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Text File | 1994-05-22 | 30KB | 734 lines

IMHO ==== --------------------------- How to use it ---------------------------- The screens in IMHO are mostly a mixture of standard GEM dialogs and 'list' screens. The GEM parts should be fairly obvious - just click on the buttons you want. The 'list' screens all have HELP options - just hit the <Help> key, and you will get a pop up help box telling you what you can do. The 'list' screens will also respond to the following keys :- Left Arrow : Scroll up one page Right Arrow : Scroll down one page Esc : Returns to the previous function (except taglines) ============== Initial Screen ============== After double clicking on IMHO.PRG you should see the initial dialog screen. This has three options :- List Message Packets Open Message Packet QUIT List Message Packets -------------------- This is the default button - click on it or press the <Return> key to display a list of message packets along with information about them. The column headed 'Messages' tells you the total number of messages in the packet. The column headed 'Personal' tells you how many of the messages are addressed to you. The column headed 'Unread' tells you how many of the messages you have not yet looked at. If there are none, this column will be blank. The column headed 'Comment' is for you to put your own comments. (These can be changed when you close a packet). E.g. "Finished". If you have previously deleted some old message packets, the bookmark files can be 'Tidied' from this screen, by hitting 'T'. You will then be prompted to confirm your request, after which the tidy will be done. The tidy process removes old entries from the SUMMARY.ALL file contained in the bookmark directory, and also deletes any associated bookmark files for each old packet. You can delete the bookmark files yourself if you wish, but the SUMMARY.ALL file needs to be tidied every now and again, or it may grow too large - it contains information about the packets in the messages directory. You can see how many old bookmark packets there are to tidy by hitting the <HELP> key. If you click on a packet, the screen will blank and the archiver will be invoked to decompress the packet. Upon successful decompression the "open packet" dialog screen will appear - see below. Open Message Packet ------------------- You can use this button if you want to open a packet without displaying the list of all message packets. But note that if you have previously saved a comment about the packet it will be lost if you open the packet this way. You can still save a comment when closing the packet, however. You may need to use this button if, for example, you want to open a packet that is not in your "messages" directory, as it presents you with a file selector box, allowing you to pick a packet from somewhere else. If you cancel the selector you will return to the initial screen. If you select a message packet the screen will blank and the archiver will be invoked to decompress the packet. Upon successful decompression the "open packet" dialog screen will appear - see below. QUIT ---- Click on QUIT to exit from IMHO. ================== Open Packet Screen ================== This displays the the name of the current packet at the top and has the folowing buttons :- +------------------------------------------------------------+ | Read Messages (default) Close Packet | | Read Pers Messages Make Reply Packet | | Enter New Messages Load Reply Packet | | View Replies Add to Previous REP | | | | Save Bookmarks Use ACCessories | | Pause Run Program | | | | View File Update Read [Yes][No] | +------------------------------------------------------------+ The function of each of these buttons will now be explained. +---------------+ | Read Messages | +---------------+ This is the default button - click on it or press the <Return> key to select. This will display a list of areas which contain messages. The areas can be ordered by a .CNF file - see CONFIG.TXT for details. The numbers in the "Total" column show the total number of messages in each area. The numbers in the "Pers" column show the number of messages that have been sent to you in each area. The numbers in the "All" column show the number of messages that have been sent to ALL in each area. The numbers in the "Unread" column show the number of messages that you haven't looked at yet. This will be blank if there are none. If you click with the left mouse button you will get a list of all the messages in the area which you have clicked on. Use the right mouse button to get a list of messages to you and to ALL. Message List ------------ This is one line per message showing "To:", "From:" and "Subject:". Also at the top right of the screen is "<l> to <m> of <n>". <n> is the total number of messages in this list, <l> is the number of the message (within the list) that appears first on the screen, and <m> the last on the screen. There will be a single character preceding each message listed to indictate if the message is Unread, Read, Replied, or Marked. Hit the <HELP> key to see which characters correspond to each of these states. The characters may be changed via the IMHO.CFG file, see CONFIG.TXT for details. You can either click on the message you wish to display (left or right mouse button), or hit the <B> or <T> keys. <B> will display the message at the current bookmark place-holder for that area, and <T> will display the message at the temporary bookmark. See 'Message Display' below and CONFIG.TXT for more details on bookmarks. Message Display --------------- This display consists of a header at the top of the screen containing information such as "To:", "From:" etc, and the text of the message underneath. A message display "indicator" will appear in the header part of the screen, just under the message number, at the top right of the screen. This consists of 2 horizontal lines which are similar to "slider" bars on windows - the lower one indicates the "total" number of lines in the current message, and the upper line indicates which part is being displayed on screen - left being the beginning and right being the end of the message. The length of the upper line indicates the proportion of the message which can be displayed, i.e. the shorter the line the longer the message. As with the 'list' screens you can scroll up and down one page by hitting the left and right arrow keys, and <Esc> will take you back to the message list. You can also scroll up an down one line by hitting the up and down arrow keys. Hitting <Insert> will take you to the previous message, and <Clr/Home> will take you to the next message. This make seem an odd choice of keys, but I wanted to keep all the most commonly used keys all together so you don't have to keep looking all over the keyboard. You can use the <+> and <-> keys to skip to the next and previous messages if you prefer. If you go "off the end" of the list it will wrap around to the start and you will heard a "ding-a-ling-a-ling" sound to indicate you've gone past the end. (Also if you go backwards past the begining). In summary this is :- __________________________ __________________________ | Insert | ^ | Clr | | Prev | Scroll | Next | | | | | Home | | Msg | Up | Msg | |________|________|________| => |________|________|________| | | | | | | Prev | Scroll | Next | | <-- | v | --> | | Page | Down | Page | |________|________|________| |________|________|________| You can also jump to the top of a message by hitting F1, or to the bottom of a message by hiting F10. The function keys F2 through F9 will jump to the corresponding tenth of the way through the message. The other keys you can use in the message display are as follows :- (Hit <HELP> to get a list) Q : Quoted reply to sender of message ^Q : Quoted reply to receiver of message R : Unquoted reply to sender of message ^R : Unquoted reply to receiver of message N : Enter new message in this area L : Edit last reply text ^L : Edit last reply header V : View (all) replies S : Save current message to a file H : Hardcopy of current message on printer A : Use desktop ACCessories P : Run a program G : Grab user name or tagline F : Find a string in the current area ^F : Display next found message (Use after F) ^B : Set permanent bookmark place-holder to the current message B : Go to the permanent place-holder bookmark ^T : Set the temporary place-holder bookmark to the current message T : Go to the temporary place-holder bookmark # : 'Mark' current message M : Make a reply packet The '^' character means hold down the <Control> key while pressing the indicated key. Quoted and Unquoted ------------------- A "quoted" reply is one which contains the text of the original message prefixed by "XY>" on each line, where XY are the initials of the sender of the message. If the message already contains quoted lines from other replies then these are left intact. An "unquoted" reply will have none of the original message in it. It will still contain the header, signature and tagline as mentioned in CONFIG.TXT. Reply Text ---------- The top few lines of the reply text will be prefixed by a '*' character. These are stripped off when the reply packet is created. The lines contain information about who the reply is to etc. You can delete or modify these if you like, it won't do any harm. Though if you chop the '*'s off, they will appear in your reply. If you put any extra lines starting with a '*' directly after the ones at the top of the file they will also be stripped off. If you do want lines starting with '*' in your message make sure there is at least one line before it which doesn't start with '*'. This will normally be the case anyway as the reply generated will have the "hello" line at the top. If you do not make any changes to the file, or have quit from the editor without saving changes IMHO will assume that you don't want that reply and will delete it. It does this by checking the time and date stamp on the file. Reply Header ------------ This refers to the fields "To:", "From:", "Subject:", "Area:", and the private/public status of the reply. While the replies are being written this information is stored in a seperate file to the text for the reply. This makes it easier to get at the text in case something should go wrong. (See CONFIG.TXT for details on how and where the replies are stored). A "header box" is used in various places in IMHO. This is a GEM dialog box which allows you to change the "To:", "Subject:", "Area:" and the private/public status of a reply or new message. It is used in replying to a message (unless switched off), in entering a new message, in editing the last reply header, and in editing reply headers from the view replies list. It functions in the same way for each of these cases, as follows. The private/public status is indicated as the button which is highlighted in black at the top of the box. Click on the other button to change it. In the "To:" field you can either put the full name or use abbreviations defined in the IMHO.USR file (see CONFIG.TXT for details of setting up the file). To use an abbreviation put '*' followed by the abbreviation, e.g. "*boso". When you hit <Return> the abbreviation will be converted to the full name as defined in the file. If the abbreviation is not found in the file it will remain on the "To:" line and will not be accepted as a valid user name. If you can't remember the abbreviation then either put a single '*' character on its own or leave the whole "To:" field blank. When you hit <Return> (or click on OK) a list of all the users you have defined will appear, along with any comments you have put in the file. You can then select one by clicking with the mouse. You will not be allowed to enter a blank "Subject:". Blank subject lines can cause problems on some BBS's. (e.g. it crashed the one I was uploading to!) If you want to change the area into which the reply will go, you can click on the "Change Area" button. This will give you a list of areas to choose from. Click on the area you want, or hit <Esc> to leave it as it was. Edit last reply --------------- <L> will put you straight into the editor where you can edit the text of the last reply that you entered. <^L> allows you to edit the header - see above. However this does not change the comment lines prefixed by '*' in the text of the message, which will remain as they were. I may get round to 'fixing' this one day, but it's a lot of effort for little gain. Save current message to a file ------------------------------ This will prompt for a file using the file selector. If a new file is given it will be created. If an existing file is selected it will be appened to (i.e. not overwritten). Each message will be preceded by a line of '-' characters, to make it easier to see where each one starts if you have saved several messages to a single file. The saved message will contain the "header" information and a few extra details of where it came from followed by the text of the message. Hardcopy of current message on printer -------------------------------------- This will print out a copy of the current message in the same format as mentioned above in the "save" option. If the printer is not active or not ready to receive, a pop up box will appear asking if you want to try again or give up. Bookmarks --------- There are two types of "bookmarks". Firstly the place-holder bookmarks which can be used to keep track of where you got up to if you have large message packets that take a while to read and reply to. Secondly there are the single character marker-type bookmarks which tell you which ones you have read, replied to, or marked. The 'Mark' function, key '#', can be used for highlighting messages that you want to look at again some time later, or you may wish to use this to indicate messages to you that you don't want to reply to but don't want to just leave as 'read'. Each message packet has its own bookmark file (see CONFIG.TXT for details). You can set one place-holder bookmark per area, but they can only be used on either the "total" message list, or the "personal" message list within that area, not both. The place-holder bookmarks will not give sensible results if you use them from within the "Read Pers Messages" option (see below), as the message list may span several areas. The above refers to permanent bookmarks. There is also a temporary place-holder bookmark that you can use while jumping about a message area. This only exists while you stay within the area. Once you <Esc> back up to the area list screen it will vanish. (It still exists while in the message list). The temporary bookmark may be wiped out by the "Find" function, depending on your actions, see below for details. When you set a place-holder bookmark you will heard a "ding-a-ling" sound to confirm that it has been set. Finding strings --------------- Hitting <F> will bring up a dialog box in which you can enter a string to search for. Below the string are buttons to restrict the search. Selecting the "Header" button will restrict the search to the header parts of the messages. "Text" will restrict it to the message text only, ignoring the headers, and "Both" will search in both. The "header" search will include the "To:", "From:" and "Subject:" fields. It actually searches the QWK header block, so you could also search for date and time if you wanted but it would have to be in QWK format - date is MM-DD-YY, time is HH:MM. You could use this for example to find any messages that had been sent to or from a particular person. Searching in the "Text" will take a little longer, but it still seems to run pretty quickly. The search is done within the current area only. The distinction between upper and lower case is ignored when performing a search. In order to make this quicker I relied on the fact that there is only a one bit difference between upper and lower case characters. However this 'fiddle' also means that some other characters will also "match" which don't really match. These characters are as follows :- @ and ` [ and { \ and | ] and } ^ and ~ _ and <del> (hex 7F) I can't see this causing any real problems!? After initiating the search you will get a pop up box which will either say that the string was not found or tell you how many messages the string was found in. If the string was found you then have the choice of displaying the first message or staying where you are. If you display the first message found the temporary bookmark (mentioned above) will be set to the message you are currently displaying. This is so that you can then skip back to where you were before doing the Find just by hitting <T>. The temporary bookmark will not be changed if you don't display the first message found. If you use Find twice in succession you will lose your original position in the message area if you display the first found message both times. If you want to keep your current position in the area, either save it as a permanent bookmark, or make sure you hit the <T> key before doing each Find. If the string has been found in more than one message you can "cycle" forwards through each of the messages found by hitting <^F>. Once you go past the last message found, you will hear a "ding-a-ling-a-ling" sound and the first message found will again be displayed. The found messages will remain for as long as you stay within the current area (like the temporary bookmark). So you can skip about the messages, do replies etc. and still use <^F> afterwards. The Grabber ----------- Hitting the 'G' key brings up the grabber-box. You can then grab a user name or a tagline (or cancel). The "To:" and "From:" user names from the current message will appear in the top two buttons. Click on either of these to grab the user name and put it into the IMHO.USR file. If you grab the "From:" name, and there is a Fido-style address in the origin line near the bottom of the message, then that address will also be grabbed. The "short" name (or nickname) put into the file is simply the initials of the person grabbed. See CONFIG.TXT for details about the IMHO.USR file. IMHO will attempt to "spot" taglines automatically. If it finds one it will appear in the top tagline button. Click on this button to save it into the IMHO.TAG file. The end of the tagline may appear to be missing from the text displayed in the button, due to the limited size of the button, but the whole tagline will be grabbed to IMHO.TAG. IMHO will remove other parts of the line, such as '...' for Bluewave style taglines before saving it in the file. If IMHO cannot find a tagline the text "---Couldn't spot a tagline---" will appear in this button. (You can grab this if you really want to!) You can then click on the second tagline button "Pick a Line", which allows you to select a line from the bottom of the message to "grab". IMHO will put the whole line, as it is in the message, into IMHO.TAG. Grabbed users and taglines will not become available for use straight away, as IMHO only reads in the data at startup time. If you want to use something you have just grabbed you will need to use the "Pause" option, then rerun IMHO, which will resume where you left off. The other keys -------------- The V, M, P, and A keys correspond exactly to the functions invoked from the buttons on the "Open Packet Screen". These are described below under the headings "View Replies", "Make Reply Packet", "Run Program" and "Use ACCessories". +--------------------+ | Read Pers Messages | +--------------------+ This will display a list of all messages addressed to you in all areas. There is one line per message showing the "Area", who the message is "From" and the "subject" (right-most column). Also at the top right of the screen is "<l> to <m> of <n>". <n> is the total number of messages in this list, <l> is the number of the message (within the list) that appears first on the screen, and <m> the last on the screen. There will be a single character preceding each message listed to indictate if the message is Unread, Read, Replied, or Marked. Hit the <HELP> key to see which characters correspond to each of these states. The characters may be changed via the IMHO.CFG file, see CONFIG.TXT for details. You can then click on the message you wish to display. See 'Message Display' above for details of the message display screen. +-------------------+ | Enter New Message | +-------------------+ This will produce a list of all the areas available. The areas can be ordered by a .CNF file - see CONFIG.TXT for details. Areas which have been defined as private in the .CNF file will have a '*' character in the column headed "Private". Click on the area in which you wish to write a new message, and you will get a "header box" with a default recipient of "ALL". You can change this as required, and selecting OK will take you into the editor. See above for more details about the header box. +--------------+ | View Replies | +--------------+ This will produce a list of all outstanding replies. It shows the area name, the "To:" field and "Subject:" field of the reply. The column headed by "Prv" will be marked by a '*' character if the reply is private. The column headed by "Del" will be marked by a '*' if a reply is marked for deletion. To do this move the mouse arrow to point at the reply you wish to delete and press the <D> key. If you later change your mind you can undelete it in the same way by using the <U> key. To delete the replies you have marked for deletion you need to exit from the View Replies list by hitting <Esc>. You will then be told how many replies will be deleted and asked to confirm that this is what you want. You can also edit the reply text by clicking on the reply with the left mouse button. This will take you into the editor. To edit the reply header ("To:", "Area:", etc.) click on the reply with the right mouse button. +--------------+ | Close Packet | +--------------+ This will return you to the "Initial Screen" from where you can open another packet or exit. If you have the "Save Bookmarks" option set to "Ask" (see CONFIG.TXT for details) then you will get a pop-up box to allow you to add a comment to the bookmarks for the packet you have closed. If you want to enter a specific comment, then edit the displayed text and either hit <Return> or click on the "with this comment" button. If you want to use one of the 3 preset comments, just click on one of the 3 buttons below the top one. The comment in these buttons can be changed via the IMHO.CFG file (see CONFIG.TXT for details). If you don't want to save the bookmarks, click on "Don't Save Bookmarks". If there are any outstanding replies you we be told and asked if you wish to make a reply packet. Clicking on "YES" will make a packet as documented below in "Make Reply Packet". Clicking on "NO" will leave the outstanding replies where they are, in the work directory, ready for later. Clicking on "CANCEL" will abort the Close Packet function and stay in the Open Packet Screen. +-------------------+ | Make Reply Packet | +-------------------+ This will generate a reply packet from all outstanding replies and leave you in the Open Packet Screen. If you have the "Add To REP" option set to "Ask" (see CONFIG.TXT for details) and there is already a .REP packet for the current BBS in the work directory then you will be asked if you want to add to the existing .REP packet, create a new one, or cancel the creation of a reply packet. If you click on "ADD", then the outstanding replies will be added to the existing .REP reply packet. If you click on "NEW", then a new packet will be created, containing just the outstanding replies. If you click on "CANCEL" no reply packet will be created. +-------------------+ | Load Reply Packet | +-------------------+ This will bring up a file selector from which you can choose which reply packet you want to load. The replies loaded will be added to any outstanding replies that you may have. You can invoke this function as many times as you wish, to load in several packets at once if needed. +---------------------+ | Add to Previous REP | +---------------------+ This will copy a .REP reply packet from the reply directory into the work directory, to allow outstanding replies to be added to it. This can be invoked before, during, or after replies to messages have been created with the editor. +----------------+ | Save Bookmarks | +----------------+ This will save bookmarks to the bookmark directory. You can use this option if you are about to do something a bit dangerous, like running another program from IMHO, or using the Desk ACCessories. Bookmarks are held in memory until they are saved via this option, or by closing the packet, or by using "Pause". If the memory gets corrupted, or you get bombs or errors in IMHO, you will lose the bookmarks up until the previous save point. +-------+ | Pause | +-------+ This will exit from IMHO while leaving the current packet open. You can later resume processing of the packet simply by running IMHO again - it will pick up where it left off. All current bookmarks will also be recovered. +-----------------+ | Use ACCessories | +-----------------+ This will display a menu bar at the top of the screen from which any loaded desk accessories can be selected from the "Desk" menu title. Selecting the "Info about IMHO" option from the "Desk" will display some copyright information and will also tell you how much free memory is available. To get out of the menu select the "Go Back" option from the "Return" menu title. +-------------+ | Run Program | +-------------+ This brings up a file selector from which you can choose which program to run. After a program has been selected you will be prompted for a command string to pass to the program. If the program is of type .PRG a GEM-type screen similar to when running a program from the desktop will appear and the mouse pointer will be left active. If the program is of another type (e.g. .TOS or .TTP) the screen will be cleared to white, the mouse pointer switched off, and the text cursor switched on. This is again similar to running from the desktop. +-----------+ | View File | +-----------+ This allows you to view files which may be included in the message packet. A QWK packet may include 3 extra files, depending on the settings of the door on the BBS. These are: 1) Welcome Message - usually a description of the BBS, and a greeting. 2) News/Bulletins - usually what's been going on recently on the BBS. 3) Goodbye Message - usually some stats or birthdays etc, and farewell. Some BBS's also add a file called NEWFILES.DAT which contains a list of new files on the BBS. If your BBS has a differently named file containing this list you can set it in IMHO.CFG - see CONFIG.TXT for details. When you click on "View File" you will get a pop-up box with buttons for each of the 4 files above. Click on a button to view the file. If any of the files are not included in the message packet, the buttons will be disabled ("ghosted"), so you cannot click on them. In addition to these 4 there is a button marked "Another File..." which allows you to view any other file, either from the message packet or elsewhere. There are 3 ways to view files: 1) The inbuilt IMHO viewer. 2) Via the editor. 3) Via another program. The default is to use the IMHO viewer. See CONFIG.TXT for details on how to change this. The IMHO viewer allows you to scroll up and down through a file by one page at a time, using the left and right arrow keys. +-----------------------+ | Update Read [Yes][No] | +-----------------------+ The [Yes] and [No] are radio buttons which allow you switch off the flagging of messages that you read. If [Yes] is highlighted (black) then the flag marks are set to read when you read a message (the default). If you click on [No] the messages will not be flagged as read. In this mode the messages replied to or 'marked' still retain their flagged status. I put this in so I could just have a quick flick through some messages without actually reading them properly, or when doing searches on messages. Note about Netmail ------------------ Netmail messages are treated slightly differently. See CONFIG.TXT for more details. The basic difference is that the "Subject:" is treated as an "Address:", and an '@' is automatically put in front of whatever address is given. You can also define addresses in the IMHO.USR file.