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GoldED+ sources: Initial revision.
2000-02-25 10:15:17 +00:00
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
# GoldED Users Guide Manual
# $Id$
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#manualfile GOLDUSR.TXT
#pagelength 60
#pagewidth 80
#leftmargin 8
#rightmargin 2
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
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ڿ <20><> GoldED 3.0.0
<20><><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD> <20><><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
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Users Guide Manual
Program and manual written by Odinn Sorensen
Copyright (C) 1990-1998 by Odinn Sorensen
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#header
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#heading ______________________________________________________________________
#heading
#heading <center><chapter>
#heading ______________________________________________________________________
#heading
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#footer ______________________________________________________________________
#footer
#footer <chapter> <right>GoldED Users Guide, Page <page>
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#tocbegin
#chapter Table of Contents
#tocline ......................................................................
#tocindent 4
#tocpagenumber i
#toc
#tocend
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#pagenumber 1
#chapternumber 1
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Notes About This Manual
The organization of this manual is not so good, sorry about that.
If you find spelling, grammatical or factual errors, please let me
know.
If you think the wording is bad or confusing in some parts, please
send me your improved version of the parts.
If you would like to write entirely new chapters (especially for the
Users Guide), please do and send them to me. Screen shots may be
included, but should be edited to fit a 70 char wide page.
I have limited time and would be very grateful for any help which can
improve the quality and usefulness of the manual.
TO TRANSLATORS: This manual is produced from ASCII text files with
special codes and compiled to the release manual using a manual
compiler I wrote myself (gmanual). If you want to translate the GoldED
manuals to any language, please copy the manual source, translate the
copy and compile it using gmanual for distribution to others.
You must also contribute your translated manual source to the
community for futher use and improvement.
NOTE: The manual source should be transformed into SGML, so we can get
ASCII, HTML, PostScript or whatever versions. Any takers?
Odinn Sorensen, The GoldED Author.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Legal Notes
GoldED and the Goldware Utilities are covered by the GNU General
Public License (GPL). For details see the file COPYING.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Support and Development Philosophy
Besides working on GoldED, I am studying to become an electrical
engineer. For this and other reasons, I don't have much time for
individual support, particularly not for helping beginners with setup
problems etc. Please seek help in the support conferences on FidoNet
or Internet or ask your friends.
I will do my best to be available in the support conferences, but I
can't guarantee replies to all questions. There may even be times when
apparently urgent or important questions seem to be ignored. Please
don't take this personally. It may be that I simply have no time in
those periods. And later when I do have time, it may be several weeks
later and I may decide to skip lightly over the hundreds of messages
that piled up in the echoes. In that case, try to repeat your question
regularly and eventually you should be able to get a reply from me.
GoldED was a closed-source user-supported shareware program until
november 1998, when it was transformed into an open source GPL'ed
program with myself as primary maintainer and final judge of official
patch acceptance. In addition to myself, there is a core team of
developers, currently consisting only of Dirk A. Mueller, but
hopefully soon others, which have full access to committing changes
directly to the development CVS tree.
I was very happy about every single registration I got in the past,
because it gave me incentive to keep on working on GoldED, and
gave me additional economical freedom - something which is important
to anyone who studies without other economical backing. In the summer
of 1998 I was fortunate enough to get a job (currently as part of my
studies, but will likely continue for quite some time), which gave me
economical independence of shareware income from GoldED. This gave me
the opportunity to fulfill a promise I made myself long ago - that I
would not allow GoldED to die, just because I lacked the time to
support it properly. I would rather release the source code and let
interested users carry it onwards at their own pace. So after careful
examination of the variety of open source compliant licenses out
there, I chose GPL and LGPL.
Thank you for your support and understanding.
Odinn Sorensen.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Entering Messages
The process of entering a message deserves some description, because
there are a number of steps that may be a bit hard to figure out
directly.
You start a message by using one the following commands:
Key Command keyword Description
Ins READnewmsg Start a blank new message.
Alt-Q READquotemsg Quote-reply the current msg.
Alt-G READcommentmsg Quote-reply the current msg to TO person.
Alt-N READmovequotemsg Quote-reply in another area.
Alt-B READmovecommentmsg Quote-reply in another area to TO person.
Alt-R READreplymsg Reply to current msg, but don't quote.
The first thing that happens is that the header display comes to life,
and allows you to change the names and addresses of destination and
origination. In netmail areas, the userlist lookup feature is in
effect for the destination name field. You move around in the header
with the arrowkeys. Pressing <Tab> or <Enter> moves to the next field.
Pressing <Enter> in the subject field or <Ctrl-Enter> anywhere, ends
the header editing. Pressing <Esc> drops the message. While editing
the header, you can use the Alt-keys to toggle message attributes.
After the header editing is done, a menu appears, allowing you to
change the message attributes, origin, template, start the internal or
external editor or quit it.
When you select to start the editor, the template is processed and
prepared for use.
Safely back from the editor, you are presented with a menu where you
can select to save the message, drop the message, continue editing,
view the message, change origin or ROT13 crypt it.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Userfile Considerations
GoldED will by default always use the first entry in the userfile and
the first lastread in the lastread file(s).
In older versions GoldED would seek through the userfile for your name
and use the lastread pointers that corresponded to the index of the
userfile entry. This would normally work, but under some
circumstances, GoldED might fail to find your name and therefore add
you to the userfile. This could cause lastreads to suddenly appear to
be reset to the first or last message in all areas.
The solution of always using the first lastread is effective for
single-user setups, but for users sharing the same msgbase using
GoldED, each user MUST setup different user numbers if they want to
keep their lastread pointers separate. These keywords are used to set
the lastread pointer user number:
EZYCOMUSERNO <number>
FIDOUSERNO <number>
GOLDBASEUSERNO <number>
HUDSONUSERNO <number>
PCBOARDUSERNO <number>
SQUISHUSERNO <number>
WILDCATUSERNO <number>
There is no JAMUSERNO, because the JAM format is cleverly designed
to be independent of userfiles.
The <number> defaults to 0 (zero). Set it to 1, 2, 3 etc. for each
additional user that shares the same msgbase using GoldED.
Alternatively, set <number> to -1 (minus one), which will tell GoldED
to return to the old method of searching the userfiles to get the
lastread indexes.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Using the Search Functions
The search function is activated using the Alt-F (header and body) or
Alt-Z (header only) keys. This will bring up a popup entry field where
you can enter several strings, separated by the '|' search string
separator character like this:
Odinn|GoldED
By default, GoldED searches forward (next messages), but by preceeding
the search string with a '-', the search goes backwards (previous
messages).
Besides the backward search, there are a number of other search
command characters. Here is the complete list:
- Search backward.
+ Search forward. (Just for completeness).
< Search the From: field.
> Search the To: field.
: Search the Subj: field.
= Case-sensitive search.
! Reverse - Stop/mark when the search string(s) are NOT found.
& Separator - Reserved for future use with logical "and" searches.
By default the '<', '>' and ':' search commands are enabled, so that
GoldED searches all header fields. However, when one of these options
are actually used, the search is limited to those only.
Examples:
<Odinn Searches in the From: field only.
<>Odinn Searches in From: and To:, but not Subj:.
:tagline Search for "tagline" in the Subj: field only.
The search command characters are stripped before the search is
started. If you need to search for a string that begins with a search
command character, you must precede it with the search string
separator, like this:
-|++ Search for the string "++".
All this also applies to the marking search function (Alt-S).
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Using External Editors
Like all message editors that allows the use of external text editors
for writing messages, GoldED must deal with the problem of
free-flowing text paragraphs versus hard-cr-terminated lines.
Most text editors terminate *all* lines with a carriage return (CR,
13d, 0Dh). Unless you use a fairly short right margin in the text
editor, those lines can be very annoying to quote if the quotemargin
is shorter. This usually results in "ragged" quotes, with a long
quoteline alternating with a short leftover. This looks bad, and
requires a lot of work to edit to a respectable shape.
To solve this problem, GoldED treats the file from the text just as if
text blocks doesn't have any hard-cr's in them - it "reflows" the
text. Of course, this immediately creates another problem: If you
include a cut from a log file, source code, table or other stuff that
*requires* the text block to be aligned with itself. Those blocks
would become scrambled and unreadable.
GoldED recognizes a special control string, that tells the reflowing
code to put hard-cr's on single lines or groups of lines. You define
the string with the keyword "Hardline" in the configuration file. Here
is an example of the use of the hardline string (in the example "<<"):
<<
==== Log Cut ====
+ 22.24.31 Event 0-@
- 22.24.42 Preparing outbound mail
= 22.58.47 RING
= 22.58.55 CONNECT 2400
+ 22.59.02 Incoming call at 2400 baud
==== Log Cut ====
<<
In this example, the hardline string on the lines before and after the
cutting tells the reflower that all those lines must the hard-cr
terminated. The hardline string must be the only characters on the
line, and it must be placed on the *first* position. The reflow code
looks for <string><cr>. The hardline string works as a "toggle".
The hardline string also has another use: If you put the string as the
last characters on a line, that line will also be hard-cr terminated.
Example:
Greetings...<<
Odinn Sorensen<<
The last << in this example was not really necessary, because a blank
line always ends the preceding line or paragraph with a hard-cr. In
any case, the hardline string is stripped off before the message is
saved.
Some lines are by definition always hard-cr terminated, and does not
need hardline strings. Those lines are quoted lines and control lines
such as kludges, tearlines and originlines. In addition, three
identical characters at the beginning of a line also terminates the
preceding paragraph.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Quote Reflow
When you quote a message that already contains quoted lines, those
lines may be too long for your quotemargin. Most message editors would
then just cut a bit off the end and put it on a line below. GoldED
does it differently - it determines the quotestring of the line, and
then "reflows" all the following lines with the same quotestring and
puts the quotestring back on the reflowed lines. This usually works
great and looks good. It can also fail miserably in some
circumstances.
The reflowing is in effect in both the message displaying and in
quoting. If you want to observe the effects, try executing the
READdecreasemargin or READincreasemargin commands (they don't have any
default key assignments though).
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Carbon Copy and Crossposting
Carbon Copying
Carbon copy (CC) is a way to send the same message to a number of
people without the trouble of manually entering and copying a message
for each of them. The CC works only in netmail or local areas. You can
send any message, including fileattaches (in netmail) with the CC
function.
Carbon copies are created by putting the string "CC:" followed by one
or more names or addresses, separated by commas, on one or more lines
at the beginning of the message. The names and addresses must follow
the same rules as when using the lookup function in the netmail
header.
Example:
CC: 16, Joergensen, #236/512
If you put a "#" in front of a name or address, that node will be left
out of the list, but will still receive a carbon copy.
You can also use address macros (see the NAMESFILE keyword) instead of
names or addresses.
If you often send carbon copies to the same people, it can get a bit
tedious to type (and remember) every time. Therefore you can also
specify a file with the names and addresses:
CC: @TESTERS.LST
Files names and addresses can be mixed on the same line. The lines in
the file must be the same format as above. No nesting is allowed: You
can't specify files within files.
When you save the CC message, GoldED will scan the message text to
find and process the CC: lines. When this is done, a menu will pop up
and allow you change the format of the CC: lines, the attributes of
the CC messages or drop the copies.
When processing the CC list, GoldED will check each node in the
nodelist and pop up the nodelist browser in case of more than one
match or if the node was not found.
Crossposting
Crosspost is similar to Carbon Copy, except that instead of sending
copies to a list of persons, it posts copies of a message in several
different conferences. Typical usage is announcement of files, vital
BBS information and other general interest info.
To crosspost a message is simple - just add lines in this format:
XC: <echoid> [echoid] [..]
The "XC:" must be the first three characters on the line. The <echoid>
must be valid echoid's defined in GoldED. Example:
XC: GOLDED, NEWFILES_R23.PRO, ENET.SOFT
This would produce the following output in the message:
* Crossposted in GOLDED
* Crossposted in NEWFILES_R23.PRO
* Crossposted in ENET.SOFT
And post it in the conferences.
Please moderate your use of this feature - it adds duplicate
information to the mail flow, and excessive use may be frowned upon by
cost-sensitive individuals.
TIP: If you want to keep copies of your messages in a separate
"outbox" echo, add this line to your message template(s):
xc: #@cecho, #outbox
This will automatically crosspost your msg to the OUTBOX area (you
must define or have an area with that echoid). The '#' tells GoldED
that you don't want the crosspost to be noted in the msgs. The
"@cecho" is a template token which is replaced with the current
echoid.
The only drawback to this tip is that there is no way to see what area
the original msg was posted in when looking at the msgs in the OUTBOX
area.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Using the Tagline Support
GoldED directly supports the popular taglines, which look something
like this in messages:
... tagline
--- GoldED 2.51
* Origin: whatever (2:236/77)
Taglines are usually one-liner jokes or wisdom or whatever. They serve
absolutely no technical function and are considered by some to be
waste of diskspace and modem time. In some conferences, they may even
be forbidden by the moderator, so if you want to use this feature,
check the conference rules first!
The tagline support in GoldED is currently not very advanced. You can
define some global taglines and manually select them from a menu, like
you can with origins. Taglines can also be defined in random system
groups, where they will be chosen randomly. For those with existing
tagline collections, you can specify the filename of the tagline
collection. Then a random tagline will be picked from the collection.
Taglines in messages are detected and displayed in a different color
(definable with COLOR READER TAGLINE).
Here are the keywords for tagline support:
TAGLINE <text> or @<filename> Defines a tagline or file
TAGLINECHAR <char> Defines the tagline character
TAGLINESUPPORT <yes/no> Disable internal tagline support.
If you define taglines globally, GoldED automatically adds extra menu
items to the EDITMENU and EDITSAVEMENU, to allow you to manually
select the tagline either before entering a message or when saving it.
Like for origins, it is also possible to change the default tagline by
using the READchangetagline command. Default key assignment is Ctrl-I.
Example for GOLDKEYS.CFG:
^I READchangetagline
Future plans for the tagline function include: Command to "steal"
taglines. Tagline collection file browser. Tagline "filters". Please
note, however, that tagline features are generally low priority. So
don't hold your breath.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Using the ISO 8859-1 ("Latin-1") charset
This chapter describes how to setup GoldED to use the ISO 8859-1
character set in all or selected mail areas.
The ISO 8859-1 character set seems to be the preferred standard for
accented (highbit) characters in the Internet. It is also basically
the same character set used in MS-Windows (code page 1252) and the
Amiga.
Add the following lines to the Random System groups you want to setup
charset translation for. They can also be used globally in the main
configuration if you want to ISO 8859-1 to be the default character
set for all your mail areas.
XLATIMPORT LATIN-1
XLATEXPORT LATIN-1
XLATIMPORT/EXPORT are used to translate characters to and from the IBM
PC 8-bit (above ASCII) character set.
The following lines need to be added to the main configuration:
XLATPATH <path to the .CHS files>
If your codepage is CP437 or CP865, use these two:
XLATCHARSET IBMPC LATIN-1 IBM_ISO.CHS
XLATCHARSET LATIN-1 IBMPC ISO_IBM.CHS
Or if your codepage is CP850, use these three:
XLATCHARSET CP850 LATIN-1 850_ISO.CHS
XLATCHARSET LATIN-1 CP850 ISO_850.CHS
XLATLOCALSET CP850
The two .CHS files must be present in the XLATPATH. You can find them
in the XLAT archive inside the advanced setup archive.
GoldED will put a kludge "^aCHRS LATIN-1 2" or "^aCHARSET LATIN-1 2"
into your messages so that other mail readers can translate to their
native character set if necessary.
That's it.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Converting your highbit characters to ASCII
If a conference moderator or network policy forbids the use of highbit
characters such as your national accented letters, you must configure
GoldED so that these characters are converted to acceptable ASCII.
Fortunately there are at least three ways of doing this with GoldED.
Let's say that you want to convert the characters <20><><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD> (the most
commonly used Danish national characters in codepages 865 and 850).
You can convert the characters using EDITmacros by putting these lines
in the GOLDKEYS.CFG file:
<20> EDITmacro "AE"
<20> EDITmacro "OE"
<20> EDITmacro "AA"
<20> EDITmacro "ae"
<20> EDITmacro "oe"
<20> EDITmacro "aa"
An alternative way of doing this is by using the EDITCOMPLETION
keyword like this in GOLDED.CFG:
EDITCOMPLETION "<22>" "AE"
EDITCOMPLETION "<22>" "OE"
EDITCOMPLETION "<22>" "AA"
EDITCOMPLETION "<22>" "ae"
EDITCOMPLETION "<22>" "oe"
EDITCOMPLETION "<22>" "aa"
If you use one of these two methods to convert your highbit
characters, that's it. There is no way to switch it to allow the
highbit characters in some areas.
The best method to convert characters is by using the character
translation system and enabling it in just those areas where it is
required. Setting this up is a bit more elaborate. When the character
translation system is in effect, you simply enter your message using
your national highbit characters. Then when you save the message,
GoldED automatically converts it to ASCII.
Add these lines in GOLDED.CFG:
XLATPATH <path where IBM_ASC.CHS can be found>
XLATCHARSET IBMPC ASCII IBM_ASC.CHS
And add this line either globally in GOLDED.CFG or in specific groups
in the random system:
XLATEXPORT ASCII
The IBM_ASC.CHS file can be found in the XLAT.ZIP archive within the
manual and advanced cfg archive.
It should be noted that the IBM_ASC.CHS translation table converts
from codepage 437 (actually 865) to ASCII. If your normal codepage is
850, you should use the following XLATCHARSET instead:
XLATCHARSET CP850 ASCII 850_ASC.CHS
You will also need this line:
XLATLOCALSET CP850
The XLATLOCALSET keyword tells GoldED which codepage your computer is
configured to use.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Encrypting Messages
GoldED allows you to en/decrypt messages encoded with the ROT13
encryption method. ROT13 is very simple: It just swaps the letters
"A-M", "a-m" with "N-Z", "n-z" and vice-versa.
ROT13 is mostly used in Internet newsgroups where it is used as a
"spoiler warning", so that game solutions, joke punchlines and other
stuff is not read by accident. In those networks, most message readers
have ROT13 de/crypting capabilities.
In FidoNet, not all message readers have ROT13 capability, and the
current policy (Policy 4) states:
2.1.4 Encryption and Review of Mail
FidoNet is an amateur system. Our technology is such that the
privacy of messages cannot be guaranteed. As a sysop, you have the
right to review traffic flowing through your system, if for no
other reason than to ensure that the system is not being used for
illegal or commercial purposes. Encryption obviously makes this
review impossible. Therefore, encrypted and/or commercial traffic
that is routed without the express permission of all the links in
the delivery system constitutes annoying behavior.
You will be able to encrypt your messages with ROT13, but you should
not use the crypting facility of GoldED, unless your network allows
it, and *never* in international echoes.
See also the chapter about how to setup GoldED with PGP.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Using the UUDECODE feature
GoldED contains a built-in uudecode feature. It is keycommand
READuudecode, which defaults to Ctrl-X.
The uudecoder in GoldED is based on (but heavily modified from) some
very old ('88), but good, C source (available as UUENUUDE.ZIP on my
system), which claims to be based on the Berkeley original.
No error checking is done during the uudecode.
GoldED currently cannot handle uuencoded data which is split in
multiple sections and/or multiple messages. Only uuencoded data is
supported, not MIME Base64 or other encodings.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Using the UUENCODE feature
GoldED contains a built-in uuencode feature, which is available when
importing a file in the internal editor.
To uuencode a file while importing it, simply put a '#' character in
front of the filename.
Example: #WHATEVER.ZIP - Will import as:
begin 644 WHATEVER.ZIP
[uuencoded data]
end
NOTE: This is a very simple implementation of uuencode. It cannot
split large files over several messages. The file mode number 644 is
hard-coded and has nothing to do with the actual file mode.
WARNING: Due to memory constraints, the standard 16-bit DOS version of
GoldED is usually not able to deal with messages much larger than
about 10-16k. You can very quickly reach that size when uuencoding
files. For this reason, you should not use this feature unless you are
running one of the 32-bit versions (DOS-386, OS/2 or Win32).
GoldED currently only supports the uuencoding type, not MIME Base64 or
other encodings.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Nodelist Browse and Lookups
When you write a netmail message, you must know the name and net
address of the recipient. Unless you have a remarkable memory, this
information can be a bit hard to remember. Therefore GoldED supports
several different nodelist indexes: GoldNODE (a proprietary format),
FrontDoor, Version 7 and FIDOUSER.LST.
When you enter a name or address in the header (the TO: field) and
press <Enter>, GoldED looks in the nodelist index to find the missing
data. You can enter the address in the name field. Names to be
searched for must be entered last name first (because of the way the
index is structured). If you enter a partial name or address, GoldED
will find the closest match. Addresses can be entered in short form,
based on the current AKA, like .3 for the address of your third Point,
or 33 for node 33 in your net.
Before the nodelist is searched, the list of address macros are first
scanned, and if a match is found there, the information there is used
instead.
When GoldED has found a match, it looks a bit further to see if there
are more matches. If not, the matching data is inserted in the header,
and you can continue editing. If more than one match was found, it
starts the nodelist browser. Here you can browse around and find the
correct destination node. When found, you select it with <Enter>. The
full name and address of the node you selected is then placed in the
appropriate fields in the header. Pressing <Esc> in the browser quits
it without inserting any node information. While in the browser, you
can press <Tab> to switch between name and address lookup.
The list of nodes in the browser is sorted differently, according to
what you entered. If you entered a name, the list is sorted
alphabetically by last name. If you entered an address, the list is
sorted ascending by address.
The nodelist browser can also be accessed in other ways. The keys F10
and Shift-F10 brings up the browser at the FROM and TO names (nodes)
respectively, to let you inspect their nodelist data. It's quite
handy, you will wonder how you could do without it - I did :-)
The nodelist lookup feature can also be used when in the internal
editor, but an even more useful key is available there. By pressing
Alt-L, the browser will pop up for the name or address at the editor
cursor position!
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter User Database Lookup
GoldEd has a special user database lookup feature for BBS sysops.
In Hudson, Ezycom, Squish (and *.MSG, if you are using Maximus) type
areas, GoldED can perform an additional type of name lookup, using
wildcards.
This form of lookup is triggered by using DOS/4DOS-style wildcard
characters in the name you want to lookup. Examples:
To: Joe* Finds any name beginning with "Joe".
To: *Blow Finds any name ending with "Blow".
To: Od?n* Finds "Odinn", "Oden" etc.
Depending on the size of your user database and the speed of your
computer, the lookup may take a little while.
As currently implemented, this user database lookup is only good for
simple one-shot lookups - you can't bring up a browser to pick the
user, or see his/hers other user data.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Marking Messages
GoldED has a message marking system, which allows flexible
manipulation with selected messages.
You can either mark messages manually one by one using the
READtogglemark command <Space>, or use the READmarkingoptions menu
<Alt-S>. With the marking menu, you can for example mark all messages
in a particular thread (replychain), or all messages that match a
certain string or a number of other criteria.
When you have marked the messages, you can then Copy, Move, Delete or
Write them. Or you can switch to reading only the marked messages.
The marks stay in position until removed (unmarked) or you exit
GoldED. Marks are kept even if you leave the current area and do
business in another for a while.
Another, more volatile, form of mark is the "bookmark". Bookmarks can
be used for returning to a certain position after a stroll out a long
reply chain and stuff like that. There is only one bookmark, and it is
reset when you leave the area. Using the Find function leaves a
bookmark at the current message.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter The File Request Feature
Often when you see a msg where new files are announced, you wish you
could simply press a key and select files to request. Well, with
GoldED you can!
The file request function (default key Ctrl-F) will scan the current
message and present you with a list of the requestable files it found.
GoldED will even show the file descriptions if it can find one.
You select the files by toggling marks with the Space key. A '+' will
show in front of the selected files. The selections can be discarded
by pressing Esc. When done with the selections, press Enter to
continue.
Now the destination area must be selected from the list. You have to
pick a netmail area of the *.MSG type, since the Hudson and Squish
netmail areas are currently not supported by most mailers today.
After selecting the area, check that the header data (TO name etc) is
correct. You can now go on to perhaps write a thank you note in the
accompanying msg, or you can save (empty) your msg immediately (if you
have the EDITMENU keyword set to Yes).
At the moment you start editing the header, the filenames and
descriptions are written to a FILES.BBS in the INBOUNDPATH. This can
be very helpful if you are getting files for your own BBS and are
tired of inventing or finding descriptions for all those files.. The
fact that the FILES.BBS is written to disk before you even save you
msg, can be used to get "free" descriptions later from the response
msgs some mailers send back when you do a file request.
There are currently a couple of limitations in the file request
function:
* You can only request as many files as can fit in the subject line
of one msg.
* GoldED recognizes several different types of file announcement
formats, but some may not be fully supported. This means that
legitimate descriptions may not be found by GoldED, or that some
files are not recognized as requestable.
* If a msg does not conform to a known announcement format, it is
instead (actually it is _also_) scanned for a number of standard
archive extensions. These extensions are configurable with the
FRQEXT keyword, which comes pre-defined with many common file
extensions. Only one such file per line can be found by GoldED,
and only if it is "straight" - no spaces between name and
extension, and no "funny" characters in the filename. The
description is simply the rest of the line.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Using the Personal Mail Scan feature
GoldED can scan for your personal mail (messages addressed to the name
defined with the USERNAME keyword).
NOTE: Personal mail scan is a very new feature in GoldED (introduced
in 2.50.Beta4) and is likely to have plenty of rough edges, quirks and
bugs. The current implementation is not set in stone. Please give me
your comments on any problems or suggestions for improvements.
The personal mail scan feature can be activated in two different ways:
1. Manually from the arealist using the personal mail scan menu on
Alt-P (keycommand AREAscanpm). The menu contains the same items
as the regular Alt-S scanning menu. Here you can scan all, marked,
current, matching or unscanned areas for personal mail.
2. Automatically using the PERSONALMAIL keyword with the Startup
parameter.
If personal mail scan is activated from the menu in the arealist, then
when the scan is completed, GoldED shows a window with a simple
statistic about the personal mail (xx mails found in yy areas). The
window will go away after a few seconds or by pressing a key.
Areas with personal mail will be marked with a '+' after the message
count in the Msgs column. In the statusline, the exact number of
personal mails is shown for each area when you move the selection bar.
To remove the personal mail mark from an area without reading the
mail, re-scan the area with the normal area scan (Alt-S).
To read personal mail, simply enter an area marked '+'. GoldED will
automatically switch to "Read Marked" mode so that you only read the
personal mail. When you exit the area after reading your mail, GoldED
remembers the original lastread and sets it back where it was (this
will only work when in Read Marked mode with personal mail).
You can automatically sort areas with personal mail to the top of the
arealist by adding the sort spec 'P' in front of your current
AREALISTSORT string. Example: AREALISTSORT PTUE.
Only messages after the lastread are scanned. The scan ignores
messages that are marked received.
The keywords AREAPMSCAN, AREAPMSCANEXCL and AREAPMSCANINCL work for
personal mail like the AREASCAN, AREASCANEXCL and AREASCANINCL do for
normal mail scans.
The PERSONALMAIL keyword specifies options for the personal mail scan
feature. With it you can tell GoldED to automatically scan for
personal mail at startup and to look for mail to all your USERNAMES
(if you have more than one spelling of your name for example).
Personal mail scan is currently only implemented for the JAM, Squish,
Hudson, Goldbase and PCBoard msgbase formats. Personal mail scan
support for *.MSG and Ezycom will be added in a future release.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Using the Internet Features
This chapter (which is not complete!) discusses how to use the
Internet compatibility features in GoldED, implementation details,
limitations etc.
See also the "Using the SOUP feature" chapter.
If you access Internet via a gateware running the GIGO gate program,
you should ensure that the gate operator has the following lines in
the GIGO HEADERS.CFG file:
Allow_To:
Allow_From:
Allow_Newsgroups:
Allow_Subject:
Allow_Date:
Allow_Message-ID:
Allow_References:
Allow_In-Reply-To:
Allow_Organization:
Allow_MIME-Version:
Allow_Content-Type:
Allow_Content-Transfer-Encoding:
Allow_Sender:
Allow_X-Newsreader:
Allow_X-Mailreader:
Allow_X-To:
These are the Internet RFC header control lines that GoldED can put in
your messages if you set INTERNETRFCBODY YES in your GoldED setup for
your Internet areas.
<chapter not completed yet>
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Using PGP as an External Utility
This chapter describes how to can install PGP as an external utility
in the GoldED setup. The examples assume that PGP 2.3 or higher is
installed in the directory C:\PGP.
Add the following to your GOLDED.CFG:
--- Cut ---
EXTERNUTIL 1 -nokeepctrl -wipe c:\pgp\pgp.exe +force -sa @tmpfile -u
"@oname" -o @file
EXTERNUTIL 2 -nokeepctrl -wipe c:\pgp\pgp.exe +force -sta
+clearsig=on @tmpfile -u "@oname" -o @file
EXTERNUTIL 3 -nokeepctrl -wipe c:\pgp\pgp.exe +force -ea @tmpfile
"@dname" "@oname" -u "@oname" -o @file
EXTERNUTIL 4 -nokeepctrl -wipe c:\pgp\pgp.exe +force -eas @tmpfile
"@dname" "@oname" -u "@oname" -o @file
EXTERNUTIL 5 -nokeepctrl -wipe c:\pgp\pgp.exe +force @tmpfile -o
@file -u "@dname"
EXTERNUTIL 6 -noreload c:\pgp\pgp.exe +force -ka @file -u "@dname"
EDITSAVEMENU Yes
EDITSAVEUTIL 1 "S PGP Sign the msg"
EDITSAVEUTIL 2 "l PGP Clear-Sign the msg"
EDITSAVEUTIL 3 "E PGP Encrypt the msg"
EDITSAVEUTIL 4 "p PGP Encrypt & Sign the msg"
EXTERNOPTIONS -Pause
--- Cut ---
NOTE: Some of the configuration lines were split in two due to the
document margin. They must of course be on one line in the actual
GOLDED.CFG.
Add the following to your GOLDKEYS.CFG:
--- Cut ---
F11 ExternUtil03 ; F11 -> Encrypt message
F12 ExternUtil05 ; F12 -> Decrypt message
#F12 ExternUtil06 ; Shift-F12 -> Add public key to keyring
--- Cut ---
You need to have KEYBEXT Yes (the default) in GOLDED.CFG if you want
to use the F11/F12 keys. You can of course assign other keys, just
make sure they don't clash with already defined keys.
The PGP commandlines are set up for multiple recipients, the TO: name
and your own FROM: name. Otherwise you would not be able to decrypt
your own msgs, and that could get a bit unpractical ;-)
HOW TO USE IT:
To sign, clearsign or encrypt a msg, simply select the appropriate
menu item in the save menu. Another method is described below.
To decrypt an encrypted msg, Press F12 while viewing the msg in the
reader. After decryption, you can write the msg to disk/printer, reply
to it, copy it, etc. The decrypted text will revert as soon as you
move away from the msg, or after you perform any operation on it. To
make a decrypted msg permanent (saved to disk in decrypted form), use
the Change Msg command after decryption and then save the msg
immediately, or use the copy function if you want to keep the original
untouched..
One thing to be aware of, is that the encrypted msg text does NOT
contain kludges if it was encrypted from the EDITSAVEMENU. If you make
such a text permanent, you would loose the kludges. Currently the only
way to keep kludges in the encrypted text is to encrypt it "manually"
after saving it, using F11, Change Msg, save immediately. If you do it
this way, you should be careful in a multitask/network environment,
where a mail scanner could scan out the unencrypted msg before you get
a chance to encrypt it... I plan to fix this problem in a future
release.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Using the GIF Features
This chapter discusses how to use the GIF features in GoldED.
If the GIF kludge is found in a msg, the @gif token is filled with the
filename from the GIF kludge. You can setup an external utility to
view the GIF (if you have the file) like this:
(In GOLDED.CFG:)
EXTERNUTIL XX c:\utl\vpic.exe @gif
(In GOLDKEYS.CFG:)
key ExternUtilXX
If the GIF kludge is found, the text "[GIF:filename]" is added in the
lower-right corner of the header display so that you know that it is
there without looking in the kludges.
If you don't have the GIF, you can file request it by hitting Ctrl-F
(the READfilerequest command).
A note about the @gif token: It is replaced by the filename from the
GIF kludge, if any. If a GIFPATH is defined, the path is prepended to
the filename. A file extension is NOT added. This is so that you can
convert the .GIF's to a smaller format with a different extension.
Example: EXTERNUTIL XX c:\utl\vpic.exe @gif.jpg
You can configure GoldED so that it inserts the GIF kludge in your own
messages. See the GIF keyword for details.
NOTE: The GIF kludge is not in wide use, and there is a very real
possibility that some people might be annoyed about "yet another
useless kludge" which increases the size of msgs (not much, max 16
bytes). So I recommmend that you only use it in a few echoes and
perhaps in netmail, if at all. It might be a good idea to ask the
moderator of an echo before starting to use it in that echo. Use the
GIF keyword in Random System groups instead of globally. See also the
Message Kludge Lines chapter for information about the kludge.
Planned:
* A specific GIFVIEWER keyword and READgifviewer command instead of
having to use the external utility feature. GIFVIEWER would work
like EDITOR and SPELLCHECKER - there will not be a built-in
viewer.
* A menu to select the GIF just like origins etc.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Using the QWK features
GoldED supports import and export of the QWK offline packet format for
BBS conferences and Internet e-mail and newsgroups. Using this
feature, you can use GoldED as QWK offline reader.
A QWK packet consists of the files CONTROL.DAT, MESSAGES.DAT and
possibly a number of other files. GoldED uses only the two files
mentioned, other files are ignored.
A QWK reply packet generated by GoldED consists of the file
<BBSID>.MSG, which contains the messages that you wrote with GoldED.
<BBSID> is the QWK BBS identification name of the BBS you use.
GoldED currently doesn't support unpacking and packing of compressed
.QWK and .REP packets. You must unpack and pack your QWK/REP packets
manually or using a batchfile.
When exporting message to QWK reply packetfiles, GoldED will
*overwrite* any existing reply packet (<BBSID>.MSG), so you should not
export until you are actually ready to upload your packet.
After processing the CONTROL.DAT file, GoldED writes a file named
<BBSID>.GLD in the GOLDPATH. The file is used by GoldED to store the
relationship between conference numbers and conference names, for use
when later replying or entering new messages. For QWK export to work,
you must have previously imported a QWK packet so that the <BBSID>.GLD
file is created.
The QWK import/export features are currently activated from a submenu
the arealist scan menu (Alt-S). The submenu item is only present if
QWKIMPORTPATH and/or QWKEXPORTPATH is defined.
Below are the keywords that are relevant for the QWK support as
currently implemented:
QWKIMPORTPATH <path>
Path where incoming QWK packet files (CONTROL.DAT and
MESSAGES.DAT) can be found.
QWKEXPORTPATH <path>
Path where outgoing QWK reply files (BBSID.MSG) can be placed.
QWKBADMSGS <echoid>
Specifies the area where messages in unknown conferences are
put. If you get messages tossed here by accident, you must move
them manually to the correct area. If the badmsgs area is not
defined, the messages will silently disappear. Messages tossed
to the badmsgs area will have the control line
"AREA:<bbsid>_<confno>" at the top of the message.
QWKCONFMAP <bbsid> ["]<confname>["] <echoid>
Defines the mapping between the BBSID and conference names in
the QWK packets and the echoid name of the conference as
required by GoldED. You MUST define a mapping for every
conference that you subscribe to. If you don't, the messages
will be tossed to the area defined by QWKBADMSGS or disappear.
The <bbsid> is the name listed on line 5 in CONTROL.DAT after
the comma. The <confname> is the conference names listed on line
13 and on alternate lines onwards in CONTROL.DAT. If a
conference name contains embedded spaces, the <confname> must be
enclosed in double quotes, like this: "Main Board". The area
<echoid> must be already defined either in an AREAFILE or using
the AREADEF or AREA keywords.
QWKTOSSLOG <file>
Name of a file where GoldED puts the echoids of each area where
articles have been imported. The tosslog file is intended to be
used with a replylinker. If no path is given, it defaults to the
GOLDPATH.
QWKREPLYLINKER <cmd>
Commandline for a replylinker program to call after QWK import.
QWKOPTIONS <bbsid> <options>
Defines various options for the QWK support.
INTERNETRFCBODY <yes/no>
Enable this in areas with Internet RFC headerlines at the top of
messages. See the "Using the SOUP features" chapter for details.
CTRLINFO <tearline/origin/no>
Enables or disables tearline and/or origin in random system
groups.
In areas where INTERNETRFCBODY is enabled, or RFC headers are present
as FTN kludges, GoldED will convert the RFC headers Message-ID,
References and In-Reply-To to MSGID and REPLY kludges, so that
MSGID/REPLY replylinkers can be used instead of dumb subject linkers.
GoldED will also get the full-length To/From/Subject lines and store
them in the messages instead of the short 25 character QWK fields.
Finally if the INTERNETGATE keyword is defined, GoldED will add the
FSC-35 kludges REPLYTO and REPLYADDR in the messages.
Example setup in GOLDED.CFG:
(for Internet setup, see also the SOUP chapter).
// Basic QWK setup
QWKIMPORTPATH C:\QWK\
QWKEXPORTPATH C:\QWK\
QWKBADMSGS BAD_QWK
// Replylinking when using GEcho and Hudson areas:
QWKTOSSLOG C:\GECHO\IMPORT.HMB
QWKREPLYLINKER C:\GECHO\MBUTIL Link
// Replylinking when using GEcho and JAM areas:
QWKTOSSLOG C:\GECHO\IMPORT.JAM
QWKREPLYLINKER C:\GECHO\MBUTIL Link
// Replylinking when using Squish and Squish areas:
QWKTOSSLOG C:\SQUISH\QWKTOSS.LOG
QWKREPLYLINKER C:\SQUISH\SQUISH LINK -fC:\SQUISH\QWKTOSS.LOG
// QWK conference mapping
QWKCONFMAP GOLDWARE GoldED GOLDED
QWKCONFMAP GOLDWARE "GoldED Beta" GOLDED.BETA
QWKCONFMAP GOLDWARE "BBS Users" BBS.USERS
QWKCONFMAP WHOKNOWS EMail EMAIL
QWKCONFMAP WHOKNOWS dk.chat DK.CHAT
QWKCONFMAP WHOKNOWS dk.test DK.TEST
// Area definitions for the QWK conferences
AREADEF BAD_QWK "Bad QWK msgs" 0 Echo Opus C:\QWK\CONF\BADQWK
AREADEF GOLDED "GoldED support" 0 Echo JAM C:\QWK\CONF\GOLDED
AREADEF GOLDED.BETA "GoldED beta" 0 Echo JAM C:\QWK\CONF\GOLDBETA
AREADEF BBS.USERS "BBS Users" 0 Echo JAM C:\QWK\CONF\BBSUSERS
AREADEF EMAIL "E-Mail" 0 EMail Opus C:\QWK\CONF\EMAIL
AREADEF DK.CHAT "dk.chat" 0 News JAM C:\QWK\CONF\DKCHAT
AREADEF DK.TEST "dk.test" 0 News JAM C:\QWK\CONF\DKTEST
// Group for the EMAIL area
GROUP EMAIL
CTRLINFO NO
EDITHARDTERM YES
TEMPLATE INTERNET.TPL
INTERNETADDRESS odinn@whoknows.where
INTERNETMSGID YES
INTERNETRFCBODY YES
ENDGROUP
// Group for the Internet newsgroups
GROUP Newsgroups:
MEMBER dk.*
CTRLINFO NO
EDITHARDTERM YES
INTERNETADDRESS odinn@whoknows.where
INTERNETMSGID YES
INTERNETRFCBODY YES
QUOTECHARS ":;|"
TEMPLATE INTERNET.TPL
WHOTO All
ENDGROUP
Planned QWK features:
* Support for BlueWave and perhaps other offline packet formats.
* Support for compressed .QWK and .REP packets.
* Built-in replylinker.
* Your suggestions :-)
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Using the SOUP features
GoldED supports import and export of the Internet SOUP packet format
for e-mail and newsgroups. Using this feature, you can use GoldED as
an offline reader for Internet. The SOUP packet format, version 1.2,
is documented in the SOUP12.DOC document by Rhys Weatherley
<rhys@cs.uq.oz.au>.
A SOUP packet consist of a number of packet files with an extension of
.MSG plus an AREAS file which tells where each .MSG packet belongs.
Other files may be found in a SOUP packet, but they are not supported.
A SOUP reply packet generated by GoldED consists of a GOLDMAIL.MSG
packet file for e-mail and/or a GOLDNEWS.MSG packet file for
newsgroups plus a REPLIES file which lists the .MSG packets.
The SOUP import/export features are currently activated from a submenu
the arealist scan menu (Alt-S). The submenu item is only present if
SOUPIMPORTPATH and/or SOUPEXPORTPATH is defined.
Below are the keywords that are relevant for the SOUP support as
currently implemented:
SOUPIMPORTPATH <path>
Path where incoming SOUP packet files (AREAS and *.MSG) can be
found.
SOUPEXPORTPATH <path>
Path where outgoing SOUP reply packet files (REPLIES and
GOLD*.MSG) can be placed.
SOUPEMAIL <echoid>
Specifies the area where e-mails are placed.
SOUPBADMSGS <echoid>
Specifies the area where articles in unknown newsgroups are put.
If you get articles tossed here by accident, you must move them
manually to the correct area. If the badmsgs area is not
defined, the articles will silently disappear.
SOUPNEWSRCFILE <file>
Name with full path of the NEWSRC file which lists the
newsgroups you are connected to. GoldED uses the list to mark
the matching areas as newsgroups. These will then be scanned for
outgoing mail when starting a SOUP export.
SOUPTOSSLOG <file>
Name of a file where GoldED puts the echoids (newsgroup names)
of each area where articles have been imported. The tosslog file
is intended to be used with a replylinker. If no path is given,
it defaults to the GOLDPATH.
SOUPREPLYLINKER <cmd>
Commandline for a replylinker program to call after SOUP import.
INTERNETADDRESS <internet-address>
Specifies your Internet address. This must be the address only,
no name. The INTERNETADDRESS and USERNAME will be combined to a
standard "From: internetaddresss (username)" headerline when you
write e-mail or articles.
INTERNETGATE [gatename<,>]<ftn-address>
Specifies an FTN address which is used as the destination
address in the FTN message header. It is also the address used
in the FSC-35 REPLYTO/REPLYADDR kludges that are inserted in
mail and news imported from SOUP packets.
INTERNETMSGID <yes/no>
Specifies whether the FTN MSGID kludge should contain an RFC1036
compatible Message-ID or the normal FTS-9 format. Note that
using the RFC1036 format in MSGID breaks the FTS-9 (version 001)
specification, so please don't use this feature in FidoNet
netmail or echomail. As a safeguard, GoldED will only use the
RFC1036 format in areas specifically marked as e-mail or
newsgroups, using the SOUPEMAIL and SOUPNEWSRCFILE keywords or
using the Email and News area types with the AREADEF keyword,
even when INTERNETMSGID is set to YES globally.
INTERNETREPLY <yes/no>
If set to yes (the default), GoldED uses the FSC-35 reply
method, which puts UUCP in the to-field and a To: line at the
top of the message. For use with SOUP, this is ugly, so it is
recommended to set this keyword to NO. Note however, that due to
limitations of the header field editor, there is currently a
limit of 35 characters for the from and to headerfields.
INTERNETRFCBODY <yes/no>
Tells GoldED whether to look for and process RFC headerlines at
the top of the message body, before the first empty line. Also
tells GoldED to insert its own RFC headerlines at the top of the
message body instead of as kludge lines. This option should only be
used when receiving Internet mail as QWK packets where the
RFC headerlines are usually found at the top of the messages, or
when sending Internet mail via FTN packet to a gateway running
GIGO. GIGO does not recognize RFC header in kludges, but it does
recognize them at the top of the messages, if it is properly
configured (with lines of "Allow_Xxx:" in GIGO's HEADERS.CFG,
where Xxx are the RFC headerlines the gate administrator wants
to allow).
MAILINGLIST <echoid> <senderaddress> [contribution address]
Defines one or more mailing lists. When importing e-mail from a
SOUP packet, GoldED will look at the Internet address in the
"Sender" header and if it matches one of the MAILINGLIST's, the
e-mail will be tossed to the defined area. Note that GoldED
supports only participation in, not hosting of mailing lists.
The contribution address is the destination Internet address for
mail you write to the mailing list - the address is typically
given to you when you subscribe to a list. If the contribution
address is not specified, the senderaddress is assumed.
There are six different SOUP packet encoding formats. Four of those
are supported by GoldED.
u USENET news articles (import only)
m Unix mailbox articles (import only)
M Mailbox articles in the MMDF format (not supported)
b Binary 8-bit clean mail format (import and export)
B Binary 8-bit clean news format (import and export)
i Index file only (not supported)
The 'M' format is not yet supported. If you need support for this
format, please let me know, and send along an example SOUP packet
which uses the 'M' format. There are no plans to support the 'i'
format in the near future.
Articles are imported to the area matching the newsgroup name (for
example "rec.humor.funny" is imported to an area with the echoid
REC.HUMOR.FUNNY). E-mails are imported to the area named with the
SOUPEMAIL keyword. If no matching area can be found, the articles are
tossed to the area named with the SOUPBADMSGS keyword, with the
newsgroup name in an AREA: line at the top. If no badmsgs area is
defined, the articles will be silently thrown away.
After import, the AREAS, *.MSG and *.IDX files are deleted from the
SOUPIMPORTPATH. Be sure to keep backup copies when experimenting with
the SOUP feature. Note that there is currently no dupe check.
In the imported articles, the RFC headerlines are converted to
kludges. The real names (if any) in the From: and To: headerlines are
put into the message from/to header fields. If no To: line is found,
"All" is used.
When you write or reply to e-mail and articles, GoldED adds the echoid
(newsgroup name) and message number to a file named GOLDSOUP.LST in
the GOLDPATH. This file is used exclusively by GoldED to find outgoing
mail when starting the SOUP export.
There are three Internet specific template tokens:
@oto Original RFC "To:" headerline.
@ofrom Original RFC "From:" headerline.
@omessageid Original RFC "Message-ID:" headerline.
With these tokens, it is possible to create templates which look like
one of the defacto standard attribution lines used by other
newsreaders. See the example NEWSGRPS.TPL file for examples.
In e-mail and newsgroups, the ORIGIN keyword can be used to set the
content of the "Organization:" headerline.
The Martin Junius <mj@sungate.fido.de> MSGID.DOC document is
supported. This means that the Message-ID headerline is converted to a
MSGID kludge and the References headerline is converted to one or more
REPLY kludges. This makes MSGID/REPLY based replylinking possible
using existing FTN-based utilities. The original Message-ID and
References headerlines are preserved in the messages along with the
MSGID/REPLY kludges.
SOUP import and export is currently quite slow and a some things are
hardcoded that should be made into options. There is a lot of room for
improvements, but this is a nice start for those who want to read
their Internet mail and news with their favorite program instead of
the various SOUP offline readers out there.
For people with the IBM OS/2 Internet Access Kit, I can recommend the
"Souper" program which can make SOUP packets for offline consumption
instead of the expensive online reading with NewsReader/2 and
Ultimedia Mail/2. At the time of writing, the latest version was
SOUPER12.ZIP, ftp'd from hobbes.nmsu.edu.
The SOUP features SHOULD NOT be used with the GoldED DOS version. Use
the 386 or OS/2 versions. The current implementation uses memory like
a pig, and in any case, it is common that very large messages (>64K)
are seen in Internet e-mail and newsgroups, and the DOS version does
not handle very large messages well at all.
It is recommended to use either the JAM or the Squish msgbase formats
to store the Internet newsgroups. These two formats support tree-like
replylinking. JAM supports it best, with unlimited links. Squish only
supports up to 9 links. GoldED currently also only supports up to 9
links, even for JAM.
GoldED understands several character translation standards and
non-standards for Internet e-mail and newsgroups. Please see the next
chapter for details.
PLEASE NOTE: GoldED can be used purely for Internet use as a SOUP
packet reader, but there are still some FidoNet-specific keywords
which must be setup for GoldED to operate correctly. The ADDRESS and
INTERNETGATE keywords must be set to a FTN-compatible address. If you
don't know or care about any such address, just use this:
"2:236/77.999" (leave out the quotes).
Example setup in GOLDED.CFG:
// Minimum FTN setup
USERNAME Odinn Sorensen
ADDRESS 2:236/77
// Basic Internet setup
INTERNETADDRESS odinn@ibm.net
INTERNETGATE 2:236/77
INTERNETMSGID YES
INTERNETREPLY NO
// Basic SOUP setup
SOUPIMPORTPATH C:\SOUP\IMPORT\
SOUPEXPORTPATH C:\SOUP\EXPORT\
SOUPNEWSRCFILE C:\SOUP\NEWSRC
SOUPEMAIL NET_EMAIL
SOUPBADMSGS BAD_NEWS
// Area definitions for e-mail and bad newsgroups
AREADEF NET_EMAIL "E-Mail" 0 EMail Opus C:\SOUP\NETMAIL
AREADEF BAD_NEWS "Bad Newsgroups" 0 News Opus C:\SOUP\BADNEWS
// Replylinking when using GEcho and JAM areas:
SOUPTOSSLOG C:\GECHO\IMPORT.JAM
SOUPREPLYLINKER C:\GECHO\MBUTIL Link
// Replylinking when using Squish and Squish areas:
SOUPTOSSLOG C:\SQUISH\SOUPTOSS.LOG
SOUPREPLYLINKER C:\SQUISH\SQUISH LINK -fC:\SQUISH\SOUPTOSS.LOG
// Setup of some mailing lists
MAILINGLIST LIST.EMX emx-list@eb.ele.tue.nl
MAILINGLIST LIST.GIGO gigo-owner@gigo.com gigo@gigo.com
// Area definitions for the mailing list areas
AREADEF LIST.EMX "EMX mailing list" 0 EMail Opus C:\SOUP\EMX
AREADEF LIST.GIGO "GIGO mailing list" 0 EMail Opus C:\SOUP\GIGO
// Setup of character translation
XLATPATH C:\GOLDED\XLAT\
XLATESCSET MNEMONIC IBMPC MNE_IBM.ESC
XLATCHARSET LATIN-1 IBMPC ISO_IBM.CHS
XLATCHARSET LATIN1QP IBMPC IQP_IBM.CHS
XLATCHARSET MAC IBMPC MAC_IBM.CHS
XLATCHARSET IBMPC IBMPC IBM_IBM.CHS
XLATCHARSET IBMPC LATIN-1 IBM_ISO.CHS
XLATCHARSET IBMPC LATIN1QP IBM_IQP.CHS
XLATCHARSET IBMPC MNEMONIC IBM_MNE.CHS
// Main group for Internet newsgroups
GROUP Newsgroups:
MEMBER alt.*, comp.*, misc.* news.*
MEMBER rec.*, soc.*, sci.*, talk.*
MEMBER bad_news
EDITHARDTERM YES
QUOTECHARS ":;|"
TEMPLATE INTERNET.TPL
WHOTO All
ENDGROUP
// Main group for e-mail, mailing lists and some danish newsgroups
// with character translation
GROUP EMail:
MEMBER net_email, list.*
MEMBER pingnet.*, dknet.*, dk.*
EDITHARDTERM YES
TEMPLATE INTERNET.TPL
WHOTO All
XLATIMPORT LATIN-1 ; Assume ISO-8859-1 is in use
XLATEXPORT LATIN1QP ; Use MIME quoted-printable encoding
; XLATEXPORT LATIN-1 ; Use MIME 8bit encoding
; XLATEXPORT MNEMONIC ; Use RFC1345 character mnemonics
ENDGROUP
Example INTERNET.TPL:
@moved* Replying to an article in @oecho.
@moved
@changed* Changed by @cname, @cdate @ctime.
@changed
@forward* Forwarded from @oecho by @cname.
@forward* Originally by: @ofrom, @odate @otime.
@forward* Originally to: @oto.
@message
@forward
@new
@reply@ofrom wrote:
@reply@position
@comment@ofrom wrote:
@comment@position
;@quotedIn article @omessageid, @ofrom wrote:
@quoted@ofrom wrote:
@quoted@position
@quotebuf
@quotebuf@ofrom wrote:
@quotebuf
@quote
--
Signature Signature Signature Signature Signature Signature
Signature Signature Signature Signature Signature Signature
Planned Internet/SOUP features:
* Killfile.
* Addressbook.
* Article cancel.
* Improved thread navigation.
* Built-in replylinker/threader.
* Elimination of FTN-requirements, for pure Internet use.
* Msgbase format designed optimally for Internet and threading.
* Your suggestions :-)
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Notes About Internet Character Translation
Character Translation Issues:
* MIME: From RFC1341/1521, charset=ISO-8859-1 and encoding
quoted-printable or 8bit is supported both for ingoing and outgoing
messages. The RFC1342/1522 header extensions are currently not
supported.
* X-Charset and X-Char-Esc: These experimental headers are supported
for both ingoing and outgoing messages, using RFC1345 character
mnemonics and escape character ASCII 29.
Unresolved Issues:
* In e-mail (netmail) areas, the charset translation features do not
yet work correctly. Please avoid using non-ascii characters in
message headers (to/from/subject).
Using MIME Character Translation (RFC1341/1521)
You must have these lines in your GOLDED.CFG:
XLATCHARSET IBMPC LATIN-1 IBM_ISO.CHS
XLATCHARSET IBMPC LATIN1QP IBM_IQP.CHS
XLATCHARSET LATIN-1 IBMPC ISO_IBM.CHS
The IBM_ISO.CHS, IBM_IQP.CHS and ISO_IBM.CHS files must be present in
the XLATPATH.
To use MIME charset ISO-8859-1 and encoding 8bit in your messages,
you must have these lines in the appropriate group(s):
XLATEXPORT LATIN-1
XLATIMPORT LATIN-1
This will add the following headers in your messages:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Note that 8bit encoded messages usually won't get through unharmed
in e-mail, because the SMTP protocol is 7bit. In newsgroups the
problem apparently isn't so bad. If you want your 8bit characters to
get to the destination unharmed, you should use the quoted-printable
encoding (see below).
To use MIME charset ISO-8859-1 and encoding quoted-printable in your
messages, you must have these lines in the appropriate group(s):
XLATEXPORT LATIN1QP
XLATIMPORT LATIN-1
This will add the following headers in your messages:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
When quoted-printable encoding is used, 8bit characters are
translated to a three-character code starting with ASCII 61 ('='),
followed by two hexadecimal characters that together form the
hexadecimal value of the original character in the charset specified
by the Content-Type header.
Users must be aware that not all reader software recognize and
support the quoted-printable format. The reader software may display
the entire three-character code untranslated, or translate the code
imcompletely. If the code is untranslated, the displayed result is
usually not pretty.
Using Character Mnemonics Encoding (RFC1345)
You must have these lines in your GOLDED.CFG:
XLATESCSET MNEMONIC IBMPC MNE_IBM.ESC
XLATCHARSET IBMPC MNEMONIC IBM_MNE.CHS
XLATCHARSET LATIN-1 IBMPC ISO_IBM.CHS
The MNEMONIC.ESC, IBM_MNE.CHS and ISO_IBM.CHS files must be present
in the XLATPATH.
To use character mnemonics in your messages, you must have these
lines in the appropriate group(s):
XLATEXPORT MNEMONIC
XLATIMPORT LATIN-1
This will add the following headers in your messages:
X-Charset: ISO_8859-1
X-Char-Esc: 29
When character mnemonic encoding is used, 8bit characters are
translated to a three-character code starting with ASCII 29,
followed by two characters that together form a standardized
mnemonic of the original 8bit character.
Users must be aware that not all reader software recognize and
support this encoding format. The reader software may display the
entire three-character code untranslated, omit only the escape
character or translate the code incompletely. If the code is
untranslated, the displayed result is usually not pretty.
Choosing Between MIME and Character Mnemonics
The safest choice for both e-mail and newsgroups is MIME with
quoted-printable encoding.
MIME is a fully documented standard (see RFC1522 or the older
edition RFC1341) using standard headers. It is fairly widely
supported by (newer) reader software.
The character mnemonics are documented in RFC1345, but the "X-"
headers are not documented (to the authors knowledge). The existence
of the X-Charset/X-Char-Esc headers and the encoding method was
found and deduced from sending e-mails with 8bit characters back and
forth between different addresses and looking at the e-mail at the
destination. The translation of 8bit e-mails and addition of the X-
headers appears to be done by routing software before sending them
using 7bit transfer protocols like SMTP. It is unknown what, if any,
reader software that supports the character mnemonics.
The main disadvantage of MIME 8bit and quoted-printable is that the
character set is limited to the US-ASCII 7bit or ISO-8859-1 8bit
sets. The character mnemonics support most or all of the 16bit
unicode character set.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Sound Support in DOS - The Goldware Sound API
The DOS and 386 versions of GoldED support sound via sound cards by
calling functions in the Goldware Sound API.
The Goldware Sound API is a set of functions provided by an interrupt
service function installed on the Alternate Multiplex Interrupt (AMI)
2Dh. For full details on the Alternate Multiplex Interrupt, please see
Ralf Brown's Interrupt List (INTER46*.ZIP), his AMI specification
(ALTMPX35.ZIP) and/or his AMIS library (AMISL091.ZIP).
I have implemented a program loader which provides the interrupt
service function with the Goldware Sound API. The current version of
the program loader is named GCTVSAPI 1.00 and may be found in the
archive GCTV100.ZIP. The current version of GCTVSAPI loads the
Creative Labs CT-VOICE.DRV file for playing of .VOC files. Full public
domain C++ source code and the Goldware Sound API specification is
included in the archive.
I hope that others will write program loaders or TSR's that implement
the Goldware Sound API for other sound cards than the Sound Blasters,
or even an implementation that does not require CT-VOICE.DRV.
If you have written a Goldware Sound API implementation, please let me
know, so that I and the reg.sites can make it available for other
users.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Sound Support in the OS/2 Version
To support sound in the OS/2 version, GoldED requires the MMPM/2, the
OS/2 MultiMedia Presentation Manager to be installed.
GoldED sends commands to MMPM/2 using the mciSendString API function.
Basically it send the following commands to play a sound file:
open <filename> alias noise wait
seek noise to start
play noise
(do other things until playing is complete)
close noise wait
These commands require that there is an association between the sound
file and the appropriate sound device (typically waveaudio or
sequencer). If you can't seem to get GoldED/2 to play your files, you
should check in the Multimedia Setup if the Association tabs under
Digital Audio and MIDI look correct.
It works perfectly here. If GoldED/2 doesn't play your files, you have
a setup problem somewhere. Try if entering "PLAY FILE=<soundfile>" at
the OS/2 commandline works. The REXX program PLAY.CMD sends commands
to MMPM/2 in almost the same way as GoldED/2.
If you are trying to make GoldED/2 play .VOC files and it doesn't
work, convert them to .WAV and try again.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Replacing DOS/4GW with PMODE/W in GoldED/386
The standard release of GoldED/386 requires the Rational Systems
DOS/4GW DOS extender runtime file DOS4GW.EXE. Many other programs use
the same extender. However there is an alternative extender which can
be used with GoldED. The alternative extender replaces a "stub" in
GED386.EXE and eliminates the requirement of the big DOS4GW.EXE file
as well as reducing memory requirements and increases speed.
The alternative DOS extender is PMODE/W by Charles Scheffold and
Thomas Pytel. At the time of writing, the latest version I know of is
version 1.23, distributed in the archive PMW123.ZIP (132k), dated june
24, 1996. By now there is probably already a newer version. Try
checking their website at http://www.dorsai.org/~daredevi/pmw.
If you want to replace DOS/4GW with PMODE/W, simply use the PMWBIND
utility that comes with the PMODE/W archive, like this:
PMWBIND /R GED386.EXE
That's it!
The PMODE/W manual recommends using the PMWSETUP program to adjust
some PMODE/W parameters in the new GED386.EXE, but in my very short
test period it worked fine without any adjustments, at least in a DOS
box under OS/2 Warp.
So, if PMODE/W is so great, why don't I use it in the standard release
of GoldED/386? There are several reasons:
1. For use in commercial/shareware programs, they want USD 500. I
can't afford that.
2. During the beta test of GoldED 2.50 I tried to use version 1.12 of
PMODE/W, but it turned out there were too many problems with it. I
haven't checked if the newer versions are better.
If you do replace DOS/4GW with PMODE/W and later experience odd
problems, please don't report anything to me before you have tried
going back to the standard release. You can do that by simply running
GoldED/386 like this:
DOS4GW.EXE GED386 [whatever parameters, if any]
Good luck with it!
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter The Message Database Formats
GoldED supports many different message database formats. The following
is a list of them all, with notes about their characteristics and what
special quirks to look out for with each of them.
Opus/FTS1 (*.MSG)
These are two variants of the same type of msgbase. It works by
using one physical file per message (1.MSG, 2.MSG etc.),
collecting them in a directory for each area. Depending on the
clustersize on the harddisk, this can be a very wasteful and slow
way to store messages. With a clustersize of about 512 bytes, the
waste may be acceptable, but the access speed can be dramatically
slow if there are many *.MSG files, due to the DOS file system.
Caches and BUFFERS adjustments can improve it, but there are
limits.
In echomail areas, this format has a special quirk: The first
message (1.MSG) is normally used to store the so-called
"highwatermark". The highwatermark tells the echomail processor
where it should start scanning for new messages entered by users.
By deleting (Zapping) the highwatermark, you can make the echomail
processor re-scan the whole area again. This may cause messages to
be sent out as "dupes", so this should be used sparingly and
carefully, if at all! The highwatermark can also be "Heated" -
which means that it is set to the last msg in the area. This
prevents the echomail processor from finding newly entered
unscanned msgs. Use with care.
The variants: The "Opus" format originated in the Opus BBS system.
It put some Fido undocumented(?) fields to use as date/time
stamps. The "FTS1" (defined in FTS-0001, revision 12 and later)
format uses the undocumented fields to set the zone/point
information for the msg. To the authors knowledge, the Opus
variant is the dominant, and the FTS1 variant is doomed to
oblivion. If in doubt, use the Opus format.
Hudson
This msgbase format was invented by Adam Hudson, and was first
used in his QuickBBS package. Later several other BBS'es were
cloned from QuickBBS (like RemoteAccess and SuperBBS).
The basic format is built around 7 main files:
MSGTXT.BBS This contains the message text of all msgs in all
areas.
MSGHDR.BBS The headers for all the msgs in MSGTXT.BBS.
MSGIDX.BBS Index to MSGHDR.BBS.
MSGINFO.BBS Tells how many msgs there are in each area.
MSGTOIDX.BBS Index that contains all the TO names.
LASTREAD.BBS Lastreads for all areas for each user in USERS.BBS.
USERS.BBS Contains a record for each user. Also the index to
LASTREAD.BBS.
The format limits the total size of MSGTXT.BBS to a maximum of
16MB, which translates to about 16000 msgs of "average" length.
GoldED automatically warns you if the limit is close to being
reached, and advises you to pack the msgbase.
The first incarnations of QuickBBS did not support "sharing" of
the msgbase. This became more and more important in later years as
multitaskers and networks got cheaper. RemoteAccess BBS was the
first to implement a useful method, and later a better method was
evolved (known as "RA 1.01 or RA 1.1x"), which is now the standard
for all modern software that supports msgbase sharing. GoldED
fully supports the new standard of course.
The main virtue of this format is that it is very fast to access
the msgbase.
The main disadvantage is that it can be very sensitive to disk
problems, and it is a common horror story that people loose their
entire msgbase because the disk developed bad clusters or some
program went berserk and messed up the msgbase files.
Goldbase
This is an enhanced version of the Hudson format, introduced in
QuickBBS 2.80 by the QuickBBS group.
The Goldbase format removes the 16MB size limit and allows up to
500 message areas instead of the 200 in Hudson. The filenames are
the same, except that the extension is .DAT instead of .BBS.
Squish
The Squish format is relatively new. It was invented by Maximus
BBS author Scott Dudley in 1991, and was first used in Maximus
CBCS v2.00. Soon after, GoldED was among the first message editors
to support this new format.
Squish uses three files per area: A header/message text file
(*.SQD), an index file (*.SQI) and a lastread file (*.SQL). The
SquishMail echomail processor uses a fourth file (*.SQB) to hold a
dup-database.
The use of a database for each area - instead of one file per msg,
or all msgs in one big database - makes this format fast, very
safe and resistant to disk problems. Even if something messed up a
Squish area, it can almost always be fixed and recovered, using
the SQFIX or SQREIDX utilities that come with the Squish echomail
processor.
A special feature of Squish areas is that they can be
self-maintaining. You can setup a Squish area so that it may only
contain a maximum of so-and-so many msgs, and then it will
automatically re-use the space used by old msgs when the limit is
reached, and so it will practically stop growing. It will still
need packing, but not nearly as often as a Hudson msgbase has to.
Ezycom
<to be described>
JAM
The JAM format was invented by Joaquim Homrighausen, Andrew
Milner, Mats Birch and Mats Wallin.
JAM uses four files for each area: A header file (*.JHR), a
message text file (*.JDT), an index file (*.JDX) and a lastread
file (*.JLR). Most echomail processors support two additional
files to aid scanning out messages: NETMAIL.JAM and ECHOMAIL.JAM.
They are "global" files, located in the JAMPATH.
See also the chapter "JAM Implementation Notes".
PCBoard
<to be described>
See also the chapter "PCBoard Implementation Notes".
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter JAM Implementation Notes
This chapter describes details about the implementation of the JAM
messagebase format in GoldED. Should be read in conjunction with the
JAM specs for better understanding. A lot of technical terms will be
used, so if you are not the technical type, just skip over it.
General notes
The first release of the JAM messagebase specifications (JAM-001,
rev.1, dated 93-07-01) included an example implementation in the C
language of a "JAM API".
For the purpose of use in GoldED, the JAM API C implementation was
both too complete and not complete enough. Therefore I developed my
own specialized JAM msgbase handling code. My own code was of course
designed be compatible with the original JAM API as well as the
specifications, but some things are done slightly differently for
various reasons.
File I/O checks
Reads and writes to the msgbase files are generally NOT checked for
errors in GoldED. In contrast, the original JAM API checks everything
and stores error values in the API, for the user to use or ignore.
Full checking degrades performance a bit, adds more code to the EXE
file, and most importantly, GoldED just doesn't have a safe way to
recover from the detection of such errors anyway at this time.
Assuming that your system is working well, there are no harddisk
errors etc., this will normally not be a problem.
Message header revisions
The JAM message headers contain a field to indicate the revision
number of the header structure.
GoldED currently ignores this field and assumes that future revisions
will remain backward compatible. When creating new msgs, GoldED uses
the revision 1 header structure.
When new revisions of the JAM specs are released, GoldED will be
updated to handle these as quickly as possible.
Passwords
The JAM specs contain fields for passwords to access the msgbase
and/or indiviual messages.
GoldED currently doesn't support these passwords. When creating a new
JAM msgbase and/or new JAM msgs, GoldED sets the password to
FFFFFFFFh. If you change an existing msg which has a password, the
password is NOT preserved, but reset to FFFFFFFFh.
Lastreads
The JAM lastread file is designed such that is has to be searched for
a userid/usercrc, because one cannot assume that the records are in a
specific order.
The JAM API searches the userid field. However it seems more
reasonable to search for the usercrc, because that is a value the
program can calculate from the username without looking in other
files. I'm not sure why the JAM API chooses to look in the userid
field instead. GoldED searches for the usercrc, not the userid. In any
case, it seems that RemoteAccess 2.x sets both the userid and usercrc
to the same value.
The specs state that the user's lastread record must be searched for
both when retrieving it and storing an updated record. However, the
JAM API seems to implemented slightly differently, because when it
stores an updated record, it stores it at the same position as it was
read *without* first searching for it.
GoldED has been implemented to work in a similar manner. It searches
for the user's lastread record when the msgbase is opened, and it
assumes that it will remain in the same position as it was found,
until the msgbase is closed.
This is normally a quite reasonable assumption. The only circumstance
where the lastread records might be re-ordered is when a msgbase
maintentance utility cleans up or sorts, and such a utility is
normally designed to open the msgbase files in exclusive mode, which
it can't do when the files are already open. If it tries to re-order
without exclusive access, the utility is badly designed and
potentially dangerous in multitask/networking environments.
Size limits
The JAM specs allow msgbases and msgs of really huge sizes. The 16-bit
DOS version of GoldED cannot handle the full extremes of this. The
32-bit OS/2 and 32-bit protected mode DOS versions of GoldED can
handle any size, only restricted by memory, disk space or unknown
compiler or operating system limits.
The internal limits for the 16-bit versions of GoldED means that they
can only handle msgbases containing a maximum of 8191 msgs (including
deleted msgs), and msgs a maximum of about 64k long. In theory at
least. In practice the limits may be smaller due to lack of memory.
ASCII 7-bit escaping
GoldED currently doesn't support the escaping described in the JAM
specs. The specs state that the current revision of JAM does not
support it either, so I guess it's no great loss.
Date fields
GoldED currently doesn't display the DateReceived field, but it is
updated on disk when a message is received (read) by the recipient.
The DateProcessed field is set to the current date when a msg is
writtten or changed with GoldED.
All new dates are set to the system time and are not adjusted for
timezone.
Subfields
The concept of the JAM subfields is difficult to support easily in a
program like GoldED, which was designed to support the traditional
fixed header formats and kludges in the msg body. Therefore the
implementation in GoldED of the JAM subfields is not currently as
complete as one might wish.
However, it should be adequate for most purposes. I will of course do
what I can to improve the JAM subfield support in future releases. The
following is a list of the current limitations of the JAM subfield
support in GoldED:
* Subfields are converted internally to the equivalent kludges for
easy viewing, and to make it possible to copy JAM msgs to areas
with other msgbase formats. Some subfields do not have equivalent
known kludges defined. They are converted to kludges with names I
have invented for the purpose. All subfields can be viewed if you
hit the Alt-I key to display a hexdump of the message.
* The subfields with size limits (typically 100 chars) are not
specifically checked for size. Since all other msgbase systems
have much lower limits for the fields in question, this should not
be a problem.
* Only one OADDRESS/DADDRESS is supported. When reading a message,
only the _first_ OADDRESS/DADDRESS is used.
* None of the file attach or file request subfields are supported at
this time. File attaches or file requests are stored in the
subject field in a manner similar to other msgbase formats. This
might not be supported by a fully JAM compliant mail processor,
but IMHO a mail processor should use the subject field if it finds
the file attach/request attributes set, but can't find any
subfields for them.
* If you change a JAM message which is not from you, and save it,
all unsupported subfields will be missing in the saved message,
and some supported subfields may be changed in content (like the
PID subfield).
* Currently unsupported message attributes:
MSG_FPU "Force pickup"
MSG_NODISP "Msg may not be displayed to user" (always displayed)
Deleted msgs
The original JAM specs has a fairly major problem when it comes to the
specification for deleting msgs and in particular about _detecting_
deleted msgs. The original specs do not define a fast way to detect
deleted msgs from the index file alone.
This may not be so important for a BBS or a mail processor, but it is
absolutely vital for mail readers such as GoldED, which need a fast
way to find out how many active msgs there are, and where the lastread
is, and to calculate how many unread msgs there are. If GoldED had
scan the header file to check a single bit in each header the area
scanning would slow down dramatically, because the header file can
easily grow to many megabytes and thousands of msgs.
Fortunately there is a way out. The specs state that if the usercrc
and header offset values in the index are both -1 (FFFFFFFFh), then
"there is no corresponding header". Such a situation is IMHO highly
unlikely, so I have proposed to use this to signify a deleted msg
instead. This should be backward compatible with almost all JAM
compatible programs, with the possible exception of msg undelete
utilities.
With the header offset set to -1 (FFFFFFFFh), there is of course no
fast way to find the header of a deleted msg. A msg undelete utility
would have to scan through the entire header file to locate the
deleted header (or rather the last occurrence of it, because there can
easily exist more than one deleted header with the same message
number). This is IMHO a price worth paying for the performance gained
by using by changing the specs to specify a deleted msg instead of a
hypothetical non-existing header.
When I brought up this subject in the JAMDEV echo, the developers who
replied generally agreed that this was a good idea. At the time of
writing, I don't know for certain that it will be changed in the
specs, but I think so.
GoldED optionally (since version 2.50.B0822) follows my proposed
method when deleting msgs. The configuration keyword JAMHARDDELETE
specifies which method to use. If set to Yes, my method is used. The
default is No, but I recommend (and use myself) Yes.
Scanning files
The NETMAIL/ECHOMAIL.JAM files are written/updated when new messages
are written or changed in JAM netmail/echomail areas. The files are
written/updated in the JAMPATH. If you don't have a JAMPATH, it
defaults to the HUDSONPATH. If you don't use a Hudson msgbase and
haven't defined a HUDSONPATH, the HUDSONPATH defaults to the GOLDPATH.
At the time of writing, the NETMAIL/ECHOMAIL.JAM files are not a part
of the official JAM specs, but they are used in RA2 and most JAM
compatible mail processors to specify the msgs that need to be
exported from the JAM msgbase files.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter PCBoard Implementation Notes
This chapter describes details about the implementation of the PCBoard
messagebase format in GoldED.
Netmail
GoldED 2.50 supported FidoPCB-style netmail areas, where the first and
second line of the msg had special meaning as FidoNet address or
attributes. This is no longer supported from version 2.51. Instead,
the official method used by PCBoard itself is supported. This should
be transparent to you.
Extended Headers
GoldED is aware of PCBoard v15.x extended headers in the message text.
The TO, TO2, FROM, FROM2 and SUBJECT extended headers are directly
supported and "swallowed" when reading a msg. Other extended headers
are currently treated like normal message text and is therefore not
hidden to the reader. In a later release, I plan to internally convert
the extended headers to kludges.
Long Names
GoldED 2.51 supports the long names that are possible with PCBoard.
You can both enter and edit them. GoldED 2.50 was limited to 35 chars.
Password
Passwords are not supported.
Attributes
The Private, Received, Crash and Direct attributed are supported.
Double-Byte Characters (Foreign Systems)
GoldED reads the PCBOARD.DAT file to determine whether to use E3h or
0Dh (CR) as the line/paragraph termination character when reading and
writing message text.
Message Index
Only the new v15.x .IDX files are suppported. The old .NDX files are
not supported in any way.
Userbase
By default, the first set of lastreads is used. But if you set
PCBOARDUSERNO to -1, GoldED searches the userbase for your name to
find the lastread pointer set. If GoldED does not find you name, it
will NOT add a new userbase record for you, but instead uses the first
set of lastreads.
Mail Waiting Flag
The mail waiting flags are updated when you write to people that are
named in the userbase.
Changing a Message
When changing a message, the new edition is saved as if it were a new
message, with a new message number, and then the old edition is
deleted. This behaviour is consistent with the way PCBoard itself
works when changing a message. NOTE: The old edition will still be
visible with the DEL attribute until you exit the area.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter AdeptXBBS Implemenation Notes
This chapter describes details about the implementation of the
AdeptXBBS messagebase format in GoldED. The implementation is based on
the documentation in version 1.05, experimentation and questions to
the authors. Thanks go to Frank Jacobberger for the initial testing
and prodding of the authors to answer my questions :-)
The AdeptXBBS format does not have a quick method of finding deleted
messages via the index file. This means that deleted messages will
still be visible, but marked with the DEL attribute. When GoldED
deletes a message, it will at first seem to be gone, but after the
next scan, it will be back again, with the DEL attribute.
Mixing of netmail and echomail or other types of mail in the same area
is not directly supported. If an area is setup as both netmail and
echomail, GoldED will treat it as netmail. If an area is neither
netmail nor echomail, GoldED wil treat it as a local area.
GoldED detects Usenet (newsgroup) and Internet E-Mail areas in
the AdeptXBBS setup and uses them as such, but it has not yet been
tested if GoldED and AdeptXBBS are compatible in the way they store
and process Internet header information.
The AdeptXBBS personal mail feature (the index in the Personal_Mail
directory) is supported for mails you write to other users on the BBS.
However, personal mail for you via this feature or by other means is
not yet supported.
The replylinking method used by AdeptXBBS (whatever the method is??!)
is not yet supported. This means that links to other messages are
missing.
The AdeptXBBS messagebase format is only supported in the OS/2 version
of GoldED, because AdeptXBBS requires HPFS. In the other versions, the
AdeptXBBS code is not included in the EXE file and therefore doesn't
use additional memory or EXE disk space.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter WildCat! 4.x Implementation Notes
This chapter describes details about the implementation of the
WildCat! 4.x messagebase format in GoldED.
The WildCat format does not have a quick method of finding deleted
messages via the index file. This means that deleted messages will
still be visible, but marked with the DEL attribute. When GoldED
deletes a message, it will at first seem to be gone, but after the
next scan, it will be back again, with the DEL attribute.
WildCat features which are not supported yet:
- The userbase.
- The message unread chain.
- The message from/to title.
- The message network name.
- The message internal and external attach.
There is not yet any AREAFILE WildCat. You must define the areas by
hand using the AREADEF keyword, like this:
AREADEF MYTEST "My Test" 0 Echo WCat <path\basename> etc.
There is a keyword WILDCATUSERNO, which works just like the other
<msgbase>USERNO keywords. By default GoldED will use the first record
in the lastread file (*.LRD), so if you are not the first person in
the userbase, or you are sharing the messagebase with others, you may
have to change this user number. The userbase is currently not
supported (ie: you can't set the number to -1 to let GoldED find the
correct user and lastread automatically).
NOTE: The WildCat support is currently not very well-tested, so use
it with caution. In my limited testing, I have not found it to be
damaging the messagebase, but you should probably test it on less
important areas and/or make backups until it is determined that it
is safe.
<sorry - this chapter is not completed yet>
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Win32 Implementation Notes
A new Win32 API based console (text) mode version has been added to
the GoldED family: GoldED/W32. It will run under Windows NT and
Windows 95 as a textmode application. Note that the screen update
speed and keyboard response may be slow, especially under Windows 95.
This is because screen and keyboard access has to go through some
fairly complex (Win32) API functions, which are designed to hide the
underlying hardware access method and thus have a lot of overhead
compared to direct hardware access under DOS or even the simpler API
under OS/2.
Known limitations/problems/bugs in the Win32 version:
- Can't change the screen mode (like from 25 to 43/50 lines).
- Can't change the border (overscan) color.
- Can't switch between blinking and intense colors.
- Can't change the palette.
- Shelling to the OS may not work.
- Standard beeping effects may not be working under Windows 95.
- Possible minor keyboard quirks.
On the whole, I am not very happy about the Win32 versions performance
when running on Windows 95. However, I am certain that I can put a lot
of blame on the poor implementation of the console mode in Windows 95.
It runs more smoothly in Windows NT, even the old NT 3.1 that I tested
it on in the beginning. I would like to hear from users how it runs
under NT 4.0.
Some of the limitations and problems with the Win32 version are caused
by limitations or peculiarities in the Win32 console mode API.
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Linux Implementation Notes
There are some things you must know before trying out the Linux
version, especially if you are used to the DOS, OS/2 or Win32
versions:
* You should be familiar with GoldED for the other operating systems
and know your way around at least a basic golded.cfg.
* Linux is an OS with CASE-SENSITIVE file systems. GoldED now uses
lowercase filenames internally, because this is costumary for Unix.
When accessing msgbases on case-insensitive file systems such as FAT
or HPFS under Linux, filenames might not be lowercase on the disk.
If this is the case, you must rename them so that they are (and hope
they stay lowercase).
This will probably be the part that will give you the most grief if
you try to run a system with a mixture of Linux, DOS, OS/2, and/or
Win32 software.
IF IT DOESN'T WORK OR COREDUMPS, TRY CHECKING IF ALL FILES ARE
LOWERCASE, BOTH ON THE FILESYSTEM AND IN THE CONFIGURATION FILES.
* The directory separator (slash) char is '/', not '\'. However,
GoldED automatically translates the "wrong" slash char to the
"right" slash char in most cases, so you probably won't notice it.
* Unix has no drive letters (C: etc), and GoldED for Linux currently
can't map DOS-style paths to Unix-style paths. This means that
AREAFILE's won't work unless paths are specifically written in
Unix-style.
* If you want to use the same golded.cfg file for all platforms, you
can use the conditional statement "IF LINUX" or "IF UNIX" around
Linux specific parts of it, typically paths or filenames.
* I recommend to start with a tiny golded.cfg (see below) with only
the basic setup and a few areas that you have a backup of. The
msgbase support of GoldED for Linux should work exactly as
3.00.Alpha5, which is NOT known to trash msgbases, but it's compiled
and built with a compiler and tools that I'm not very familiar with,
and there may be compiler quirks and flaws introduced in the porting
which may have affected otherwise working code.
* Currently only the *.MSG, JAM, Squish and Hudson formats have been
tested, but it should work with the other formats too.
* There is not yet any support for Unix-style mailboxes or news
spools. If you want to access those, you need to use a utility that
can create/unpack SOUP packets. GoldED can import/export those to
the msgbases that are supported (JAM or Squish is recommended for
this).
* File attach probably does not work well (it's not been tested).
* Characters with ASCII values 0-31 are currently remapped to 'x' or a
visually similar character before being written to the screen.
Characters in the range 128-159 are remapped from CP865 to Latin-1.
* The default XLATLOCALSET is LATIN-1 for the Linux version, as
opposed to IBMPC for the other OS'es. You should setup character
translation between IBMPC and LATIN-1 and use the correct XLATEXPORT
for each echo. See the GoldED manual for details. Most FidoNet
echoes assume IBMPC or another IBMPC-based sets as default if there
is no CHRS or CHARSET kludge. For areas where IBMPC is assumed, you
should set both XLATIMPORT and XLATEXPORT to IBMPC or CP850.
* Screen color changes and cursor movements are made with ANSI
sequences. GoldED for Linux will also work in X terminals, but this
is not recommended because of keyboard limitations. Telnet sessions
should work, if they support the ANSI sequences and produce usable
keycodes.
* Standard distributions of Linux do not define all the keys that are
usually available on DOS, OS/2 and Win32. Specifically, cursor
movement (arrows, page, home/end) keys don't have separate keycodes
when combined with the shift, control or alt keys. It is possible
(in the keytable maps in /usr/lib/kbd/keytables) to define
non-standard keycodes to make Ctrl-PageUp, Alt-Left etc. work, but I
haven't had time to do this yet.
* There may be odd quirks in the keyboard handling. Please report if
you find any.
* The "DOS shell" probably doesn't work. Not tested.
* The printing feature prints to "/dev/lp". Not tested.
Please report only problems that are specific for the Linux version.
General problems have already been reported to death since april '97
and may already be fixed in the next versions.
=== Cut, a basic golded.cfg ===
username Odinn Sorensen
address 2:236/77
areadef netmail "Netmail" 0 net opus /usr/ftn/netmailx . (loc)
areadef net.fidoz2 "FidoNet Z2" 0 net squish /usr/ftn/fidoz2 . (loc)
areadef zzz.jtest1 "JAM test" 0 echo jam /usr/ftn/jtest1 . (loc)
=== Cut ===
#page
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#chapter Thank you's, Credits and Acknowledgements
* All GoldED users, for their endless patience and support through
the years.
* Dirk A. Mueller has been very helpful in all kinds of ways. I just
can't thank him enough!
* Squish and Maximus are Copyright 1989, 1995 by Lanius Corporation
(Scott J. Dudley).
* JAM(mbp) - Copyright 1993 Joaquim Homrighausen, Andrew Milner,
Mats Birch, Mats Wallin. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
* Marcantonio Magnarapa made a manual compiler for the GoldED manual
during the 2.50.beta phase, for which I was very grateful.
However, I have since made my own manual compiler.
* The EXEC v3.3 swapping spawn function by Thomas Wagner is used in
the DOS version to minimize memory use while shelling to DOS and
running other programs.
* Sourcecode for doing the WaZOO .REQ thing was kindly provided by
Morten Baun.
* Udo van den Heuvel made the GoldPGP utility, which inspired me to
make GoldED do the same internally.
* Nicolai Dufva (2:236/100.28) helped with coding for the sound
support in the OS/2 version.
* Bob Stouts C/C++ SNIPPETS have been a source and inspiration for a
number of functions and classes in my Goldware library.
* The Free Software Foundation for GPL and LGPL.
* Linus Torvalds for Linux.
[this list is incomplete]
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#end
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
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