OS/2 Shareware BBS: 35 Internet/35-Internet.zip/wrpdis20.zip/WARPDIS.FAQ

Text File | 1995-07-22 | 6KB | 109 lines

Subject: WARPDIS.FAQ: OS/2 offline news and mail
 Last-modified: 22nd July 1995
 Version: 1.00
 Posted: Weekly
 Newsgroups: demon.ip.support.os2

Q: What is WARPDIS (NEWNEWS/GETMAIL/SENDIT) ?
Q: How do I collect news with WARPDIS
Q: So why doesn't everyone use NEWNEWS ?
Q: Does NEWNEWS support get and kill files
Q: How do I collect and deliver mail with WARPDIS
Q: Why use GETMAIL/SENDIT when OS/2 provides SENDMAIL.EXE
Q: Can GETMAIL be used with PMMAIL or Post Road Mailer ?
Q: If I want to use NEWNEWS but not GETMAIL and SENDIT is this a problem ?
Q: How much do they cost to register, and can I get the source ?
Q: Where can I get WARPDIS from ?
Q: I have mail waiting but GETMAIL won't collect it.  Why ?

---

Q: What is WARPDIS (NEWNEWS/GETMAIL/SENDIT) ?
A: If you are using KA9Q or KA9Q/2, are reasonably happy with the news and
mail software that you have, and just want a means of collecting news and
mail occasionally whilst using the WebExplorer, then WarpDis is what you
want.

Q: How do I collect news with WARPDIS
A: WarpDis contains a program called NEWNEWS.CMD which can be run from an
OS/2 command line, or set up to be started from an icon, or even started
automatically upon connection.  Once you have made a few simple changes to
it's configuration file (NEWNEWS.INI) to point to the correct files in your
KA9Q setup, it collects news in exactly the same fashion as KA9Q, and can
be used interchangeably with, or as a complete replacement of, KA9Q.

Q: So why doesn't everyone use NEWNEWS ?
A: Well, it does have some drawbacks.  It probably isn't as fast as KA9Q,
although it has been reported to collect news at speeds of upto 4K/sec !
If you use kill files then I doubt you will ever see speeds this high, and
I have never personally seen speeds much greater than 1K/sec.

Q: Does NEWNEWS support get and kill files
A: Yes.  get files have always been available, and kill files were made
available as a beta release in version 1.32 and were released in the
main distribution file wrpdis17.zip

Q: How do I collect and deliver mail with WARPDIS
A: Two programs called GETMAIL.CMD and SENDIT.CMD handle these two functions.
In the same way that NEWNEWS.CMD is compatible with KA9Q these programs also
can be used interchangeably with whatever ka9q.

Q: Why use GETMAIL/SENDIT when OS/2 provides SENDMAIL.EXE
A: SENDMAIL is a very powerful program next to which GETMAIL and SENDIT are
really very puny.  It has been written and rewritten by hordes of programmers
both within and outside IBM over a period of many years.  Natively it doesn't
support ka9q mail files, or the format of outgoing mail written by ka9q
compatible mail and news programs.  However, with a simple conversion program
(*** can anyone provide a URL to such a program? ***) it does everything that
GETMAIL and SENDIT can, and probably lots more.  The only thing that GETMAIL
and SENDIT have in their favour is that they are easy to configure and run.
Whilst SENDMAIL can handle multiple connections simultaneously, GETMAIL can
only manage them sequentially.  Suprisingly this doesn't seem to matter.

Q: Can GETMAIL be used with PMMAIL or Post Road Mailer ?
A: Funny you should ask.  GETMAIL has options to collect mail into a single
or multiple directories.  Through the use of the PPOO (Personal Post Office
Option) in Post Road Mailer or by using POP3D (an os/2 POP3 daemon) you can
use your favourite PM based POP3 enabled mail program (cf. Clive Rodina's
PMMAIL mini-faq <URL:http://metro.turnpike.net/C/clv/pmmail.html>)  However,
GETMAIL really wasn't written for this, and doesn't pretend to be the best
solution available.  If you are planning to use PMMAIL or Post Road Mailer,
then you should consider using SENDMAIL and Niel's deliver.exe
<URL:ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/os2/tcpip/deliver1.zip>

Q: If I want to use NEWNEWS but not GETMAIL and SENDIT is this a problem ?
A: Not at all.  In fact, their design lends them to just this sort of use.
Imagine you are connected and retrieving a page with the WebExplorer.  You
have a note in news/spool/mqueue which you wish to deliver.  Just type
'SENDIT' and press enter in an OS/2 window, and it is sent.  Similarly, lets
say you are reading the page, and don't want to waste the connect time.
Fire up another os/2 window and type 'NEWNEWS' and it immediately connects
and starts downloading news.

Q: How much do they cost to register, and can I get the source ?
A: The programs are freeware, not shareware.  This means that within the
terms and conditions distributed with the programs (the GNU General Public
License) they are completely free to use and distribute.  Furthermore the
source is also free, because they are written in Rexx, an interpreted
programming language, and so the executables are also the source.
To implement kill files with any sort of decent performance it was
necessary to write a bit of NEWNEWS in C.  This has been packaged as a
rexx DLL, and the source is included with WARPDIS.

Q: Where can I get WARPDIS from ?
A: The latest two versions of WARPDIS are always available for download
from ftp.demon.co.uk in the directory /pub/os2/tcpip - the distribution
files have the name wrpdisxx.zip where xx is the latest version number.
Each distribution is complete, and does not rely on any previous version
being installed.

Q: I have mail waiting but GETMAIL won't collect it.  Why ?
A: GETMAIL is an smtp daemon.  This means that it simply starts up and
waits for someone to connect on port 25 and start delivering mail.  Since
Demon do not provide a mechanism to initiate a mail transfer, there is
nothing that GETMAIL can do to get any mail you have except wait.
In general Demon attempt to connect immediately after you dial in, and
then about every 3-5 minutes afterwards.  To ensure that you don't miss
the first attempt to deliver mail, follow the instructions provided to
start GETMAIL before connecting to the internet.