PQ215c.ZIP MARCH 1992 ~~~~~~~~~~ A minor upgrade to ensure that new BBS Newsletters are always highlighted as new. PQ215.ZIP ~~~~~~~~~ Sorry for the delays in production of this release. Apart from a few personal problems which have interfered, I also waited some time for the new Tomcat and Wildcat versions to settle in, to be sure that no new problems would rear their heads. Changes and New Features ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - Several Power-QWK users have asked me to provide a mechanism for splitting messages which are too long for their target services. The whole concept of machine-tampering with messages is anathema to me. However, there is no sign that services such as Qmail and Tomcat will increase their message size limits significantly, despite the emergence of new networks which impose no such limits. I have therefore provided a compromise solution which I hope will suffice for the time being. This enables users themselves to inform Power-QWK of break points within messages and replies. When a message or reply is returned from the user's editor, Power-QWK scans it for lines containing only the three characters |||. Each such line constitutes a break point within the message and is replaced by a line containing the characters Continued... Thus, the ||| line constitutes the final line of a message part. For readability, it is recommended that such lines be preceded by at least one space line. The Subject field is also altered in split messages, to include an identifier in the form x/y where x is the number of the part and y is the number of parts. For instance, if a message has the Subject 'Casino Royale' and is split into three parts, the Subject fields in the headers of the parts will become Casino Royale 1/3 Casino Royale 2/3 Casino Royale 3/3 Personally, I find the whole scheme abhorrent, but it seems that I have no choice in the matter. - There is a new config option which allows you to tell Power-QWK to mark messages FROM you as read automatically. Like the facility to mark personal messages as read in general conferences, this facility may be cancelled temporarily by entering the conference with the Tab key instead of Enter. The new facility applies to ALL conferences, including the Personal conference. - you can now press Ctrl/F2 to set an alarm clock within PQ - so you can't get carried away when there are more important things to do than read mail . You can set either a specific time or a number of minutes from 'now'. - New Files sort has been replaced, to accommodate the new Tomcat format. Please press F1 for help at the Topics Menu for details before using the new facility. The facility may be employed by Qmail users but only under the conditions specified in the Help file. - Power-QWK now optionally displays the time in the top right hand corner of the main display screens in either of the forms HH:MM:SS or HH:MM. - You can now configure whether screen updating should be by direct video writes or via the BIOS. Note however that, to avoid conflicts with the cursor, the on-screen clock is always updated using direct video writes. If the clock causes conflict with windowed programs such as Desqview or with speech synthesisers as employed by some blind users, then removing seconds from the clock display means that such conflicts only happen once per minute. If this is still too much then configure the clock OFF. - If you have more than one message base, you may now press P at the Message Base Selection screen to invoke Global Prune. This will Prune all message bases in turn, starting with the currently highlighted one and proceeding to the end of the list. As processing always starts with the currently highlighted message base, you may interrupt Global Prune, by pressing Esc, and continue later from the same message base that you interrupted. This new mechanism enables a completely 'hands free' Prune which may therefore be left to run unattended, overnight if required. - Three new functions have been introduced at the message base selection screen, to allow PQ-Online to be integrated into the Power-QWK environment. PQ-Online is a powerful communications program and script processor which allows all forms of BBS communications to be automated, with built-in X, Y and Zmodem. PQ-Online will begin beta testing shortly after the 'live' release of Power-QWK version 2.15. These functions are described in Help and in the PQ-Online documentation. If you do not have PQ-Online then these functions may be ignored. - When displaying a message at the Reply History screen, you may now use Ctrl/e to switch directly into your editor. When you finish editing the message, PQ returns to the Display function. In common with Ctrl/t, change tagline, this function is not included in the KeyLine at the foot of the screen because the screen is generic and therefore used for several functions, not all of which would permit the use of these keys. - On initial entry, PQ now reads the DOS country specific information record and thereafter formats all dates, whether printed, filed or displayed, in whatever manner has been configured into DOS. i.e., US - MM-DD-YY Europe - DD-MM-YY Japan - YY-MM-DD - When you delete a conference completely, using the Del key at the conference menu, Power-QWK now deletes the conference entry from the Conference List in CONFIG, the next time you process a .QWK packet from the same BBS. Previously, the files were deleted but not the Conf List entry so deleted conferences remained visible in the Conference Pick List and on the Conference Menu until such time as the Sysop started using the same conference number for a new purpose. - There is a new configuration option to read new mail in thread (Subject) sequence as well as the old chronological sequence. New users will find that Subject is now the default order - existing users will have to configure the sequence they require. This has necessitated a slight difference in action of some keys at the message screen. Press F1 at the message screen for full details of all key actions. - There is a new configuration option to allow you to specify the location of the PQ Work Directory. The directory must still be called $$WORK$$ but can be a subdirectory of any other directory, on any disc. This allows you to specify a RAM disc for the work directory if you wish. For documentary reasons, the recommended name is path\PQ\$$WORK$$ but you need not use this form of name, as long as the terminal name of the directory is $$WORK$$. - The message screen has been enhanced to provide faster screen updating when paging through messages and when changing from one message to another. - The printer problems should all now have been cleared - from this release, PQ recognises whether you have a printer or not, although the commands used are not guaranteed to work on all processors so the question has been left in config 'do you have a printer'. If you have one, you should still answer Y to this question as, at a future release, PQ will prompt for further printer parameters. - The Preamble, Postamble and Quoting String part of config has been tidied up so that the three strings are in line and may be selected as a threesome. - A further conference-level parameter has been introduced - press A at the conference menu to set a default Alpha/Beta status for the conference as a whole. This causes PQ to apply the conference default to each new message that arrives in the conference. Very useful, but be cautious. If you give a conference Delta default then you MUST unmark or re-mark any messages that you want to survive your next prune. - When there is new mail when you enter a conference, PQ now remembers the last fifty messages which have been read, thus enabling you to reread new mail more easily, just by pressing the - (minus) key. When the current session started with new mail, the plus and minus keys will only navigate new mail until such time as you leave the conference and re-enter with no new mail. Then, they revert to their normal functions of traversing the conference in chronological sequence. - If you use the RIME network, PQ automatically senses PCRelay routings below the tagline and inserts them in the first line of the reply file. Therefore, if you don't want the reply to be routed, just delete the line when you enter the reply. - There is a new configuration option which allows you to specify that the message header is to be included in reply files. The header appears at the top of the message and includes To, From, Subject, Date, Time, Source, Conf and Message Number. It FOLLOWS any RIME router. It is immediately followed by a line containing just the three characters ~~~. When the file is passed back from your editor to PQ, if the ~~~ line is still there then PQ deletes it and all that precedes it, EXCEPT for any RIME router. Thus, you can use the header just for your own information when replying or you can leave it in the message, and even write a snazzy editor macro to customise it if you wish. - You can now recolour the header at the message screen, using the keys F5 and F6. - Function Key F3 has changed usage at the message screen. It used to toggle the sort order of the conferences but this is configurable so it now becomes an alternative to F2. F2 calls up the Conference Pick List as always and F3 does the same but with all conferences which have new mail sorted to the top of the list. - For those who access more than one online service, the Message Base selection screen has been enhanced to show whether .QWK or .REP files exist for each of the listed Message bases. It also shows an asterisk against each Message base for which there is new mail (i.e., messages, not bulletins or other files). Every time you visit this menu, the highlight bar is automatically positioned at the first message base with new mail. Obtaining all this information involves disc access so the menu is slower to display than it used to be but this is more than compensated by its increased useability. Again some key functions have changed, in the interest of making all PQ screens act the same. Again, it needs getting used to but doesn't take long. Pressing Return now selects the next message base with mail or enters the highlighted message base if it has new mail. If no message bases have new mail, the highlight bar just moves down to the next name. To force entry to a message base which has no new mail, press Tab. - The History screen has been enhanced and some key usages changed. It takes a bit of getting used to after the old system but it does bring this screen into line with other screens within PQ. The Return key now DISPLAYS the message rather than calling your editor. Repeatedly pressing Return displays each message in turn, scrolling continually through the available messages. To edit, press E. Editing and tagline changing no longer cause the message to move to the end of the list. It is now a full-scrolling window so cursor-down at the bottom of a page goes onto next page; paging is fully circular so PgDn on the last page will get you the first and so on. - The History screen may now be invoked by pressing H either at the conference menu (as always) or at the message screen. This makes it much more accessible and has removed the necessity for the 'Press P to re-edit previous reply' option, which has been removed. - Setting the criteria for Wildcard To/From/Subject searching has been enhanced so that pressing F2 calls up the Addressee Pick List. Fixes ~~~~~ - A bug in the conference menu logic caused conferences with names beginning with an exclamation mark to appear with the name Personal. - Wildcard To/From/Subject searching was inadvertantly disabled for some users by the introduction of Hot Key Manager - the keys Alt/d and Alt/u were converted to Hot Key usage but the alternative Alt/DownArrow and Alt/UpArrow are not available on 'unenhanced' keyboards. These functions are now served by Alt/+ and Alt/-. Again, press F1 at the message screen for details. - A further victim of Hot Key Manager was Alt/r at the message screen - this allowed a reply to be made but without your normal Preamble, Postamble and Quoting Strings. This function is now embodied within the Ctrl/r key. - If you entered a new To name or Subject at the addressing window and then sent the message without first pressing Return, then the new name or Subject was lost and the message was sent with the previous name or subject. PQ214.ZIP ~~~~~~~~~ Changes and New Features ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - For improved useability with XT keyboards, colour changing at the message screen is now accomplished using F7 and F8 rather than F8 and F9. The following standard has been adopted throughout Power-QWK for all screens which can be recoloured within PQ rather than by calling the Colour Customiser element of Power-QWK Configuration Manager: F5 - highlight bar background F6 - highlight bar foreground F7 - text background F8 - text foreground At this release, the message screen may be recoloured in this way, as may Tagline Manager window, Hot Key Manager window, the Addressee Pick List and the Conference Pick List. The last four all use the same set of colours so changing at one window will automatically cause change to the others when next they are used. - Power-QWK now handles mail from UltraBBS and UBBS mail doors. - The Power-QWK Rebuild facility has been extended to include a 'Bulletins' option. This enables recovery when UNREAD bulletins are deleted inadvertantly by mechanisms external to Power-QWK. e.g., accidentally at the DOS command line or by necessity following a disc fault. At the Topics Menu, press R for Rebuild and then B for Bulletins. It's very rapid and can do no harm if run even when there is no need. A side-effect of running Rebuild/Bulletins is that ALL Bulletins in ALL conferences become marked as UNREAD. To aid the recovery process further, you can now press R and U at the Bulletins Menu to toggle the Read/Unread status of the currently highlighted bulletin. - This release sees the inclusion of full message-body wildcard string searching. At the message screen, press W to set up a Wildcard pattern and find the first message in the current conference which contains a matching string. Then, pressing Y finds 'Yet another' message with a match. Repeatedly pressing Y presents each message in turn which contains a match on the wildcard pattern until every such message in the conference has been seen. Within individual messages, pressing E 'examines' the current message for occurrences of the wildcard pattern, ignoring the line which is currently at the top of the screen. If an occurrence is found, the display is repositioned so that the new occurrence is at top of screen. So, to find every occurrence of a particular string in the current conference, press W, set up the string, press Y to skip to each matching message in turn, press E to find each occurrence within each matching message. You can in fact press Y or E at any time. If you've never pressed W to set up a pattern then the default pattern '*' will be used. This matches every line within every message within every conference. Once you have set up a wildcard pattern, it survives changes in conference so it is easy to search for the same pattern in several or all conferences. For more information, press F1 for Help at the message screen. - You can now press D at the Online Service Topics Menu to tell PQ whether to date/time stamp messages sent to the current online service or to leave the field blank. You should only tell Power-QWK to leave this field blank if you are sure that blank is acceptable to the online mail door. For Tomcat doors, blank tells the mail door to insert date and time when the message is uploaded. Other mail doors may only insert date/time of upload if you specifically configure them to do so. PQ212.ZIP ~~~~~~~~~ Changes and New Features ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - When entering the Messages area of a message base, if a .REP file already exists, Power-QWK now allows you to write its contents to the Prune Archive (if you keep one). The options for .REP files are now - bring forward into the current session; - delete; - write to Prune Archive and then delete; The new option is provided for those users who do not wish to download their own messages from online services. It places your messages in the Prune Archive, where they may be viewed at any time until pruned. Such messages obey the same pruning policy rules as any other messages. Because the messages have not been received from the online service, they have no 'real' message number. PQ therefore numbers them 00. This is not a format permitted by online services so will never conflict with 'real' message numbers but it does mean that when you sort on message number in the Message Pick List, your own messages will rise to the top of the list, in date/time order. POWER206.ZIP and PQ206b.ZIP ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Changes and New Facilities: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - The name of the main program has been changed from POWERQWK.EXE to just PQ.EXE. This means that you now type PQ to run Power-QWK instead of POWERQWK. - Power-QWK now supports MarkMail as well as Tomcat and Qmail. - Ansi Music Messages are now supported as well as Ansi Art Messages. POWER203.ZIP ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Changes and New Facilities: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - Power-QWK will now process Qmail.4 .QWK packets, as well as those produced by Tomcat! POWER200.ZIP ~~~~~~~~~~~~ First public release. No known bugs. Power-QWK Version 1.00 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Alpha and Beta test only - never released publicly.