+' to the filename in your configuration.

added a nifty little feature to the areas menu... you'll notice that the
vertical separator bar has been removed.  but that's not the nifty part,
when you scan areas using <alt><s>, msged will now display your current
position in the area and how many messages are in the area.

color settings are changed slightly.  compatible for the most part, except that
gray and brown are no longer recognized (use white and yellow). only three
characters of the color are needed, i.e. magenta is mag, blue is blu and
black is bla.  if you append a + sign to the foreground color, you get high
intensity, appended to the background gives blinking.

the kludgeline config keyword is no longer necessary.  all kludgelines are
shown when you use the <alt><v> (view) command.

to use quickbbs areas you need to add two new lines to your config file, the
first is:

    quickbbs PATH

where PATH is the directory containing the quickbbs msg*.bbs files.  the
other line associates board numbers with a descriptive area name. (this will
be extended in the future).  currently it is in the format:

    quick DESCRIPTION BOARD

where DESCRIPTION is the area description (in double quotes) and BOARD is the
integer board number (>0).  the quickbbs message base takes significantly
less disk space and is also faster.  there are currently some things missing
from the quickbbs support, namely, it can't be used for netmail, no reply
threading and a few other miscellany.

msged now saves and restores the current directory when shelling to dos

home and end go to the first and last areas in the areas menu

new quote string macro!  the & (ampersand) expands to all initials, i.e.
for the name "Randy Van de Loo", the string ">&:" would expand to ">RVdL:"

NO linefeeds are put into messages, lines are terminated only by
a carriage return

soft carriage returns automatically added to usenet messages

search now starts from the CURRENT message

msged now uses the comspec to find the proper comspec

message flags supported on a per area basis, use PDKCH before the area
description, the old settings still apply to the first area.

direct flag disables all gating for a message, sets xx2 attribute

quoteright sets the right margin for quoted text.

function 0 is an autostart macro, executes when msged is started.