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MR/2 - A QWK Compatible Mail Reader for OS/2. 07/09/92 Copyright (c) 1992, Knight Writer Software Company. All rights reserved. ------------------------------------------------------------------ *** KEYS ASSIGNMENTS HAVE BEEN CHANGED SINCE VERSION 0.99B *** T was next message by thread - it's now steal tagline. Use H to move ahead by thread When replying, F2 used to toggle from/to - now it selects taglines. Use F3 to toggle from/to ------------------------------------------------------------------ =================================================================== N O T I C E =================================================================== This IS a shareware package, and does require a registration fee if you choose to continue using it after 30 days. The registration fee is currently $20. Eventually, the final product MAY have a "begging" screen with a key-file that will register the software and suppress it. The more interest I get, the more likely I am to continue with improvements. ------------------------------------------------------------------ KNOWN BUGS AND STUFF ==================== Mouse support is missing from some of the "inform user" screen. The TEMPORARY directory MUST remain a subdirectory of the MR2 home dir. You can't use "\" or "&" as part of any search text (since MR/2 uses them as delimiters). You can't cancel a search until the first "hit" is displayed. This is particularly irritating when soundex searching, since soundexing is noticably slower. If you set "SkipReadMessages" to true, you cannot gain access to a conferences where all messages have previously been read. I don't supply an editor. You'll have to find your own or use E or EPM. QEdit for OS/2 works nice as an inexpensive, character-mode editor You can't send ADD/DROP conference messages yet. This seems easy enough, so I should be able to add it in soon. ANSI support is not provided in a limitted fashion and @variables are not converted. Sorry, maybe later. Other frills that have not yet been addressed: Bulk marking, forwarding messages, carbon copies, twit filter, function key assigning. There are probably others. Feel free to bombard me with requests. No long file name support. Since QWK is a DOS thing, the only place I can see using it is for packet names (if the user renames it). Any ideas? Changes included in v0.96 ------------------------- o MR/2 is now WINDOWCOMPAT, which means it can be run in an OS/2 character mode Window. If you can find an editor that also runs in a window (e.g., QEdit for OS/2 does) - you can take advantage of the cut/paste capabilities of the clipboard. o Warning that MR2.INI does not exist (very first time MR/2 is invoked) has been expanded. More explanation is given as to what happens if you choose to create MR2.INI. o Responding "N" for "NO" when asked if you wish to create and edit your initial MR2.INI file no longer hangs. There's an apparent bug in the Zortech's fopen() call where NULL is not returned if the file does not exist. I've bypassed this. o Mouse cursor is now hidden before the screen is cleared when exiting. o If you searched for text, then replied, the reply logic trashed the search string. If you would press "N" to search for the next, it would fail, and since the screens flashed so quickly, you couldn't see the word you're search for isn't correct. Anyway, it's fixed. o All individual help files have been combined into a single help source, "MR2.HLP". This seems to have slowed the help system down somewhat - I'll optimize later. o When viewing messages, the message header is frozen at the top of the screen and no longer scrolls with the message. o From the packet selection list, you can now use ALT-D to delete a packet (after confirmation) or rename a packet with ALT-R. Minimal error checking is performed - rename only works within the original packet directory. o Again, while on the packet selection list, you can use ALT-C to edit the MR2.INI file. The editor used will be whatever is currently configured (in your MR2.ini file, or the "E" editor, if none has been specified). The .ini file is reloaded when control returns from the editor. (Screen clears to all red momentarily - close your eyes for just a second until I fix this :) o Searching for text was only checking the body of the message. It now also checks the Subject, To and From fields. o Do you like to keep your editor open in another window? If you set your editor name up to be "NONE", MR/2 will post a "waiting" message instead of chaining to an editor. This lets you switch to a window with your editor loaded, edit, and switch back. When all done, press a key in MR/2, and your edited file will be processed. This REALLY works great with QWIKSWCH, or in 2.0 with just two sessions active (MR/2 and your editor). NOTE: no check is made to see if the file was actually changed. I will provide some code to detect and warn of this situation later. REMEMBER: Reply.Msg is in a tmp$$\ directory. o A new MR2.INI option has been added to enable the setting of extended attributes for reply files. This saves some time when using the "E" editor, as you won't have to set "Plain Text" them when you save the file. Options are: Attributes=NONE or Attributes=Extended Changes included in v0.97 ------------------------- o A new key has been enabled from the packet selection screen. Alt-N will update the file list (showing any new files). o "P" will now "print" the displayed message to "prn". Message will be formatted just like a "saved" message. o Mouse operations have been cleaned up and the cursor is hidden when the mouse is not available for input. Correct selection and menu entries are highlighted and selected (previously, mouse cursor and highlight bar did not correspond). I still need to add mouse input capabilities to the messages display screen. o Previously, when creating a new messages, "ALL" was filled in as the TO field automatically, and the cursor was placed on the subject line. After personally typing several netmail messages to ALL with the user name on the subject line, I've changed this. The "ALL" is still defaulted, but the cursor stays in the TO field. Tabbing out will keep "ALL" unmodified - type over "ALL" and it will "Auto-clear". o When saving a message to disk, MR/2 now prompts for a file name, providing the previously used file name as a default. Currently, changes made to the save file name are remembered only during the current session. MR/2 still reloads the name of the default save file from the MR2.INI file each time it is invoked. o The Zortech "event" class that monitored the keyboard and mouse while on a selection list would continuously poll these two devices until something was available. This would slow down other sessions considerably. I've now put a DosSleep call in place that cleans this up nicely. o When an "empty" packet list is found, the previous error message did little to explain the problem. The new message does a more thorough job and offers the chance to edit the .ini file and reload. o ReplyPath and ReplyFile are now functional in the MR2.INI file. You can now place your reply packets in a directory separate from your QWK packets. Also, you can control the naming of the reply temporary file (which was previously hard-coded to be "reply.msg"). This makes editing in a separate window simpler, as you don't have to path into MR/2's work directory. The ReplyFile specification will except full path names, so "C:\Reply" is totally valid. The .ini parameter "QuoteToFile" was redundant and has been removed. o The BBS ID is now included in a message "saved" to an ASCII disk file. o If you forget the closing "\" on your PacketPath or ReplyPath, MR/2 will append one for you (if these values are not empty). o Extremely limited color configuration has been added - you can set the colors for the message reading screen only (this also changes the file viewer colors and BBS Welcome backdrop under the main menu). The method is primitive and not the final solution, but it should satisfy some, as this should be where the most time is spent. See the Color= option in MR2INI.ORG and be prepared to do some thinking in hex. o Another new MR2.INI option has been added. HeaderEditing allows you to perform the editing of the message header from the default of both before and after editing the message. You may now select from before, after, or the default of both. o The problem with the screen flashing red mentioned above (v0.95) was a QEdit-only problem. Qedit, as I found through experimentation, checks the color at (0,0) upon entry, and clears the screen to this color on exit. I now place a black space at (0,0) before calling any editor. (This is why QEdit leaves an OS/2 screen blue on exit - it reads the OS/2 command line message (blue) and clears with this). o Most of the "beeps" have been removed from the message viewer. Scrolling or paging through messages or files will no longer beep at beginning or end of file. o A minimal Welcome.QWK file is included in the distribution file. The default pack path, if not changed, should show this packet. Instructions are included in the packet on how to correct the packet path. o The packet selection list now sorts in descending date/time order, so the most recent packet will always be at the top of the list. Previously, files were listed alphabetically. o You may now use ALT-P from the packet selection screen to change the packet path for the session. The existing path is displayed as the default. Changes included in v0.98 ------------------------- o MR/2 version now displays at the top of the packet selection screen. o Text searches are now multithreaded. While you're reading the first matching message, MR/2 reads ahead and loads anything it finds into a pipe. "Previous" hits are supported via a stack-like structure that can hold up to 200 hits. You can move backwards and forwards through matching messages freely. The previous "Searching" screens that appeared when you pressed "N" or "L" have been suppressed. This still needs some thorough testing ... o Pressing 'I' to select messages by header had a problem when pressed on any of the first 8 messages in a conference. Usually, the current message is centered within the selection screen. When the message was one of the first 8, the current message would appear on top. Now, the listing starts from the first message in the list. o I added another color option to the primitive MR2.INI "Color" parameter. You can now add two more hex digits (making this the 5th and 6th) to control the color in the message header area. o Another event-class problem fixed. Errors returned from mouse calls were being ignored and, if no mouse was installed, "ghost" mouse events were still being processed. This caused MR/2 to flash a screen or two, then exit immediately. Now, if the mouse-open call fails, no other mouse calls are significant. I tested this by booting OS/2 1.3 from floppy (Disk #1) and exiting at the IBM screen. Things still seem to work well under 1.3. o Two more keys have been enabled during message reading - "T" will read forward from the current message by subject ("thread"). "B" will move backwards. These functions use the old single-threaded search code, with the "Searching..." message. o Errors encountered by the packer/unpacker command lines will be reported before MR/2 exits. It still exits, but it shows the failed command first. o Errors encountered by your defined editor command line will also be more clearly reported. You will not, however, be booted out of the program. o The reply packet path will now default (if not specified in MR2.INI) to the reply path. If neither are specified, the packet path defaults to the current directory (which would be the MR/2 home directory), and the reply path defaults to the same (actually to "..\", but replies are handled while you're in the tmp$$ dir). The previous beta probably confused a few people when replies were put into the MR/2 home dir instead of the old method of placing them with incoming packets. o Instead of adding searching capabilities to file viewing (new files, bulletins, system news), I added direct access to the defined editor. If your using a pre-loaded editor (Editor=NONE), this will not work. If you are using a spawned editor, then while viewing any of the mentioned files, you can press "E" and your editor will be loaded with the file being displayed. From here you can search, cut/paste to other files or whatever. You can make changes - but MR/2 will do nothing extra to save them. Changes included in v0.99 ------------------------- Didn't get as much done as I had hoped with this release. There may be a version 0.99a before I call it 1.00. If you're going to report a bug or request an enhancement, now's the time! *********************************************************************** PLEASE: fill out and send me the answers to my survey contained in the file SURVEY.TXT. I will use any responses to help plan the future development of MR/2 - AND I will offer the results to any other OS/2 mail reader authors that I become aware of. *********************************************************************** o Searching status now says (0 hits) or (1 hit) or (>1 hits). o Multithreaded searching problems fixed with regards to freeing memory BEFORE calling DosExit(). Also added some code to use the "reading message" semaphore when canceling a search, so as not to cross wires while cleaning up. o Messages > 100 lines are now split up. If more than 100 lines exist, splitting occurs at line 95, a "continued" message is appended and a additional message(s) are generated with "(Cont'd)" appended to the subject line. o If the first message in a conference happened to contain the previously specified "search string", the message viewer would position the text as if a search "hit" was found. This has been corrected. o Mouse support has been added to the message viewing screen. Click on the bottom "status" line works the same as hitting ENTER. Click on the next line up (last display line) and you've simulated "spacebar". Any other line on the bottom half of the message area is a page-down. Click on any line in the top half of the message is the same as a "page up". Click on the "==" header dividing line and you've requested the previous message ("G" or "-"). Click on "Subject:" pages forward by thread, "Conf:" brings up the index and on "Hit" (or where it should be displayed) for the next search. You still can't acknowledge a few of the "informative" message boxes with the mouse yet ... I'll get these next. o New MR2.INI option: SkipReadMessages. If set to YES, MR/2 will do its best not to show you previously read messages. Any time you move forward "normally" (using ENTER, spacebar or "+"), any message marked previously as read will be skipped over. You can still select any message by index, or page backwards with "G" or "-". Searching and threading will always reread a message. Problem: using "G" moves back sequentially ONE message - if messages were skipped, this may not be the message previously read. Problem: You can't get into any conference that has been completely "read". o New MR2.INI option: QuoteBody. Can be used to control the quoting used when creating an initial reply file. If set to "%i>" (enclosing the string in quotes is suggested), then the %i is replaced by the from-user's initials, and any other text is duplicated as specified (spaces may be used to pad). An additional parameter may be appended to the end of the quote string, separated from it by a comma. This parameter may be EachLine or FirstLine. Each line prefixes each quoted line with the quote string, FirstLine prefixes only the first line of the quote, then indents all other lines to align with the first. If not specified, the default is EachLine. NOTE: %i is the only special string parameter supported at this time. It may be ommitted from the quote string, if desired (e.g., "->"). o New MR2.INI option: OldQuoteDetect. When this parameter is set to YES, MR/2 attempts to identify any previously quoted text when building a reply file. Any text suspected of being a previous quote will not be prefixed with the quote body string. Blank lines are also not quoted. This often results in a cleaner quoting style. o New MR2.INI option: HeaderInQuote. If YES is specified, a copy of the original message header (in a format similar to a saved or printed message) is inserted at the very beginning of an initial reply file. This allows for the creation of clever editor "macros" that can mold the header infromation into quoting styles not supported directly by MR/2. Make sure this area is removed from the reply before it is saved as MR/2 makes no effort to detect and remove it. o Searching for text now supports multiple-word "or" searches. If you want to search through a conference for messages that contain OS/2, IBM or "Nick Knight", simply fill in the search form with "OS/2\IBM\Nick Knight" (less the quotes). The backslashes are the delimitters, and, no, you can't search for anything with a "\" character in it. Searching is done in one pass and only the first hit in any one message counts. o In older versions, the reply packet retained all killed messages and would depend on the mail door to discard these messages. When editing a reply, MR/2 would create a "new" message and kill the old version. If you edited a message multiple times, you would have a packet with an "invisible" copy of each older version. First, it was pointed out certain doors don't check the status flag and post these messages anyway. Then it was pointed out to me that not all users are accessing the board locally, and uploading inactive messages is causing longer connect times. While I actually consider the former a mail door bug, the latter point hit home. MR/2 now filters out all killed messages just before packing it into the .rep file. o Not sure how to spell "Bernoulli", or don't trust other message writers to spell it correctly? No, I haven't included a spell checker - but searches can now use "soundexing", or phonetic spelling. This code will undoubtably be tweaked over time, but the base algorithm is very sound. If you prefix any search word with a "&", soundex checking will be performed. Searching for "burnully" WILL find "Bernoulli" and all spellings that soundex to the same value. Another example, "Windows" will see "windoze" as a phonetic match. WARNING: "OS/2" doesn't create any kind of realistic soundex key. Results will not be usable with short words - you'll get more matches that you can track. The longer the search string the better. Note that this type of search is MUCH slower than straight character matching - good thing it's multithreaded :) Changes included in v0.99b -------------------------- o When editing a previous reply, a new option assigned to F9 exists for saving header (to/subject/conference) changes without having to edit the actual reply. o You can now hit ALT-F from the conference selection screen to search through all conferences. When viewing messages in this mode, many of the regular keystroke options are not available. Pressing ENTER "T" or "N" will bring up the next search "hit". Pressing "G", "-", "B" or "L" will display the previous search hit. Pressing "F" will allow you to search ALL messages for another string. The "I" key is not implemented in this mode, and will tell you so if pressed. Any undefined key will move to the next search hit. o I've started to add the ability to ADD or DROP conferences, although it doesn't really work yet. It appears that each mail door can decide to do this its own way. My research continues ... o The status of each message is now preserved through the use of extended attributes attached to the packet. Exiting a package and later reloading it will not destroy the read/replied/saved state of each messages. You must have KeepMessageMarks set to YES in the .ini file. o There was a bug that occurred when editing a reply or new message header and ESCAPE was pressed by accident. If you would then press ESCAPE again to deny aborting the message, the TO field would get changed to match the FROM user. This has been corrected. o The helpful little instruction lines at the bottom of the screen are back. I had tons of trouble with Zortech's screen classes handling (they were always there, and were supposed to be showing up, but rarely did), so I did a little bypass surgery and things work nicely now. o Some of the confirmation "boxes" were confusing, as the options were always OK and CANCEL. I've added some variations that provide more sensible choices (e.g., "YES/NO" and "KEEP/DELETE"). o The INSERT key now functions just like the "I" key while viewing a message. It will invoke the message header "index" screen. Many DOS readers use the INSERT key in this way. o Priority is now set lower on the background search process. Previously, if you attempted to reply to a search-hit while the search continued, the background thread would fight for the machine and cause a noticable delay. o Related to the previous note - if you replied to a search "hit" while the search continued in the background - the messages checked/hits counter would show through to the editor, overwriting the bottom line of the screen. This has been suppressed - although searching will continue while in your editor. o When viewing a message, you may press the "O" key to access an OS/2 command line. You will need to use the "EXIT" command to return to MR/2. I will enhance this to modify the prompt (to remind you you're shelled-out of MR/2), and I hope to provide access to this feature nomatter where you're at. Currently, though, it works ONLY while reading a message. o The quoting of the source message sometimes left a high-end ASCII character at the end of teh reply file. This has been fixed. o Finally! I'm 99% sure I found the last (?) nasty critical-error type bug. It had to do with reply to a search "hit". If you would later go back to review your replies, a protection violation ocurred the minute you selected the "replies" conference. This was non-destructive (your replies were always there when you reloaded MR/2), but it was extremelly irritating. Changes included in v0.99c -------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------ *** KEYS ASSIGNMENTS HAVE BEEN CHANGED SINCE VERSION 0.99B *** T was next message by thread - it's now steal tagline. Use H to move ahead by thread When replying, F2 used to toggle from/to - now it selects taglines. Use F3 to toggle from/to ------------------------------------------------------------------ o When replies were killed, some previous versions would not display the status as "killed". This has been corrected. o Tearline has been changed to "___" from "---" so as not to confuse Fidonet mail processors. o Some more problems with read/saved/replied/killed status not showing up correctly have been fixed. o Lines longer than 80 columns would sometimes cause display problems for messages and file listings. This has been corrected. The most common indication of this problem was the status/instruction line being overwritten with message text. o MR/2 now sets the video state so that high-intensity background colors can be used. This means that blinking attributes won't blink any more, but provides for more color choices. o When you edit the packet path from the packet selection window, the full file specification being used is displayed for editing. Previously, only the directory was shown and modifiable. Now, you can change the directory and/or the wildcard filename qualifier. This done partially as an aid in debugging (one) problem-prone installation. o When displaying the Welcome and Goodbye screens, MR/2 now attempts to detect and display ANSI escape sequences. If the first character in the source file is an ESCAPE character, then ANSI displaying is enabled. o The SAVE to file function has been enhanced. When prompted for the save file name, you may now press F2 to select from a list of existing save files. You may place a wildcard specification in the form before pressing F2 to control which files are displayed. If no wildcards are found in the default name, MR/2 derives a specification from the default file's path and suffix. From the save file selection list, you may optionally use ALT-E to "edit" any displayed file name. o Taglines have been enhanced. You can now load a list of taglines from a file by specifying "@filename" for the MR2.INI "TagLine" parameter. The "@" sign says to treat the line as a file name. A new parameter, "TagMode" is now available that can be set to RANDOM or SEQUENTIAL. Random will skip around the tagline file for each reply, SEQUENTIAL randomly jumps to the first tagline, then progresses through them in order for subsequent replies. NOTE: Editing a reply causes a new tagline to be chosen for the original message. You must hand pick a tagline to control this. Three sample tagline files have been included, OS2.TAG, Misc1.Tag and Misc2.Tag. I have a 166k Misc3.Tag, but I felt it was too large to include. o When replying, the FROM/TO toggle has been moved to F3. F2 now invokes tag line selection. Use this to "hand pick" a particular tagline for the current reply. o When reading message, the "T" key previously would move forward by thread. This has been reassigned to the "H" key. The "T" key now attempts to "steal" the currently displayed messages tagline. The line selected by MR/2 is displayed for editing. You may also "hand pick" any line from the original message by using the up/down arrows to scroll through message lines. This will aid "stealing" when MR/2 can't properly identify the correct line containing the tag. NOTE: Stealing and selecting taglines will change the "sequential" progression of auto-rotating taglines (in SEQUENTIAL mode only). o The end-of-list logic has been modified slightly for selection list screens. Now, when you press END while selecting from a list, not only does the display jump to the last page, but the last element is highlighted. Along the same lines, pressing PAGE DOWN when on the last page of a list display will move the highlight to the last entry. o The HeaderInQuote option reported the "To" user to be the same as the "From" user. This has been fixed. Changes included in v1.00 (Note: .99c was not widely distributed) -------------------------------------------------------------------- o Internal: replaced hand-written copying of initial .ini file with a call to DosCopy(). o Opening a packet will now cause the packet's control file to be copied into the MR/2 home directory as bbsname.CFG. This file will be used by the logic for entering messages without a packet. You should see a .cfg file for each unique BBS from which you read QWK packets. o From the main packet selection screen, you may now press ALT-E to enter messages for any BBS that MR/2 has ever encountered. A list of ".cfg" files is displayed (see previous note) for selection. When one of these names is picked, MR/2 creates a partial packet and allows entry of new messages, and reviewing of these message (and any previously existing replies). o Ooops. The background searching was being set to "idle" priority. This worked great, until a DOS app/hog using a polling loop was loaded (for example, WordPerfect). The search would tend to freeze and MR/2 would lock up. Priority for the search thread has been left "regular", but changes to a lower priority "level". o I've actually written a manual! It's not as good as I'd like, but I'll work on that later. I have to figure out how to do table of contents and an index in WordPerfect. I'm used to Ventura Publisher, but that won;t print to an plain ASCII text file. See MR2.DOC and again, comments and suggestions are always welcome. o MR/2 now recognized the existance of a properly checksummed MR2.ID file. This will be the file sent to registered users and will remove the "NR" markings from their taglines. When this file is present, the registered user also has the option of including their serial number in each tagline. Changes included in v1.01 ------------------------- o By request, 43 and 50 line mode are now supported via a new .ini entry. You can supply a VideoMode=xx parameter in MR2.INI, where xx can be 25, 43 or 50. Any other numbers will be ignored. All Selection lists and displays are adjusted to match the screen dimensions. For those with vision better than mine ... :) o Clicking the mouse on the Subject area while viewing a message still simulated hitting the 'T' key. This key no longer moves forward by thread, it steals taglines. Now, clicking on Subject is translated properly to an 'H'. o When filling a field in a "form" (e.g., the Subject field of the Message Header Edit form), overtype-mode would sometimes echo characters that weren't there. This happened after some characters were deleted; the "ghost" characters appeared at the end of the string. This is fixed. o The automatic splitting of long replies is now controlled via a MR2.INI parameter SplitLongReplies (set to Yes or No). If set to yes, MR/2 will split replies up so that no more than 100 lines are in each message. If set to no, then no splitting is performed and one large message is create. The default is to split message. o Previously, long replies were always split. The "cut-off" point was 95 message lines, and a "<cont'd>" line was appended with a blank line. I've seen some message processors cut the first part by one lines, making the second message consist of 1 or 2 meaningless lines. I've changed the "split at" number to 92 lines. o And another MR2.INI parameter has been added: AllUpperCase controls how the Subject, From and To lines are treated after editing a message's header information. Previously, all fields were converted to upper case. Now, if AllUpperCase=No, the case is left as entered. (By request...) o The message header editing form now allows you to "up arrow" into the From field and modify it. NOTE: many BBS's will reject messages whose FROM line do not match the user's logon name. Changes included in v1.02 ------------------------- o Bug fix: User reported a problem with conference numbers showing incorrectly. Turns out that some packets have a single byte conference field in the header, and the other byte used by newer mail doors was set to a space (hex 20). This caused conference numbers to be report as 8192 more than their actual value. Changes included in v1.03 ------------------------- o Fixes to tagline logic. If tagline file was non-existant, MR/2 would crash. If file was empty, added tags would not show up until you exited and reentered. o Selection list problems fixed. Highlighting of the line above displayed list on occasion. Selection bar will no longer move into unfilled areas. Scrolling up and down through list no longer displays end-of-list "ghost" entries. o Added some tests for over-length taglines. Previously, a tagline longer than 120 character would lock the session. o Forms display routine would show an over-length tagline w/o truncating it. Display of tagline extended to column 80, then would wrap to the next line. This has been corrected. o Actually added in 1.01 is the ability, from the packet selection screen, to toggle video modes. The "V" key will toggle from displayed lines from 25 to 43, from 43 to 50, and then from 50 back to 25. o MR/2 would lock up when saving a reply (or a new message). This happened only with BBS doors that would pad the user name (in control.dat) with spaces. The lockup occured after pressing F10 to accept the message header information. This shouldn't happen any more :) o NOTE - NOTE - NOTE: The problem with packets proclaiming "no mail to read" seems to be related to missing .NDX files in the packet. The QMAIL door in particular lets you suppress these files, and some mail readers (SLMR/OLX) don't use them, anyway. MR/2 requires these file, at least today. I WILL provide an index building function in the very next release, figure by 5/22 worst-case. o OK, so I added the routine to create NDX files if they aren't there. (See above) Testing on this was minimal, so please report any problems. Packets without .NDX files should no longer report "no mail found". Changes included in v1.04 ------------------------- o You may now create a supplemental "INI" file for any/all BBS's that you get mail from. MR/2 still loads its options from MR2.INI, but you may now change some of these options automatically by BBS, when a packet is opened. Once the packet is unpacked and the BBS "ID" is extracted, MR/2 checks its "base" directory (where MR2.INI resides) for a file named after the BBS, with a ".INI" suffix. For example, after unpacking a QWK packet from PC-OHIO, MR/2 will load options from a file named "PC-OHIO.INI", if one exists. Obviously, some options will have no effect (e.g., PacketPath has already been used and is no longer pertainent, as is WorkPath), but things like tagline files and quoting styles can be changed on a BBS basis. If a "BBS" .INI file is accessed, MR/2 will reload the global MR2.INI file when the current packet is closed. o New INI parameter "TagStyle" has been added. You may specify either FIDONET (the default) or PCBOARD. If Fidonet is specified, taglines will use "*" characters to delimit MR/2's signiture. If PCBOARD style is requested, the "block" character used by SLMR/OLX will be substituted. o Read-ahead by thread (the "H" key) has been enhanced to recognize subjects prefixed with "RE:" or "RE: " as matching. Messages will also match if the subject matches the original *less* the "RE:". o Install now includes Register.Doc for easier user registration. - That's it for this revision. I *almost* added a large section of code for twits and canned searches, but this is going to take some time to code and even more time to test and debug. I'll make that available in a week or two, along with fixes for any other reported bugs. BTW - a PM version is in a very primitive form, anyone interested in giving me some useful feedback? First, should it be MR/2 PM or MR/PM? Changes included in v1.1 ------------------------- o The Reference number field was not being set and maintained properly. If you replied to a message, that message's reference number would get copied into the replies Ref#. Then if you would re-edit the reply later, the Ref# would be set to the conference number. I've now staightened this mess out and it seems to work properly. o Added a new MR2.INI parameter "WrapLinesAtColumn" that defaults to 80. This should ease the problems with users that depend on the system "E" editor and its "word wrapping" function. MR/2 will let no line extend beyond the value supplied here, and will insert a CR/LF between words to keep text in bounds. o You may now set the MR2.INI variable "VideoMode" any of the values 25, 28, 34, 40, 43, 50 or 60 to represent the number of lines to display. Also, the V toggle while on the packet select screen has been enhanced to toggle through all of these values. o MR/2 now accepts one or more file names identifying .QWK packet as command line parameters. For example, typing: MR2 E:\DL\NERDNOOK.QWK will invoke MR/2 and automatically select the named packet for reading. More than one packet may be specified, MR/2 simply opens the "next" packet when the previous packet is closed. When all packets on the command line have been read, MR/2 returns to the packet selection screen and waits for a new selection. If you wish to have MR/2 exit after all specified files have been processed, set the INI variable "ExitAtEndOfParameters" to YES. This also allows for an "association" to be set up using WPS settings. If a new ICON is created to invoke MR/2 and "*.qwk" is set as an association, then clicking on a QWK packet inside the file manager is all that's necessary to read a packet. o Cosmetic: "Pick a Conferences" when writing a "new" message now reads correctly. o Cosmetic: when using video lines other than 25, the search status message would update always on line 25. This now moves with the number of lines displayed. o When editing the message header, F4 may be used to select from a list of available conferences. This is useful when moving a message from its source conference into another. By request. o The master conference list now displays in alphabetical order by name. Previously, conferences listed in the order they occured in the BBS's configuration file. o NOW, there's a new INI parameter, "SortMasterConferences" which defaults to NO (old-style non sorted list). Specifying YES will sort the master conference list alphabetically. o The "Z" key, used when viewing a message, now allows you to "Zip" to the next "unread" message in a conference. o Threaded reading has been greatly enhanced. First, a new INI option must be set - "MessageOrder=Subject" (the default is "None"). This enables all sorts of new goodies :) Basically, setting this to YES will sort the messages by thread before reading begins. Care was taken to "clump" all "RE:" type messages in with their original non-RE'd subjects. o If MessageOrder has been set to "Subject", some new keys are available. While viewing messages, the TAB key will skip ahead to the next thread. The BACKSPACE key will skip backwards to the previous thread. Even better, pressing "Q" will invoke the Quick Thread Summary screen. This list all threads in the conference, in alphabetical order, along with the count of previously read messages vs. total message in the thread. All threads that have been read completely are marked with an "*". This is a full feature "selection" screen, so you can page around, pick and peck at only the subjects that interest you. o I added another option - I'm not very happy with it, but you may find it somewhat useful. The INI parameter "ThreadChangeTone" accepts two numeric parameters (e.g., "ThreadChangeTone=20000,10"). These parameters are passed to the OS/2 kernel procedure DOSBeep() and represent the frequency and duration of the tone to make when you "page" into a "new" thread. The values 20000,10 make a quick "clicking" like sound that isn't *too* anoying. I'm open to ideas on this one ... :) o Default tagline file is now MISC2.TAG in an attempt to minimize anti-Windows discussions in OS/2 related conferences. OS2.TAG is still in the distribution zip, you'll just have to set it yourself, if you want it. o Minor bug: List Selection processing would exit a list if HOME was pressed on the "first" page of records. Now, user stays in the selection list and the cursor moves to the first entry. o When Sorting by Subject, the 'H' and the 'B' keys used the old way (searching forwards/backwards by subject) aren't that useful. I've changed their behaviour slightly in this case. The 'H' key will move forward a message, and if the "thread" changes, will display the Quick Thread Summary screen. The 'B' key will move backwards one message pull up the summary screen if you move into a "new" thread. NOTE that the selecting a thread from the summary screen moves you to the *first* record in the thread, even if the 'B' key was previously used. There currently is no way to jump to the last message in a thread. Is this capability desirable? o The default for the setting of ExtendedAttributes is now YES. If you do not use the E editor, some minor speed increases may be achieved simply by setting this to NONE. Note that this is only an issue with users creating their INI file for the first time (existing INI's are not affected by this change). Didn't get to twits and canned searches yet - Sorry! I think the threading stuff will satisfy more of you, anyway :)