Gone are the days when it'd say... 2002-03-22, 03:09h.
Versions
--------
RickDev/01 2002-01-22
*ALL PROGRAMS*
Moved program version to a seperate string, so it all stays in
sync.
Added "-version" command line parameter (as NewsAgent doesn't
offer Info windows), so you can see which version is in use.
Simply open a taskwindow and type:
*/<NAbeta$Dir>.#### -version
where '####' is the application name (!RunImage, EditMaster,
AutoRepair, or Debatch).
It will inform you which version it is, then exit. A release of
a 'newer' version of something may include older parts. For
example, it is not expected that an awful lot will be done to
the AutoRepair program, where lots may be done to EditMaster...
Tweaked header files and variables so it compiles cleanly (no
warnings) on my setup (CC version 4.00). It may have compiled
clean for Jason - it is possible CC version 5.05 is 'smarter'.
EDITMASTER
Fixed buggette with longer MessageIDs, just increased buffer
size. RFC son-of-1036 suggests message IDs MUST NOT be no
longer than 250 octets, so the buffer is 255.
Date in header line is given in local time, with +0000 or
+0100 offsets (ie, the offset from UTC).
This is as recommended in RFC son-of-1036. The "GMT" and "BST"
timezones are dropped. No alphabetical timezones will be used
in NewsAgent, as to output codes like BST, CET and GET, you'll
need to be able to understand them. There are around *five*
timezones called EST - most will assume Eastern Standard Time,
but you cannot really rely on this.
This code has been tested with my machine set to various time
zones and/or not daylight saving.
For example, daylight savings (+0100) in France (+0100) will
correctly output +0200. You GMT/BST and TimeZone settings
should be correct. That's all.
You will be prompted if there are more than four groups listed
in the newsgroups header, if a follow-up is given, or two with
no follow-up.
This is to try to restrict excessive crossposting, which is an
evil thing.
You will be prompted if you have sent an attachment to a
newsgroup that does not contain "binar" within it's name. This
is to trap attachments sent to non-binary groups in error (but
it can be overridden for cases like "comp.xxxx.sources" which
takes binaries but doesn't imply such in its name).
Crossposting binaries is faulted. You can't do it without
sending multiple messages (so don't even try).
You will be warned if "#!" or "--" are the first things on any
given line of a message.
The first is KNOWN to affect Pluto (ie, posting a mail message
in news, including headers, causes Pluto to debatch the mail
into mail... well, it did a year ago - maybe Pluto is now smart
enough to recognise that it should NOT have mail in an incoming
news stream).
The latter implies that a signature was included, either by
intention or by careless quote.
Workarounds:
#! rmail or #! rnews
These should be removed. If you are intending to quote full
headers, these are unnecessary. The write-up in the message
body should make it clear if it is mail or news; failing that
it should be obvious from the header itself.
-- signatures
Ideally, clip out "-- " from quoted signatures. It is
superfluous. If you think I'm being bossy, consider many news
clients will spot "-- " and switch to 'signature mode'. If
you have this sequence in the middle of your postings, then
you'll be caught out.
Now supports Superior speech. It will try the Superior Speech
(module must already be loaded) and if not found it will try
Jon Duddington's Speak (again, module should be loaded).
Any From address with ',' or '.' within will be quoted. This is
in accordance with RFC son-of-1036.
No longer outputs a Reply-To header. This is because NewsAgent
output a Reply-To that is identical to the From header. This is
pointless. A future version will have a user-settable Reply-To
in the configuration, and Reply-To will then be used if set up.
Will trap (and fault) posting of messages that are unmodified.
Will trap (and fault) posting of a message with contains only
quoted material.
Provision made to implement user overriding of the default
"Organization" line. Please note that the default is now
"ArgoNet subscriber, United Kingdom", rather than the "ArgoNet,
but does not reflect its views".
To quote RFC son-of-1036 "The Organization content SHOULD
mention geographical location (e.g. city and country) when it
is not obvious from the organization's name. [...] The
Organization content is provided for identification only, and
does not imply that the poster speaks for the organization or
that the article represents organization policy."
The United Kingdom bit was added after a lot of deliberation,
as most users will be @argonet.co.uk. However some may have
their own domain with .com or .org suffix. Okay, it is valid
that some (as myself soon) will not be in the UK. By then I
hope to have updated the NewsAgent configuration utility to
allow this sort of thing to be altered by the user.
Message-IDs have been altered to be more specific to the first
fourteen characters, and to better disguise the email address
of the originator.
It was:
<na.4f91544afc.a70210rmurray@heyrick.co.uk>
It is now:
<ef.4f91544afc.a70210pc16@heyrick.co.uk>
^^ ^^^^
The first underlined section is not a string 'ef', but a random
value between 0 and &FF.
The second underlined section is your Argonet POP3 mailbox.
This can be used to mail you, but it helps disguise your email
address - as message IDs only specify a valid domain should be
present. This will, obviously fail with your own domain (as is
shown in the above example, but again it is only to disguise
your email address - this is NOT your email address, it is just
that NewsAgent uses this!).
The "na." at the start is no longer considered necessary, as it
was within the variable section, and the newsreader
identification line says it is NewsAgent.
VIEWAGENT
Had no built-in version string, so assuming version 0.84 (same
as EditMaster).
!RUNIMAGE
Now compiles with only two warnings, related to maths. Probably
something should, pedantically, be flagged as 'unsigned' when
setting bit 31 as a flag.
Again, this had no version of its own, so assuming 0.84.
DEBATCH
As with the others, this had no version of its own, so assuming
0.84. The debatcher refers to itself as "NewsAgentDB", so
you'll see this if you use the -version command line option.
AUTOREPAIR
Yes, it is version 0.84. :-)
Like the debatcher, this doesn't call itself "AutoRepair", but
rather it likes to be known as "NewsAgentAR".
RickDev/02 2002-01-23
!RUNIMAGE
Modifications to support article locking from the viewer.
VIEWAGENT
Added a 'lock' icon to the toolbar. Clicking SELECT will lock
the message currently being viewed. Clicking ADJUST will lock
the message and open the next message.
There is no 'unlock' icon. Use the listing for that.
Also, added a little more 'space' between the bin icon and
everything else. Just in case. :-)
RickDev/03 2002-01-27
DEBATCH
Modified the code to my personal style (easier for me to read).
Inserted #ifdef conditionals to select proper build (the normal
paths), or development build (NAbeta paths).
Changed a few of the embedded messages to be a little bit
clearer (IMHO).
The file format conversion routine is now disabled. It will
return an error. As nobody should be using a version of
NewsAgent that is THAT old, this isn't anything you should
encounter.
RickDev/04 2002-01-29
EDITMASTER
If posting a message to a "binar" group with no followup, it
will ask if one should be given.
RickDev/05 2002-02-21
*ALL PROGRAMS*
Implemented "PROPER_BUILD" option, and recompiled, so now it will
use the proper paths (not NAbeta...), because Paul F Johnson's
stupidly long mail address / MessageID is *REALLY* starting to
annoy me.
I might add some clipping code to hack it if it is too long for
sensible display.
EDITMASTER
When quoting, Message-IDs will be clipped to 63 characters (same
as fetcher (look in HistoryDir)); and also email address will be
clipped to 63 characters also.
Surprise surprise, this only appears to affect messages from
Paul F Johnson. :-)
RickDev/06 2002-02-23
!RUNIMAGE
Now does Hourglass when creating list of subjects/messages in a
group. You'll see why when you have > 4000(odd) messages...
Fixed the weirdness where the dates get all messed up in the list
of messages in a subject.
VIEWAGENT
Hacky twiddle to display quoted text (where first two characters
are '>' or ':') in blue.
THIS IS A QUICK HACK, so any style change in the line will reset
the text colour to black.
I've just done it to see how well it is received. I think it is
a useful thing.
Clicking a URL will have the following effect:
1. It'll try launching the URL the ArcWeb way (ie, like before)
2. If that fails, it'll see if you have the Acorn URI, and if
you do then your URL will be launched via the URI handler.
3. If you don't have the URI, then it will try to launch your
URL the Fresco way.
4. If that fails, it'll try the URLOpen_<method> way.
I think I'll die of shock.
Oregano actually WORKS with the URL launching!!!
(if you are wondering why I'm so shocked, consider they replaced
the entire FontManager, and they've apparently gone one better
with Oregano 2 and replaced the WindowManager!)
EDITMASTER
More twiddles to defend against shooting over bounds.
RickDev/07 2002-02-26
*ALL PROGRAMS*
Some more internal twiddles. These, mainly, are getting ready for
the introduction of an updated NewsAgent configuration utility.
EDITMASTER
Stupid bozo error:
prompt_user("non binaries group, send with attachment?");
return;
Should have been:
if ( prompt_user("blah?") == 1 )
return;
:-)
RickDev/08 2002-03-21
*EDITMASTER*
Typo in Message-ID code that generated incorrect IDs (it added
the POP3 identity (like in Path:), when it should have been the
email address...
It's a nasty one, as it seems some people are unable to post
messages because the server objects. Can't, for the life of me,
figure out why my messages were accepted with 'broken' IDs.
[added later: it was NewsFudge 'autocorrecting' the broken IDs!]
RickDev/09 2002-03-22
*!RUNIMAGE*
A few small tweaks, internal stuff really...
*VIEWAGENT* [for David Eaton, today]
Did a little bit of work on the textual effects. Italics /should/
work correctly now - provided you turn off after you've turned
on! Also, less stuff is italicised, and the whatsit handles
punctuation.
Did anybody notice that *bold* didn't actually work? There was
code for the **whatever-this-does** effect, and code for /itals/
and even code to display anything in capital letters as bold
(talk about shouting!), but there wasn't anything for *bold*.
Well, it works now. :-)
Implemented a pseudo-teletext mode. It was said that content "in
italics" could quite logically wrap around to a new line.
Fair enough.
It is unlikely to be wanted to intentionally span a blank line,
so upon hitting a blank line (paragraph break), bold and italic
will be forced off.
I've just tried this with some 'known' broken messages, and it
looks good.
Please note - my quote colouring code is still a hack, I'm
calling it a day at 3 am, okay?
RickDev/10 2002-03-26
Updated configuration utility:
"NARD", bit 0 - Toggle display of words in capitals as bold
bit 1 - Toggle display of quoted text in colour
bit 2 - Toggle X-No-Archive header
bit 3 - Toggle autosave option (not yet supported)
"ORGN", organisation string
PLEASE CONFIGURE NEWSAGENT BEFORE USE - DEFAULT OPTIONS IN CONFIG
IS EVERYTHING ON, DEFAULT OPTIONS IN NEWSAGENT IS EVERYTHING OFF.
*VIEWAGENT*
Some bugs with the textual effects, so jiggled the code a bit. It
is not perfect, but it is better and more consistant.
Implemented option to turn off NewsAgent's annoying propensity to
display stuff in capitals in bold type.
Quotes-in-blue is still as hacky, but now you have an option to
turn it on and off. :-)
*EDITMASTER*
Implemented option to insert "X-No-Archive: Yes" into headers.
Now inserts user-defined Organization string.
RickDev/11 2002-06-09
Updated configuration utility:
"RPLY" is the 'Reply-To' to use. If blank, no Reply-To.
Also the configuration utility checks the organisation string
is given, and if you have specified an alternative news server,
that you have given that too.
*EDITMASTER*
Implemented option to insert "Reply-To" into headers.
*EDITMASTER / !RUNIMAGE*
Now supports the automatic backup system, if you have enabled it.
It works thus:
0. See #3.
1. When you edit, roughly every 30 seconds the "!autoback!"
file will be created. The timeout check only occurs when you
press a key, so at most you'll lose 30 seconds worth of
editing; and consequently it will allow disc spindown (etc)
when you are not actively editing.
2. If you quit legally (ie, close icon (abandon) or post the
message), the "!autoback!" file will be deleted.
3. When you run "!NewsAgent", the main program will check to
see if the "!autoback!" file exists. If it does, then it
will prompt you if you'd like to resume editing. If you
choose to do so, the editor will pop up with the last edit
session restored to within 30 seconds of typing...
I originally coded this for Emily and it is damn useful. Not so
much 'cos of the editor crashing (so not an issue, EditMaster
hasn't crashed on me yet), however powercuts and the old bug in
MessageTrans (seems to be gone now thanks to Nemo's fix) used to
cause problems. It's nice to have the option of rebooting and
picking up WITHOUT losing half an hour's worth of typing!