home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Amiga Plus Extra 1997 #5
/
AmigaPlus_Extra-CD_5-97.iso
/
online-tools
/
mail
/
q-blue2.3
/
q-blue.doc
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1997-02-27
|
475KB
|
8,612 lines
User Manual for
Q-Blue, release 2.3
an offline electronic mail reader for Amiga computers
by Paul Kienitz
Shareware distribution license:
The computer program "Q-Blue, release 2.3" is copyright (c) 1992-
1997 by Paul Kienitz, with all rights reserved except as stated
here. Q-Blue 2.3 exists in two forms, an "evaluation" version and
a "registered" version. The former may be copied and distributed
freely; the latter may not be. Selecting the "About Q-Blue"
pull-down menu item when the program is running will display a
message that declares whether that copy is registered or not. The
evaluation version may be used by any person for occasional use,
or for as long as needed to decide whether to use the program
routinely. Permission is not granted to use that version
routinely for longer than thirty days. Routine use is defined as
two or more uses per week. The evaluation version may be copied
and distributed by any means, so long as the set of files
comprising the software package, including this manual and the
file called "How-to-order", is kept complete and unmodified.
The registered version may be purchased directly from the author,
Paul Kienitz. If you have purchased the registered version, you
are licensed to make unlimited use of the software, on one machine
at any one time, so long as you abide by the terms of this
license. A group of people who share one computer may use a
single copy, as may an individual who uses two or more computers,
so long as it is not running on two computers at the same time.
Copies of the registered version are not to be distributed to
other users by any means, except by the author or his designated
agents. See the file "How-to-order" for information on how to buy
a registered copy.
Q-Blue, like most software, is provided "as is", with no warranty
of any kind. The author cannot assume liability for any damage
caused by the software. Anyone who willfully violates the terms
set forth in this license, such as by distributing copies of the
registered version to those who have not paid for it, will be
deemed to have forfeited all rights and permissions granted here,
including the right to make any use at all of Q-Blue. If you
cannot abide by the terms of this license, do not use the program.
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual
Table Of Contents
PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1) BACKGROUND
1.1) So, what is an offline mail reader anyway? . . . . . . 5
1.2) What are "QWK" and "Blue Wave"? . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3) General information about Q-Blue's interface . . . . . 8
1.4) Special properties of Q-Blue's string gadgets . . . . 9
1.5) Q-Blue's question and error requesters . . . . . . . . 11
1.6) A brief description of Q-Blue's "list windows" . . . . 12
2) AN OVERVIEW OF HOW TO USE Q-BLUE
2.1) Installation and configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2) Downloading a mail packet to read . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3) Starting Q-Blue and opening a packet . . . . . . . . . 16
2.4) Reading the messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.5) Writing messages and replies . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.6) Packing and uploading your replies . . . . . . . . . . 20
PART 2: CONFIGURATION
3) STARTING Q-BLUE, AND BASIC CONFIGURATION
3.1) Configuration files and startup options . . . . . . . 21
3.2) The Setup menu; loading and saving configurations . . 23
3.3) Message sorting order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.4) The Directories setup window . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.5) The two most crucial directories . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.6) Non-directory pathnames in the Directories window . . 31
4) SETTING UP A TEXT EDITOR FOR WRITING REPLIES
4.1) The Editor setup window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.2) Specifying commands for running an editor . . . . . . 34
4.3) Why use two separate editor commands? . . . . . . . . 36
4.4) Using an editor with ARexx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.5) ARexx scripts using two files . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.6) Using CygnusEd to edit replies . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.7) Using CygnusEd through the "Ed" activator . . . . . . 44
4.8) Using TurboText to edit replies . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.9) A few editor tricks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
- 2 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual
Table Of Contents, continued
5) SETTING UP ARCHIVE COMPRESSORS
5.1) The Compressors setup window . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
5.2) Teaching Q-Blue about other compression programs . . . 52
5.3) Special codes in compression commands . . . . . . . . 54
5.4) Compressor "patterns" for automatic recognition . . . 56
6) OTHER CONFIGURATION OPTIONS
6.1) Selecting the font for Q-Blue's screen . . . . . . . . 57
6.2) Selecting the screen type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
6.3) The Options setup window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
6.4) Specifying how messages are quoted for replying . . . 64
6.5) Header and signature strings for replies . . . . . . . 66
6.6) Special codes used in header and signature strings . . 67
6.7) Other gadgets in the Replying setup window . . . . . . 69
6.8) Local setup options for individual BBSes . . . . . . . 71
6.9) Configuring QWK packet netmail . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
6.10) Configuring Internet email . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
PART 3: OPERATION
7) SCROLLING LIST WINDOW OPERATION
7.1) Basic list window control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
7.2) Special features of message and area list windows . . 82
7.3) Special features of other list windows . . . . . . . . 83
7.4) What is shown in windows listing message areas . . . . 84
7.5) What is shown in other list windows . . . . . . . . . 86
8) OPENING MESSAGE PACKETS
8.1) Options available when no packet is open . . . . . . . 88
8.2) Initial steps in opening a mail packet . . . . . . . . 90
8.3) Decompression and loading of mail . . . . . . . . . . 92
8.4) "Opening" with no mail packet . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
8.5) Reloading unfinished replies . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
8.6) The "twit list" file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
8.7) Twit list options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
8.8) Twit list examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
- 3 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual
Table Of Contents, continued
9) READING MESSAGES
9.1) What you see when reading a message . . . . . . . . . 102
9.2) Basic reading options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
9.3) Special features available when reading . . . . . . . 106
9.4) Saving and printing messages . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
9.5) The word search feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
9.6) Additional aspects of the search feature . . . . . . 113
10) WRITING REPLIES AND NEW MESSAGES
10.1) The message creation window: From, To, Subject . . . 115
10.2) Other message creation gadgets . . . . . . . . . . . 118
10.3) Editing and saving messages . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
10.4) Selecting an area for the message . . . . . . . . . 121
10.5) Adding missing areas to the list . . . . . . . . . . 123
10.6) Writing netmail messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
10.7) Netmail attribute flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
10.8) Writing Internet messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
10.9) Taglines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
10.10) Tagline window options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
11) COMPLETING THE UPLOAD PACKET
11.1) File download requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
11.2) Blue Wave mail door option flags . . . . . . . . . . 134
11.3) More Blue Wave mail door configuration choices . . . 135
11.4) Mail door message area selection . . . . . . . . . . 137
11.5) Extra options available when selecting mail areas . 140
11.6) Packing your replies for uploading . . . . . . . . . 141
11.7) Closing the mail packet; exiting the program . . . . 142
PART 4: CONCLUSION
12) AUTHOR SUPPORT
12.1) How to contact the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
12.2) Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
- 4 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 1.1
PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1) BACKGROUND
1.1) So, what is an offline mail reader anyway?
If you have used offline mail readers in the past, or are familiar
with the concept in some other way, you probably don't need to
read this section. For those who are not familiar with them, here
is an explanation of what Q-Blue is for:
Its purpose is for reading electronic mail from computer bulletin
board systems, or BBSes as they are commonly called, without tying
up your telephone line while doing so. If you don't have an Amiga
computer with a modem, or don't use it to call BBSes or other
online data services, you don't have any use for Q-Blue. If the
BBSes you call do not support offline readers, you're still out of
luck. But quite a few BBSes have the ability to package mail in
QWK format, and an increasing number are supporting the more
sophisticated Blue Wave format. If a BBS has a lot of message
traffic and has no means of allowing callers to read mail offline,
then it's time to pester the person in charge (the sysop) until
she or he adds that ability.
Typically, offline mail packets are created by means of something
called a "door": a piece of software that callers to the BBS can
use by giving a command to some BBS menu. In some cases, the BBS
itself has a built-in feature for creating them, without using a
separate program. The details are different for each individual
BBS. We will refer to the software that bundles offline mail
packets as the "mail door", in either case. Once the mail door is
running, it will provide a menu of commands which allow you to
select which mail you want to read, and how to package it. Again,
the details vary from one setup to another -- the various mail
doors all differ in their command interfaces. Once the mail is
bundled up, the door lets you download it all as a single
compressed file. Then you can log off from the BBS, hang up the
phone, and read the mail at your leisure with an offline reader.
The reader allows you to write new electronic mail messages,
including replies to the ones you have downloaded. When your
replies (if any) are ready, you can call the BBS again and upload
them to the mail door, which will then "post" the messages in the
correct places.
Why bother with these extra steps to read your mail? Because if
you don't, then your phone line is busy the whole time you read
and reply to messages. If the call is not local, the costs can
add up rapidly. The BBS's phone line is also busy, preventing
other people from using it if it does not have other lines
available. Also, when reading online you have to create your
replies using whatever excuse for a text editor the BBS provides;
not only are you deprived of the features of your preferred
- 5 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 1.1
editor, but different BBS systems are not consistent with each
other in how their editors work. And when reading messages, you
have to put up with the slowness of text sent through modems, and
possibly line noise as well. When reading mail offline, there is
no line noise, no speed bottleneck, and you can use your favorite
text editor to write replies and new messages. It also saves
quite a bit of money if you call BBSes long distance. This is
what Q-Blue is for: it unpacks the mail packet you downloaded,
displays the messages, and lets you write replies.
Q-Blue 2.3 has the following arbitrary limitations: no message
may be longer than 8000 lines or the remainder will be discarded.
In the registered version, up to 200 replies may be created in one
upload packet. In the evaluation version, the maximum number of
replies is restricted to four. The personal messages area can
contain at most 400 messages. There will be at most 50 bulletins
and other extra text files shown. The downloads and uploads
directories can have at most 400 files between them or the file
list window may leave some out. Up to 32000 messages per area can
be handled, in up to 32000 areas. The maximum number of taglines
that can be listed is also 32000.
1.2) What are "QWK" and "Blue Wave"?
Whenever a BBS creates a bundle of information to be used by an
offline reader, it stores the data in a particular format which
the offline reader understands. The data is contained in a
"packet", which is a compressed archive containing several files.
The software that creates the offline mail packets (commonly
called the "door") and the software that lets you read the packets
(the "reader") must agree on all the details of what these files
contain. Unfortunately, there are different kinds of doors which
have their own incompatible standards in this area, each with its
own set of readers which can understand its format but not others.
Q-Blue is a reader that understands two mail formats.
"QWK" (which is pronounced "quack" by those who prefer other
formats) is the common name for the format of files that are
produced by an offline mail door called QMail, and a great many
others that are compatible with it, such as RoseMail, TomCat,
DLGQWK, and so on. The format was created by Mark "Sparky"
Herring of Sparkware, the author of QMail and several related
products. The name comes from the fact that the files it creates
are typically given a name that ends with ".QWK". The majority of
mail doors are compatible with QMail and produce message bundles
of this type. The format of QWK files is public knowledge, and
new mail processing software using this format is being created
all the time. It is obsolete, but still very popular because,
until recently, there were few alternatives.
"Blue Wave" is a different format for offline mail, which the
doors and readers based on QWK format are not compatible with. It
- 6 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 1.2
has several advantages: for instance, it is designed to be able to
send private "Netmail" messages between different BBSes linked by
networks such as FidoNet, and it allows one to specify, while
offline, things like the criteria by which the door should select
mail for future downloads. Blue Wave also avoids the shortcomings
of the QWK format which cause the subject lines of messages to be
shortened to 25 characters and, in many cases, cause peoples'
names to appear in all uppercase letters.
There are two main subtypes of Blue Wave mail packets, known as
"version 2" and "version 3". The latter has improved features,
such as direct support for Internet mail and newsgroup posts.
There are several circumstances in which Q-Blue will behave
differently depending on whether a Blue Wave mail packet is
version 2 or version 3, documented throughout this manual.
The main disadvantage of Blue Wave is that originally, software
using it was available from only one source -- George Hatchew of
Cutting Edge Computing, formerly known as Blue Wave Software --
and because of this, it is not nearly as widespread or broadly
supported as the older QWK format is, though it has gained ground
rapidly. The version 2 Blue Wave format was designed by George
Hatchew and Fred Rappuhn. The first Blue Wave compatible software
from another source (Q-Blue 0.7) did not appear until mid-1992,
and the Blue Wave format specification was not made public until
the end of 1993. By this time Fred Rappuhn was out of the
picture, and version 3 Blue Wave is George Hatchew's creation.
The one other widespread format for offline mail is called "Silver
Xpress" -- it's as old a format as QWK, and yet over the years it
has grown possibly more sophisticated than Blue Wave. Q-Blue does
not support Silver Xpress, because the format is proprietary and
its creator, Hector Santos of Santronics Software, has chosen to
support another program for reading Silver Xpress mail on the
Amiga. Instead of making the Silver Xpress format available to
the public, Santronics has instead set out to develop a new format
called "XNet". Unfortunately, the work of completing the XNet
specification and creating software to use it has been left
unfinished for a long time, and as of this writing it is uncertain
whether it will ever see any wide use.
Other completely unrelated formats are being used to read mail
from the big interconnected services like the Internet, which at
this time is still largely a separate world from BBS mail --
though less so every year. "SOUP" is probably the most popular
such format at this time. And there are other readers which
understand messages in the forms used by FidoNet compatible
mailers to transmit mail between networked BBSes, or store BBS
message bases. Q-Blue does not understand any of these other
formats yet. It does understand QWK and Blue Wave. It can read
messages produced by any door compatible with either of these,
and create replies that they can understand.
- 7 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 1.3
1.3) General information about Q-Blue's interface
Q-Blue's user interface mostly similar to what you would expect in
any modern Amiga program, but not entirely. When you use an eight
color screen (section 6.2 describes how you can choose between
four and eight colors), all areas of the screen that are meant to
be clicked on with the left mouse button, except scroller gadgets,
are given a distinctive color -- green in the default palette.
Rectangular green areas with a "raised" border and a word inside
are command buttons. Clicking while the pointer is over that area
instructs Q-Blue to carry out some action. A somewhat larger
rectangle with a curled arrow at the left end is a "cycle gadget".
This lets you select one of several options. Every time you click
on this gadget, a different option is selected and a different
word is displayed inside. If you click it enough times you will
get back to the option you started with and the cycle will repeat.
Clicking it with the shift key held down causes the options to
appear in reverse order. In a very few cases, Q-Blue will instead
use "radio buttons": a set of several small oval buttons of which
just one appears recessed and has a bright dot in the middle.
Selecting the one labeled with the desired option "pops out" any
other that is selected.
Another kind of gadget is a small green rectangle with a "raised"
border containing either a checkmark or a blank space. This
represents an option that can be turned either on or off. If the
checkmark is present, the option is turned on. Clicking on such a
gadget removes the checkmark if it is present, and makes it appear
if it is absent.
Command button gadgets have a word inside with an underline under
one letter of the word, usually the first. This means that if you
type that letter on the keyboard, the effect will be as if you had
clicked on the gadget -- the same command will be carried out. In
the case of cycle gadgets and checkmark gadgets, there is a label
written next to the gadget, and the first letter of that label is
underlined. Typing that letter on the keyboard is the same as
clicking on the gadget. A checkmark gadget will switch from off
to on or vice versa, and a cycle gadget will switch to its next
setting. Or if you hold down a shift key while typing the letter,
it will switch to its previous setting. Sometimes a command
button will have a bent arrow next to it shaped like the one on
your return key, pointing down and then to the left. This
indicates that pressing the return key, or the Enter key on the
numeric keypad, is equivalent to clicking that gadget.
String gadgets are long green strips with a "ridge" border.
Q-Blue's string gadgets have some unusual added properties not
shared with most other Amiga software. They are discussed in the
next section (1.4).
Commands can also be given with pull-down menus by using the right
mouse button. Each menu item that causes a dialog window to open
- 8 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 1.3
has a name with "..." shown on the end. Each item's corresponding
keyboard command is displayed along the right edge of the menu.
For instance, the item that reads "Open packet... O" can be
executed by typing the letter "O" on the keyboard as well as by
selecting the menu item, and it will open a window. All menu
choices are visible, even when they are not usable. The unusable
ones are "ghosted" -- that is, they are written in gray-looking
speckled letters instead of in clear dark text. Selecting a
ghosted item has no effect. Gadgets can be ghosted too, when they
are not usable. A ghosted gadget is speckled with background
color so that it looks blurred and dimmed.
Sometimes the mouse pointer gets turned into an image of a pocket
watch -- or under AmigaDOS 3.x, the system "busy pointer" you
specify. This indicates that Q-Blue is busy on something that
can't be interrupted, and you have to wait a moment. When the
mouse pointer is shown this way, anything you do with the mouse or
keyboard will be ignored. The exception is when a requester with
option gadgets is visible in the middle of the screen. If you
activate the backdrop behind the requester, the watch image will
show, but any input you give will be heard by the requester.
Any window can, of course, be closed by clicking the left mouse
button on the little box in the upper left corner -- the "close
gadget". Pressing the Esc key has the same effect. It is a
keyboard synonym for the close gadget, for all of Q-Blue's
windows. But in a few cases, the window might not close when you
tell it to. Sometimes, if you enter invalid information, you will
get an error message when you try to close the window, and you
have to correct the indicated problem to be able to close the
window. The number of windows that act this way has been kept to
a minimum.
Sometimes Q-Blue needs you to specify the name and location of a
file. In these cases it will display the standard "ASL" file
requester. A description of how to use this requester is covered
in the basic manuals that come with every Amiga, and most users
are familiar with its usage. The file "asl.library" must be
present in your system's LIBS: directory for this to work. If the
library cannot be opened, Q-Blue opens a small window with one
string gadget into which you can type the name of the file you
want to specify. Pressing return closes the window, telling
Q-Blue to go ahead and use the file you've named. Clicking the
close gadget or pressing Esc tells Q-Blue not to use what you've
entered.
1.4) Special properties of Q-Blue's string gadgets
Q-Blue's string gadgets are like any Amiga string gadget in that
each contains a line of text (which may be empty) that you can
edit by clicking in the gadget to "activate" it, and typing new
text or erasing old text with the backspace and Del keys. Holding
- 9 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 1.4
down the right Amiga key (just to the right of the spacebar) and
typing the letter X erases everything in the string gadget, if it
is active. (A string gadget becomes "active" when you click the
mouse in it. A cursor appears in it to mark where the stuff you
type will be entered.) Pressing backspace with the shift key held
down erases everything from the cursor to the beginning of the
string, and the Del key, with shift down, erases everything from
the cursor to the end. Holding down the right Amiga key and
typing Q restores the string to whatever it showed when you first
activated it, undoing any changes you made.
When Q-Blue is using an eight color screen, string gadgets are
colored green inside like all the other gadgets. When the gadget
is activated, the inside changes to black. On a four color
screen, the inside is blue when it's not activated, like the
background of the window the gadget appears in. If another
program, or an ASL requester, creates a string gadget on Q-Blue's
screen, it is typically black inside even when not active. Of
course, these colors refer to the default palette settings. The
special properties discussed here apply to those windows -- they
only apply to windows created by Q-Blue itself. The keystrokes
described above, however, are standard for all.
Q-Blue does not supply special keyboard shortcuts for activating
each string gadget, as it does for each gadget of the other kinds.
Instead, the tab key is used as a universal string gadget
activator. Whenever any string gadgets are visible, pressing the
tab key will activate one of them. Pressing tab again will
deactivate that one and activate the next one below it. Pressing
tab with a shift key held down activates the next one above.
Pressing either enough times will bring you back to the gadget
that was originally active. And this is not the only way to
activate other string gadgets.
Normally, when you are finished editing a string gadget, you press
return. If there is another string gadget below the one you
pressed return in, it will be activated -- unless, that is, you
turn off this feature in the Options setup window. This does not
"wrap around"; that is, the first gadget will not activate when
you press return in the last one. If you do not want the next
gadget to be activated, hold down an Alt key while pressing
return. If you want the gadget above to be activated, hold down a
shift key while pressing return. The last gadget is activated if
you use shift-return in the first one. But if the "Next string
gad activates" option is turned off (see section 6.3), no other
gadget is activated. Of course, none of this applies to windows
that contain only one string gadget.
As mentioned in the previous section, the Esc key acts as a
synonym for the "close gadget" in the upper left corner of each
window. This even works while a string gadget is active; if you
press Esc while typing into a string gadget, the window containing
the gadget will be closed.
- 10 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 1.4
Q-Blue's string gadgets have one other unusual property (which is
standard in some other graphical operating systems): you can paste
from the system clipboard into any string gadget in Q-Blue's
windows. This is done by typing the letter V with the right Amiga
key held down -- the standard "paste" keystroke used in most
programs that use the clipboard. When this keystroke is used in
an active string gadget, and the system clipboard (unit 0)
contains text, the contents of the string gadget are replaced with
that text, or as much of it as will fit. The gadget is briefly
deactivated but normally becomes active again an instant later.
Except when that reactivation fails, using right-Amiga-Q to "undo"
its contents will restore what was there before the clipboard
paste. This feature has many uses when combined with the feature
for drag-selecting text from messages into the clipboard: you can
copy a user name or network address into the message writing
window, copy a filename into the download requests window, steal
taglines, and so on. This can sometimes also be used to enter
strange characters that can't be typed in from the keyboard.
If the clipboard contains more than one line of text, then
normally newlines are converted to spaces, and any spaces after
the newline are removed. But in certain string gadgets that use
"@"-codes, newlines are replaced with the code sequence "@N",
which is translated back into a newline when the string is used.
The gadgets that use "@N" are the editor command strings (see
section 5.3), the compressor command strings (section 4.2), and
the quote header, carbon copy header, and signature strings
(section 6.5), and their "BBS Local" equivalents (section 6.8).
1.5) Q-Blue's question and error requesters
Q-Blue uses simple requesters whenever it needs to ask the user a
question, or report an important message. These requesters are
red in the default eight color palette, centered in the middle of
the screen, and have mouse gadgets along the bottom for you to
respond with. These are used instead of the standard "system
requesters" because they have clearer keyboard shortcuts. For
giving error messages or other information that does not ask you
to make a choice, there will be one gadget in the lower right
corner under the text of the message, labeled "Okay". For cases
when you have to make a choice, there will be two or three
gadgets, each labeled with a different word. The first letter of
each label word is underlined to indicate a keyboard shortcut you
can use.
One of the gadgets has a bent arrow showing next to it, to
indicate that pressing return is equivalent to selecting that
gadget. The gadget with the arrow next to it is considered the
default choice. The spacebar, as well as the return key and the
Enter key on the numeric keypad, will select this default choice.
If the requester has a "Cancel" option in the rightmost gadget,
pressing the Esc key will make that choice. Esc is used to mean
- 11 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 1.5
"cancel" or "close window" throughout Q-Blue. If there is no
"Cancel" gadget, then pressing Esc makes the default choice, like
the return key. The text above the gadgets explains the choice
you have to make.
While one of these requesters is open, the rest of Q-Blue cannot
do anything. If you activate some other Q-Blue window, the mouse
pointer will show as a "busy" clock face. You must choose one of
the gadgets before the program can resume operation, either with
the mouse or with a keyboard equivalent.
If a requester cannot be opened, for instance because all chip
memory has been used up, Q-Blue's screen title bar will turn
bright red and display the message "*** ERROR *** NO MEMORY!!
Other errors likely. PRESS ANY KEY". If this happens, you should
probably assume that there have been other errors which it could
not report to you in detail. You should probably do something to
increase the available memory in your Amiga, like quitting some
other program that you have running, or there may be a risk of a
system crash (hopefully not from Q-Blue itself). Like the message
says, you then need to press a key to allow Q-Blue to continue.
1.6) A brief description of Q-Blue's "list windows"
Q-Blue uses something called a "list window" in many different
ways. These windows are used much like standard "listview
gadgets", such as the scrollable lists seen in a file or font
requester. They show a sequence of lines, which can be scrolled
up and down using a proportional gadget at the right edge. One
line is "highlighted" -- the text is written on a different
background color than the one used in the rest of the window. In
the default palette, most lines have a blue background but the
highlighted one (the current selection) has a green background, so
you see a green stripe across the window. Various keystrokes, or
a mouse click, can be used to select any line in the list as the
highlighted one.
A scrolling list window appears whenever you choose a mail file to
unpack, or choose a message area to read or post a message in, or
choose a message to read within an area, or choose a tagline.
This list window works the same in all cases... mostly.
Everything can be done with either the keyboard or the mouse.
With the mouse, you can highlight a line by clicking on it with
the left button, and if you double-click on a line, the window is
closed and that line is taken as your final selection. If there
are more lines than the window has room for, you can use the
scroll gadget at the right edge to move more lines into the
visible area. If you don't want to make any selection, click the
close gadget in the upper left corner, and it will close the
window and behave as if you had never opened it -- anything you
did to move the highlighted line will be ignored.
- 12 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 1.6
Keyboard control is mostly done with arrow keys. Pressing the up
or down arrow key moves the highlighted bar up or down by one
line, and you can also move the highlight line up or down by a
"page" (as many lines as show in the window, minus one) by
pressing an up or down arrow key with an Alt key held down, or by
pressing the "PgUp" and "PgDn" keys on the numeric keypad. You
can jump to the first or last line with the "Home" and "End"
numeric pad keys, or pressing an up or down arrow key with the
Ctrl key held down.
Pressing return or the spacebar closes the window, selecting the
line that is highlighted at the time as your final choice. The
Enter key on the numeric pad also works. To close the window and
have Q-Blue behave as if it had not been opened, press the Esc
key. In other words,
pressing the return key can be thought of as
"okay", and pressing Esc can be thought of as "cancel".
The same
distinction applies to double-clicking a line vs. clicking the
close gadget. A common mistake, perhaps most often made with the
window for selecting what area to post a message in, is to select
a different line and then click the close gadget instead of
pressing return or double-clicking. This causes your selection to
be ignored.
The list window need not be the active window -- if any window on
Q-Blue's screen is active (except the "Packer command output"
console window, an ASL requester, or something opened by another
program), these keys will work.
2) AN OVERVIEW OF HOW TO USE Q-BLUE
2.1) Installation and configuration
The first thing you need to do before using the program is this:
read the distribution license on the title page of this manual.
If you cannot agree to abide by the terms in that license, you do
not have legal permission to use Q-Blue, even if you pay for it.
Q-Blue 2.3 should be usable on just about any Amiga computer with
at least one megabyte of memory and AmigaDOS version 2.04 or
newer. Anyone still running AmigaDOS 1.3 or 1.2 can use Q-Blue
1.0, which is the last version that still works on those systems.
Q-Blue is usable on systems without a hard disk.
Before it is possible to use Q-Blue, you have to configure various
settings. Most importantly, you have to set aside a couple of
disk directories for use by the program, which are not used by
anything else (see section 3.5). If you want to write replies,
rather than just reading, you have to tell it how to use your text
editor (it is set up to use C:Ed by default). There are other
things to set up as well, but these are the most essential. The
- 13 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 2.1
configuration steps are the least intuitive part of using the
program, and are covered in detail in sections 3, 4, 5, and 6 of
this manual.
You may also wish to install some IBM style fonts for Q-Blue to
use, since the IBM character set, rather than the 8 bit ISO set
normally used by the Amiga, is standard in most of the BBS world.
Four such fonts are included with the Q-Blue package, along with
three non-IBM fonts. The script called "Install" will unpack and
install whichever fonts you select. If you double-click on this
icon, it will put up a series of requesters that ask you which
fonts you want to use, and where to put them. It first asks you
whether you want to select a special place to install them,
instead of the normal FONTS: directory. If you select "Yes", it
presents you with an ASL file requester to allow you to pick
another directory.
The script describes each font in turn, mentioning what screen
types it's intended for, asking you whether you want to install
it. The available fonts are in two groups: some using the IBM
character set that is commonly used with BBS mail, and some using
the ISO character set that is used by normal Amiga fonts. Each
set has a selection of fonts suitable for different screen
resolutions. It goes through the IBM fonts first and the ISO
fonts last.
The four IBM fonts are: newcleanibm size 8, which is 8 pixels wide
and suitable for a basic noninterlaced NTSC or PAL screen; tallibm
size 11, 12, and 14, which is also 8 pixels wide and suitable for
interlaced or productivity screens 400 or more pixels tall;
wideibm size 9, 12, and 14, which is 10 pixels wide and useful
only with screen modes 800 pixels wide, which older Amigas cannot
display; and stretchibm size 12, which is 9 pixels wide and useful
only for NTSC or PAL screens which use extreme horizontal overscan
to achieve a width of 720 pixels.
The ISO fonts are exact equivalents in size and appearance to the
IBM fonts, and include talliso 11, 12, and 14, wideiso 12 and 14,
and stretchiso 12. There is no newcleaniso 8 or wideiso 9 because
the Amiga's built-in fonts topaz 8 and topaz 9 fill these roles.
Either font type can be used if the mail you read is all basic
7-bit ASCII. These fonts are generally all similar in appearance,
with a look much like that of an old version of topaz 11 that was
included with AmigaDOS 1.3. They are not sans-serif like the
modern topaz fonts, except for the 8 point newcleanibm font.
The "Install" icon runs a script using IconX, so various standard
commands such as Copy must be available in your C: directory. You
can, if desired, install the fonts manually with a suitable
command in a CLI (AmigaShell) window, or by using a directory
utility program. In the case of the evaluation version, you would
CD to the directory the Q-Blue archive was unpacked into, and give
a command such as "Copy fonts/#? ALL FONTS:". In the case of the
- 14 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 2.1
registered version, you would unpack the archive "FONTS.lha" with
a command such as "LX -a -m x Q-Blue:FONTS.lha FONTS:". The LX
command is included in the directory "c" of the Q-Blue disk, if
you do not already have it. LhA or LZ can, of course, be used
instead of LX.
If you have already installed the newcleanibm and tallibm fonts
from an earlier version of Q-Blue, you should go ahead and install
the new versions, replacing them. Numerous small improvements
have been made in the fonts. The wideibm and stretchibm fonts may
be useful to you if you intend to use Q-Blue with higher than
normal horizontal resolution, but if not, you have little reason
to unpack them.
In the evaluation version, the "Install" script does not do much
more than install the fonts. It can also install a text file
called "Taglines" which can be used with Q-Blue's tagline
function, to a directory you select. But in the registered
version, the script is also responsible for unpacking this user
manual from the archive "DOCS.lha", and can unpack and install Zip
and UnZip programs, and their doc files. Each step is accompanied
by requesters that allow you to skip it, or select a suitable
directory to place the material in.
Once the installation and internal setup is complete, you can use
Q-Blue to read mail. A broad outline of how to do this is given
in sections 2.2 through 2.6.
2.2) Downloading a mail packet to read
To use Q-Blue, you first need some mail to read. To get it, log
on to a BBS that has messages you want to read, using your modem
and telecommunications software as you normally would. Then, use
whatever command the BBS provides to create QWK or Blue Wave mail
packets. Often, this is a command for starting up a separate
"door" program within the BBS system. (This manual will use the
term "door" generically to refer to offline mail packing systems,
even when they are a built-in feature of the BBS.) Optionally,
give commands to the door program to select what mail you want to
read. Usually you would just give a simple command that means,
"Send me all new messages that I have not read yet, in the areas
I've been reading." The door will pack the mail into a file using
some archiving program such as Zip or LHA, and then let you
download that file by some protocol such as ZModem.
QWK compatible doors vary greatly, and this manual can't begin to
describe how to operate all of the different ones that exist. But
Blue Wave doors are quite consistent between different BBSes.
Q-Blue comes with a file called "BW-door.doc", which contains a
manual for Blue Wave doors written by George Hatchew, the author
of most existing Blue Wave compatible doors. In the registered
- 15 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 2.2
version, this file is stored in the archive file "DOCS.lha", and
the "Install" script will unpack it along with this user manual.
One note about QWK doors: some offer an option to send packets
that do not include ".NDX" files. You may use this option with
Q-Blue, as those files are usually redundant and Q-Blue can
therefore ignore them. Many other QWK readers require them.
If you find that you need to re-download some mail that the mail
door thinks you have already read, such as if a packet is
accidentally deleted, see the discussion of "pointer files" in
section 8.3. Q-Blue saves copies of these files from the packets
you read, when a BBS provides them.
2.3) Starting Q-Blue and opening a packet
After the mail packet has been downloaded into your Amiga, log off
of the BBS and start up Q-Blue. Either double-click its Workbench
icon, or just type "Q-Blue" to a command prompt in a CLI window.
When started with a CLI command, it automatically detaches itself
to run in the background, so that you get your command prompt back
right away. If the program is not located in a directory included
in your command path, you may have to type the program name with a
directory path in front of it.
When starting Q-Blue, you can specify a mail packet to open,
either on the command line, by shift-double-clicking the packet
when starting from Workbench, or with a "tool type" line in the
Workbench icon. Details on this are in section 3.1, which also
describes how to specify an alternate configuration file to change
Q-Blue's option settings.
If you do not use this option, Q-Blue will present you with a
mostly blank custom screen, with seven gadgets at the bottom, the
leftmost one of which is labeled "Open". (Unless, that is, you
use a setup option to remove these gadgets.) To open a mail
packet, you can either click on this gadget with the left mouse
button, or press the letter O on the keyboard, or use the right
mouse button to select the "Open packet" option from the "Packet"
menu. These are all equivalent ways of giving the "Open" command.
This is the leftmost of four menus, the other three being
"Messages", "Replies", and "Setup". The gadgets at the bottom are
mostly just shortcuts for menu items.
The result of selecting "Open" will be that Q-Blue will display a
window labeled "Select file to unpack -- enter or double-click",
showing a list of files in the directory that your downloads are
kept in. This is a list window of the type described in section
1.6. Telling Q-Blue which directory your packets are downloaded
into is part of the setup process, and is covered in section 3.4.
- 16 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 2.3
The mail packet you just downloaded will typically be the first
file listed in this window; others are listed in order of
increasing age. The first file shown is highlighted. You can
select this (or another) file as described in section 1.6, for
instance by pressing return. Q-Blue will then attempt to unpack
the file for reading. In most cases it will automatically figure
out which of several possible decompression programs to use.
Alternatively, you can use the gadget labeled "No Pkt." or the
N key, which correspond to the "Open (no packet)" menu item. This
option allows you to write messages for uploading to a BBS you
have called in the past, without having any downloaded mail packet
on hand to read. It works like reading a normal mail packet,
except that instead of being able to read a set of messages from
the BBS, there is only one blank "placeholder" message. Instead
of displaying a list of mail packets, the selection window
displays a list of special files, each of which describes one BBS
that you have read mail packets from previously. Section 8.4
describes this fully.
2.4) Reading the messages
After showing you the operation of the decompression program in a
text window labeled "Packer command output", and assuming that the
unpacking is successful, Q-Blue will show you a window which lists
the different message areas in which messages exist. BBSes
typically separate messages on different topics into distinct
areas; for instance, one for messages about programming, another
one for talking about movies, another for bondage fantasies, still
another for sharing adventures in stamp collecting, and so on.
These different areas, or "conferences" or "subs" as they are
sometimes called, are listed in a window labeled "Select message
area -- Enter or double-click". It works just like the file
selection window. If you want to start at the beginning, just
press return.
If you want to read your own personal mail first, a special area
near the top of the list, just above the first "real" area,
contains copies of all messages in the packet that were addressed
to you (if any). Above that there may be another special area
where you can read extra text files included with the packet, such
as news about the BBS, welcome and goodbye messages, updated
bulletins, and perhaps a list of new files available to download.
The highlight bar normally starts out on the first regular message
area, which comes after the personal messages area if any. To
read the personal messages or the bulletins first, use the up
arrow key or double-click with the mouse on the desired line.
If you have already opened this same packet once before, the
highlighted line is the area in which you were last reading when
you closed the packet. This allows you to close a mail packet,
reopen it later, and resume right where you left off.
- 17 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 2.4
After you have selected an area and this window has closed, it
might, depending on the preference options you have chosen in
setting up Q-Blue, show you another window listing all the
messages in the selected area, showing who they are from, who they
are addressed to, and the subject header of the message. The
title bar of the window will show the name of the message area.
Normally the highlighted line is the first one -- the first
message in the area. But again, if you have already opened this
packet once before, then the highlighted line will be the last
message that you had read in this area before closing the packet.
Now you are reading the mail. The author, addressee, subject,
area, and date are shown in the box at the top of the screen (blue
with a red border in the default eight color palette), and the
text is shown in the large blank area in the middle. If the
message is too big to fit on the screen, you can display the next
screenful by pressing the spacebar. You can move the message text
up or down one line at a time with the arrow keys, or show the
next or previous screenful with the "PgUp" and "PgDn" keys (9 and
3) on the numeric pad of your keyboard. Pressing the up and down
arrow keys while holding down one of the Alt keys also does this.
You can also scroll text up and down with the mouse: click it near
the bottom edge of the screen and text scrolls up until you
release the mouse button; click it in the box above the text and
it scrolls down. By clicking and dragging the mouse in the middle
you can select a section of text which is copied into the system
clipboard. And if your overscan preferences allow some extra
horizontal room, there will be a scroll gadget along the right
edge of the screen, which can be used as another way to scroll the
message text up and down. The less obvious mouse scrolling method
can be used if the scroll bar does not fit into the display.
To see the next message, you can press the right arrow key, or
click the gadget labeled "Next" at the bottom of the screen, or
press the spacebar when the bottom of the message text is visible
on the screen. The left arrow key and the "Prev." gadget make it
go back to earlier messages.
When you reach the last message in the area you are reading,
pressing the spacebar or right arrow, or clicking the "Next"
gadget, normally causes the "Select message area" window to
reappear. (There is a setup option that can make it simply enter
the next area, if desired.) The highlight bar is now on the next
line. If you want to keep reading the messages in order, just
press return or the spacebar as before. You can read through all
the messages in the packet just by pressing the spacebar.
2.5) Writing messages and replies
At some point you may see a message you want to reply to. To
do this, click the gadget at the bottom of the screen labeled
"Reply", or select "Reply to this msg" from the "Replies" menu,
- 18 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 2.5
which is the third of the four menus, or press the R key. Up will
pop a window labeled "Writing a reply" which shows who the message
is from (you), who it is to (the author of the message you are
replying to), and the subject line of the message (which by
default is the same as the subject of the message being replied
to, with "Re:" added in front). These are regular Amiga string
gadgets which you can edit in the usual way, except that the
"From:" gadget may be ghosted so you can't edit it, if the message
area is marked as not allowing you to use a different name. (If
you are reading QWK mail, it will let you put any name in there,
but the mail door may ignore it... or in some cases even discard
the message!) It will try to activate the "Subj.:" gadget for
editing when the window is opened, unless the "To:" gadget is
blank; if you don't like the message title that's there you can
clear it by pressing right-Amiga-X when it's active, and then
typing in a new title.
At the bottom of this window is a gadget labeled "Edit", with a
bent arrow next to it, shaped like the one on your return key.
This arrow indicates that pressing the return key is the same as
clicking the "Edit" button. Click it, or press the E key, or
press return, and your text editing program should appear, ready
to edit the text of your reply. If it doesn't, you probably need
to change something in your editor setup. See section 4 for
information on getting editors to work with Q-Blue.
If you have used the "Quoting" feature, the message you are
replying to will be shown in the editor, with (depending on your
setup) ">" characters all down the left margin. You should now
select the parts of the message that you want to mention in your
reply, and write what you want to say in response. If you are
creating the reply in a second file (this is an option you can
choose during setup), then move only the parts you need to the
second file; if using just one file, then erase the parts you
don't need. Then type in your response. When you're done, tell
the editor to save and close the file.
The Q-Blue display should reappear on the screen. If not, you may
have to move screens around to find it. The bent arrow should now
be next to the gadget marked "Save" instead of "Edit". If not,
and the gadgets in the window are ghosted, then Q-Blue is still
waiting for your editor to finish. You may have to tell the
editor to exit completely, to get Q-Blue to come back to life. If
your editor supports ARexx or has a separate "activator" program,
you should be able to leave it running continuously instead of
exiting every time you finish writing a message -- for details,
see section 4 below on setting up the editor.
At any time during this process, you can click the "Tagline"
gadget, and select a little one-line addendum to be tacked onto
the end of the message, if you have set up a text file containing
suitable lines. Or you can optionally cause this to be done
automatically, without the gadget being used.
- 19 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 2.5
You can still adjust the various gadgets in the window, or choose
"Edit" again if you want to make further changes to the text.
When you're satisfied, click "Save" or press the S or return key,
and your reply will be stored and the window will close. Use the
"Cancel" button or the letter C if you want to throw your reply
away. The window's close gadget also works.
You can also write messages that are not replies to another
message. Give the "Write" command instead of "Reply", with the
gadget or the W key or the "Write new message" menu item, and the
same window comes up, except that the subject and the name of the
person it's addressed to are blank. The process of writing the
message works the same way, except you don't start out with a
quoted copy of a message you are replying to -- you just write a
message from scratch.
2.6) Packing and uploading your replies
When you've read all the messages, you need to create an upload
packet containing your replies. If you wrote any replies, the
gadget in the lower left corner of the screen is labeled "Pack",
which corresponds to the "Pack replies" menu item. Q-Blue will
then compress all your replies into a single file you can upload,
using the same archiving method that it used to unpack the
messages you read. The gadget in the lower left corner will now
read "Close", as it does when no replies have yet been written; it
and the C key are equivalent to the "Close packet" menu item.
This command tells Q-Blue to clear this message packet from its
memory when you're done reading it, so you can read another.
Or instead, you can exit Q-Blue with the "Quit" gadget or the
"Quit Q-Blue" menu item. If you do this while a mail packet is
still open, it will put up a requester giving you the option of
leaving the packet's files still in your work directory after
quitting, so you can resume reading later without needing to
unpack it again (see the end of section 9.3).
If you wrote any replies, it's time now to call the BBS back.
Log on again, start the mail door again, and tell it to receive a
reply upload. On some BBSes, there may be a single command
telling it to receive a reply packet, without using a door
program. Send the file when it tells you to, wait for it to post
the messages it got, and log off again. You're all done. If you
want to save phone calls, you can wait until the next time you
want to download, and do your uploading in the same call.
- 20 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 3.1
PART 2: CONFIGURATION
3) STARTING Q-BLUE, AND BASIC CONFIGURATION
3.1) Configuration files and startup options
Q-Blue stores its configuration settings in files. When starting
Q-Blue, you can optionally specify what file Q-Blue will load its
configuration from. You can do this either on the command line or
in the Workbench icon. The file "S:Q-Blue.config" is used by
default, if you do not specify a different one. These files are
created with the "Save setup" command inside Q-Blue, which is
described in the next section. If the standard configuration file
does not exist, Q-Blue will use default values, which will not let
you read mail without filling in some paths that are left blank in
the Directories setup window (see section 3.4 and especially 3.5).
To specify a configuration file in a CLI command, type the full
pathname of the file after the word "CONFIG" on the Q-Blue command
line: for instance, "Q-Blue config S:Other.config". (As mentioned
above, there is no need to type "Run", because Q-Blue detaches
itself to run in the background.) With an icon, select the icon
and use the Workbench "Information" menu item to edit the icon's
"Tool Type" lines. A Tool Type line that begins with "CONFIG="
specifies the configuration file to use; you enter the file's full
name after the equal sign. The icon comes with a sample "CONFIG="
line with parentheses around it; remove the parentheses to use it
with a real filename.
You can create project icons which have Q-Blue as their "default
tool" and different configuration files specified with the Tool
Type line; each icon, when double-clicked, will run Q-Blue with a
different setup. This can also be used for variations in other
Tool Type options such as "PACKET", of course. Note that such
project icons should
not
be attached to real files; they must be
bare icons or, due to the internal design of the Workbench, Q-Blue
will mistake the file for a mail packet to open. In other words,
if your project icon is saved under the name "Alternate-Blue"
(from IconEdit, for instance), make sure there is no actual file
named "Alternate-Blue" in the same drawer. If there are no Tool
Types in the project icon, those of the Q-Blue tool icon itself
will apply. If it can't find or can't read the specified file, it
will attempt to use the standard file "S:Q-Blue.config".
You can also specify a packet to be opened, just by putting the
filename of the mail packet on the command line. A command such
as "Q-Blue Work:Mail/whatever.qwk", tells it to immediately try to
open the named file as a mail packet and display the messages in
it, as if you had started up Q-Blue, given the "Open" command, and
then selected this file as the one to open. The same thing
happens if you click on the Q-Blue icon and then shift-double-
click on the icon of a mail packet. (Of course, the packet does
- 21 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 3.1
not need an actual icon if the Workbench "Show >> All Files"
option is used.) With icon Tool Types, the equivalent is a line
starting with "PACKET=", such as "PACKET=Work:Mail/whatever.qwk".
The word "OPEN" can be substituted for "PACKET" in the Tool Type
line, for compatibility with older versions of Q-Blue. On the
command line, the word "PACKET" may optionally be used before the
packet filename. You need not specify an absolute pathname; you
can give a filename relative to the downloads directory specified
in Q-Blue's setup (see section 3.4). For instance, the example
above could be just "Q-Blue whatever.qwk" if you have selected
"Work:Mail" as your downloads directory. Section 8 of this manual
has full detail on the process of opening mail packets for reading.
You can also specify a wildcard pattern after the word PACKET. In
this case, it searches through all files matching the pattern, to
decide what file to open as a mail packet. If more than one file
matches, it selects the
newest
one which does not have a name
ending in ".NEW" or ".REP" -- those names indicate reply packets.
So if you call a BBS that uses Blue Wave, and download packets
with names like "WHATEVER.MO1" or "WHATEVER.TU1", you can create a
project icon which will open whichever of those packets is newest
by giving it a tool type that reads "PACKET=whatever.???". You
may also use a path before the pattern, but Q-Blue does not handle
wildcards in the directory path part of the name; something like
"work:mail/#?/whatever.#?" will not work. Note that if the only
filenames fitting the wildcard pattern are reply packets, it will
attempt to open one of these as a mail packet. This will, of
course, produce an error message when it tries to read the mail.
You can add the word "NOPACKET". If this is specified along with
a filename for the PACKET option, the file you name is treated as
a BBS file, of the kind that you would select with the "Open (no
packet)" menu option. As a tooltype, enter "NOPACKET=Yes" or just
"NOPACKET"; the filename goes after "PACKET=" as above. This
option allows you to write messages for a BBS without opening a
real mail packet to reply to. If you name such a file without the
word NOPACKET, you'll get an error message, and the same applies
if you name a real mail packet when using this option. When
NOPACKET is used, the default directory in which it looks for the
file you name is your BBS context directory, instead of your
downloads directory. The BBS context directory is where Q-Blue
saves the BBS files for the various BBSes you read mail from.
Section 3.4 explains how to select this directory.
You may also use the keyword "POPKEY" in the command or in a tool
type. If this word is followed by a key description such as is
used by commodity programs, for instance "control lcommand q" to
indicate a press of the letter Q with the Ctrl and left Amiga keys
held down, then Q-Blue will pop its screen to the front whenever
that key combination is pressed, no matter what window or program
is active, or reopen its screen if it is iconified. By default,
there is no special key and this feature is unused. When used on
the command line, a key description with spaces in it must have
- 22 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 3.1
quotes around it. And note that due to peculiarities of the Amiga
commodities system, if you specify a letter key (such as Q in the
example),
you must type the letter in lowercase
or the result may
not work properly.
The final option that can be used in the command line or in a Tool
Type is "LIST" (or "OPENLIST", for compatibility with older
versions). If you type "Q-Blue list" at a command prompt, or use
a Tool Type line reading "LIST=Yes" or just "LIST", then Q-Blue
will not try to open a particular mail packet file when it starts
up, but will immediately display a list of the files available to
open in your downloads directory, in the same way it does if you
use the "Open" gadget or menu command within Q-Blue. If
"NOPACKET" is also specified, it will display a list of BBS files
as if you had used the "Open (no packet)" command. "LIST" is
ignored if a mail packet filename is also specified, unless the
packet cannot be opened.
If you give the command "Q-Blue ?" it will prompt you with its
command template, giving you another chance to enter arguments.
The template it will prompt you with is "PACKET,CONFIG/K,POPKEY/K,
NOPACKET/S,LIST=OPENLIST/S". It will detach from the CLI after
you enter the arguments. Or you can press Ctrl-C at this point to
stop the program from running.
The keywords such as "CONFIG" on the command line can be upper or
lower case, but Tool Type keywords are generally all uppercase --
lowercase won't work at all under AmigaDOS 2.04, though they will
under DOS 2.1. The four options may appear in any order. For
example, "Q-Blue config S:OtherConfig whatever.qwk" specifies that
"whatever.qwk" should be opened after loading the setup from
"S:OtherConfig".
Note that the supplied Workbench icon contains a stack setting of
8000.
Do not
use an icon without this stack setting -- Q-Blue
will refuse to run, showing an error message in a system requester
on the Workbench screen. When run from a CLI prompt it sets its
own stack automatically as it detaches itself to run in the
background, so the CLI's stack setting does not matter.
3.2) The Setup menu; loading and saving configurations
All of the commands for setting up Q-Blue are found in the
rightmost of the four pull-down menus, which is labeled "Setup".
The top item, "Sort messages", is a submenu that lets you choose
in what order to read the messages in a mail packet. The setting
currently selected has a checkmark next to it. You can pick a
different setting either by selecting the appropriate menu item,
or with a keyboard shortcut. The shortcuts in these submenus are
shown in each menu subitem with "Ctrl-" in front of the key you
need to press, meaning that you have to hold down the Ctrl key
while pressing the letter. The Ctrl key is not used for any menu
- 23 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 3.2
commands except setting the message sorting order. The various
settings are explained in the next section.
In the middle of the "Setup" menu are seven menu items which allow
you to configure different parts of the setup: "Directories",
"Editor", "Replying", "Compressors", "Font & Screen", "Options",
and "BBS Local". Each of these opens a window with gadgets for
telling Q-Blue the necessary information -- we will refer to them
as the Directories setup window, the Editor setup window, and so
on. They can be opened with the keyboard as well as by using the
menu; the key shortcuts are Alt-D, Alt-E, Alt-Y, Alt-C, Alt-F,
Alt-O, and Alt-B. The Directories window is covered in sections
3.4 and 3.5; the Editor and Compressors windows are explained at
length in sections 4 and 5 respectively; the other three windows
are covered in section 6.
If either the Directories or the Editor window is not set up at
least minimally, Q-Blue will put up a requester when the program
starts, reminding you to finish the setup before reading mail.
The other five setup windows have default settings that may not
need to be changed. The Directories window starts out empty, so
you must set some paths there before the program can be used. The
editor window has a default configuration using the "Ed" editor.
At the bottom of the "Setup" menu are items labeled "Load setup"
and "Save setup" -- their shortcuts are Alt-L and Alt-S. "Save
setup" is used for creating configuration files that can be either
loaded with "Load setup" or specified at startup time, for
instance with a "CONFIG=" icon tool type (see section 3.1). It
stores in this small file every option setting that you can change
with the Setup menu, except those in the BBS Local window, which
are stored in their own separate files. It also stores the
current setting of the "Compression type" submenu of the "Packet"
menu, which is covered in section 8.1.
The "Load setup" and "Save setup" commands each open a file
requester for selecting where the data should be read from or
written to. The default filename is whatever configuration file
was last loaded or saved, or the one the program loaded when it
started up. If you load in a different file with "Load setup",
every setting in the Setup menu could be changed. All changes
take immediate effect except for: (1) the font and screen
settings, which take effect when you close and reopen the screen
(see sections 6.2 and 8.1), and (2) if a packet is currently open,
the work and reply directory settings, which take effect the next
time a packet is opened (see section 3.5). If the message writing
window is open, "Load setup" will refuse to change the sort order
or anything in the Editor setup window (see section 4.1). To take
full effect, it should not be used while writing a message.
Q-Blue 2.3 can load old configuration files written by any past
version of Q-Blue, and in fact, the original Q-Blue 0.7 can read
configuration files written by any later version. This makes
- 24 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 3.2
replacing an old version of Q-Blue with a new one quite painless,
because you don't have to redo any of the installation or setup
procedures. All you have to do is copy the new version of the
program over the old one (you can just drop the new one's icon on
top of the old one), and next time you use it, pick settings for
any new options that weren't present in the old version. In the
case of Q-Blue 2.3, the options newly added since 2.1 are in the
"Options" and "BBS Local" setup windows, with one new item in the
"Editor" window.
Also stored in the configuration file are the current positions
and sizes of the various windows that Q-Blue opens. If you open a
setup window or a list window or a search window or a message
writing window, and move or resize them, Q-Blue will remember
where on the screen you last left them, and if you then use "Save
setup", from then on it will reopen those windows in the same
places. The three ASL requesters do not always follow this rule:
they only remember their new positions if you actually select
something, not if you cancel them. Also, the font requester won't
remember a new position at all if you are using version 37 of
asl.library (the one that came with AmigaDOS 2.04). If you are
using that old version, you should get a more up-to-date copy from
someone who has AmigaDOS 2.1 or newer, because there is no screen
mode requester in that version, and the file requester is very
slow. The newer asl.library from 2.1 will work fine even if the
rest of the system is not updated.
If you change the screen to a different display mode, so that the
screen is not the same height as it was the last time a given
window was open, any window you reopen will reset to its default
position. Changing the width of the screen does not affect this,
because all of the windows automatically stretch and shrink
horizontally in proportion to the screen. The only window which
never remembers a new position is the console window that the
output of compression commands is displayed in.
3.3) Message sorting order
The order in which messages are sorted is set with a submenu at
the top of the "Setup" menu, labeled "Sort messages". It can be
used both to select in what order messages will appear when a
packet is opened, and to re-order the messages you are reading.
Note: your replies are not resorted, but left in the order they
were written. Bulletins and other special files are also not
resorted. The sorting does not affect the ordering of message
areas, only the sequence of messages within each area. There are
six choices of sorting order:
- "by number"; shortcut Ctrl-N. This is the default setting. It
shows the messages in their "natural" order -- usually the
same order that they would appear if you read them online,
- 25 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 3.3
according to the numbers that the BBS assigns them as they
are added to the message areas.
- "by age"; shortcut Ctrl-A. This sorts messages by the date and
time each message was first written, from oldest to newest.
Numeric order is often not very different from chronological
order, but when offline readers and networks are involved,
the time a message appears on the BBS may be different from
when it was created. Also note that the times on messages
are local and do not include time zone information, so a
message from New York written at noon is actually older than
one from California written at 11:00 AM, but Q-Blue will
think it's newer.
- "by subject"; shortcut Ctrl-S. This sorts messages according
to the alphabetical order of their title or subject lines.
This tends to put messages on a given topic together in one
place. If "Re:" is present at the beginning of the subject
line, it only pays attention to the remaining text after
that. Messages with the same subject are sorted by age. It
attempts to recognize cases where a subject line has been
truncated, and consider the short version "equal" to the
longer one.
- "by thread"; shortcut Ctrl-D. Any message that is a reply to
an earlier one, or which has been replied to later, often
stores the identifying numbers of those messages in its
header information. Sorting by thread causes all sets of
messages connected to each other in this manner to be
collected into groups. Each group is sorted internally by
age, and the groups themselves are sequenced alphabetically
by the subject line of the oldest message in each, at least
roughly. This method lets you read each "conversation" as
one group of adjacent messages.
- "by who from"; shortcut Ctrl-F. This sorts alphabetically by
the names of the messages' authors, so that all messages from
one person are together in one place. Messages by one author
are put in numeric order, which should be the same as chrono-
logical order unless they post from two different BBSes.
- "by who to"; shortcut Ctrl-T. This sorts by the names that the
messages are addressed to. This can let you, in a way, put
yourself in someone else's shoes, seeing the mail addressed
to a particular person all together.
There is another checked option below these, marked "Last name
first?", with the shortcut Ctrl-L. When this is checked, sorting
by authors' or addressees' names ("by who from" and "by who to")
is done alphabetically by last name. When it's not checked names
are sorted by first name first, which is especially suitable if
the messages are written using "handles" instead of real names.
It is not checked by default. Q-Blue knows that words such as
- 26 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 3.3
"Ph.D" or "Sr." or "III" are not last names; a name like "Ludwig
van Beethoven Jr." will be sorted under "Beethoven" if this option
is checked.
When you change the sort order of a packet you are reading, it's
not possible to "keep your place" in an area you have already read
some messages in. Whatever message is "current" in each area will
remain current; in particular, the message displayed onscreen will
not change. But messages you have read before it may now be after
it, and unread messages may now be before it. You can use the
"List messages" command to see which ones have been read (section
7.5 describes how the list window indicates which messages have
been read). This is a change in behavior from Q-Blue 1.0: in that
version, it would select as current the message just before the
first unread message found in the area.
Caution: sorting Blue Wave packets by date is not always reliable.
The dates are in text form only, and may be stored in a variety of
different formats, like "8 Jun 94" or "06-08-94" or "6/8/1994".
It can't always be certain which number is the day and which is
the month. That second example could mean either June 8 or August
6 depending on what country the message came from or what software
was used to write it. Q-Blue will assume June 8 in this case.
Sorting by thread often does not work as well as it should. Many
messages do not store the information on which other messages are
connected to them, so there may be many "gaps" between messages
that ought to be associated. How well the grouping will work
depends greatly on what BBS you download the messages from. In
some cases this information on which messages were replies to
which is entirely absent, and in others it is very spotty. This
is why connected groups are sorted in order of subject: so that
messages that should be connected, but aren't, will still tend to
end up near each other.
3.4) The Directories setup window
The most important single part of setting up Q-Blue is telling it
what directories it will use.
The window for this purpose is
opened by the "Directories" command in the "Setup" menu. The
keyboard shortcut for this window is Alt-D. This window, which is
labeled "Pathnames of essential directories" in its title bar, has
seven string gadgets. In the first five are the pathnames of the
directories which Q-Blue uses.
If any of these directories are
not specified, then Q-Blue cannot function fully.
This window
will open automatically if you try to open a packet, or create
replies, with necessary directories unspecified. The five
directories are:
- the
downloads
directory: enter the complete pathname of the
directory into which you will download mail packets from the
BBSes you call.
- 27 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 3.4
- the
uploads
directory: enter the complete pathname of the
directory from which replies will be uploaded to the BBSes
you call. This may be the same as the downloads directory.
Typically, you would set these to be whatever directories
your telecommunications program is already using for this
purpose.
- the
BBS context
directory: this is where Q-Blue stores certain
files related to the different BBSes that you call. It keeps
files needed for several special features here, including the
"Open (no packet)" command and the BBS Local setup window.
- the
work
directory: this is where all of the contents of the
download packet will be unpacked.
This MUST be a directory
that is not used for any other files, because when you unpack
mail, Q-Blue will DELETE EVERY FILE in this directory.
It is
explained further in the next section. The default setting
is "T:" -- this
must be changed
if your computer does not
have much spare memory.
- the
replies
directory: this is where Q-Blue stores the messages
you write, before they are compressed for uploading.
As with
the work directory, this one MUST NOT be used for anything
else, because Q-Blue will DELETE EVERY FILE in it when you
open a mail packet or BBS file.
It may also delete them when
the packet is closed, if you set the "Flush replies at close"
option. This one is also covered further in the next section.
Make sure that you specify each directory as a complete pathname,
so that it will always point to the same place regardless of what
the program's current directory is. Q-Blue will object if you
enter a non-absolute pathname -- that is, a path not containing a
colon after the first word. All leading and trailing blanks will
be removed from whatever you enter in the directory gadgets.
The downloads directory is where Q-Blue looks for mail packets
when you give the "Open packet" command. That command normally
opens a list window displaying the mail packets found in that
directory, in order of age. If there is no downloads directory or
if it is empty, the ASL file requester can be used to open a mail
packet in any directory.
The uploads directory is where Q-Blue creates reply packets for
uploading. It is also where it checks to see whether a given mail
packet has an existing reply packet that goes with it. The
downloads and uploads directories are used by Q-Blue only for
storing compressed archive files, downloaded from the BBS or
intended for uploading to it, but other unrelated files can be
stored there if desired. The various files that go inside these
archives, which Q-Blue accesses when reading or writing messages,
are kept in the work and replies directories while they are in use.
- 28 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 3.4
The BBS context directory is used to store four types of files:
"BBS files" which are used in the "Open (no packet)" command
described in section 8.4; "local setup files" which store the
settings used for a particular BBS, and are created with the BBS
Local setup window (see section 6.8); "marks" files, which store
information on which messages have and have not been read in a
given packet, and what the last message read in each area was, so
that if you close a packet and then reopen it later, you will
resume just where you left off; and "pointer" files, which are
extracted from mail packets and, with some mail doors, will allow
you to "undo" your last download if you need to reread the last
batch of messages (see section 8.3). If this directory is not
specified, Q-Blue will work normally except for these features.
You should specify some place where files will remain intact
between different uses of Q-Blue. In other words,
do not
use a
ram disk directory.
The Work and Replies directories are covered in the next section.
The section after that (3.6) covers the last two gadgets, which
are separated by a line from the five directory path gadgets.
The
default work directory, "T:", should be changed if your computer
doesn't have much spare memory.
Pressing the tab key will activate the uppermost empty directory
gadget, or if none are empty, it will activate the downloads
directory gadget. When you are done putting information into this
window, just close it either by clicking the close gadget or
pressing the Esc key. It may refuse to close the window if there
is something wrong with your selections -- for instance, if one of
the directory paths you named actually specifies a file. If this
happens you must correct the problem before closing the window.
3.5) The two most crucial directories
Q-Blue can, if necessary, function more or less normally with most
of the gadgets in the Directories setup window left unset. But
two of the directories are crucial to its operation. They are the
Work directory and the Replies directory. The former is used to
store the files that constitute a mail packet, while you are
reading it. The latter is used to store the replies you are
writing in response. In both cases,
NO OTHER FILES should be kept
in these directories. Anything that does not belong there may be
ERASED.
A directory in ram disk is a good choice for the work directory,
if you can spare the room, because the files it puts here are
strictly temporary, and if they are put on a slow device, such as
a floppy disk, it will create annoying delays. However, if you
don't have plenty of spare memory after starting Q-Blue, ram disk
is not a good choice. And I do mean
plenty
of spare memory,
because not only can the temporary files placed here take up
hundreds of kilobytes in some cases, but many modern compression
- 29 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 3.5
programs require another 200 or 300 Kb free in order to pack your
replies for uploading. You may also use a ram disk subdirectory
for your replies, but since these usually do not take up much
space or much time to write to disk (unless you are an exceedingly
verbose message writer), it's safer not to use a ram disk. The
work directory's contents can always be replaced by just reopening
the mail packet, but your replies may not be so easy to replace if
there is a crash or other failure.
Since the work and replies directories must each be used for only
that purpose and nothing else,
it is safest to specify directories
that do not yet exist
. Q-Blue will create them when they are
needed, as long as the parent directory exists. If you specify a
name ending in a colon -- that is, if you give a device or volume
name, or an assigned name -- then Q-Blue will append the
subdirectory name "Q-work" onto it. The same rules hold for the
replies directory, except that if it appends a subdirectory name
it uses "Q-rep". This behavior is new as of Q-Blue v2.0, and
allows one to simply specify "RAM:" or some other disk name for
both directories, whereas in old versions this would not work. If
you give a pathname not ending in a colon, then it uses the
directory just as you specified it. If you select a work or
replies directory that already has some files in it, Q-Blue will
display a warning message.
It will display an error message if either the work or the replies
directory (including any appended subdirectory name) has the same
path as any other directory in the Directories setup window. You
will have to fix the error before it will let you close the window.
If you run more than one copy of Q-Blue at a time, the different
copies must all use different work and replies directory names.
But this is handled automatically; it appends numbers onto the
specified names to give each process a unique name to use. Only
the un-numbered name is shown in the setup window or saved in the
configuration file. A similar stratagem is used for the temporary
filenames used in the Editor setup window. If you ever run two
copies of Q-Blue at once, don't be surprised if you find that
you've got an "extra" replies directory on your disk. If the
original replies directory is named "Work:Mail/replies", for
instance, the extra one would be named "Work:Mail/replies1". And
if your work directory is given as "RAM:" and you open packets in
two processes at once, they will use the directories "RAM:Q-work"
and "RAM:Q-work1".
If more than one Q-Blue process is running, and you manually set
one of them to use different directories than the others, then it
will not append numbers onto those names. Q-Blue 1.9 would add a
number unnecessarily in this case, in processes other than the
first one started.
If you change the work or replies directory setting while a mail
packet is open, the change will not affect the mail you are
- 30 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 3.5
reading. It will continue to use the old work and replies
directories until you close the packet and open another one. This
also applies when "Load setup" is used. The replies directory
setting will take immediate effect if the previous setting was
blank or a nonexistent directory.
When you open a BBS file with the "Open (no packet)" command
described in section 8.4, only the replies directory is used. The
work directory setting only matters when opening an actual mail
packet.
3.6) Non-directory pathnames in the Directories window
Under the five directory gadgets in the Directories setup window,
separated from them by a line, are two other string gadgets. The
upper one is labeled "Printer output filename". The default
string in it is "PRT:". It specifies where the output should be
sent when you tell Q-Blue to print a message. If this gadget is
blank, the "Print message" command will give an error message.
You can specify a disk file here, or something like "PAR:" to send
text out the parallel port without being translated by the Amiga
printer driver.
Use of "PAR:" or something similar to access a port directly is
often necessary if you are trying to print a message using the IBM
character set. Many printers understand IBM special characters,
but the printer.device driver does not, and will assume the
message is using the Amiga's usual 8 bit ISO character set and try
to print it accordingly. If your printer is built to use IBM
characters, the driver will translate ISO characters into their
nearest IBM equivalents, unaware that the text being printed is in
IBM form already. There is no good way to tell the Amiga to use a
different character set when printing, so usually the best you can
do is just hope that your printer can do the right thing if you
send the message to it unfiltered. However, one disadvantage of
using PAR: or an equivalent instead of PRT: is that there is no
good way to abort a failed attempt at printing.
Last is a string labeled "Path for saving messages". This is used
with the "Save msg as file" command (section 9.4). It specifies a
default path to be used when it opens a file requester to ask you
where the message should be saved. You can specify the name of a
file here, so that the save command will, by default, append the
text of messages you save onto that file. Or you can specify a
directory name here, so that the requester knows what directory to
look in but you can pick any filename within that directory. If
you put a slash ("/") on the end of the path, or use a name ending
in a colon (":"), Q-Blue will know that the path is a directory
and not a filename. This is not necessary if the directory exists
and can be found when the ASL requester is opened, but may be
useful if it specifies, for example, a directory on a disk that's
not always mounted.
- 31 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.1
4) SETTING UP A TEXT EDITOR FOR WRITING REPLIES
4.1) The Editor setup window
The "Editor" menu item in the "Setup" menu, or the keyboard
shortcut Alt-E, opens the window titled "Configuration of text
editor for writing messages". It will be opened automatically if
you try to write a message with no editor configured. There are
four string gadgets to set here, but two of them are optional.
Below them are three checkmark gadgets, for controlling whether
Q-Blue's screen will be moved behind other screens before starting
the editor, or moved up front when the editor command finishes,
and for specifying whether the editor can handle upper-ascii
characters.
Q-Blue can edit messages in two different ways. The first, which
is used for writing or re-editing messages that are not replies,
just edits one text file. The second method uses two files, with
your reply in one and a copy of the message you are replying to in
the other. The second method need not, and in some cases
must not
be specified; if it is not, the first method is used for all reply
editing.
The four string gadgets let you specify two temporary filenames
and two editor commands -- one pair for each type of editing. The
four strings are:
- the temporary filename used for editing messages. The default
is "RAM:Reply". You should almost certainly use a file in
ram disk. When it's time to edit a message, Q-Blue will
write whatever text is to be edited into this file, call the
editor, and then read the text back in from this file when
the editing is done.
- an optional second filename which, if specified, gives the
name of a temporary file (typically in ram disk) into which
Q-Blue will write the contents of whatever message you are
replying to, modified according to your current quote style
setting. You can specify this if your editor can hold two
files at once and allow you to conveniently move pieces from
one to the other. See section 4.3 below for a more complete
description of how this can be used.
- the command used to edit the first temporary file. Typically
this would just be the name of the editor followed by the
name of the file, or the special sequence "@F". For instance,
if your regular editor is MEmacs (supplied on the AmigaDOS
Extras disk), your command would be "MEmacs RAM:Reply", or
"MEmacs @F". The "@F" sequence is replaced with the name of
the file in the first string gadget. If your editor has an
ARexx port, you could create an ARexx script to feed the file
to the editor, and use a command such as "RX MyScript @F".
In this case you could leave the editor running all the time
- 32 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.1
instead of exiting after each use. The default command is
"Ed @F", which uses the simple editor "Ed" that is included
in the C: directory of standard Workbench disks.
- an optional command to edit a reply using
both
of the temporary
filenames, with the quoted original in one and your reply in
the other. Note that many editors only allow you to specify
one file in the command used to start them up -- in this case
it may not be possible to create a useful command here. The
sequence "@O" (that's the letter O for "Original", not a
zero) is replaced with the second filename wherever it
appears; "@F" with the first filename as in the first
command. "@O" has no meaning in the first command, only in
the second.
If you run more than one copy of Q-Blue, the temporary filenames
actually used for editing messages may not match the names you
specify exactly; they will have digits added to their names to
make them unique. This is one reason why "@F" and "@O" are
available as shorthand designations for the two files. But if you
simply write out the filenames fully in the commands, as was done
in older versions of Q-Blue, it will recognize them and replace
them when needed with the modified filenames.
Note that it is possible to edit the settings in this window while
in the middle of writing a message. This should be done only with
care. For instance, if you change the first filename, Q-Blue may
be unable to load the reply you're writing until you somehow
rename the temporary file you've created to match.
As with the Directories setup window, pressing the tab key will
activate a string gadget. Which one it activates depends on which
ones do and do not have some text in them -- it tries to guess
which one most "needs" editing. Leading and trailing blanks will
be removed from whatever you put in the gadgets.
At the bottom of the window are three checkmark gadgets. The
first two gadgets are labeled "Before edit, screen to back" and
"After edit, screen to front". The first one, when checked, tells
Q-Blue to move its custom screen behind other screens before
running the editor. This may help make the editor's screen, or
the Workbench screen if it uses that, be visible if the editor
does not pop to the front by itself. By default it is turned on,
which is suitable for use with the default editor C:Ed, which
normally opens its window on the Workbench screen.
The "After edit, screen to front" checkmark tells Q-Blue to move
its own screen to the front after the editor command finishes.
This may reduce the need to shuffle through screens to find
Q-Blue. But this is only useful if the editor command waits until
you are done editing before returning. If your command merely
sends an ARexx message or two to the editor and doesn't wait, or
if your editor is a self-detaching program, the command will
- 33 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.1
finish almost immediately and this option would cause Q-Blue's
screen to pop up and cover the screen you're trying to edit on,
before you can write anything. It is also checked by default, as
is suitable for the default editing command.
The final checkmark gadget is labeled "Remove upper ascii and
control characters". Certain editors will not correctly handle
characters that are outside the basic ASCII character set, such as
accented or umlauted letters, or ANSI control codes. Particularly,
the basic Ed editor that comes with AmigaDOS, which is the default
editor in Q-Blue's initial setup, will reject any file that
contains such characters, complaining that the file is "binary".
When this gadget is checked, any such offending characters in the
text being edited are replaced with asterisks.
With almost every
other editor, this gadget should be unchecked.
4.2) Specifying commands for running an editor
Mostly, the commands that go into the second and fourth string
gadgets in the Editor setup window can be just simple copies of
commands you would type at a CLI prompt, but not always. There
are special codes you can include in them, which are marked by the
use of an "@" character. The "@F" and "@O" codes have already
been mentioned. They are optional; you can always just type out a
filename given in the other string gadgets. But those two are not
the only special codes available.
You can put two or more commands in each editor command gadget, by
separating them with the characters "@N". This gets translated
into a line break. When the command is run, it behaves as if you
had typed the first part, pressed return, and then typed the next
one. You can have any number of consecutive commands, as long as
they all fit in the string gadget, which holds 255 characters.
The letter N after the at-sign can be upper or lower case. For
example, if some editor called MyEd requires a large stack
setting, you could put a "Stack" command in front of the editor
command, like this:
Stack 16000 @N MyEd RAM:Reply
Any auxiliary commands which you wish to apply to the message,
such as a stand-alone spell checker or fancy tagline utility, can
be included before or after the editor command, separated by "@N"
sequences.
There are a few other codes you can use in editor commands. The
sequence "@S" is replaced with an eight digit hexadecimal number
that gives the address of Q-Blue's custom screen. This is
provided for any software that wants to open windows on Q-Blue's
screen and uses a direct screen address rather than the name of a
public screen. This feature may not be supported in future Q-Blue
releases; it is useful mainly for use with ConMan (see below).
- 34 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.2
Most modern programs that can open on different screens take a
public screen name rather than a raw hex address, and Q-Blue's
screen is public. Its screen name is "Q-BLUE" unless that name
is already taken, in which case a number will be added to the end,
for example "Q-BLUE1", to make it unique. Usually the number
added to the public screen name is the same one that is added to
the names of the work and replies directories, and the temporary
editing filenames, when you run more than one copy of Q-Blue at
once. The sequence "@P" is replaced with the correct public
screen name. By giving a window specification such as
"CON:0/0/640/200/My Window Name/CLOSE/SCREEN @P", you can open
console windows on Q-Blue's screen. This can be used, for
instance, with the Ed editor, using its "WINDOW" argument, with
an editor command such as this:
Ed @F WINDOW "CON:0/12/640/188/Edit reply/CLOSE/SCREEN @P"
With this command, the Ed editing window will appear on Q-Blue's
screen instead of the Workbench screen. In this case the "Screen
to back before" and "Screen to front after" gadgets should be
turned off. But Ed has one small problem when run this way: any
requesters it opens appear on the Workbench screen instead of on
Q-Blue's screen. If you are still using ConMan, use the window
specification "CON:S@S/0/12/640/188/Edit reply/C" instead of the
example given above. In either case, the numbers giving the size
of the window should be adjusted to match the size of screen you
are using with Q-Blue.
The codes "@B" and "@Q" are also available, and they work the same
way in editor commands that they do in compressor commands (see
section 5.3): whatever follows a "@B" sequence is ignored up until
another "@B" is found, if the currently open packet is not in Blue
Wave format, and likewise material between "@Q" sequences is
ignored if the current packet is not in QWK format. So if you
want an editor command that works one way for QWK and another way
for Blue Wave, put the Blue Wave part between two "@B" codes and
the QWK part between two "@Q" codes. Any other character after an
at-sign is included in the command as is, with the "@" itself
discarded. So if you want to put an actual at-sign in the
command, use "@@".
When Q-Blue runs these commands, it uses your command path setting
to find the programs to run. To be specific: if Q-Blue was
started from a CLI prompt, it uses the path known to the parent
CLI process (if any), otherwise it uses the path known to the
Workbench. The Workbench process learns the path from what was
set in the original CLI when the "LoadWB" command was executed to
start it. If no path is found in these places, it will look for
some other CLI window that has a path, and use that. The same
rule applies when it runs compressor commands.
Q-Blue is "deaf" to all input while the editor command is running.
It cannot do anything at all until the editor command finishes.
- 35 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.2
It shows this by changing your mouse pointer to a stopwatch image
and also by ghosting the gadgets in the message writing window.
It's a good idea to keep your right margin in the editor set no
higher than 77, because some BBS systems do not correctly handle
uploaded messages with lines 78 or more characters long. And
usually, it's more convenient for others if your text is narrower
than that, with a right margin of about 74 or 72. This makes it
easier, for instance, for people to quote what you say with some
marker in the left margin without having to break long lines.
4.3) Why use two separate editor commands?
Some people find the meanings of the two different pairs of editor
commands and filenames confusing. A few examples may help to
illustrate how they work. Assume you're reading a message from
some hypothetical person we'll call John Smith, which says:
Do the right thing.
Vote Republican.
Since you are a rabid Anarcho-Syndicalist and have a low opinion
of Republicans, you decide to give that ignorant Mr. Smith a piece
of your mind. You select "Reply" and then "Edit". Let's assume
that your quote style setting is "Add XX>" (see section 6.4 for
information on quote style choices).
First let's look at what happens if you have a simple editor setup
using one filename and one command. Q-Blue will write out a file,
which with the default setup will be named "RAM:Reply", containing
these lines:
JS> Do the right thing.
JS> Vote Republican.
and then run your editor to edit that file. The "JS>" markers are
a commonly used way of reminding readers that these words are not
yours, but quoted from what John Smith said. If you specify a
"Quote header" (see section 6.5) then that introductory text will
be written above the two "JS>" lines. You decide to use the line
"Vote Republican" to remind people of what John Smith's message
said. So you delete the line saying "Do the right thing", put a
blank line after "Vote Republican" and start typing, and save the
file when you're done. The result will be a message from you to
John Smith with the line "JS> Vote Republican" at the top.
If you later decide to re-edit this reply, because you've thought
of even more reasons why Republicanism is wrong and only Anarcho-
Syndicalism can save the world, Q-Blue will fill up the file
RAM:Reply with a copy of the message you wrote before, still with
"JS> Vote Republican" at the top, and give that to the editor.
- 36 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.3
If you use an editor setup with two commands, then when you select
"Edit" the first time to write the message, the file RAM:Reply
will be empty, except for your "signature" if you have specified
one. The two lines starting with "JS>" will be in a different
file -- the second one named in the Editor setup window. Let's
say it's named "RAM:Quotee". Both of the files RAM:Quotee and
RAM:Reply will be loaded separately into your editor. Instead of
deleting the "Do the right thing" line, in this case you would
copy the "Vote Republican" line from RAM:Quotee to RAM:Reply,
using the clipboard or whatever other method your editor provides
for moving chunks between two separate files loaded at once. Then
you would type your response into RAM:Reply below the copied line,
and save that file when finished.
If you re-edit the message later, your editor will be loaded with
your existing reply text in RAM:Reply (including the copied
lines) and the two "JS>" lines in RAM:Quotee as before. So if you
decide to use the "Do the right thing" line which you left out
earlier, you can copy it across now. This is one big advantage of
using two files: if you left out some part of the quoted text and
then change your mind and want to use it, it's still available in
the other file. Also, if you only want to use a small part of the
quote, you don't have to take the time to delete all the other
parts -- you just lift the one small part you want out of that
file and paste it into the other. (This should help eliminate the
annoying faux pas of writing a reply which quotes the entire text
of a long message and only adds a one line response at the end, or
worse yet accidentally posting the quoted text with no reply.)
If you specify a signature string (see section 6.5), then if you
have one editing command, the signature text will be written out
after
the quoted lines. You should write your reply after the
quoted lines and before the signature lines, for the resulting
message to have the most easily understandable form. If you use
two editing commands, then the signature will be written into the
reply file, not into the quote file. The editor will be started
with quoted text in one window and the signature in the other.
You would write your reply above the signature. So using a
signature is easier with two files, because you just start writing
at the beginning, which is probably where the editor leaves the
cursor when the file is loaded.
This all, of course, requires that you be using a text editor
which is capable of being loaded with two different files at once
and moving blocks of text from one to the other. If you don't use
such an editor, then you should
make sure that the two gadgets
gadgets labeled "Optional" in the Editor setup window have nothing
in them.
The default editor C:Ed is one editor that cannot load
two files at once, so the second filename and the second command
should not be used with it.
If you do put something in the lower command string, it would
typically be the name of your editor, or perhaps something like
- 37 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.3
"RX SomeScript", followed by
both
of the two filenames specified
in the string gadgets above, or the equivalent codes @O and @F.
For instance, if you use MEmacs, you would enter the string
"SYS:Tools/MEmacs @O @F" or something similar. When MEmacs is run
with a command like this, it will display a split screen with one
file in the top half and the other in the bottom half. It might
be appropriate in some cases to put the two names in the opposite
order, depending on how you want the editor to behave. Try it
both ways if you're not sure.
If you are writing an original message instead of replying, or
replying with the quote style set to "None", it will not use the
second command and filename -- it will just use the first command
to edit the message in one file. If you are carbon-copying a
message, it will use just the one file, except when you are
carbon-copying one of your replies, in which case it will create
the second file containing the quoted original that the other
message was a reply to. In other words, when carbon-copying a
reply, it acts as if you were re-editing that reply, except that
it creates a new message from it. When carbon-copying anything
else, it acts as if you were creating a new message, except that
the text is filled in ahead of time. See section 10 for complete
information on creating replies, new messages, and carbon copies.
If you do use quoted text in your reply, please remember that many
of your readers have already seen the message, and don't need to
read it all again. Keep only the essential points, or just enough
for readers to keep their place in the discussion, in your reply.
Excessive quoting of older messages, as well as being tedious for
readers, can cost money for the people who provide us with BBS
services.
4.4) Using an editor with ARexx
As mentioned above, the command you specify does not need to wait
for the editor to finish with the file before returning; Q-Blue
doesn't read the file produced by the editor until you tell it to
save the message. It assumes that the editor could still be
changing the file, right up until you tell it to save the finished
reply. This state of affairs is routine when ARexx is used. If
you are sending ARexx commands to an editor, you should if
possible tell it to move its own screen to the front. And such a
script should check whether the editor's port exists, and if not,
start the editor and wait for the port to appear.
If you are using an editor that responds to ARexx commands, then
you can put a command in Q-Blue's editor setup window which
executes an ARexx script instead of running the actual editor
program. This script would be stored in your REXX: directory,
with a name such as "Q-Blue-edit.rexx". Your editor command would
then be "RX Q-Blue-edit @F", or something similar. The following
- 38 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.4
is an example of such an ARexx script, using the AmigaDOS 2.04
version of Ed as a stand-in for whatever real editor you prefer:
/* Q-Blue-edit.rexx: load a file into Ed 2.00 */
parse arg filename .
if ~show('l','rexxsupport.library') then
if ~addlib('rexxsupport.library',0,-30) then
exit 20
portname = 'Ed'
i = 0
if ~show('Ports', portname) then do
address command 'Run <nil: >nil: Ed nil:'
do while ~show('Ports', portname)
call delay 15 /* 0.3 seconds */
i = i + 1
if i > 33 then exit 10 /* allow 10 seconds */
end
end
address value portname
'OP "' || filename || '"'
'SR 74' /* adjust to suit your taste */
This script will automatically start Ed if it is not already
running, and then send it an "OP" command which tells it what file
to edit. The last line has the effect of setting Ed's line length
to 74 characters, so that the text you type in will be word-
wrapped to that width. This helps keep your text readable if
somebody else quotes it. You might wish to use a higher or lower
number. Scripts for other editors with ARexx ports are, for the
most part, similar. You typically need to change only: (1) the
name of the ARexx command port given in the "portname =" line,
(2) the command for starting the editor after the words "address
command", and (3) the actual commands to the editor at the very
end. These are all different for each editor. If the editor has
a command for bringing its screen to the front, that should be
added at the end.
With a script like this, you can take advantage of multitasking
and leave the editor running continuously. (Not that this is
worth doing if Ed is all you've got for an editor. Especially
since at least one version of Ed apparently has a bug which, when
it's used this way, causes it to erase the top line of the file it
edits!) Hopefully it should not be too difficult to create
scripts for more powerful ARexx-equipped editors based on these
examples. I use Uedit, which is now in the public domain
following the untimely death of its author, Rick Stiles. It will
serve as a typical example of how to write a script that can
handle editing two files.
- 39 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.5
4.5) ARexx scripts using two files
For use with a second editor command, using two filenames, the
ARexx script would be nearly the same as the example given in the
previous section, except that the "parse arg" at the beginning
would have two filenames after it, and there would be two file
loading commands instead of one, with one of them checking first
to make sure the second file was actually included in the command.
The beginning of the script would look like this:
/* Q-Blue-edit.rexx: load one or two files into editor */
parse arg replyfile quotefile .
If Ed could load two files, its single "OP" command would become:
if quotefile ~= '' then 'OP "' || quotefile || '"'
'OP "' || replyfile || '"'
This part could be more complicated with some editors; they may
require you, for each file, to first use some sort of "Open New"
command to create an empty editing space, and then load the file
there with another command.
I will use the public domain editor Uedit here as an example of
how to write a working script using two files, and a general
example of how to modify the basic script to suit a different
editor. With Uedit, the port name is "URexx", the command to
start it running would typically be "Run <nil: >nil: UE", and the
command for loading a new file is "LoadFile", which unlike Ed's
"OP" command requires no quote marks around the following
filename. So, the complete script would be:
/* Q-Blue-edit.rexx: load one or two files into Uedit */
parse arg replyfile quotefile .
if ~show('l','rexxsupport.library') then
if ~addlib('rexxsupport.library',0,-30) then
exit 20
portname = 'URexx'
i = 0
if ~show('Ports', portname) then do
address command 'Run <nil: >nil: UE'
do while ~show('Ports', portname)
call delay 15 /* 0.3 seconds */
i = i + 1
if i > 33 then exit 10 /* allow 10 seconds */
end
end
address value portname
if quotefile ~= '' then 'LoadFile' quotefile
'LoadFile' replyfile
'LineLength 74'
'FrontScreen'
- 40 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.5
Uedit has no standard ARexx command for setting the right margin
or moving its screen to the front, but it's not difficult to add
them. To do so, add two lines reading "linelength 1111+0 |" and
"frontscreen 1112+0 |" to Uedit's "REXXCOMM" file (which should
already contain a "loadfile" line), and add the command
definitions below to the "Config!R" file, compile them, and save
the configuration. These command definitions assume that the
buffer and number variable usages have not been rearranged from
the defaults used in most Uedit releases:
Set local line length via ARexx. Example: "LINELENGTH 80"
<1111: if (!toNumber(n0, buf61)
| gtNum(8, n0) | gtNum(n0, 999)) {
equateNum(n96, 1)
rexxOut(" ", all, 10, 1, n99) .. error
} else
setLocal(curFile, lineLength, n0) > .. success
Pop up Uedit's screen via ARexx. Example: "FRONTSCREEN"
<1112: screenToFront > .. for version 2.6d or newer only
Note: Uedit may not necessarily be prepared to act on ARexx
commands. For this to work, you must make sure that the ARexx
"autotraffic" mode is turned on. In Uedit 4.0, the global flag
setting command (Ctrl-G) includes a "rexxTraffic (UGB)" option.
Make sure this is turned on, and save your config that way so it
will stay on next time you use the program. It is also necessary
that Uedit be able to find the "REXXCOMM" text file, which should
be included with it and which you are adding extra lines to.
An ARexx script for using Uedit with Q-Blue can be quite a bit
more sophisticated than this, if desired. If you use Uedit and
are interested in some of the fancier tricks that are possible,
contact me and ask for the files "Q-Blue.UE" and "qblue.rexx".
With a script like this, the second editor command should name the
reply file before the quote file, not after. The commands in the
third and fourth Editor setup window string gadgets could be:
RX Q-Blue-edit @F
RX Q-Blue-edit @F @O
All three of the checkmarks should be unchecked. Again, if you do
not wish to load the quoted message and your reply in separate
files, just leave the bottom string gadget of each type empty. If
you use some other editor not mentioned in this manual, with a
little luck you should be able to similarly adapt one of the
examples above to work with it.
- 41 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.6
4.6) Using CygnusEd to edit replies
Some editors, including the popular commercial products CygnusEd
Professional sold by ASDG Inc., and TurboText from Oxxi Inc.,
include a small "activator" program which performs the function of
loading a file into the editor, starting it if necessary, without
using ARexx. This program is called "TTX" in the case of
TurboText, and "Ed" in the case of CygnusEd (more or less
replacing the Ed program on your Workbench disk). With these
editors you probably won't need an ARexx script -- you can simply
put a command using the activator, such as "Ed RAM:Reply", in
Q-Blue's Editor setup window.
This section and the one after it (4.7) describe various ways to
configure Q-Blue to use CygnusEd. If that's not your editor, you
can skip these two sections. Section 4.8 covers TurboText.
With CygnusEd, you have a choice between starting a new editor
process, and editing the files with an existing one. Each
approach has advantages and drawbacks. If you use the "CED"
command to create a new editor process, you avoid the troublesome
question of dealing with old copies of the file(s) to be edited
being left in the editor, and you don't have to deal with lots of
files (the ones used by Q-Blue and whatever else you have also
been editing) all crowded together on the same screen. And with
newer versions of CygnusEd, you can open the editing window on
Q-Blue's screen. But there are disadvantages too: it uses more
memory, and you won't be able to use the "hot-start" feature
because if it's turned on, then every time you try to edit
something in Q-Blue, a requester will pop up on the Workbench
screen asking if you really want to start a new process, and
you'll have to find the requester and click "OK" there before
anything can be edited. Using the "Ed" activator program is more
suitable for many users, especially those without lots of extra
memory.
Whichever approach you use to starting CygnusEd, there is a neat
feature you should use, which avoids the necessity of sending
ARexx commands to adjust the settings. The feature is this: if
you edit a file with a name ending in ".blue", it will load its
"environment" settings from a file called "S:ceddefaults.blue".
I recommend that you set "Icon creation" off, "Word wrap" on,
"Tabs = spaces" on, and "Set right border" to about 74, then use
"Save environment" to store these settings in a file named
"S:ceddefaults.blue". If you do this while CygnusEd is running on
Q-Blue's screen, it will also save the size and position of the
editing window. Then, in your Q-Blue editor setup, make sure that
the two filenames both end in ".blue" so this environment file
will be automatically used. For example, the top gadget in the
Editor setup window would contain the filename "RAM:Reply.blue".
Unfortunately, this feature may not always work reliably in older
versions of CygnusEd. The Q-Blue feature which automatically adds
a number to the end of the temporary filename when two processes
- 42 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.6
are running at once is aware of this, and will put the added
number before the period in the name so that it won't interfere.
If you don't plan to use the "Ed" activator program, you should
make sure the "Hot-start enabled" option is
off
before saving the
environment file, and for that matter leave it turned off in any
other environment files too. In this case, your four editor setup
strings should look something like this:
RAM:Reply.blue
RAM:Quotee.blue
CED -pubscreen=@P @F
CED -pubscreen=@P @O @F
If CED is not in your command path, you will of course need to use
a complete pathname instead of just "CED" at the beginning. The
"-pubscreen=@P" part makes it open its editing window on Q-Blue's
screen. This option is not available with version 2 of CygnusEd,
and should be left out in that case. When the editing window is
not on CygnusEd's screen, Q-Blue's "After edit, screen to front"
feature is not very usable (and unfortunately, CygnusEd 2 is not
able to push its own screen to the back either) but if you're
determined, it is possible to use it: add the "-keepio" option to
the end of each command, make certain that "Hot-start enabled" is
always turned off, and quit CygnusEd completely every time you
finish editing a message. (If Q-Blue does not wake up when you
finish editing, try pressing the return key while holding down the
Ctrl, right Alt, and right shift keys.) Another possible approach
would be to use the technique described in section 4.8, involving
an ARexx script that waits for a message sent by a macro executed
inside CygnusEd.
Editing a reply with this setup will cause a new CygnusEd window
or screen to pop up containing either one view if writing an
original message, or two if writing a reply. In the latter case,
the message you are replying to will be in the upper view, with
">" or "XX>" markers added depending on your quote style setting.
To use pieces of the original as quotes in the reply you are
writing, select a marked block (by double-clicking and dragging
the mouse, or with keyboard methods), copy it to the clipboard
(Amiga-c), click on the spot in your reply where you want it to
go, and paste (Amiga-v in new CygnusEd versions, Amiga-i in old
ones). When you are done writing the reply, use the "Save & quit"
command (shift-Amiga-Q) either once or twice, depending on how
many views were opened.
If you use the "CED" command instead of the "Ed" activator, you
might also want to set the environment in "S:ceddefaults.blue" to
specify the same font that Q-Blue is using, especially if that is
- 43 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.6
an IBM font and you read messages that sometimes contain IBM
characters.
4.7) Using CygnusEd through the "Ed" activator
If you use the activator program instead, the effect is somewhat
different. Whatever screen CygnusEd is using will pop to the
front, and one or two new views will be created there. If any
other files are already being edited there, the views created for
Q-Blue's files may be rather small and cramped. I recommend that
the "hot-start" feature be turned
on
in this case. Also, the "-f"
command option, or the "-o" option in older versions that don't
have "-f", should be used. This takes care of cases where you
edit your reply but don't quit its view. The Ed command will
replace the old, obsolete file still in the view with fresh
information. The "-s" or "-sticky" option can also be helpful,
but the only way that works is to combine it with "-f" into a
single "-fs" option. The full commands would be:
RAM:Reply.blue
RAM:Quotee.blue
Ed @F -fs
Ed @O -f @F -fs
Q-Blue's "After edit, screen to front" option can be set if "-fs"
or "-sticky" is used. (But note that it is not fully reliable, at
least in older versions; the "sticky" option may fail to work if
CygnusEd is not already running or dormant.) Without this option,
you may have to manually find Q-Blue's screen when you're done
writing the reply. With older versions of CygnusEd (before v3.5),
"-sticky" and "-o" cannot both be used, nor can -o be used on two
filenames at once. This means that to edit two files with this
option, you use two separate "Ed" commands separated by "@N", and
neither is able to use "-sticky". With CygnusEd 2, the two editor
commands (in the third and fourth editor setup string gadgets)
that I would recommend are:
Ed @F -o
Ed @O -o @N Ed @F -o
Also, the "Before edit, screen to back" option may need to be
used with CygnusEd 2, though it's never needed with CygnusEd 3.5.
When you have finished writing your reply, you then need to save
the result and ought to "quit" the view or views created by
Q-Blue. This may be a bit cumbersome to do by hand if there are
other views open, but it can be automated with the ARexx script
below. But this script depends on certain global variables being
- 44 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.7
set to contain the names of the two files being edited, which may
not be exactly what you entered in Q-Blue, if you run more than
one Q-Blue process. To set up these variables, you need to add
"RxSet" commands to the two editor commands in the setup window:
RxSet QBlueReply @F @N RxSet QBlueOrig "" @N Ed @F -o
RxSet QBlueReply @F @N RxSet QBlueOrig @O @N Ed @O -f @F -fs
With those "RxSet" commands in place, this script will work:
/* Q-Blue-finish.ced: save and close Q-Blue file(s) */
options results
signal on error
'Jump to file' getclip('QBlueReply')
if RESULT == 0 then exit
Save
Quit
'Jump to file' getclip('QBlueOrig')
if RESULT ~= 0 then do
Save
Quit
end
CedToBack /* REMOVE THIS LINE if "-pubscreen" is used! */
ERROR: exit
If you never run more than one copy of Q-Blue at once, you could
simplify this. You could leave the "RxSet" commands out of the
editor setup window, and just replace the two "getclip()" function
calls in the script with the pathnames of the files, like this:
'Jump to file RAM:Reply.blue'
That script would be stored in the file "REXX:Q-Blue-finish.ced",
and you would probably use the "Install DOS/ARexx command" menu
option to attach it to one of the ten function keys. If you don't
want the complexity of using two views to write replies, and just
want to create your reply in the same view that the quoted
original appears in, then fill in only the first gadget of each
type in the Editor setup window, and leave the other two empty.
Then the "Q-Blue-finish.ced" ARexx script given above will not be
needed. The "CedToBack" command near the end is not necessary if
the "After edit, screen to front" feature is working, and should
definitely be removed if you're using the "-pubscreen" option to
edit on Q-Blue's screen. It should also be removed for CygnusEd
version 2, which does not support that command.
Note that the above script may possibly close the wrong views if
you are also editing some other files with the same filename but a
different directory path -- CygnusEd does not distinguish them
properly. One unfortunate side effect may be that a CON: window
gets opened on the Workbench screen for no reason, which you can't
- 45 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.7
close! For this and several other reasons mentioned above, an up-
to-date copy of CygnusEd will definitely work much more smoothly
with Q-Blue. This leftover window happens even with version 3.5,
actually, but since the window is "/AUTO" you don't see it. This
seems to happen when you use the above ARexx script after CygnusEd
is started with "CED" instead of with "Ed". The script should
probably not be used in that case, at least not with old versions.
The "Remove upper ascii and control characters" gadget should be
unchecked with CygnusEd.
4.8) Using TurboText to edit replies
If you don't use the TurboText editor published by Oxxi, you can
skip this section, which describes how to set up Q-Blue to use it.
With TurboText, unlike CygnusEd, you don't have to make a choice
between starting a new process and making use of an existing one;
only the latter is possible. And although the "TTX" activator
command has a "SCREEN" option which allows it to open an editing
window on Q-Blue's screen with a command such as "TTX RAM:Reply
SCREEN @P", this will not work if any TurboText window is open
anywhere else -- it can only use one screen. Because you would
then have to manually dig through various screens under
circumstances beyond Q-Blue's control, I recommend against using
the "SCREEN" option. (Anyway, TurboText windows tend to look
a little funny when they open on Q-Blue's screen, due to Q-Blue's
nonstandard assignment of Intuition window drawing pens.) For
similar reasons, it may be impractical to tell TurboText to use a
different font (e.g. an IBM font) with Q-Blue messages.
To cause the editing window(s) to have the right option settings,
you should create a short ARexx script called "Q-Blue-prefs.ttx"
in your REXX: directory, consisting only of TurboText commands to
set various options. For example:
/* Q-Blue-prefs.ttx: set options for Q-Blue reply editing */
SetPrefs WordWrap ON
SetPrefs TabsGiveSpaces ON
SetPrefs SaveIcons OFF
SetPrefs RightMargin 74
And then refer to that file in the TTX command with the "MACRO"
option, with a command such as "TTX @F MACRO Q-Blue-prefs".
Depending on what your normal settings are in TurboText, some of
those option lines may be unnecessary. If only one or two options
are needed, you can include them right in the command instead of
putting them in a separate script, by enclosing the ARexx
statements in both double and single quotes and separating them
with semicolons, in place of the filename after the word "MACRO",
like this:
- 46 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.8
TTX @F MACRO "'SetPrefs RightMargin 74; SetPrefs WordWrap ON'"
I recommend using the "WAIT" option as well, which will prevent
the TTX command from finishing (and Q-Blue from coming back to
life) until all file(s) loaded by it have been closed again. This
allows Q-Blue's "After edit, screen to front" feature to work, and
avoids the problem of old reply files being left in the editor,
which TurboText can't resolve as easily as CygnusEd can, with its
"-f" option for the Ed activator. So, the complete commands you
would set up for TurboText would be:
RAM:Reply
RAM:Quotee
TTX @F WAIT MACRO Q-Blue-prefs
TTX @O @F WAIT MACRO Q-Blue-prefs
"After edit, screen to front" should be turned on, unless you do
not use the "WAIT" option. "Before edit, screen to back" should
be turned off. "Remove upper ascii and control characters" should
also be turned off. Unless you are pinched for memory, I
recommend that TurboText be left resident in memory between uses.
This can be accomplished by including the word "BACKGROUND" or
"BG" in the TTX commands, or adding a line to Q-Blue-prefs.ttx
(the script named after "MACRO" in the commands) that says
"SetBackground ON", or by running TurboText that way before Q-Blue
ever uses it.
When you write a new message, whatever screen TurboText's windows
are on will pop to the front, with a new window open to write your
reply in. If you write a reply, two windows will open, with the
window for your reply in front. The window containing the quoted
text of the message you are replying to will be right behind it.
By bringing that other window to the front, you can copy sections
of it into your reply using the clipboard: double-click the mouse
and drag it over the region you want to include (or use keyboard
methods to mark a block), use the "Copy" command (right-Amiga-C),
bring back the reply window (you can use right-Amiga-0 to switch
quickly between the two), click where the stuff should go, and use
"Paste" (right-Amiga-V). If you do not want to hassle with two
windows, and just want to create your reply in the same window
that starts out containing the quoted original message, then just
fill in the top gadgets of each type in the Editor setup window as
given above, and leave the bottom string in each pair empty.
When you finish writing the reply, use the "Save" (right-Amiga-S)
and "Close Window" (right-Amiga-Q, or the close gadget) commands
in each window that Q-Blue opened. If there are two windows, this
may be somewhat inconvenient, and as with CygnusEd, an ARexx macro
can automate this. But as with CygnusEd, the script won't work
- 47 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.8
properly unless you modify the second command in the Editor setup
window to include a "RxSet" command, like this:
RxSet QBlueOrig @O @N TTX @O @F WAIT MACRO Q-Blue-prefs
You would invoke this script while the window containing your
reply is the active one:
/* Q-Blue-finish.ttx: save and close Q-Blue file(s) */
options results
signal on error
SaveFile NoIcon
CloseDoc
address TURBOTEXT GetPort getclip('QBlueOrig')
if RC == 0 then do
address value RESULT
SaveFile NoIcon
CloseDoc
end
Screen2Back /* REMOVE this line if "SCREEN" option used! */
ERROR: exit
The "Screen2Back" command is not needed if Q-Blue's "After edit,
screen to front" feature is working, but may be needed if you
don't use the "WAIT" option in the TTX commands. That line
must
be removed if you run TurboText on Q-Blue's screen. You would
presumably attach this script to some key with a line in the
"KEYBOARD:" section of the definition file "TTX_Startup.dfn".
For example, to execute this script by pressing the F10 key, you
could add the following lines to the definition file:
KEYBOARD: APPEND
F10 ExecARexxMacro Q-Blue-finish
#
Note that this script may fail to work if there is any other
window open with the same name, not counting the directory path,
as the second file in your Editor setup window. For instance,
editing a file named "Work:stuff/Quotee" in another window might
cause this script to close that window instead of the one
containing "RAM:Quotee", just because TurboText doesn't bother to
tell the difference. If this becomes a problem, just pick a more
unusual filename to use in Q-Blue's setup.
One trick that may help make editing with two windows more
convenient is to make use of the ARexx script "WindowOrg.ttx" that
is supplied with TurboText. To do this, add the following lines
to the end of the script "Q-Blue-prefs.ttx", after the various
"SetPrefs" lines:
- 48 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.8
options results
GetFileInfo
origname = '"' || upper(getclip('QBlueOrig')) || '"'
if upper(word(RESULT, 3)) == origname then call 'WindowOrg'
As with the "Q-Blue-finish.ttx" script, this depends on the
presence of the "RxSet" command in the Editor setup window's
second command string. The effect will be that when Q-Blue loads
two files into TurboText, the windows will arrange themselves so
they each cover half of the screen, not overlapping. But it
probably won't work if other files are also loaded.
4.9) A few editor tricks
One slightly tricky point with some editors, such as Uedit, is
that since it saves files as a background operation, you may end
up telling Q-Blue to save the reply before the editor has finished
writing it out. This will cause Q-Blue to display an error
message saying that it could not find the file. If this happens,
just close the error requester and tell it to save again. If that
was the problem, the second attempt will succeed.
An odd trick, probably useless: you can use two editor commands
even if you specify only one filename. This might be of use if
you want the editor to treat that file in two different ways
depending on whether it contains quoted text to be replied to or
not. The second command will be used when loading the editor with
quoted material, and the first will be used when re-editing text
you have written yourself, or when starting with an empty file.
You can, if necessary, cause an ARexx script to wait for the
editor to finish with the file before returning, so that Q-Blue's
"After edit, to front" screen pop-up feature can work at the right
time. This requires creating a named port in your script, and
then, as part of the command you use when finishing a message in
the editor (presumably a macro), sending a message to that port.
Here is an example of a partial script that does this, which can
be added to the end of an ordinary editor script that is called by
a RX command in the Editor setup window:
/* rexxsupport.library must be already opened here: */
pname = 'Q-Blue-wait' /* use any unique name */
if ~openport(pname) then exit 20
call waitpkt pname
pak = getpkt(pname)
if pak ~== '00000000'x then call reply(pak, 0)
In this case, you would set up an editor macro to be used when you
finish editing a message, which would save the file and close its
editing window or view or buffer, and finally, execute this ARexx
command:
- 49 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 4.9
address 'Q-Blue-wait' 'x'
You can use anything in place of "x". As soon as the "x" message
is received, Q-Blue's screen will pop to the front. If something
goes wrong and the message doesn't get sent, you can cause the
ARexx script to exit, and allow Q-Blue to wake up, by entering the
"HI" (Halt Interpreter) command supplied with ARexx at a CLI
prompt.
5) SETTING UP COMPRESSOR COMMANDS
5.1) The Compressors setup window
The Compressors window is one of the most complex of the setup
windows to work with, but with any luck you may not have to mess
with it at all. By default, Q-Blue is set up to handle five types
of compression: Zip, LHA, LZX, Zoo, and Arc. Zip compression is
further divided into "Zip 2.x" and "Zip 1.x" types, the latter
being used for BBSes that have outdated unzipping software. If
you have the necessary programs for these, you should be able to
use the default settings. They assume that you have the following
programs: LhA by Stefan Boberg for LZH and LHA compression (note
that the old Lharc program cannot handle LHA, which is what many
mail doors will give you if you ask for LZH); UnZip 5.0 or higher
from the Info-Zip group (of which I am a member); Zip from the
same group, preferably version 2.0 or higher; Zoo by Rahul Dhesi,
preferably version 2.1 or higher; Arc 0.23 by Raymond S. Brand;
and LZX by Jonathan Forbes and Tomi Poutanen. If these programs
are in your command path (they would typically be in your C:
directory), your compressor configuration won't need any changes
for these compression types. If any are not present, that only
means you cannot use that particular type of archive compression.
Zoo and Arc are not used much any more, so you may never need
these at all. Conversely, LZX is a recent product that never came
into very wide use. Zip and UnZip are by far the most commonly
used, and may be your only choice with some BBSes, so you'd better
have these. Registered copies of Q-Blue include Zip and UnZip on
the disk. If you need to add another type (such as perhaps ARJ),
or use a different program for one of these types (such as LZ by
Johnathan Forbes in place of LhA), then read the following. You
should also read section 5.2 if you are using a configuration left
over from an older version of Q-Blue.
The window titled "Compression methods for packing and unpacking
files" can be opened by pressing Alt-C or selecting "Compressors"
from the "Setup" menu. There are eight buttons in the top part of
the window. Each represents a different compression method.
Normally there are fewer than eight compression methods installed,
and the rest of the gadgets are blank and ghosted. Below these
- 50 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 5.1
are a bunch of string gadgets which are blank and ghosted until
you select a particular method. At the right edge, midway down
the window, is a gadget labeled "Add". If you want to put in a
new method, click this gadget or press the A key. If you want to
edit the definition of an existing method, or delete it, click on
the button that is labeled with the name of the method you want to
edit, or press the digit key that is shown next to the gadget (1
to 8). If you select an existing method, its gadget will stay
selected and the remaining gadgets in the lower part of the window
will become active, showing the existing definition. If you use
the Add command, the first unused gadget in the top group of eight
will un-ghost and become selected, and the bottom gadgets will
become active with nothing in them. You can't add a new method if
all eight gadgets are already defined.
The definition consists of four parts: First, in a small string
gadget midway down the left side of the window, is the name of the
method. This is the name that shows in the appropriate gadget in
the upper part, and is shown in the checkmarked submenu that is
used to pick which method you actually want to use. It tries to
activate this gadget for typing when you select a method to edit.
It holds a maximum of seven characters; one would normally put a
simple, easily recognized name here, such as "ARJ" or "Stuffit".
(I have not yet seen Amiga compression programs for either of
these methods, though decompressors exist.) The two large string
gadgets below are used for specifying the commands used for
compression and decompression. The string gadget labeled
"Pattern", to the right of the name, is used for recognizing
whether a given packet has been compressed with this method.
If you want to delete a compression method from the available set,
select the appropriate gadget and then erase the contents of all
four string gadgets. When you un-select it or close the window,
it will be removed and you will have one fewer compressor to
choose from. Never remove the last one -- there must always be
one valid compressor.
It won't let you close the window if any
definition is incomplete, or if there is not at least one valid
definition.
A complete definition must have a name, a compression
command, and a decompression command -- the pattern may be blank.
It also will not let you close the window if one of the pattern
strings (explained in section 5.4) has invalid characters in it.
If you fill in one or two parts of a compression method, and
another part is still blank, it will demand that you either finish
the partial definition or erase it, before you close the window.
It will put up a requester telling you which one is incomplete.
If a pattern is invalid, it will first put up a requester, and
then when the error requester is closed it will select the
offending archiver and attempt to activate the pattern gadget with
the cursor at the point where the invalid character was detected.
Note: if you want to specify a method that has a decompression
command but no compression command (for instance if you have
downloaded a packet in .ARJ form or something, and have only a
- 51 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 5.1
decompressor on hand), then just put "Quit 10" in the compression
command gadget. This will cause an error message if you try to
compress replies with this method.
5.2) Teaching Q-Blue about other compression programs
In the two large string gadgets at the bottom of the Compressors
setup window, you enter the actual commands as you would type them
at a CLI prompt, except that you do not enter the literal name of
the archive file to be created or unpacked -- instead, type "@A"
where the archive name would go. For example, the default Zip
decompression command is "UnZip -o @A". Likewise, if you need to
include the name of the directory the uncompressed files go in,
you enter "@D" in its place. ("@D" is no longer used in any of
the default commands.) Q-Blue will replace "@A" and "@D" with the
appropriate pathnames when executing the command. Q-Blue uses
your command path setting when executing these commands, just as
it does with editor commands (section 4.2 has details on how it
determines the path to use). To use compression programs that are
not in your command path, you'll have to use an explicit pathname
for the compression program. The command for packing replies goes
into the bottommost gadget, which is labeled "Compression
command", and the one above it, labeled "Decompression command",
contains the command for unpacking mail.
In general, when specifying a compression command, give one that
will archive all files in the current directory, or the directory
named with "@D". The directory that "@D" specified to is always
the current directory when the command runs, so it is usually not
necessary to include the "@D" code explicitly. Although QWK
replies typically use only one file, Blue Wave replies require
many files, and Q-Blue uses the same command for both cases
(though you can create variations with "@B" and "@Q"). If the
archiver allows wildcards, you can use the all-files wildcard, as
in the default LHA compression command, "LhA -0 a @A #?".
If your archiving program does not let you use wildcards to tell
it what files to compress, you can use the "@F" code instead.
This code is replaced with a list of all the filenames in the
current directory (the "@D" directory). The default Zip command
used this code in Q-Blue 2.1, because old versions of Zip do not
support wildcards. The command "Zip -k @A @F" would give Zip an
explicit list of every file to be compressed. For example, if
your replies directory contains the files "somebbs.upl", "23.001",
and "14.002", which are to be compressed into "up:somebbs.new",
then "Zip -k up:somebbs.new 23.001 14.002 somebbs.upl" would be
the actual command executed by Q-Blue after the codes are replaced.
In Q-Blue 2.3 the default Zip command was changed back to use the
wildcard "*" instead of "@F", because some users reported that a
command using "@F" was not able to compress more than 28 Blue Wave
replies. (On most systems this problem hopefully should not
- 52 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 5.2
occur.) If you have a very old version of Zip that does not
understand the "*" wildcard, you may have to replace it with "@F".
It is also possible to use some command that tells it to gather
all files within a named directory: for example, the default Zip
command in very old versions of Q-Blue, "Zip -jkr @A @D", used
this approach.
Note
that in this case, it will not only include
all of the files in the replies directory, but all those within
any subdirectories as well. This can be a problem if any
subdirectories exist in your replies directory. It is best not to
create any such.
Here is a table of the current default commands, listing first the
decompression and then the compression command for each. In most
circumstances, the different ones used in old Q-Blue versions will
still work and do not really need to be modified if you don't want
to take the trouble.
1) Zip 2.x: 4) LZX:
UnZip -jo @A LZX -m -X0 x @A
Zip -k @A * LZX -X0 a @A #?
2) Zip 1.x: 5) Zoo:
UnZip -jo @A Zoo xSO @A
Zip -0k @A * Zoo a @A *
3) LHA: 6) Arc:
LhA -m -x0 x @A Arc xw @A
LhA -0 a @A #? Arc a @A #?
When specifying a decompression command, you should generally use
whatever option is provided to make it do the decompression
without ever stopping to ask the user for input. It is usually
best to also tell the decompression command to restore everything
to the current directory instead of preserving any subdirectory
paths. One change between the default commands of Q-Blue 2.2 and
those of older versions is that previously, the Zip and LHA
decompression commands did not suppress subdirectories. An option
to strip subdirectory paths is especially important in compression
commands if "@D" is used. You should make sure that the files are
stored as plain filenames with no directory paths. All of the
default commands meet these criteria, except that LZX extraction
preserves paths, because the no-path option did not work on the
early copy I have.
If you wish to use the program LZ by Johnathan Forbes instead of
LhA by Stefan Boberg, simply edit the two commands for compression
type LHA so that the command name is "LZ" instead of "LhA" -- the
rest of each command after the name can be left unchanged. You
may wish to add the "-n" option to your LhA or LZ commands, which
turns off the feature that tells you from moment to moment how far
it has progressed in compressing or decompressing each file,
because on some systems this option can slow down the program
- 53 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 5.2
noticeably. The "-x" option should not be used for compression.
Early versions of Q-Blue used LZ by default.
Sometimes the "-0" option has to be used with Zip compression, if
you have Zip version 1.9 or newer. This is necessary if the BBS
is unpacking archives with an old unzipper, or with some software
such as the QSO mail packer incorporated into TBBS, or the similar
QWK packer used in MajorBBS, which as of this writing can unpack
old-style Zip archives but not those compatible with Zip 2.0.
With Zip, "-0" causes files to be stored with no compression at
all. It makes for a bigger reply packet, but since reply uploads
are generally much smaller than mail downloads, the penalty is not
very large, and the compression features of modern modems may make
the upload just as quick. Q-Blue 2.3 has a separate "Zip 1.x"
compression type which uses the "-0" option automatically, if the
download packet appears to have been made with an obsolete type of
Zip compression. If you have a very old version of Zip, such as
v0.93, you can use it without "-0" and delete the extra "Zip 1.x"
compression method... but note that those old versions have bugs.
If a reply packet already exists with the same name as the one
that the compression command is trying to create, Q-Blue may
rename it so that you have a backup copy of your previous reply
packet -- the details are in section 11.6. After the command
runs, Q-Blue will check whether the expected new archive now
exists, and put up an error message to let you know if it is empty
or nonexistent.
5.3) Special codes in compression commands
This section covers the complete set of special codes available in
compressor commands. As mentioned above, wherever "@A" is found
in a compression command, Q-Blue substitutes the name of the
archive file that is being created (in the case of compression) or
unpacked (in the case of decompression). Archives being created
are always located in your uploads directory, and Q-Blue appends
the correct filename onto the uploads path you give in the
Directories setup window to produce the pathname used for "@A".
Archives being unpacked may be in either the uploads or the
downloads directory, or anywhere at all if the ASL requester is
used to select a file to open.
Q-Blue replaces "@D" with either the name of the directory that
files are to be unpacked into, or the directory that files to be
packed are in. In the case of decompression, this may be either
your work directory or your replies directory. When compressing,
it is always the replies directory.
As described in the previous section, "@F" is replaced with a
complete list of the names of all files in the current directory,
which is the same directory that "@D" specifies. This is useful
with compressors that expect a list of files to be compressed. In
- 54 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 5.3
Q-Blue 1.0 and older, the @F code was useful only for QWK replies
consisting of just one file. It can still be used for this
purpose. The files are listed as simple names with no path
information, with spaces in between. @F produces an error message
if used in a decompression command. Also note that the same code
is used for a different purpose in editor commands.
The directory name inserted in place of "@D" will always have a
colon or slash on the end, so that a decompression command can
know it is a directory and not the name of a file within the
archive being decompressed, and a compression command can use
forms like "@D#?" without worrying about whether or not a slash
needs to go between the directory name and the wildcards. Any
file or directory pathname inserted with any of these codes will
have quote marks around it if it contains space characters, so you
should
not
include explicit quote marks in the commands you enter.
As with the commands in the Editor setup window (see section 4.2),
if there is a part of the command that you wish to be included
only when dealing with a QWK format packet, you can put that part
between a pair of "@Q" sequences, and likewise any part between
two "@B" sequences will be ignored except when dealing with a Blue
Wave packet. Note that this is not entirely reliable with
decompression commands, because when it is unpacking a mail
archive, it doesn't know yet what the packet contains, so it can't
be sure whether it's a QWK packet, a Blue Wave packet, or neither.
It can only judge by the name of the file being unpacked, and if
it doesn't look like either type, it will assume it is QWK until
after the unpacking is finished and it reads the contents in the
work directory. Files with extensions consisting of three digits,
like "SOMENAME.001", are assumed to be Blue Wave, though some QWK
doors might also be able to produce such names.
The "@N" code can be used, just as in editor commands, to separate
two commands to be executed in sequence. It becomes a newline in
the command that is executed. The "@P" and "@S" codes can be used
also, but they are generally of value only in editor commands;
section 4.2 explains their use. The special sequences recognized
in both editor and compressor commands are "@B", "@Q", "@P", "@S",
and "@N". The sequence "@F" is usable in both editor and
compressor commands, but has a different meaning in the two
situations. The sequences that work only in compression commands
are "@A", "@D", and "@U". Any other character after an "@" is
included as is, after discarding the at-sign. Thus, "@@" becomes
one at-sign in the command that is executed. The letters can be
upper or lower case.
"@U" is rarely useful. It is replaced with the pathname of the
directory where the compressed packet belongs -- your uploads
directory when compressing, or it may be your downloads directory
if used in a decompression command. In other words, "@U" is the
parent directory of "@A". One case where it can be used is with
the public domain StorMail command. For those who do not have a
- 55 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 5.3
proper Zip compressor, StorMail will create a Zip archive with no
compression. It is very limited -- it will only store a file
named somename.MSG into an archive named somename.REP. This means
that it can only be used for QWK replies and is useless for Blue
Wave. To use StorMail, the correct compression command is
"StorMail @F to @U". But StorMail will fail if there is more than
one file in your replies directory, or even if the one file there
does not have a name ending in ".MSG".
5.4) Compressor "patterns" for automatic recognition
The "compressor pattern" feature is something has been imitated
in other mail readers because it allows adoption of future
compression methods without any loss of convenience. (They were
called "signatures" in previous Q-Blue versions, but the name was
change to avoid confusion when the "Signature" feature was added
to the Replying setup window.) In order to recognize what
compressor to use for unpacking a given packet, Q-Blue needs to
know something about what it can expect to find in a file produced
by that compressor. The text in the "Pattern" gadget fills that
purpose. That text consists only of pairs of hexadecimal digits,
or question marks, separated optionally by spaces. Each question
mark or pair of digits represents one byte in the file being
checked, starting with the very first byte. If each pair of hex
digits specifies the same byte value that actually appears at that
place in the file, then the file matches the pattern and Q-Blue
figures that this must be the right compressor to use. Where a
question mark is given, the corresponding byte in the file may
have any value.
If two patterns both match, Q-Blue selects the longer one. This
is often the case with the two default compression types labeled
"Zip 2.x" and "Zip 1.x" -- the pattern used by the latter is the
same as that of the former, with one byte added at the end. Any
archive that fits the longer signature will also fit the shorter
one, but Zip 2.x will be selected only if the archive fails to
match the extra byte of Zip 1.x's longer pattern. In past
releases, v2.1 and older, Q-Blue had only one Zip compression
entry and would not recognize packets that required 1.x-compatible
compression.
This method of recognizing compression types is not completely
reliable for some types. Zip and Zoo archives are always
recognizable, LHA should be dependable, but Arc may sometimes fail
to be recognized. Also, Zip 2.x archives may be mistaken for Zip
1.x, if the first entry is a directory name or a non-compressed
file. But accidentally using 1.x in place of 2.x causes no great
trouble, whereas to accidentally use 2.x in place of 1.x may
produce an upload packet that the BBS cannot unpack. Q-Blue's
default pattern settings for Zip are based on a policy of "better
safe than sorry".
- 56 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 5.4
Any compressor may have a blank pattern. In this case, whenever
you want to open a packet with this compression type, you'll have
to select it manually. If a pattern is defined and this tells it
that the compressor it should use is not the one currently
selected, it gives you a choice of whether to switch or not. See
section 8 on opening packets for details.
Figuring out a pattern for a new compression type is sometimes a
matter of guesswork. You have to make a hexadecimal dump of
several archives compressed with that method with "Type Hex" or a
similar command, and look for bytes near the beginnings of the
files that always have the same values in the same locations. If
you're unlucky, there just may not be any such bytes. But usually
some of the first few bytes have consistent values. When you find
those bytes, copy down their hexadecimal values, and fill in
question marks in place of any bytes before them which have
differing values, and put the result in the pattern gadget for
that compression type. With a little luck, Q-Blue will then
automatically recognize any packet compressed that way. You're
limited to about the first 150 bytes in the file for finding a
pattern. Usually if it isn't in the first dozen bytes it's not to
be found.
The patterns for the default compression methods are as follows:
for Zip 2.x: 50 4B 03 04
for Zip 1.x: 50 4B 03 04 0A
for LHA: ? ? 2D 6C 68 ? 2D
for LZX: 4C 5A 58
for Zoo: 5A 4F 4F 20
for Arc: 1A
In some older releases, "1A 08" was used for Arc, but this did not
always work. A pattern of "60 EA" ought to work for ARJ.
6) OTHER CONFIGURATION OPTIONS
6.1) Selecting the font for Q-Blue's screen
At the top of the setup window titled "Font and screen
specifications" are a row of three gadgets which are used for
telling Q-Blue what font to use to display messages. Below that
are two gadgets for selecting the type of custom screen to open,
and a command button for reopening the screen using those new
settings. Below those are gadgets for adjusting the screen's
colors, similar to those found in various palette requesters or
the "Palette" preferences editor.
A font can by selected by either of two methods: with the ASL font
requester, or by editing string gadgets. The command gadget
- 57 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.1
labeled "Font:" in the upper left corner of the Font & Screen
setup window will pop up the ASL font requester. You can also
select a font by editing the two string gadgets to the right of
this command button, labeled "Name" and "Height". If the
requester is used, it will insert the name and point size of the
font you select into the two string gadgets.
The "Name" string gadget just to the right of the "Font" gadget
shows the name of a font in your system FONTS: directory, which
can be specified with or without the ".font" ending on the name.
Pressing the tab key will activate this gadget. It can be edited
manually, as well as being set by the ASL font requester. For
example, you might enter "newcleanibm.font" here. The default
if this gadget is blank is to use the "System Default Text" font
you have selected in the "Font" Preferences program, or topaz 8 if
that does not fit Q-Blue's screen. The "Height:" numeric gadget
to its right specifies the point size of the font -- the height of
each character in pixels. The font you select here will be used
for almost everything in Q-Blue, except menus and window titles,
which use the system default font.
The font you choose must meet specific requirements. It must be
non-proportional -- that is, all characters the same width; it
can be no less than 8 and no more than 32 pixels tall; the width
must be no less than 5 and no more than 16 pixels; and it must
specify all normal ASCII characters (hex values 20 through 7E).
Q-Blue rejects "scaled" fonts that the system makes by stretching
other bitmap fonts larger or smaller (they usually look awful),
but a outline font like LetterGothic 18 is okay. The majority of
users would probably get best results with a font which shows the
IBM character set, instead of the 8 bit ISO character set normally
used by the Amiga. This character set is the de facto standard in
most BBS mail. Many fonts using the IBM character set are
available. The Q-Blue distribution includes several. Section 2.1
describes them and gives information on installing these fonts for
Q-Blue to use -- basically, all you have to do is double-click the
"Install" icon and answer the requesters.
In general, I recommend using the included newcleanibm font (size
8) if you use a basic noninterlaced NTSC or PAL screen, tallibm
(size 11, 12, or 14) with an interlaced or other double-height
screen, and wideibm (size 9, 12, or 14) for 800 by 600 pixel
screen modes which are not available on older Amigas. It is
entirely a matter of taste which height you choose; the width is
the crucial measurement needed to fit the font to Q-Blue's screen.
The stretchibm font (size 12) is intended for those who use NTSC
or PAL screens with extreme horizontal overscan, making them 720
pixels wide. If you don't want to use the IBM character set, I
recommend topaz 8 for noninterlace, topaz 11 or talliso for
interlace, topaz 9 or wideiso for 800 by 600, and stretchiso for
720 pixel overscan.
- 58 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.1
If you enter an invalid height number (under 8 or over 32), the
gadget will be reactivated with the previous value in it. If you
select a font which Q-Blue cannot use, a requester will appear
warning you of the problem, but it will not forbid you from
leaving the invalid selection in your setup, because it can always
fall back on using topaz 8.
The font you select will not be used immediately. In order to see
your new font, you have to reopen Q-Blue's screen. This can be
done by using the "Iconify screen" command in the "Packet" menu,
described fully in section 8.1, or by using the "Open!" gadget
below the font height gadget, which is described in the next
section. If the specified font cannot be used, an error requester
will appear on the Workbench screen (or default public screen) and
when that is closed, Q-Blue will open its screen using your system
default font, or topaz 8.
Below the font gadgets is a line of text that tells you the width
of the currently specified font, and how wide a screen you will
need to see everything when using it. Because BBS messages are
almost always formatted to fit within a display 80 text characters
wide,
Q-Blue always opens an Intuition screen with a width equal
to 80 times the width of the font it's using.
This may be
narrower or wider than the visible width of the display, which is
controlled by your preferences overscan settings. This line might
read, for example:
Font width = 8 pixels; screen width needed = 640
This lets you know what size of screen you should open so that the
physical display and the Intuition screen width will fit each
other. In this case, you would avoid using a screen size such as
800 by 600 or 1280 by 512, because a large portion of the display
area would be unused. Similarly, if you use a font 10 pixels
wide, such as topaz 9 or wideibm 12, so that it says "screen width
needed = 800", you would not want to use a basic NTSC or PAL
screen, because not everything would be visible at once. In a
case like this, Q-Blue will turn on the screen's autoscroll
feature, so that if you slide the mouse pointer into the area that
doesn't show, it will scroll to show it. If you use the screen
mode requester as described in the next section, you can manually
select whether autoscroll is used.
6.2) Selecting the screen type
Below the font selection gadgets in the Font & Screen setup window
is a cycle gadget labeled "Screen colors and type". This gadget
has five options: "4 NoLace", "4 Lace", "8 NoLace", "8 Lace", and
"Custom". Each time you click on it, it changes to a different
one of the five settings. Its keyboard equivalent is the letter
S. The default setting is "8 NoLace". The first four settings
let you select basic screen types using your system's default
- 59 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.2
monitor type (usually NTSC or PAL). The "Custom" setting lets you
use an arbitrary display type chosen with the ASL screen mode
requester. The other options are provided for simplicity, and for
systems that do not have a working screen mode requester, such as
systems using AmigaDOS 2.04, in which asl.library does not include
this requester.
The number 4 or 8 is the number of colors that Q-Blue's screen
will use. An eight color screen is generally nicer to look at,
but the four color screen, though drabber in appearance, has the
advantage of using less chip ram and updating more quickly. On
Amigas with pre-AGA display hardware, using a four color screen
can double the speed of many display operations. On Amigas
without true fast memory,
everything
will speed up. The "Lace"
vs. "NoLace" choice chooses whether the screen will be interlaced
for double the default vertical resolution, allowing you to read
twice as much text on the screen at any one time, or use a larger
and more readable font such as tallibm 14. But if you have pre-
AGA display hardware and no deinterlacer, it will cause the image
to flicker. It will also use more chip ram if interlace is used,
and slow down text scrolling. The default is no interlace.
Below the cycle gadget is a command button labeled "Mode:", which
is ghosted except when the cycle gadget is set to "Custom". To
the right of that gadget is displayed the name of the currently
selected custom screen mode. If you click the "Mode:" button or
press the M key, the ASL screen mode requester will pop up, if it
is available in your system. It will let you select any other
Workbench-compatible custom display mode from a scrolling list,
and also give you a slider gadget for selecting how many colors
the screen should use (4 and 8 are the only choices) and a
checkbox for turning on the autoscroll feature. When you close
the requester by selecting "OK", the new name will be displayed to
the right of the button, along with some information about the
size of the screen this mode will create, for example:
MULTISCAN:Productivity Lace (640 x 960 x 4)
The first two numbers in the parentheses are the nominal width and
height of the screen in this display mode, in this case 640 pixels
wide and 960 pixels tall. The actual width and height may be
slightly larger, depending on your overscan settings, but it will
never be smaller. The third number is the number of colors it
will use, either 4 or 8.
You should generally select a screen
mode for which the first number matches the "necessary screen
width" number displayed below the font gadgets.
With basic
NTSC or PAL video modes, however, it is possible to stretch the
screen to 720 pixels wide if you use extreme overscan; in this
case a font 9 pixels wide instead of 8 (such as courier 15 or
stretchibm 12) can be used. This text will be ghosted, like the
"Mode:" button, when the screen type setting is not "Custom".
- 60 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.2
As with the font setting, a change of the screen settings does not
take effect until you close and reopen Q-Blue's screen, or save
the configuration and restart Q-Blue. Most other option choices,
including palette changes done with the gadgets in the bottom part
of this window, take immediate effect. Closing and reopening the
screen can be done using the "Iconify screen" command described in
section 8.1, but there's a shortcut provided here. To the right
of the screen type cycle gadget is a command button labeled
"Open!". When you click this or press the O key, Q-Blue will put
the new font and screen settings to immediate use. It will close
the window and then close the screen, and reopen the screen with
the new settings. If the screen fails to open, for instance
because there is not enough chip ram available, Q-Blue will be
iconified (see section 8.1). You can un-iconify it when it's
again possible for the screen to open, for example when you have
freed up some memory. If the selected screen mode doesn't work,
it will use the default NTSC or PAL display mode.
If your overscan preferences for the selected screen mode allow an
extra 16 or more horizontal pixels beyond the nominal size, Q-Blue
will open a slightly wider screen in order to include a scroll
gadget along the right edge.
The remainder of the window is occupied by palette control
gadgets. There is a color selection gadget on the left, which
lets you pick one of the four or eight colors so you can modify
it. It has a swatch of each color in it, and you can either click
on the color you want to change, or move the current selection
from one color to another with the arrow keys. To the right of
that is a "recessed" swatch showing a sample of the currently
selected color. Below that is a command button labeled "Undo".
On the right are three slider gadgets labeled "Red", "Green", and
"Blue". With them you can adjust the color values that make up
the currently selected color. They can be adjusted by keyboard:
press R, G, or B to increase the value of the corresponding
slider, or press it with the shift key held down to decrease the
value. The current numeric values are shown to the right of each
slider. Clicking "Undo", or pressing U, undoes all color changes
made since the window was opened.
Color changes, unlike font or screen mode changes, take immediate
effect. However, you cannot adjust the colors used on four color
screens while an eight color screen is open, or vice versa. The
two palettes are separate, and both are remembered in the
configuration file when you use "Save setup".
6.3) The Options setup window
The "Miscellaneous preference options" setup window can be opened
with the "Options" item in the "Setup" menu, or with the keystroke
Alt-O. It contains nothing but checkmark gadgets, in two columns.
Each has a descriptive label to its right, with the first letter
- 61 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.3
of that label underlined. Click on the gadget to switch the
checkmark on or off, or type the underlined letter to the right of
the gadget for the same effect. When the checkmark is present,
the option described in the label is turned on.
The top gadget on the left is labeled "Page break after printing",
with the letter P as its keyboard shortcut. When this is checked
(the default), any message sent to the printer will be followed by
a formfeed character to send the printer to the start of a new
page. Otherwise it puts three blank lines after the text. (Older
versions of Q-Blue only put two blank lines.)
To the right of the page break gadget is one labeled "Waste memory
for speed", with keyboard shortcut W. When this is checked, it
causes the text of some messages to be cached in memory instead of
loaded from disk each time they come up onscreen. Specifically,
Q-Blue attempts to preload the text of the next 20 messages after
the one you are currently reading, so that you can quickly move
through them all without waiting for disk access. It will
"forget" the cached messages if you do something that needs memory
to be conserved, such as packing replies or iconifying the screen.
If your work directory is in ram disk, there will be no
significant benefit in using this. By default it is turned off.
The second gadget on the left side, under the "Page break" gadget,
is labeled "Msgs: list before reading", shortcut M. It is turned
off (unchecked) by default. It causes the window listing messages
in the current area to be automatically opened whenever you choose
a new area. If you consider this to be an unnecessary extra step,
you can leave this gadget unchecked and when you choose an area it
will simply display that area's first message, or the last one you
read if you have already been in this area before. This option
also causes the message list window to be opened when you do a
word search in the current area (see section 9.5).
To the right of that, under the "Waste memory" gadget, is one
labeled "Your msgs flash screen", shortcut Y, which is unchecked
by default. It determines whether the screen will flash when a
message addressed to you is displayed. This is commonly called a
display "beep", and may produce a sound if you use a program or
preferences setting which translate such flashes into actual beeps.
The third gadget on the left side is "Areas: list before reading",
shortcut A, which is turned on by default. It is analogous to the
"Msgs: list before reading" gadget immediately above it. It
causes the window listing areas with messages in them to be opened
whenever you try to read the next message in an area where you are
at the last message, or the previous message when you are at the
first. The default area highlighted in the window will be the one
after (or before, if you asked for the previous message) the one
you were in. If this option is unchecked, it will simply display
the first, or last-shown, message in the next (or previous) area
without opening the areas window. It will still open the window
- 62 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.3
when you reach the end (or beginning) of all available messages.
This setting also causes the window to be opened after doing a
word search of all areas.
To the right of that is "Update behind list window", shortcut U,
which is on by default. Q-Blue has a feature that some people
might consider annoyingly flashy: when the window which lists the
messages in the current area is open, moving the highlight bar up
and down causes the indicated message to be immediately displayed
on the main screen behind the window. If you hold down the arrow
key so it repeats, or press it rapidly, the background display
will get rather noisy as it repeatedly starts displaying a new
message, and then abandons the effort part way through to start on
another one. None of the messages displayed this way are counted
as having actually been read. If you turn off the checkmark here,
the background will remain static until you close the list window.
The fourth gadget on the left side is "Buttons at screen bottom",
shortcut B. This is checked by default, and when it's turned off,
the row of seven command buttons at the bottom of the screen
disappears. This allows more of the text in the message body to
be seen at once. The amount of increase may be two text lines or
just one line, depending on the font size and screen height. The
first five of those gadgets are all just shortcuts for equivalent
menu items, and so are really just a small convenience. The last
two, labeled "Prev." and "Next", have no menu equivalents; with
the gadgets turned off, there is no mouse equivalent to pressing
the left arrow or right arrow key.
To the right of that is one labeled "`Re:' before reply subject".
Its shortcut is R and it is checked by default. When it is turned
off, then when you reply to a message the subject, or title, of
your reply is by default the same as that of the message you are
replying to. When it's checked, the reply's subject is the
original's with "Re:" stuck in front, to indicate that it is a
reply to someone else's statement. For instance, if the original
subject was "Amigas are neato", the reply would be titled
"Re: Amigas are neato" by default.
The fifth one on the left is labeled "Next string gad activates",
key shortcut N. It controls the behavior of string gadgets, which
was described in section 1.3: if this is on (it is, by default),
then whenever a window contains several string gadgets, pressing
return in one string gadget will automatically activate the next
one below it. Pressing shift-return will activate the one above,
and pressing Alt-return will not activate either. When this
gadget is off, pressing return or shift-return never activates
another string gadget.
The fifth gadget on the right is "Option to delete packet",
shortcut O. When this is checked, Q-Blue will ask you with a
requester, when you close the packet, whether the mail packet file
that you opened should be deleted. The requester will mention how
- 63 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.3
many, if any, of the messages in the packet have not been read.
It is off by default.
The bottom gadget on the left is "Sizes in message list", shortcut
S. When this is checked, the window listing messages in the
current area will show the approximate length of the message in
bytes instead of the message's index number. (With QWK mail the
number is rounded up to a multiple of 128.) It is off by default.
The bottom gadget on the right is "Flush reply dir at close",
shortcut F. If this is checked, Q-Blue will delete the files in
the reply directory when you close the packet, if they have been
packed with no problems. This may help reduce confusion in cases
where you have a choice between unpacking a reply archive and
reloading replies left in that directory. It is off by default.
6.4) Specifying how messages are quoted for replying
The Replying setup window is opened by selecting "Replying" in the
"Setup" menu, or pressing Alt-Y. It is titled "Options for
writing messages and replies", and it contains gadgets which are
mostly concerned with two aspects of writing replies: quoting from
the original message you are replying to, and adding taglines.
At the top left is a cycle gadget labeled "Quote style default",
with five values and the keyboard shortcut Q. It is used to set
the default style for quoting lines from a message that you are
replying to. You can change the style for any one message, if
desired, with an identical gadget in the window that is open when
you are writing a reply -- this gadget in the Replying setup
window only selects the default. The concept of reply quoting is
explained more fully in section 4.2. The five settings are:
- "Add >" puts a greater-than character in the left margin of
all quoted text. This is a common style used to indicate
that the text is a quotation from somebody else's message.
- "Add XX>" is similar, but puts the initials of the person who
wrote the quoted text before the greater-than sign. This is
also a commonly used style. It will use up to three initials
from the name, or use the entire name if it's no more than
three letters long. If the name is one word but longer than
three letters, it will use the first two letters with the
second letter in lowercase. It does not add anything to any
lines that have already got something similar at the left
edge, and blank lines are left blank.
- "Wrap XX>" is like "Add XX>" except that it attempts to
reformat paragraphs before adding the XX> part at the left
margin. This helps prevent situations where long lines get
broken into a slightly shorter line followed by a line
containing only a word or two, but can occasionally mess up
- 64 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.4
text that is organized as a list or table of separate lines
not meant to be run together. Q-Blue 2.3 does not attempt
to reformat any text that already has ">" marks. This is the
initial default setting.
- "Verbatim" makes no changes to the text being quoted. It
preserves the text as close as possible to its original form
-- which may sometimes mean that some lines are wider than
the screen. It is up to you to indicate in your reply that
the text you use is a quote of someone else's words.
- "None" lets you start with a clean slate. No text from the
message you are replying to is supplied when you use this
choice.
To the right of this cycle gadget is a numeric string gadget
labeled "Quote right margin", which sets the right margin used for
preparing quoted text. This only affects text that ">" or "XX>"
is put in front of -- the right margin for text that you type
yourself is controlled by your editor program, not by Q-Blue. It
controls how many characters are allowed on a quoted line,
including the stuff added at the left margin, before the last few
words are wrapped onto the next line. The default value is 76,
and the maximum value allowed is 80. On some BBSes, values higher
than 78 may not work properly. The minimum value allowed is 30,
unless you set it to zero.
It is sometimes wise to set this number to a lower value, such as
72; the reason for this is that someone else may re-quote the
text you quote, and add additional ">" or "XX>" or other markers
to the left margin, and unless their right margin is several
characters wider than yours, the prose may get mangled by their
quoting software. Few programs know how to reformat such
paragraphs when quoting them; more often they break long lines by
putting one or two words on a line by themselves, or even truncate
the end of each line. On the other hand, if you use too narrow a
margin and don't use "Wrap XX>" you may mangle stuff pretty badly
yourself. "Wrap XX>" style quoting is recommended if you are
quoting with margins narrower than the original text. The margin
setting is ignored with "Verbatim" quoting, unless it is zero.
A value of zero in the "Quote right margin" gadget can be thought
of as "infinity"; it allows lines to be of unlimited length. When
that gadget is set to 0, Q-Blue will merge each quoted paragraph
into a single long line. This is intended for those who wish to
use a true word processor as their message editor -- one which
deals naturally with text that has line breaks only between
paragraphs, and wraps text within a paragraph to suit itself.
When the quote margin is set to 0, you won't get a ">" or "XX>"
mark at the start of each line, but only one at the start of each
paragraph. The effect applies regardless of quoting style; even
in "Verbatim" mode paragraphs will have their internal line breaks
- 65 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.4
removed, and there is no difference between the "Add XX>" and
"Wrap XX>" styles.
6.5) Header and signature strings for replies
Below the gadgets related to reply quoting is a string gadget
labeled "Quote header". This string specifies a block of text
that gets put at the top of a quoted message, if any quoting style
but "None" is used. The string can contain codes which stand for
things like the name of the author of the message being quoted,
the name it was addressed to, the date it was written, or the
original subject line it had. For instance, let us assume that
John Smith wrote a message to Mary Jones, and you are writing a
reply to that message. John Smith's words will be included
(quoted) in your reply. The quote header string will produce an
introductory statement at the top of the quoted text, such as:
At 9:31 PM on 1 Apr 97, John Smith said to Mary Jones:
That is the default style. But the header can be as complex as:
* From: John Smith To: Mary Jones
* Area: Radio and TV Date: 1 Apr 97, 9:31 PM
* Subj: Rush Limbaugh is a divine prophet
or as simple as:
Dear John,
The flexibility of these texts is accomplished by using "@" codes,
along the same general principles as the codes used in editor and
compressor commands (see sections 4.2 and 5.3). But the actual
codes used are very different, except for "@N" which is universal.
The full list of codes that can be used is explained in the next
section. Some basic ones are: "@N" is a line break, "@A" is the
name of the author of the message you are replying to, "@R" is the
name that their message was addressed to, "@S" is the subject line
of that message, "@C" is the name of the area it was posted in,
and "@D" and "@T" are the date and time that it was written. More
advanced sequences like "@FY" and "@Z" and "@36" are covered in
the next section.
The first example would be produced with this string in the quote
header gadget: "At @T on @D, @A said to @R:@N". This is the
gadget's default setting. The second example would be produced by
" * From: @A@38To: @R@N * Area: @C@36Date: @D, @T@N * Subj: @S@N".
The third would just require "Dear @FY,@N". In each case, the
final "@N" puts a blank line between the header and the quoted
text following it.
Below the "Quote header" is a similar string labeled "C.C. header".
It specifies what announcing banner is put at the head of someone
- 66 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.5
else's message when you use the "Carbon copy" command (see section
10, particularly 10.3). It uses the same "@" codes that the quote
header does. The default string is:
** Message forwarded by Q-Blue @V@N ** Posted @T on @D in
area "@Z@C"@N ** From @A to @R@N ** Subject "@Z@S"@N
except that it's all on one line. There is a space character at
the beginning. With its four @N codes, it produces four lines of
information at the top of the forwarded message, followed by a
blank line. The two @Z codes cause the area name and subject to
be shortened if they're too long to fit on the same line with the
other stuff around them. When you carbon-copy your own replies,
this header is not added. Section 10.3 contains an example of a
header produced by this string.
Below that is a string labeled "Signature". This specifies text
that is appended to the end of each message you write, and is
often used to list important data about yourself such as various
email addresses or your company affiliation. This string uses a
subset of the "@" codes used in the two header strings. Most of
the codes are ignored; the ones that work are @N, @D, @T, @V, and
@<number>. The @D and @T codes give the date and time of the
moment the signature is written, not the time of some other
message. Usually @N is the only code used here. Note that any
signature you specify will always have a blank line put in front
of it to separate it from the message it follows, so you don't
need to put an "@N" at the start of it. The signature text will
be loaded into your editor as part of the message text file when
you write a reply. It is not kept separate, as taglines are.
Perhaps the easiest way to put a multiline signature in here is to
write it out somewhere else such as in a text editor, and then
copy it to the clipboard and paste it into the Signature gadget by
pressing right-Amiga-V while it's active. The line breaks will be
automatically replaced with "@N" codes, as with any string gadget
where those codes are used. But note that the gadget holds at
most 400 characters. Many people like to create signatures more
than a thousand characters long, but Q-Blue will not participate
in such excess. With a little discipline, 400 is plenty. Also
remember, when writing your signature, that
any "@" character, for
instance in an Internet address, has to be written as "@@" to
translate correctly.
6.6) Special codes used in header and signature strings
The codes that are used in the "Quote header" and "C.C. header"
strings each consist of a "@" character followed by one or two
letters or digits. The code sequences are:
- 67 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.6
@A: the full name of the quoted message's author.
@R: the full name of the person that message was addressed to.
@Y: the full name of the person your reply is addressed to.
@FA: the first name of the quoted message's author.
@FR: the first name of the person that message was addressed to.
@FY: the first name of the person your reply is addressed to.
@LA: the last name of the quoted message's author.
@LR: the last name of the person that message was addressed to.
@LY: the last name of the person your reply is addressed to.
@S: the original subject line (or title) of the message.
@J: the original subject line with any initial "Re:" removed.
@D: the date the message was written, in "DD Mmm YY" format.
@T: the time of day that it was written, in AM/PM format.
@C: the BBS's name for the message area it was in.
@V: Q-Blue's version number (currently 2.3).
@N: a break between two lines of text.
@Z: truncate the next @C or @S to avoid breaking the line.
@@: an "@" character.
@<number>: (e.g. "@36") insert spaces up to column <number>.
Putting a letter "F" in the middle of @A, @R, or @Y reduces it to
just the first name; putting an "L" in the middle gives the last
name. The first name it selects usually consists of everything
before the first blank space in the name, and the last name is
everything after the last blank space, but if the name is all one
word then the whole thing is used as both first and last name, and
if the name starts with the word "The" (for instance, if someone
is using "The Mad Bomber" as an alias), then everything after the
"The" is used as both the first and last name. Also, if the last
word is something like "Jr." or "Ph.D" or "III", then it uses the
previous word as the last name.
In a typical reply, @Y would be the same as @A (and @FY and @LY
would be the same as @FA and @LA): both being the author of the
message you are replying to. But if you change the name in the
"To" gadget when replying, @Y will refer to that newly chosen
name, while @A would still refer to the person who wrote the
message being replied to. Naturally, this only applies if you
change the "To" name
before
editing your reply, which is when this
format string is used. And if you used the "Reply to addressee"
command, then @Y is by default the same as @R, not @A. If a name
is all uppercase, Q-Blue tries to capitalize it reasonably.
The @Z code needs some explanation. Normally, if a subject or
area name is so long that it causes a line to be longer than 80
characters, the line is word-wrapped -- broken into two lines.
But if @Z is present before @C or @S or @J, then that area name or
subject string will be truncated to fit, so that the line it's on
won't go past 80 characters. Since area names can be up to 49
characters long and subjects can be up to 71 characters, but both
are much shorter in the great majority of cases, it makes sense to
use @Z rather than trying to make sure there is always enough room
for the longest possible cases.
- 68 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.6
The use of a number after the @, for instance "@20", causes the
next text to appear that many columns from the left edge of the
screen. It is used to put something in a fixed horizontal
position when the text before it is variable in length. It will
insert no spaces if already past the specified position. This
code can be used in the "Signature" gadget as well as in header
strings, unlike most of the fancier codes. It can help you fit a
"bigger" signature into the available 400 character space...
though it should be kept in mind that giant signatures are often
viewed as a mark of cluelessness.
6.7) Other gadgets in the Replying setup window
Below the "Signature" string in this window are two cycle gadgets
for controlling the tagline feature, and a string gadget for
specifying the file to load taglines from. The left hand cycle
gadget is labeled "Default tagline", with keyboard shortcut D and
four settings: "None", "Random", "Sequence", and "Manual". On the
right is one labeled "Tagline after", with shortcut T and two
cryptic-looking settings: "..." and "* Q-Blue". Taglines are
explained more fully in sections 10.9 and 10.10.
The first gadget tells Q-Blue when and how it should add a tagline
to a reply automatically. When set to "None", no taglines are
added automatically, though you can add them when you choose with
the "Tagline" button in the message writing window. When it's set
to "Random", then every time you write a new message or reply,
Q-Blue will randomly select a tagline from the currently loaded
tagline file, and add it to the end of the message. "Sequence" is
like "Random" except that it causes taglines to be used in the
order they appear in the tagline file, instead of randomly. If
it's set to "Manual", then whenever you edit a new message or
reply, the tagline selection window will be automatically opened
when you first edit a message, with a random line selected,
allowing you to select a different line or tell it not to use any
tagline. When you re-edit an existing message, none of these
things are done. The tagline can, however, still be changed
manually with the "Tagline" button.
The "Tagline after" cycle gadget controls what characters are used
to mark the beginning of a tagline. Normally, each tagline is
preceded by three periods and a space -- this is the de facto
standard way of telling taglines apart from other lines. When
reading Blue Wave packets, this method is always used. But when
reading QWK packets, there is another tagline style you can use.
This cycle gadget shows either "..." or "* Q-Blue" to indicate
which to use, the latter being the default.
With QWK messages, Q-Blue normally adds a line at the end of each
nonprivate message you write saying "* Q-Blue 2.3 *" (with a space
at the beginning of the line). This is known as a "brag line" --
most offline readers add one. Section 6.8 tells how registered
- 69 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.7
users can turn off braglines. If the "Tagline after" cycle gadget
is set to "...", the tagline is put just above the brag line,
preceded with three dots, just as with Blue Wave mail. But if the
gadget is set to "* Q-Blue", the tagline will be put on the same
line as the brag, just after the second asterisk, so only one line
is added to your message instead of two. Naturally, this means
that the tagline can't be as long as it can be the other way, but
if you select a tagline too long to fit after the brag line, it
will put it on a separate line just as if the "..." option were
selected. With private messages, no brag is normally added (as of
Q-Blue 2.3), but if the tagline style is "* Q-Blue" and you are
adding a tagline which is short enough to fit after the brag, the
brag will be used in front of it instead of "...".
The reason this style choice is not available with Blue Wave is
that the brag line is added by the mail door after you upload your
replies, so Q-Blue has no control over it. The QWK brag line, by
the way, is not added to the message if the last line of the
regular message text (not counting the tagline) contains the word
"Q-Blue". This allows you to substitute your own brag line for
the standard one, with the caveat that it will be placed before
the tagline (if present) instead of after. Normally there is a
blank line between the end of the message and the brag line, but
if a "..." style tagline is added, the brag line comes right
after it with no space, whether it's the QWK brag line added by
Q-Blue or the Blue Wave brag line added by the mail door. This
means you can add this kind of tagline by simply typing it at the
end of your message, rather than by using the tagline window, if
you wish.
Beneath these two cycle gadgets is a string gadget labeled "File
containing taglines". To use taglines conveniently, you need to
put the full pathname of a text file containing your taglines into
this gadget, or its equivalent in the BBS Local setup window. If
you specify no file here and try to use taglines, you will get an
ASL requester asking you to select a tagline file.
At the bottom of the Replying setup window is a string gadget
labeled "Default alias name". Its use is strictly optional. When
reading Blue Wave mail, certain message areas may allow you to
enter a message that is "from" any name you want to use, instead
of making you use your real name or logon handle. When you write
a message in such an area, Q-Blue will normally set the message's
author name to be the name or handle you log onto the BBS with,
but if you enter a different name in this gadget, Q-Blue will use
that instead. You can, of course, change the name at the time you
are writing the message; this name is only a default. Any
messages addressed to the name in this gadget will be counted as
being addressed to you. When reading QWK mail, it will put this
name in place of your real name when writing messages, when you
use the gadget labeled "Handle" in the message writing window (see
section 10.2).
- 70 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.7
Most of the gadgets described in this section have a duplicate in
the BBS Local setup window, allowing its global setting to be
overridden for a single BBS. The next section covers this.
6.8) Local setup options for individual BBSes
The BBS Local setup window, which can be opened with the key
shortcut Alt-B, differs from the other setup windows. It cannot
be used when no packet is open, and its settings are not saved in
the regular configuration file. It allows you to change some of
Q-Blue's setup options depending on where the mail you are reading
came from. Most of its gadgets are duplicates of ones that exist
in the Replying setup window. The gadgets from that window that
are duplicated are the "File containing taglines" string gadget,
the "Default tagline" and "Tagline after" cycle gadgets, the
"Quote header" and "Signature" string gadgets (but not the
"C.C. header" string), the "Default alias name" string, and the
"Quote right margin" numeric string gadget.
An important note
about the "File containing taglines" string
gadget: if you use the tagline window's "Load" or "saVe" buttons
to select or create a new tagline file (see section 10.9), the
newly selected filename
will be copied into this gadget
. The
change becomes permanent if you reopen the BBS Local setup window
and select "Save". The global tagline file string gadget is not
affected.
There is also a "Compressor" cycle gadget which is a sort of
duplicate, in different form, of the "Compression type" submenu.
There are two checkmarks which (for no particular reason) are not
present in the Replying setup window: they are labeled "Permit
blank To & Subject" and "Indent XX> quotes".
There is a button labeled "Mail..." which, if enabled, opens a
second window. This is documented in the next two sections.
Finally, there are "Load" and "Save" buttons.
The "Indent XX> quotes" checkmark affects whether text quoted in
the "Add XX>" or "Wrap XX>" styles has a space character at the
beginning of each line. This is necessary with some BBS software
that doesn't pay close attention to such quote marks, in order to
prevent these paragraphs from being word-wrapped so that the XX>
markers appear in the middle of a line. It defaults off except
with Searchlight BBS. Quoting with XX> markers is explained fully
in sections 4.3 and 6.4.
The "Permit blank To & Subject" checkmark makes it legal to upload
a message which has no name in the "To" field and/or no title in
the "Subject" field. Normally Q-Blue will not permit a message to
be saved without these.
Even with this gadget checked
, Q-Blue will
warn you if they are blank; when you tell it to save the message,
it will flash the screen and activate the empty To or Subject
- 71 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.8
string gadget. If you then click "Save" again, it will save the
message. Messages with blank To or Subject fields should not be
used carelessly.
In each case, except for the two checkmarks, the gadget overrides
an equivalent global setting. For instance, if the "File
containing taglines" string is blank, then the pathname in the
Replying setup window is used, but if it contains a pathname, then
that is used instead of the one in the Replying window. The same
rule applies to the "Quote header" and "Signature" strings. The
three cycle gadgets each have an extra option that reads
"(global)". When set to that option, then the equivalent gadget
in the Replying window, or the "Compression type" submenu
selection in the case of the "Compressor" gadget, takes effect.
But when any other option is selected in the cycle gadget, it
takes effect and the global one is ignored. The blank or global
option is the default in all cases.
The "Tagline after" gadget is a special case. Besides the "..."
and "* Q-Blue" options available in the equivalent gadget in the
Replying setup window, and the "(global)" option, there is a
fourth option labeled "Stealth". This works the same as "...",
with one difference: in registered copies of Q-Blue, it causes
your replies to contain no Q-Blue bragline. The "* Q-Blue 2.3 *"
line normally appended to QWK replies is left out, and in Blue
Wave replies it pretends that the message was written by BWAVE for
MS-DOS. Unregistered copies do not do this; with them "Stealth"
works exactly the same as "...". When a Blue Wave packet is open,
the "..." and "Stealth" options are the only ones available in
this cycle gadget because the "* Q-Blue" option only works with
QWK packets. If you use "Stealth" in an unregistered copy, you
get a warning message letting you know that it won't work.
The "Compressor" cycle gadget (key shortcut C) is also a little
bit of a special case. It does not completely override the global
setting for which compressor is selected. It tells Q-Blue what
compression type to expect for packets that have the right name
for this BBS. But if the globally selected packer type matches
the file, it will use that without even checking what the local
one is. If it doesn't fit but the local one does, then
the global
one will be set to match the local one
, so that the right packer
is used for archiving replies. The cycle gadget's options simply
consist of the same packer type names listed in the "Compression
type" submenu, and the "(global)" option. If the mail packet you
are reading came from a BBS that uses a different compression type
than most of the other mail you read, then click this cycle gadget
until the right compressor is showing, and then click the "Save"
button. From now on, Q-Blue will open the packet without asking
each time whether you want to change compression type. But then
when you open another packet that uses your normal type, after
opening one of these different ones, it will think you still want
to use the special type that the local window specified for the
- 72 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.8
other BBS. The cure for this is to set a local compression type
for each different BBS that you call regularly.
Note that since this setting is looked up before the packet is
opened, Q-Blue is not always guaranteed to find the right local
compression type for a given mail packet. Each BBS has a short
name, known as the "BBS ID" or "packet name", inside its mail
packets. Usually, the mail packet itself is a file with that same
name and some extension. For instance, a QWK packet from a BBS
that uses the packet name "SOMEBBS" will typically be named
"SOMEBBS.QWK". When a packet is open, this ID is shown in the
screen's title bar, which will read (for example):
Q-Blue 2.3: reading "SOMEBBS"
But sometimes the filenames don't match the BBS ID, and in that
case the local compressor selection gadget won't be very useful.
When you use the "Save" gadget (key shortcut S), it writes a file
in the BBS context directory that you specified in the Directories
setup window. The filename is chosen automatically, so no file
requester appears. It writes a simple textfile that lists all the
non-default option settings in the window, and has the chosen
compressor name in its filenote. The filenote is used in order to
avoid reading the whole file twice, once at decompression time and
once after the packet is open.
The "Load" gadget (key shortcut L) lets you load in options from
such a file using the ASL file requester. The requester has a
pattern in it to find only files with names ending in ".local-QWK"
or ".local-BW". The "Save" option writes out files with those
names, with the part before the period being the BBS's packet
name, and the "QWK" or "BW" part depending on which type of packet
is open. The "Load" option lets you undo the changes you've made
since the last time you saved, or copy local settings from one BBS
to another by selecting a file with the other BBS's packet name.
When a mail packet (or BBS file) is opened, the corresponding
local setup file is automatically loaded. Of course, for this to
work depends on no two BBSes you call having the same packet name.
Non-unique packet names cause trouble for everybody, though, so
sysops do avoid them. Of course, since Q-Blue looks for this file
in the BBS context directory, the local setup window will not work
at all if no such directory is defined. If none is yet specified,
the "Save" button will produce an error message.
6.9) Configuring QWK packet netmail
"Netmail" is a term used for messages which are sent to a single
person, usually privately, who is not on the same BBS as the one
you're calling, via FidoNet or any other network that uses the
same type of mail software. To send such a message, you must not
- 73 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.9
only supply the recipient's name, but a Fido-style address for the
BBS that the recipient would read it on. The Blue Wave packet
format includes built-in support for sending netmail messages, but
the QWK format does not. Because of this lack, many QWK mail
packing systems ("doors") have added features which make it
possible, by various methods, to send netmail messages in an
ordinary QWK upload. Unfortunately, different QWK doors use
different methods, not compatible with each other. Many offer no
method at all.
To deal with this, Q-Blue's BBS Local setup window has a button
labeled "Mail..." which opens another window which is labeled
"Email/Netmail on this BBS". It has two gadgets along its top
edge that let you describe the method a particular BBS's door
uses for netmail. These gadgets are ghosted for Blue Wave
packets. The approach used does not cover every variation used by
different QWK doors, but it handles the majority of them.
The first gadget is a string labeled "QWK netmail kluge line".
This describes the format of a special extra line of text that is
added to the top of a netmail message, specifying the address of
the destination BBS. Most QWK doors with netmail features use
some kind of special line at the top of the text. The format of
this line depends on the particular mail door you're using, and
you should consult that door's documentation if in doubt about
what it uses. For those that use some other method of specifying
the destination address, such as SFMail for Spitfire BBS, which
expects the destination address at the beginning of the subject
line, Q-Blue will not help you. But there are two exceptions:
the subject line method used by MKQWK, JC-QWK, and OLMS for Remote
Access BBS is supported, and so is the awkward system used by
PCBoard 15.0 and newer.
The string that you put into this gadget is a copy of what the
first line of the message should be, with a "/" (a slash
character) substituted for the actual address. When you write a
netmail message, Q-Blue looks for the slash and replaces it with
the full Fido-style address, which you have entered in the
"Netmail address" string gadget in the message writing window (see
section 10.6). The format of this string depends on what QWK door
the BBS uses to pack your mail, or in some cases, on the software
that the sysop uses to connect the BBS to the network.
The two most popular format strings are "To: /" and "->/". Use
the first string, "To: /", if the BBS uses Maximus or EzyCom
software with built-in QWK packing, or if it is RBBS with either
NoSnail or MailManager +Plus+ network software. The other string,
"->/", can be used with the TomCat, wcMAIL, or wcQWK door on BBSes
running WildCat!, and also be used for the QSO mail packer on TBBS
systems, and the TriMail door for TriBBS. In some cases the form
"->/@fidonet" may be necessary. Silver Xpress mail doors, used in
QWK mode, generally support both of the above strings, regardless
of BBS software.
- 74 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.9
If you are using a SearchLight BBS with Valence QWK door, you can
use "@/" or "Netmail: /". The "@/" format supposedly also works
for QSO according to its docs, but it is widely reported that it
actually does not work. (In fact, I'm not sure if the "->/" form
works in QSO versions before 2.0.)
If the software is PCBoard, the correct string depends on what
Fido mailer software is in use. If the Fido networking is built-
in, as is the case with recent versions of PCBoard, then make sure
the "Use PCBoard extensions" checkmark is checked, and
leave the
netmail kluge string empty
. Q-Blue will then use PCBoard's
extended "@TO" kluge line to include the address. The "Direct"
and "Crash" netmail flags (see section 10.7) can be used in this
case, though of course the BBS may disregard them. If the Fido
mail software is InterPCB, the string "@>/" should be used. In
some cases "@>/@fidonet" needs to be used instead. With FidoPCB
or QFront software, the string is "(/)".
The MKQWK and JC-QWK doors for Remote Access BBS use a method
where the address is put into the subject line, the subject goes
into the kluge line at the top of the message text. Q-Blue
detects MKQWK and JC-QWK packets and will correctly handle netmail
addressing if you select the proper netmail area. With these mail
doors,
leave the kluge line string gadget empty
. With MKQWK, but
generally not with other QWK mail doors, the netmail flags
"Direct", "Immediate", and "Crash" can be used. The BBS may
disregard them, of course. MKQWK and JC-QWK also allow the
subject line on netmail to be longer than the normal 25 character
limit. All of this also applies to the OLMS door, but with that
door it makes more sense to just download your mail in Blue Wave
format, rendering this setup process unnecessary.
I have heard reports that these three Remote Access doors can also
use the Valence method, "@/". I have not confirmed this. But
leaving the string gadget empty works better, because it enables
you to use a longer subject heading.
There are probably other styles as well, but this probably covers
the majority of cases. To summarize:
"To: /" Maximus, EzyCom, RBBS, Silver Xpress
"->/" TomCat, wcMAIL, wcQWK, QSO, TriMail,
Silver Xpress
"@/" Valence, possibly several others
"(/)" PCBoard/FidoPCB, PCBoard/QFront
"@>/" PCBoard/InterPCB
empty MKQWK, JC-QWK, OLMS
empty PCBoard/built-in; "Use PCBoard extensions"
gadget must be checked
Just enter the appropriate string (without quote marks) in the
"QWK netmail kluge line" string in the BBS Local setup window. If
you're not sure what string a given BBS's mail door uses, check
- 75 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.9
the BBS's help files or bulletins, or ask the sysop. In some
cases, the mail door itself has a "Help" command that gives the
necessary information, or a "Download the user manual" command.
There is one other piece of information that is needed for
creating QWK netmail messages: which area they should be put in.
In most cases, one message area is set aside for all netmail
traffic. If there is more than one such area, Q-Blue's local
configuration can only support one. Specifying the netmail area
is done with the "Area:" button to the right of the "QWK netmail
kluge line" gadget. If you click it or press the A key, a list
window opens showing all of the possible message areas. You just
have to find the correct area in the list, and select it. Usually
the right area has the word "netmail" in its name. Again, if in
doubt, consult the BBS's help texts or bulletins, or ask the
sysop. When the window opens, if no area is currently selected,
it tries to set the current selection to an area with the word
"netmail" or "net" or "mail" or "matrix" in its name. This guess
may help, or may not.
When you select an area, that area's number is displayed to the
right of the "Area:" button. If the kluge line string is
specified and the area is selected, the netmail gadgets in the
message writing window will work. If one or the other is not set,
they will be ghosted. If an area is selected but the kluge line
string is not (except in the cases mentioned above where it can
work when empty), the number next to the "Area:" button will be
ghosted to show that it is not in use.
The list of areas in that window is exactly the same as the list
used for selecting a message area for writing a message. There is
one additional option, however, represented by the gadget at the
bottom of the screen labeled "None". If you click this or press
N, you are specifying that there is no area designated for
netmail. The window closes, and any number written after the
"Area:" gadget is erased. This list window can be word-searched
like any other list window (see sections 9.5 and 9.6), and it is
possible to add a missing area to the list when reading QWK mail,
as with other areas lists (see section 10.5).
When this is all set up, don't forget to use the "Save" button so
that the options will be remembered next time you open a packet
from the same BBS. Remember that the "Save setup" menu item only
saves global options, not those in the BBS Local setup window.
6.10) Configuring Internet email
As with Fido-type netmail, there is no one agreed-upon method for
handling Internet email in an offline mail packet, at least not
with mail formats older than Blue Wave version 3. (With version 3
of Blue Wave, the "Mail..." gadget is disabled and this window is
not used at all.) But there is less disagreement than with
- 76 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.10
netmail, so instead of giving you an awkward method of specifying
an arbitrary format in a string gadget, Q-Blue gives you a cycle
gadget that selects one of three common methods. At this writing
all BBSes I know of use one of these three, and most of those use
just one, which Q-Blue calls the "Generic" style. It consists of
putting a line beginning with the word "To:" and followed by the
internet address that the mail is being sent to at the top of the
message body. Searchlight BBS uses a different line, starting
with the word "Internet:" instead. And PCBoard, when email is
handled internally instead of by add-on programs, uses its own
special "@TO" and "@TO2" header lines. The cycle gadget for
selecting this in the "Email/Netmail on this BBS" window is
labeled "email Kluge style", and its options are labeled
"Generic", "PCBoard", and "SearchLt". Its keyboard shortcut is K.
In most cases, if "PCBoard" or "SearchLt" is the correct choice,
Q-Blue will manage to set them automatically, but this cannot be
guaranteed.
Just below the "Area:" button which is used for selecting where
netmail goes, is a similar button for selecting what area Internet
email belongs in. It is labeled "arEa:" and uses E (for Email) as
its keyboard shortcut, while the button for netmail uses A. It
works the same way the netmail "Area:" button works: it opens a
list window showing available areas, allowing you to select the
right one where email belongs, or select "None". The selected
area number, if any, is shown to the right of the button.
If your email kluge style is "SearchLt" or "PCBoard", then the
area is the only other thing you need to select. All of the other
gadgets in the window are ghosted. But in the "Generic" case,
there may be several other things you need to set. There are two
more string gadgets and two checkmarks that are enabled in this
case.
One question that has to be settled is this: if the email address
you are sending is short enough that it can fit into the regular
"To" field of the message without needing an extra kluge line to
contain it, can the message be sent without using the kluge? The
answer is, sometimes yes and sometimes no. Many BBSes allow
Internet addresses to be put into the normal "To" field and will
correctly send such mail. But others cannot send mail unless the
kluge line is used. The string gadget labeled "Internet email
dummy recipient" is used for answering this question. If left
blank -- and nowadays, this should work with most BBSes -- then
Q-Blue will use the regular "To" field instead of the kluge line
whenever the address you are mailing to is short enough to fit,
and if the kluge line is used, will put the word "ALL" into the
"To" field, which is ignored. None of this is visible to the
Q-Blue user once this is configured; it's done automatically
behind the scenes.
In those cases where the kluge line must always be used, it is
sometimes necessary that the regular "To" field contain a
- 77 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.9
particular special word to inform the system that the message is
email. "UUCP" is probably the most common special word used this
way. The "Internet email dummy recipient" string gadget is used
to specify this special word. Whatever you put into this gadget
is always used in the "To" field of email uploaded to this BBS.
If you do not know of any requirement for using a special word
such as "UUCP" but a kluge line is required, I recommend putting
the word "ALL" into this gadget. Again, when you are writing a
message, this process is hidden: you simply type the email address
into the "To:" string gadget, and Q-Blue will arrange the data as
needed in the message that is uploaded.
Many BBSes that participate in Fidonet do not have any direct
ability to send email, but can send it indirectly by transmitting
your message as netmail to a Fido node which will translate it
into email. This system that translates email is known as a
"gateway". Q-Blue can automate even this two-stage process,
adding both the netmail and email kluge lines necessary. To use
this type of email, you must enter the Fido address of the
gateway system into the string gadget labeled "Fidonet address of
gateway". There are many gateways in use; the idea is that each
one should serve only a small region instead of offering a service
to Fidonet as a whole. Consult the bulletins or help files on
your BBS to find the right address, or ask your sysop. The
information should also include a description of what your own
email address would be, which other people can use to email you
via the gateway.
With older Fido gateway software, it was necessary to put the word
"UUCP" into the "Internet email dummy recipient" string gadget,
but nowadays that can usually be left blank. Fido-gated email, as
far as I know, always uses the "Generic" kluge style. The gateway
address gadget is ghosted when the kluge style cycle gadget is not
set to "Generic". In most cases, the area for sending this email
should be set the same as for sending Fido netmail -- that is,
when using QWK mail, the "Area:" and "arEa:" buttons should show
the same number after them. (With version 2 Blue Wave mail, the
top two netmail gadgets are ghosted.) But there are some BBSes
which separate netmail into more than one area, and may use a
different one for gated email than for normal netmail. In some
cases, email and netmail -- and even local mail -- coexist in the
same area even though email is not gated. Q-Blue will not send
QWK email as gated unless an address is specified in the "Fidonet
address of gateway" gadget. With QWK packets, the method of
sending netmail must also be configured, as described in the
previous section, for gating to work.
Occasionally there are BBSes which support both direct email and
gated email. Unfortunately, Q-Blue can only support one email
method at a time. Particularly in the case of a version 3 Blue
Wave door, using the alternate method of gated email has to be
done "by hand", since Q-Blue already knows of one email method.
- 78 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 6.9
Some BBSes have kluges that allow a subject line longer than 25
characters to be used with QWK mail. Q-Blue will detect such
cases automatically when they are available, except in the case of
PCBoard, because some PCBoard mail doors produce QWK packets which
do not identify which kind of BBS they came from. If you are
reading mail from a BBS using PCBoard version 15.0 or higher, and
you want to have subject lines up to 60 characters long instead of
just 25, you can check the checkmark gadget labeled "Use PCBoard
extensions", keyboard shortcut U. This also must be checked if
you want to use PCBoard's internal handling of Fido netmail --
that is, if you are leaving the "QWK netmail kluge line" gadget
empty. This checkmark is always checked (though it is ghosted)
when the email kluge type is "PCBoard".
For PCBoard BBSes that still use the "Generic" email kluge type
(and there are many at this writing), and also for some Remote
Access mail doors, there is one further question. These systems
may have a kluge line that allows the subject field to be longer
than 25 characters, and a different kluge line that allows email
to be addressed, but cannot use both at once! Each will only work
if it is the first line in the message. To handle these cases,
the last gadget in the "Email/Netmail on this BBS" window is a
checkmark labeled "long subject kluge does NOT work with internet
email". The key shortcut is N. When not ghosted, Q-Blue will
often cause this gadget to be checked by default, just to be safe.
If you uncheck it, this tells Q-Blue that it is okay to use a long
subject line on an email message. On a PCBoard system that still
uses "Generic" email addressing, it should probably be checked.
With the MKQWK door for remote access, it should stay checked, as
of the most recent information I have. With the JC-QWK door, it
can be unchecked according to the documentation I have.
- 79 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 7.1
PART 3: OPERATION
7) SCROLLING LIST WINDOW OPERATION
7.1) Basic list window control
A scrolling list window appears whenever you need to make one
choice from a list of choices. The most common case is to choose
a message area from the list known to the BBS. Section 1.6 gave a
brief introduction to these list windows, which in essence are
similar to scrolling lists seen in many programs and requesters.
This section thoroughly covers all details of using these list
windows, including options that differ from one to another.
Almost everything can be done with either the keyboard or the
mouse. Menus are not available while such a list window is open.
With the mouse, there are three things you can do: click a
special-purpose gadget at the bottom of the screen, click on a
line listed in the window, or use the scroll gadget at the
window's right edge. If you click in the window, the line the
pointer is on becomes the current selection (the highlighted
line), and if you double-click on a line, the window is closed and
that line is taken as your final selection. There are two cases
where double-clicking is ignored: when adding or dropping message
areas via the "Mail door" command, and when viewing taglines with
the "Maintain taglines" command. In these two cases, it does not
matter which line is highlighted when the window is closed.
If there are more lines than the window has room for, you can
slide the scroll gadget at the right edge to move more lines into
the visible area. Clicking and dragging the bright part (the
"knob") causes lines to move up and down in response to the
vertical movements of the mouse. Clicking in the darkened areas
of the scroll gadget outside the sliding part causes the next or
previous windowful of lines to show (with one line overlapping),
when you click below or above the knob, respectively. Clicking
the little arrow gadgets next to the slider cause the display to
scroll up or down by one line. Holding down the button on one of
those gadgets for more than half a second makes it scroll
continuously.
The window can be resized to show more or fewer lines. If you
move or resize the window, then the next time you open it, it will
remember where you left it and what size it was. The zoom gadget
will toggle the window between two different sizes -- initially
the alternate size is slightly smaller than the whole screen. If
you don't want to make any selection, click the close gadget in
the upper left corner, and it will close the window and behave as
if you had never opened it -- anything you did to move the
highlighted line will be ignored. Double-clicking a line means
"okay" and using the close gadget means "cancel".
- 80 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 7.1
As already described, pressing the up or down arrow key moves the
highlighted bar up or down by one line, and pressing return or the
spacebar closes the window, selecting the line that is highlighted
at the time as your final choice. If the selection is moved above
or below the range of lines shown, the window will scroll to keep
the highlight line visible. To close the window and have Q-Blue
behave as if it had not been opened, press the Esc key. The
return key or spacebar or numeric pad Enter key means "okay", the
Esc key means "cancel". (A common mistake is to accidentally use
a "cancel" option, such as clicking the closebox, when you meant
to tell it "okay", and then wonder why it didn't do anything.)
There are also keys for moving the highlighted line by a windowful
at a time, and for moving the highlight bar to the first or last
line. The complete list of keystroke commands for changing the
currently selected line is:
- to move the highlight bar down one line, press the down arrow
or right arrow key, or 2 or 6 on the numeric pad (the IBM
equivalents of down arrow and right arrow). For windows
listing message areas, the "]" (next area) key also works.
- to move the highlight bar up one line, press the up arrow or
left arrow key, or the numeric pad IBM equivalents: 8 or 4.
The "[" key also works for windows listing areas.
- to move the highlight bar down one page (as many lines as show
in the window, minus one), press PgDn (3 on the numeric pad),
or hold down a shift or Alt key and press down arrow or right
arrow (either the regular one or the numeric pad equivalent).
- to move the highlight bar up one page, press PgUp (9 on the
numeric pad), or hold down a shift or Alt key and press up
arrow or left arrow (regular or numeric pad).
- to move the highlight bar to the last line, press End (1 on
the numeric pad), or hold down the Ctrl key and press down
arrow or right arrow.
- to move the highlight bar to the first line, press Home (7 on
the numeric pad), or hold down the Ctrl key and press up
arrow or left arrow.
- to scroll the window so that the highlight bar is in the
center, without changing the current selection, press the 5
key on the numeric pad, or the "`" (grave accent or reverse
single quote) key just above the tab key.
To summarize the use of shift keys with arrow keys: no shift key
means move by one line, shift or Alt means move by one windowful,
and Ctrl means move to the first or last line. This allows even
an Amiga 600 with no numeric pad access to every option.
- 81 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 7.2
7.2) Special features of message and area list windows
There are several special key commands that depend on which
particular list window is open. Generally, but not in every case,
there is also an equivalent gadget at the bottom of the screen,
which you can click if it's visible.
Pressing the letter S, or clicking the gadget at the bottom of the
screen labeled "Search", lets you do a word search on the contents
of the list window. Pressing U or Alt-U undoes the effects of the
last search. When displaying messages or areas with readable
messages, Alt-U affects all areas while U only affects the current
area. See sections 9.5 and 9.6 for details on how searching works.
If the window showing readable message areas is open, pressing the
L key or clicking the "List" gadget closes it and opens the window
showing the messages in the selected area. Conversely, pressing A
or clicking "Areas" while viewing the list of one area's messages
closes that window and opens the window showing the areas with
readable messages. This version is not able to have both of these
windows open at once, though each is accessible when the other is
open in exactly the same way it is when you are simply reading
messages.
When the window listing messages in an area is open, you can move
to the next area by pressing the "]" key or the previous area by
pressing the "[" key, just as is the case when no list window is
open. Doing this causes the list window to recreate the list of
messages that is displayed to suit the new area. With windows
listing areas, the "]" and "[" keys just move the selection up or
down one line. These keys always mean "next area" and "previous
area".
Note that the currently selected line in the messages list window
does not "count" until the window is closed. If you switch to
another area while the window is open, either with the "[" or "]"
key, or by activating the areas list window, the current message
in the previous area will be what it was before the list window
was opened. Only the final area you're in when the window is
closed gets a new current message selected by the line you've
highlighted in the list window. However, if you jump around from
area to area, each area will remember what line the list window
was last on. This current line value is temporary, and is
meaningless after the window is closed, except for the area you
end in, but is convenient if you are jumping from area to area.
If you cancel the list window, everything is left exactly as it
was before the list window was opened. Except when you use a word
search, that is -- the effect of the search remains, just as if
you had done a search of the messages when the window was not open.
The list window showing areas in which you can post new messages
and replies (accessible from the message writing window) does not
respond to the letter L or give you a "List" gadget. But when a
- 82 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 7.2
QWK packet is open, pressing C or clicking the gadget labeled
"Create" opens a small window which allows you to enter the number
and name of a new message area which is not shown. This is
covered in section 10.5. This feature is also available in the
list window used for adding and dropping message areas from the
mail door's list of which ones you are reading (see section 11.4),
and in the windows for selecting a QWK netmail or email area in
the BBS Local setup window (section 6.8). It is included so you
can cope with QWK mail packers that give you an incomplete list of
available areas.
When selecting an area for a message you are writing, another
gadget is labeled "Active" or "All"; clicking this or pressing A
toggles the list between showing every known area and showing only
those you are reading messages in. See section 10.4 for details
on this feature.
The window you can use to select which message areas the mail door
should include in future downloads is similar, but instead of a
gadget labeled "Active" or "All", it has gadgets labeled "Add",
"Drop", and "Reset". These are explained in section 11.4. The
window for selecting a QWK netmail area, available from the BBS
Local setup window, has no "Active"/"All" gadget. Its special
feature is a gadget labeled "None" for telling it to use no area
at all. Section 6.8 explains this window.
7.3) Special features of other list windows
When the window listing mail packets in your downloads directory
or BBS files in your context directory is open, there is a gadget
labeled "ASL req". Clicking it or pressing A closes the list
window and brings up a standard file requester. Initially this
starts out displaying the files in the same directory that the
list window was showing, except that it doesn't leave out files
with names that don't look like mail packets. If you select a
different directory in it, it will remember that and display that
new directory the next time you open it. In the case of opening a
BBS file with the "Open (no packet)" command, the requester has a
"Pattern" gadget set to show only files with names likely to be
BBS files. You can erase this pattern string if you want to see
all possible files.
With this file list window, you can press A or click the "ASL req"
gadget while it is scanning the disk, before the window actually
opens. You can also press Esc at that time to abort the window
before it opens. In either case Q-Blue will immediately stop
searching the disk for files to list.
The reason you may want to use a real file requester is because
the file list window, when listing mail packets, is only capable
of showing files in the downloads directory you have specified in
the Directories setup window, and it only shows the files there
- 83 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 7.3
that have names in the form expected of download packets --
generally, names in the IBM form of no more than eight characters
followed by a dot and three more characters, with the part after a
dot fitting one of a few specific patterns. It will include files
that have more than three characters after the dot if the first
three are "QWK". If you wish to select a file that doesn't show
up in the file list window, you can use the file requester to
select any file your system knows about. Unfortunately the file
requester does not know how to sort files from newest to oldest.
This, plus the information it displays about associated reply
packets and how much of each packet has been read, is why a list
window is used instead of always using the ASL requester.
There is also a gadget labeled "Delete", key shortcut D or Del.
Using this tells Q-Blue to delete the file that is currently
highlighted in the list. A requester appears, giving the full
pathname of the file, its size in bytes, and its creation date,
asking whether you are sure you want to delete it. If you answer
"Yes", the file is deleted from disk and removed from the list
window. If the file has an icon, that is deleted also. If you
delete the last file in the list, the window closes.
The taglines list window has special gadgets labeled "Delete",
"Random", "None", "Load", and "saVe". The "saVe" gadget is one of
very few gadgets in the program with a key shortcut that is not
its first letter. The letter V, instead of S, is underlined,
because S is used for "Search" in this list window just as it is
in every other. And since the taglines window has a string gadget
at the bottom, it responds to the tab key, which activates the
gadget. It also responds to right-Amiga-V to paste from the
clipboard into the string gadget, even when the gadget is not
active. The taglines window is explained fully in section 10.9.
7.4) What is shown in windows listing message areas
The window listing areas with messages in them, which is opened by
the "Areas" command, is titled "Select message area -- Enter or
double-click". This window shows five items of information on
each line.
The "long name" which describes each area's purpose is listed in
the right hand column, which is labeled "Area name". Such names
might be, for example, "Technical questions" or "What's your
favorite band?" or "Political conspiracy theories" or "Amiga vs.
IBM flame wars". Near the left margin, in the column labeled
"Area#", is the number assigned to this area, usually in ascending
order. Occasionally the "number" might have letters instead of
digits in it, when reading Blue Wave mail. In between are numbers
giving the total count of messages found in the area, and how many
of those messages are addressed to you, in the columns labeled
"Msgs" and "You". At the extreme left there may be a "*" or ">"
character. A "*" indicates that you have read all of the messages
- 84 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 7.4
in this area, and a ">" indicates that you have read some but not
all. If you haven't read any of them yet, neither is present. Or
the letter "S" in contrasting colors might be there instead --
this indicates that a word search (see section 9.5) has been used
on this area, and only those messages which fit the search
criteria are currently visible.
There may be a couple of extra areas listed in this window. If
there are any extra information files in the mail packet, such as
welcome and goodbye messages, bulletins, or a list of new files,
the first area listed in the window will be a special fake area
labeled "(news, bulletins, other special files)". By selecting
this area, you can read these news files as if they were messages,
except that you cannot reply to them. Q-Blue will display up to
8000 lines in any one message, cutting off anything beyond that.
If one of these files is longer than that, you will have to use
some other method to read the whole file. The filename to look
for in your work directory is shown at the top of the screen when
the file's contents are displayed. Another limitation is that
Q-Blue will not display more than 50 such files in this area.
If there are any messages addressed to you, the first area listed
after the special files (if any) is a collection of those
messages, labeled "(messages addressed to you)". Any message
addressed to your name can be read either in this special area or
in the area where it was posted; the ones here are duplicates of
messages that also appear in normal areas. The real message areas
are listed after the news and personal areas. If you have written
any messages to upload, they are shown in a special area at the
end, after the regular areas, labeled "(your replies and new
messages)". You can select and read these three special areas
just like the regular ones. When this window first opens, the
first regular area, after the news and personal areas, is the one
initially highlighted. Except, that is, if you reopen a packet
you have already partially read; in that case it will try to
remember where you left off and restart at the same place.
A different variation of this list window, also labeled "Select
message area -- Enter or double-click", will appear when you are
writing a message and you want to select what area to put it in.
In this case, all known message areas are listed instead of just
those that have messages in them, and the pseudo-areas for
bulletins, replies, and personal messages are left out. And
instead of listing the counts of messages in the middle, it shows
the area's "short name" or "tag". This is usually a descriptive
name for the area given as a single word in uppercase letters, for
example "TECHNICAL" or "BANDS" or "CONSPIRE" or "CPU_WARS". The
short and long names are listed in columns labeled "Area-tag" and
"Full name". This only applies to Blue Wave packets, since QWK
packets do not have separate long and short area names. In the
latter case there is just one column labeled "Name". With some
BBS systems, the short name is just a number. If it's the same as
the number on the left, then Q-Blue leaves the space blank. At
- 85 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 7.4
the left edge may be a letter indicating what type of message area
this is. "E" means the area is "echoed" (connected by a FidoNet-
type network) between multiple BBSes which all receive every
message posted here; "R" means it's read only (you can't post
messages here); "N" indicates a netmail area; "@" indicates an
Internet email area; and "U" indicates a Usenet newsgroup (Blue
Wave version 3 only). With QWK you can't tell one kind of area
from another, except that "N" and "@" appear if you have selected
such areas in the BBS Local setup window. If netmail and email
are in the same area, "N" shows.
Speaking of the BBS Local setup window, a different version of
this same list window is used to select which area QWK netmail and
email messages go in. It is identical in appearance -- the only
difference is in the commands available. The "Active"/"All"
gadget is absent, and a gadget labeled "None" is present so you
can specify that there is no netmail or no email area.
The window for selecting message areas to be downloaded is also
very similar to the one used in the message writing window, but
with an extra item of information shown at the beginning of each
line, in a column labeled "Read?". It shows words such as "Add"
or "Drop" or "Rset" or "Pers" in contrasting colors if you have
given some command to change how or whether mail in this area is
to be downloaded. Otherwise, it shows "Yes" or "no", or in the
case of Blue Wave version 3 "Pers" or "PAll" to indicate whether
the mail door is currently downloading this area, or ignoring it,
or downloading it selectively. Or it shows "?" if Q-Blue doesn't
know one way or the other, which with QWK mail is the case for any
area that does not actually have messages in it. The use of this
window, which is significantly different from the other area
windows, is explained fully in section 11.4.
7.5) What is shown in other list windows
The file list window appears when the "Open" or "No pkt." command
is given. Its title is "Select file to unpack -- Enter or double-
click", and it shows four or five items of information on each
line, in columns labeled "Rep?", "Size", "Date", "Filename", and
"Note". This window is exactly the same for opening a mail packet
and for opening a stored BBS file with the "Open (no packet)"
command, except there is no "Note" column in the latter case. The
files are listed in order of age, newest first. The names of the
files you can open are listed in the right half of the window.
Before each name is the date and time when each file was written.
To the left of that is the size of the file in bytes.
At the left margin, in the "Rep?" column, there may be the word
"old" or "NEW". One of these words will be present if Q-Blue
finds a file in your uploads directory which seems to be a reply
packet matching the mail packet listed on that line. If no such
reply packet exists, the space will be blank. If this mail packet
- 86 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 7.5
is newer than the reply packet, meaning that the replies probably
belong to an earlier mail packet from the same BBS, then the word
"NEW" appears. If the mail packet is older than the reply packet,
meaning that the replies were probably made to messages in this
packet (or an even newer one), then the word "old" appears. It
means that the mail packet itself is probably an "old" one.
A question mark appears after the word "NEW" or "old", if the name
of the reply packet does not match exactly and Q-Blue is just
guessing that they go together. This might happen if, for
instance, it finds files named PACKET2.QWK and PACKET.REP -- it
would guess that they are probably related. The rule for such
guesses is that the mail packet name can differ from the reply
packet name in having one or two digits appended to the name
before the period, or substituted for the last couple of
characters if adding them would put the name over eight characters
long before the period. For instance, it would figure that
WHATEV17.QWK probably goes with WHATEVER.REP. In a case like this
it would say "NEW?" or "old?" depending on whether the .QWK file
is newer or older than the .REP file. Fortunately, it's more
common to put such differentiating numbers after the period, with
a name such as WHATEVER.Q03, so that such confusion doesn't
happen.
When you give the "Open packet" command, but not when you give the
"Open (no packet)" command, the rightmost column of the window
displays any filenote that the packet file has. If the note is
long, of course, only the beginning of it is visible. The main
use of this is for displaying brief notes that Q-Blue itself
attaches to packets it has opened. These notes tell how many of
the messages you have read, as a percentage of the total. Such a
note might read, for example, "57% read." When this is displayed
in the file list window, it can be a very useful reminder of which
packets still need to be read.
The window for listing messages within an area, which is opened
with the "List" command, has the name of the listed area in its
title bar. It shows five items on each line. At the left there
may be a ">" character, or a letter "R". A ">" means you have
read this message. An "R" means you have written a reply to it.
Next comes the number that this message has on the BBS you got it
from, in a column labeled "Num", or if you have turned on the
"Sizes in message list" option (section 6.3), the length of each
message in bytes in a column labeled "Size". The rest of each
line shows the name of the message's author, the name that it was
addressed to, and the message's title or subject line, in columns
labeled "From", "To", and "Subject". If a name or subject is very
long, only the first part of it will show. If the author or
addressee is you and you are using an eight color screen, your
name is shown in a contrasting color.
In the replies area, it shows the name of the area the message is
in, instead of the name of who it's from (you). The left column
- 87 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 7.5
will contain an "R" if this message is a reply to a message in
this packet, rather than being an original message or a reloaded
reply to a message in a different packet. It will show a "D" in
contrasting colors here if the reply is marked as deleted (see
section 9.3).
In the bulletins and special files area, the list shows the name
of the file, and for certain recognized filenames, a short
description of its expected contents.
The simplest list window (in terms of contents) is the one for
selecting taglines. It shows only the taglines themselves, one on
each line. This list window, unlike any of the others, has a
string gadget along its bottom edge for entering new taglines.
8) OPENING MESSAGE PACKETS
8.1) Options available when no packet is open
To read mail or create messages for uploading, you must either
open a downloaded mail packet, or use the "Open (no packet)"
command to open a stored "BBS file" that tells Q-Blue about the
BBS the messages will be uploaded to. Until you do one of these
two things, your actions are limited. All of your choices are
available in the "Packet" and "Setup" menus -- the "Messages" and
"Replies" menus in the middle are inactive until a packet or BBS
file is open.
The "Setup" menu on the right (or the equivalent keyboard
shortcuts) allows you to set up Q-Blue to suit your system and
your preferences, as described above in sections 3 through 6.
These options are available whether anything is open or not,
except for the BBS Local setup window described in sections 6.8
through 6.10. Your other choices, in the "Packet" menu on the
left, are: you can open a mail packet, open a BBS file, change the
setting for packet compression type, "iconify" the screen, display
the "About Q-Blue" requester, or exit the program. There are
gadgets at the bottom of the screen labeled "Open", "No pkt.",
"Iconify", and "Quit" to make those four actions more convenient.
Their keyboard shortcuts are O to open a packet, N to open a BBS
file, I to iconify, and Q to quit.
The current archiving method can be set manually with a submenu in
the middle of the "Packet" menu, labeled "Compression type". You
can select an archiver from the keyboard by holding down an Alt
key and pressing a digit from 1 to 8, using the numbers along the
top of the keyboard,
not
the numeric pad. The submenu shows which
number corresponds to which method; 1 for the first archiver
listed, 2 for the second, and so on. In the default setup, Alt-1
selects Zip, Alt-2 is "Zip 1.x" (for compatibility with BBSes that
- 88 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 8.1
have outdated unzipping software), Alt-3 is LHA, Alt-4 is Zoo, and
Alt-5 selects Arc. The selected compression type has a checkmark
next to it in the menu. Normally, when a packet is opened, the
right compression method will be determined automatically, either
according to the setting in the BBS Local setup window (see
section 6.8) or by examining the archive itself, so there is
little need to use this submenu before opening a packet. Using it
after the packet is open determines how the reply packet, if any,
is compressed.
The "About Q-Blue" option's key shortcut is Alt-? (but it also
works to type Alt-/, you don't have to hold down the shift key
when pressing the question mark key). It opens a requester which
shows information about the version of Q-Blue you are using. If
your copy is registered, this window display includes your name
and your serial number. If not, it displays a reminder that the
unregistered version is only for trial use and you should register
if you use it regularly. In either case, it displays at the top
the program's name, version number, author, and creation date.
The "Okay" gadget closes the requester.
The "Iconify screen" command, keyboard shortcut I, closes Q-Blue's
screen and creates an AppIcon on the Workbench screen, resembling
Q-Blue's normal icon but with an exclamation point in the upper
left corner. Like the Q-Blue program icon itself, it's an 8 color
image, if your Workbench is using 8 colors. The icon is labeled
"Q-Blue" if no packet is open, or labeled with the packet's ID
name (the same name that is shown in quotes in the screen title
bar) if one is open. If no packet is open, you can open one by
clicking the mouse on an icon representing a mail packet file,
dragging it over the AppIcon, and "dropping" it by releasing the
mouse button. This will cause Q-Blue to reopen its screen and
open that file as a mail packet. If you are using the "Show >>
All Files" option for the Workbench window the file is in, of
course, then the file does not need a true icon.
What is perhaps most convenient is to set the drawer's Workbench
window to "Show >> All Files" and "View By >> Date". That way the
most recently downloaded packets are shown at the top of the
window, similarly to Q-Blue's own files list window. You can open
one of these packets by "dragging" the filename with the mouse and
dropping it on Q-Blue's AppIcon when the screen is iconified, or
if Q-Blue is not running yet, by shift-double-clicking the
filename after clicking Q-Blue's program icon. If you iconify the
screen with a packet open, then dropping another packet onto the
icon will reopen the screen and show an error message.
It is not possible to iconify the screen if any other program has
a window open on Q-Blue's screen, and an error message results in
that case. If you move the icon, reopen the screen, and then
iconify again, it unfortunately will not remember to put the icon
where you last left it -- that information is not saved for Q-Blue
by the Workbench.
- 89 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 8.1
To reopen the screen without attempting to open a packet, simply
double-click on the AppIcon. Or you can press the special key
combination, if any, specified with the "POPKEY" startup argument
described in section 3.1. If Q-Blue's screen cannot be opened, it
will put up a system requester with an error message. When the
screen is reopened, it will use your current setting for the font,
screen type, and number of colors (see sections 6.1 and 6.2).
This may mean that the screen is not the same as the one you
iconified -- the font or resolution or number of colors may be
changed. When you specify such changes to the display, they do
not immediately take effect; Q-Blue keeps using the old settings
until you iconify and then reopen the screen. The reopened screen
will have the same public screen name that it had before closing,
unless some other program steals the name.
Technical note: if a Q-Blue process receives a Ctrl-F break signal
while iconified, the screen will reopen. If it receives that
signal at any other time, the screen will pop to the front. This
information might possibly be useful to someone who wants to
control a Q-Blue screen with another program.
8.2) Initial steps in opening a mail packet
The process of opening a mail packet can be initiated several
ways. You can give the "Open packet" menu command, or use the
"Open" gadget or the O key, or specify the "LIST" startup argument
when launching the program, as explained in section 3.1. These
all have the same effect: to open a list window which lets you
select a mail packet file to open. Similarly, you can select a
BBS file to open by using the "Open (no packet)" command, the
"No pkt." gadget, or the N key, or by combining the "LIST" and
"NOPACKET" startup arguments. And using the "PACKET" startup
argument with a filename after it (or just giving a filename on
the command line with no keywords), or starting Q-Blue from the
Workbench with a shift-double-click on a packet icon, or dropping
such an icon on Q-Blue's AppIcon while the screen is closed,
causes a named packet file to be opened without any list window
selection needed. A BBS file can be opened from the command line
by combining the "PACKET" and "NOPACKET" arguments (or just a
filename and "NOPACKET"), but opening a BBS file by shift-double-
clicking it from the Workbench is not supported.
All of these are different variations of the process of "opening",
and the next few sections describe that process in general. There
are a lot of details, but don't be intimidated -- it's usually
very simple in practice and takes just a few seconds. Much of the
material that follows can be regarded as background, mainly useful
in case an error or other unexpected result occurs. There are a
number of points where something can go wrong. This section and
the following one will focus on the process as it applies to real
mail packets, leaving the somewhat different handling of BBS files
for section 8.4.
- 90 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 8.2
When you give it an open command by any method mentioned above,
the first thing it does is check your work directory to see if a
mail packet has already been unpacked there. If it finds files
that look like they belong to a mail packet, it will use a
requester to ask you whether you want to try to load what is
there, or select a compressed packet to unpack. There are two
gadgets labeled "Load" and "Select" -- click one, or press the L
or S key. This feature allows you, if you wish, to manually
unpack mail into the work directory instead of having Q-Blue
unpack it for you, or to reload a packet you had been reading
before, if you had quit Q-Blue without closing (see section 9.3).
The default choice is to try to load the files that are already
there. Such files are ignored if you directly specify a packet to
open, either with the "PACKET" startup argument or by feeding it a
packet's icon with the Workbench.
If it finds files which do
not
look like a mail packet, it puts up
a warning message alerting you that these files will be deleted if
you go ahead and open something. This, unlike the case of files
that do look legitimate, applies even when the "PACKET" startup
option, or equivalent, is used. It gives you a chance to change
your choice of work directory instead, if you don't want to lose
those files -- the choices are labeled "Use" and "Change".
"Change" is the default choice: if you select it, it cancels the
packet opening operation and opens the Directories setup window
(see section 3.4). "Use" causes the unrecognized files to be
deleted
. It will then check your replies directory the same way
to see if it has files in it that do not look valid, and if any
are found there, put up a similar warning requester allowing you
to change your directories setup.
If you opt for loading files already present in the work directory,
all the steps having to do with decompression will be skipped.
Otherwise, if you have not specified a particular packet to open
through the Workbench or the startup arguments, it will search
your downloads directory and open a scrolling list window labeled
"Select file to unpack", showing all of the mail packets in it.
Your uploads directory is also searched, so that the list can show
which files have reply packets that go with them. (See section 7
for complete details on how to use list windows like this one to
make selections.) If the file you want to open is not shown in
the list window, you can use the standard file requester to select
any file in the system, by pressing the letter A or clicking the
gadget at the bottom of the screen labeled "ASL req". Section 7.3
gives complete details on that option. The file requester will be
used automatically if there are no files to show in the list
window. Cancelling the list window or ASL requester causes the
open command to be cancelled too.
Once the packet to open is selected, the next thing it does it
attempt to figure out which compressor the packet was made with.
If the one you currently have selected looks like the right one,
it goes ahead and attempts the unpacking. If there is a "BBS
- 91 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 8.2
Local" setup file in your BBS context directory that matches the
name of the mail packet, it will check whether you specified a
different compressor in the BBS Local setup window, and if so, see
if that one matches instead. (The compressor name is stored in
the local setup file's comment field, not inside the file itself.)
If a different compressor entirely seems to match, it puts up a
requester asking you if you want to switch to that one, naming
your current (global) choice and the one it guesses is correct so
you can decide whether to switch. The gadgets are labeled "Yes",
"No", and "Cancel", and the default is "Yes", to switch to the
other compression method that it thinks is correct. "Cancel",
naturally, tells it not to open the packet at all. If the packet
does not match any known packer, it gives you a choice between
trying the compressor you've specified, and canceling the
operation. The default is to give it a try.
Note that before trying to uncompress a mail packet, it will first
delete all files
in the work directory. This directory
must not
be used to store any permanent files. Also note that if you start
Q-Blue twice, so that there are two copies of the program running
at the same time, only the first one will use the work directory
specified in your setup. The others will use directories
consisting of the same name with a number added on the end. For
instance, if the Directories setup window specifies "RAM:QBWork"
as the work directory, the second Q-Blue process will use
"RAM:QBWork1" as a work directory. This second copy will show the
number 1 in parentheses at the left end of its screen title bar,
as shown in the example in section 9.1. When running a second
Q-Blue process, the process of checking the work and replies
directories for different files may not produce the results you
expect, because it's using different directory names. For
instance, it may check the second replies directory and find files
there that are many days out of date.
8.3) Decompression and loading of mail
Q-Blue will next attempt to decompress the mail packet. A console
window labeled "Packer command output" will be opened, and the
decompression command will be executed. The window will open on
Q-Blue's screen. The command is written at the top of the console
window before executing it, so you can see exactly what it was.
This can be useful if the command fails to work correctly.
Section 5 describes how to configure the decompression commands.
If the command runs okay and returns zero, Q-Blue will close the
window as soon as it's done and try to read the unpacked files,
loading the message information into memory. If the command
produces a nonzero return code, indicating a possible error,
Q-Blue will write a message in the window saying, "Error detected?
Press return to close window:" and wait for you to type a return
with that window active. This is so that you can study any error
messages shown in the window before it disappears.
- 92 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 8.3
Note that there is no way for Q-Blue to be certain about whether a
genuine error has occurred. In fact, there may be some cases in
which a drastic error can go unnoticed. Because of these
possibilities and the unpredictable behavior of unknown
compression programs, when it detects an apparent error in the
unpacking, it tries to go ahead as if it were successful, just to
see whether it works or not. If the unpacking really failed, it
will probably report some other error a moment later, such as an
incomplete or missing file in the work directory. Only a very
obvious failure, such as being unable to open the console window,
makes it give up.
Q-Blue is completely "deaf" to any input as long as this console
window is open. It is unable to do anything else until the window
is closed. This is indicated by the mouse pointer showing as a
clock face whenever the backdrop window is active.
Once the packet's files are in the work directory, either by
decompression of a mail packet or because Q-Blue found the files
already there, it begins reading the contents of the packet. At
this point, if it came from a Blue Wave mail door it may require a
password before you can read it, depending on what options you
chose in the mail door. A small window containing a string gadget
will appear, prompting you for the password. This string gadget
is unusual in that you can't see the word you are typing into it.
The cursor moves normally but the text is invisible -- it's
displayed in letters the same color as the background. You get
three chances to type in the right password. If you fail, the
packet is closed. Letter case is ignored in the password.
If all of this happens without error, Q-Blue will then scan the
files and create lists in memory of all the readable messages.
The mail is now ready to be read, and will remain so until you
give a "Close" command. But there are still more steps before the
opening process is complete.
The first extra step is that Q-Blue checks the BBS Context
directory for a "marks" file. If one exists that matches the
packet you have just opened, then all the messages that you had
read when the packet was previously opened will be marked as
having been read, and your "current message" will be set to the
last one you were reading instead of to the first message in the
packet. This allows you to close a packet and reopen it later,
picking up just where you left off. The marks files are saved
when you close a packet or quit Q-Blue, and also whenever you
write a reply or pack replies. If you have to reboot the machine
while a packet is open, the marks file information may be out of
date when you reopen the packet, but hopefully not too badly if
you've been writing replies. If something goes wrong with the
process of checking for a marks file, you can still read the mail
normally.
- 93 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 8.3
Another extra step that Q-Blue may take is to save a "pointer"
file from the packet in the context directory. Typically this
file is named SOMENAME.PTR or SOMENAME.PNT, where SOMENAME is the
BBS's packet ID. With some BBSes the name may be SOMENAME.LMR,
SOMENAME.SFP, or SOMENAME.PTN -- the latter being the case for the
Valence door on Searchlight BBSes, which actually includes two
pointer files in its packets, the other being named SOMENAME.PTN.
Q-Blue only saves the .PTO file. The mail doors that include
these files have a feature that allows you to rewind the current
high-message pointers for the areas you are reading by uploading
this file. If a packet gets lost before you can read it,
uploading this file will rewind the pointers to where they were at
the time you downloaded the packet that the pointer file came
from. In the case of Valence you may have to rename the .PTO file
to SOMENAME.PTR before uploading it.
Q-Blue then has to deal with the question of whether there are
replies to be reloaded. The section after next covers this.
8.4) "Opening" with no mail packet
If instead of giving some version of the "Open packet" command you
use the "Open (no packet)" menu option or the "No pkt." gadget
(key shortcut N), then what happens is similar to the above but
simpler. A list window opens which is similar to the one used by
"Open packet", titled "Select BBS file to open -- enter or double-
click". It lists files in much the same way that the "Open
packet" list window shows mail packets, except that the files
shown are "BBS files" stored in Q-Blue's BBS context directory.
These files are created whenever you open a downloaded packet.
Information from the packet is copied to a BBS file, unless the
packet is older than an already existing BBS file. These files
consist of copies of files found in the mail packet: the
"CONTROL.DAT" file in the case of a QWK packet, or in a Blue Wave
packet, the "WHATEVER.INF" file (where WHATEVER is the packet name
used by the BBS). As with the other file list window, the ASL
file requester can be used to augment this list window, so you can
select BBS files in any directory. The BBS file is a legible text
file in the case of QWK packets, but the Blue Wave BBS file is
illegible binary data. Some of these files have some extra
information stored in their filenotes. For everything to work as
well as it should,
do not change the filenotes on any of the files
in your BBS context directory.
The files shown in the list window have names that end either in
".BBS-QWK" or ".BBS-BW", with the part before the period being the
packet ID name for the BBS, which is usually the same as the name
used by the download packet. The part after the dash tells you
whether this BBS file came from a QWK or Blue Wave mail packet.
It is usually obvious which file came from which BBS that you have
called. Each one will be marked "old" or "NEW" along the left
edge if there appears to be a corresponding reply packet in your
- 94 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 8.4
uploads directory -- usually "old", meaning that the BBS file
predates the reply packet -- as described in section 7.5. Each
file's size and creation date is also listed. Filenotes, which in
the case of real mail packets are used to note what percentage of
a mail packet you have read so far, are not listed for BBS files.
If you select a file that has been given some name other than the
standard names shown in the files list window, Q-Blue will
correctly figure out whether it is QWK or Blue Wave, and
if it is
QWK
, will learn the correct packet name for creating replies with.
But if it is Blue Wave, it usually has to take the packet ID from
the name of the file you open. For instance, if you open a file
named "FLARP.FOO" it will assume that the packet name is FLARP.
If the file was originally named "GLOOT.INF" and you renamed it,
then it will create replies that the BBS can't read, because it
does not know that the correct packet name is GLOOT. This problem
is corrected in version 3 Blue Wave doors, but in most cases you
should
avoid renaming
Blue Wave BBS files.
Once you select a valid BBS file to open, Q-Blue will essentially
pretend
to open a mail packet from the same source. But there is
no decompression step, it does not make any use your work
directory, and no mail is made available to read. Instead, after
opening, it will display a single empty "placeholder" message, in
the area for bulletins and other special files.
Once the messages have been scanned or the placeholder message is
created, the handling of replies proceeds identically for both
BBS files and real mail packets.
8.5) Reloading unfinished replies
What happens next depends on whether Q-Blue saw any other file
that appeared to be a reply packet for the selected download
packet or BBS file, and whether the replies directory contains
unpacked files that appear to be replies matching the packet just
loaded. It looks for reply packets only in the uploads directory
you specified in your setup, and looks only at the
names
of such
files to pick out apparent matches, not at their contents. For
instance, if you select a file named "WHATEVER.QWK" to be opened,
it will assume that "WHATEVER.REP" contains replies to it.
Similarly, for Blue Wave packets, if you pick "SOMENAME.WE1", it
will look for a reply packet named "SOMENAME.NEW". If you select
a file from the list window without using the ASL file requester,
each file listed will be labeled, as noted below in section 7.5,
to indicate whether an apparent reply packet exists and whether
the mail packet is older or newer than the reply packet
corresponding to it.
Once the mail packet or BBS file is open, it will recheck the
uploads directory again to make sure whether or not a file with
the right name for a reply packet is there. It checks twice
- 95 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 8.5
because it may discover, after the packet is open, that the
correct name for the reply packet is not what it seemed to be from
just looking at the name of the message packet. This feature
allows message packets to be renamed without losing the ability to
find the right reply packet -- though the files list window may
fail to tell you about it in that case. But this version of
Q-Blue has no method of opening a reply packet that is named
differently from the name it was created with, or not in the
uploads directory. In other words, you can safely rename message
packets but not reply packets.
If replies are found already present in the replies directory (in
uncompressed form), it will open a requester asking you whether
you want to reload those replies or start fresh. If a compressed
upload packet is found, it asks you whether to unpack it. If an
upload packet and files in the replies directory are
both
present,
it gives you a three way choice of whether to try to load the
existing files, delete them and uncompress the upload packet, or
ignore them both so that you start with a clean slate; the three
choices are labeled "Reload", "Unpack", and "Ignore".
Note that except in the case of reloading existing reply files
found in the replies directory, Q-Blue will
delete all files
in
the replies directory before continuing. Like the work directory,
the replies directory
must not
be used to store any permanent
files. If you have no replies directory defined at all, it will
still let you open the packet, and if a reply packet exists, it
will put up an error message saying there's no place to unpack it.
When it asks you whether to unpack or reload replies, the default
selection depends on the ages of the different files. If the
replies are in files with a datestamp newer than the packet that
was just opened, Q-Blue assumes that this set of replies belongs
to the current mail packet and is unfinished, and the default is
to reload or unpack them. If the mail packet is newer than the
replies, it assumes that these replies are for a previous mail
packet from the same BBS, which have probably already been
uploaded, and the default is to ignore them and start fresh. If
a compressed reply packet and replies already in your replies
directory both exist, the default is to reload the ones in the
replies directory if
either
of the two sets of replies is newer
than the download packet, so long the upload packet is newer than
the files in the replies directory by no more than 12 hours. In
this case it assumes that the upload packet was probably made by
packing these same reply files. But if the upload packet is more
than 12 hours newer than the uncompressed replies, the default
action is to decompress it. The same defaults apply when opening
BBS files instead of mail packets. You may prefer to set the
"Flush reply dir at close" option (see section 6.3) to avoid the
confusion of such cases, and keep replies only in compressed form.
There is one "gotcha" about deciding which files are newer or
older: sometimes if you download a mail packet from a time zone
- 96 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 8.5
east of the one you live in, you may end up writing replies to a
mail packet in which the files have datestamps that are still in
the future by a couple of hours. If you write replies promptly,
you may end up with a reply packet that is dated at an earlier
time than the mail it was written in reply to. Especially if you
are loading already unpacked mail in the work directory, this can
cause the requester to be fooled and make "Ignore" the default, as
if the replies were outdated.
If you run more than one Q-Blue process at one time, then as
explained in section 3.5, the work and replies in use will not be
the ones named in your Directories setup window, but will be
"sibling" directories with digits added to the ends of their
names. In the case of the replies directory, if you only run two
Q-Blues at once on rare occasions, it may happen that the second
replies directory contains old replies that are days or weeks out
of date, which you do not want to reload. This is the reason for
the 12 hour rule.
Whenever you are running more than one Q-Blue
process at a time, you have to take extra care when making
decisions involving pre-existing files in the work or replies
directories.
If you have written a set of replies for a previous mail packet
for the same BBS but not uploaded them, you can reload them and
add more to them while replying to the current mail packet, so
that all replies get uploaded together. In this case you would
tell it to reload replies though the default is not to. And if
you know that you are not going to upload these replies until
after another download, you can "leave a note to yourself",
reminding you to reload them instead of discarding them, by
setting the newly created upload packet's datestamp a few days in
the future. This way, the next time you open another packet from
that BBS, if the future date has not passed yet, Q-Blue will make
reopening the packet the default selection.
This can be done with the AmigaDOS "SetDate" command, or with a
small residentable command called "Future" that is included in the
"c" drawer of the Q-Blue distribution (which has no icon). This
command's template is "FILE/A,DAYS/N": you give it a filename and
the number of days into the future (or the past, with a negative
number) to set its datestamp, relative to today's date. The
number is optional and defaults to 7: one week in the future. The
time of day of the datestamp is not affected -- only the day. It
requires AmigaDOS 2.04 or newer.
If you tell it to unpack compressed replies, it will repeat the
same unpacking operation it went through for the main packet:
checking for compression type, opening the console window, and so
on. If the reply packet was made in response to this same
download packet, it should usually manage to sort out which
replies were in response to which original messages within the
packet. This process is not 100% reliable, especially not with
QWK mail, but if it makes a mistake it will not cause any problems
- 97 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 8.5
with the replies you upload. It only makes the "Flip to reply"
command (see section 9.3) work incorrectly.
8.6) The "twit list" file
Every once in a while, you encounter a situation where somebody's
contribution to the mail you're reading is just not worth seeing.
It might be a trivial waste of time to read, or more often, it
might be somebody who is deliberately obnoxious and tries to get
others to respond equally obnoxiously. Now you can, of course,
just decide not to read that person's messages, but sometimes life
is just more pleasant if you dispense with the temptation, and
avoid seeing reminders of things that you have to make an effort
to avoid. This is the purpose of the "twit list" feature. With
it, you can select certain messages to be discarded from the mail
packet before you ever see them.
If you are reading Blue Wave mail, it is often better to use the
mail door's "Filters" feature instead of Q-Blue's twit list,
because this removes unwanted mail before it is downloaded, so you
don't have to wait for your modem to download mail you aren't
going to read anyway. However, Q-Blue's twit list may still be
useful, because it can reject messages according to more precise
criteria than the Blue Wave door can. See the Blue Wave mail door
user's manual, which is included with registered copies of Q-Blue
as a file named "BW-Door.doc" in the "DOCS.lha" archive, for
information on using filters.
The most common way to reject mail is by specifying the name of
the person who writes it. This is commonly known as "twitting"
that person. Some offline readers allow you to discard all mail
from a certain person; others discard mail both from and to that
person, so you also don't see people's replies to the stuff you're
trying to avoid. Q-Blue allows either option, and several others
that bring quite a bit of sophistication to this odd little
feature which ideally shouldn't need to exist at all.
The "twit list" is a text file called "S:Q-Blue.twits". Q-Blue
does not have a window full of fancy gadgets to control its
contents -- you have to create the file with a text editor, such
as the one you use to write your replies with. Each line in this
text file describes some group of messages to be rejected. In the
simplest case, each line is simply someone's name. Q-Blue
examines each message at loading time, and if the name of the
author matches one of the names in the twit list, that message is
rejected. If you specify a name with no options, Q-Blue will
reject messages from that person but not messages addressed to
him. A line starting with a semicolon is ignored; you can add
comment lines to the twit list file that way.
To control the more sophisticated options in the twit list, you
add something extra to the beginning of the line: a few letters
- 98 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 8.6
and possibly an exclamation point, followed by a colon, before the
name. To reject messages both from and to a given name, put "FT:"
before the name. To reject all messages with a given word or
phrase in the subject line, put "S:" before the word or phrase.
There are several other letters with special meanings. For even
fancier uses, you can put a BBS ID and/or a message area name
before the comma as well, each preceded by a comma. All of these
options are explained in the next section. Space characters are
ignored around the colon and commas.
At present, there is no facility for "twitting" messages in a
packet that is already open. Q-Blue reads S:Q-Blue.twits each
time you open a mail packet, so any changes you make to the file
will take effect the next time you use the "Open" command.
8.7) Twit list options
The following is a list of all the letters you can put before the
colon in a line in the twit list file, and how they affect the
meaning of what comes after it:
- "F": reject all messages where the author's name matches the
rest of the line after the colon. This is the default if
there is no colon before the name.
- "T": reject all messages where the addressee's name matches.
- "S": reject messages in which the subject line, or any part of
the subject line, matches.
- "O": reject all messages from a given FidoNet style origin
address. (This is a drastic measure.)
The next several options do not select messages to be rejected;
instead, they modify the selection made by one of the methods
listed above. They are generally combined with one or more of the
above; if not, "F" is assumed:
- "Y": reject only messages addressed personally to you.
- "E": reject only messages
not
addressed personally to you.
- "P": reject only public messages, not private mail.
- "M": reject only private mail, not public messages.
- "!": do not reject these messages. This specifies exceptions
to other sets of messages that are rejected.
Several letters can be combined in one line. For instance, the
line "FSPY: John Smith" would reject all messages that are written
by John Smith, or mention John Smith in the subject, but only if
- 99 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 8.7
they are public messages addressed to you personally. The line
"!T: Mary Jones" would prevent any messages addressed to Mary
Jones from being rejected, even if they were written by John
Smith. "Y" and "E" are opposites, and if both are specified, then
neither will take effect. The same is true of "P" and "M".
To specify that a line in the twit list file should apply to only
one BBS, place the BBS ID before the colon, after a comma. For
example, if the BBS ID is "SOMENAME", such a line might read
"FT, SOMENAME: Mary Jones". The BBS ID, which is also known as
the packet name, is the short name that is shown in quotes in the
screen title bar when you are reading a packet from that BBS. It
is also shown in the heading of the "BBS Information" requester
(see section 9.3). In this case, messages from and to Mary Jones
will only be removed when you read mail packets from that BBS --
packets with names like "SOMENAME.QWK" or "SOMENAME.SU1".
To further restrict a line so it applies to only one message area,
put the area's number or full name after a second comma, before
the colon. For instance, to affect only the area named "RADIO" on
this BBS, you could use "FT, SOMENAME, RADIO: John Smith". In the
case of Blue Wave packets, the name to use for the area is the
short "area-tag", not the full name. The area-tags are visible in
the list window that you use for selecting an area for writing a
message, or for adding or dropping areas to read when using the
"Mail door" option (section 11.4). The full area name shown in
the list window showing areas with messages to read (the one the
"Areas" button brings up) is
not
the name to use, with Blue Wave
packets. With QWK packets, this is the only name an area has --
there is no separate area-tag. You can use the area's number
instead. You can, if desired, leave out the BBS ID by putting the
two commas together; this should not be done carelessly, and
should only be done if you specify the area with a name instead of
a number.
The "O" option is a special case. It is useful only in fairly
extreme circumstances, and somewhat costly to use, since it
significantly slows down the whole process of loading a message
packet. In this case, what you put after the colon is a FidoNet-
style network address in Zone:Net/Node.Point form, for example
"O: 1:2345/678.9". As usual, the decimal point and the number
after it can be left out if it's zero. Any message which has an
"Origin line" showing this address will be rejected. You would
use this in a situation where a BBS's entire population of users
is not worth reading. If there are a few people in the group you
still want to read, you can make exceptions for them with "!F:".
Q-Blue 1.0 allowed BBS ID names to be specified only in "O:"
lines, and expected them after the colon instead of before,
followed by a comma. A line like "O: SOMENAME, 1:2345/678.9"
would make sense to Q-Blue 1.0. Version 2.3 still accepts this
syntax, for compatibility.
- 100 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 8.8
8.8) Twit list examples
Some examples will clarify the uses of these options. First,
say that you simply don't want to hear another word from John
Smith, because he does nothing but expound Republicanism. You
would put a line in the file S:Q-Blue.twits that simply says
"John Smith", or "F: John Smith" if you want to be fancy. Let's
say that someone who calls himself "k0deZ KinG" is so offensive
that you don't want to hear from him, or see what anyone says back
to him either. You would add a line that reads "FT: k0dez king".
(Note that the twit list never distinguishes between uppercase and
lowercase letters.) If you don't even want to read messages
about
him, try "FTS: k0dez king".
Suppose there's a long tiresome debate going on about one of those
perennial controversies that nobody changes anyone's mind about,
for instance gun control. There are lots of long, argumentative
messages with titles like "Re: Traitorous gun control fascists"
and "Beer guzzling pinhead gun fondlers", and you finally want to
just skip over any message that has the word "gun" in the subject.
You would put the line "S: gun" in the twit list. Or if the bad
messages are mostly confined to an area called "POLITICS" of a BBS
called "MYBBS", you could use "S, MYBBS, POLITICS: gun".
Suppose this John Smith person that you normally don't want to
hear from occasionally sends you a private message, and you do
want to see those. In this case you would use "FP: John Smith",
which would reject only public messages. Another possibility is
to use two lines: the first being simply "John Smith" (or anything
else that removes his stuff) and the second being "!M: John
Smith". The "!" says that this is an exception to the normal
rule. Any private message from John Smith (the "M" means private
mail only is affected) gets left in place even if some other line
would reject it.
Suppose someone named Mary Jones has taken to addressing many
unpleasant messages to you, but there's no need to reject what she
says to others. You would use "FY: Mary Jones", or simply
"Y: Mary Jones". On the other hand, suppose you want the opposite
effect: ignoring Mary Jones most of the time, but paying attention
if she's speaking directly to you. In this case you would use
"E: Mary Jones".
Suppose that you're reading mail from some network that includes a
BBS dedicated to one particular cause or fad, and everyone on it
is a tiresome fanatic on some subject you don't care about. Or
suppose that someone who deserves twitting has his own BBS, or
perhaps a point system, and sends out messages under many
different names. (This was the situation that drove me to create
the feature.) You get mail from that place only when you download
mail packets from "Joe's BBS", which is your local member of the
same network. If the BBS ID of the mail you download is
"JOES_BBS", and the address within that network of the BBS to be
- 101 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 8.8
rejected is 57:69/42, then you would add the line "O, JOES_BBS:
57:69/42" to the twit list file. If John Smith and Mary Jones are
users on that BBS who are exceptions to the general rule, you
could let them through with two lines reading "!: John Smith" and
"!: Mary Jones". Replies addressed to that BBS are not filtered;
if they become a problem, you'll have to reject them by the names
of the recipients.
Or suppose that you are reading an echo devoted to some particular
religion, and somebody connects a BBS full of hostile nonbelievers
to that echo. You want to reject all their messages, but not in
other message areas, because some of them are sensible on other
topics. Furthermore, you read this echo on more than one BBS
sometimes, but the name of the echo is, in all cases (let us say)
"MYRELIGION". If the offending BBS has the origin address of
42:57/69, the line to use would be "O,, MYRELIGION: 42:57/69".
Normally you should specify a BBS ID with the "O" option whenever
possible, to avoid slowing down the loading of other packets. If
there are two BBSes you read the MYRELIGION echo in, you can use
one line for each of their BBS IDs, and avoid impeding the reading
of other mail. This is also necessary if the two BBSes do not use
the same name for the message area.
Most people's twit lists are very short, usually only one or two
lines. In fact, users who have a twit list at all are in the
minority. If you start feeling a need to filter ten or twelve
categories of messages out of your mail, maybe it's time to take
up a different hobby instead of BBSing.
9) READING MESSAGES
9.1) What you see when reading a message
After opening a packet, once you pick an area and, if necessary,
close the list window showing messages in that area, you are
finally reading the messages. This is the state that Q-Blue will
be in during most of the time you spend using it. The screen's
title bar now shows the packet name, or BBS ID, of the mail packet
you are reading. If you are reading a special message area, such
as bulletin files, personal messages, or your replies, that is
also indicated in the title bar, in a form like this (where
WHATEVER stands for the current packet name):
Q-Blue 2.3: reading "WHATEVER" -- YOUR REPLIES
The current time will also be shown at the far right end of the
screen title bar. Due to awkward features of Amiga Intuition, the
time is not shown if Q-Blue's screen is not active, or if no mail
packet is open. If you are running more than one Q-Blue process,
- 102 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 9.1
there will be a number at the beginning of the title bar for all
except the first one you started, like this:
(1) Q-Blue 2.3: reading "WHATEVER" -- YOUR REPLIES
When this number is showing, it means that this instance of Q-Blue
is using different work and replies directories than usual -- the
number that shows is added to the end of the directory names, as
described in section 3.5. It is also using a different public
screen name, as described in section 4.2.
Just below the title bar is a box, which in the default palette is
blue with a red border, which contains information about the
message you are currently reading. To be specific, along the left
side are items labeled "From:", "To:", "Subj.:", and "Area:".
After these are listed, respectively, the name (or alias) of the
message's author, the name of the intended recipient, a line
indicating the message's topic, and the name (in long form) of the
message area it was posted in.
On the right side, you'll see "Date:" and "Msg#:". The former
tells the date and time at which the message was written. After
"Msg#:", up to three numbers may be shown. The one shown in
yellow in the default palette, which is always present, is the
sequential number that this message has been assigned by the BBS.
The other numbers, which may be absent, are cyan in the default
palette. If this is a reply to an earlier message, then the
number of that earlier message is shown before the current
message's number, with "<-" in between. If some later message is
a reply to this one, then that one's number is shown after, with
"->" in between. For example, if it says "419 <- 425 -> 428", it
means that this is message 425, which is a reply to number 419,
and that number 428 is a reply to this one. If the message shown
is one of your replies to be uploaded, it says "reply to" followed
by the number of the message you wrote this in answer to, or "new
message" if this is a newly written message which is not a reply
to anything.
If the message is an Internet email reply with a very long name in
the "To:" field, the "Msg#:" part will be left out to make room.
This also happens if it is an outgoing newsgroup post with a long
list of other groups that the message is crossposted to (see
section 10.8).
At the lower right of the box at the top of the screen, after the
area name, are two other numbers showing how many messages in this
area were found in this mail packet, and which one this is. For
example, "#2 of 5" means that this is the second of five messages
found in this area. Along the right edge there may be three other
special words shown against a contrasting background color. If
the word "Priv" is present, this message is marked as private, to
be read only by the recipient named in the "To:" line. If "Rcvd"
is shown, it means that the addressee has read (or at least
- 103 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 9.1
downloaded) this message. "Repl" means that you have written a
reply to this message yourself, which is now in the replies area.
"Repl" is also shown when such a reply is itself on the screen.
The content of the message is shown in the large area below the
bordered box. Normal text is shown in white in the default
palette, and lines that have a quote indicator at the beginning
such as ">" or "XX>" are shown in yellow, so that (with luck) you
can see at a glance which words are new and which are repeated
from past messages. Sometimes quotes are indicated by lines that
begin with ":" or "|"; Q-Blue will show such lines in yellow if
there are ten or more in the message, or three or more that are
consecutive. The clutter of origin lines, tear lines, seen-by
lines, advertising lines for various mail processing software, and
supposedly funny taglines at the bottom of the message is all dull
magenta, which makes it easy for the eye to skip over them without
having to read any of it. Note that its decisions about which
lines should be colored magenta are guesswork, and far from
infallible. Occasionally some "kluge lines" used by FidoNet are
shown in magenta at the top of the message text. If the message
has "RFC" control lines at the top, as is usually the case with
Internet messages, these lines are shown in cyan. Again, the
detection of these lines may involve guesswork. The end of the
text is marked with a horizontal stripe which is red in the
default palette, so you can tell when there is no more text below
the bottom of the screen.
9.2) Basic reading options
You can move around among the messages, and scroll long messages
up and down, either entirely with the mouse or entirely with the
keyboard, whichever you prefer at any moment. If the message is
too long to all fit on the screen, you can scroll it up and down
by holding down the left mouse button at the top or bottom edge
of the text. When the mouse is within one line of the bottom edge
of the text display area, or in amongst the gadgets at the bottom,
the text will scroll upwards, adding new lines at the bottom. The
text will scroll downwards if you click in the box at the top
where the author's name, subject, and so forth are displayed.
If the screen is interlaced, or using any display mode which is
400 or more pixels tall, it will scroll two lines at a time, for
quickness. You can change the direction of scrolling by sliding
the mouse to the other end of the screen while the button is held
down.
Clicking and dragging the mouse in the middle of the text causes
the text dragged over to be copied to the system clipboard. To
copy a chunk larger than what is visible, drag the mouse to the
top or bottom edge of the text area with the left button held
down, and it will scroll as described above. The area being
clipped is displayed in inverse color until you release the mouse
button, at which time it is copied to the clipboard. If you have
- 104 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 9.2
a three button mouse, you can scroll the text without clipping by
holding down the middle mouse button. It scrolls the same way the
left mouse button does, but cannot select text for the clipboard
or activate the gadgets at the bottom of the screen. There is no
keyboard method for copying text to the clipboard.
If you prefer to use the keyboard, you can scroll a long message
up one line with the down arrow key, or down one line with the up
arrow key. Either the regular arrow keys or the IBM equivalents
on the numeric pad (2 and 8) work. The PgDn key (numeric pad 3)
moves the message down to show the next screenful of lines, with
one line of overlap; that is, the line that was previously at the
bottom is now at the top. PgUp (numeric pad 9) displays the
previous screenful of lines. Pressing an up arrow or down arrow
key while holding down a shift or Alt key is equivalent to
pressing PgUp or PgDn. Pressing Home (numeric pad 7) shows the
first line of the message, and pressing End (numeric pad 1) shows
the last line. Pressing the up arrow or down arrow keys while
holding down the Ctrl key are equivalent to Home and End,
respectively. This way, Amiga 600 owners with no numeric pad
aren't missing any options. The keys for scrolling long messages
are identical to those used for scrolling list windows.
If the message currently shown has more text beyond what shows at
the bottom of the screen, pressing the spacebar will display the
next screenful just like the PgDn key. If the end of the message
is visible (this is indicated by a red stripe below the last line
of text), the spacebar will show the start of the next message
like the right arrow key. If the current message is the last one
in the area, the spacebar will open the window listing areas with
messages, with the next area highlighted so that pressing the
spacebar selects it -- or, if you have "Areas: list before
reading" turned off in the Options setup window (see section 6.3),
then it will display the first message in the next area. If the
"Msgs: list before reading" is on, the list of messages in the new
area will open when you enter it. If you have already read some
of the messages in the new area, it will display the last one you
read there, instead of the first.
What this means is that you can read every message consecutively
just by pressing the spacebar. The return key and the numeric pad
Enter key do the same thing. The backspace key does this in
reverse, more or less: it shows the previous screenful, or the
previous message, or opening the list window of readable areas
with the previous area highlighted. Alt-spacebar works the same
as backspace.
To view the next message, you can click the gadget labeled "Next"
at the lower right corner of the screen. The gadget just to the
left of that, labeled "Prev.", will show you the message before
this one. If you click "Next" when viewing the last message in
the area, or "Prev." when viewing the first, the list window
showing the message areas will open, if you have "Areas: list
- 105 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 9.2
before reading" checked in the Options setup window. This works
just as described above for the spacebar. The window will open
with the area just after (or, in the case of "Prev.", just before)
the one you were reading highlighted. The keyboard equivalent is
to press the right arrow key to view the next message, or the left
arrow key to see the previous one, as shown by the arrow signs on
the two gadgets. The IBM numeric pad equivalents are 6 for right
arrow and 4 for left arrow.
You can open the window to select another area any time by
clicking the gadget labeled "Areas" at the center of the screen's
bottom edge, or using the equivalent "Areas with msgs" item in the
"Messages" menu. The key shortcut is the letter A. You can open
the window listing messages within the area with the "List" gadget
just to the right of that (keyboard shortcut L), or the equivalent
"List area's msgs" menu item. And when either of these windows is
open you can select the other.
To write a reply to the message you are reading, you can click the
"Reply" gadget. To write a new message that is not a reply, click
on "Write". The keyboard shortcuts are R and W. If you are
viewing one of your own replies, the "Reply" gadget is replaced
with "Re-edit". This is used if you want to change the contents
of a reply you have already created. The equivalent menu items
are labeled "Reply to this msg" (or "Re-edit reply") and "Write
new message", in the "Replies" menu. The "Reply to addressee",
"Write new email", and "Carbon copy" commands are variations of
these. "Reply to addressee" is just like "Reply to this msg"
except that it addresses the reply to the recipient, rather than
the author, of the message you are replying to. Its key shortcut
is E. The second is a shortcut for selecting "Write new message"
followed by clicking the "@-email" button -- it puts the message
you write into the Internet email area. If there is no such area,
it is ghosted. Its key shortcut is the @ sign. "Carbon copy"
lets you create a new message with text copied from an existing
one, either a message you are reading or one of your own replies.
Its key shortcut is Alt-W. The details of writing messages are
covered in section 10.
9.3) Special features available when reading
The "Messages" and "Replies" menus, besides containing items
equivalent to the various buttons, also have several commands not
available as gadgets. The "Next area" option at the top of the
"Messages" menu shows messages in the message area immediately
after the one you have been reading, without opening any list
windows. It shows the first message in the area, or the last
message you read in the area if you have been in it before. The
keyboard shortcut is the right square bracket: "]". And the
"Previous area" selection goes back to the area before the one you
are now reading -- the shortcut is "[".
- 106 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 9.3
The next items are "Search for words" and "Undo search". The
latter has two subitems. These are described in sections 9.5 and
9.6, which cover the search feature. Fifth and sixth are "Print
message" and "Save msg as file", which also has two subitems.
These are covered in the next section, 9.4.
The next two items are called "Next unread (wraps)" and "Mark as
unread". The key shortcut for the first is N. (This is the same
key used for "Open (no packet)", but that item is not available
when a packet is open, so they don't conflict.) "Next unread"
searches forward and puts on screen the first message after the
current one which you have not looked at yet. If there are none
after the current message, it starts from the beginning of the
packet. If every single message in the packet has been read, it
tells you so with a little error requester. If you have skipped
over some messages, this command is a good way to go back and
review them.
But note that if you read the first couple of lines of a message
and then skip the rest, Q-Blue will count the message as having
been read. This command will show this message only if it has
never been onscreen... unless you use the "Mark as unread"
command, or its key shortcut, X. This causes Q-Blue to forget
that the current message was ever onscreen. If you are reading a
message and don't finish it, but want to look at it again later,
use "Mark as unread". You will see the message indicated as
unread in the list windows, and "Next unread (wraps)" can find it.
Last in this menu are "Areas with msgs" and "List area's msgs",
which are, as stated in the previous section, equivalent to the
"Areas" and "List" gadgets at the bottom of the screen. They open
the list windows showing areas with readable messages, or messages
within one area, respectively.
The first item in the "Replies" menu is "Flip to reply"; the F key
is equivalent. If you have not replied to the message that is
currently on screen, this item is ghosted and the F key does
nothing. If there is a reply, then this will put that reply on
screen, replacing the message you were reading before. (The word
"Repl" near the right edge of the bordered box at the top of the
screen indicates whether there is a reply for F to flip to.) When
reading replies, the menu item becomes "Flip to original", and it
sends you back to the message that the one you are reading was
written in reply to. If the message you replied to was addressed
to you, it will flip to either the copy in the personal area or
the copy in the regular message areas, depending on which was on
screen most recently, so pressing F twice will put you back where
you started.
The second "Replies" item is always ghosted except when you are
reading one of your own replies. This item is "Delete reply".
The keyboard shortcut is the Del key, or the letter D (as used in
older versions of Q-Blue). When you select this, the reply that
- 107 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 9.3
you are reading will be marked as deleted, and will be erased from
your replies directory. But it will still be retained in Q-Blue's
memory. The word "DELETED" will appear on a contrasting
background in the message's header, after the "Msg#:" label. When
you are reading a deleted message, this menu item is changed to
"Un-delete reply", with the shortcut still being Del or D. By
selecting it, the deleted reply will be un-marked as deleted and
rewritten into the replies directory. You can un-delete a deleted
message any time before you close the mail packet; at that time,
deleted messages are forgotten.
If a file in your replies directory gets damaged somehow, deleting
and then un-deleting the corresponding message -- or in the case
of QWK replies, any message -- will rewrite a fresh copy of the
file. In the case of Blue Wave, the header files such as the .UPL
file get rewritten when any message is changed.
Next come the five message writing commands: "Reply to this msg"
(or "Re-edit reply" when a reply is displayed onscreen), "Reply to
addressee", "Write new message", "Write new email", and "Carbon
copy", as mentioned in the previous section. Section 10 covers
their use in detail. The last three items are "Request D/L" and
"Mail door", which are covered in section 11, and "Maintain
taglines".
"Maintain taglines", key shortcut T, opens the same tagline window
that opens when you use the "Tagline" gadget in the message
writing window. It allows you to add or delete taglines, and load
or save tagline files. Use of this window is covered in section
10.9. The main reason it is made available in the menu is for
convenience in "stealing" taglines by clipping them with the mouse
and then pasting them into the window's string gadget, as
explained at the end of section 10.9. When using this window via
the "Maintain taglines" command, it does not matter which line is
selected when you close the window, and double-clicking is ignored.
The remaining options while reading messages, besides the "Setup"
menu items covered in sections 3 through 6, are found in the
"Packet" menu. The "Compression type" submenu, "Iconify screen",
and "About Q-Blue", were described in section 8.1, since they are
available whether or not any packet is open. "Close packet",
"Pack replies", and "Quit Q-Blue" are covered in sections 11.6 and
11.7. All of these are available while reading messages, but
"Open packet" and "Open (no packet)" are not.
The "BBS Information" item in the "Packet" menu, shortcut B, opens
a requester that lists some information about the BBS that created
the mail packet you are reading. It gives the full pathname of
the mail file or BBS file you opened -- or "(unknown)" if you
loaded mail files that were already in the work directory --
followed by its creation date, the name of the BBS, the sysop's
name, and your logon name. In the case of Blue Wave mail it lists
your alternate name, the BBS's network address if any, and the
- 108 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 9.3
netmail "credit" you have, if relevant. In the case of QWK mail,
it lists the BBS's city and phone number, and the control name
used by the mail door for offline configuration, if any (see
sections 11.4 and 11.5 for an explanation of this). Select "Okay"
to close it. This item is disabled when no packet is open.
9.4) Saving and printing messages
The sixth item in the "Messages" menu is "Save msg as file", which
has three subitems, "ask filename" with key shortcut V (sorry
about that, S is used for Search), "append previous" with key
shortcut Alt-V, and "whole area", with key shortcut Alt-Ctrl-V
(hold down both the Alt and Ctrl keys while pressing V). You can
use either of the first two to make a copy, in a text file, of
whatever message is presently on the screen. When you tell it to
save a message to disk with the "ask filename" subitem or the V
key, it opens a file requester which you use to specify where to
save it. Unless you cancel the requester, the message will be
written out to the specified file, with the header information
(author, addressee, date, etc.) at the top, similarly to how it
appears in the box at the top of the screen. The "whole area"
subitem works the same way, except that instead of saving the
current message on screen, it writes out all messages in the area
that you're currently reading, into one big text file.
After you select the file to save it in, another requester may
appear, if the file is one that already exists. It gives you
three choices: to append the current message onto the end of the
existing file, to erase the previous contents of the file and
replace them with this message, or don't save the message after
all. The gadgets are labeled "Append", "Replace", and "Cancel".
The default is to append. The file requester, after the first
time it's used, defaults to selecting the same file that you
selected last time. It puts three blank lines in front of the
message, when appending it onto an existing file. Note that if
the file you select is not a text file,
appending to it can make
it unusable.
For instance, if it is a program, it will not run
any more. Be careful to only append to text files.
Bulletin files are handled a bit differently from messages. If
you save a bulletin by itself, without appending it onto an
existing file, then Q-Blue makes a binary copy of it rather than a
"printout" type of listing of its text. If a binary file such as
an LHA archive is included as an extra item in your mail packet,
perhaps "attached" to one of the messages by the BBS, you can save
it to disk in usable form with the V key, as long as you avoid
appending it to an existing file. Such binary files will
generally appear as gibberish when viewed onscreen. Using the
"whole area" subitem counts as appending, so it does not make
binary copies.
- 109 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 9.4
When you use Alt-V, or the "append previous" subitem, no
requesters appear. The text is automatically appended to the file
that was last selected with the "ask filename" or "whole area"
subitem. A message appears in the screen title bar for four
seconds, telling the name of the file appended to. Alt-V is a
convenient way to write many messages into one text file. This
option is not enabled unless you have used "ask filename" once.
If "ask filename" is cancelled or encounters any errors in writing
out the file, "append prev." is again disabled until "ask
filename" is used successfully. This requirement for using "ask
filename" once is maintained even if a default filename is
specified in the "Path for saving messages" string in the
Directories setup window (see section 3.4).
The fifth "Messages" menu item is "Print message", shortcut Alt-P.
This sends a copy of the current message to your printer. Or
actually, it sends it to whatever filename is specified in the
"Printer output" gadget in the Directories setup window, which
defaults to "PRT:" (see section 3.4). If the message contains IBM
high-ASCII characters, the Amiga printer driver will probably not
show them correctly. If your printer is made for use with IBM
compatible computers, as most are, you may get better results by
sending your printer output to the printer's port in raw form
rather than through the printer driver, and making sure that your
printer is correctly set up to print such characters rather than,
for instance, interpreting them as italics. Setting the string
gadget to "PAR:" will do this for printers connected to the built-
in parallel port. Or you can specify a disk file name, if you
wish to "print" to a file. If the file already exists, it will
append to it. The effect is much like the "append prev." subitem
of "Save msg as file", except that the filename is specified in
the Directories setup window's "Printer output filename" gadget.
When not appending to a file, printing is done by a background CLI
process, and can continue after Q-Blue is exited. If you need to
abort the print, you can't do so from within Q-Blue. Go to a CLI
window and give the command "Status". Among the processes listed
should be one that says "Loaded as command: COPY". If the name
"copy" is not in uppercase, then it is not the one started by
Q-Blue. The COPY command launched by Q-Blue is the process that
is actually feeding data to your printer. Just before those words
will be the word "Process" and a number. For example, it might
say "Process 5: Loaded as command: COPY". Enter a "Break"
command followed by that number and the letter C. In this
example, the command would be "Break 5 C". The process should
disappear and printing should stop. But your printer might keep
going for a while if it has already received a lot of text that it
hasn't printed yet. Note that if you specify PAR: or some other
raw port handler instead of PRT:, the Copy command may wait around
forever, in spite of "Break" commands, if the port is not ready to
use -- for instance, if your printer is turned off. This makes it
more difficult to abort cleanly than it is when PRT: is used. The
- 110 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 9.4
background process requires the "Failat" and "Delete" commands to
be available, as well as "Copy".
As with the "append previous" save command, a message appears in
the screen title bar for four seconds. If you give a disk
filename, it will display the same message: "Appended to" followed
by the filename. But when copying in the background to a device
such as "PRT:", the message says "Copying to" followed by the name.
9.5) The word search feature
Q-Blue has a rather sophisticated feature for finding messages
according to whether they contain a given word or sequence of
words. Unlike many search functions, it will find a sequence of
words even if they are separated by line breaks or by spacing
different from what you enter in the search window, or even XX>
style quote marks. It also allows you to control exactly where
it looks to find the given words: you can separately check the
authors or addressees or subject lines or the main text of
messages, and include or exclude the network gibberish at the
bottom. Q-Blue 2.3 allows you to search for four different
phrases at once. The effect is that messages which do not match
the search temporarily disappear, until you undo the search.
Searching is controlled through a window which can be opened by
pressing S or by the "Search for words" item of the "Messages"
menu. The window has four string gadgets, where you can enter the
phrases to search for. Consecutive searches leave these gadgets
unchanged, so you may have to erase one of them if you no longer
want to search for a second phrase.
Below the four string gadgets, next to the words "Look in:", are
four checkmark gadgets which tell it where it should look to find
the given phrases, labeled "From", "To", "Subj.", and "Body text".
They can be switched between checked and unchecked with the keys
F, T, S, and B. When "From" is checked, it will look at the name
of who the message is from (the author). When "To" is checked, it
will check the name the message is addressed to. "Subj." tells it
to check the subject or title string. "Body text" tells it to
check the actual content of the message. You can set these four
gadgets to any combination of checked and unchecked, though if all
four are unchecked you'll get an error message because it has
nowhere to look. In the bulletins area, where the messages have
no "from" or "to" names but do have a filename, it will check that
filename for a match if either the "From" or "To" gadget is
checked.
The default setting when the window is first opened is for "Body
text" to be unchecked and the others to be checked. This is
because searching the body text is a lot slower than searching any
of the other parts. Searching a large number of messages can take
many seconds, even if your work directory is in ram disk and you
- 111 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 9.5
have a fast CPU. Searching with the body text option turned off,
however, takes almost no time. The "Waste memory for speed" setup
option (see section 6.3) can help speed up body text searches.
However, the speedup will be less than it was in earlier Q-Blue
releases if the area contains many messages, because that option
is now much more modest in the amount of memory it wastes. During
searches that include body text, the title of the search window
shows how far the search has progressed so far, as a percentage of
the total count of messages that need to be checked.
Below those four gadgets are two more checkmarks labeled "Refine
previous search" and "Ignore end-of-message clutter". Their
shortcuts are R and I. They are explained in the next section.
At the bottom of the search window, next to the words "Search
area(s):", are three gadgets labeled "Here", "All", and "Nowhere",
with key shortcuts H, A, and N. They tell it which message areas
it should search. As indicated by the bent arrow next to it,
pressing return selects "Here". That tells it to begin searching
only the messages in the current area, leaving other areas alone.
The "All" gadget tells it to check every message in every area,
except for your replies.
The "Nowhere" gadget tells it not to search. It also tells it to
discard the results of any past search. It is not the same as
simply cancelling the window with the close gadget or Esc key --
if you just cancel the window, any previous search will be left
unaffected, but if you click "Nowhere", it will bring back the
complete set of messages as they were before any search was done.
It acts like the "all areas" command in the "Undo search" submenu.
Once you select "Here" or "All", it will start searching, after
first discarding previous search results. If there are no
messages that contain the phrases in the areas you've told it to
search, it will put up a requester telling you that nothing was
found. A side effect of this, in the current version, is that any
previous search result is lost, either in the current area only if
you selected "Here", or in all areas if you selected "All". A
failed search has results similar to selecting "Nowhere", except
that the window stays open for another try. But if "Refine
previous search" is used, it restores the previously existing
search result instead of restoring an un-searched condition.
If it does find one or more messages that match the phrases you
specified, the result is that all messages except the ones that
match will temporarily disappear, in your current area or in all
areas depending on where you searched. You can now read messages,
reply, or do anything else in the normal way, except that the only
messages you see are the ones that fit the search. When searching
all areas, those areas which had no matching messages will also
entirely disappear, temporarily. Q-Blue will do its best to keep
its place in the remaining messages so you can more or less
continue where you left off.
- 112 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 9.5
If your search included a check of body text, messages that were
found that way will have the matching words or phrases highlighted
with contrasting inverse colors when they are viewed. Q-Blue will
highlight the first four non-overlapping occurrences of each
matching phrase.
To bring back the vanished messages, you can reopen the search
window and select "Nowhere", or you can use the menu item below
"Search for words" in the "Messages" menu, labeled "Undo search".
It has two subitems, "this area" and "all areas". The first
brings back the missing messages only in your current message
area, the second brings all of them back. The key shortcut for
"this area" is the letter U; for "all areas" it's Alt-U.
9.6) Additional aspects of the search feature
The "Ignore end-of-message clutter" gadget, when checked, causes
searches of body text to ignore the origin lines, tear lines,
taglines, and other garbage that commonly ends up added to the
ends of messages (or the beginnings, in the case of some Fidonet
"^A" kluge lines). The lines that are shown in magenta in the
default 8 color palette are the ones that do not get searched.
With this checked, you can for instance search for the phrase
"Blue Wave" and only find messages that actually mention it,
instead of finding every message that was posted by someone using
Blue Wave software. It is ghosted except when "Body text" is
checked.
The "Refine previous search" gadget is used if you want to search
according to one criterion, and then search
only
the messages
found that way, for some other unrelated phrase. For instance,
suppose you want to find messages written by Mary Jones that
mention President Clinton. There are dozens of messages by Mary
Jones, and dozens about Clinton, and you want to find the few in
both categories. What you would do is search once for "Mary
Jones" with the "From" gadget checked. It will reduce the list of
messages to be only those written by Mary Jones. Bring up the
search window again, and replace "Mary Jones" with "Clinton" in
the string gadget, and turn on the "Subj." and/or "Body text"
gadgets. Since the messages are already narrowed down by the
previous search, the "Refine previous search" gadget will be
enabled -- it is ghosted when no previous search is in effect.
Click it or press R, and then search again. It will look for
messages containing "Clinton" among those messages that remain
after the previous search: those written by Mary Jones. This
gadget, unlike the other checkmarks, is always unchecked when the
window is opened; it does not retain its previous setting.
The exact relation between the phrases you enter into the string
gadgets and the text it finds needs some explanation. As
mentioned above, it searches not for one string of characters but
for a sequence of distinct words and punctuation marks. If it
- 113 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 9.6
finds the given sequence, regardless of spacing or line breaks
between them, it counts that as a successful find. It will even
skip over XX> style quote marks at the beginnings of lines, if
necessary, between one matching word and the next. In other
words, if the message contains these lines:
JS> > And I thought it was really super-
JS> > DUPER !!!
then if you search for "super-duper!", these lines will match. It
always ignores the distinction between uppercase and lowercase
letters -- at least with the normal 26 letter alphabet. It cannot
ignore the case of accented, umlauted, or otherwise unusual
letters, because of the different incompatible character sets that
different systems use to represent such characters.
It will find a phrase starting or ending in the middle of a word,
unless you begin or end the phrase in the string gadget with an
extra space. If a word in the string gadget has a space on both
ends, it will find it only as a whole word in the text, not as a
part of a larger word. This works separately for the beginning
and end of the word -- a space at the beginning makes it avoid
matches starting in the middle of a word, and a space at the end
makes it avoid those ending in the middle of a word.
An example may clarify this. If you enter "car" into one of the
string gadgets with no spaces, it will find messages containing
the words "carpet" and "vicar" and "escargot". If you put a space
before the word "car" it will skip "vicar" and "escargot" but
still find "carpet". Conversely, a space at the end will cause it
to find "vicar" but not the others. Spaces at both ends make it
find only the word "car". But this does not mean it literally
searches for the word "car" with space characters before and after
-- it will also find the word if it is bracketed by newlines or
punctuation characters. It will find "(car)" for instance. When
there are several words in a search string, the ones in the middle
must always match as whole words -- these considerations apply
only to the beginning of the first word and the end of the last
word.
You can use the search window while any list window is open. The
third gadget from the left at the bottom of the screen is labeled
"Search" whenever a list window is open, to make it convenient.
With the list windows for messages in one area, or areas
containing readable messages, it works exactly the same as when no
list window is open. The list window will be updated to show the
new set of messages available to read. In the case of the areas
window, any area which has been searched is marked with a letter S
along the left margin. And just as when no list window is open,
pressing U undoes the search in the current area, and Alt-U undoes
it in all areas. When a list window has had its contents screened
through a search, the word "[Searched]" in brackets appears at the
beginning of the window's title. In the case of the areas list
- 114 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 9.6
window, this word appears if you do a search of all areas (which
removes any area with no matching messages) but not if you search
individual areas.
A simplified search function can be used on any other list window
besides those that list readable messages. When you are looking
at the list of mail packet files in your downloads directory, or
at the list of areas in which replies and new messages can be
posted (see section 10.4), or the list of taglines or any other
similar window, you can search the list to find an item by name.
This is useful with some BBSes which give you a choice of hundreds
or even thousands of message areas to post in. You can enter the
name, or a part of the name, of the area you are trying to find in
the search window, and the contents of the list will be narrowed
down to just those that contain the word or phrase you specified,
so you don't have to hunt back and forth through a long list to
find the right area. You can bring back the full list with the
search window's "Nowhere" gadget, or by pressing U or Alt-U while
the search window is not open. With these other windows, U and
Alt-U have the same meaning.
When doing this kind of simplified list window search, the "From",
"To", "Subj.", "Body text", and "Ignore end-of-message clutter"
checkmark gadgets are ghosted since they are not relevant. The
"All" gadget is also ghosted, and the default gadget is labeled
"Window" instead of "Here", to indicate that it is looking only at
the text that is visible in the window. The shortcut is W instead
of H. The "Refine previous search" option is available as usual,
though. In the case of the downloads directory files window or
BBS files window, the search looks at the names of the files, and
the filenotes -- which usually only contain a notation such as
"27% read" -- not at anything else in the window such as the date
and time or the size of the file. In the window of areas you can
post in, it will check both the numbers and the names.
10) WRITING REPLIES AND NEW MESSAGES
10.1) The message creation window: From, To, Subject
When you tell Q-Blue that you want to write a reply or a new
message, or carbon-copy a message, it opens a window with a bunch
of gadgets for specifying things about the message. There are
string gadgets for specifying the message's author (your name or
alias), addressee, and subject, gadgets for specifying whether it
is a private message and what area it will be posted in and so on,
and buttons to edit the text, select a tagline, save the finished
message, or cancel it. You can also cancel it with the close
gadget or the Esc key.
- 115 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.1
The string gadget labeled "From:" specifies the message's author.
When reading a Blue Wave packet, this gadget is usually ghosted
and you can't change the name in it. The actual content may
depend on what area is selected; some areas use your real name (as
known to the BBS), and others may use an alias or handle, if the
BBS knows of one. The exception is when the area the message is
in is marked as allowing you to use any name you want. In this
case you can put anything in there, with the default value being
the "default alias name" you chose in the Replying setup window,
or the equivalent gadget in the BBS Local setup window, or if you
left those blank, your logon name on the BBS. Note: if you erase
the gadget and press return in it when it's empty, your logon name
will be inserted, rather than the "any name" default. When
reading a QWK packet, you can put any name into this gadget, but
it will probably have no effect; the mail door will usually fill
in your real name or handle as it deems appropriate. And some
mail doors, it is said, will reject messages if they don't like
the name you put here. The "Handle" gadget (see the next section)
can be used to conveniently switch between your name and alias(es).
The "To:" gadget specifies who the message is addressed to. If it
is a reply, then the default is normally the author of the message
you are replying to, unless you used "Reply to addressee", in
which case the default is the recipient of the message you are
replying to. That is, if John Smith wrote a message to Mary Jones
and you reply to it, then normally your reply would be addressed
to John Smith, but with "Reply to addressee" your reply would go
to Mary Jones instead. When writing an original message, this
gadget starts out empty. You must put something into it, or
Q-Blue will refuse to accept the resulting message -- unless you
have activated the "Permit blank To and Subject" option in the BBS
Local setup window. If you just press return in this gadget when
it's empty, it will be set to "All", unless the cycle gadget
labeled "Privacy" (see below, in this section) is set to "Private".
If you are reading QWK mail, the "From:" and "To:" names may both
get converted to uppercase, if the messages you have downloaded
use uppercase names.
The "Subj.:" gadget lets you specify the title or subject line
that appears at the top of the message. In a Blue Wave packet,
this string can be longer than what fits in the visible area of
the gadget -- up to 71 characters, depending on the BBS. With
QWK, this string, like the two name strings above it, is generally
limited to 25 characters. If this is a reply, the default is to
use the subject of the message being replied to, with "Re:" added
in front if you have the "Add Re:" gadget checked in the Options
setup window. If it's an original message, it starts out empty.
Again, you must put something into it for the message to be
accepted, unless "Permit blank To and Subject" is used. When you
use the "Carbon copy" command, the subject gadget starts out
containing the same text as the message being copied, and no "Re:"
is added. The "To" gadget starts out blank.
- 116 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.1
One exception to the rule that QWK subject lines are limited to 25
characters is when the mail packet contains special "kluge lines"
compatible with those used by the BBS software PCBoard 15.0 and
later, which allows subjects up to 60 characters long to be
specified in a special format at the top of the message text.
This option is activated by the "Use PCBoard extensions" checkmark
gadget in the "Mail" subwindow of the BBS Local setup window. If
any such kluge line is found in the mail packet without an origin
line indicating it came from another system, or if the file
"DOOR.ID" is present in the packet and contains a like saying
"SYSTEM = PCBoard 15.0" (or any higher version number), or the QWK
packet was produced by PCBoard's built-in QWK packer, then Q-Blue
will set this checkmark by guesswork, without changing the
permanent setting. If you manually turn it on or off and use the
BBS Local window's "Save" button, Q-Blue will not try to use
guesswork any more. If the option is set, you can use up to 60
characters in the subject string gadget, and create the "kluge
line" in the uploaded message if necessary.
Important note:
often other software that deals with the message
will not correctly understand this, and in these cases it is
necessary to avoid subjects longer than 25 characters (the same
length as the From and To names) to avoid causing problems. This
especially applies in any situation that requires some special
information to be in the first line of the message, which is a
common way for PCBoard systems to deal with problems like
specifying the destination address for private mail sent over a
network such as FidoNet or the Internet. It may be the case that
if your subject is longer than 25 characters, the other software
will be unable to figure out where the message is supposed to go.
Hopefully upgrades of these programs will resolve the problem
eventually. Because of these problems, Q-Blue is careful not to
stretch a PCBoard subject over the 25 character limit when it adds
"Re:" to the beginning, if it is acting by guesswork in using the
kluge lines. And when QWK netmail is handled with the "QWK
netmail kluge line" method described in section 6.9, Q-Blue
restricts the subject to 25 characters with PCBoard. In other
cases, don't be surprised if a long subject gets truncated when
you reply by netmail. This applies only if you have specified a
"QWK netmail kluge line" string, not if you set the "Use PCBoard
extensions" checkmark and leave the kluge line gadget empty.
Some other mail doors that allow long subject lines are the
Valence door for Searchlight, which permits subjects up to 40
characters long in all cases, and the MKQWK and JC-QWK doors for
Remote Access, which allow a subject of 71 characters on netmail
messages, but not on ordinary posts. JC-QWK, according to its
manual, supports this with internet email also, though MKQWK does
not. In this case, don't be surprised if the subject gets
truncated when you move a netmail message into a public area. The
OLMS door for Remote Access supports 71 character subjects in all
areas.
- 117 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.2
10.2) Other message creation gadgets
The cycle gadget in the upper right of the window, labeled
"Quoting", specifies how the message being replied to will be
quoted when sent to the editor. The possible values are those
explained in section 6.4: "Add >" which puts a greater-than sign
at the beginning of each line, "Add XX>" which adds a greater-than
sign after the author's initials at the beginning of each line
that doesn't already have different initials, "Wrap XX>" which
does the same and also reformats paragraphs, "Verbatim" which puts
the message being replied to into the editor without any
modification, and "None" which does not send anything from the
message being replied to into the editor. The default setting of
this gadget is determined by the identical cycle gadget in the
Replying setup window. When writing an original message rather
than a reply, this gadget is ghosted. A carbon copy is treated as
a reply if the message being copied is one of your replies.
The key shortcut is Q. If you are using an editor setup with only
one editing command instead of two, then the quote setting only
affects the first use of the editor, and after using "Edit" the
first time, the quote style gadget is ghosted.
Below that is a cycle gadget labeled "Privacy:" which tells
whether the message is public or private. In the latter case,
only the addressee (and probably the sysop) will be able to read
it, on the BBS you upload it to. But be warned that if you post
it in a networked message base, such as a FidoNet echo, the
private-message flag may not have any effect. When reading a Blue
Wave packet, some message areas allow only public messages, and
others allow only private ones. Except when the area the message
is being written into allows either one, this gadget is ghosted.
Otherwise the default is for it to be private if the message you
are replying to is private. The key shortcut is P. And bear in
mind that no BBS mail is truly private unless you use encryption.
Below the subject string is a button labeled "Area:". Clicking
this, or pressing the A key while no string gadget is active, will
open up a list window showing all the message areas into which you
can put this message. See section 10.4 for details on using this
window. Just to the right of this gadget is shown the number (in
parentheses) and the full name of the area that the message is
going to go into.
To the right of the area name is a button labeled "Handle", with
key shortcut H. If Q-Blue is aware of more than one name that you
are using -- a real name and an alias, or two aliases -- then this
button will change the contents of the "From" gadget (if it's not
ghosted) from one of your names to another. With QWK packets, the
BBS only knows one name for you to use. With Blue Wave packets,
the BBS tells Q-Blue about both your logon name and an alternate
name. Generally one of these is your real name and the other (if
different) is a handle, but which is which depends on the BBS.
- 118 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.2
With both types of mail, the "default alias" you have selected
within Q-Blue is another possible name for you, and the "Handle"
gadget can switch the "From" gadget between all three kinds of
names. If a default alias is defined in the BBS Local setup
window, it overrides the setting in the Replying setup window.
On the left, under the "Area:" button, is a gadget labeled
"@-email", which is ghosted if there is no area marked for
Internet email. To the right of that are a button labeled
"Netmail" and a string gadget labeled "Netmail address". These
gadgets are ghosted if there is no message area designated for
netmail. With Blue Wave packets, one or more areas may be marked
as netmail areas automatically; with QWK packets you must specify
which area is for netmail in the BBS Local setup window. With
version 3 Blue Wave packets, there may be an area marked as
Internet email, but with either QWK or version 2 Blue Wave, you
must use the BBS Local setup window to specify the area, if the
BBS has one. See sections 10.6 and 10.7 for details on creating
netmail messages and section 10.8 on creating email messages.
10.3) Editing and saving messages
At the bottom of the window are four gadgets. The one on the
right is labeled "Cancel" (keyboard shortcut C) and is used to
discard the message if you decide not to send it. The close
gadget has the same effect, as does the Esc key. If you are re-
editing an existing message, "Cancel" leaves it unchanged. On the
left is "Save" (key shortcut S), which stores the finished message
and closes the window. This gadget is ghosted if you have not yet
used the editor to write anything, except with carbon copies.
To the right of the "Save" button in the window's bottom row of
gadgets is "Edit" (keyboard shortcut E), the one which makes the
whole window worthwhile: it runs your editor to let you type in
the text of your reply. (See section 4 for instructions on how to
set up the editing commands used by this gadget.) Except when
making a carbon copy, when the window is first opened there is a
bent arrow next to this gadget, indicating that pressing return
will start your editor. After the first time you edit the text,
it moves the bent arrow next to the "Save" gadget, which is now no
longer ghosted, and pressing return will save the message. When
making a carbon, the arrow is next to "Save" in the first place.
If you are writing a new message, the text you are editing starts
out empty, or empty except for the "Signature" you have specified
in the Replying or BBS Local setup window (see section 6.5). If
you are writing a reply, it starts out either empty or containing
a quoted version of the message you are replying to, depending on
your editor setup and quoting options (with signature, if any, in
either case). If you are making a carbon copy, it starts out
containing a copy of the text of the message you were reading when
you gave the "Carbon copy" command, and no signature is added. It
- 119 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.3
is not necessary to use "Edit" at all in this case, though you can
if you wish. If the message you are copying is one of your own
replies or new messages, the copy is verbatim. If it is a copy of
a message that you downloaded, a header is added which tells who
originally wrote the message, and so on. It looks something like
this, by default:
** Message forwarded by Q-Blue 2.3
** Posted 10:36 AM on 1 Apr 97 in area "Politics"
** From John Smith to Mary Jones
** Subject "Limbaugh for President"
The original author's and recipient's name, and the original date,
area name, and subject, are inserted in the appropriate places.
To modify the format of this header, change the "C.C. header"
string in the Replying setup window, as described in section 6.5.
Note that the freely distributable evaluation version of Q-Blue
2.3 will not permit you to create more than four replies or new
messages at one time. It will put up an error requester if you
try to add more. This, and the disabling of the "Stealth" tagline
feature described in section 6.8, are the only limitations of the
evaluation version. The registered version allows you to write up
to 200 messages in one upload packet. The one other difference is
that the evaluation version makes you close the "About" requester
at startup time.
It is not always the case that the message that Q-Blue uploads is
exactly what you created in the editor. For instance, it will
convert tab characters in your message into spaces. in Fido-type
echomail areas -- and note that with QWK mail, Q-Blue has to
assume that any area might be an echo, unless the message you are
sending is private -- it will modify any line starting with three
dashes and a space, or consisting of just three dashes, as these
can confuse some mail sending software, sometimes resulting in a
truncated message. And when creating replies for QWK format
uploads, Q-Blue will add an extra line to the bottom called a
"brag line", giving the name and version number of Q-Blue that
created the message. Brag lines are discussed in section 6.7,
because of the way they interact with the tagline style options
documented there.
With Blue Wave format uploads, the mail door adds the brag line,
so Q-Blue does not add one of its own. In this case, what Q-Blue
does is see whether the message ends with a tagline -- that is, a
line starting with three periods and a space. When such a line is
found at the end of the message, Q-Blue will put no newline at the
end of the message, so that there is no blank line between the
tagline and the mail door's brag line. Although Q-Blue has its
own facility for adding or changing such taglines at the ends of
messages (see section 10.9), it will also react this way to a
tagline that you simply type in at the end of a message. In QWK
replies, it will avoid putting a blank line between such a tagline
- 120 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.3
and its own brag line. In general, if you enter a message with a
couple of blank lines at the end, Q-Blue will remove them. If
there are lots of blank lines at the end, Q-Blue will remove a
couple and leave the rest.
After you select "Save", the message you just wrote will become
the currently displayed message on screen if you are in the
replies area, or if you have opened a BBS file instead of a real
mail packet.
Past versions of Q-Blue would warn you if the message you wrote
was more than 97 lines long, because of a possibility that such
long messages would cause difficulty for network software and be
split apart during transmission, or maybe even truncated. Since
such length limits are pretty much a thing of the past these days
in networks such as FidoNet, in Q-Blue 2.3 that feature has been
removed. A few individual BBSes, especially those running outdated
software, may still limit the size of messages in some way.
10.4) Selecting an area for the message
When you click the gadget labeled "Area:" in the message writing
window (or press A), a list window opens up, similar to the one
that shows all the areas that contain messages you can read. The
difference is that this one lists every area known to the BBS (at
least usually), even ones with no messages in them. The gadgets
in the message creation window will be ghosted while the areas
list is open. It opens with the highlight bar on the area that
the message is currently in. By selecting a different area with
this list window, you can cause the message you are writing to be
posted in a different area. This practice is recommended in those
common circumstances where a given area is devoted to a particular
topic, and your conversation is wandering onto a different
subject. If you and the person you are writing to both read some
other area where your message fits in better, moving your reply to
that other area is a good idea. But note that when the message
area is a FidoNet echo or similar large-scale networked
conference, moving the message to another area may cause its
addressee to fail to ever see it.
When you use the "Write new message" command and the area you are
reading is either the bulletins or your own replies, then this
list window will open automatically as soon as the message writing
window is open, forcing you to select an area. If you are reading
a message in one of the BBS's regular areas, then the message you
write is placed in that area by default. Replies and carbon
copies are placed by default in the same area that the message
being copied or replied to is in. If the area it would go in is
"read only" (meaning that posting messages is not allowed here),
the window will open automatically to make you select another
area. If you use the "Write new email" command, it starts out in
the Internet email area.
- 121 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.4
Each area has a number and a name. With a Blue Wave packet, each
one may have a number, a short name sometimes called an "echo
tag", and a longer name that gives a more complete description.
These are listed in the window in that order from left to right,
on each line (see section 7.4). With Blue Wave, it can be the
case that the "number" is a short word instead of just digits, but
this is rare. At the left edge there may be a letter: "E" means
that this is an "echoed" area, shared by more than one BBS. "R"
means that this area is "read only". Q-Blue will show an error
message and make you pick another area if you try to put a message
in a read only area. "N" means that this is a netmail area (see
section 10.6). "U" means that this area is a Usenet newsgroup --
a type of area that is only recognized with version 3 Blue Wave
mail packets. An "@" sign means that this area is for Internet
email. With QWK mail packets, these different types of areas are
not distinguished, except for any areas you have marked in the BBS
Local setup window's "Mail" subwindow as being a netmail or
Internet email area.
As with any other list window, you can use the word search
function described in sections 9.5 and 9.6 to find an elusive area
if there are too many listed to look through. (Some BBSes may
have thousands of areas listed here). Type any part of the
number, short name, or long name into the search window, and it
will reduce the list in the window so it shows only those areas
that include the specified word or phrase. Typing U or Alt-U, or
reopening the search window and clicking on "Nowhere", will
restore the full list. So will closing and reopening the window.
Another way to cut the list down to size, if it contains dozens or
hundreds of areas you're not interested in, is to use the gadget
labeled "Active" at the bottom of the screen. It eliminates areas
you are not reading from the list. In the case of Blue Wave mail,
it includes only those areas which you have selected for reading
in the mail door on the BBS, leaving out the ones you never read.
In the case of QWK mail, this gadget reduces the list to only
those areas which have messages in them in this packet. With QWK
it doesn't know what other areas you might have selected for
reading, but received no mail in today. The gadget is ghosted if
no areas have messages in them.
When this gadget is used and only active areas are listed, the
gadget is changed to read "All" instead of "Active". The keyboard
shortcut is A in either case. Clicking "All", or pressing A
again, restores the full list. It tries to keep the highlight bar
on the same area after switching. Searching can be combined with
this, and doing a search affects both the complete list and the
active areas list, except in one case: when you search the
complete list and none of the areas found are present in the
active list, selecting "Active" at that point will display all of
the active areas, while the full list displays only those found by
the search.
- 122 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.4
As with other list windows, you make your selection by either
double-clicking on the desired line, or moving the highlight bar
to the desired place and pressing return or the spacebar.
Pressing Esc or clicking the close gadget leaves your previous
area selection unchanged. Once you make a selection, the number
and long name of the newly chosen area will be displayed in the
message creation window, to the right of the "Area:" gadget.
10.5) Adding missing areas to the list
There is one extra feature which is present only with QWK packets.
Typically this list window shows every possible area you can write
a message in, when "Active" is not selected, but sometimes this is
not true. Some QWK packets do not bother to describe areas other
than the ones you have specifically asked to read mail in. Some
QWK doors allow this behavior as a configuration choice for each
user, since many people have no wish to be burdened with a long
list of areas they have no interest in reading.
When this is the case, you have a problem if one day you need to
write a message in some other area on the BBS that is not included
in the list. So, Q-Blue lets you add new areas to the list. In
order to do this, you must know the correct
number
that the BBS
uses for the area you want. If you pick the wrong number, the
message may end up in an embarrassingly inappropriate place, or be
lost entirely.
If you are certain you know the right number, click the gadget
labeled "Create" at the bottom of the screen while the areas list
window is open, or press C. (Note: this gadget was labeled "New"
instead of "Create" in version 1.0 of Q-Blue.) It will close the
window listing the areas and open in its place a small window
labeled "Describe the message area to add" containing string
gadgets for the number and name of the area you want. Type the
correct number into the first gadget, and a descriptive name in
the second. You do not have to use the same name that the BBS
uses. "Okay" and "Cancel" gadgets complete the window, with the
return key being equivalent to "Okay". "Cancel" has the same
effect as the close gadget or the Esc key -- the new area window
will close and the list will window reopen just as it was before.
The O and C keys are also shortcuts for the gadgets, as usual.
If you select "Okay", it will check to see if the area number is
valid. It must have no more than seven digits (the limit was five
digits in Q-Blue 2.1 and older), must not be negative, and must
not already be in use in the existing list of areas. Q-Blue will
give you an error message if the number is not valid, or if you
leave the name empty. If everything is valid, it will close this
window and reopen the window listing areas, with the highlight bar
on your newly created area, at the end of the list. Pressing
return will select this as the area the message goes in. When the
new area is created, the BBS file in the context directory is
- 123 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.5
rewritten to include the newly created area, so that if you use
the "Open (no packet)" command, you can write messages in that
area without having to use the "Create" option over again.
However, this information will be lost again if you download and
open a fresh packet from the BBS that does not include that area.
The "Create" option can be used not only when writing a message,
but when selecting a QWK netmail or email area in the BBS Local
setup window (see section 6.9), or selecting areas to download
future mail from with the "Mail door" command (sections 11.4 and
11.5).
10.6) Writing netmail messages
Q-Blue includes a feature which allows you to send messages via
"Netmail": a method by which you can send a private message to a
single user on a BBS which is not the one you are uploading your
replies to, but is connected to that BBS by a Fido-type network.
In such networks, each connected system has an address consisting
of up to four numbers in the form "Zone:Net/Node.Point" (example:
1:2345/678.9). Because the QWK packet format has no standard
method of handling netmail, special configuration is required to
use the netmail feature with QWK packets. This setup procedure is
described in section 6.9.
Netmail is handled with two gadgets in the message writing window:
a button labeled "Netmail" with key shortcut N, below the space
where the name of the current message area is written, and a
string gadget to its right labeled "Net address". The string
gadget is ghosted except when the current area selected for the
message is a netmail area. To put a message into the netmail
area, you could click the "Area:" button and scroll through the
list looking for the right one (netmail areas are marked by a
letter N in contrasting color at the left edge), or you can just
click the "Netmail" button, which automatically puts the message
in a netmail area.
Sometimes there is more than one netmail area, which is often
necessary if the BBS is connected to more than one separate
network. In this case you'll have to figure out which netmail
area to use to get to the right destination, judging by the names
given the different netmail areas, or by instructions provided by
your sysop. When there is more than one netmail area, clicking
the "Netmail" gadget repeatedly will cycle through them in turn,
eventually bringing you back to the original (non-netmail) area
you started in. If there is more than one netmail area and you
are in a non-netmail area when you click the button, the first
one it jumps to will be the last netmail area you put a message
in, or the first one in the areas list if you haven't written any
other netmail yet. If it can't figure out what non-netmail area
a message would be associated with, then it will open the areas
list window.
- 124 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.6
When you put the message in a netmail area, either with the
"Areas" list or the "Netmail" gadget, the "Net address" gadget
becomes enabled, and if you are writing a reply, Q-Blue tries to
fill the gadget with the net address that the message you are
replying to originated from. It will typically also set the
"Privacy" cycle gadget to Private, since netmail is usually
intended only for one recipient. It will activate this string
gadget if it hasn't got an address in it yet.
The process of figuring out the right address to reply to may not
be 100% reliable, and if the address you see there is not where
you want to send the message, or if you are writing a message that
is not a reply, you have to specify an address. With Blue Wave
mail, Q-Blue will flash the screen and activate the address gadget
if you try to save a netmail message with no net address, just as
if you tried to save a message with no name in the "To" gadget.
But with QWK mail, there are some BBSes which have you put both
netmail and local messages in the same area. Because of this, the
net address is not mandatory in QWK netmail areas. If you do not
enter an address, the message will be posted as local mail instead
of as netmail.
The most essential parts of the address are the net number and the
node number, which specify what BBS to send the message to. They
are decimal numbers from 0 to 65535 separated by a slash, for
example "2240/176". They are usually preceded by a zone number,
which may be optional but which, in these days of BBSes often
being connected to more than one network at a time, you'd better
not leave out. The zone number precedes the net number and is
followed by a colon, for example "1:2240/176". In FidoNet the
zone number more or less specifies which continent the BBS is on,
where 1 stands for North America, 2 for Europe, and so on; in
other cases the number is generally used to indicate which of many
smaller networks the destination BBS is to be found in.
The point number is zero when the address is that of a full-
fledged BBS or "node", and in this case it can be left out. When
the addressee is a "point" -- a private mail system hooked to the
network, which can be thought of as a sort of micro-BBS in which
the sysop is the only user -- then you must specify the point
number after the node number with a period in between, for example
"1:2345/678.9". To recap: in this example, 1 is the zone number,
2345 is the net number, 678 is the node number, and 9 is the point
number.
In many cases, it is possible to fill in the address in this
gadget by copying the right address into the system clipboard and
then pressing right-Amiga-V while the gadget is active. Like all
string gadgets in Q-Blue's windows, it uses that keystroke to
replace its current contents with the text in the system
clipboard. Often you can clip an address from the text of a
message onscreen using the mouse (see section 9.2), and paste it
- 125 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.6
into this gadget. This can also be done, of course, with people's
names in the "To" gadget.
If the address you enter into the string gadget is not a valid
specimen of this syntax, Q-Blue will give you an error message.
Q-Blue will also reject an address that is the same as that of the
BBS you downloaded the mail packet from, except with QWK packets,
which leave Q-Blue with no idea what the BBS's own address is.
Local mail areas should be used for such cases.
Once a valid address is there, you can if desired switch the
message out of the netmail area by clicking the "Netmail" button
again. It will go back to whatever area it was in before you
clicked "Netmail" the first time, and ghost the address gadget.
Or if there is more than one netmail area, clicking "Netmail"
enough times will eventually bring you back to that original area.
If you are replying to a netmail message and it doesn't know of
any other non-netmail area to go to, it will just cycle between
the different netmail areas.
The rest of the process of writing a netmail message proceeds
exactly as usual... with one further possible complication.
10.7) Netmail attribute flags
Each netmail message has certain "attribute" flags, which may give
it special properties. Q-Blue may open a small extra window to
allow you to choose attributes for this message. Each sysop may
or may not allow users to make use of any particular attribute.
Quite often, no special attributes at all are allowed; in this
case no extra window opens. The window does not open when reading
QWK mail, except with a very few mail doors for which Q-Blue knows
the right "kluge" to set them. Many of these attributes are not
normally used except by sysops. If any are permitted, Q-Blue will
open a window containing seven checkmark gadgets. All are
initially unchecked, so that no special attributes are set, and
those which you cannot alter are ghosted. You may close this
window after you have the attribute settings correct, or leave it
open until done writing the message, in which case it will close
along with the main message writing window. The window will also
close if you move the message to a non-netmail area.
Each checkmark gadget has a numeral for a keyboard shortcut, from
1 to 7, which will toggle the attribute on or off. The seven
gadgets are:
- #1 is "
Hold
". This attribute causes the netmail message to sit
and wait on the BBS until the sysop personally clears it to
be sent out on the network, or the receiving system calls and
picks it up. Some sysops force all messages to be held this
way, to prevent people from sending netmail that ends up
costing them too much money on their phone bills.
- 126 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.7
- #2 is "
Kill
", short for "kill after sending". This attribute
makes the message be automatically deleted after it has been
sent out to the other system. If you use this, keep in mind
that the reliability of netmail arriving at its destination
may be doubtful in some networks.
- #3 is "
F'Req
", which stands for "file request". With this
attribute, the subject line of the message has a special
meaning: it is the name of a file or files on the other
system. This message will, if all parties involved
cooperate, cause the other system to transmit the named
file(s) through the network back to your BBS. If you are not
the sysop, be sure your sysop is prepared to deal with files
arriving that way, and willing to hand the file over to you
when it arrives, before using this option.
- #4 is "
F'Att
", which stands for "file attached". This causes a
file on the local BBS to be sent to the other system along
with this message. The file must already be on the BBS and
ready to send before this option will work, and this option
is normally usable only by sysops.
- #5 is "
Direct
". Normally (nowadays) netmail messages are sent
from one system to another similarly to the way public echo
mail is sent: in hops that may go through half a dozen other
systems before reaching the destination. If "Direct" is
specified, the mail processor will attempt to connect
straight to the receiving system, eliminating the steps in
between, saving time (possibly days), and often causing much
higher phone charges. "Direct" may be useful for making sure
that a message really does get through to its destination if
that is normally questionable, and you can afford the cost.
- #6 is "
Crash
". Originally this was like "Direct" except that
it not only dials directly to the receiving system, it also
(at least typically) does not wait until the phone rates are
cheap to do so. If "Crash" was used during business hours, it
could be quite a bit more expensive than "Direct". But
nowadays the trend is toward treating the "Crash" flag in a
different way, causing the mail to be sent as soon as it is
reasonably affordable, e.g. after business hours. And with
some mailers, it may not even be sent directly, though the
number of intermediate hops should still be minimal.
- #7 is "
Immediate
", which means that the message should be
transmitted right away regardless of cost. Some mail
software does not recognize this, but when it is recognized,
it tells the mailer to drop everything to send this one
message right away.
Needless to say, most sysops do not allow their callers to freely
use relatively expensive flags like "Crash" and "Immediate".
"F'Att" is rarely used except by sysops, or point system users --
- 127 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.7
ordinary BBS callers usually would not be able to manage this at
all except in close cooperation with the sysop. "F'Req" is also
usually restricted, since if a large file is transferred this can
be even more expensive than crash messages.
If you have closed this window and wish to reopen it, you can do
so by moving the message to a non-netmail area and then back into
netmail. You can do this either by selecting from the areas list
window or clicking the netmail button. Two clicks will do it if
there is only one netmail area.
10.8) Writing Internet messages
To write an Internet email message, you use the gadget labeled
"@-email", just to the left of the "Netmail" button. Its keyboard
shortcut is the @ sign (you have to hold the shift key down). It
is similar to sending Fido netmail in many ways, but there are
some significant differences. One is that you can move a message
into netmail just by selecting a netmail area in the list window
by clicking the "Area:" button, but the email features are not
activated by just putting the message in the right area; you
must
use the "@-email" gadget. Another difference is that more than
one Fido-type netmail area may exist, but Q-Blue assumes there is
only a single Internet email area. If a BBS does not have an
email area set up, the "@-email" gadget is ghosted. The "Write
new email" menu command, as mentioned above, is a shortcut for
opening the window and then clicking this gadget.
Version 3 Blue Wave mail has direct support for Internet email,
allowing destination addresses up to 99 characters long. But most
BBSes do not have this direct support set up. With QWK mail or
version 2 Blue Wave mail, and possibly even some version 3 Blue
Wave BBSes, a "kluge" must be used to tell the system what address
the email is to be sent to. Q-Blue will automatically use the
correct kluge if you put the correct settings for the BBS into the
BBS Local setup window's "Mail" sub-window, which is explained in
section 6.10. The most common kluge method allows addresses up to
75 characters long. The method used by Searchlight BBS is limited
to 66 characters, and some PCBoard BBSes may support 120 character
addresses. If one of these two proprietary methods needs to be
used, the BBS Local setup must be configured accordingly.
When the "@-email" gadget is used, the caption of the message
composing window has "[Internet]" appended to it. Unless the
"To:" string gadget already contains a valid internet address
(which generally consists of a series of words separated by
periods with an at-sign somewhere in the middle, and no spaces),
then the name there is removed. If you are replying to a message
that has an originating email address in its header (the lines
shown in cyan color at the top of the message body), then that
address will be inserted into the "To:" string. If there is a
subject line in the message's header, the contents of the "Subj.:"
- 128 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.8
gadget may also be changed. If you are replying to a message in
the email area with a valid originating address, your reply is
email by default without having to click "@-email".
One way that email is often sent is through a FidoNet "gateway".
In this case, the message is actually sent as netmail to a machine
on FidoNet which translates it into email form. The BBS Local
setup window allows you to specify the FidoNet address of the
gateway. When email is configured this way, using the "@-email"
gadget causes the netmail address string gadget to be enabled, and
the gate address specified in the BBS Local setup is copied into
it. The netmail attributes window may also open. Since this is
both a netmail message and an Internet message, you can set the
various netmail options, including a different gate address,
though the "To:" gadget still holds an Internet address. If the
gateway address field in the BBS Local setup window is blank, you
must manually supply the Fido address each time you send email.
This applies only to Blue Wave mail; with QWK, the BBS Local
gateway address field must contain an address or Q-Blue will
assume that email is not gated.
Clicking on "@-email" again turns the message back into non-email
form. The "To:" gadget gets its previous contents restored, and
so does the netmail address gadget, if it was in use.
With version 3 Blue Wave mail packets, some areas are marked as
Usenet newsgroups. As of this writing, many BBSes have newsgroup
areas, but are not able to distinguish them from other kinds of
areas. Q-Blue treats these mostly like Fido-style echo areas,
except that if you make an Internet email reply, it will scan the
message for appropriate header lines as if it were an Internet
message. True newsgroup areas differ from other areas in two
ways: messages are not addressed to any individual recipient -- in
effect, every message is to "All" -- and it is possible for a
single message to be present in more than one newsgroup at a time.
Q-Blue has support for posting to multiple newsgroups which is
rudimentary but usable: the "To:" string contains a list of the
newsgroups that the message is to be posted in, separated by
commas. The gadget is labeled "NGrps:" instead of "To:" in this
case. This list of names can be up to 400 characters long. If
the message being replied to specifies a set of newsgroups, Q-Blue
will copy the list into this gadget, unless it's too long. In an
effort to reduce "spamming" (the annoying practice of posting a
message to far more newsgroups than it belongs in), Q-Blue will
ignore entirely any newsgroup list over 400 characters. If the
gadget is empty, the message will be posted into the single
newsgroup area that is shown next to the "Area:" gadget.
10.9) Taglines
Over the last decade, a custom has grown up among many people who
post messages on BBS systems. The custom is to add a little extra
- 129 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.9
one-line joke or saying to the end of each message. These little
additions are called "taglines".
Q-Blue's tagline feature is usually accessed from the message
writing window. There is a command button labeled "Tagline" at
the bottom, between the "Edit" and "Cancel" gadgets. Clicking it
or pressing T causes the taglines window to open. It is also
possible to cause this window to open automatically, with settings
in the Replying setup window, as described in section 6.7. The
first time you open it, Q-Blue will load your taglines file. The
window can also be opened with the "Maintain taglines" menu
command, which also uses T as its key shortcut, when you are not
writing a message.
The pathname of the file it automatically loads is specified in a
string gadget in the Replying setup window, or can be overridden
for a single BBS with an equivalent string gadget in the BBS Local
setup window. If none is specified or it cannot be read, then the
ASL file requester opens so you can select a file to load. The
file you select is a plain text file, with one tagline on each
line. It may also contain blank lines, and comment lines which
begin with a ";" (semicolon) character. An example file called
"Taglines" is included with Q-Blue. It contains several hundred
taglines. Some people collect thousands. The window can list up
to 32000 taglines, but watch out if your tagline file grows very
large, because Q-Blue holds the entire file in memory. If you
have thousands of taglines, it may be best to divide them into
several files. The next time you use the window it opens
instantly.
The taglines window is simply a scrolling list window with one
valid tagline on each line. Blank lines, comment lines (starting
with a semicolon), and lines that are too long to use, are not
shown in the list. The current selection (the highlighted line)
is set randomly when the window opens, except when the "Default
tagline" setting is "Sequence", in which case it shows the tagline
after the one last used. There is a string gadget at the bottom
of the window, which holds a copy of the currently selected line.
It is automatically updated as you select different lines.
When the default tagline setting is "Sequence", each time a
tagline is used, Q-Blue will set the filenote of the currently
loaded tagline file to a number indicating which one was last
used. This way, it knows where to resume the sequence when you
run it again. If you manually select a different tagline for any
message, the sequence will then continue from that point. There
is an exception: if you write a new tagline in the string gadget,
or the tagline you pick is any that was added to the end of the
list after the file was loaded, the sequence position will be left
unchanged. The number saved in the filenote may be slightly
inaccurate if you delete taglines from the list, though often it
can compensate. If you load from one file and then save the list
to a different file, the second gets filenoted from then on.
- 130 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.9
You can edit that string gadget to create a new tagline. When you
press return on a new or modified line in the string gadget, it is
added to the list in the window at the end, becoming the new
current selection. If the new line is partly the same as the
original that you edited, a requester asks you if you want to
delete the old version. Note that if you have used a search on
the tagline window, creating a new tagline with the string gadget
will force the window to be restored to its unsearched condition,
unless the line you enter matches one already displayed.
Unfortunately, it is not possible at present to insert new
taglines into the middle of the list; they always appear at the
end. Any major editing of the tagline file is best done with a
text editor.
Once you select a tagline for a message you are writing, it will
be visible at the bottom of that message after it has been saved.
But when you edit the message, the tagline will not appear in the
text being edited. In this it differs from the "Signature" text
that you can specify in the Replying setup window, which does get
loaded into the editor as part of your message.
If you are reading a Blue Wave packet, certain message areas may
forbid taglines. When you post a message in such an area, Q-Blue
will not allow a tagline to be added, and if you move a message
with a tagline into such an area, it will be removed. As of this
writing, most BBSes do not have any areas that forbid tagines.
Any time a tagline file is unloaded, either when it's time to load
a different one or when you exit Q-Blue, you may be prompted with
a reminder that any changes to your current tagline list have not
been saved. This will happen if you delete any taglines, or add
any new ones
other than
lines that you type in just to attach to
the current reply. The requester has the options "Save", which
brings up an ASL requester to select where to save them; "Discard",
which ignores the changes; and "Cancel", which aborts whatever
action would have unloaded the old tagline file. Remember: if you
add a tagline for use on the current message you are writing,
Q-Blue will
not
remind you to save the tagline list (unless there
are other changes also), so if you want such a tagline to be a
permanent addition, save it manually (see next section).
10.10) Tagline window options
There are six gadget options at the bottom of the screen when
the tagline list window is open. Besides the "Search" option that
is available in every list window, the options are "Delete",
"Random", "None", "Load", and "saVe".
"Delete" removes the currently selected tagline from the list,
after asking you with a requester if you're sure. Either the Del
key or the letter D works as a shortcut for it. "Random" tells it
to arbitrarily select a different line. Use this when you don't
- 131 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.10
like the one selected but don't have a strong preference for
another line to use. The selection is not quite random: it avoids
reselecting lines you have already seen (except when the list is
reduced by a word search). Use "Search" if you want to locate a
particular line, or lines containing particular words -- this
makes it easy to find those relevant to a particular topic.
Sections 9.5 and 9.6 describe how to use the search window.
"None" tells it that this message should have no tagline. It
closes the window, and erases any tagline the message already had.
This is different from simply canceling the window with the close
gadget or Esc key, which leaves intact any previously selected
tagline. Another way to leave your message with no tagline is to
activate the string gadget, erase its contents, and then press
return.
"Load" brings up the ASL file requester so you can select a new
tagline file. Your selection is
copied into the "File containing
taglines" string gadget in the BBS Local setup window
(unless you
just reload the same file already loaded), so if you use that
window's "Save" gadget, the new choice becomes permanent for this
BBS. The global default setting is not changed. This means that
when you close the packet and open another one, Q-Blue will revert
to using the original default tagline file (if any); the new
selection you've made only lasts until the packet is closed.
The "saVe" gadget differs from most other Q-Blue command buttons
in that its key shortcut is not its first letter. The shortcut is
V, because S is used for search. It brings up the ASL file
requester and lets you save a copy of the taglines file. Any new
taglines that you have added to the end of it are included, and
any that you deleted will be left out. All comments and other
lines not shown in the taglines window will be preserved when the
new taglines file is written out. The default place to save it is
into the same file it was loaded from. Just as with the "Load"
option,
if you specify a new filename it will be copied into the
BBS Local setup window's "File containing taglines" gadget
.
Offline readers with fancy tagline support generally include a
feature for "stealing" taglines from messages you are reading.
Q-Blue does not have a function specifically for this purpose, but
it has something almost as good: you can paste any text from the
system clipboard into the tagline window. That window's string
gadget, like all string gadgets in Q-Blue (see section 1.3)
responds to the keystroke right-Amiga-V by replacing its contents
with whatever text is in the clipboard, if there is any. And when
the tagline window is open, this works even when the string gadget
is not active: a press of right-Amiga-V activates the gadget and
pastes from the clipboard into it. Combined with the ability to
clip text from messages with the mouse (described in section 9.2),
this makes tagline stealing fairly easy. Just drag the mouse over
the tagline you want to steal (even if it's a phrase in the middle
of a message instead of an actual tagline), open the taglines
- 132 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 10.10
window (use the "Maintain taglines" command if you are not
currently writing a message), and press right-Amiga-V. You can
then edit the result in the window's string gadget if desired.
11) COMPLETING THE UPLOAD PACKET
11.1) File download requests
Replies are not the only thing that Q-Blue lets you create in
response to a mail packet. With at least some types of mail
bundling software, you can also include other material in the
upload packet. Q-Blue lets you specify extra information that
instructs the mail door to, for instance, change the list of areas
that it should download mail from.
BBSes don't just offer messages to read, of course. They also
offer files you can download. And many BBSes provide a service of
including, in your mail packets, a list of all new files that have
become available for download since the previous packet. With
some BBSes, Q-Blue lets you include in your reply upload a list of
which files you want to download, so you don't have to note down
the names and remember later, while calling the BBS, to go to the
files section and get them.
The "Request D/L" option (keyboard shortcut Alt-R) allows you to
specify up to ten files that you want to download. This is useful
if you are reading a list of new files, or if a message you read
mentions the name of a file you want to have a copy of. When you
use this feature, the mail door will prompt you to receive these
files immediately after you upload your replies, so you don't have
to go to the BBS's file area and tell it the names of the files
manually. At present Q-Blue only supports this for Blue Wave
mail, because QWK methods for doing this are inconsistent at best,
and in most cases nonexistent.
When "Request D/L" is selected, a small window titled "File
download requests" will open, containing ten short string gadgets.
Simply type the names of the desired files into these string
gadgets and close the window. A small extra file will be written
into your replies directory, which will be included in the packet
you upload to the BBS. In a few cases, some of the ten gadgets
may be ghosted; this means that the sysop of the BBS has set a
limit lower than ten on the number of files you can request for
download. These filenames are limited to 12 characters, because
the current Blue Wave format unfortunately assumes that only
MS-DOS compatible filenames are used. If the BBS supports longer
filenames, you'll just have to download such files manually for
the time being.
- 133 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 11.1
When you are done, just close the window. There is no "Cancel"
option -- if you wish to undo something you have to erase or edit
the string gadget manually. As with other Q-Blue string gadgets,
you can paste from the clipboard into a gadget by pressing right-
Amiga-V while it is active. This can be useful if a bulletin
listing newly downloadable files is on the screen; use the mouse
to drag-select the name of a file, and paste it into a string
gadget in the "File download requests" window.
Naturally, the possibility exists that the BBS may fail to send
you the files. This might happen if, for instance, the BBS
insists that you have to upload some files first in order to gain
downloading privileges.
11.2) Blue Wave mail door option flags
The Blue Wave mail format allows you to control most of the
options of the mail door while you are reading messages in Q-Blue.
This is done with the "Mail door" option in the "Replies" menu, or
with the key shortcut Alt-M. This command opens a window titled
"Blue Wave mail door configuration", which in turn allows you to
open two more windows controlling further aspects of the mail
door's behavior, one of which is used for selecting which message
areas you want to read.
When the "Mail door" option is used while reading a QWK mail
packet, it opens that area selection window only, because the only
mail door configuration option that Q-Blue supports with QWK mail
is the ability to add and drop message areas. See the next two
sections for a description of how to use that window.
The Blue Wave format's method of adjusting mail door settings
offline has changed with recent mail door releases. Some
configuration options will only be available with version 3 Blue
Wave packets. With older version 2 mail packets, there are four
checkmark gadgets at the top of the window, four string gadgets,
one cycle gadget, and three command buttons. With a version 3
mail packet, there are five additional checkmarks, one numeric
string gadget, and one additional cycle gadget.
The checkmark gadgets at the top of the window each control a door
option that can be turned on or off. They are:
- "Hotkey menu commands", keyboard shortcut H. When this is
checked, the mail door will respond immediately to any
command letter you type into it. When it's not checked, you
have to press return for a command to be executed.
- "Expert (brief) menus", keyboard shortcut E. When checked, the
command menus displayed by the door consist of a simple one-
line list of which letters it recognizes. Otherwise it
displays a menu screen with a short summary of each command.
- 134 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 11.2
- "Color graphics in menus", keyboard shortcut C. When checked,
the door will use ANSI sequences in the text it displays in
order to create multicolored pictures on your terminal's
display, if your terminal knows how to display ANSI color.
Turning this off causes its output to be monochromatic,
containing no ANSI sequences. In theory it's also supposed to
make it use only basic ASCII characters with no special IBM
characters, but often the doors use these characters anyway.
- "Include my replies", keyboard shortcut I. When checked, any
replies you upload from Q-Blue will be included with the new
messages next time you download more mail. Otherwise, your
replies will be left out.
- "Filter out Fido control lines", keyboard shortcut F. This one
is present with version 3 only. If unchecked, the door will
include special kluge lines used by Fido-compatible networks
in each echomail message. Each such line is preceded by a
Ctrl-A character, and shows as purple when displayed by
Q-Blue. Some mail doors ignore your preferred setting of
this option. And the "MSGID:" kluge line generally will not
be filtered out even if it is checked.
- "Numeric file extensions", keyboard shortcut N. This is also
present with version 3 only. Normally, Blue Wave mail doors
create packets with names like WHATEVER.MO1, in which the
extension is based on the day of the week. If this is
checked, the packets will have extensions consisting of
digits only, such as WHATEVER.047.
Each of these checkmark options, like all of the other gadgets, is
originally set to display how the mail door was configured at the
time of the mail download. Or, if you had previously changed some
of the settings, and then reopened the same mail packet and
reloaded the unfinished replies, the changes you made then will be
displayed when the window is opened. With version 3 mail packets,
the changes are stored in a file with the extension ".OLC" in your
replies directory, which gets included in your upload packet.
With version 2 packets, a file with the extension ".PDQ" is used.
11.3) More Blue Wave mail door configuration choices
With version 3 packets, immediately below the six checkmarks are
a numeric string gadget labeled "Max pkt size (K)" and a cycle
gadget labeled "List of new files". The former tells the mail
door that it should not create mail packets larger than a given
size, for instance 200K bytes if you put "200" into this gadget.
If the gadget is left blank or contains "0", there is no limit.
At least some Blue Wave doors will ignore this setting, and may
even display random incorrect values in it. If this happens,
there is nothing to do but ignore it.
- 135 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 11.3
The "List of new files" cycle gadget has three choices: "None",
"Text", and "ANSI". The latter two indicate that each mail packet
should include a list of new files available for download on the
BBS. Select "None" if you don't want such a list. If "ANSI" is
selected, the list will be written with ANSI color codes in the
text. Since these do not show in current versions of Q-Blue, you
might as well just select "Text".
Below these two, or below the first four checkmark gadgets with a
version 2 packet, are a string gadget and a cycle gadget. They
are used to control the Blue Wave password security feature. If
you desire, the Blue Wave door can demand that you give a password
before it lets you download mail, or it can make Q-Blue demand the
password before you can open the packet, or both. The string
gadget labeled "Password" contains the word that you will need to
type in when it asks. The cycle gadget labeled "When" tells when
you will be asked. If it says "Never", the password is ignored.
If it says "Door", the mail door will require the password before
letting you download your next batch of mail. "Reader" means that
Q-Blue will ask for the password when you open the packet. "Both"
means you will be asked at both of those times. The key shortcut
for cycling this gadget is W. Both of these gadgets are set to
display the password options, if any, that the door is currently
using. If you change them, then after you upload replies the door
will use the new settings.
Below the password string gadget are three string gadgets labeled
"Macro #1", "Macro #2", and "Macro #3". These gadgets are used to
contain sequences of Blue Wave "bundling commands". These are the
cryptic commands that you can type into a Blue Wave door after it
shows you what messages can be downloaded in what areas. The
macros can be used to store a complex sequence that you use often.
Full documentation of these commands is in the Blue Wave mail door
user's manual, which is included with registered copies of Q-Blue
under the name "BW-Door.doc", in the "DOCS.lha" archive.
With version 3 mail packets, each macro string gadget has a
checkmark to its right. They are labeled "#1 auto", "#2 auto",
and "#3 auto", and their keyboard shortcuts are 1, 2, and 3. If
any of these is checked, the macro string to its left will be
automatically executed whenever a mail packet is prepared for you.
The uppermost of the three command buttons in the lower right
corner of the window is labeled "Key/Fil", shortcut K. It opens a
second window labeled "Keywords and filters used by Blue Wave mail
door", which can be used simultaneously with the main mail door
window. Using the gadget again, or closing the main window, will
close that window too. It contains twenty string gadgets, in two
groups of ten. On the left is a group labeled "Keywords to look
for:" and on the right are ten labeled "Filter words to avoid:".
When the Blue Wave door searches for new messages to download, it
checks the From, To, and Subject heading lines of each message to
see if any of the keywords or filter words can be found in them.
- 136 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 11.3
The "K" bundling command can be used to tell the door that in one
area, or all areas, only messages that contain keywords (plus
messages addressed to you) should be downloaded. The "F" bundling
command tells it to download only messages that do
not
contain any
of the filter words. You can set any of these gadgets to contain
the words, names, or short phrases that the door should check for.
The middle command button is "Areas", shortcut A. It opens the
window that lets you select message areas to download, which is
described in sections 11.4 and 11.5. The gadgets in the main mail
door window, and the keywords and filters window if it is open,
will be ghosted while the area selection window is open. If you
click the close gadget of the main mail door window, the area
selection window will also close, as will the keyword window.
The final button is "Reset", shortcut R. This lets you undo any
changes you have made to the door's option settings, or keywords
and filters. It does not affect changes made in the areas
selection window -- that has its own separate "Reset" option. If
any changes have been made, it will put up a requester asking if
you are sure you want to undo changes, with "Yes" and "Cancel"
options. If you select "Yes", then all of the settings in this
window, and the keywords and filters, will be changed back to the
settings that the mail door is already using. If you use "Reset"
and there are no areas marked ADD or DROP in the area selection
window, the ".OLC" or ".PDQ" file in the replies directory will be
deleted. If there are no changes to undo, the gadget is ghosted.
11.4) Mail door message area selection
Sometimes, when you are reading mail, you decide that some message
area is boring and you don't want the mail door to download its
messages to you any more. Or you see an area that intrigues you,
and you want to tell the mail door to send you the messages in it.
The window for controlling this function in Q-Blue works somewhat
differently for QWK mail and Blue Wave mail. When reading a QWK
mail packet, this window is accessed by using the "Mail door"
option of the "Replies" menu, shortcut Alt-M. With Blue Wave
mail, the "Mail door" option opens a window which contains an
"Areas" gadget, which in turn opens this window when clicked. The
window is titled "Select areas to add or drop from downloads", and
in form it is very much like the list window used to select what
area to put a reply you are writing into (see section 10.4), but
its usage is different, with some unique quirks.
The areas available are listed in a scrollable window like others
in Q-Blue, one on each line. Each area's number and name(s) are
shown, and there may be characters indicating which areas are read
only, netmail, or echoed, exactly as in the window for selecting
an area for a message you write. The one addition is a column
along the left edge, labeled "Read?" at the top. It shows "Yes"
for each area the door is currently set to download messages from,
- 137 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 11.4
and "no" for each area the door is ignoring... except with QWK
mail, where any area that does not have messages in it in this
packet is labeled "?" because Q-Blue does not know whether you are
downloading it or not. With version 3 Blue Wave mail, it may also
say "Pers" or "PAll" if you have set the area to download only
personal mail, or only personal messages plus those addressed to
"All". Any changed settings you specify will be shown in bright
colors -- white on red in the default eight color palette. See
section 7.1 for general instructions on using scrolling list
windows.
Any changes you specify take effect once you upload your replies
to the mail door. In the case of QWK mail, it works by writing
empty messages addressed to a special name used by the mail door.
A file in the download packet named "DOOR.ID" tells it what name
to use. If that file is not present, A requester will warn you
that the feature may not work. In some cases it works even when
"DOOR.ID" is not present... and occasionally, it fails even if one
is
present. For instance, the built-in QWK feature in Maximus
BBS software makes the mistake of including a "DOOR.ID" even
though the feature of adding and dropping areas is actually not
supported at all. When no "DOOR.ID" file is present, any ADD or
DROP messages you create will be addressed to "QMAIL", a name many
(but not all) mail doors will respond to.
With Blue Wave mail, a special file with the BBS's packet name
followed by the extension ".OLC" or ".PDQ" is created, which
specifies both the door options (see section 11.2 and 11.3) and,
if any areas were added or dropped, the complete list of which
areas should be downloaded. This means that if you download a
packet and then change some of the door's settings while still
online, and then upload replies containing a ".PDQ" file, the
changes you made online will be forgotten, replaced entirely by
those specified in Q-Blue.
To drop a message area, you simply click the gadget labeled "Drop"
or press D. This gadget can also be used to cancel any add or
drop setting you have previously marked an area with. Adding a
message area is more complex, because there are further options
available with many mail doors. The gadget labeled "Add...", key
shortcut A, may open a small requester window with further
options. With version 2 Blue Wave mail, it simply marks the area
as added. With version 3 Blue Wave mail, it opens a small window
containing three "radio buttons", each representing one possible
way to read messages in the area. The three choices are "All
messages", "Only personal msgs", and "Personal + to All". The key
shortcuts are A, O, and P. The first button, which is activated
by default, causes all new messages in the area to be downloaded
with each packet. The second causes all messages not addressed to
you personally to be ignored. The third includes those personal
messages, plus messages addressed to "All". The area will then be
marked "Add" or "Pers" or "PAll" in the list window. No method is
provided for specifying how many old messages to download in the
- 138 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 11.4
new area; you have to use "bundling commands" at download time if
you want to control this.
With QWK mail, the little requester is completely different. It
includes two checkmarks and a string gadget. The first checkmark
is labeled "ADD: read this area" and the second, which may be
disabled with some mail doors, is labeled "RESET: ignore old
msgs". Their key shortcuts are A and R. By default, the first is
checked. It indicates that an ADD command should be sent to the
mail door, telling it to start downloading mail from this area.
The second indicates that a RESET command should be sent, telling
it to download new mail only; otherwise the default is usually to
download every available old message. Both commands can be sent
together by checking both. The string gadget allows extra text to
be added to these commands. Different QWK mail doors vary in what
syntax they support for extra information, if any. Consult the
documentation of the QWK door you are using. In the simplest
case, when you just want to start reading an area, you probably
just want to set both checkmarks and leave the string blank, but
if your door supports fancier commands, you can make use of them.
Some mail doors support commands to tell it how many old messages
to download, with a syntax such as "RESET HIGH-20" or "ADD -50".
By typing the extra information into the string gadget, it can be
appended to whichever command you issue.
If both ADD and RESET
are checked, the extra text will be appended to the RESET command.
For example, the first example might be accomplished by checking
RESET and entering "HIGH-20" in the string gadget. ADD would be
checked if this is an area you have not previously been reading;
if you just want to "rewind" an area you are already reading, it
should be unchecked. The second example would be accomplished by
checking ADD but not RESET, and putting "-50" in the string
gadget. Some doors allow you to specify that only personal
messages should be downloaded; the most common way to do this is
to check the ADD box and put "YOURS" in the string gadget. Do not
check RESET, as a rule; "RESET YOURS" won't work. Some doors also
support downloading personal mail plus mail to "All"; putting "YA"
instead of "YOURS" in the string gadget is the most common form
that is supported for this purpose.
If you check neither the ADD nor the RESET gadget, the string
gadget can be used to specify a command having nothing to do with
either of these. For instance, some mail doors use a command such
as "YOUR" or "ADDY" instead of "ADD YOURS" to specify that
personal mail only should be downloaded; in this case you should
put the required word in the string gadget and leave both the ADD
and RESET gadgets unchecked. If you leave both unchecked, the
area will be marked "misc" instead of "Add" in the areas list. If
you check the RESET gadget, the area will be market "Rset", or
"AddR" if ADD is also checked.
Q-Blue does not support issuing more than one command per message
area, except in the single case of combining "ADD" and "RESET",
- 139 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 11.4
with extra arguments on the latter. But it is possible to do QWK
configuration "by hand", by writing a message that is addressed to
the name of the mail door. Consult the documentation of the
particular mail door you are using for how to do this, and what
options are accepted. Q-Blue's "BBS Information" requester
(section 9.3) displays the mail door name that such control
messages should be addressed to, if a "DOOR.ID" file was present.
This name is what you put into the "To" field of your control
messages. When you combine handmade control messages with adding
and dropping done with the list window, the manually created
messages will be processed by the mail door after the automatic
ones, so they have the final say.
11.5) Extra options available when selecting mail areas
A "Search" gadget, shortcut S, is available as it is with any
other list window. It works the same as elsewhere, temporarily
removing from the list all areas that do not contain a given word
or phrase somewhere in their descriptions (names or number). See
section 9.5 for details on word searches. Pressing U, or opening
the search window again and selecting "Nowhere", restores the full
list as it was before searching.
A gadget labeled "Create", shortcut C, is also present in the case
of QWK mail. This works identically to the "Create" gadget
available when selecting an area for a reply to be placed in: it
adds a new area to the list. Complete details are in section
10.5, but briefly, it opens a small window which lets you enter
the number of an area not included in the list, and a descriptive
name for it. The name can be anything you wish, but the number
must match an area number used by the mail door, to do any good.
This is often useful for cases in which the list of areas included
with the mail packet leaves out those you aren't downloading. To
add such an area, you must know the right number for it, and enter
that number in the small window that opens when you give the
"Create" command, along with some name. When you select "Okay",
the list of areas will reopen, with the new area highlighted at
the end. You can then use "Add" to cause the mail door to begin
downloading that area, if you used the correct number. The new
area will also appear in the reply area selection list.
Another command button at the bottom of the screen is labeled
"Reset", with R as its keyboard shortcut. With this, you can undo
all of the notations such as "Add", "Drop", "Rset", " Pers", and
so on that you have put on various areas. It will put up a
requester asking you if you're sure you want to cancel all changes
before it does so. Answer "Yes" to go ahead and remove all of the
changes, or "Cancel" to leave them as they are. The gadget is
ghosted if there are no ADD or DROP settings to undo. Note that
this "Reset" option has nothing to do with the option to send a
"RESET" control message to the mail door; that is controlled from
the small requester window that is opened with the "Add..." gadget.
- 140 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 11.5
Since this list window is concerned only with changing the status
of the separate areas listed, and it does not matter what line the
highlight bar is on when you close the window, and it makes no
difference whether you close the window with the return key or the
Esc key or the closebox. Normally the latter two would cancel any
selection you made; in this case they simply close the window.
Also, double-clicking on a line normally closes the window, but in
this case double-clicks are ignored and have no effect.
11.6) Packing your replies for uploading
The "Pack replies" item (shortcut P) tells Q-Blue to compress the
replies you have written into an upload packet, along with any
download requests or mail door configuration changes you have
made. It is ghosted if you haven't written any replies or other
upload material, or have made no changes since the last time you
packed them. When the "Pack replies" menu item is enabled, the
gadget at the lower left corner of the screen is labeled "Pack"
and performs the same function. It is labeled "Close" otherwise,
corresponding to the "Close packet" menu item.
Note: if replies were reloaded directly from the replies directory
without decompressing an upload packet, it assumes that packing is
needed and the gadget starts out as "Pack" instead of "Close".
Packing may or may not actually be needed, depending on what your
actions were when the packet was last open.
The packing operation is basically similar to the unpacking
described in section 8.3. First, any file in the uploads
directory that has the same name as the archive it is trying to
produce is moved out of the way (see the next paragraph), then a
console window is opened and the compression command is executed
in it. Q-Blue will keep the window open until you press return,
if it senses any apparent errors. If the compression fails, it's
up to you to correct the problem and try again. If the expected
archive file does not exist or is empty after the command is run,
it will tell you so with an error requester.
When Q-Blue uses a compression command to make an archive, it
first checks whether any file already exists with the name of the
archive to be created. If so, and it's non-empty, it renames the
old one before creating the new one. The new name is formed by
appending ".old" to the name being created -- e.g. an existing
file "WHATEVER.REP" will be renamed as "WHATEVER.REP.old" before
it creates the new file. If "WHATEVER.REP.old" already exists
when the renaming is attempted, it will be deleted. This means
you will always have a backup copy of your previous reply packet
when you pack your current replies. It will do this backup
operation only once while a given packet is open, so that if you
use the "Pack" command several times, it will replace the new
archive without disturbing the backup copy. This way, a copy of
whatever upload archive you had before opening this packet is
- 141 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 11.6
preserved, in case (for instance) it turns out that you thought
those replies had been uploaded, but actually they had not been.
If the rename operation fails, it reports that and gives you an
option to just delete the existing packet instead of keeping it
as a backup.
Once the replies are packed into an archive in your uploads
directory, you then have to upload that file to the same mail door
that you downloaded the original mail from. The mail door will
then post your replies into the correct message areas so that the
people they are addressed to can read them, and process any
download requests or configuration changes you've included. You
may do this the next time you call the BBS to download mail, or
call it back immediately just to do the upload, if you want people
to see your replies as soon as possible.
11.7) Closing the mail packet; exiting the program
After you have packed your replies and are done reading the mail,
you may want to close the mail packet, so you can open another
one. To do this, use the "Close packet" item in the "Packet"
menu, or you can use the gadget in the lower left corner, which if
you have no changed reply material needing to be packed, is
labeled "Close" instead of "Pack". The keyboard shortcut is C.
If you close a packet while there are replies not packed yet, it
will put up a requester asking whether they should be packed or
not, with gadgets labeled "Pack", "Ignore", and "Cancel". The
default is to pack them. "Ignore" tells it to close the packet
without packing the replies, and "Cancel" tells it not to close
the packet after all. Note that if you pack them this way instead
of giving a pack command manually, it may not give you a second
chance if something goes wrong; it will go ahead and close the
packet and discard all of your replies from its internal memory
unless some obvious error takes place in the packing -- for
instance, if the archive file it's trying to create does not
appear at all. If Q-Blue fails to notice a problem, it is
possible to salvage the replies from your replies directory by
archiving them by hand from a CLI... unless you have the "Empty
reply dir at close" option activated, in which case there may be
nothing you can do.
If the "Option to delete packet" gadget in the Options setup
window is checked, it will then put up a requester asking whether
you want to delete the mail packet that you just read. It will
give the full pathname of the packet you opened, and tell you how
many messages in it, out of how many total, have not been read.
(Messages excluded by a twit list are not counted in the total
that can be read.) The default is "No", of course. The requester
will not appear if the packet file does not have the same size or
datestamp that it had when you opened it; this is to protect
against accidentally deleting a newer packet from the same BBS.
- 142 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 11.7
And of course, the requester does not come up if you opened a BBS
file with the "Open (no packet)" command, or if you opened mail
that was already in the work directory, which Q-Blue did not
unpack. If you choose "Yes", the packet is deleted, and if it has
a Workbench icon that is deleted also.
If the packet is not deleted, then Q-Blue will attach a filenote
to it indicating how many of the messages have been read, as a
percentage of the total. Such a filenote simply reads, for
example, "23% read." Under some conditions it will not add such a
filenote: if the archive file is not the same size it was when you
opened it (which will be the case if you download a new packet
from the BBS with the same name), if it already has a filenote
that was not written by Q-Blue, or if it has a Q-Blue filenote
which gives a percentage larger than what would be written. These
filenotes are displayed in the files list window when you give the
"Open" command, so you can see which packets have been partially
or completely read already.
The actual operation of closing the packet consists of deleting
the files in the work directory, forgetting all of the messages in
its memory, and returning the screen and gadgets and menus to the
empty state they were in when you first started it up. Files in
the replies directory are deleted if you have the "Empty reply dir
at close" option set (section 6.3), but not if the replies have
not been successfully packed.
Q-Blue puts up the "busy" mouse pointer and ignores input for a
few moments until this whole process is finished. The gadgets at
the bottom of the screen become "Open", "No pkt.", "Iconify", and
"Quit", and the others are ghosted.
If you use the "Quit" option while a packet is open (keyboard
shortcut Q), it will put up a requester asking you whether you
want to keep the packet's files in your work directory after
quitting. You can select "Empty" to have it delete the work files
as is done whenever you close a packet, or "Leave" to have the
work directory left intact. If you choose "Leave", then the next
time you run Q-Blue and select "Open", it will allow you to reload
the mail in the work directory without having to decompress the
packet it came from. (Very few other offline readers let you do
this.) The default option in this requester is "Cancel", which
tells it not to quit at all. Before asking this, if you have
replies that have not been packed, it will ask you whether you
want to pack the replies (the default) or ignore them. They will
be left intact in your replies directory, where they can be
reloaded if the next packet you open is from the same BBS, unless
you have "Empty reply dir at close" set
and
you are emptying the
work directory. The "Leave" option causes "Empty reply dir at
close" to be ignored.
If you choose to empty the work directory rather than leaving
files intact in it, and the "Option to delete packet" feature is
- 143 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 11.7
activated in the Options setup window, then it will ask whether
you want to delete the mail packet, just as it does with the
"Close packet" command.
If you select "Quit" when no packet is open (for instance, by
using "Close" and "Quit" in succession), then Q-Blue will exit
immediately, without any of those requesters. But there is one
more thing it checks before quitting. That is whether you have
made any modifications to your tagline file that might need to be
saved. As explained in section 10.9, a requester may appear at
the time the tagline file is unloaded, allowing you to save any
changes, or discard them (quit without saving) or cancel your Quit
command.
- 144 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 12.1
PART 4: CONCLUSION
12) AUTHOR SUPPORT
12.1) How to contact the author
If you find any bugs, any suggestions for improving it, or any
questions about the program, here are some ways you may be able to
get ahold of me:
Paper mail: Paul Kienitz
6430 San Pablo Ave.
Oakland, CA 94608
USA
Internet: Send mail to kie@pacbell.net, or alternately,
Paul.Kienitz@shelter.sf.ca.us. The first address can receive
large files without difficulty; do not send large files to the
second one.
Fido netmail: "Paul Kienitz" at 1:125/5109. On RIME, route with
"->5109" in the Common or Amiga area.
Previous releases mentioned Paul.Kienitz@f28.n125.z1.fidonet.org
and paulk@terapin.com as Internet addresses I could be reached at,
and Fido addresses 1:125/28 and 1:161/16 (formerly 1:125/16).
None of these sites exist any more. Paul.Kienitz@coolbeans.com
may still work for a while.
Fido echoes: you can reach me in OFFLINE or BLUEWAVE or
AMIGA_COMM, and I will probably see personal messages in the
general AMIGA echo.
For information on ordering a registered copy, see the file called
"How-to-order" that should be included with every copy of Q-Blue.
12.2) Acknowledgments
I owe thanks to many people who helped make Q-Blue a success. I
can't name them all, but I think I can at least cover most of them
by categories. So, I express thanks to the following people:
George Hatchew, who got the project started by giving me the
chance to support his Blue Wave mail format on the Amiga before it
was made public, just because I said I thought I could do it.
Glenn Schworak, who responded to Q-Blue 0.7's worst bug by writing
Q-Fix, a band-aid which let people use 0.7 with packets from
Maximus and other slightly nonstandard mail systems which it
couldn't read otherwise. He saved many customers for me when I
fell down on the job of getting a prompt update out.
- 145 -
Q-Blue 2.3 User Manual section 12.2
All of the people who beta tested various versions of Q-Blue and
reported bugs, and everyone who sent me weird mail packets that
made Q-Blue choke, and all those who sent me other problem reports
or original suggestions for improvement. I hesitate to name some
and leave out others, but I should mention Anthony Yee, Robert
Sudbury, Ed Langkamp, Tomaz Borstnar, Terry Dailey, Liz Driver,
Christopher S. Smith, Tony Summerfelt, Marshall Freedland, and
Petar "Norge" Cuckovic.
Those who helped me work out the methods in sections 4.6, 4.7 and
4.8 for supporting CygnusEd and TurboText, neither of which I had
any documentation for, including Per Jacobsen and Ralph Torchia,
but especially Jon Peterson who loaned me two user manuals.
Jonathan Forbes for writing LX, and Mike "C-man" Austin for
writing clones of the RequestFile and RequestChoice commands, all
of which are used in the "Install" script. (The IsADir and XSkip
commands used in installation are my own, as is the Future command
in the same directory -- source files are available on request.
XSkip is simply a clone of the standard Skip command which does
not become buggy when the script has very long lines in it.)
Goran Paulin, my registration agent in Eastern Europe, who has
made it possible for many people who would not otherwise done so
to get registered copies. See the "How-to-order" file for
information on how to order through Goran, who can handle many
more currencies than I can.
And most of all, all those who became registered customers,
especially those who registered the half-finished mess called
Q-Blue 0.7. That money kept my head above water more than once
during periods when I had no other income, and so gave me the
chance to finish the newer versions.
The names Amiga, AmigaDOS, Workbench, ARexx, ConMan, ASDG, Oxxi,
CygnusEd Professional, TurboText, Blue Wave, Silver Xpress, XNet,
QMail, RoseMail, TomCat, wcMAIL, wcQWK, QSO, Valence, DLGQWK,
MKQWK, JC-QWK, OLMS, NoSnail, MailManager +Plus+, TBBS, Maximus,
SearchLight, WildCat!, EzyCom, RBBS, Remote Access, PCBoard,
FidoPCB, InterPCB, FidoNet, Internet, MS-DOS, and IBM are
trademarks of their respective owners.
- 146 -