!AntUtils (History)

Read the !Help file for full instructions

1. Tidied up mail and news fetching to make source code a bit neater and more manageable. :-)
2. Added colour status indicator to Status window.
3. Took out ColourTrans dependency altogether and added it to the URLStore plugin - which is where it was required anyway (AntUtils icon)
4. Tidied templates file up a little bit. Choices window is now slightly tidier.
5. Allowed 'Auto quit' to work in conjunction with 'Lan'.
6. Added SoundFX (see docs)

1. Lowered ColourTrans version dependency so that AntUtils will load correctly on older machines.
2. Added 'Stay Online' feature to cancel the Hangup part of InetSuite's Transfer All+Hang up. This is handy if you change your mind and don't want to hang up after selecting that option.
3. Amended manual and help messages accordingly.

1. Extended search menu to allow for up to 20 search engines.
2. Amended Pluto debatch time to always be less than the message fetch time. If both are set to 1min, debatch time will become 30 seconds.
3. Fixed bug in key handling so that cursor up works in the choices window.
4. Made minimum 'fetch time' in choices = 1 minute.
5. Modified debatching to avoid skipping fetches due to thinking it's already transferring messages. AntUtils now correctly scans the input files to see if they are actually open, rather than just existing.
6. Added mailto:author option to 'Info' window.
7. Wrote a StrongHelp manual and modified the !Help file accordingly.

1. Added confirmation options to potentially dangerous operations (such as flushing Fresco's cache etc)
2. Fixed HotList management HTML segment to remove a spurious </center> tag and to add smaller font sizes to the date.
3. Added internal hotlist manager in addition to the HTML format one.
4. Extensively rewrote AntUtils to use Plugins. (This should make future development easier)
5. Tidied up Fresco sub-menu and added a 'Delete' option to give better control over the purging of various Fresco files.

1. Added additional script files to execute on starting and Quitting of AntUtils so that commands can be run immediately on loading AntUtils and also executed on Quitting AntUtils. See !Help for more info.
2. AntUtils now delays mail and news fetching if it's already in the middle of the previous one.
3. Bug fix: Stopped icon bar icon flickering if you held the mouse button down over it.
4. Added 'Cookies' control to Fresco menu.
5. Added check on Quit for mail/news still waiting to be sent, if still online.
6. Added code to kill filer modules on 'SHUTDOWN' cron command so as to force a shutdown even if data remains in a RAM disc or to prevent the 'please insert disc xxx' error.
7. Amended URL interception code to only intercept internet protocols (definable in the Messages file)
8. Added control option (in Messages file) to disable the URL interception entirely (ie. behave the same as versions prior to v1.21)
9. Added 'Fetch' and 'Debatch' commands to cron commands.

1. Added interruption of Shutdown sequence if mail or news is still waiting to be sent and you're still online (or connected to a LAN).
2. Improved documentation to Cron_coms to give details on quitting named tasks.
3. Added 'tab key' recognition to writable icons.
4. Bugfix: Added key handler routine to 'paths' window.
5. Added hotlist manager if you click on a URL without being online. (Thanks to Anthony Hilton for the suggestion)
6. WimpSlot increased to 156K (unfortunately).
7. Bugfix: Sig change ignored if no sigfile exists within AntUtils.
8. Added time/freemem display to icon bar. (press CTRL while clicking on icon bar to toggle)
9. Bugfix: Multi-User setting now being saved correctly.
10. Amended some icons for better visibility on pre-RISC OS 3.5 machines.
11. Bugfix: 'Shutdown' command tidied up a bit.
12. Added warning message for when memory is getting seriously low (ie. too low to top up RMA space)

1. Fixed minor bug where entering a search engine string and then selecting another search engine before starting the search blanked the search string.

1. Included new AntUtils sprite (thanks to Richard Foster)
2. Changed the SELECT/ADJUST action in the aux.apps window. (can be set via 'Messages' file).
3. Added interactive help message for the pause button.
4. Fixed bug which caused a crash if the random sig was turned on and Marcel hadn't been seen.
5. Added search engine launcher.
6. Added some more interactive help messages for the 'Open' and 'Repair' submenus.
7. Removed debugging feature left in previous versions that made AntUtils quit if SHIFT was held down whilst negotiating the menus.
8. Added option to fetch mail/news immediately on loading AntUtils.
9. Amended URL launcher routine to load Fresco if not already loaded.
10. Added a couple of extra configuration options into the Messages file.

1. Added better filename validation for Marcel inbox repair.
2. Extended auxillary applications so that ordinary files can be loaded from the aux.apps window.
3. Added pause function to countdown timer.
4. Made Pluto window opening on debatch optional.
5. Added some missing interactive help messages.

1. Added small icon for !AntUtils
2. Extended buffer for thumbnail indexing to allow for long filenames.
3. Added additional path to be set so that Fresco can be set independently of the main InetSuite.

1. Added Fresco Javascript and Faking methods to save manually editing Fresco's config file.
2. Added 'Open' option to open InetSuite's mail/news incoming and outgoing mail queues.
3. Added simple, automated recovery routine to help repair broken Marcel inboxes.

1. Optimised wimp polling so that AntUtils requires vastly lower processor time.

1. Fixed bug in signature routine where no signature file caused a crash.
2. Fixed minor redraw bug when dropping new aux.apps into aux.app window.
3. Added semi-automatic 'downloads' save facility.
   Drag a file from a save dialogue box onto !AntUtils icon to save the file into a preset directory. This is handy if a save dialogue opens before you've had a chance to open a filer window.
4. Included new, extended 'quotes' file.

1. Fixed bug where clicking on the aux.apps window background caused an array subscript error.
2. Added rudimentary control over Fresco's cache and history.
3. Added support for interactive help.
4. Added a couple of example scripts to perform timed mail/news downloads.

1. Added autoreset option to attempt to automatically reset and reboot the machine in the event of a fatal error. Useful for leaving unattended!

1. Made iconbar icon the correct width. (silly error that I kept forgetting to fix).

1. Allowed definable maximum length for People menu block.

1. Amended Image Indexing to allow the images to be in a different directory to the index file. Drag the image directory to the Image Indexing window before you drag the index file out to create it.
2. Amended title of Image index slightly.
3. Made filename of image index linkable.
4. Amended Image indexing to only copy the background if a file called "background" does NOT already exist.
5. Improved error handling somewhat when invalid image directories are specified.
6. Made 'title' and 'created time' optional in Image indexing.

1. Tidied up the 'Quick mail' routine a bit so that AntUtils doesn't try sending mail whilst it's already sending mail from the last time (added so that if Ant take too long to send the existing mail, AntUtils won't try resending a second later).
2. Swapped the mouse button action in the auxillary apps window to be more style guide compliant. Adjust leaves window open whereas select closes window after loading app.
3. If the mail mechanism is set to Pluto, AntUtils will do a single, last debatch of mail and news when you disconnect after being online.
4. *MAJOR ADDITION* - Ability to create html index files of image directories.

1. Bug fix: Timer reseting when 'Lan' setting turned on.
2. Added ability to include "|M" inside shortcut string sequences, so that carriage returns can be included.
3. Added 'Quick mail send' option which checks for any mail in the outgoing queue every 5 seconds and if so, sends it straight away. NB. Advanced users can change the time delay by editing the AntUtils.Resources.Messages file.

1. Added 'Check RMA' option to choices so that AntUtils will ensure that there is always enough free RMA space whilst loaded. This hopefully eliminates the DLL crashing that the Ant Suite sometimes suffers from on connecting.
   The actual minimum size of RMA space is definied within the AntUtils.Resources.Messages file. The default is 128k
   This supercedes/fixes the method used in v1.08 (item f)

1. Added option to run without installing an icon on the bar. (Shift, Ctrl, A, U to toggle)
2. Added shortcuts to enable up to 5 specific lines of text to be automatically inserted at the cursor position. These are stored inside !AntUtils.Resouces.Shortcuts
3. Added facility to send an automatic debatch command to Pluto, one minute after mail downloads and two minutes after news downloads (user configurable).
4. Added additional web resources sites to AntUtils 'Info' window. This allows you to hotlink visit either my own, Ant Ltd or Jon Duddington's Pluto web sites in order to check for latest updates.
5. Added 'tick' for status option on menu.
6. Allowed facility to claim RMA space on connection in an attempt to 'fix' the DLL not found crashes on connection.

1. Fixed bug whereby if you don't have an ADFS::HardDisc4 filepath, AntUtils will crash. Now if you wish to move to a different machine, simply delete the !AntUtils.Resources.choices file and re-run.

1. Added 'auxillary files' window, so you can hotlink any additional 'utility' apps you want to run with InetSuite.
2. Made double-clicking on "Next Cron" icon in the status window actually execute the next cron entry, ahead of time - so you can step through them immediately.
3. Added support for Pluto newsreader.
4. Added cron logging so you can see if everything has worked whilst you were away.
5. Should hopefully now manage signatures a bit better when set to non multi-user.
6. Added filepath window so you can implicitly set the paths to !InetSuite and !Pluto - so you can run AntUtils even before the others have been 'seen'.

1. Fixed bug in Lan connection where AntUtils failed to check the Lan connection correctly, thus giving an offline status.

1. Tidied up file handling so that open files are not closed, if an error is detected during initialisaion.
   This will enable AntUtils to become part of your boot sequence without generating a 'file is closed' error.
2. Amended cron routine so that only AntUtils commands are converted to uppercase, thus leaving any oscli commands as they are.
3. Added next cron command to status window.
4. Fixed bug where newstime was not updated correctly when set to automatically fetch news messages.
5. Added arm code routine to reset machines on pre-Risc OS 3.5 machines.
6. Added code so that if more than one copy of AntUtils is loaded, the first one quits automatically, so that only one copy of !AntUtils can be loaded at any one time.
7. Added 'load time' to info window, mainly to see if autoboot options and cron table's are working ok.
8. Added 'swap' command to cron table to allow for two different cron tables to be active.
9. Clicking select on the next cron icons in the Status window gives a message stating in full what the next cron event is, as the status window is truncated.

1. Added cron table to allow !AntUtils to execute various commands at preset times, whilst loaded.
2. Added support for multi-user hotlists and call logging files, due to popular demand on the Ant Chat mailing list.

1. Added automatic newsgroup fetching.
2. Added 'Autoquit' option, so that !AntUtils will quit automatically as soon as you come offline and quit !InetSuite.
3. Added 'Auto status' option to enable !AntUtils to open and close the status window automatically if you are on or off line respectively.
4. Added support for SLIP access as well as PPP.
5. Added LAN connection option to force permanent connection.

1. Fixed bug whereby detrimental count resets approx every five seconds. This was caused by a minor(?) typo in a boolean calculation. (oops)
2. Added error message if you try to connect to my web page without being online.

1. First release version, pretty much all working and debugged, albeit the first version.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any additional ideas for features.