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NEWSie - News/Email/FTP/Browser August 22, 1998 NEWSie uses the NNTP Internet protocol to read UseNet News articles. It provides a standard GEM interface complete with menu, windows, and mouse selection. NEWSie provides the ability to read, save, and print NEWS articles, and full Posting and Followup capabilities. Articles can be downloaded and read offline. Offline Posting and Followup functions are available. It uses STiK/STinG/GlueSTiK as the Internet access manager via SLIP/PPP connection. Newsie supports a full complement of e-mail services, including Send, Reply, and Forwarding of mail messages. Multiple mailboxes are supported, with transfer of mail between mailboxes. Mailboxes may be sorted in subject, author and date order. A facility to use and edit nicknames is available. Both Selective and Full mail retrieval are available. NEWSie also provides FTP (File Transfer Protocol) support for the Atari computer User. Selection of servers with individual logon id, password and directory are provided. Directory lists are cached to provide the fastest access, and directories are automatically retrieved when changes have been made. Recently, NEWSie has an integrated text only Web Browser that provides rudimentary features of Hypertext linking. A local Home page and Hotlist path are available. NEWSie will be made available free of charge for download from several ftp sites. For more information: John Rojewski e-mail: rojewski@primenet.com WWW: http://www.primenet.com/~rojewski/newsie.html OVERVIEW This is an attempt to document the facilities of NEWSie, a UseNet Newsreader client for the Atari series of computers. NEWSie is a GEM compliant program with standard GUI features including menus, windows, dialogs, and mouse and keyboard input. In addition to UseNet, NEWSie supports e-mail send via smtp and receive via pop3 protocols. The following major topics are included in this document: 1. MENUS File Edit News Mail FTP Special Preferences 2. WINDOWS Subscribed NewsGroups Article Overview Article Text New NewsGroups Full NewsGroups MailBox MailBox, Selective Retrieval Mail Text FTP Server FTP Directory FTP Viewer Help Log Address Book Browser 3. DIALOGS Personal Preferences Server Preferences General Preferences News Reading Preferences Mail Preferences Message Preferences FTP Preferences Path Preferences Log Preferences Signature Preferences Font Preferences Browser Preferences Edit Nicknames Edit Server Edit Function Keys Edit Address Post/Followup Article Send/Reply/Forward Mail Subscribe to NewsGroup UnSubscribe from NewsGroup Edit Newsgroup first/last Transfer Status 4. FILES Resource Support Programs Preferences Subscribed NewsGroups Full NewsGroups New NewsGroups MailBoxes and Mail Log Offline Articles Offline Posts and Followups Nicknames FTP Servers Function Keys Address Book Mail List Attribution Support HELP Files KillFile and Mail Director Browser History Log file 5. STARTUP OPTIONS CAB Internet Client Support Select NewsGroup file at startup Select Preference file at startup Select Web document (.HTML) file at startup 6. SETUP and USAGE 7. FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS 8. KNOWN PROBLEMS 1. MENUS File The File Menu provides methods to control NewsGroup lists, Article Printing, and Exiting the program. The Close item provides the ability to close any open window. The Save As item provides the ability to save the Newsgroup List, current news article, or current mail messages with a different name. Edit The Edit Menu contains all the standard Cut, Copy, and Paste commands. Cut, Copy, and Paste are implemented for some windows in this version of NEWSie. Copy works for the Subscribed Newsgroups, New Newsgroups, and Full Newsgroups windows. Cut and Paste work only for the Subscribed Newsgroups window. News The News Menu contains methods to select Next Article, Next Thread, and Next Group. Additional items provide the ability to Post messages, and Followup to messages read. The 'Read for Offline' item will read all outstanding messages for all newsgroups in the current .GRP file. (See Offline NewsReading below) Mail Mail support is available via the items in this menu. E-mail send, reply, and forward are available. The ability to check your POP3 maildrop exists, via the Check Mail item, and the Get Mail item will retrieve your mail to your system. An Open In Box item will open and display a list of any messages received. An Open Mailbox item provides the ability to view other mailboxs, including an OUTBOX, which contains a copy of all email which has been sent via NEWSie. There are also user-defined mailboxes that will store inbound mail, and copies of messages sent. The Edit Nicknames menu allows special receipients to have short nicknames, that are expanded when the message is actually sent. The Address book may be opened, and Address may be added while viewing either news or mail messages by selecting the 'Add to Address Book' item. A 'Send Queued Mail' item has been added to this menu. Selective Mail retrieval is now available with 'Get Selected Mail'. This provides the ability to share mail between multiple users, and the ability to determine message sizes before retrieving them to the local machine's disk. FTP The FTP menu provides the ability to get and put files on FTP servers. The menu is split into two (2) sections. The first for Servers: selecting, editing, adding and deleting. The second is for moving through the server directories and retrieving, storing, or deleting files. Special The Special Menu contains some additional items, including the retrieval of the Full Group list, and any new Newsgroups. Manual Connect and Disconnect are avaialble. A final item (Open URL) allows you to retreive any Web reference (http-web page, graphic, etc.) from within NEWSie. The ability to extract UUEncoded articles is provided. The Log file can be viewed online via the 'Show Log File' menu item. Preferences The Preferences Menu supplies a variety of areas that the user needs to change to configure NEWSie to work with his/her Internet Service Provider (ISP) and also to allow the user to define some defaults for system operation. Most selections present a Dialog to the user. 2. WINDOWS Subscribed NewsGroups The Subscribed NewsGroups window displays the NewsGroups that you have selected to be kept aware of new articles. A NewsGroup is a category of messages that (should) relate to some topic. There are many thousands of NewsGroups, and not all News Servers (ISPs) offer all NewsGroups. You may manually enter the name of a NewsGroup you are interested in viewing, or in combination with the Full NewsGroup and New NewsGroup windows, Subscribe to additional NewsGroups. If your ISP does not support a particular newsgroup in the Subscribed Newsgroups list, it will be marked with a '?' in the first column of the display. You may select such a group, but the only action that may be performed is to UnSubscribe. Article Overview For any given NewsGroup, selecting that NewsGroup via a double-click or Return Key in the Subscribed NewsGroup window will fetch the Article Overview list from the News Server. This list is displayed in the Article Overview window. The overviews are formatted with: Article number Subject Author Date of submission Number of lines of message text Any of the overviews can be selected via mouse click or keyboard up and down arrow keys. When selected, the article overview is displayed in color RED (subject to preferences). For Monochrome users (ST-High), the selected article will be underlined. Shift up/down arrows will scroll a page. A double-click or Return key will fetch the selected Article from the News Server. Article Threads are recognized. Threads are a group of related articles, and are marked with a '+' for the primary article, and '-' for subordinate articles. Threads formatting is dependent upon the Newsreading Preferences 'Create Threads' and 'Collapse Threads'. If 'Create Threads' is un-selected, then Thread processing is bypassed and articles are shown in numeric (ascending) order. If 'Create Threads' alone is selected, both the primary ('+') articles and subordinate ('-') articles will be displayed. If the 'Collapse Threads' option is selected, only the primary ('+') articles will be displayed. The left and right arrow keys control the expansion and/or collapse of individual threads. Selecting a primary article and pressing the right arrow key will display all subordinate articles for that thread. Clicking the left arrow on the primary, or any subordinate article, will collapse the thread back to just the primary article. Article Text The Article Text window displays a News Article. The article contains a header and the message body. The header contains lines such as: Author, Subject, Date, etc. The body contains the message response entered by the author. Each article read is available on your local disk as 'NNNNNN.TXT', where NNNNN is the Article number. These files can be deleted by you as you choose by pressing the Del key within the window. This provides a method to keep un-wanted messages from accumulating. Up/down arrows will scroll 1 line, and Shift up/down arrows will scroll a page. If you prefer an external viewer program instead of the builtin window, you may select a viewer program from the Preferences menu in the Path Preferences dialog (External Viewer Path). Once this is done, selecting 'Use External Viewer' in the Newsreading Options dialog will cause NEWSie to call the external program with the article filename. Offline Newsreading NEWSie supports offline newsreading with version 0.60. The menu item 'Read for Offline' will read all outstanding articles in all newsgroups in the current Subscribed Newsgroups window. Warning: until you are familiar with the operation of this program, the author suggests you limit the number of newsgroups/articles to some finite number less than ten newsgroups and a total of 100 articles. A maximum of 400 articles can be maintained for each newsgroup (if you have the disk space!). The 'Read for Offline' menu item is used while online (connected to your mail server) and will build a set of files and directories in the directory you have named as the 'Offline Path' (see Path Preferences). The Escape key is active, and will abort this function at any time. After reading the articles, Quit NEWSie, Disconnect STiK, and start NEWSie again. This time, you will be able to view the articles saved on disk in the same way as online articles. The delete key will delete articles on disk, and also remove the entry in the Overview window when the window is closed. Offline Posting of new articles, and Followups to articles read is now supported. These articles are created as the result of a Post/Followup followed by a 'Send' or 'Queue' when there is no connection to the News Server. At the next time there is a connection to the News Server, these articles are transmitted, and deleted from your system. To view the articles waiting to be Posted, use the 'Open Offline PostBox' item in the News menu. This will open the PostBox (if it exists) and allow you to view/edit the articles, and/or delete them before they are sent via the 'Delete' key. There are (currently) no preference controls on this function. New NewsGroups The New NewsGroups window displays a list of NewsGroups created after a certain Date and Time. The data and time are entered by the user in a dialog. This list can be referenced and any of the NewsGroup names can be selected, and Subscribed to. When the Subscribe is performed, the NewsGroup name is added to the Subscribed NewsGroup window, and is immediately available for use. A double-click with the left mouse button, or selecting Subscribe from the Special menu performs the Suscribe function. If you have enough memory, a sort will take place. This will also remove extraneous information from the NEWGRP.TXT file (thus reducing its size) and will create a NEWGRP.IDX file which is used to reduce the time required to scroll through the file. Shift up/down arrows will scroll a page. Search and Match are available via the 's' and 'm' keys respectively. Full NewsGroups The Full NewsGroups window serves a similar purpose, but contains a complete list of all NewsGroups available from your News Server. Because this file can be very large, it may take several minutes to fetch it. The same selection and subscription ability exists for this window as for the New NewsGroups window. An attempt to sort this file will be made. If you have enough memory, the sort will take place. This will also remove extraneous information from the FULLGRP.TXT file (thus reducing its size) and will create a FULLGRP.IDX file which is used to reduce the time required to scroll through the file. Shift up/down arrows will scroll a page. Search and Match are available via the 's' and 'm' keys respectively. MailBox The Mailbox window displays the contents of various mailboxes. Two Mailboxes are provided by NEWSie, the InBox and the OutBox. The InBox contains a list of all emails received via the Get Mail Menu title. After receiving mail, clicking on the Open In Box will display the messages with a 'U' (unread) in the first column. Double-clicking on any message line will open the Mail Text window (see below). Arrow keys will move up or down in the list, and the return key will also select the current mail message. The delete key will mark the item for deletion when the window is closed. A 'transfer' from any mailbox to any other mailbox (including creating a new mailbox) by pressing the 't' key. To create a new MailBox, enter the Mailbox name followed by '.MBX' in the file selector (i.e. NEW.MBX). (Of course the name can be anything, but NEWSie will only look for MBX files by default.) You may sort the mailbox in any or three ways. By author ('a'), subject ('s'), or date ('d'). (Some date stamps are non-standard, and may produce undesirable sort order.) Shift up/down arrows will scroll a page. Holding down the Shift key and pressing return will open the External Editor with the selected Mail Message. MailBox, Selective Retrieval Although very similar to the regular Mailbox, the Selective Mailbox is the view of available mail from the mail server. Many of the features of the regular mailbox, like Transfer, do not make much sense in this window. Consequently, a new Toolbar and Popup Help menu are displayed in this window. Instead of reading the entire mail records, only the "top" header lines are retrieved from the server. These are displayed in the standard mailbox window, with the mail server name in the title bar. Several options are available to mark the mail items for retrieval, deletion, or leave them untouched on the server. No viewing of the text of the mail can be performed until the window is closed, and the selected mail items are retrieved and/or deleted. Closing the 'server' mailbox window will open the InBox mailbox only if mail messages were marked for retrieval. Due to the significant difference in operation of the mailbox window in this mode, there is a new Toolbar and Popup menu. There is a new Help file MAILSEL.HLP that has been created, and should be added to your existing HELP directory. Also, the reported size of the email is listed in bytes versus lines, since the total number of lines cannot be determined without retrieving the entire mail message. NOTE: Upon completion of retrieving the header lines, the POP connection is closed. If any items are marked for retrieval and/or deletion, the POP connection is re-established. This design prevents any intermediate system crashes or communication breaks from locking the POP server mailbox, die to improper closing. Because of this closing, the Mailbox is NOT locked between initial header retrieval and the actual retrieval/deletion of the marked mail messages. Mail Text This window displays the content of any of the selected Mailboxes. This window is shown unless the 'Use External Viewer' option is selected. The delete key serves the same function as in the MailBox window, namely, to delete the current mail message when the MailBox window is closed. Up/down arrows will scroll 1 line, and Shift up/down will scroll a page. FTP Three windows are provided for FTP support. The Server window allows the user to open a connection with an existing server, add a new server, edit an existing server parameters, or delete a server. The return key is used as a shortcut for Open, Insert for new, '?' for edit, and Delete for delete. The Directory window is visible after an FTP session has been established. The window contains a file attributes list, the file or directory name, the size of the file, and date and time the file was last updated. Keyboard shortcuts are available. Return will retrieve a file, or open the directory (if the entry is a directory). Delete will delete the file (or directory), Insert will prompt for a file to upload (i.e. store) on the server, and Shift-Insert will allow the user to upload a file with a different name. The ability to create a new directory is available from the FTP menu or via the 'm' key. Default transfer mode is Binary, however the 'a' key will use Ascii mode for the next transfer, and 'b' will use binary mode. Any directory retrieval will revert back to binary mode. The third window is the 'view' uption. This provides the ability to download a file and display it immediately on the screen within a window. This is designed for text files only, to read INDEX files and other documentation related things. Help Window related help is available via the HELP key, or right mouse button click. In machines with AES 3.3 or higher, there are window specific popup command menus which include a Help entry. These popup menus can make operating NEWSie more efficient and pleasant. If you have ST-Guide installed in your computer, NEWSie provides .HYP format help files instead of the test files. Log The Log window is provided to allow the user to see the results of various activities online. This is particularly useful to see the preamble text from some anonymouse FTP sites, and possible error conditions. The Log Window can be opened via the 'Show Log File' menu item in the Special menu. Scrolling up and down is provided. Additionally, any keypress or mouse click within the window will update the window display to allow viewing of the entire log file, since it may have increased in size since the window was opened. Address Book The Address Book window is very similar in function to the FTP Server window in many aspects. The ability to Add, Edit or Delete entries in the Address Book are primary functions. While sorting of the entries is automatic for insertions, editing the name will not automatically re-sort the Address Book and a manual Sort function is provided. Selection of an address is via mouse click or arrow keys. The current email address will be shown in red (underlined for Monochrome). Pressing the return key or double-clicking will open a Send Mail dialog with the selected user name and address inserted, ready for the Subject to be inserted. An Info area is provided in the Edit dialog to insert some comment or note about the user. The Address book file is limited to about 32,700 entries, but may be smaller if less memory is available on your machine. Multiple Address Book files are now supported. The 'L' key, and the Toolbar and Popup Help menus also support 'Load'ing a different Address Book file. Address books are suffixed with an ".ABK". Browser Window Starting with version 0.80, the browser window will be opened when any text file is selected via the 'Open URL' menu item. HTML formatting is provided as well as a source view. Standard scrolling is handled for this window. In HTML formatting mode, hypertext links are displayed underlined and in blue color. Clicking on a link will "open" that document. Opening the document would include retrieving the file from the network or local disk as required. Additional control for link selection can be made with the Control and Shift keys. Holding the Control key while clicking on a link will copy the URL/link to the clipboard (SCRAP.TXT) for use by another program, like CAB. Holding either Shift key will send the URL/link information to CAB, (via VA-START) providing CAB is currently active (multi-tasking OS). The browser window has a GEM information line, which is used to display the destination of the link in HTML formatting mode. There is built-in support for playing .AVR and .WAV files on Falcon and STe/TT machines. 3. DIALOGS Personal Preferences The Personal Preferences dialog provides the ability to enter information about the user. Fields include: Full Name Organization name E-mail address Account name - contains your ISP account name for mail. Server Preferences The Server Preferences dialog provides the ability of the user to specify information about the Internet servers that will be used to access the News and Mail systems. Fields include: NewsServer name MailServer names (both SMTP (send) and POP3 (receive)) Connect to NewsServer on startup indicator Open Subscribed Newsgroups window on startup indicator 2 TCP/IP timeout values General Preferences A long time in arriving, this dialog is for additional things that work across all protocols, windows, etc. Auto-Topping Windows - selecting this option will cause the window the mouse is over to become the top window, without any clicking. The status window is excluded from this contol, that is, if the status window is top, the auto-topping is ignored. The delay for recognizing a new top window is 0.5 seconds. Leave this option off (un-crossed) to maintain the old method of selecting a window. Toolbars - an added feature in NEWSie 0.78. Certain windows can have a toolbar (ie. button bar) placed wither at the top or bottom of the window. These buttons provide a fast efficient way to perform common functions. Toolbars are unique to the specific window. Selecting just the Toolbars defaults to a position at the top of the window, and selecting the 'at bottom' box with display at the bottom of the window. Window Buffering Window buffering reduces file I/O time by reading the entire file into available memory and refreshing/scrolling from that memory. Buffering is selectable via the 'Use Window Buffers' checkbox. Automatic Language Preference The 'Auto Language Preference' checkbox will interrogate the _AKP cookie (if present) and determine the user's language preference. NEWSie will then attempt to locate the various files associated with the prefered language (if available) and use them. Manual Language Preference Additionally, the 'manual Language Preference' field allows the user to override the default (English) language by specifying an existing language preference in the General Options preference dialog. Dynamic Expansion You should select this option to permit NEWSie to expand the sizes of internal buffers to support more than 100 emails per mailbox, more than 30 FTP Servers, more than 200 FTP files, etc. Since it's new with version 0.84, I will let you choose! Show Bubble Help Bubble help is available for window Toolbars. Selecting this checkbox allows the help information display via right mouse click on a Toolbar button. Use window info line for Status Click to enable the display of transfer status messages in windows containing an Information line. Limited to certain windows. Auto Extract Attachments and Ask with Prompt Automatic extraction of attachments can be controlled by these checkboxes. Selecting the 'Ask with Prompt' will produce an alert box asking whether to extract or not. When the 'Auto Extract' is checked, any attachment is extracted without action required. News Reading Preferences The News Reading Preferences dialog provides the user with several options pertaining to the method by which NEWSie will display News Articles on the user's screen. Fields include: Display the article header lines Maximum number of messages to read Use External Viewer Create Threads Collapse Threads Most recent 'n' articles Allow Offline Newsreading Erase articles after viewing Mail Preferences The Mail Preferences include several features for storing and manipulating e-mail. fields include: Delete Mail from Server after Receipt Use a saved password The user's password (saved in the Prefs file) Send Queued Output at Check_Mail Delete Queued Output after being sent Create Mail Directories Message Preferences The Message Preferences dialog provides the user with several options pertaining to the method for responding to Articles read. These include: Followup to NewsGroup Reply to the article's author via e-mail Send copy to yourself via e-mail Character(s) to indicate a quote FTP Preferences Dialog This dialog is used to set various FTP preferences. These include: Send HELP at connect - a list of valid commands are written to the log file if allowed in the Log Preferences Issue Allocate before Store - send command to allocate storage space on server. Some servers ignore this command, and some need it. Save Last Directory - saves name of the latest directory referenced on a server if selected. This was the default in prior versions of NEWSie. Saving this directory name means that connecting to the server will automatically take you to the same directory you last referenced. Use PORT command instead of PASV Because some FTP servers do not support the PASV command, usage of the PORT command has been implemented. This option allows the user to specify using the PORT command always. Checking the box disables the use of PASV. NOTE: NEWSie will automatically use the PORT command if the PASV command fails. Path Preferences The Path Preferences dialog allows the user to specify where additional files, articles, etc. should be stored in the user's computer file system. These include: Work Path Mail Path (for e-mail) Offline Path (for offline newsreading) External Editor Program External Viewer Program FTP Download Path Note: The Titles are also selectable, and they allow the same functionality as selecting the Path objects they represent. Also the Path Preferences dialog will be automatically displayed at startup if any of the preference paths are missing or invalid. Log Preferences The Log Preferences dialog allows the user to specify how much or how little information is recorded about the actual activity of NEWSie in retrieving and replying to articles. In general, there is little information in the Log for casual users, and most users will not need to change these preferences. The 'Log Data' selection is unused (i.e. it does nothing. 'Mask Passwords' will change any password characters into a string of '*'s, before logging to prevent accidently exposing your passwords. The option 'Log Transfer Rates' will provide a character per second (cps) calculation for files being received. No calculation is provided for files being sent to the server. Signature Preferences The Signature Preferences dialog is provided to allow users to suffix any reply or posted responses with their selected signature. The filepath displayed indicates the current signature file, and the first several lines of text are displayed. Clicking on the filename allows the user to select a new signature file. As with the Path Preferences dialog above, the Signature Path title is also selectable, and provides the same functionality as selecting the filename object. Font Preferences The Font Preferences dialog is provided to allow the user to vary the font displayed in the NewsGroup, Overview, and Article windows. For those users the have some version of GDOS (including NVDI), they may select any of several font faces and point sizes. Clicking on the arrow box on the right of the font name will 'drop down' a font selection list. Arrow buttons in the list allow for scrolling. Clicking on any font name will select that font for use. In the event that the chosen font does not exist in a particular configuration, the default system font will be used instead. Browser Preferences The Browser Preferences dialog contains a few things specific to the Browser window and includes: Home File (i.e local.HTM file) HotList File (i.e. local Bookmarks/Hotlist .HTM file) Browser Cache Directory Enable History Logging Edit Nicknames The Edit Nicknames dialog is available to allow sending messages to people that you will frequently correspond with, or for implementating mailing list of several people whom you wish to send the same message to. Clicking on a empty Nickname (left column) will add a new nickname. DO NOT use spaces, as everything past first space will be ignored. A Description is available to describe the nickname. To add email addresses to a Nickname, click on the nickname, then click on an empty entry in the Address (right column), and fill in the email address. When completed, click OK to save the additions/changes, or Quit to leave the edit dialog without any changes. No more than 200 addresses are allowed per nickname by the dialog. With Version 0.82, if you use Magic, or have WDIALOG.PRG in your AUTO folder, this dialog will operate like a window. It is therefore non- blocking and moveable. The window closer gadget operates like the CANCEL button in the dialog (i.e. no changes saved). Edit Server The Edit Server dialog is provided to allow a user to enter a new FTP server name and logon information, or, to edit the information of an existing server. A sample of servers is provided in the DEFAULT.SVR file. The logon name can be specific or 'anonymous' for servers which allow anonymous FTP sessions. The accepted password for an anonymous FTP connection is the user's e-mail address. A The starting directory is saved after a session if selected in the FTP Preferences dialog, and can be changed before opening the connection if desired. If the logon name is missing, 'anonymous' is used. The the password is missing, the user's email id is used for 'anonymous', or the user is prompted via the password dialog if the logon name is something else. There is now an additional parameter which allows the selection of a port number. This number may be 0 thru 9999. The default value is 21. This default is used if the port field is empty (null string). Edit Function Keys As part of a request to support better keyboard shorcuts this feature provides the ability to select any Menu function via one of the 20 Programmable Function Keys at the top of the keyboard. The Edit Function Keys menu item in the Preferences Menu will display a dialog containing the editable text. The dialog consists of 2 columns of 10 editable fields for the user to enter the text of the Menu Function to be executed when that function key is pressed. The compare is case-insensitive, so 'quit' works just as well as 'Quit'. The compare is for the length of the input text, so just a 'q' will execute the 'Quit' menu item. Cancel and OK buttons are provided. The Cancel button is the default, and the OK button saves the changed definitions into a text file. Edit Address Book As part of the Address Book, this dialog provides the ability to edit information in the Address Book. This dialog is used to request user verification of additions to the Address Book and well as edits. Cancel and OK buttons are provided. Clicking on the OK button will initiate a save of the Address Book. Post/Followup Article This dialog allows you to respond to News postings, or create a new News article to the selected Newsgroup. A Newsgroup name may be entered into the dialog directly, but to eliminate the possibility of typing mistakes, the prefered method is to use the Newsgroup name filled in by NEWSie from the selected newsgroup in the Seubscribed Newsgroups window. A subject should be entered for New Posts. NEWSie will automatically generate a 'Re:' prefix for Followups. Use the 'Cancel' button to cancel the Post/ Followup. Use the 'Edit' to create your Post or Followup text, and use the 'Send' or 'Queue' to send the Post/Followup immediately, or queue it for later submission. Send/Reply/Forward Mail This dialog allows you to send mail, to reply to mail received, and to forward mail to another user. After selecting a recipient via the To: editable field, and putting something onto the Subject: field, you may select the 'Edit' button to enter the external editor. The 'cc:' field is also available to send a copy to another person. After completing the editing, and quitting the editor, this dialog will again appear, and you may choose 'Cancel', 'Send' or 'Queue'. Choosing 'Send' will send the message immediately if online, or queue the message in the OUTBOX mailbox to be sent at a later time. 'Queue' will just queue the message. The 'To:' and 'cc:' buttons allow a fast access to Nicknames to fill into the fields. These buttons will also display up to the first 300 entries in the Nicknames/Address Book. This provides additional functionallity for addressing email. A single File Attachment is now supported, with three (3) encoding options: None, UUE, or MIME encoding. These methods are compatible with the decoding options already provided by NEWSie. The encoding buttons are radio-buttons, so only one is selectable at a time. The encoding is performed before the file is presented to the user for editing. The user should be careful not to change any of the encoded text or associated headers, because this may render the encodings un-decipherable and un-usable by the recipient. To cancel a file attachment in the dialog, select it again, and press the CANCEL button in the file selector. Subscribe to NewsGroup The Subscribe to Newsgroup dialog is presented in several situations: double-click in the Full Newsgroups window double-click in the New Newsgroups window The Subscribe Menu title Insert key in the Subscribed Newsgroups window In the first 2 cases, the Newsgroup name will be displayed. Clicking on the OK button will enter the Newsgroup into the current Subscribed NewsGroup file (i.e DEFAULT.GRP, or other). The 3rd case (Subscribe Menu) can be used instead of the double-click, but may also be used at any time to allow the user to type in the name of a Newsgroup. The 4th case (Insert key) will also allow the user to type in a Newsgroup name. Note that if the Newsgroup name is invalid or unsupported by your ISP, the current Subscribed Newsgroup file/window will not be updated. UnSubscribe from Newsgroup The UnSubscribe from Newsgroup dialog is presented in the following situations: The UnSubscribe Menu title Delete key in the Subscribed Newsgroups window In either case, the currently selected Newsgroup is displayed in the dialog with question 'UnSubscribe from Newsgroup?'. Pressing the OK button deletes the Newsgroup from the Subscribed window and file. Edit Newsgroup First/Last This dialog allows the user to change the starting and ending new articles. Previously, this required editint the .GRP file directly. Now, you can change the first article to look back at articles previously read, by reducing the first article number. Use the "?" key in the Subscribed Newsgroups window to activate this dialog for the selected newsgroup. Transfer Status The Transfer Status dialog is an output only dialog provided to give the user visual feedback of data transfers as they occur. This is status is available whenever there is information being received from the servers, or being sent to the servers. The Transfer Status display may be disabled by un-selecting the 'Show Status' option in the Newsreading Preferences dialog. This can be classified as a window too, since it is now non-blocking. Using the 'Use Info Line for Status' will substitute the Info line in a window for the Transfer Status dialog/window. This is an option, but seems to take less screen space, and is somewhat less intrusive. When the window has no info line, the Transfer Status dialog/window is still displayed, regardless of the Info Line option. Full NewsGroup Warning The Full NewsGroup Warning dialog is provided to warn the user that this transfer can take a long time and use a lot of disk space. Full NewsGroup Re-load The Full NewsGroup Re-load dialog is provided to allow the user to use the existing Full NewsGroup list or download a new one. Using the existing file is much faster. New NewsGroup Selection The New NewsGroup Selection dialog is provided to allow the user to see any NewsGroups that have been created since a specified date. This, in combination with the Full NewsGroup list, will allow the user to access new NewsGroups as they become available. STiK Disabled The STiK Disabled dialog is displayed at startup when the STiK accessory is not 'enabled'. STiK must be enabled and most likely connected to the user's Internet Service Provided (ISP) before NEWSie can access new articles. 4. FILES Resource The NEWSIE.RSC file is required for operation. It should be in the same directory as NEWSIE.PRG. This file contains all of the Menu and Dialog definitions. There should be no reason for the user to modify this file in any way. There is a French resource NEWSIEFR.RSC. French documentation is included in the LANGUAGE\FRENCH directory. There is also an Italian resource NEWSIEIT.RSC. Italian documentation is included in the LANGUAGE\ITALIAN directory. There is also a Swedish resource NEWSIESV.RSC. Swedish documentation is included in the LANGUAGE\SWEDISH directory. There is also a Spanish resource NEWSIESP.RSC. Some Spanish documentation is included in the LANGUAGE\SPANISH directory. There is also a German resource NEWSIEDM.RSC. No German documentation currently exists. This selection can be changed in the General Preferences dialog. Select 'Auto Language Preference' or select a manual language and select the OK button. It should no longer be necessary to copy and rename RSC files! Support Program(s) With NEWSie 0.54, the UUD.TTP program is provided. It should be placed in the directory configured as the Work Path. This program provides the service of decoding any UUEncoded data in retrieved messages. This encoded data is most generally a binary file (picture or program). The 'Extract Binaries' menu item in the Special Menu uses this program. With NEWSie 0.90 the UUDecode function can be performed internally, so UUD.TTP is no longer required. With version 0.74, the MUNPACK.TTP program is provided. It should also be placed in the Work Path directory. This program provides the service of decoding MIME uncoded data (base64, etc.). The 'Extract Binaries' menu will examine the current file and select this module if the article or messages contains MIME control statements. Many thanks to programmer Jos den Bekker for writing this fine program. In the UTILITIES directory is a program named MAILBOX.PRG, designed to re-build mailboxs and retrieve "lost" email. Although NEWSie is not designed to lose messages, it sometimes happens. Running MAILBOX.PRG will recover messages that are not assigned to a Mailbox (.MBX) and puts them into a RECOVERn.MBX file. See associated documentation with the program. Preferences The PREFS.INF file is required for proper operation. It should be in the same directory as NEWSIE.PRG. There is a generic PREFS.INF file in the distribution. Feel free to use this as the basis for configuring NEWSie to your preferences. See the individual Preference dialogs for any specific options available. Note that NEWSie will automatically update your existing PREFS.INF file to include all of the most recent parameters when you execute a more current version of NEWSie. Also the Path Preferences dialog will be displayed at startup if any of the preference paths are missing or invalid. NEWSie supports multiple Preference (.INF) files, via the Load/Save Preferences menu. Subscribed NewsGroups The DEFAULT.GRP file is required for proper operation. There is a generic DEFAULT.GRP file in the distribution. You may add new NewsGroups to this, and delete ones you are not interested in subscribing to. You may have several Subscribed NewsGroup files, and use them interchangeably. The DEFAULT.GRP will be used by NEWSie at startup. A GRP file can contain a maximum of 100 newsgroup names. Full NewsGroups The FULLGRP.TXT file is an optional file. It is optional because it can be extremely large, possibly larger than 1 Meg. This file is retrieved from your selected News Server only if you request it. Once retrieved, it is used until you request it again. This file will contain a listing of all the NewsGroups that are available for subscription from your News Server. An FULLGRP.IDX file is created when the file is sorted. New NewsGroups Just like Full Newsgroups above. The NEWGRP.TXT and NEWGRP.IDX are created and used while the New Newsgroups window is open. Once the window is closed, the file is not referenced again, until the next time is it over-written. MailBoxes and Mail A MAIL path is available in the Path Preferences. Within this path NEWSie will establish MailBoxes and Mail messages. MailBoxes are expected to have a suffix of .MBX, and Mail messages will be in the form MAILnnnn.TXT, where nnnn is a unique number from 0000-9999. There is no limit to the number of mailboxes, except local disk storage. Selective Mail utilizes the "SERVER.MBX" file. If you currently have a mailbox named "SERVER.MBX", it will be erased once you attempt to utilize Selective Mail Retrieval. Rename it to something else, or use the MAILBOX.PRG to recover its contents, and then rename it. NEWSie support subdirectories for mail with release 0.92. Usage and creation of subdirectories is controlled via the "Create Mail Directories" option in the Mail Preferences dialog. Mail directories are created with the current date as the name (i.e. 19980102 is Jan 02 1998) and the mail messages created or received on that date are placed in the directory. The mailboxes have the proper directory name, so there is no change in the viewing of mail messages. There are two advantages to using directories: 1. Reduce the number of messages in the main MAIL directory to reduce access time and FAT chains that can get corrupted. (Yes, it has happened to me too!) 2. Provide a method to backup email messages (both input and output) by simply dragging a directory with the day's messages to another partition, floppy, etc. Log The LOG file is a temporary file created by NEWSie during its processing. It is of most interest to the author and to others who want more information about the workings of NEWSie and other UseNet news reader programs and the associated commands, protocol, etc. The Log Preferences dialog will allow you to configure the information put into this file as you choose. The Log file is viewable via the 'Show Log File' menu entry in the Special menu. Offline Articles If you choose to use the Offline Newsreading features, you should specify a Offline Path directory (OFFLINE is included in the distribution file). NEWSie will create a set of directories under the selected Offline path for each newsgroup that can have offline articles. The names of these directories are a 'compression' of the newsgroup name. The articles are placed in the respective directory in the same format as for online articles ('NNNNNN'.TXT') in separate files. Offline Posts and Followups Articles are saved in files named 'POSTNNNN.TXT' in the WorkPath. An index of these files is called 'POSTS.PBX' (PBX being similar to MBX, meaning PostBoX). These files are created as the result of a Post/Followup followed by a 'Send' or 'Queue' when there is no connection to the News Server. At the next time there is a connection to the News Server, these files are transmitted, and deleted from your WorkPath. If before you connect to the News Server, you decide to refrain from Posting something, you should use the 'Open Offline PostBox' menu item in the News menu to review and/or delete the offending file(s) via the 'Delete' key. Nicknames The NICKNAME.TXT file is used to store nicknames and addresses. In future versions, there may be several selectable filenames, and size limitations may be changed. FTP Servers The DEFAULT.SVR file contains several FTP server names, with anonymous logon capability. Please feel free to add or delete as you choose. Support for non-standard FTP port numbers has been added in version 0.82. Function Keys The FKEYS.TXT file is in the program-path (i.e. same directory as NEWSIE.PRG). This file is loaded at startup and is activated when the user presses a function key F1 thru F10, or F11 thru F20 (shift F1 thru F10). The text of the key is compared with the menu items, and if they match, the menu item is executed. Example: F1<tab>Quit F2<tab>Edit Nicknames ... Between the F1 and Quit is a single <tab> character. Function keys are F1 thru F20 inclusive. A sample file is included in the distribution (zip) file. Function key definitions are editable via the Edit Function Keys menu entry in the Preferences menu. Note: for non-english users, use the menu text as it appears in the menu items. i.e. Sauver for Save, Sauver comme for Save As, etc. Address Book The main Address book is named: ADDRESS.ABK, and resides in the program path with NEWSIE.PRG. NEWSie 0.92 provides the ability to have multiple Address Books. They have the '.ABK' suffix, and reside in the NEWSie program path. There is no limit to the number of Address Books except local disk space. Mail List Attribution Support It is possible to subscribe to Mail lists. These mail list servers provide a copy of email sent to them to every subscribed member. It is often very useful to have an indication on replies to indicate what member initiated the message, in the form 'On <some date>, <the user> wrote:'. This is handled by NEWSie with a file called LISTSVR.TXT located in the Mail Path. An example is included in the MAIL directory in the distribution ZIP file. There is no dialog to modifiy this file. You must edit it manually if you would like to use this feature. NEWSie checks this file, and tries to match the destination email address with one of the entries in the file. If there is a match, the Attribution line (On <date>, <user>...) is produced. This processing only affects reply messages. HELP Files There are text files in the HELP directory which may be viewed at any time by pressing the Help key. Help is based upon the current top window. If there are no windows, or the Help window is currently on top, the General Help file is displayed. See the non-english language HELP in the LANGUAGES directory. With version 0.80, NEWSie supports ST-Guide hypertext (.HYP) help files too! In version 0.68 and above, the right mouse button also initiates the help processing. If your computer has AES version 3.3 or above, there are additional commands in the popup menu displayed. KillFile and Mail Director One of the features of NEWSie is the Killfile. This file provides the ability to perform a variety of modifications on incoming mail messages. The format of KILLFILE.TXT is: find <tab> text <tab> action <tab> value <tab> comment Find is a keyword out of the following list: subject - any text within Subject, uses pattern matching author - any part of originating Author Full name email - any part of orignating email address (user@domain) domain - any part of orignating email domain (i.e. aol.com) to - any part of destination email address (user@domain) replyto - any part of Reply_To: email address Action can be: status - change status in mailbox ('D' = delete, 'P' = purge) transfer - transfer email to another mailbox (XYZ) Some examples: subject $ status P delete messages with '$' in the subject replyto zetnet transfer zetnet auto-route zetnet messages replyto stik transfer stik auto-route zetnet messages The '#' in the first column indicates a comment and the line is ignored. Look at the KILLFILE.TXT example file for commenting suggestions. Currently only the first character of the Find and Action code are used, so the may be abbreviated with only the first character, but that may change with future versions. The Kill File resides in the users 'work' path. You must move it there. There is no editing supplied by NEWSie. Use your text editor. There is no dialog support for modifying this file, and that is on the list for future improvement. Browser History Log file The Browser History Log file contains HTML formatted entries for all URLs retrieved via the Browser. This can be opened an re-used as a "favorites" list. It can also be used to determine where others using your machine have been surfing. 5. STARTUP OPTIONS NEWSie startup features include the following: CAB Internet Client Support Select NewsGroup file at startup Select Preference file at startup Select Web document (.HTML) file at startup CAB Internet Client Support With the introduction of CAB 1.5, comes the ability for CAB to start other programs based upon the URL (Uniform Resource Locator). The following URLS are supported by NEWSie: 'news:' - a newsgroup name is the only parameter supported. The <message-id> option is not supported by NEWSie at this time. Note: a message-id contains the '@' character, and newsgroup names do not. 'ftp://' - the following formats are supported: ftp://domain/directory ftp://userid:password@domain:port/directory the first is called 'anonymous' and the second is 'non-anonymous'. This second method requires a userid and password for the domain. It is useful for local use, but should never occur on Web pages, since the password could be seen by anybody. 'mailto:' - followed by a email-address. This is already supported within CAB, but NEWSie is used, the OUTBOX copy feature is available, etc. These have been tested on TOS 4.04 and Magic, but not MultiTOS, Geneva, etc. NEWSie does recognize VA_START commands from external clients. Select NewsGroup file at startup NEWSie has the ability to be started with a particular newsgroup file If defined as a Desktop Application for file type '.GRP', NEWSie will use the specified GRP file instead of the DEFAULT.GRP file. Select Preferences file at startup NEWSie will provide the ability to startup with a Preferences file other than PREFS.INF when either of the Shift Keys are held down when starting the program. This will produce the Load Preferences File Selector or popup menu (AES 3.30 or higher). Note: The PREFS.INF is loaded first, then the newly selected prefs file. Select Web document (.HTML) file at startup NEWSie will start an HTML file dragged to it at startup, similar to a .GRP file. The Browser window will parse and display the .HTM file. 6. SETUP and USAGE Several things are necessary to use NEWSie from the distribution ZIP file. 1. Unzip the NEWSIEnn.ZIP file and move to where ever you want it. 2. Enable STiK if it is installed. If you don't have STiK installed, you will not be able to perform any Online activities with NEWSie. 3. Double-click on NEWSIE.PRG 4. Immediately go to the Preferences Menu and fill in the following: Personal Preferences Server Preferences (especially the NewsServer name) Path Preferences for editor and viewer usage, MAIL and OFFLINE path Other Preferences as you choose Save Preferences Note that the Path Preferences dialog will be displayed at startup if any of the preference paths are missing or invalid. 5. Quit NEWSie via Quit in File menu 6. If not already connected to the Internet (via STiK/STinG dialer), do so. 7. Execute NEWSie again, hopefully getting a connection to your NewsServer. If you have selected 'Connect at Startup' in the Server Preferences, this should occur automatically, otherwise, use the 'Manual Connect' item in the Special Menu. 8. If you speak French, Italian, Swedish or Spanish, you may want to use the NEWSIEFR.RSC, NEWSIEIT.RSC, NEWSIESV.RSC or NEWSIESP.RSC and the French, Italian, Swedish or Spanish HELP files. Program documentation is also available in these languages. Open the General Options dialog and check the 'Auto Language Preference' or select a manual Language preference by clicking on the field to the right of the 'Auto Language Preference' line. 9. Report problems to: rojewski@primenet.com. NOTE: If you upgrade to a new release of NEWSie, make certain you keep the PRG and RSC files co-ordinated. Failure to apply the correct RSC file can cause major problems... 7. FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS Enhancements to NEWSie are planned. The current package is continuously being improved. (Unfortunately there are only so many hours of programming time in a week...) Some acknowledged areas of weakness are: Documentation of features (i.e this document) News Article management ISO-8859 character set support See IMPROVE.DOC for a survey of suggested improvements. 8. KNOWN PROBLEMS (0.88 and 0.90) Atari Works cannot be used as external editor/viewer Some problems with 'Edit Nicknames'. Causes 2 bombs for some. Some problems with disk corruption reported. See HISTORY.DOC to see what has changed in the previous version(s). See WHATS.NEW to see what is new in this version.