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Text File | 1994-09-09 | 13.5 KB | 300 lines

!Incorp © 1994 Julian Wright ---------------------------- This application forms a part of my application !ReadNews. This application is subject to the following rules and conditions: This version of !Incorp is NOT Public Domain, it is "Freeware". This means you may copy it freely, give it to your friends, upload it to BBSs etc as long as you meet all of the following conditions: ¤ You must copy the WHOLE program, and ALL it's data files including this text file, in EXACTLY the condition you received it. The easiest way to do this is to keep the original archive to pass around, rather than copying your extracted copy. ¤ You must not charge any money for the use, storage or distribution of !Incorp (except for a **SMALL** amount to cover disc copying costs ONLY). ¤ I do not accept any liability whatsoever for any loss or damage to data that result from the use of !Incorp. ¤ No version of !Incorp may be included with any Commercial distribution without my written permission. Right, now that's out of the way... Purpose ------- Incorp takes batches of news and email from Rucp and incorporates them into the structure that Readnews uses. MessageTrans Module ------------------- Incorp uses the MessageTrans module, for internationalisation purposes. If you are still running under RISC OS 2 and do not have this module, Incorp can still function but some text messages, most notably the interactive help ones, will not be available. MessageTrans is freely available but only from officially sanctioned sources, so I cannot provide it with Incorp. You may already have it though, as some Third-Party applications come with it. Inside the !Incorp.!Run file, near the top, there are two lines which deal with loading MessageTrans if it is needed. If you have RISC OS 2 and have MessageTrans in your !System.Modules folder you should uncomment these lines to ensure it gets loaded. RISC OS 3.00 users and higher need not worry about any of this - for you the module is already in your rom. Setting up Incorp ----------------- Open the Config window from the iconbar menu and set the options inside to your personal preferences, as described below in the section 'Config Window'. If you are using ReadNews and Incorp with Rucp, you will not need to change the ToIncorp file. But if you are using some other transport mechanism, you will need to edit this file. If so, click on the Edit ToIncorp File icon in the Config window. The ToIncorp File ----------------- This file contains a list of places for Incorp to look when searching for new news and email to incorporate. Each 'place' is specified on a separate line in the file. Blank lines and lines starting with #'s are ignored. The format of a 'place to look' line is as follows: [NEWS|MAIL|DOTMAIL] <Pathname> [<Newsgroup>] The first parameter specifies whether the item pointed to contains email or news. If DOTMAIL is chosen then this indicates that the item contains email for which all lines beginning with ".." should have the first "." removed. The second parameter is a pathname pointing either to a batch file or a directory. If it points to a directory, then all files in the directory will be incorporated. The third parameter is optional, and specifies a newsgroup or email mailbox which overrides whatever destination might be found in the individual articles. If absent from a NEWS line, then the destination of each article in the batch(es) specified will be determined from the "Newsgroups:" line in the header of each article extracted, otherwise all articles in the batch(es) will be placed in the specified newsgroup. If it is absent from a MAIL or DOTMAIL line, the destination of each article is determined from the filename of the batch, otherwise the specified destination is used. Some examples may help... NEWS <Rucp$Dir>.uucp.News This causes all files in <Rucp$Dir>.uucp.News to be incorporated as news batches, with individual destinations read from the Newsgroups: lines in each article. NEWS <Captured$Dir>.Download comp.sys.acorn This causes the file <Captured$Dir>.Download to be incorporated as a news batch, with all articles being placed in comp.sys.acorn regardless of their Newsgroups: line. This might be used if you have some news you have captured in a terminal package or which may not have a Newsgroups: line in its header, if it even has a header. MAIL <Rucp$Dir>.uucp.Mail This causes all files in the <Rucp$Dir>.uucp.Mail directory to be incorporated as mail batches, with the destination of each email being determined from the name of the file which contains that email. To use Incorp ------------- Load !Incorp, and click on it's icon on the icon bar to start the incorporation process. This multitasks fully, where possible, unlike earlier versions. If the Verbose option is configured, then while Incorp is incorporating articles it's status window will be open, looking much like a RISC OS 3 filer_action window... :-) There are two buttons on the status window while Incorp is incorporating, "Abort" and "Pause". The Abort button will halt Incorp in it's tracks. The Pause button will pause Incorp, and change into a "Continue" icon. Clicking on Continue will make Incorp carry on from where you last paused it. When Incorp has finished processing, it removes the Abort and Pause buttons and replaces them with a single "OK" button, which simply closes the status window when you click on it. It then opens the Just Arrived window, if it was not already open, or updates it if it was. If Incorp tries to add an article to a 'full' newsgroup (ie one whose directory is filled to capacity already) then it will do one of two things depending on how it is configured. Either: a) Delete the oldest article in the group and continue or b) Pause, with two extra options visible in the status window: Delete - Delete oldest article and continue Quiet - Delete all further articles as necessary At this point you also have the option of reading some of the articles with ReadNews, and deleting them there, after which point you can click on Continue to get Incorp to try again without deleting any articles of it's own. Menus ----- There are two - the iconbar menu and the Incorp menu, which can be accessed from the incorp status window. The Iconbar menu has the following options: Info: The usual info box. Config: Leads to or opens the configuration window. Quit: Hmm. I wonder what'll happen if I press this red butt... The Incorp menu has the following options: Faster: Speed up the process of incorporation at the expense of fast multitasking. Pause: Cause Incorp to pause when it reaches a full newsgroup. Verbose: When unticked the status window will close; incorporation will continue. Config Window ------------- This window can be accessed from the iconbar menu. It has the following options: Fast processing: If selected this causes articles to be scanned faster, at the expense of multitasking speed. Delete old articles: If selected then when a full newsgroup is encountered Incorp will delete the oldest article in that group immediately (as it did in earlier versions of the software). If unselected then Incorp will pause when it encounters a full newsgroup, and give you a chance to deal with the situation yourself. Verbose Status: If selected then the status window will pop up automatically when you start an incorporation. If not, incorporation will commence silently. You can still pop up the status window at any stage during incorporation by clicking on the iconbar icon though. Autoclose Status: If selected then whenever you close the Just Arrived window by clicking ADJUST on one of the icons, the Status window will be automatically closed as well. Autoclose Arrived: If selected then whenever you close the Status window by clicking on the OK icon, the Just Arrived window will be automatically closed as well. Open Arrived Early: If selected then the Just Arrived window will be opened when the *first* new article is incorporated and will be continuously updated, otherwise it will behave as before and not open until the *last* article has been incorporated. Shrink partially processed batches: If selected then any articles which have been successfully incorporated from the current batch will be removed from it if you abort incorporation with the Abort button. The bottom section deals with the timer. Incorp can be set to start itself up every so often, and this section controls how often. (Or indeed if it happens at all). Note that regardless of the state of the Verbose option, a timer-initiated incorporation will not pop up the status window. Just Arrived Window ------------------- This window is opened whenever one or more of the following is detected: - New news has just been incorporated - New Email has just been incorporated - There are new files in the UUCP Public directory It contains up to three icons, depending on which combination of the above has been detected. Each icon has a counter underneath it, which represents the number of new postings, emails and files which have been received, respectively. Clicking on either the news or email icons will cause ReadNews to load, while clicking on the file icon will open the public directory. Incorp will continue to register new files until you move or remove the files from the public directory. Clicking with adjust will also close the Just Arrived window. Once the Just Arrived window has been closed, it's counters are reset and it will not be re-opened until there is more new stuff... Version History --------------- <1.00 - Command line version of program, didn't multitask. 1.00 - First multitasking version of Incorp (except for email) (1/5/92) 1.01 - Email incorporation now multitasks (5/5/92) 1.02 - Improved Faster mode - now it works even faster, and still keeps the byte count updated properly. Fixed problem with base creation causing an extra 'phantom' message to be seen by the Newsreader. (10/5/92) 1.03 - Added option to not scan for either news or email (25/5/92) 1.04 - Fixed major bug... Incorp was locking up whenever an error occurred! This didn't really bother me before, as errors are rare in my own code 8^) But it was getting to be a bit of a pain, so the error routine works now. Incorp now handles news batches that aren't batches. That is, if there is no '#! rnews' at the start Incorp assumes the whole file is one article. Re-worked the internals to make them neater. Implementing a pause function when a newsgroup fills to capacity should be easy now. Haven't tested the new code exhaustively though. (8/6/92) 1.05 - Added configure window. Amended library and application to make use of more RISC OS 3 facilities where available. Incorp now pauses (if configured) when attempting to write to a full newsgroup, rather than just deleting the oldest article. New options while so paused: Delete and Quiet. Wrote routine to remove leading "."s from the start of lines in incoming Email messages, but commented it out as it doesn't work yet. 1.06 - Internationalised using MsgTrans. Configuration options no longer have instant effect... they are only noticed when Ok or Save buttons are clicked on. Config window templates redesigned to place Save and Ok buttons on a pane attached to the bottom right of the window. Interactive help added. 1.07 - Now renames batches currently being worked on in order to prevent a simultaneous UUIO task from eg, adding new articles to an Email file which Incorp is currently processing in RAM. Incorp would have then simply deleted the email file and the new email would have been lost. Thanks to a routine supplied by Philip Banks, new newsgroups are no longer generated for cross-posted articles when an existing group would have sufficed. Incorp no longer says it is "Incorping" when there are no articles to incorp :-) Control message "newgroup" now causes group creation without any article appearing. 1.08 - Added animation on icon bar for during incorporation. Added verbosity configuration option. 1.09 - Fixed little bug introduced in 1.07 with renaming of batches whose filenames were already 10 characters long. I didn't notice it myself cos I have RISC OS 3 with Truncate configured. Oops! 1.10 - Added more AA fonts to RISC OS 3 templates. 1.11 - Fixed little bug with creation of new groups where existing ones would have sufficed with cross-posted articles. Changed templates to work fine with RISC OS 3.10 1.12 - ADJUST click on Just Arrived window closes it. Incorp now scans for email before news. 1.13 - When a header line is 256 characters long Incorp no longer ignores the rest of the header (which used to cause amongst other things valid articles to show up in junk) 1.14 - Options for autoclosing of Status and New Arrivals windows when the other is closed, added to the configuration. 1.15 - Full newsgroup now only causes the Status window to pop to the front once per incorp session. Handling of Just Arrived window tidied up as well. 1.20 - Major overhaul to the incorporation engine. Added Shrink processed articles option.