Digester Manual

What is Digester?

The Digester program converts e-mail of the info-mac digests to hypertext format files (HTML).

The hypertext format files can be browsed through using a Web browser. If you haven't heard about the web, I really suggest you start reading something about it :-) The interactive format of the digests makes it easy to browse through the messages and download the software. You do, however, need a browser, TCP-IP (MacTCP and maybe PPP or SLIP).

Why Digester?

I started this service because I had a hard time browsing through the 180Kbytes of plain text, which is the normal format of the digest. The tedious work of copying the filenames into a batch file to retrieve the files was becoming unworkable for me. Now browsing the digest just takes a few minutes and I'm informed of the things that interest me. I hope it will be as usefull to you as it is to me.

Changes version 2.3

Fixed Mail URL linking in digester and post-send.
Enhanced URL valid characters list.
Added From, To, Subject and Date parameters in digester.par to make it more flexible.
Added an advertising facility to include ads in issues.

Changes version 2.1.1b

Added file type and creator parameters in the .par file: FTYPE and FCREAT.
Added IMAGES path parameter in digester.par, so now you can put your buttons anywhere.
Fixed a bug in digester caused it loop endlessly if the BOD parameter was set incorrectly.
Added parameter file selection in command line. This is not available for the Mac version. I'll have to rewrite the interface to include that in an appropriate manner.
Fixed a bug in the post-send stuff.
If FIL switch is off, digester will not create the programs file.
If the BOT or EOT parameters are empty, the text following the table of topics will be skipped completely, until a message delimiter is found. If EOT is not empty, digester will skip to the EOT in the digest.

Changes version 2.0.4b

Added the standard file dialog. BEWARE that digester now only looks in the folder in which digester resides!
Fixed a bug in digester caused it stop in pass 2 due to unexpected delimiter found in certain other digests.
Added URL link support.
Added direct Mail link support apart from the mail button. Be aware that when users choose a direct mail link and quote, that the entire digest is copied! For this reason the mail button was previously implemented, in order to filter out just that one message. A user asked for this feature.
A debug (DBG) parameter in the digest can be turned on for more information about what digester is doing.

Changes version 2.0.2b

Fixed a bug in digester caused it to crash when an improper filename was filled in.
Fixed bug: Digests with lines over 200 characters caused crashes.

Changes version 2.0

Digester can now convert a number of different digest formats instead of only the info-mac digest. The digester.par file contains conversion parameters. You can set them to work with your digest format. If the digest.par file is not available (in the same folder as digester) default values (those for the info-mac digest) will be used.
The table of contents now correctly reflects the contents of the digest. The info-mac digest Table of topics is often inconstistent with the actual contents of the digest, which makes it totally useless for digester. Digester now uses a 2 pass scheme to first make the table of contents by checking each message and in pass 2 the messages are compiled.
Digester now supports a new output format where programs and messages are put in separate files each with their own table of contents.
Work is still in progress to make the interactive digest format that sends only one message at a time. I have to work out the cgi-scripts for the Mac, the unix scripts should be trivial as they are similar to the post-send.c script.
A feature that was introduced in an intermediate version of digester is the make reply button that allows the user to extract just the one message to which she/he wants to reply to. For now, it only works on UNIX work stations (post-send.c), unless some smart person has already compiled a script for the Mac (in which case I would be grateful if I could receive a copy, thanks in advance :).
Another feature is a good Mac user interface. To me that is low priority, as most systems that use the digester are UNIX based (which have little more than the stupid old terminal interface).

Changes version 1.3

Digester now supports the new mime-format of the info-mac digest. The digester does not use the mime-format information, but has learned to ignore commands related to this new scheme.
The digests have now got a 'go to previous message' button ('back' for short). The GIF file related to the button is called 'prev.gif'.
The digester now uses a file called 'sites.asc' to read the sites which will be inserted as links to the files servers of your choice. The first line is the number of lines (sites) following below (I need this to allocate enough memory for the string array). The following lines are the format strings (C-format for fprintf). They may look a bit cryptic. If you want to insert a new site: copy the last line and change the server name. The '%s' is used to insert the path of the file. Don't forget to change the number of sites at the top of the file.
I am working on a scheme to make it possible to order the digests piece by piece (message by message) in order to make the wait shorter. This will also make it feasible for people with a slow modem connection to make use of this service. But, this means rewriting the digester entirely and making it an interactive program (like scripts). Any suggestions are welcome.

How to use digester

You can convert your digests by doing the following:

If you are using Eudora, select one the info-mac digest at a time and save it WITHOUT 'include header and guess paragraphs' as ONE file in the same folder as the digester. So each digest in a separate file, thank you. The old version of digester could cope with more than one digest in a file, but because of the two pass scheme now used, digester can only handle one digest at a time.
If you want to use reconfigure digester, please read this document.
Start digester and specify the file name of the file to be converted and if you want fancy buttons (if the PROMPT switch is on). Fancy buttons are those shown in the example. You can change them if you like. No buttons means that normal text will be inserted instead. You can also choose to split the digest into two or three files, for example:
In case of two files:
1. list of programs and contents: IMp182-13.html
2. list of messages and contents: IMm182-13.html
In case of three files:
1. list of topics: IMt182-13.html
2. list of programs: IMp182-13.html
3. list of messages: IMm182-13.html
In case of one file: IM182-13.html
Start Netscape or some other browser and open (command-O) the digest file (IM???-??.html, IMt???-??.html, IMp???-??.html or IMm???-??.html).
Now move the 'html' files to the site folder if they are not already there.

That's all. It may take a moment to load the issue though, so don't panic. You Mac has not hung itself up.

You may also wish to publish the digests on the Web so that more users can benefit from this service. In this case you should check out httpd for the Mac.

I have also included a standard index file for use on a server.

If you have come up with nicer buttons, please send them to me.

If you choose to present this service to a wide community (which I hope many will do), please send me your URL, so I can make a list of 'mirrors'. For many users the trip over the Atlantic ocean is a long and unbareable one. Thanks in advance,

André

If you have any questions, please e-mail me at:

A.C.vanderHam@ET.TUDelft.NL

Lets go back!