############### > Build 1060 Version 1.6 ( 24.March.2001) GroupLimit: Allow again 20 groups for the tiny+free version. Default setup: The Full Auto Setup contains now two easy examples for connect/disconnect. You have to replace the dummies (DialupName, Username, Password) before you can use auto dialing! Bugfix: Internal group numbers: The group number were set to zero in Guide Newsgroup creation. Now the actual amount of groups is used. Sending 'idle': MyNews has now a delay of ten seocnds before it sends the 'idle' to other MyNews hosts. This will prevent other hosts from getting the IDLE command all the time while the next article will come in the next second. (IDLE tells a host that this client has done its work. and is a part of MyNNTP - communication between MyNews hosts) Download timeouts: MyNews uses now a timeout of 300 seconds while waiting for a response to the ARTICLE command and during downloading articles. If a host does not answer for more than 300 seconds, then the download is stopped from that server - and it is treated as if it would not be there (disappeared). This causes then a pending PROXY socket to be closed - or tries to download the article from another host. Display: The DownloadCleanup shows now less info in aDsp mode Display: Whenever a server ends a download all status windows are updated. Default setup after new installation: The QuickButtons have been rearranged: The "Start" button has been removed (Is now in the Guide) The first block is now: Guide-Exit-Help-Stop The second block is now: Post - Flags - Conf The third block is now: Head - Msgs - Body - Miss The fourth block is now: Login - Logout The block are now seperated by empty buttons. Reconfigure the QuickButtons to your own needs by clicking one of them with the right mouse button - or use the "Button" in the Desktop Setup. The third default WinBox "run" has been changed: It shows now also the traffic window. Notify: "Speedup Headers" is not activated by default. If you want to use that feature, then you have to activate it yourself ! Menus: The 'MyNews' menu has been rearranged. Now the first four entries are the as in 'Usenet' and 'Input' menu. The function: "Get missing articles" (only from MyNews hosts) is NOT available! This function would try to download from the MyNews hosts first. But it _would_ happen that also active Usenet hosts are tried if the messages cannot be found on the MyNews network - so you can use directly 'Input - Get missing Articles'. ############## > 24-03-2001 BugFix necessary: Cannot send "idle" - while a proxy service is running! The following article command is not sperated from the previous idle command if time distance is too short. This creates a "hangup" int he connection! BugFix: The option "Input" - "Full speed" did not work with the new scalabale download speed (8 kB..1024 kB)sec). Now the feature sets the download speed temporarily to maximum speed ( 1024 kB/sec). BugFix: Proxy operation failed sometimes because the messages were set to 'expired' a condition which had not been repaired. Now Articles which are still in the group reset the "expired" flag. LAN-Specific functions (Summary) -------------------------------- Beside the FullSpeed and AllHeader options there are more specialities for clients which are detected to be in your local network. He a complete survey of all LAN specific functions - which do NOT apply to 'normal' clients from the Internet: * There are no entries in the connection log for local clients * Local clients are never identified by resolving their IP-Address * Incoming posts are always accepted with full possible speed. * Posts from the local network are also posted upstream to your Usenet provider. (Controlled via Full Speed) * Newsreader in the local network have always access - even if newsreader access is blocked by security! * Newsreaders in the local network can always access all groups. (All 'No sharing' and 'OnlyFriends' newsgroups) However it is possible to lock them out with a specific access feature (full version) * NewsReader in the local network can always SEE all groups in the groupLIST. * Newsreaders can always POST to the server, even if posting is forbidden. However it is possible to lock them out with a specific access feature (full version) * MyNews accepts always IHAVE from other news-servers in the local network. * The limitation for downloaded bytes/session (max_allowed_kb) is ignored for the local LAN. * Local Browsers receive WebPages from the HTTP-Server always with full speed. (full version) * Local Browsers are not logged in the !www-logfile. Sending with full speed to a client [send_full_speed] (full version) ----------------------------------------------------- This option allows a local news-reader or news-tool to communicate with MyNews at maximum speed. Other jobs are BLOCKED in this time! Again this variable could be set to '2' - then it controlled the full speed option for a local network. Now there is an additional flag for the LAN: [server] send_lan_fullspeed=1 This controls the behavior of MyNews in the LAN. (Be sure to have a fast LAN ;-) Sending all headers to a client [flag_all_headers] (full version) --------------------------------------------------- This option (in the Server Config) allows users to send the entire header list (message list) to a local newsreader or other newstools. Previously this was a number (0,1,2) - now it is simply a flag Off/On. The value of '2' did previously allow also tools in your local network (LAN) to receive all headers. This has been replace by a second option: [server] flag_lan_headers=1 sends now all headers to the local network independent from the settings for the local computer. Please keep in mind that this permissions allows also dynamical download of messages (the proxy operation of MyNews !) NEW: There is an additional flag in the selective access config: 'h'. This allows to assign access to all headers also to users by ip or password. Please keep in mind that that the clients must be faster than your own connection. MyNews does not buffer during proxy operation! ======= > Build 1057 (23.March 2001) Final port change: RequestHost(): Is now always dont on the default nntp port - http-port no more used at all ! The setting has been removed from the sharing setup. BugFix: MS - Outlook express. IE insists on CRLF comunitcation. This was removed by mistake when removing the additional empty line at tghe end of a message. Now CRLF is used again. So OE should work properly now. If ANY tools have problem with this setting, then add this to your MYNEWS.INI: [server] flag_crlf=0 Then MyNews acts as before. Xover-Storage: ReadMsgXover() Does no longer add <-no-references-> and other nonsense. The space between the tabs is then simply NULL BugFix: The range for the scrollbar in the groups window was sometimes not correct. Now the range is aligned at all settings of the scrollbar. Bugfix: Severe race & hardard effect for crossposts: If headers were downloaded from two server, then it happens that the first server delivers the article header for the first crossposted group-A. This writes a header to that grouplist (no other ones). If the second server delivers now the same article for another grouplist - Group-B, then it is no more added again, because the header is already know. If now the second server delivers the article for the second group-B, then the article was STORED into the second group-B. THe first group-A contained the header - but could not show the article. The second group-B contained the article, but did not show the header! Now the article destination is changed: If the the header says group-A then it is stored in group-A, even if it was downloaded from group-B! A crosspost warning appears in the spy to indicate this: Crosspost (Group-A --> Group-B) [msgid]. This is not perfect, but crossposts are really ugly ! Display: Xover-Repair: MyNews keeps now the values for 'New articles' and 'Xover' articles (arrived). Feeding without path and message-id ----------------------------------- This topic is so hot, that the feature is disabled now for Free and Tiny versions. It is possible to activate it still in Full/Root versions. But it makes ONLY sense if that MyNews is not distributing the messages also in the MyNews network. So it makes only sense for groups which are not shared - or for hosts which run completeley isolated. The trouble is far to much. This feature (which was intended to protect the newbies) is a loopback. The advantages are overridden by the disadvatages - especially for Newbies. Display: If the full automatic was stopped by reaching the 'maximum downlaod time' a lot of wiered error messages appeared in the event log and spy. Now the amount of message is reasonable. You should be aware of the fact that the full automatic is also started if the Download STOP is set. You must disable the full automatic seperately! BugFix: The status-display for the FullAuto showed "scheduled < ## secs) even if the Full Automatic was disabled by switching off the scheduler. Now the status line shows in this case: 'suspended at ## secs' BugFix: A missing group directroy also caused a crash (GpFault) when the group was openend with the internal reader. The reason was a very old bug in the b-tree search handling. The bug is fixed now: The group directory is created automatically and the group simply appears empty. BugFix: The guided 'create new newsgroup' did not create the group directory. Now an empty directory is created. The group directory was created automatically at first download - so this was not too bad (because most users did this - including myself). But posting a message to a newsgroup with a directory caused a severe fault ! Now the group-directory is also created if it has vanished. BugFix: If a posting failed because the newsgroup did not exist, then the counter for the open posts was not reset back to zero. This resulted in a permanent yellow [P] indicator - and a warning at the exit program. Now fixed. BugFix: The indicator 'u1' was no longer yellow during sharing uploads. This happened when the paiting for the status window was reworked. Now ti should work again. MyNews treated other hosts as "get again" when the 'Get Again' timer was off, but the periodical verification was activated. So MyNews downloaded messages again and again.... with the verify period (which is short). Now this is hopefully fixed. ############## > 23-03-2001 BugFix: Download from a single host (host-window - download). These functions did no more start downloading the Marked & Missing messages. (The files were not read). Fixed now. BugFix in Registration: Could create only free licenses - now fixed. Conflicting downloads: The 'get back' and the 'Login & Download" jobs had a conflict with FulLAuto. The message "Other job active... suspended to xxx seconds" appeared, but the kob was started anyway. Now the job is really suspended. Improved error-messages: The error messages for "Canot close tree" and "TIMEOUT" (during header download) are now more informative. The Error-Messages during a verify (cannot send "date") has also been improved. Download conflicts: There has been a conflict in downloading with manual functions, Full Automatic and scheduled Jobs. Sometimes the download list was cleared. Now this should no more happen. Special Cursors: The Socket-Window shows now also the special MyNews cursor when the mouse is moved outside the socket-area. There also the MyNews special applies (left button: MAXIMIZE/NORMALIZE). The Host-Window shows now also the special MyNews cursor when the mouse is moves outside the host-area. There also the MyNews special applies (left button: MAXIMIZE/NORMALIZE). Display: Reading the download file without AllDebugDesiplay but Informative Display (iDsp) shows now one character per message in the spy: . added to list * body already available - already in download list (duplicate) BugFix: Time in Connection log was an incorrect string. Fixed ##############> 22-03-2001 Host Status Colours: Another change to the background colours of the host window was made: WHITE: Not available Usenet Hosts (Use-N/A) these are also the not yet found predefined MyNews hosts. Gray: Disabled host (by host config) - use menu 'On' to activate such a host Light Gray: Just temporarily disabled host. Black: Deleted host The previously used "Dark Grey" was nearly identical to black. Now the seperation is better. BugFix: "Hosts - Edit - Reset all Traffic Counters" did not work. Fixed now. Disabling a server due to problems in download now also resets its timer, head&body download flag. Winboxes: Restore to original positons: Some child windows has been too long. They exceeded the lower end of the Main Window (Sock, Host, Spy,...) This has been fixed. Now MyNews sets the correct sizes. Mouse Cursor: The MainWindow changes now the mouse cursor for: The Guide - Big Hand Indicators - Small hand WinBoxes - four direction error (size cursor) The HostWindow shows a small hand on the Host-Number Column (leftmost). There a left or right mouse button click switches now on/off the host (if not generally disabled). The Groups windows shows a <-!-> cursor on the flags. It is possible to change them with one mousebutton click here. Spy, Status, Data and Viewer window have now a special MyNews cursor which indicates special functions on these windows. Additional error-messages for firewalls: If a host closes a connection during CONNECT, Authentication of MODE, then error-texts appear - and the host is removed from the hostlist. These are usually protective operations by personal firewalls. The error-codes are 20200, 20201, 20202, 20203. Dangerous new feature (full & root verisons only): ---------------------- It is now possible to create more than one connection to a Usenet host: Example: You have one host defined: news.provider.com You want to define a second and third connection. Do this by defining these hosts: news.provider.com#2 news.provider.com#3 MyNews detects the '#' in the name (and throws it away). So the hosts are treated as different, while they are absolutely the same. WARNING! Most providers restrict the amount of simultanous connections to their news-servers. And if a news-server is slow, then adding multiple connections will make it just slower. In best case you STEAL bandwidth from other users! And this is a BAD case. Read the TOS (Termos of Service) for your news-provider carefully. Abuse against these rules with a 'multi-connect' might terminate your account! You have been warned ! Restriction: This feature works ONLY on full qualifed names. It cannot be used on MyNews-Names! And it cannot be used on IP-Addresses. (This is mainly for protection of private servers and MyNews partners). BugFix: Hosts - Add new server: If this was used twice, then the second entry did overwrite the previous entry. It was not possible to define more than one new host per session of MyNews. After restart the next hosts could be added. Now you can add a bunch of hosts instantly -without a break. Predefined MyNews: Incoming connects from a predefined MyNews which was not found during LOGIN works better now. The prefined entry is not removed, but used. And no additional host is created (this avoids duplicate hosts). There is still a problem with multiple predefined hosts on the same name but different ports - but this is just a very special personal application! HostAdd(): Does no longer remove IDLE and GONE hosts everywhere, but just at the position where they are IDLE and/or GONE. Previous version removed also actual running hosts which has been 'coming back' with a new IP. HostDelete(): Does no longer remove a host if it was on a different port HostOff(): Did sometimes switch off (MOde 0) a predefined host. This happens no more. Predefined MyNews hosts are only switched back to USE N/A FilterFile: Using the "Groups - Filter - Global/Local" functions does now check if the global/local filters are used in the actually select group. If yes, then nothing happens. if NOT, then you get a dialog which asks you if you want to activate global/local filterung for that group. YES --> activates the Filter NO --> does not activate the filter, but allows to edit the file. CANCEL --> aborts the editing function before it started. Expire: MyNews does no longer expire headers which are marked for download. Repair one group: This will no longer increase the number of "new headers". and if you select the group again, then it will be refreshed automatically after a repair now. BugFix: Data-Window-Headers: The display of the servers where the article is available has been wrong. Now the correct info is displayed. Additional info in Data Window: If the aDsp is active (all debug display) then MyNews shows the stored tree values below the headers. Additional question: "Groups - Extra - Repair" asks now in all cases if you are sure. This prevents the user from repairing a group by clicking the wrong function by mistake. (A repair might take a long time). BugFix in "Repair - Headers section": This function did not rewrite the header-numbers for messages but inserted a ZERO instead. This cause the error "Article header already expired (artnr < first), because the value was zero. Fixed now. ########### > 21-03-2001 QueueSpeedup: Normally MyNews acts on the host queue once per second. This avoid to contact 30 hosts within one second. But those queued jobs which had nothing todo still waited seconds. Now this is faster: Queued jobs which have nothing todo are skipped - and the next job is started immediately. + BugFix: Priority by Host: Sometimes messages were NOT downloaded, but moved to the 'missing messages'. This was because one of the high prio servers did not have the message - and did not restart the lower priority servers. Now the end of a download (Cleanup) checks if there are still messages for download on low priuority servers. If yes, then they are restarted at the end. This causes all lower prio messages downloaded LAST, even if they were marked for download as the first one (if they are not found on high prio servers). BugFix: Old Keywords in the download parameter file for scheduled jobs: If "keywords=2" was used but now keywords were in the INI-file for the download the MyNews crashed with a NULL-Pointer. This happened during regular downloads but was caused from anm incorrect settings (keywords>0) in the Config-Input menu. The bug (which happend almost on my own, scheduled servers) has been fixed now. Keywords should no longer be used. The Filter file is far better (s+ keyword) BugFix: Incoming eMail: Now also all Header lines are seperated with CRLF. (Some Windows eMail Programs have also problems with just LF as line delimiter). Error-Message "Upstream: Message was cancelled" is no longer an error, but a normal text in the logfile (Happens too often). ############## > 20-03-2001 Status-Information-Display: The version "Root-server" was not displayed properly. The text was always "Full version." - now fixed. BugFix in Async connect: Did sometimes connect to a wrong computer (wrong index used) - now fixed (applies only internal to test-builds). BugFix: Feeding on a very fast line caused the message "AsProc: Could not identify this timer..." all the time during feed. This should be fixed now. Old running timers are now killed before a new one is set. BugFix: Xover - Move messages. MyNews reject now attempts to move messages which are marked as 'keep'. A red message appears. Plausibility: Manual Joining check now that a message is not clicked twice for joining. If you click a line again twice (and not the last one) then a red message appears in the status line. BugFix: Aborting a manual join did not refresh the window. So the old JoinMarkers (J:1, J:2...) stays there. Now these markers disappear at CANCELLING a manual join. btw: If you made an error in manual joining, then doubleclick any part twice - and use CANCEL in the confirmation box. BugFix: Traffic Scaling: In manual scaling mode a scaling of ZERO (or a negative value) caused MyNews to lock up. The drawing of the y-scale was never finished. Now a value of ZERO (or negative) uses automatically auto-determination of the scaling. BugFix: Incoming SMTP-Email Incoming eMail has been also stored with LF as a line delimiter. Now CRLF is used instead. A few mailers have problems with just LF at the end of a line. This occures when a received message is moved directly to the mailbox-directory of a user. ########### > Build 1056 (19-March-2001) Input-Focus after click to a WinBox: After calling a window setting with a winbox the input focus remained usually at the spy, the traffic, or the main window. This is not very useful. Now the input-focus (active window for keyboard input) is set to these three windows (if visible) with that priority: 1. Groups 2. Xover 3. Data BugFix: Traffic while sending XOVER was calculated far too high (an increasing sum was added). Now the correct amount of sent bytes is added to traffic. Log-Survey: And empty line has been inserted after a header download into the spy/logfile. This makes survey a little better. BugFix: It still happened that a slow host was contacted for header download and a faster one which was started later responded faster - and block that header download. Now the hosts are "only connected" and the header download is not removed from the queue until the host is really found. Renaming: The text 'upload' in the status-summary has been replaced by 'sharing'. This line is the status for other MyNews clients and news-readers. It does not contain the uploading parts (of own messages/autoposts) to Usenet. So the text was misleading. Sharing is the traffic we deliver to other MyNews (and others readers). Uploading is 'posting & feeding' to the Usenet - (or predefined MyNews). Sharing is passive - we are waiting for someone to retrieve messages from us. Uploading is active - we are posting/feeding actively. BugFix: Sending own posts upstream was still made in 'server-mode' (with all headers) for full/root versions. Just the autoposter did use 'reader mode'. Now the setting "Config - Upload - Feed Usenet as server" applies also to "sending own posts to Usenet". True feeding (MultiFeed) is STILL done in server-mode. ############### > 19-03-2001 Download Progress in Status Window: The display disappears now after the download is finished. The last summary is written to the logfile (--- Download Summary ---) BugFix: Security menu: The "Access File" function was no more visible for the full version. This was not intentional. And it is now visible again. Display of cancelled messages (yes - again, this is difficult) Now a cancelled message appears with a magenta background and black text in the subject line when it is not read. When it is read then the background turns white and the text is magenta. This should now be a better solution for seeing them directly. Group Lists from other Hosts: The downloaded grouplists from other hosts are now collected in the HOSTS folder. So it is easier to find them - and they should not be deleted all the time when the temp-directory is removed. The temp directory should be for REAL temporary data only. Display: Sending own messages to Usenet: Now the Socket Status shows that a message is going up. Not all messages received when priorities are active ---------------------------------------------------- When a download is started (headers+messages) then usually MyNews will retrieve the messages JUST from this one host. But when priorities are active, then download must occur from another host. This is an inconsitency in the design. Now MyNews is downloading messages always from ALL HOST when one of the two priorities is used. This will hopefully fix the bug that messages are moved to the 'Missing List'. BugFix: The bug which crashed MyNews when specific filters from the filter file were used has been fixed now. This was an error in cleaning up the filters from memory. Security: The 'Information' section in the Status window contains now a "Secu" line. There a summary of all active security features is displayed. If the server is completel open, then this line turns blue. BugFix: During first start of MyNews the repair made the entire window flickering while creating the predefined newsgroups. This is fixed now. Just the status-window is updated (if already visible). The default text viewer is now also "notepad.exe" The default picture viewer is now "kodakimg.exe" - this is the 'Imaging' program in Win98. A new 'Guide' Button has been added: "Read News". This one shows simply the internal newsreader with all three windows overlapped full size. All blocking functions has been replaced by non-blocking versions. The time when MyNews has 'frozen' is over. This applies to: Register - Login - Logout - Logout at all hosts - Upload request. During these operations a dialog box appears on top of MyNews which cannot be removed. It is now possible to cancel these blocking operations. And it seems than Online Registration works now even if the User goes online DURING the registration process ! ############## > 18-03-2001 ############## > Build 1055 Security: MyNews does no longer show/log the outgoing and incoming passwords. However the own passwords are still visible in the edit fields. (This applies also to the plain ascii text "selective access file") Host - AllOn: New function: The menu function in the Host-Window: "AllOn" activates all hosts (which are not permanently disabled). SO this is the reverse function to "AllOff". The purpose of these functions is to disable all hosts, enable 2,3 or 4 and then perform an operation (Get new/marked/missing/headers..) just on them. The "AllOff" sets just a TEMPORARY disable marker. And the "AllOn" removes jsut this temporary disable marker. Also the click with the right mouse button to the number column of the hosts uses only this temporary marker. If you want to disable or enable a host not temporarily then use the menu function "On/Off". However these settings are NOT saved to the harddisk For changing the disable permanently use the OPTIONS dialog. Sharing Setup: The default value for portHttp is now 119 (previously: 81) The hhtp-demon is no longer used since release 1.5 Group Size: The group size is now incremented whenever a new article arrives. Previously the group size was calculated only at startup. (After Expiry/Move/Delete Articles the group size is still incorrect). Workaround: The autodecoder removes now leading/trailing qutoes from the filename - and it removes leading/trailing spaces from the filename. But resultet in filenames with an underscore at the start or end of a filename. BugFix: The new high counters were not resetted in Groups-Load-Reset High counters. Fixed now - the group is removed from ALL the hosts\high-HOSTNAME.ini files now. BugFix: The 'Scheduler' Indicator [S] was green when the scheduler was disabled but a full automatic was still active/running. Because disabling the scheduler also disables the Full Automatic this indicator turns now RED after disabling. BugFix: Deleting a group caused sometimes a downlaod for it because it was still contained in specific group list. Now group which are not in the actual grouplist are NEVER used for header download. BugFix: Deleting a group did not move all the markers for the groups below in the grouplist. This did mix up the entire group configuration! - Fixed now. Only workaround for old version: Move the group to bottom first - and delete ut then. Xover-Display of cancelled messages: Previously the line count was show in magenta. This was disturbing because we could not see if the file was already known - or not. Now the line-count-background is white/green/cyan for the cancelled messages. But the REST (Date, MsgId...) is now magenta. As long as these messages are new, they are shown with a red subject. If they has been read, then they turn magenta. FullAuto: Maximum time reached and clients still active (sharing upload): A FullAuto does not stop if there are clients downlaoding all the time. This prevents us from starting the next own download - because we are waiting. Now downloading clients do no longer disturb us: They can continue downloading and we finish our FullAuto Run. If we have "DISCONNECT from hosts after downloading" active - then those clients will be FORCED to stop (after the next message) ( Refuse further uploads) Grouplist - Backup: I had a strange case when the grouplist was destroyed during a faulty "Read Bags" operation. It was hard to restore all my settings :-( Now MyNews creates a BACKUP of the grouplist whenever MyNews is stopped: Grouplist: server\grp-list.txt Backup: server\grp-list.bak In case of emergency this backup can be used to restore the old settings. Speed for sharing (upload): It is now possible to share more than 8192 bytes/second with others (outgoing). However the bandwidth is still liited to 8 kB/second per individual users. But if you are sharing 32 kB , then 4 clients can now download with 8 kB/second simultanously. Downloading marked & missing messages: -------------------------------------- Now MyNews reads the list with the marked & missing messages only ONCE per click to the function. Previously MyNews did this for every queued event. Now MyNews will not forget the marked and missing lists. They stay unchanged - and are modified only at the next attempt for download. During the executing of "get marked messages" and "get missing messages" MyNews analyses what has been already downloaded and does not rewrite the already received messages to the download lists. Due to the nature of the beast the initial displays of MyNews after startup show now a higher amount of missing messages than the real number. This is because duplicates are added to the miissing file now. If the functions "download marked" or "download missing" are used then MyNews checks if there are still messages in the download queue or if there are download lists (GetFile.txt, Get-Miss.txt). If neither applies then nothing is started - just an error message is issued. Xover: Extreme long subjects: Not matter how large you define the display space for the subject line: Someone will post a message with a larger one so the subject does not fit the column in the overview list. Now MyNews detects such super long subject lines and displays them entirely in the status-line - with a yellow background. This prevents you from changing your column steiings all the time. Logs: All CheckAccess(), CheckFriends(), CheckTrolls() are now displayed with the socket number in the logfile & the connection log (better survey) ############ > 17-03-2001 BugFix: Calculation of active clients: MyNews count how many clients are downlaoding messages from us (when sharing is used). The bandwidth is shared between them. So this counter is important. The new release shows the number up 'uplaoding' connections to others. The indicator [U] changes to [u1], [u2]..[u9].... And the calculation method has been improved. Wrong calculation resultet sometimes in blocking the computer when MyNews tried to send out more bytes than the line had bandwidth! Status-Window: Display redesigned - the content changes now dynamically - unneeded field disappear again. The Summary part is again below the "Action" part. Erasing old event- and conenction logs: The Config - Database setting for "keep ## logfiles on disk" also applies now to old event logs and connection logs. If the value ## is set to 10, then just the latest 10 event/conenction logs are kept. Normal Logfile - The functionality (Close actual log -move it to logdirectory - show it) is now available from the SPY-log menu. This makes it EASY to trace the last things. (And it prevents me from implementing a scrollbar into the Spy-Window ... which is impossible because it is repainted all the time :-) Connection log - The same functionality (Move the latest connection log to the LOgDirectory and show the content) is now available from the new Spy - Log menu. New Spy-Menu: LOG This contains now also the "Event log viewer" form the [E] indicator. Event log - A click to the red Indicator [E] (Events) moves now the event log to the log directory and shows the events with the text editor. If no events are found then a warning is shown. This also resets the event log - so it does not grow endlessly. This funciton is a nice way to see just the events from the last time. Previously the call of "Window - View last events" showed all events since the setup of MyNews (until the event log was removed manually. How the handling of the event log is far easier. BugFix: QuickButtons: When all buttons has been removed then a click to 'Remove' caused a crash. Now the buttons for navigation and 'Remove' are hidden if no more buttons are visible. If all buttons has been removed, then it was necessary to edit the INI-file to bring them back. Now the Config - Desktop tab contains a button "Buttons" which calls the QuickButton Manage Dialog if all buttons has been removed (to add the first one). Status-Help: The status window has got a '?' menu which calls the help page Spy-Help: The SPY window has got a '?' menu which calls the Help-Page. Sock-Help: The sock window has got a '?' menu which calls the Help-Page. Host-Help: The host window has got a '?' menu which calls the Help-Page for the host window. Order - with Download stopped: Ordering a message from the XOVER window results now in an error-message if the download has been stopped. Previously just a 'fail' appeared in the spy. Xover - Threading: If threading is on, then the 'Subject' column shows now: 'Subject - Thread'. Activation/Decativation of threading refreshes now the Xover-Window. Full Automatic: Suspend,Resume,StartNow, Edit. The Schedueler menu offers now these four functions directly. Previously it was necessary to call the full automatic setup to switch off the "active" flag for suspend/resume or click the 'Start now' button. Now 'regular' fucntions are available to do this. Desktop-Config: "No context menues on right mouse button" has been changed to: "No hide/clear for right mouse button". This is a part of windows conformity and "non confusion". MyNews offers the feature to hide four windows with a right mouse button click to the client area: Status, TRaffic, Data, Viewer. The Spy-Window is cleared with a right mouse button click. These 'features' (abbreviations) can now be switched off. However the right mouse button click on the JPG viewer still hides the window. All these functions are very useful for me - but cause confusion at the 'regular' users. SO they can be switched off now. Download stopped: This prevents MyNews now from starting "Get Back", "Executing requested uploads", and all other downloads. Stop-Guide: The "Guide" has been extended by a STOP icon. This allows the newbie to stop Mynews (Regualar & Quick) , Download, Sharing, Upload, Automatic. Identification: MyNews sends now a new first "hello" message. This one includes the version: 200 MyNews <%s> ver%d Posting OK The version number is important for future clients to identify the available features of that host (compatibility to older versions). BugFix: The QuickButtons for "Timer" and "rBag" did not appear again. They has been created too early in the program - at a time when the Permissions (free,full,root) were not yet evaluated. Now these buttons appear again. ############### > 16-03-2001 Error-Codes during connect to hosts: These cryptic error codes has got a better textual explanation now. These explanantions appear in the spy-window, then event-log and the normal logfile. Expire Articles: Progress Display: The expiry of articles is now far slower (if an article is expired). - so a better progress display has been implemented in the spy whith iDsp (informative display) active: For every article a charcter is written to the Spy: v -> Articles expired - Volume too high n -> xxx - Number of articles too high t -> xxx - Article older than ## days (hours) . -> Article kept (not expired) x -> Article expired BugFix: End was not properly detected in Manual Joining - now OK. Left mouse button use: A click to a window client area with the left mouse causes maximization/normalisation of that window. This applies to: Status, Spy, Sockets, Hosts, Traffic, Data, Viewer. The new config "Desktop - No maximize/Normalize" for left mouse button" brings back the 'usual' windows behavior: If this option is checked - and a window is clicked with the left mouse button, then just that window is moved to foreground and made active. No size change happens. This is a part of the "anti-confusion". The viewer-window STILL toggles between FIX and VAR with the left mouse button! BugFix: Downloading data asynchronously sometimes resultet in an error: AsDon: Winsock error in RECV -1: 10035 There MyNews was faster than the source of the article. Now this does no more happen. MyNews will wait for the next bytes to arrive. This caused that sometimes the rest of the download queue was moved to the missing messages ! ############## > 15-03-2001 Display in data window: The 'order' function did show the data window - but nothing informative was displayed there. Now these texts appear: "Order was started." "Order failed !!!" These texts disappear as soon as another header line is selected - and dont re-appear. It is just informative as long as you wait one the same message. So it does NOT appear for the function: "Order and go down" The display has also been reorganised a little. ALL headers are now visible and the server-display is seperated with horizontal lines. Also the status appears now in the FIRST line, not the last one. Scheduled expire: This function loads now ALWAYS the stored default parameters from the harddisk. THis is to prevent the user from changing the parameters manually for special manual expire - and then MyNews would use these "one time" parameters for the next automatic job. BE SURE TO STORE CHANGED GLOBAL EXPIRY PARAMETERS TO DISK ! Expiry of a single group: Calling the expire for a single group fetches now the group specific parameters (if any), shows them in the dialog and executes on them. They cannot be stored here ! There original 'default' expire parameters are restored after this. All this is done to prevent the user from modifying the global expire parameters to make a special jon on one group. And then the next global expire would use these modfied parameters again ! Manual Joining of multipart messages: ------------------------------------- There are always new methods to encode headers, filenames..... So a manual method for joining is/was necessary. Here it is: Call the Xover-Menu: "Act" - and the the "Manual joining". -> The status line shows a yellow hint. Now click the header line with the first section BY THE RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON. -> The status line shows you the hint to click the 2nd section now. Now click all other section in the correct sequence 2,3,4,5. with the RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON. The LINE-Display in the list will change to J:1 J:2 J:3 J:4 ...... for progress help. Click the LAST one twice. A dialog will appear and ask for confirmation. -> You can finish with YES, continue (more parts) with NO - or abort Manual joining with CANCEL. The JOINING is now done in the way that all your selected messages are combined in a huge file (data\temp.ntx) anbd then the decoder is running on that file. That's it ! Call external viewer from internal viewer: The versions up to 1.4 were able to call the external viewer by pressing 'v' again while the internal JPG viewer was active. Now you have to use the keyboard combination for the external viewer also in the internal viewer. The internal viewer sends ALL unknown keycodes to the Xover-window (which then calls the external viewer). Files-Directory Cleanup: Whenever the "autoshow/autodecode option was active then MyNews did create subdirectories in the files folder for every newsgroup - even if no files were to decode. Now the group-folders in the files directory are only created if there ARE decoded attachements. Order: Usability: The latest release always shows the data window whenever a message is ordered directly (priority download). This is ugly when the articles is a JPG picture and the autoshow option is on. The the picture is hidden behind the data window. Now MyNews detects that a JPG picture was received and brings the JPG-window with the picture automatically to the top. BagFile-Reading: When using nested directories then MyNews did always move the done bags to *.don files for each subdirectory. Now a general \startdir.don\ is created and the original paths are used. New subdirectories in the DON-Directory are only created if there were bags/messages to move to. ALl this allows VERY easy and quick deletion of all the read bags AFTER the job is done (even with nested subdirectories). BugFix: Reading Bagfiles crashed when the source directory did no exists (since it is pssible to read from nested directories). This is fixed now. An error-message appears instead. Xover-Usage: ESCAPE & BACKSPACE Keys: In the "One window mode": The escape key closes now xover, viewer and data window and switches back to the groups window. The backspace key leaves the data or viewer window open and switches back to the XOVER window. If the one window mode is switched off, then: The escape key switches back on window - and leaves the others open. The backspace key switches back to the Xover-window and closes data and viewer. It depends on you what mode you prefer. But you can always choose between "switch back" and "close". Download Server Maximum: The amount of usable servers for download has been increased from 32 to 100 (all hosts). As soon as you begin to predefine a few hosts you will reach _easily_ 32 hosts. And then MyNews got problems. This is fixed now. BugFix: At the end of a failed download MyNews now updates the status window. This shows that the download queue is empty and the missing files has increased. Host-Window: The "Community" column has been split. Now there is a Volume, a community and a comment column. Logout at all hosts: No logout is sent to disabled hosts. BugFix: Inbound Setup: Did modify portHttp & portNntp --> Fixed. FreeWare & TinyVersion: Does no longer start the HTTP-Server-Part of MyNews. Port-Extensions: MyNews is now accepting a port in the mode identification: mode MyNews MYNAME:port This port is used for conenctions to that host. So it is finally possible to peer between hosts on non-standard ports. Port-Extensions: MyNews is now sending upload requests ALWAYS to the NNTP-port of the other server. The HTTP-Port is no longer used. Port-Extension: MyNews identifies itself as a client now with the mode-command: mode MyNews SERVERNAME:port The additional :port is sent when the server-port of the client is different from the default NNTP-Port for MyNews. Older clients will not be able to connect to such hosts (perhaps on port: 120) - an upgrade is necessary. The advantage of this is that you can run easily a second or third MyNews on the same IP-address - and the clients still connect the right one. You could even offer a MyNews on a common port as 80 (HTTP)..... (but this is your own responsibility). BugFix: The bugfix in 'overwriting queue' had the result that downloads as "Get back" did no longer work. This is fixed now. Async Download messages - the display is now updated while a header download is running. This was disabled before because the both jobs shared the same display space - now there are two different displays in the status window -and the display can run simultanously. Xover: KEEP-Marker: Setting or resetting (toggling) the KEEP marker with 'k' does no longer switch the active line. This is better in daily use. Xover-Threading: Messages which had to be sorted 'downwards' has not been moved below the referneced message, but exactly above it. This is fixed now - threading should be far better now. ############# > 14-03-2001 Reorganised servers improvement: A pretty good method to discover if a server has been reorganised is to check the "lower message number". If this counter decreases (instead of staying constant or growing) then this is a perfect indicator for a reorganised server. MyNews now stores the "low article counter" per group and server in the new host-specific article counter file: "hosts\High-.ini [Low] = This will improve the completeness of propagation between MyNews servers - even if they are reorganised often. BugFix: The new speedup for header-download (test if a group exists at all) failed for more than 30 hosts and 100 groups. Reason: the file HIGH.INI was growing too large ( >64 kByte ). Solution: A new HOSTS sub-directory keeps now the host specific information. Here: "hosts\High-.ini" [High] = So we have enough file-space for 1000 groups and their watermarks. DISADVANTAGE: In case of upgrade ALL Headers are downloaded again for ALL groups! (time consuming) BugFix: Suck_back sometimes switched a predefined MyNews host to GONE. Then this host disappeared from the hostlist (was overwritten with next found MyNews). Now this (last?) case of removing a predefined host is also fixed. BugFix: Showing the headers for transmitted headers displayed sometime: "rom:" instead of "From:" - this is fixed now (PrintArticleSubject()) BugFix in the newest expiry changes: The headers has been expired too fast (msgid was updated late). Now it is OK again. ############# > 13-03-2001 Bugfix: Overwriting queued jobs: A request to download marked bodies or missing messages or .... did sometimes OVERWRITE already queued jobs. This is no longer done. Hosts are used for new jobs only if they have nothing in their queue. (Might be funny for dld of grouplist and verify - conflict !) (Perhaps we need more 'queue' marker or seperate queues for all hosts.) Bugfix: Endless Xover waiting Sometimes the situation occured that the status indicated a running XOVER but no connection was running on Xover. This did block further Xovers. It was hard to find - but there was a collision between downloading headers and downloading bodies (if the downlaod queue wasnot empty). In such cases the "xover-busy" flag was set too early - and the xover was not started! Now the Xover flag is set later - right before the Xover starts. Traffic: Logarithmic scaling is now without decimal point for 1..1000 kB Text "kBps" changed to "kB/sec" Survey: The Priorities are displayed in the Host Window '' only if "Prio by Host" is configured. NEW FEATURE: Expire by volume: It is now possible to define a maximum amount of MegaBytes for the MESSAGES in a newsgroup. The value '0' switches OFF the volume check. 100 is 100 MegaBytes (1024x1024 bytes). Articles are expired until the gobal (or group specific) value is reached. It is NOT possible to exclude a group by specific values from volume expiry by setting the group specific volume to 0 - use a very high number (80000) instead ! This value calculates ONLY the amount of bytes - not the actual clustering of the harddisk. (An article with 1000 bytes might occupy a clister of 8192 bytes on the harddisk!) This value checks ONLY the articles, not the additional data (header, tree, ...) which is necessary for group organisation ! So the calculated MB in a group directory is ALWAYS larger after an expiry than the value you wanted. It is recommended to use this value ONLY for large binary newsgroups. It is not suitable for pure text newsgroups. That expiry value helps you to keep "the beast" under control. No group is able to fill your entire disk - and you can give single groups larger (or smaller) permisisons of disk-usage. Expire single group: The expire parameters appear, but cannot be saved to disk (no SAVE button) - because these are the GLOBAL expiry parameters! A user might believe that he would cahnge the group specific values. BugFix: MyNews created always all expiry target directories. Now the group-directories are only created if at least one article is expired (and not expired finally). Expire articles: The old "trick" (aka bug) to set the sate to zero days and the amount to 100000 resultet in expriing ALL articles (because they were outdated). Now a vlue of ZERO as date switches ALWAYS off the datecheck. Expiry is then done only by amount of articles. Now a value of ZERO as number of artciles ALWAYS switches off the amount check. Expire headers: This works now also properly. You can set the amount of days to keep headers. And you can set the number of headers as a maximum limit. The 'number' override the days (age): If you use 30 days AND 1000 articles, then never more than 1000 articles will stay in the group! However KEPT headers are never removed ! A setting of ZERO for maxdays switches OFF the datecheck. Then expiry is only done by amount of articles. A setting of ZERO for the number of articles switches OFF the amount check. Then expiry is only done by time. Both values zero --> will never expire! Xover-Keep a message: This marks now the message as 'keep' in the message tree. This prevents the message from beeing expired. The "Mark Read" and "Undo" do no longer affect the KEEP flag. The KEEP flag is now erase by using "keep" again (toggles the flag) Keep messages: Expire does no longer remove articles which are marked as "keep" in the message tree. (This is set in the Xover-window with the 'keep' function). IMPORTANT: EXPIRE does no longer use "MaxMsg per group". This value did earlier set the maximum number of articles to expire. Now the "regular term" is used: "Articles in Group": Articles are expired until this number of articles remain in the group. (Setting the number 1000 --> leave 1000 articles in the group after expire). This is a good limit to prevent MyNews from keeping 100.000 articles in one group. However it is still possible that the articles are expired because they are too old! So sometimes LESS THAN 1000 articles will remain in the group. Usually you use either expiry by date OR expire by amount. Xover: Display of expired articles: If an article body has been expired but the header is still there, then the article appears as 'grey' (ignored). It cannot be opened then - even if there is an article number Expire-Bugfix: Expiring a single group from the group menu offered the expire options. But the 'special options' for the group did still apply - so wrong parameters has been used. Now the 'group specific expiry settings' are no longer used - but the displayed (and/or edited) values are used. Expire-Bugfix: Expiring an old article where the header has been already expired before resulted in an error-message. This was confusing. Now just a hint appears in the spy window. Expire additional info: The expiry process shows now the amount of expired and remaining headers as a summary at the end (in the spy). Previously there was only a summary for the articles. BugFix: The menu function "Act - Call external Viewer" was not there. It has been added now. (The function was already there - just the menu wasnt there). BugFix: Launching a multipart JPEG was always done with the external viewer. Now the internal viewer is called for JPGs (faster). The internal viewer is NOT called if the "External Viewer" is called (Shift+L). BugFix: Launching a defective JPG image with the internal viewer resultet in just the status display "local viewer started." Now there is a RED error message in the status-display if the image could not be displayed. More info is then in the spy window. Free/Tiny license: These licenses are now limited to 10 predefined hosts. It is possible to define more within one session, but they are not reloaded at startup. This is to prevent newbie users from abusing too many hosts :-) 10 is a reasonable number for all 'freebies'. Power users might require for a full version. BugFix: Sending out own posts to Usenet left the connection in "feeding status" after everything was done and OK. This caused problems at the next download from that server. Now the socket is set back to download mode. BugFix: MyNews did not store the window postions at QUICK EXIT and when closing the MainWindow with the windows [X] button. This is fixed. The Window postions are now always stored. Errors appeared in the event log (Could not save window postions) at a Quick exit or an exit with [X] - because the window was already destroyed. This is fixed. The postions are stored BEFORE the windows are destoryed now - and the final saving of positions is deiabled in these cases. BugFix: The "Main" Window did not restore itself to "maximize" if MyNews was terminated with a maximized size. The "maximized" status was nstored to disk - but not retrieved at startup. Now the Main-Window is the only one which can be shown with maximized status. (It makes no sense for the other windows) BugFix: The Full version did not display the config-tabs for "Server", "Startup" and "Input" Now these Tabs are visible again. Upgrading: Sharing is now active by default (as it was before the upgrade) >>> Build 1053 BugFix: MyNews menu was empty - fixed. ############### > 10-03-2001 Version Display: The status-window shows now the version type behind MyName: and MyIP: Tiny, Free, Full, Root. Traffic Monitor: Settable Option: "Logarithmic display". This allows better survey of small traffic peeks - which are invisible in linear scaling. With log display your see every single byte! BugFix: Header display while delivering articles: The message "No xxxx in article" appeared often. Now the seek algortihm is better and the message should disappear. Bufix: Host-Window-Display: Cleaning a host-window from more than 10 desactivated hosts resultet in graphical garbage on the desktop. How the window is properly erased. GONE MyNews hosts: These host disappear now from the hostlist as soon as a new host is added. This prevents the hostlist from overflow on long time running and heavily visited hosts. Critical bug in MyNews 1.5 -------------------------- Accessing the SHARING Setup with the freeware version does change the default download ports for NNTP and HTTP to illegal values. (Wrong param setting). Hiding these critical paramters from newbie users was a true "foot in yourself shoot" - and now the parameter is invisible ! Remove MyNews 1.5 from ALL downloads ! CreateOwnMessageID: Minutes and Seconds are expanded from one two two digits now. This avoids message ids which are different only in 'm' and 'M'. Some tools have problems with this (are not case sensitive here). AutoPoster: Creating multipart messages makes now a delay of one seocnd per part. This avoid identical "Date:" headers which confuses the newsreaders when sorting the messages by date. BugFix: Downloading headers: MyNews does not stop if there are headers following the maximum number. It stops only if a line with ".CRLF" comes in. This prevents trouble with the next operation in the line. This bug was hidden before because other MyNews did never send the last header. ATTENTION: Trap in AutoPosting: AutoPosting to a MyNews-Server which SUCKS BACK instantly will result in duplicate conenctions at the same time. It is even possible that the same message is transferred twice simultanously. Help: Make the group invisible during AutoPost or Stop the Server ! or add the target server to "Kill List" (temporarily). Resume AutoPost: Stopping the AutoPost manually with "Output - Stop feeding (soft)" Created a resume-file which could be used. The newsgroup line was missing. Now this is fixed. Even AutoPosts which are stopped manully can now be resumed. The file 'upresume.ini' is now removed at a new AutoPost This allows to determine when the last failed autopost was initiated (by filedate). Feeding: New root-license-option: feed_local_fullspeed=0,1,2 This allows feeding (autoPost, feeding) with up to 1 mByte/second to the own local host(1) or inside out own C-Class network (2). The flag can be changed DURING feed/autopost. AutoPost: Speed can now be changed 'during autopost' in the config setup. BugFix: Avoiding duplicate feeds in the last feed bugfix resultet in 'no more post of own articles'. This now fixed back. Own articles are now psoted again. Version cleanup: This cleanup is done to prevent a user from executing functions which he does not want. And it prevents the user from seeing options which he cannot use. If a user switches off "sharing" - then all the menues and functons and buttons which are used for sharing are no longer visible: Login,Logout,Start,Go The MyNews-menu & all MyNews functions in other menues. The Download-Guide hides then the 'MyNews & Usenet' options and uses always Usenet. MyNews hides now also the specific functions for the full/root-licenses: Read Bagfiles Scheduler (Timer) Speedup - Header download: The new download option: "Dont download headers if group is unknown" prevents MyNews from trying to select all groups on all servers for header download. If you have a huge grouplist (>100) then checking all these groups all the time on all hosts (especially on slow hosts) is very time consuming. Option activated: MyNews remembers that the group is not available and does not try it on that host again. (High value is set negative). This does NOT apply to the functions "Download ALL headers/messages"..... Here still everything is checked everywhere. However this option will prevent us from downloading headers if the group appears later on a host. So the value below this option: "Check group appearance every ## times" will try to find the group at every ## download of headers or messages. If this value is zero, then 10 is assumed. The best strategy might be to activate this option for speedup, set the counter to 10 (this is 90% of savings) - and whenever you add a new group and are curious, then use "download ALL headers" for a few times until you are sure to have to main hosts in that community/group. Root-Verify-Operation: If the verify connection (if the dynamic host is still active) was kept open all the time (until the host logs out) then it was not possible to perform downloads on that connection. The error-message "AsVerify(1,64,2): sAction undefined: 4" appeared. Now the verify conenction is kept open - but changed to a 'normal' idle download connection mode. So it is possible to perform downlaods on it. BugFix: Counters for "new headers". Previously it happened that headers which were already known were indicated as "new" in the grouplsit again when they were downloaded again from another host. This should be better now. However it still can happen that new headers are indicated and there are none when the message list (Xover) is opened. This happens if the headers are cancelled - or hidden otherwise - or very old (so they are already deleted in the overall tree, but still available as "deleted" in the group tree. Download Grouplist: After downloading a grouplsit from a host and sorting it into the (new) global grouplist a dialog appears: It shows the amount of total groups and the amount of new (previously unknown) groups. You can select if you want to see that hosts full grouplist, just the new groups - or skip any displays (with OK). Help is available. Improvement: Traffic window shows now also horizontal divider lines for traffic in the range of 1-100 bytes/second. Improvement: GroupList: The menu has been removed. Two buttons are available now for PageDown and Top. The buttons are now below the topic input line. The topic input line is now longer for long topic searches. Double click selects now a group and closes the selection window. Scrolling removes the reverse bar for "selected group" Clicking OK without having a group selected by mouse --> No group in view: Uses the default input line. --> One group in view: Uses this group --> Many groups in view: Message to select one of them. --> No topic entered: Message to select a group. This allows to type in the name of a new group which is not yet in the grouplist and use it at OK. If just one group is found, then it must be typed in completely. Hopefully this is "ergonomic" 'Do what I thingk'. Closing the window with the X-Button (CLOSE) --> CANCELS the selection now. The size of the GroupSelectionWindow is now always maximum in Y-Direction and 500 in X-Direction. Centered to desktop in X-Direction. If the global grouplist is missing, then a warning appears (not for root version). The window is then NOT opened. BugFix: NonBlockXover: Did not send the LAST header. 1-50 --> did send only 1-49. This was FATAL for compleness. And is fixed now. ################# > 04-04-2001 BugFix: The new five group option s(and the internal group number) are now also swapped when the grouplist is sorted, a group si move up/down/top/bottom. BugFix: Logout is now also sent to the NNTP-Port. So the HTTP-Server is no longer required at all - and desactivated for free licenses. Logout is now sensitive to the delivered NNTP-Port of other hosts. So it is possible to run multiple root serves on the same IP. Logout to all hosts: 'Normal' MyNews accept now also 'Logout' (as well as request upload). LOGIN is only accepted by ROOT Servers! Later online registration: If the registration process fails - or was skipped - then it can be repeated later: Tiny versions show the "Register (free)" as a Guide function. This allows to try to register again. If this 'later registration' fails, then the old name/mail/community are kept. Logic: The setup for the first server is now done AFTER the online registration. Former version first asked for the name, then the server and made then the online reg and then the basic setup. Now first the name is asked, then the online registration follows, then the first server is enetered and then the basic setup is done. Bugfix: Corrections in the online registration: The online registration did no longer work (I am a great idiot !) Now a few fixes has been made: The new release sends now again eMail and Community to the registration (root-server) (the old release did send just NULL strings :-( The entered eMail address is now checked for size: must be 6-100 characters long The entered eMail must now also contain one dot. (Missing domain name) If the online registration fails and "Retry" is choosen, then the User can try another name. Successful online registration rmeoves now the "tiny license file" (mynews.nam) ######### > 02-03-2001 ######### > Build 1052 BugFix: 'Keep' & DeleteHeader, DeleteHeaderSkip: The delete functions still deleted the header even it was marked as 'keep'. Now warning appears and the headers stays alive. Same correction also done do "Remove message from disk". Now it should be no longer possible to remove a 'kept' header. BugFix: Feeding of Bags (and own messages): If feed_routing was active then articles were added twice to the multi feed list. This is fixed now. "feedbags" will now work properly. BugFix: eMail file was opened with fopen and closed with cclose. This resultet in an error-message of the control system which is fixed now. Same is fixed now in FD_CLOSE socket message and TimeOut on eMail socket. Mail-Server-Directory: If the MailServer is active (portSmtp=25) then the Mail directory is now created automatically at startup of MyNews. NNTP-Server-Port: If this port is set to zero (MyNNTP), then the news-server is not started. This can be used for web-only servers or mail-only servers. Auto-Host-Disable: Whenever a hosts answer with '502 no permission to talk' as the very first answer to connect, then we are not (no more) permitted to use it. MyNews _disbales_ the host now. It wont be used until the next restart of MyNews. This is for reducing abuse to protected hosts - especially free news-servers. (Later version might disable the host permamently by updating its properties). #################### > 28-02-2000 Adding a new newsgroup All users are now getting by default the group selection window to select their group. This reduces the danger of typing mistakes. However they can still override the selection. This applies to "Groups - Edit - Add new group" and ALSO to the "Add newsgroup" guide. New group selection window: The group selection window has been implemented which shows the summary of all newsgroups which has ever been downloaded from other hosts. This window allows selection of a group by click. The selection must be confirmed with the OK button. The Cancel buttons stops the group window. The topic edit field allows to enter a text. Then only groups which contain this text are displayed. During this selection the Menue functions "TopOfPage" and "PageDown" are used to scroll the selected list. If you are missing groups: Contact other MyNews or Usenet hosts and download their grouplist. (Host-Window - Download - Grouplist) The downloaded list will be added to the summary automatically. The group names appear in different colours: Black: Normal groups Blue: mynews.* groups Magenta: Moderated groups Red: Already locally used groups Weaker security options: (full version only) For authentication by username and password you can now use * as name and/or pwd in the access file. This allows easy group-definitions: *,usergrp1,* ,gxrpi S1 ; Allows all users with this username (and different passwords) *,* ,pwd4,gxrpi S4 ; Allows all users with this password (and different usernames) It is still necessaty to have a valid username or a valid password. but the identification of the permisisons is based only on this! (Not recommended for strict security) Security: Selective access by MyNews identification (full version only) Authentication based on the MyNews identification is now possible. The MyNews hosts are stored in the access file with this syntax: +mynewsname,,, [; comment] The '+' in the first column indictaes a "MyNews" name. It is not possible to use username/password - ,,, is mandantory The are defined as usual. Security-hint: All changes to the access-restrictions/permissions by the selective access file are updated ONLY if the user contacts us again. A logged in user keeps its rights - even if the access file changed! But every new connect/authentication will set the new rights! Security: Special grouplists by user (full version only) The new access-restriction 'S' followed by a number allows special grouplist for every individual user (from the access-file) Adding the permission: S125 will restrict the user to the grouplist which is stored in: jobs\multi125.gtx These files are to be changed manually with a text editor. However it is possible to define 'dummy hosts' with special grouplists. Their hostnumber (#10) and their special grouplist can be used for users. This allows great survey about restrcited / and open / groups. These group access restrictions apply ALSO TO LOCAL LAN USERS !!!! This way it is possible to share groups in different communities. Security: Selective access restrictions: (full version only) The access can now be limited very detailled. The acess-flags in the "Access File" are now used: g access to grouplist permitted (listgroup, list, newgroups) x access to xover permitted r access to 'article', 'head', 'body' (read news) p access to 'post' allowed (even if posting is forbidden by default). N No posting permitted (even if posting is allowed by default) i access to 'ihave' w later used for www-access. L dont create conenction log entries for this host (peering hosts) K General kill for an IP-Subnet S special - restricted - grouplist for this user Generally permitted commands (with login): date, help, stat, next, group, Generally permitted commands (before login) authinfo user, authinfo pass, mode, quit, idle, get (MyNNTP) This selective setup allows to run a public server which delivers no articles, but headers: Give the users 'gx' access only (with a username+password). This selective setup allows also a public moderation input server which does not deliver articles: Give the user 'gxp' access only (with a username+pasword). This selective setup allows also a general reading server withpout posting: Give the user 'xrN' access. Security: New option "Dont contact MyNews trolls": * This rejects upload requests (we will not download from trolls). * This avoids adding trolls to our hostlist at LOGIN. * This avoids sending 'upload requests' to trolls (as well as Reject MyNews trolls). * This STILL allows trolls to download from us - but we will not download from them ANYWAY. For complete rejection of trolls activate the "Reject MyNews trolls" option. * Using this option WITHOUT "Reject MyNews trolls" is generous: Trolls may still download from us - but we dont encourage them - and we download from them. So this is a "first warning" to trolls - Their messages wont be distributed. Security: If the secu option "No newsreaders allowed" (Only MyNews) is active, then it is now still possible use the "authentication". Then access with a newsreader is possible - by authentication. BugFix: Root does no longer verify itself at startup - even if in the logging file. BugFix: fclose --> cclose() in LoggingRead() BugFix: CRLF-handling for feeds fixed. BugFix: Wrong index in Timeout at eMail and Posting sockets fixed. ################ > 27-02-2001 Repair Database: The group counter for the external news-reader are no longer resetted. The old available headers appear again if the grouplist is retrieved again after repair. Articles WITHOUT available headers (already expired) are added AGAIN to the header list. So these old articles may reappear. This is done intentionally. If someone repairs a group then he usually wants to see at least the headers for the articles which are already there. Else mixed up headers for existing articles can never be delivered again to the newsreader. Volume of dynamic MyNews hosts: This down/upload volume is now also stored (at logout/removal of host). At Login/Appearance of the host the volume is reloaded. These dynmic volumes are stored in data\volume.ini Volume discarded: Volume on predefined dynamic hosts (MyNews) on alternate ports has been skipped, because the hostname is no longer found. Now MyNews attempts the position in the hostlist as valid. This keeps the volume for such hosts - as long as they are not moved or deleted. Host-Window: Color indicators: The numbers of the hosts in the host-window are now coloured to indicate the status of the host. (The rest of the line remains now white) black: Host is deleted (and will disappear at 'clean'). dark grey: host is disabled. light grey: Server is not available (or not yet resolved - for predefined MyNews hosts) white: Root server - or other entries green: normal Usenet server yellow: active MyNews server magenta: disappeared MyNews server - or that MyNews is idle (duplicate) Incoming upload request: We will not contact a host which is a troll (killfile) or not a friend (if contact only friends is active). The host is then NOT added to our hostlist (but removed). Upload request (all - or single): Evaluates now the answer and tells if it was successful. New host-functions: A few host-functions on the context menu (right mouse button) for single hosts has been added for debugging hosts: 'Request upload' will send an uplaod request to just this one host. 'Verify MyNews' will verify if this MyNews is still there. 'Connect to host' will connect to this single host. (Disconnect from a single host is done in the sockets window) Root server entires cannot be connected to. 'Verify all MyNews' will start a verification for all MyNews hosts. This is nice if 'verify after login' is switched off and you want to decide yourself, when to contact other hosts the first time. Disabled MyNews are NOT verfified. Root servers cannot be verified. Login: Entries in the "troll kill file" are no longer added to the hostlist when "reject mynews trolls" is active Upload request: When "contact only friends" then just host in the good list are contacted. My own community is no longer delivered. When "reject MyNews trolls" is active, then hosts in the kill file are not contacted. BugFix: Error in connecting to a server: Performs now a list-cleanup. This should prevent the actual message queue from holding messages when no more hosts are available. All not downloaded messages are then moved to the "missing message list". BugFix: "Output - delete feed file" does now reset the displays in the [F] indicator and the main status. Incoming-Timeout: For incoming post+ihave there is now a timeout of 120 seconds. If data sending does not start after this time or the stream is paused for this time then the connection is closed. This timeout can be changed ONLY in the mynews.ini-file: [server] to_incoming=120 This value is ALSO used for incoming eMail ! Incoming posts (post, ihave): Speed is now limitable. [server] speed_incoming=0 // 0 is full speed The value is 128-8192. Using "Input - Full speed (inbound) sets also full speed Local clients (newsreader, LAN) are always full speed. Incoming Mail is still always full speed. Feed-Timeout: The feeder is now using a timeout of 120 seconds. If no replies for "group", "stat", "post", "ihave", ".-article" are recieved within this time, then the feeding is stopped with error. This timeout can be changed ONLY in the mynews.ini-file: [server] to_feed=120 AutoPost: Filetype '.csv' is now a valid filetype for autoposting New function: Output - Resume failed AutoPost This functions restarts an AutoPost where it failed. If a timeout occured during a message, then it is sent again. Messages which has been posted OK are NOT repeated. (The info is stored in "data\upresume.ini") (The message list is stored in data\upstream.txt) AutoPost: It is now possible to run the AutoPoster while a download is in progress. ################ > 26-02-2001 Feeding upstream: It is now possible to 'feed' with higher speeds than 8192 bytes/seocnd. The maximum is now (as for download of articles): 1.048.560 bytes/second. This is done by sending more often than once per second. Feeding upstream: Feeding upstream has been completely changed to async operation. This allows more flexibility. Tiny & Free versions will now ALWAYS post as a newsreader to their provider. (This removes the locally generated date, path, message-id, X-Newsreader) Full & Root version can now SELECT (in the feed-config) if they want to post as a server (including all these headers). MultiFeeding is still _always_ posting as a server with full headers. This mode is reserved to GATEWAYS which must be operated properly. Disadvantage: MyNews can no longer identify its own posts and may load them back from the provider. Advantage: MyNews cannot be identified - and blamed. All posts to Usenet are done as if a 'normal' Newsreader would have performed them. MyNews 'hides' behind the users provider. This has been implemented as a PROTECTION for the newbie user! It is not acceptable that newbies are locked out or blamed for using the tool. Feeding to MyNews-servers is ALWAYS done automatically as a server. For ALL versions ! So all possible problems with duplicates can be easily avoided. BugFix: The general filter limit "Maximum size of messages" did also apply to groups which are marked as "download complete". This is fixed now. "Download complete" will really download _everything_ (but NOT cancelled messages). New indicator: The Indicator [P] indicates an incoming POST, IHAVE or eMail. Because multiple messages can be received simultanously the amount is also displayed: [p2].. [p3]... [p9] Root-Servers: Root servers can now set their private domain name: [server] MyDomain=xxxxx.com This is used in the PATHs for incoming posts Using own domains is STRICLY RESERVED for the owners of the domains !!! This feature allows everybody to run a true news-server on a dynamic domain name (for example: reserved.dynip.org)..... However the "Servername" must still be unique and registered. BugFix: Posting new articles updates now the "F" indicator (and the general status) immediately. Additional flags per newsgroup: For full & root versions a click to the title bar of the group window toggled the display of the group list. Instead of the groups/server list a few new flags appear: Mod: This flag indicates that a group is moderated. (No special actions today) exPost: This excludes the group from all posts to Usenet The "Feed to Usenet option" does not appear in the POST dialogs. No articles are added to the 'feed list' for such groups. exFeed: This excludes the group from all feeds to other servers (see: feeding) No articles are added to the 'multi feed lists' for such groups. modMail: This enables the redirction of incoming posts for moderated groups which are NOT approved to the mailbox for the group. (Public hosts for posting to moderated newsgroups) Group-Managements: Groups can be set to "only visible for friends". Groups which are visible only for friends are still visible locally (or in the LAN). Clients which are not friends cannot see the group in the grouplist. Clients which are not friends cannot change to the group - and cannot download headers or articles from it. Clients which are "not friends" also includes all newsreaders from the Internet. GroupList: rearrangements: The 2nd 'New article' display has been removed. The sequence of the statistics behind the groupsnam eis now: Xover - visible in the Xover window Head - totally stored headers (included deleted headers) Disk - Articles stored on disk Size - Diskspace of the articles (not including header info size) The 'visible' column has been renamed to "shared" and has been moved behind the Download mode. An additional flag has been added: "Friends". This flag allows ONLY friends to see the group in the grouplist, and download articles from it. Security-Setup: New flag (not for Tiny versions): "Contact only friends". This options prevents MyNews from contacting other servers which are not in the "good friends" list. Whenever a LOGIN is performed, then MyNews checks all delivered links if they are friends (good). If they are NOT, then they are not added to the actual hostlist. So MyNews will neither verify nor contact them. However such hosts can contact OUR MyNews server. So for locking someone completely out it is necessary to either run MyNews also in "Access only for good friends" or he must be added to the security kill list and the "Reject mynews trolls" must be activated. It is not necessary to make special precautions for "get back from others". If a host is in the kill-list then it is rejected when it contacts us (and not added to the actual host list). If a host is not in the friends list and contacts us, then it is also rejected and not added to out host list. ################## > 25-02-2001 Incoming POST/IHAVE/eMail: The handling of TIMEOUTs and CLOSING SOCKETS has been improved a lot. It should no longer happen that sockets remain open 'forever' resulting in "someone is still posting" at the EXIT. Incoming eMail: MyNews accepts now multiple incoming eMails (SMTP) simultanously. The eMail is now located in subfolders with the full mail name. old: username@domain.com --> folder "username" new: username@domain.com --> folder "username(domain.com)" This allows handling of identical usernames in more than one domain. The SMTP-Port must still be defined manually in the MYNEWS.INI file The MAIL-Subfolder must still be created manually. Incoming posts (post+ihave): MyNews accepts now multiple incoming posts simultanously. This is great for running multiple tools - or running MyNews as a small business host. Incoming traffic: MyNews is now also monitoring the volume and traffic for incoming posts+ihave (and all commands). >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 24-02-2001 AutoPoster: The value for "split" (size of segments in lines) is now included into the parameter dialog, can be edited and saved to individual data sets. This allows more flexibility when posting huge files (avi, wav,....) Reader: New option: "Posting options" - Mail Address This allows to override the standard eMail address for specific newsgroups. For those who have multiple identities, multiple mailboxes or want to stay a bit more anynymous in specific groups this is a nice simplification (available also in most newsreaders). It is _necessary_ to have a '@' and a '.' in the address - else it is not used. Also a '*' in the address results in using the default eMail address. New Reader function: Navigation - KEEP (Key: 'k') This sets a permanent marker to a message. The subject line gets a green background. Nice as a 'reminder'. KEEP will also prevent the header line from expiry. However the article might expire 'by time' or 'amount'. Validation of newsgroup names (Usenet protection) MyNews does now check if a newsgroup name is available in the global group list. If the name is there, then the group is accepted. There is a warning for groups which are flagged as moderated in the global list. FreeVersion and TinyVersion users cannot create groups non-validated groups outside the mynews.* hierarchy. (This is done to protect them against trouble with the Usenet authorities). Full/Root version users should know what they are doing. They get the same warnings, but they can IGNORE them with the IGNORE button. The groupnames are now also checked for illegal characters. This applies to all users. However it is possible to use special characters (ASCII 65..90, 128...255) in the MyNews hierarchy to support country specific groupnames. The entire protection mechanism is NEITHER encrypted NOR protected. Experienced users can still create whatever they want. This validation has to PROTECT the NEWBIE user. Censorship or being a target for hackers is NOT the purpose of this function. Guide - new server: The dialog has been expanded by the final question if the newsgroup should be downloaded from the new server (recommended). Whoever adds a new host manually must perform the downlaod of the grouplist manually. This is _necessary_ for adding groups from the new server to MyNews for newbies. (Free & Tiny versions) The temporary GetFiles per server has been renamed (in the temp-directory). Old name: #SERVERNAME.get.txt New name: GetFile-SERVERNAME.txt The temporary Grouplists for particular servers has been renamed (in temp directory): Old name: #SERVERNAME-grp.txt New name: GrpList-SERVERNAME.txt ############# > 23-02-2001 The full versions and the root version have a new function in the server menu: "Manual update grouplist". This allows to compare the actual "grp-sum.dat" with one new downloaded grouplist. The function requires to enter the servername (which is combined to GrpList-SERVERNAME.txt) and performs a Group Merge. It is possible to display bogus groups in BIG-8 and mismatches in the moderation flag. For proper comparison it is necessary to download all grouplist BEFORE the manual check is done. Then the file data\grp-sum.dat should be replaced with the "reference" list by using the button 'Renew' together with the reference server name. Then all other grouplists ca be compared with that reference. It is a good idea to backup/restore the 'valid' grp-sum.dat file before making manual tests. A new summary group list is kept in the file: data\grp-sum.dat During updates the temporary file: data\grp-sum.new is used. The groups which has been added after an update are located in : temp\grp-new.txt UpdateGroupList(): Creates now a summary of ALL grouplist into one file. This grouplist is used for validation if a group which is added locally can be found anywhere else. This is for protection of newbie users - and for convenience of experts. The summary allows 'browsing' the existing newsgroup names and selection form a list - so it avoid typing mistakes. ############# > 22-02-2001 Temporary file: grp-actual.txt (actual grplist for running header download) has been moved to the temporary directory. BugFix: EditFlags: Could not use "Save" in the latest build - Now fixed. SendArticles: The old check for '.LF' in the last line caused troubles. Now check for LF.LF is used. ########### > Build 1051 - 20-02-2001 To Manual: Reading Bags is not possible in the FreeWare Logic: Groups - Add new group: The selection of the download mode is now done with radio buttons. (There were two checkboxes used which is not logical - because download of "headers only" and "all messages" is not possible at the same time). New display flag: "Connection display (cDsp)" Activating this flag shows all connect/disconnect/identifications of clients. These are also logged in the !connect.log file This flag changes ONLY the display in the spy/normal log. The connection log is always written! New display flag: "Header display" (hDsp) Activating this flag shows just the most important headers for incoming and outgoing articles by socket number. This makes it easy to see what's going on on the server/download part. Volume: MyNews reads now the volume for dynamic MyNews clients from the volume.ini file So also the volume of NOT predefined hosts can be tracked. (And later limited) SendArticles: MyNews did usually add an empty line to the article to guarantee that a CRLF.CRLF is sent as 'end article' indicator. Now this empty line is no more sent. It did disturb some MultiPart Decoder clients. Traffic: Displays now also all full speed sent articles Displays now also all tiny article (smaller than send_bytes) which are sent by a single send operation. The temporary GET-Files for each host (#HOSTNAME.get.txt & #HOSTNAME.get.txt.old) are now stored in the TEMP directory. This reduces the amount of data in the data directory (where jsut server info should be stored from now on). This is kind of the 'Cleanup' in the MyNews data structure. Xover: Whenever messages are hidden due to cancels then the first status display after a refresh (group call) is YELLOW to catch attention. Feed display: Whenever a feed is terminated (OK or with error) the Info for the socket is now updated with an appropriate text. Previously there was just the last Feed-MsgID and it was not visible that the feed terminated (and how). Downloads are now sending the command "myidle" to the MyNews host to indicate that downloads are finished. Host-Download-All headers: Did not work - downloaded ALL just for the first group. fixed. Now all headers from all groups are reloaded. Hints: The hints for the HOST- and TRAFFIC window could not be set to "No more!". Now also these hints can be switched off. Traffic: Outgoing XOVER traffic is now also recorded in the traffic window/volume. Send Xover: On a slow machine the sending over Xover could block the machine. Now the Xover is suspended after the "send_bytes" bandwidth - suspended some seconds (depending on active clients) and then resumed. This will slow down sending of headers, but allows better parallel operation of simultanous clients. * This slows down operation for local subnet clients downloading headers. * The local clients on the same computer (127.0.0.1==localhost) still block and run with maximum speed (Prio=1) Filter Plausibilty check on *+ and *- removed. Now accpets also these two filters. Reader: EDIT message makes now a copy in the tempdir of the message for tiny & free version. Just full/root versions can edit the message content directly Temporary Directory: Introducing a temporary directory for temporary data. (tempdir) JPEG-Viewer: All navigation keys are now also routed to the Xover window. and were not sent to Xover in previous releases. JPEG-Viewer: The new menu function 'On' reactivates the automatic display of incoming pictures. It does only change the setting of "nevershow". So it toggles with 'Off' in the same menu. Registration: Additional test for short/long eMail/Community added. Additionla test for '@' and '.' in eMail implemented. Reorganized hosts: If the high number value drops down, then the entire message list is loaded if there are less than 500 messages in the group. If more messages are there, then the old method applies. ############## 18-02-2000 Cancelled messages from good authors are never hidden ################## 17-02-2001 BugFix: Traffic volume is saved to disk only if it changed since last storing. The message "Volume saved to disk" is now only visible in all debug display. BugFix: BagReader: Accepts now also files with capitals as extension: .NTX .BAG old version did accept only .bag and .ntx Async: Answer to 'Mode Reader' is now checked for OK. if the 200 is missing. Some strange nntp-servers do not send a numerical code here. Scheduled jobs: dito: Accepts now also OK. as answer to 'mode reader' ################# 14-02-2001