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POWER-QWK v2.15 Shareware from POWERLINE SYSTEMS Ltd (C) Gale Green and PowerLine Systems Limited 1991 POWER-QWK is SHAREWARE. This means that you can try it out to ensure that it suits your needs before you pay for it. It is not free software and if you continue to use the program AFTER 4 WEEKS OF TESTING YOU MUST REGISTER IT. If you do not wish to register you must cease using the software. Info on the very low registration cost is included at the end of this DOC file. There is also a file named PRINT.ME included with Power-Qwk which you can print and post to register the software, Upon registration you will be sent a registration number which will not only allow you to register this version of the software but also future versions. Register now and support the Shareware concept. This program may not be sold or included with any commercial product without written permission from Powerline Systems Ltd. Contents ~~~~~~~~ 1. Background and Introduction to Power-QWK 2. Installing Power-QWK 3. Running Power-QWK 3.1 Getting Started 3.2 Configuration Manager 3.3 The Message Base and Topics Menus 3.4 The Bulletins Menu 3.5 The Conference Menu 3.6 Messages and Replies 3.7 The History Menu 3.8 Reading Files and Bulletins 3.9 Automating Power-QWK 4. Acknowledgments 5. Disclaimer 6. Registration and Support. 1. Background and Introduction to Power-QWK Power-QWK was born of my dissatisfaction with the offline readers available for bulletin boards and Online Services such as Direct-Line. None that I found offered any facilities for retaining mail or bulletins in an orderly accessible manner - they simply allowed the unpacking and reading of mail packets which, once read, were of no further value. Power-QWK, written for Direct-Line but usable on any Online Service which has a QWK mail door, is a full Message Base Manager. The principal facilities are as follows: - permanent storage of all downloaded messages, bulletins and standard files such as the NEWFILES listing; - full ANSI emulation for spectacular viewing of animated messages and bulletins; ANSI format bulletins are recognised automatically by Power-QWK; - friendly, effective, access to your message base with one-key commands for go-to-next, go-to-previous, find-next-in-thread, and so on; - DOS filing and printing of any message, file or bulletin, even printing ANSI bulletins as long as they don't contain upwards cursor repositioning sequences; - reply to a message received or 'say' an original message, automatically including received messages in reply files to allow them to be quoted in your replies, optionally importing the contents of a DOS file into the message; several methods for 'fancy' quoting; - having written a message, it can be recalled at any time prior to upload (even in a later Power-QWK session) to be edited or to have changed its Addressee, Destination Conference, Subject or Public/Private Status; - reply deletion; you can change your mind about sending a message right up to the moment of upload; - taglines: witty one-liners added to the ends of your messages and replies; either selected by you for each message or added randomly by Power-QWK (or omitted if you don't like taglines); - Power-QWK supports any number of tagline files; - tagline stealing: you can 'grab' a string of characters for insertion in your tagline file from any file, bulletin or message while it is on display; - almost everything configurable, including screen colours, file names, directory names, options, etc; - multiple message bases if you subscribe to more than one Online Service; - automatic treatment of NEWFILES, appending to the list maintained by Power-QWK, ignoring the standard files which appear as new every day on Wildcat! services; a sort feature allows you to sort the NEWFILES list into alphanumeric sequence, if your mail packets are obtained from a Tomcat mail door. - automatic memory of which files, messages and bulletins have been read plus the ability to mark as read or unread or delete; - message base prune facilities with the ability to keep as many day's messages as you wish (may be different in each conference) plus the ability either to discard pruned messages or save them in a Prune Archive file (which looks to Power-QWK just like another conference so even pruned messages may be viewed and replied to just as though they were still in their original conference); - rebuild and validation facilities to ensure the integrity of your message base following power failure or installation of a new version of Power-QWK; - automatic installation procedure to ensure that Power-QWK is installed properly with the correct layout and complement of help and configuration files. This procedure does not corrupt any system files such as config.sys or autoexec.bat. - many other features will have been added since the document you are reading was first written. Please read the file HISTORY.DOC for details of all new facilities added with each release of the product. 2. Installing Power-QWK Power-QWK Installation could not be simpler. All you need to pre-create, if you don't have them already, are the DOS directories you wish to use for downloading mail packets and uploading reply packets. Power-QWK also uses a Work Directory but you should not pre-create it. Power-QWK will ask you during the installation configuration session what name to use when creating this directory, but it is created at the start of every Power-QWK session and deleted again at the end. You may use the same directory for uploading and downloading but many people prefer to keep the functions separated. If you have to create these directories, DO NOT create them in your Power-QWK directory - this is reserved for files and directories created by Power-QWK itself. To create the directories, use the DOS command MKDIR, or MD for short. e.g., MD C:\DOWNLOAD MD C:\UPLOAD or, if you already have a general communications directory called, say, COMMS then MD C:\COMMS\DOWNLOAD MD C:\COMMS\UPLOAD Provided with Power-QWK is a file called INSTALL.EXE. If you execute this file and then answer the straightforward questions which appear on the screen from time to time, Power-QWK installation should take no longer than a couple of minutes. During the configuration session, Power-QWK will offer default answers to most questions. If you have doubts about what answer you should give, just press the Return key to make Power-QWK use the default value. You will be able to come back and change your mind as often as required in the future so it doesn't matter if you get a few things wrong at first - the default answers will WORK! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO INSTALL Power-QWK OTHER THAN BY USING THIS PROCEDURE. VITAL FILES WILL NOT BE CREATED, HELP FILES WILL NOT BE LOCATED CORRECTLY AND Power-QWK WILL NOT WORK AS IT SHOULD. INSTALL.EXE CREATES FILES ONLY IN THE DIRECTORY THAT YOU TELL IT, PLUS IT CREATES ONE SUBDIRECTORY 'OWNED BY' THE TOP LEVEL Power-QWK DIRECTORY. SYSTEM FILES SUCH AS CONFIG.SYS AND AUTOEXEC.BAT ARE NOT WRITTEN TO OR TAMPERED WITH IN ANY WAY. ALSO, IF YOU LATER REGISTER YOUR COPY OF Power-QWK THEN YOU WILL NEED TO RUN THE INSTALL PROCEDURE AGAIN TO TELL Power-QWK YOUR REGISTRATION NUMBER - SO DO NOT DELETE THE FILE INSTALL.EXE EVEN WHEN INSTALLATION IS COMPLETE, YOU MAY NEED IT LATER!! e.g., if you have downloaded Power-QWK from a bulletin board then you must have unzipped the file you received in order to read this document. To install Power-QWK, use the DOS command CD to change to the directory containing all the downloaded files and then type INSTALL and press Carriage Return. During the installation, the Power-QWK Configuration Manager will be invoked. You will be asked a variety of questions related to the way in which Power-QWK is to handle your mail, files, bulletins, archives, etc. If you are unsure how to answer any question simply press Carriage Return. This causes Power-QWK to use a default answer for the question. You can always change your mind at a later date by running the Power-QWK Configuration Manager again (see section 3.2). 3. Running Power-QWK 3.1 Getting Started To run Power-QWK, switch to the directory in which Power-QWK was installed, type PQ and then press the Enter key. e.g., if you installed Power-QWK in a directory called C:\POWER then you should enter the following commands: CD C:\POWER PQ The next thing to appear will be the Power-QWK Main Menu. From now on, you can press the F1 key at any time to obtain full context-sensitive help for ALL Power-QWK functions. The Help files are the definitive documentation for Power-QWK. If you would rather have this text in printed form then, at any time in Help, press P to send the currently active Help file to the printer. This facility is intended to make Power-QWK documentation as easy to use as possible - you only need to print out the bits that really interest you. Next, select the item 'Process New Mail Packets' from the menu and press Enter. If there are any mail packets (files with an extension of .QWK) in the Download Directory you specified during the Power-QWK installation procedure then these will be unpacked. If there are no packets waiting then Power-QWK will not allow you to select this menu item. Power-QWK will automatically create a new message base for each Online Service for which there are mail packets. Each message base will be given the same name as the .QWK file name used by the online service so, for Direct-Line users, a message base named DLINE will be created. This name is obtained from INSIDE the .QWK file so it does not matter if you have renamed your .QWK files for your own convenience (as long as they still have the extension .QWK). If Power-QWK finds more than one mail packet then it processes them in chronological order of file creation time within date. This is not strictly necessary, Power-QWK can apply .QWK files to message bases in any order, but chronological order is fastest and ensures that the proper bulletins are made current. Unless you have told it otherwise in Configuration, Power-QWK will ask your permission before adding each mail packet to the message base. You will now see a sequence of messages, telling you that Power-QWK is creating your message base(s), adding new files, bulletins and messages and creating new Mail Conferences whenever required. Downloaded NEWFILES listings are appended to any already existent listing within the message base (remember there is a separate message base for each online service to which you subscribe). The files which are shown as 'new' each day on Wildcat! services are automatically ignored. Bulletins automatically overwrite any already existent bulletins with the same number so your message base always contains the latest version of each bulletin maintained by your online service. Messages are stored in date/time order with a separate file and index being created for each conference (Wildcat Folder) supported by the online service. Whenever Power-QWK detects the presence of messages, bulletins or other files which are time/date stamped earlier than those already in the message base, it will ask you for confirmation before accepting them. When all .QWK files have been processed (if there were any), Power-QWK re-displays the Main Menu. From this menu, you can elect to enter the Power-QWK Offline Reader (if any message bases have been created); call the Power-QWK Configuration Manager (as you've already seen during Installation); or Quit. If you elect to Quit, Power-QWK closes down its screen windows plus any open files and returns to the DOS command line. If you call the Configuration Manager or the Offline Reader (see below for details of what to do if you call one of these) then the appropriate part of Power-QWK is entered. When you quit the Configuration Manager or Offline Reader, you return to the Power-QWK Main Menu. 3.2 Configuration Manager The Power-QWK Configuration Manager is in two parts: General Configuration and Colour Customising. You can call the Power-QWK Configuration Manager either from the Power-QWK Main Menu or by running one of the programs POWERCFG (General Configuration) or POWERCOL (Colour Customising) in the Power-QWK main directory. Colour Customising shows you, on a full screen, the colours that are used for the different Power-QWK menus. You can change them by using single key strokes. If one menu is always seen 'on top of' another within Power-QWK then it is shown in the same way in Colour Customising so that you can see how the two screens will look together. The General Configuration system is menu-driven and forms nothing more than a question-and-answer session. The General Configuration Manager's main menu offers you a selection of subject areas which you can choose to configure. For instance, you may choose to tell Power-QWK how you want your Personal mail to be handled or you may wish to change the names of various system files used by Power-QWK. You can press F1 at any time within Configuration Manager to obtain full context-sensitive Help on each item before committing yourself to a particular course of action. Once you have installed Power-QWK and done the initial configuration, running the General Configuration Manager is one of the best ways of learning about Power-QWK's facilities. Simply press Enter to move from question to question without changing any of your original answers. Every time you feel that you would like to know more about an item, press F1 to read the associated Help file. As long as you keep pressing Enter, Configuration Manager will continue to cycle through ALL the Configuration questions. Press Esc when reading an item to return to the Manager's Main Menu; press Esc again to quit the Manager. Information supplied by you in response to the Configuration Manager's questions is stored in a file named POWERQWK.CFG. This file is accessed every time you call Power-QWK so changes you make have immediate effect, from the next time you run Power-QWK. 3.3 The Message Bases and Topics Menus When you first enter the Power-QWK Offline Reader from the Main Menu, you will be offered one of two menus. If you have more than one message base then you will first be asked to select one for processing at the Message Bases Menu. You can have up to 30 message bases. Power-QWK sets one up automatically whenever it processes a .QWK packet which was downloaded from an online service which is new to Power-QWK. Once you have selected a message base, you move on to the Power-QWk Topics Menu. You will have come here straight away if you have only one message base. The available Topics represent the constituent parts of .QWK mail packets: Hello, News, Bulletins, NewFiles, Messages, User Info and Goodbye. Hello, News and Goodbye are files of information, supplied by the Sysop of the Online Service. User Info is a screen of information relating to your use of the online service - how many times you've logged on to date, how many files you've uploaded and downloaded, etc. Some QWK mail doors do not include this information in their mail packets. Bulletins are files of information related to particular topics of interest. On Direct-Line, any one Bulletin Number will nearly always relate to the same topic. For instance, Bulletin 14 is always the current list of the top twenty most active Direct-Line users. NewFiles is a listing of all new files which have become available for download from the online service since the last time you looked. 'Messages' are the Personal and Public mail items which were available for you to read on the online service at the time you did your download. The Topics Menu, and all its underlying menus, are designed to allow you to read all currently unread files, bulletins and messages by repeatedly pressing the Enter key. When you press Enter at the Topics Menu, for instance, if the currently highlighted Topic contains unread information then Power-QWK will present that information for reading. Pressing Enter repeatedly will cause Power-QWK to present all unread items in the Topic, in sequence. When there are no further unread items, Power-QWK returns to the Topics Menu. If the current Topic contains no unread information then Power-QWK moves on to the next item automatically. Sometimes, you will want to read items or browse topics which you have read already. If this is the case then use Tab instead of Enter. Tab forces entry to a topic even if it contains no unread items. In the case of the NewFiles Topic, Enter allows you to read "today's" NewFiles. Tab lets you see ALL newfiles to date. Power-QWK also has a powerful multi-phase sort facility which allows you to sort the NewFiles file into alphanumeric sequence, at the same time including any old NewFiles files which you may have accumulated in the past, perhaps using some other less powerful mail reader. Press F1 (Help) at the Topics Menu for details. In current releases of Power-QWK, NewFiles Sort is only available for systems which store NewFiles in Wildcat! two-line-entry format. As other formats become sortable the Help file will be updated to let you know. Also, of course, new facilities such as this are always reported in the file HISTORY.DOC which is included with every release of Power-QWK. Most Wildcat! Online services include two special files in the NewFiles listing every day. Power-QWK recognises these and ignores them automatically. If you ever subscribe to a Service which includes only one, or more than two, such files then you can inform Power-QWK of the correct number by pressing N at the Topics Menu. Having selected an item from the Topics Menu, you will be shown single-file items like Hello and News straight away. If, however, you choose Bulletins or Messages then you will be presented with a further menu. 3.4 The Bulletins Menu At the Bulletins menu, you can choose to read or delete any of up to 1000 bulletins per conference or folder, depending on how many are supported by your online service. As with all Power-QWK menus, there is a 'Key Line' at the foot of the screen, to remind you of the one-or-two-key commands which are available. For more detailed information, press F1 to enter the Power-QWK context-sensitive Help system. As with the Topics Menu, Tab rather than Enter will allow you to read Bulletins even if they have been read already. Pressing Enter skips bulletins which have already been read. The Bulletin numbers are presented ten to a screen and you can read 'all currently unread' by repeatedly pressing Enter. You can select specific numbers by moving the Bulletin highlight bar with the cursor and/or paging keys and then pressing Enter or Tab. Press Del to delete the highlighted Bulletin (Power-QWK will ask for confirmation before performing the deletion). As with all Power-QWK information and message screens, once you are actually reading a bulletin, you can press P to print it, F to file it (in a DOS file) and you can press L or N if you require Linefeeds or Newpage characters sending to the printer to format your output. 3.5 The Conference Menu If you select Messages at the Topics Menu, Power-QWK moves on to the Conference Menu. With current releases of Wildcat!, a Power-QWK Conference corresponds to a Wildcat! Message Folder. Conferences are presented for selection in alphabetical sequence, ten to a screen. Two exceptions to this rule are Personal Mail Conference and Prune Archive Conference, described later. If you have a Personal Mail Conference then it always appears first in the list of conferences; if you have a Prune Archive Conference then it always appears last. The Prune Archive conference also has the distinction of always being skipped by pressing Enter - you must press Tab to read the Prune Archive Conference. Similar in action to the Bulletins Menu, you can enter in turn each conference which contains unread mail by repeatedly pressing the Enter key. Continuing to press Enter will automatically page you through all unread messages in each such conference, finally returning to the Conference Menu whenever there are no further unread messages in a conference. As well as forming a gateway to the mail conferences, the Conference Menu also offers some extra facilities, each obtained by pressing a single key: P - Prune current conference or all conferences; this causes Power-QWK to discard out-of-date messages, retaining the number of days' worth of messages specified either in Configuration Manager or by pressing D (see below). Old messages will either be discarded or, if you have specified to the Configuration Manager that you wish to keep a Prune Archive, then old messages will be added into the PRUNE Conference. Here, they can be viewed and responded to just as though they were still in their conference of origin. D - set prune Days. This allows you to set specific values for each conference, over-riding the global value you have already set in General Configuration Manager. You might for instance want to keep the contents of your Personal Mail conference (if you have one) forever. Just set the number of days on the PERSONAL conference to 999. You might wish to keep messages in, say, the COMPUTER conference for a fortnight but for only five days in, say, the COMMS conference. R - Rebuild; press R again for full Rebuild or press V just to Validate Counters; Rebuild completely reconstructs all Conference Message Indexes, ensuring that they truly match the contents of the actual Message Files. Validate Counters simply checks and corrects if necessary all of Power-QWKs Pointers and Counters, ensuring that they reflect the true contents of the Message Indexes. If you ever doubt the integrity of your message base, run Validate Counters. If you are still in doubt then run Rebuild. E - Edit Taglines. If you like to use taglines, witty one-liners added to the bottom of your messages, then this key allows you to edit your file of taglines - POWERQWK.TAG. If you have set 'Select each time' in the Taglines section of General Configuration Manager then you can also edit POWERQWK.TAG by pressing E at the Taglines Selection screen. B - Enter the Bulletin Area of the current conference. R - mark Read. This causes all messages in the highlighted conference to be marked as Read, whether you have actually read them or not. U - mark Unread. This causes all messages in the highlighted conference to be marked as unread, even if they have actually been read. H - History. This allows you to edit, or change details of, all messages which are currently waiting to be packed for upload to the online service. This includes all messages written during the current Power-QWK session AND any written in previous sessions which have not been uploaded yet. At the History Menu, you can change the Addressee of any message, the Subject (Title), the Status (Public or Private), the destination Conference (Wildcat! Message Folder), the tagline, or the actual message contents. S - Say. This allows you to 'say' a message to the highlighted conference. Say is distinct from Reply in that Say potentially initiates a conversational thread whereas Reply continues one. If you 'Say' to either the PERSONAL or PRUNE conference then, after entering your message, Power-QWK will offer you a list of available conferences from which you may choose the destination. As with all Power-QWK Menus and screens, pressing G enters a Gateway to DOS, allowing you to 'shell' to the operating system, enter commands, and then type EXIT to return to Power-QWK. 3.6 Messages and Replies When you are reading a conference, i.e., you actually have a message on the screen, there are many facilities available at the press of a key or two. As usual, the best way to learn about them is to read a conference, get a message on the screen and then press F1 for Help. You can practice as much as you like. Then, when you've finished, return to the Conference Menu, press H for History and then delete any practice messages you have created but don't want to send. As with all Power-QWK screens, there is a Key Line at the foot containing a list of all (or most) of the keys that you can press to cause specific actions. Even if there is no room for all the available keys to be mentioned in the Key Line, they will all be described in Help. When reading a message, the Enter and Page Down keys have the same effect: move on to the next page of the current message or, if there are no more pages, move on to the next unread message in the current conference or, if there are no more unread messages, return to the Conference Menu. The other available keys are as follows: R - Reply to the current message. Power-QWK constructs a reply file containing the current message, automatically incorporating the Quoting style you have requested in General Configuration Manager, and then calls your Editor Program, also named in Configuration Manager. When you exit from your editor and return to Power-QWK, a tagline will be appended if required and the message will then be added to the file of messages waiting for upload. Power-QWK will automatically direct the message to the same conference as that of the message to which you are replying. You will be prompted for Subject, Addressee and Public/Private Status. You will be offered the name of the sender of the original message as the default Addressee name but you can change this if you wish or press F2 to bring up a list of your top twenty most recently used addressee names, from which you can select a name to use without actually typing it. Then, you will be asked if you wish to send any carbon copies to any other addressees. These may have different Public/Private Status and Subject fields to the original reply (these fields are all changeable later at the History Menu anyway). You can use F2 to obtain the names of all the carbon copy recipients. I - same as R but, as well as incorporating the original message in the reply file, Power-QWK will also Include a file which you nominate. S - 'Say' a message to the current conference. You cannot Say to PRUNE or PERSONAL in this manner. i.e., a 'proper' conference must be current. This is similar in action to R for Reply except that Power-QWK will not be able to offer a default Addressee name and obviously there will be no original message placed in the reply file. You can still use F2 to pick an addressee from your top-twenty list and taglines are added (or not) as normal. X - same as S but Power-QWK will include an eXtra file, which you nominate, in the reply file. A - Animate the current message. If you receive a message which contains Ansi sequences then press A to see the file 'properly' including full colour and animation capability. This facility has the bonus that you can also decipher messages which contain cursor movement sequences. Sometimes, you will receive messages which contain sequences of [D [C or similar. These are implanted in the file as a result of the sender using the cursor keys to 'go back' and correct errors. Press A for Animate and these sequences will be translated into the correct on-screen cursor movements so that you see the message as the sender intended. T - steal a Tagline from the current message. As with all Power-QWK screens, you can use F to File the current message, P to Print it plus N and L for Newpage and Linefeed respectively. You can also use the cursor keys to move to a different message in the conference, whether it has been read or not. CursorUp/Down moves to the Previous/Next message in chronological sequence. Ctrl-CursorUp/Down moves to the Previous/Next message in the current thread (Wildcat! defines a 'thread' as any group of messages which have the same Subject). Home and End move to the chronologically first and last messages in the conference. Alt-CursorUp/Down allows you set full Wildcard search criteria on the To, From and Subject fields, for a Backwards/Forwards search of the current conference from the current position. You can use as many wildcards as you like in search criteria so, for instance, From=steve* plus Subject=*pc* will match all messages from people whose names begin with the letters 'steve' which have the letters 'p' and 'c' consecutively anywhere in their titles. Pattern matching is case insensitive. Having set the criteria for a Forwards/Backwards Search, repeated pressing of the F4 key finds all matching messages in the message base between current position and End/Beginning of the conference. Once search criteria have been set, they survive even changes of conference. So you can set up a search and then perform it in as many conferences as you like. Note that Power-QWK allows the D and U keys to be used instead of CursorDown and CursorUp. This will help if your system does not support, for instance, the key combinations Ctrl-CursorDown or Alt-CursorDown - use Ctrl-D or Alt-D instead. As always, you can press G to pass through the Gateway to DOS, enter commands and then type EXIT to return to Power-QWK. Above all, don't forget F1 for Help. 3.7 The History Menu This menu shows all the prepared messages and replies which are waiting to be uploaded. They may have been prepared in the current Power-QWK session or in one or more previous sessions. Messages and replies are placed by Power-QWK into a file called *.MSG where * represents the mail packet name used by the online service. Messages for Direct-Line go into a file named DLINE.MSG. Whenever you end a Power-QWK session, the file *.MSG is packed, using the Packer Program supplied to General Configuration Manager, into a further file named *.REP. *.REP is the file which you have to upload to the Tomcat! door in the online service. Whenever you select 'Messages' at the Power-QWK Topics Menu, Power-QWK automatically attaches to, and unpacks into *.MSG, any already existent *.REP file. So you can append to this file during the course of several Power-QWK sessions. The History Menu shows all the messages and replies which currently reside in *.MSG. You can move the highlight bar to point to a specific message using the usual cursor and paging keys. The following commands are available at this menu: T - change the contents of the To field. You can use F2 to call up your top-twenty Addressee Pick List if you wish. S - change the contents of the Subject field. C - change the name of the destination Conference. Power-QWK will display a multi-page screen called the Conference Pick List, showing all the available conferences. Just highlight a name and press Enter. P - toggle the Private/Public Status field. A - 'Also send' the highlighted message to another Addressee. Having pressed A, you can press F2 to access the Addressee Pick List. D - Display the highlighted message. This facility is provided to enable the checking of Ansi Art and Ansi Music messages before you send them. Non-Ansi files will display correctly but in a fairly primitive manner. Such files are best shown by using Enter to invoke your editor (see below). Enter - edit the contents of the highlighted message. This action has the side-effect of causing the highlighted message to be moved to the end of the *.MSG file (and therefore to the end of the History Menu) Del - Delete the highlighted message. Power-QWK will ask for confirmation before performing the deletion. G - Gateway to DOS 3.8 Reading Files and Bulletins Having selected a file or bulletin to read, Power-QWK automatically analyses the contents of the file to see how it is formatted. Power-QWK recognises fully formatted Ansi files, which may have many screens delimited by Home/Clear sequences (Esc[2J). Power-QWK has full Ansi animation so the files can be in colour and contain any amount of cursor movement. Non-Ansi files must either be CR/LF delimited or not delimited at all. In the latter case, Power-QWK inserts a CR/LF pair every 80 bytes when displaying. Once the file or bulletin is on display, you can scroll up or down through the file using the PgUp, PgDn, Home and End keys. You can also press any of the following characters: P - Print the file or bulletin. F - File (in a DOS file) the file or bulletin. N - Send a NewPage (Formfeed) character to the printer device. L - Send a LineFeed character to the printer device. T - Steal a Tagline from the display. Enter - same as PgDn. Esc - Quit the current file or bulletin. 3.9 Automating Power-QWK If you are an experienced online user then you may wish to incorporate a call of Power-QWK into a script file or .BAT file so that downloaded messages are automatically incorporated in your message base in 'hands free' mode. To accomplish this, call General Configuration Manager and switch OFF the facilities of .QWK file processing confirmation and 'More? Prompts?'. These facilities are both in the 'Prompting' section of Configuration Manager. Then, in your script or .BAT file, call Power-QWK using the command POWERQWK X. When called in this manner, Power-QWK by-passes the menu system, processes any existent .QWK files and then exits back to the Operating System. 4. Acknowledgments Wildcat! is a registered trade mark of Mustang Software. Qmail is a registered trade mark of SparkWare. Tomcat! is a registered trade mark of Technique Computer Systems, Victoria BC, Canada. 5. Disclaimer Every attempt has been made to ensure that Power-QWK is a safe and reliable product to use. None the less, neither the Author nor PowerLine Systems Limited may be held responsible for any damage caused by its use, howsoever such damage occurs. If you do not accept this, do not use the software. 6. Registration and Support For easy registration print out the PRINT.ME file included with Power-Qwk. (TYPE PRINT.ME > PRN) REGISTRATION VIA ENGLAND - UK ----------------------------- Send a cheque or Postal Order for £20 made out to: 'POWERLINE SYSTEMS LTD' and mail to: Powerline Systems 44 Rydal Way, Ruislip, Middx. HA4 ORU. ENGLAND REGISTRATION VIA CALIFORNIA - USA --------------------------------- Enclose a cheque or money order for $38 made out to: 'Southland Trading Company' and mail to: Southland Trading 900-91 Howard Avenue, Escondido, CA 92025. USA Enclose the following info: Your Name Your Address Your Postcode/Zip Your Country You will be sent a unique registration number to enter into POWER-QWK to register your copy. Once registered to you the program MUST NOT be passed on to others. Only Shareware copies may be passed on. Registered versions do not display the Shareware banner displayed by the non-registered version. As new versions of Power-Qwk appear simply enter your registration number to change them into registered versions bearing your ID. UK FEEDBACK & LATEST VERSIONS ----------------------------- Feedback on this program is welcomed via the Direct-Line Online System. Direct-Line operates on the following UK numbers (set your communications software for 8/N/1). Address messages to GALE GREEN or SYSOP. 081-841-4114 Speeds 3/12/1275/2400 + MNP5 081-845-8228 Speeds 3/12/24/9600(v32) + HST 96/14.4k + v42bis & MNP5 Multiple lines are available on each number. WORLDWIDE FEEDBACK & LATEST VERSIONS ------------------------------------ The latest version of Power-Qwk is always available via UKFORUM on CompuServe (GO UKFORUM), and Support for the program is available in the Comms message area there. Address messages to 70007,4737. Copyright (C) Gale Green & Powerline Systems Ltd. 1991/2