History

MailWatch

4.0 (28.1.97)

• Since my ISP was off the net for a while, and I'm on summer holidays, I judged that it was a good time to begin coding the new version of MailWatch that I'd been meaning to do. The main change is the use of external GUI modules.
• Included some nice NewIcons (taken from a Be screenshot, with minor editing by myself) which should work well on a 16 or 32 colour screen with a balanced palette. Don't worry, the MagicWB icons are still in there too :).
• Reorganized many of the OOP baseclasses used in both MailWatch and MailWatchPrefs.
• MailWatch now strips out the '.info' extensions on the icons itself, as it needs to pass the full path of these icons to its external module. This meant removing the code from MailWatchPrefs to do the same thing, as it was no longer necessary.
• You can now choose whether you want files that are already there when MailWatch is started to be displayed as 'Old' or 'New'. This can be set individually for each file. Requested by Carsten Kullik.
• The default location of the configuration file has changed. MailWatch and MailWatchPrefs now both look for a file 'ENV:MailWatch/MailWatch.prefs', and of course MailWatchPrefs now saves to the corresponding location in ENVARC:. Users upgrading from a previous version may wish to move their configuration files there, or load them into MailWatchPrefs and resave them.
• MailWatch will now quit when it receives a CTRL_C signal.
• Small size savings by resolving the multiple occurrences of some strings into references to one such string as a constant.
• Hopefully fixed the last of the bugs in the notification code. Matthew Hunter reported various anomalies when the file being watched shrunk, as well as problems with the filesize change margin, so I've rewritten this section again.
• Removed a couple more Enforcer hits that only occurred under certain circumstances. (Do you know how difficult it can be to understand what's wrong with code you wrote more than a year ago?!?)

4.0a (6.2.97)

• Implemented a definable 'time-out' time, to allow the mail-program some time to commit odd and dubious acts on the mailfile before MailWatch checks the filesize again. (This has been requested by a couple of users of AmigaElm, which apparently has a rather baroque method of filehandling :).
• Removed the absolute path specification for modules in MailWatch; this was decidedly unpopular, as some people use the program from SYS:WbStartup and didn't want to clutter that up. Also tried to improve the program's behaviour when it couldn't find those modules.

4.1 (17.3.97)

• You can now specify whether individual icons start up enabled or disabled.
• Changed the icon-handling again; moved most of the necessary intelligence into the preferences program (see MailWatchPrefs v4.1).
• Added support for CX_POPUP and CX_PRIORITY tooltypes.
• Hopefully, fixed a bug (reported by Matthew Hunter) which occasionally led to MailWatch trying to read spurious device names.
• Removed Enforcer hits that sometimes occurred when the program attempted to execute empty actions. Took the opportunity to trim this section of the code a little.
• Added the ARexx file execution type. This executes the selected ARexx script with Sys:RexxC/Rx.
• Wrote an Installer script for the package.
• Removed Beep from the distribution; it's still available from my home page if anyone really misses it :).

4.1a-4.1d (19.3.97 - 22.3.97)

• Due to a bug in an OOP baseclass that handled exec.library functions, MailWatch v4.1 didn't work much past the stages of setting up and closing down. This now seems to be fixed.
• MailWatch didn't read the filesize correctly (failed to pass a return value) so all files were considered to be 0 bytes. Fixed.
• Major code reorganization & optimization, resulting in minor size savings.

4.1e (11.5.97)

• There was a bug that would lead to MailWatch ignoring notification changes; due to the nature of the bug (it was present in my time comparison code), it would only occur once in any given 24 hour period. Should be fixed now. Many thanks to Matthew Hunter for his help in tracking down this elusive bug.
• Added the maximum size difference check, to complement the one for a minimum size difference. Now you can specify that a change in filesize must be between specific range.
• Added the ability to watch directories.
• Added some new ARexx commands, CHANGE & CHECK.
• MailWatch now interprets various codes in the icon's name gadgets. See Preferences: Icons for more details.
• Improved the Installer script. It now offers the option of installing MailWatch either to its own directory, or spread across the Sys: disk (i.e. Sys:WbStartup, Sys:Prefs, etc.)

4.2 (1.8.97)

• Added AmigaElm mode; requested by Matthew Hunter.
• Added version-checking to the loading of the program's preferences. MailWatch will now warn the user when a preference file is loaded that has not been saved with the current version of MailWatchPrefs.
• MailWatch now copies the Workbench path list if it is started from the Workbench. This means that action strings as defined in MailWatchPrefs may well not need fully qualified paths, if the programs that are being run are in the path search list.
• Fixed odd behaviour when notification of a preferences change was received while MailWatch was deactivated. (The program, when re-activated, used to activate with the old preferences, then de-activate itself, then activate with the new preferences.)
• Fixed a problem with range checking when both minimum and maximum ranges were specified; I'd reversed the order of two arguments from what they were supposed to be, so the program would stifle any action that would otherwise occur because all changes in file size were 'outside' the necessary range.
• Fixed a couple of documentation 'bugs'.
• Changed the program's behaviour to more closely follow the state of the files it watches, even when the program does not need to act on these changes.
• The Installer script now asks which GUI module the program should be set up to use.
• If the external module cannot find an icon that has been specified in the preferences file, MailWatch now informs the user of this fact and quits, rather than failing to show anything for that icon

4.3 (29.9.97)

• Fixed a couple of minor bugs which might have eaten memory while the program was running (it would all have been freed upon quitting anyway, and was pretty unlikely to happen).
• Reduced size by a few hundred bytes :P.

4.4 (30.10.97)

• No major changes for this release.

MailWatchPrefs

4.0 (28.1.97)

• MailWatchPrefs is now a commodity.
• MailWatchPrefs will now quit when it receives a CTRL_C signal.
• Corrected the version string in the 'About' requester. (Carsten Kullik was more observant than anyone else...)
• Changes to accommodate new features (see MailWatch v4.0)

4.0a (6.2.97)

• Fixed a 'wrong' description on a file requester. Thanks to Rob Miller for pointing this out.
• Changes to accommodate new features (see MailWatch v4.0a)

4.1 (17.3.97)

• Major reorganization of preferences layout. Listview and all string-gadgets now support AppWindow features, i.e. icons can be dropped onto them in order to set their values. Full-scale code reorganizations and optimizations.
• Added some decent-looking imagegadgets for file requesters.
• Added support for CX_POPUP, CX_PRIORITY and CX_HOTKEY tooltypes. Also modified behaviour when made inactive via CX/Arexx to more closely match AUISG guidelines.
• Changing a 'watched' file name via the file requester didn't update the listview. Fixed.
• Changed the icon-handling again; MailWatchPrefs now stores the full path of the icon, and then strips the '.info' extension.
• Recompiled for (and various coding changes to take advantages of) new features in EasyGUI v3.3b.
• Changes to accommodate new features (see MailWatch v4.1)

4.1a-4.1d (19.3.97 - 22.3.97)

• MailWatchPrefs was badly broken in v4.1, and would likely crash when the user attempted to bring up a file requester. Fixed.

4.1e (11.5.97)

• Dropped the support for specifying the delay-time in ticks. This means that if you had a delay set in previous versions of MailWatch, you will need to correct this value in the preferences program and resave your preferences. Sorry about the inconvenience, but this is a necessary change to both programs.
• The format of the configuration file has changed in a number of ways. I suggest that you load and resave your preferences using this release of MailWatchPrefs to ensure that you do not lose any configuration details.
• Added support for CONFIG tooltype, instead of loading from Env:MailWatch/MailWatch.prefs as a hardwired setting.
• Improved font tooltype handling, merged the two tooltypes into one.
• Due to a hurried implementation, each file gadget copied its own version of the gadget images into chip memory. This probably resulted in MailWatchPrefs using about 10KB more memory than it otherwise should have. Now fixed.
• Added titles for the various subsections - pretty but useless :).
• Fixed a couple of cosmetic bugs related to AppWindow features.
• Split the Misc. section into two parts.
• Changes to accommodate new features (see MailWatch v4.1e)

4.2 (1.8.97)

• Now uses tabs.gadget for clickable tabs in place of the cycle bar to switch fields.
• Removed some unnecessary gadget updating (e.g. updating listview when changing fields, etc.)
• Changes to accommodate new features (see MailWatch v4.2)

4.3 (29.9.97)

• File gadgets for definition of actions and icons now insert into the string gadget rather than overwrite the contents of that gadget.

4.4 (30.10.97)

• File gadgets inserting rather than overwriting broke the requesters in the None, Old and New parts of the GUI. Fixed.
• Recompiled with EasyGUI v3.3b4, which fixes these problems: GUI wouldn't resize properly if the resizing would take it past screen borders, possible problems with AppWindow features.

External modules

(Simple recompilation not mentioned).

4.0 (28.1.97)

appicons.mwdf

• Initial release (duplicates functions of MailWatch <= v3).

textreqs.mwdf

• Initial release (more a proof of concept than anything else, but some people may prefer it).

4.1 (17.3.97)

dummy.mwdf

• Initial release; does nothing at all, which some people may find handy if they only wanted the file-notification/action features of MailWatch.

4.1a-4.1d (19.3.97 - 22.3.97)

appicons.mwdf

• This was affected by a bug in the same code that MailWatch used for handling some exec.library functions; therefore, it did not work very well. Now fixed.

4.2 (1.8.97)

textreqs.mwdf

• Improved to offer positioned, asynchronuous requesters (and now requires reqtools.library).
• This module used to open workbench.library and icon.library but never actually used any functions from them. Fixed.