VBBS READ... Copyright 1991 By Stephen Vermeulen VOICE: (403) 282-7990 VBBS line 1: (403) 284-2048 VBBS line 2: (403) 284-5625 PO Box 3295, Station B, Calgary, Alberta, CANADA, T2M 4L8. Before you double click the READ icon there are a few things you will need to do. First use the WorkBench's Info menu item to edit the tooltypes in the READ icon. You should change the NAME= tooltypes to specify your name (as it appears in your TERM icon). What is READ? READ is an off line message reading and composition tool designed to work with the "new message base" on VBBS. READ does all its work on your own system so it may be used at any time, whether you are on-line or not. You will use it to read new messages, browse through old messages stored on your system, compose new postings and compose replys to existing messages or replys. READ is intended to be used with the AGE utility, see the docs that come with AGE for a more detailed discussion of the philosophy behind READ and AGE. How to use READ: FROM THE WORKBENCH: Just check the tooltypes array (in the READ icon) to see that the entries are correct for your system. The tooltypes that READ understands are: USER= set this to your user name on VBBS EDITOR= set this to the name of the text editor you like to use to edit your replys. MESSROOT= set this to the root directory of your local message base, this must be the same as you use in the TERM icon NOTE: this directory must exist, and should not currently contain any files, TERM and READ will be doing a lot of work here and foreign files might confuse them. KEEPFILE= set this to the name of a file in which you want useful messages to be kept. TEMPDIR= set this to the name of a temporary directory in which READ can create scratch files, usually this would be T: FROM THE CLI: NOTE: CLI users will need to keep the READ.info (icon) file around because this is used to specify the various parameters that READ needs to run. Because CLI users do not like their directories cluttered with .info files, when READ is started from the CLI it will first look in the current directory for the READ.info file (if you rename READ to FarOutMessageReader you will need to rename the icon to FarOutMessageReader.info as well), if it does not find it there it will then look in the S: directory and if it fails to find it there it will look in the C: directory. Keyboard Commands: Currently READ is controlled through the keyboard. This could well change at a later date (especially if Ian Gunn gets his CanDo reader working!). The following command keys are supported: RETURN or SPACE will step you through messages, and advance the screen when the scrolling is paused. K is for Keep -- which does not work yet. BACKSPACE will step you back a message in the current reply level U is for Up, and it will hop you up a directory (it can also hop you right out of the messages...) P is for Posting a new message, go into the SIG you wish to post in and then hit P and your editor will startup. R is for Replying to the current message, it will put a copy of the message into your editor, so you can quote and edit it. ---------------------------- CHANGES -------------------------------- 17 Fixed an enforcer hit caused by the SUBJECT string requesters. 16 Fixed a small bug with the SUBJECT string requesters. 15 Had to adjust some stuff regarding the FIDONET support. 14 READ will handle the new network info and keyword info in the message header. Revised the way data is placed into the little header window, so now the updates on empty sigs should be visable. Also added TAB handling. 13 READ gets sped up -- the previous version used a routine that only did single character reads, this one does much bigger reads. 12 READ takes on a new look... You get three windows, one for the header info, one for the message text and a third for the control pannel (there are keyboard equivalents too -- hit HELP to see them) be sure to lay these out however you like and then hit the SNAP gadget to save the configuration. 11 Revised the header format on VBBS messages (messages which start with the characters: VMSG), the reason for this was two-fold, first a change was needed to improve the performance of Gunzo's CanDo based reader program and second a new date field needed to be introduced into the header. If you use version 10 on version 11 messages (or visa-versa) you will find the user name and the date field get corrupted. Do not use READ 10 for any new postings. 10 Fixed a bug in the displaying of Subject and Old Subject lines which could have caused crud to be displayed at the end of these lines. 9 Added the ARCHIVE function. Now hitting the "A" key or clicking on the Archive gadget will mark the current message as archived. This will protect the message from deletion when AGE is run in the future. You should use this function to protect useful articals for future referenc, and thus build up a nice database of useful articals that you can browse at your leisure in the future. 8 Fixed the annoying scroll the message away before you have read it bug. Added HELP menu -- hit the HELP key. Added "D" to delete the current message. Added "J" to jump over the rest of the current message (if its long and boring). 7 Added the read new functionality. Also, added the scanning for messages between selected dates. You get two large date gadgets, the one on the left is the start time for the scan, the one on the right is the end time for the scan. If one of these is selected (pushed in) the date shown on the gadget will be used. If the start date is unselected the magic value for "begining of time" will be used. If the end date is unselected the magic value for the end of the Amiga age will be used. The default setting will scan for any new messages since the message reader (READ) was last used. You can change these settings on the fly at any time to condense or expand your view of messages. The READer stores the last time it was used in the MESSROOT directory in the read.last file. Fixed a small bug that caused the 200 and 201 byte in the begining of a message to become corrupt. 6 Fixed the message clear function, now it does not clear in the wrong spot. You can now post into an Empty SIG. The s:snapshot file is not written into the MESSROOT directory. 5 Added support for message headers, as well as headerless messages, on any new posting or reply the first line will be extracted and used as the subject line. Added a "Clear" gadget for those who want the screen to clear before printing each new message. 4 Fixed a bug whereby you would infinite loop if you tried to read in a message directory with no messages present. 3 Upgraded the interface, added gadgets and support for custom screens. Added a SNAP button which will write the window size and position to a configuration file (called s:read.snapshot). Added the following tooltypes which have the same function as they do in TERM SWIDTH= sets the screen width SHEIGHT= sets the screen height SDEPTH= sets the number of bitplanes PALETTE= sets a palette entry 2 Fixed a couple of bugs, added some more informational messages to the display so that you can see where you are in the message tree. Now it loops through all the bbs machines and sigs it knows about until you hit the close gadget. 1 First release of READ. ----------------------------- THANKS --------------------------- Another round of thanks go to the AMiga Users of Calgary (AMUC) for their loan of two modems and phone lines for testing some of the multi-line facilities.