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1996-08-10
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MSGED 4.00 released 1996-08-10
NOTE! Before contacting me for support, please make sure you are
using the latest archive produced by *me*. If you use another
version of MSGED, contact the author of that for support, even
if the problem also occurs in my version, as that is only fair, and
helps spread the workload. Plus the fact that even if I do fix it,
you're not going to be using my fixed version anyway, so there is
little point in reporting it to me. I am busy enough as it is, and
have many other PD projects to work on.
INTRODUCTION
This archive is a message editor that works under 16-bit DOS,
32-bit OS/2, and has more limited versions for Amigados and
Linux as well. It works with *.MSG messagebases, QuickBBS
(Hudson) messagebases and Squish messagebases.
EVOLUTION
The original MSGED was written by Jim Nutt and released to the
public domain. It worked on *.MSG and Quickbbs messagebases,
at least by version 2.00, under DOS 16-bit and OS/2 16-bit.
The last release Jim did before "disappearing" was 2.08 dos,
which was 2.06 os/2.
MSGED/SQ was later created by John Dennis, who originally kept
all his changes copyrighted, but later he then went and released
all his stuff to the public domain. This version worked on
both *.MSG and Squish messagebases, and worked under 16-bit DOS
and 16-bit OS/2. The last release from John was 2.2e, after
which he explicitly said he was no longer interested in maintaining
it. The source was released in an archive called MSQ22SRC.LZH.
MSGED/SQ 2.2e was then modified by Paul Edwards to make it work
with *.MSG and Squish under 16-bit DOS and 32-bit OS/2. Plus
a few bug fixes and enhancments. The first version of this
released was 3.00. The last version released was MSGED/SQ 3.35.
The "MSGED" name was then retaken, starting with version 4.00.
If Jim ever comes back, he is welcome to have the name back, but
until then, this is by far the most actively developed strain
of MSGED, so I thought it was better to be on the "main trunk".
The main thing that MSGED 2.08 appeared to have that MSGED/SQ
3.35 didn't, was quickbbs support, so I used the quickbbs code
from MSGED 2.08 and modified it to work with MSGED/SQ 3.35.
EXECUTABLES
The main DOS executable is MSGED.EXE. The main OS/2 executable
is MSGEDP.EXE. The Amigados executable is called msgedam. The
Linux executable is called msgedunx. The 32-bit DOS executable
is called msged32. The 16-bit OS/2 version is not actually
compiled, as it is not expected that anyone actually wants it
(although maybe there are some Windows/NT users who want it -
unless someone requests it, it won't be coming). Also it doesn't
work with MSGAPI.
MSGED32 EXECUTABLE
This 32-bit DOS-extended version of MSGED has been linked with
the PMODE/W DOS-extender. You can FREQ this from 3:711/934 with
name "PMW122.ZIP". If you would rather use the DOS4GW dos-extender,
which allows you to use disk space if you run out of memory, then
FREQ "DOS4GW.ZIP" from 3:711/934, put DOS4GW.EXE in your path, set
DOS4G=QUIET in your autoexec.bat, and run MSGED32 by going
"DOS4GW MSGED32".
DOCUMENTATION
See MSGED.DOC for the documentation. The documentation is not
up-to-date. Volunteers to do the work, please contact me.
OTHER FILES
There is a configuration file MSGED.CFG which you will probably
need to make a fair few changes to to get MSGED up and running.
Other files include MSGED.COL, MSGHELP.DAT, TEMPLATE.MSG. For
OS/2 users, there is a "MSGED.ICO" icon.
SOURCE
Full source code is included in the SRC subdirectory. MSGED
can be compiled using:
MAKEFILE.WAT - OS/2 makefile for Watcom
MAKEFILE.IBM - OS/2 makefile for CSET
MAKEFILE.EMX - OS/2 makefile for GNU/EMX
MAKEFILE.BCC - OS/2 makefile for Borland
MAKEFILE.DOS - DOS makefile for Borland
MAKEFILE.TCC - DOS makefile for Turbo C++
MAKEFILE.W16 - DOS makefile for Watcom 16-bit
MAKEFILE.MSC - DOS makefile for Microsoft C
PACIFIC.PRJ - DOS makefile for Pacific C (needs PACIFIC.PAT)
MAKEFILE.W32 - DOS-extended makefile for Watcom 32-bit
MAKEFILE.UNX - Linux makefile for dmake (with "-B") using gcc
MAKEFILE.SAS - Amiga makefile for SAS/C 6.55
MAKEFILE.MSO - OS/2 16-bit Microsoft C compile
MAKEFILE.ANS - Watcom, OS/2, 32-bit, ANSI screens
MAKEFILE.PDP - EMX, OS/2, 32-bit, PDPCLIB, not yet working
MAKEFILE.WNT - Watcom, Windows/NT, 32-bit, not yet working
As shipped, the OS/2 version has been compiled with Watcom 10.0
32-bit compiler with full optimization, the DOS version has
been compiled with Watcom 10.0 DOS with full optimization. The
Linux version has been compiled with gcc with optimization on, and
the Amigados version has been compiled with SAS/C with optimization
on. The DOS 32-bit version has been compiled with Watcom C with
optimization on.
Both the DOS and OS/2 executables have been statically linked
with MSGAPI38, which is a modification of the original MSGAPI0.
You can FREQ this from 3:711/934 as MSGAPI38.*. The date of
the version used to compile MSGED is 1996-07-24. Squish messagebase
support does not exist for the Linux and Amigados versions, which
isn't any real problem, since those platforms don't use that
messagebase format anyway. Be warned that the QuickBBS format
messagebase may change on Linux and Amigados environments, so I
wouldn't get too attached to it, use *.MSG for now instead.
COPYRIGHT
All of the source code in this archive is public domain.
However, to access Squish messagebases requires use of Scott
Dudley's MSGAPI routines, which are copyrighted by him, and
linked in to the executable. This is allowed according to
the license that the MSGAPI is distributed under. If someone
has some public domain C code to access the Squish messagebases,
please let me know so that I can use that in MSGED. Also, the
PMODE/W 32-bit DOS-extender is copyrighted, as indeed is the
relevant compiler's C runtime library.
SUPPORT
You can reach the current author, Paul Edwards at 3:711/934@fidonet.
However, it would be preferable if you posted your questions in
MSGED_ECHO in a message to "All" so that others can help answer your
question.
What I would REALLY like is for you to get a local C expert to find
the bug and just send me the bug fix so that I can incorporate it
into the next release. This avoids the headache of me trying to
reproduce your problem here. Note that since there are FREE compilers
available to compile MSGED, namely EMX for OS/2, Pacific C for DOS,
gcc for Linux, and also (untested) gcc for Amigados, there is no
excuse not to do the work yourself instead of piling it on to me.
The whole idea of free software is you are meant to contribute to
it.
As for enhancement requests, please send C source code that
implements the enhancement (and explicitly state that the code
is public domain, too). I have a long list of enhancements
which I personally want, and when I have finished all of them,
and all of my other public domain projects, I will start
soliciting other enhancement requests. Hell might freeze over
before that time though. If you don't know how to program in C,
then get one of those 14 year-old's that spends most of their
spare time hacking into the US DOD computers to spend 10 minutes
of their expertise on your MSGED enhancement. It takes me DAYS
to add enhancements.
By the way, the best way to send me changes is by using a utility
called "DIFF". This is a "standard unix" command which is
available for OS/2, and I presume also DOS. I actually use CVS
(in conjunction with RCS) to do the diffs. I know all of this
stuff is available for OS/2, and I think it is also available for
DOS. The stuff is available for FREQ from 3:711/934. Anyway,
if you have changed say msged.c, then you can go:
diff --context \old\msged.c \new\msged.c and get just a list of
changes that you have made. I prefer to get all the differences
in one file, so that I can feed it directly into another