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-
- Post Road Mailer Pro, Version 2.5, Free Edition
- June 12, 1997
-
- This package will act as a full-function 30-day demonstration unless you enter a
- Post Road Mailer 2.5 serial number into the "License the software" dialog via
- the File menu of the program's main window. If the 30 days pass without a
- serial number being entered, the program will refuse to send or receive mail,
- but you will still have full access to the mail that's already stored there.
- You should have received such a serial number from us upon registering for this
- Free Edition of the software.
-
- First-time users
- ----------------
- If you've never used the Post Road Mailer before, just unzip the package into an
- empty directory, and run INSTALL.CMD to create a program object on your OS/2
- Desktop, from which you can start the program. (Of course, if you prefer, you
- can start the program using the POSTROAD.EXE command, at the command line, in
- that directory, instead of using a Desktop icon. In this case, you will have no
- need to run INSTALL.CMD.)
-
- Users of any previous version
- -----------------------------
- Please read the New Features page of the online help, even if you don't read any
- other part of it!
-
- If you want the nitty gritty details of everything that's changed since the 2.0
- release in July of 1996, you can download the file
- http://www.tiac.net/innoval/whatsnew.txt.
-
- Please note that you can not run a prior release of the Post Road Mailer at the
- same time that you are running this one.
-
- It's not even a good idea to run two versions of the program without rebooting
- between one and the next. OS/2 does not remove *.DLL files from memory, when
- the program stops using them, until it is necessary to do so in order to free up
- some memory so that another program can use it. If one version of a *.DLL file
- is still in memory by the time another program (or another version of the same
- program) asks OS/2 for a *.DLL file by the same name, the application and OS/2
- have no way of knowing that the one in memory is the wrong one. So the
- application ends up using a *.DLL file that is not at all what it is supposed to
- be, which can result in a SYS3175 error (common), corruption of data (quite
- rare), or any other type of odd behavior. If you reboot between the running of
- one version of a program and the running of a different version of the same
- program (or any program which uses different *.DLL files by the same name), then
- there's no possibility of such conflicts.
-
- Users of any 1.99 or 2.x version
- ---------------------------------
- You may unzip this package into your existing PRM directory, if you like. (In
- fact, you should try to avoid doing it any other way.) When you unzip a .ZIP
- file into a directory which already contains some of the same files, the
- unzipping program asks you whether or not it should overwrite the old version
- with the new. Say yes to all of the *.EXE and *.DLL files and MAILCAP, for
- sure! If you have made modifications to your POSTROAD.TAG file, FORWARD.CFG (if
- you have it), any of the *.CMD files (if you have them), PROBRPT.FRM, or
- SAMPLE.ADR, you may want to avoid overwriting those.
-
- Of course, before you overwrite the old version with the new, you should backup
- the old one. And remember OS/2's object orientation, when you do. If you move
- a program file from one directory to another, the program object on your OS/2
- Desktop which points to that program file is going to remain pointing to that
- old program file in its new location. After you unzip the new version, the old
- program object is not going to be pointing to the new program file in the old
- location, anymore. So it's easy to make the mistake of thinking you're running
- the new version of the program after starting the program from your existing
- Desktop icon, when you're actually running the old version instead! So if you
- do that, you will need to go into the settings of the program object, and make
- it point to the right directory again.
-
- You may delete PMLCARD.DLL, PMLTRANS.DLL, PMLASSOC.DLL, and PICTBOX.DLL from
- your Post Road Mailer 2.0 directory after installing the new version, as they
- are no longer used.
-
- If you used a 2.0.x beta version, you may have POSTPAGE.EXE. If you've used it
- and have grown attached to it, you may certainly continue to use it, but it will
- not be supported at this time. If you haven't used it, don't start, because it
- has a lot of problems which need fixing before it will be very useful. Your
- best bet is to delete it.
-
- Due to a problem in PRM 2.0, it was possible for it to create an invalid entry
- in the INBASKET.NIX file under certain circumstances. Luckily, another problem
- counterbalanced that one, and prevented the invalid entry from being seen as
- invalid. Now that both of those problems have been fixed, PRM 2.5 will want to
- correct any invalid existing INBASKET.NIX file entries the first time it runs.
- To be on the safe side, it copies INBASKET.NIX to INBASKET.BAK as a backup,
- before it alters the former. If, after the first time you run the new version,
- your INBASKET.BAK and INBASKET.NIX files are identical, or once you're sure you
- can properly access all of your inbaskets under the new PRM version, then you
- can go ahead and delete your INBASKET.BAK file if you like.
-
- PLEASE READ THIS if you're installing over an old PRM version:
-
- Another problem in PRM 2.0 allowed the "Wait time for connection" setting (on
- the first page of the settings notebook) to work when set to 0, under conditions
- in which it should not have worked. Now that that problem has been fixed, if
- you cannot connect with that setting set to 0 anymore, try it at 1 instead.
-
- Migrating (converting) inbaskets
- --------------------------------
- The Migrate function can be used to convert a PRM 1.03a or 1.05 beta inbasket to
- the 2.x format. It must not be used for 1.99 or 2.x inbaskets, as they are
- already in that format! Users of versions earlier than 1.03a must apply the
- 1.03a upgrade before using the Migrate function.
-
- To use Migrate, you must unzip the new version into an empty directory other
- than the directory which holds the old version. Migrate cannot convert
- inbaskets that are part of the current version's own directory tree.
-
- Migrate leaves your old inbasket intact in its original location, as it copies
- the information into the new location with the new format.
-
- Be aware that a PRM 2.x folder will take more disk space than the same notes in
- the format of a PRM 1.0x folder. A folder in 1.0x is one data file and one
- index file; whereas in 2.x each note in a folder is itself a file. (If you
- don't understand why 20 1K files take more disk space than 1 20K file, you might
- like to read the question, on the Frequently Asked Questions page of the online
- help, about HPFS vs. FAT.) However, the benefits of the new one-note-per-file
- architecture of our folders greatly outweigh the drawback of some wasted disk
- space.
-
- The Migrate function has a limit of 10,000 notes per folder, so if you have a
- folder larger than that, please contact us for instructions on how to work
- around that limit.
-
- Users of "SpellGuard for PostRoad"
- ----------------------------------
- The old version of SpellGuard for PostRoad does not work with PRM 2.0.14 or
- later. Please contact InnoVal for the free upgrade to the SpellGuard version
- that works with PRM 2.1 and 2.5.
-
- HPFS vs. FAT?
- -------------
- If you have an HPFS partition available, we do strongly recommend installing PRM
- on it rather than on a FAT partition. Not because PRM can take advantage of
- long filenames or anything like that, but just because of the disk space savings
- and speed of access of EAs and small files on HPFS as compared to FAT. (See the
- Frequently Asked Questions page of the online help if you want more details on
- that.)
-
- If you have PRM 2.x installed on a FAT partition and want to move it to an HPFS
- one, just move your entire PRM directory (with all its subdirectories) to the
- HPFS partition, and then follow the instructions in the "Moving the Program
- Installation" page of the online help to make the program work with its new
- drive letter. (You don't have to run the program to read its online help; the
- contents of POSTROAD.INF, which can be read with OS/2's VIEW.EXE command, are
- identical to that of POSTROAD.HLP.)
-
- New release information
- -----------------------
- To get the latest news about new releases and plans for such, click on Release
- Information in the Help menu to download the current copy of RELEASE.TXT.
-
- Uninstalling
- ------------
- To uninstall the Post Road Mailer, all you need to do is delete its directory
- and its Desktop icon. There are no CONFIG.SYS file changes to be undone.
-
- Acknowledgements
- ----------------
- The Post Road Mailer was packaged using Info-ZIP's compression utility.
- Info-ZIP's software (Zip, UnZip and related utilities) is free and can be
- obtained as source code or executables from various bulletin board services and
- anonymous-ftp sites, including CompuServe's IBMPRO forum and
- ftp.uu.net/pub/archiving/zip/*.
-
- IBM and OS/2 are registered trademarks of the IBM Corporation. Post Road Mailer
- is a trademark of InnoVal Systems Solutions, Inc. All other brands, both cited
- and not cited, are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of their
- respective companies. The Post Road Mailer is licensed software and is
- copyrighted.
-
- (c) 1995, 1996, 1997 InnoVal Systems Solutions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
-