Aminet 4/Aminet 4 - November 1994.iso/aminet/comm/term/ripcomm.lha/UPDATE.README

Text File | 1994-07-13 | 9KB | 180 lines

RIPCOMM UPDATE NOTES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Copyright © 1994 Michael Nelson


NOTE: I will be releasing RIPCOMM in two archive formats. A full release
version (includes all files necessary to use the program) and a partial
release (includes updated files only). The FULL release archives will
be named as RIPCOMMF*.LHA and the partial releases will be name as
RIPCOMMP*.LHA, the * represents the beta version number. If you have
not got the full release you need to get it! (Call my support bbs at
[phone] or look for a RIPCOMMF*.LHA archive)

If the archive you have has NO fonts, No Docs, and No Installer script
then you have got a "partial" archive. You therfore will NOT be able
to use this program successfully as a RIPTERM.


RIPCOMM BETA Release 2 update notes


- Added button clear/inverting
- Fixed mouse field problems
- Added support for SOH (same as !) RIP command line.

- Queries are still not functional. (A query appears quoted in ($) dollar
  signs. This versions send RIPSCRIP015400 no matter what is asked for.

RIPCOMM BETA Release 3 update notes

- Added support for dynamically sized buttons.
- Improved serial port handling... slight increase in text printing.

RIPCOMM BETA Release 4

- Fixed a problem with button handling... could have been the cause of
  random crashes people were reporting. If *YOU* had problems with
  the program before let me know if versions fixes them (I suspect this
  was the problem all along... I may be wrong though :-/)
- Added support for the different paste modes (XOR,OR,AND,NOT) instead
  of plain stamp copy (which was forced).

RIPCOMM BETA #5

- No new features. Added asl requester for selecting capture file path&name
- The capture text is saved unbuffered, whereas before it was buffered... it
  will make the text display seem "jerky"... but it *WILL* save all the data
  that comes through your modem, makeing it easier for me to find bugs that
  crash the program.

RIPCOMM BETA #6
- Fixed some display problems people reported. Please report any little bug
  you find so I can fix it. One Amiga 1200 user has a problem with RIPcomm
  that I am unable to figure, if you use a 1200 please let me know if you
  have any problems.


RIPCOMM BETA #7
- The cursor code has been fixed... if you do NOT see a cursor of any kind
  let me know! Previous versions were looking for a "specific" sprite
  to use. The cursor wouldn't appear if that particular sprite was unavail-
  able.

RIPCOMM BETA #8
- Fixed the serial requester to allow rates of 57,600 (52,600 was a typo)
- Added a logfile to catch serial port errors. Please report the contents
  if anything strange happens (like a crash), I'm still having trouble
  figuring out what is giving people problems. (IOAborted may show up in
  the log file, so don't bother reporting it)
- I'm in the middle of adding a faster flood fill routine. I needed to
  change the way I open the screen, so let me know if anything strange
  happens! ;-) The flood fill routine isn't finished yet, so the program
  is still using the same old slow OS routine.
- I fixed the problem with buttons/host commands. Some BBS's require a
  `M in the host command instead of the usual ^M for a carriage return,
  RIPComm was sending the "`M" text back to the bbs instead of a CR.

RIPCOMM BETA #9
- Changed the cursor from a sprite to a "rendered" rectangle type cursor.
  It "should" appear on everyone's machine now. :-)
- Sped up the text display. The program collects incoming text into strings
  before printing anything whereas the older version printed each character
  as it came in. The cursor does not display when there is alot of incoming
  text. The program uses a timeout period between receiving the last
  character and the next. If too slow then the cursor re-appears.
- Add double-click dialing. Just double click on the bbs you wish to call
  and it will start dialing without having to select the "dial" gadget.
- Improved the RIP parameter handling. The old version used GIGO (garbage in
  garbage out) So line noise and unexpected bbs prompts could (and did)
  crash the computer. If it still crashes let me know!!!!!!!!

RIPCOMM BETA #10
- The program was using the OS serial prefs settings for the buffer size,
  which caused problems with overwrites etc... The program now uses a read
  buffer size of 65536 bytes. It should fix the problem with overwrites,
  but YOU must have enough available memory to support a buffer that size.
  If you still have problems check the RIPCOMM.ERROR.LOG file to see if it
  says anything.
- Changing the serial port preferences and selecting SAVE or USE will cause
  RIPcomm to use those settings right away unlike the previous versions which
  required you to exit the program and re-start it for the new settings to
  take effect.
- The phone gadget thingy works. Clicking it when it looks like the phone
  is on the hook will access the phonebook, and clicking it when it looks
  like the phone is off the hook will hangup (actually it just drops dtr
  even if you have that option disabled in the serial prefs... I'l fix it
  later to support the AT hangup commands later).
- Added a clear screen menu option. Selecting it will, clear the screen and
  reset the text font and text window size.
- Selecting the "Directory" from the menu, will clear the screen first.
  This is to prevent you from dialing into a text only bbs with no text
  window enabled on the RIPcomm screen (otherwise you wouldn't be able to
  see anything)
- Still more error checking for RIP graphics parameters. This hopefully will
  stop the "random" crashes from occuring (but let me know if it doesn't).

RIPCOMM BETA #11
- Version #10 caused a few problems I didn't expect due to the tighter
  parameter checking... I relaxed it a bit, instead of discarding certain
  graphics command that go partially offscreen, I adjust them so they
  are onscreen and can be displayed. Thanks to Bernd Brandes for finding
  (and reporting) this.
- $FINALLY$, I started add support for RIP variables,which was the reason
  all of those "$"'s appearing on screen. I'm enclosing a list of supported
  variables which you (if you design RIP scenes or menus) can use with
  RIPcomm... they all work within button host commands or RIP text (not
  ANSI or ASCII though). I tried supporting the most used variables first,
  and will get to the others shortly. Let me know if they give you any
  problem. (It should work with SearchLight now... let me know if it
  doesn't as I don't have a local Searchlight bbs to call)

RIPCOMM BETA 0.12
- Fixed a few lingering ANSI problems. The LF is correctly handled (doesn't
  move the cursor to X=0), and backspace deletes character under the cursor
- Added a fast flood fill routine. It is faster MOST of the time than the
  graphics library flood fill. I've included an example RIP file
  (mosiac.rip) for you to check out... you decided which flood fill is
  better! The fast flood code is still kind of experimental if anything
  strange happens during or after a flood fill please let me know.
- IF YOU USE A DISPLAY CARD THEN DO *NOT* USE THE FAST FLOOD OPTION! IT
  ACCESSES THE BITMAP DATA DIRECTLY AND THEREFORE MAY NOT WORK WITH YOUR
  CARD! STAY WITH THE AMIGA OS FLOOD TYPE.
- The program will check to see if you've got the "RIP" preferences in
  your "ripcomm.prefs" file, if not it will automatically open up the
  RIP prefs requester... use SAVE if you don't want this to appear every
  time you run the program.
- I've started numbering the beta version with a 0.nn so as not to confuse
  people when I release version 1.00. The first digit stands for the
  version number (in this case version 0) and the last two digits stand
  for the revision number (in this case it is revision 12)

RIPCOMM BETA 0.13 - 01 Jul 1994
- Fixed one more ANSI bug I forgot to fix in the last version. It was the
  bug which caused text to be printed at the wrong line when a scroll
  occured.
- I started adding things to the status bar... nothing really works yet.
  Any comments on the layout would be appreciated (before I start doing
  any programming for it that is)
- I also forgot to mention that the fast flood fill routine requires quite
  a bit of stack space in order to complete fills. The routine will check
  the stack size as the fill progresses and abort if it is getting too full.
  I suggest a stack size of about 15000 bytes.
- I fixed a problem I created myself... ICONS And Dynamic buttons usually
  have no X1(width) or Y1(height) in the buttom command... so my parser was
  sorting the button so X1>X0 and Y1>Y0. This resulted in ALL the ICONS
  being places at 0,0! Thanks to Marc Buhmann for pointing this out!

RIPCOMM BETA 0.14 - 13 Jul 1994
- I was able to reduce the programs chipmem usage of 100k, by reworking the
  circle drawing routines (which needed a large Tempras before)... this
  should make life easier for users with only 512k chip ram. :-)
- Added support for thick lines.
- The download directory in the RIP prefs requester is enabled, you can now
  download to anywhere you want.

Also, please keep sending your bug reports and suggestions. I may not
acknowledge them or follow them up in any way, but they ARE saved and I do
check them from time to time. I do appreciate them even though it might not
seem that way. :-)