NEWSRDR V3.0, 22-NOV-1991 BUG FIXES AND UPDATES --------------------- NEWSRDR V3.0, 22-NOV-1991 (final release) * Updated the Bookreader logical name stuff in NEWSRDR_STARTUP.COM. * Now providing /UPDATE=BOTH qualifier on NEWSRDR command, for those sites whose Cnews admins are too lazy or too stupid to keep their "active" files up to date. * POST command can now take a file-spec as the second parameter or on the /FILE= qualifier to specify an input file. NEWSRDR V3.0, 14-NOV-1991 (update #2) * Connection timeout increased to 10 minutes; can define logical name NEWSRDR_CONNECTION_TIMEOUT as VMS delta-time value to have different timeout, if desired. (Only affects NETLIB-based implementation.) * Fixed a couple of bugs in EXTRACT. NEWSRDR V3.0, 04-NOV-1991 (update #1) * The ALRDYSUB message on wildcard SUBSCRIBE now prints the name of the newsgroup, rather than the wildcard pattern. * When you change groups with the GROUP command or through one of the READ commands, the first and last available article numbers are updated from the newsgroup's GROUP command. NEWSRDR V3.0, 14-OCT-1991 * The CURRENT command would ACCVIO if the current article could not be obtained from the server. This has been fixed. * The DIRECTORY command now includes a /EXCLUDE qualifier for excluding articles from the listing based on author or subject. * You can now type just a newsgroup name to make it the current group, without having to type a full GROUP command. * The SUBSCRIBE and UNSUBSCRIBE now take wildcards in the newsgroup specifications, and both now have a /CONFIRM qualifier which prompts for confirmation before adding or removing the group from the subscription list. * Pressing CTRL/C now displays the message "[Cancel]". You can now use CTRL/C to cancel a SET SEEN/THREAD or READ/THREAD command. * If an article posting fails or you decide not to post an article when asked for confirmation, you are now asked whether or not NEWSRDR should retain the temporary file in which the article text was stored, rather than deleting it automatically. * Some improvements in error status checking have been made. * The NEWSRDR_ANNOUNCE logical name can now be used to define an announcement message which gets displayed each time NEWSRDR starts up. * The NEWSRDR_INITIAL_GROUPS logical name can be defined to provide users with a set of newsgroups to which new users are automatically subscribed. * Added three new commands: CANCEL, for cancelling an article; PRINT, for printing articles; and STORE, for storing articles in VMS Mail (by sending to self). * The default for all server updates is FULL. This is because the technique used for partial updates, which uses the NNTP GROUP command, puts more load on the NNTP server. Full updates are also needed for implementing the wildcarded SUBSCRIBE command. The switch to all full updates also eliminates the need to reconnect to the news server on an UPDATE command. The output from the UPDATE command has been altered in format and is now always alphabetical by newsgroup name. * The way new articles are located has been changed to reduce the amount of communication with the server, improving the speed of READ/NEW and READ/NEXT/NEW considerably. * For a mail-only reply, the header on the extracted text now reads "In you write:" rather than "In
writes:". * The documentation has been revised, and is now provided in Bookreader format as well as PostScript and plain text. See the file BOOKREADER_SETUP.TXT for information on how to use the Bookreader-format documents. NEWSRDR V2.9-5, 06-JUN-1991 * FROM-based IGNORE strings were still not being processed correctly. This time it really is fixed. NEWSRDR V2.9-4, 03-JUN-1991 * FROM-based IGNORE strings were not being processed correctly, resulting in display of articles that should have been ignored. This has been fixed. NEWSRDR V2.9-3, 15-MAY-1991 * Fixed the bug that would cause an ACCVIO when trying to read an article after unsubscribing from the current newsgroup. * Martin Egger provided code modifications for supporting Process Software's TCPware socket interface. NEWSRDR V2.9-2, 01-MAY-1991 * The NEWSRDR package now includes NETLIB V1.1. No changes to NEWSRDR itself have been made. NEWSRDR V2.9-2, 02-APR-1991 * A fix in the MDMLIB routines uncovered a bug in the ARTICLE module whereby an article temp file was getting closed twice when the article was short enough to be displayed on one screen... causing unusual errors later on in the program. This has now been fixed. NEWSRDR V2.9-1, 01-APR-1991 * The Kanji character conversion routines have been revised. * READ/NEW now cycles back to the current group, as it used to pre-V2.9 changes. * Some bugs in MDMLIB routines have been fixed. NEWSRDR V2.9, 25-FEB-1991 * A control-C handler has been added. Currently, only the DIRECTORY command handles control-C interrupts. Other commands will be made control-C sensitive in future versions. * The keypad is set back to application mode after returning from a SPAWN command. Previously, when returning from a SPAWNed command that reset the keypad mode, key definitions could not be used unless you manually set the keypad back to application mode. * NEWSRDR no longer sends a GROUP command to the server whenever it accesses an article or an article's headers. This should reduce the load on the server during DIRECTORY and READ operations. * A socket-based SERVER module, SERVER_SOCKET.C, is now included with the NEWSRDR distribution. This module can be used in place of the NETLIB-based SERVER.B32 module if your TCP/IP package supports a BSD socket interface. See the comments in LINK.COM for information on how to create a NEWSRDR.EXE image using this new module. * A string not containing wildcards specified on a DIRECTORY command, a READ/SUBJECT command, or a SET IGNORE command is now treated as "*string*". NEWSRDR V2.8, 12-FEB-1991 * REPLY (or FOLLOWUP) can now take a list of newsgroups, like POST. If specified, the groups override what would be the default for the posted reply (as taken from the original article). * The SET UNSEEN command has been added, which has the reverse effect of SET SEEN. * NEWSRDR now uses NETLIB routines for interfacing with TCP/IP. NETLIB supports DEC UCX, CMU-Tek TCP/IP, and TGV MultiNet. * The SPAWN/ATTACH bug has been fixed. * The FORWARD/NOEDIT bug has been fixed. * You can now mainpulate addresses before they are put through VMS Mail (on outgoing mail) by supplying an address conversion routine. See file ADDRESS_CONVERSION.C and the installation guide for further information. NEWSRDR V2.7-1, 11-JAN-1991 * Reply-To headers were not getting generated correctly when you didn't have NEWSRDR_REPLY_TO defined. * More logical names: NEWSRDR_DO_MESSAGE-ID controls whether NEWSRDR generates its own Message-ID headers. Normally FALSE. NEWSRDR_DO_DATE controls whether NEWSRDR generates its own Date headers. Normally FALSE. When TRUE, you MUST set up the time zone information!! NEWSRDR_BANG_ADDRESS causes addresses in From and Reply-To (the automatically generated kind) to be formatted using bang notation rather than RFC822 notation. Normall FALSE. See the NEWSRDR_STARTUP.COM file provided with the kit for more info. The docs will be updated in the next real release. * Kit now includes sample NEWSRDR_LOGIN.COM, which was omitted from the V2.7 kit. NEWSRDR V2.7, 09-JAN-1991 ** NOTE ** * * To accommodate the changes in V2.7, the format of the NEWSRDR * profile has changed. Your profile will be converted automatically the * first time you invoke this version of NEWSRDR. You can use an older * version of NEWSRDR with a new-format profile, but you will lose your * SET REPLY settings and the newer settings of SET SIGNATURE. * ********** * Additional bang-format address support. * The DIRECTORY command now formats its output based on terminal width. You can modify the format with the /WIDTH qualifier. * A READ/SUBJECT command has been added, for reading articles matching one or more wildcard patterns. Check the documentation for further information on use of this command. * A /TO qualifier has been added to the REPLY command for directing mailed replies. * The POST, MAIL, FORWARD, and REPLY commands now provide more information about where the message is being sent before asking for final confirmation. * You can now define the default REPLY behaviour (post, mail, or both) with the SET REPLY command. * You can now select whether your signature file is included automatically on mail, postings, or both, using SET SIGNATURE. * You can specify your own Reply-To address by defining the logical name NEWSRDR_REPLY_TO. * Time zones are now handled differently. All Date headers in articles are done in GMT time, rather than local time. * A username-to-mailname conversion routine can now be specified for the system, for those sites whose network mail systems do not use the VMS username for addressing local mail. * Changes have been made to accommodate the captive/restricted account changes in VMS V5.2 or later. NEWSRDR V2.6-1, 19-NOV-1990 * NEWS_*.TMP files weren't getting cleaned up on exit due to restructuring done in last revision. NEWSRDR V2.6, 13-NOV-1990 * Added documentation and help info for SET SEEN/ALL. * Added documentation on setting up time zones for use with NEWSRDR. * Improvements were made in the way the temporary files holding article text are handled, to reduce the extra network traffic that used to be incurred when the current article was being redisplayed or extracted. * A sample startup command procedure for NEWSRDR is now provided as part of the package. * /PARENT is now the default for the ATTACH command. NEWSRDR V2.5, 12-NOV-1990 * Added hooks for site-provided character conversion routines, mainly for use by Japanese sites that need to convert between their network Kanji representation and the DEC Kanji representation. Conversion is performed only on text in the body of an article, at retrieval and posting times. * Added optional bang-path address formatting, for those sites whose news servers cannot handle RFC822-type addressing. NEWSRDR V2.4, 28-JUN-1990 * Spawned editors are now supported. SET EDIT/EDITOR has been modified to accommodate both callable and spawned editors. * UPDATE now disconnects from and reconnects to the server before performing an update. Some, if not all, NNTP servers only update group information at the beginning of a session. NEWSRDR V2.3-1, 12-JUN-1990 * Under certain circumstances when UPDATE/FULL was used, a subsequent READ/NEW or READ/NEXT/NEW would cause an infinite loop. This has been fixed. NEWSRDR V2.3, 23-MAY-1990 * READ/PREVIOUS has been added, to go backwards through articles in a newsgroup. * The screen is no longer cleared when NEWSRDR starts up and when control returns to NEWSRDR after a SPAWN command. This allows the output from a spawned command to be retained on the screen. * The first entry in a DIRECTORY listing would always be marked as seen, even if the article had not yet been seen. This has been fixed. * The NEWSRDR documentation has been updated to reflect the changes made since V2.0 of the software. * Both EDT and TPU (and probably LSE) create their journal files in the current default directory. When your default is set to a directory to which you do not have write access, TPU complains and does not create its journal file, but EDT signals a fatal error, which causes NEWSRDR to exit abnormally. NEWSRDR now includes a work-around that checks to see if the editor name is "EDT". If it is, it uses a different calling sequence, redirecting the journal file to the SYS$SCRATCH directory. * After displaying a one-page article with CURRENT, an extra RETURN would have to be pressed to continue reading articles. This has been fixed. * The code that remove non-printable characters from screen output has been fixed. NEWSRDR V2.2-9, 29-MAR-1990 * VMS/ULTRIX Connection V1.2 is now supported as an NNTP transport. There are now two versions of the SERVER module, one for use with CMU and one for use with UCX. NEWSRDR V2.2-8, 01-MAR-1990 * Replaced SMG with $QIO's for output, except for screen clears. This results in improved input handling since input can now exceed screen width. * Fixed problem where keypad definitions and recall buffer were going away after spawns and edit sessions. * Fixed some qualifier bugs. * Added FORWARD command to allow articles to be forwarded by mail to another user. * NEWSRDR now fetches the copy-to-self attributes from the VMS MAIL profile and applies them to mailed messages. SEND, REPLY/MAIL, and FORWARD commands now take /[NO]SELF qualifier to override the profile setting. * Doing an UPDATE after an UPDATE/FULL would cause NEWSRDR to ask the server about every group in the local group list, even if you weren't subscribed to it. This has been fixed. * UPDATE/FULL was not correctly handling group names with special characters in them (like "+"). This has been fixed. * POST, FORWARD, REPLY, and MAIL now correctly handle the case where the file to be sent is not created when you quit out of the editor without saving. * An exit handler now gets established that saves your NEWSRDR_PROFILE in case of abnormal exit from NEWSRDR. NEWSRDR V2.1-7, 25-FEB-1990 * DIR/SEEN and DIR/UNSEEN were not behaving properly. NEWSRDR V2.1-6, 24-FEB-1990 * All articles are now marked as seen in READ commands regardless of whether or not their retrieval is successful. This fixes a problem with previous versions of NEWSRDR where killed articles are counted as unseen. -- NOTE -- The unseen article problem (UPDATE says articles unseen, READ says there are none) should be fixed automatically the first time you use this version of NEWSRDR. If it does not, you can get rid of the erroneous messages from UPDATE by issuing a SET SEEN/ALL command for each of the affected newsgroups. NEWSRDR V2.1-5, 23-FEB-1990 * Added /SEEN and /UNSEEN qualifiers to DIRECTORY command. * Unseen article count now appears in DIRECTORY/GROUP lists. * UPDATE command now displays count of unseen articles (when count > 0). * READ display now includes number of unseen articles. * Seen article information is now cleaned up at profile writing time. NEWSRDR V2.0-4, 23-FEB-1990 * Default header cache size now 128 entries. * Fixed blank command line bug. * Minor documentation changes. NEWSRDR V2.0-3, 22-FEB-1990 * Modified EXTRACT to default file name to name of newsgroup. File spec on EXTRACT now optional. * Added SET ARCHIVE_DIRECTORY command to specify default location for extracted articles. * Fixed bug in POST. NEWSRDR V2.0-2, 21-FEB-1990 * Fixed header bug in EXTRACT command. NEWSRDR V2.0-1, 20-FEB-1990 * Bug in V2.0 profile-writing code (saving SET HEADERS settings) has been fixed. * The auto-continuation context, which allows you to press RETURN to continue reading an article or thread, is now cleared just before CLI$DISPATCH, rather than before CLI$DCL_PARSE. This provides behaviour closer to that of VMS MAIL. * The screen is no longer cleared prior to a subprocess spawn or exit from NEWSRDR. NEWSRDR V2.0, 19-FEB-1990 * "Kill files" implemented as SET IGNORE[/GLOBAL] command. * Rudimentary (VMS MAIL-like) support for keypad definitions added. * POST, REPLY now take /FOLLOWUP_TO qualifier to redirect followups. * READ/THREAD command added for easy message thread traversal. SET SEEN/THREAD added for easy thread removal. * CURRENT/ROTATE and EXTRACT/ROTATE commands were added for displaying and extracting articles posted in ROT13 cipher. * DIRECTORY command enhanced with /SUBJECT=, /KEYWORD=, /FROM= qualifiers for selective display. * Xref: headers now interpreted, so cross-posted articles are only displayed once. * The commands "R" and "RE" now are abbreviations for "REPLY" rather than "READ", to be more in line with VMS MAIL. * Just entering an article number at the command prompt does a READ on that article number, more like VMS MAIL. * "EX" is now a valid abbreviation for "EXIT", to be more in line with VMS MAIL. * Article headers are now cached locally on retrieval from the server, on a per-group basis, to improve the performance of some of the newer commands. The size of the cache can be controlled with a logical name. NEWSRDR V1.2-9, 14-FEB-1990 * NEWGROUPS processing at NEWSRDR startup has been fixed. This may cause a slew of NEWGROUP messages to appear the first time you use V1.2, if you had been using an older version. * SUBSCRIBE no longer requires an UPDATE/FULL first. It will query the server for info on groups not in NEWSRDR's in-memory group list. * The VMS MAIL interface code had an insidious bug that caused frequent but random crashing of NEWSRDR. This has been fixed. * The logic used for updating the "seen" group list had a minor bug that prevented SET SEEN from working properly in certain circumstances. This has been fixed. KNOWN BUGS AND RESTRICTIONS --------------------------- * UPDATE/FULL retrieves only the list of ACTIVE groups on the server. If a group is not in the active list (as returned by the NNTP LIST command), you will not see it with DIR/GROUP/ALL. You may still be able to subscribe to it, however. This behaviour will probably not change.