Note: I don't document every little (or not so little change), just what I remember doing.
o = bug fix
+ = addition
x = change
Y2K-SE:
+ There's a new type of folder called Queue folders. Unlike the regular (archive) folder, a queue folder stores only the headers when you transfer articles into it. Then when you read or decode the articles, Xnews gets the articles from the server, just as if you're in a newsgroup.
What can you do with such an animal? You can use it as a global queue. You can use it to collect multipart binaries from different servers. Because you can switch what server you want to pull articles from in queue folders, you can pull down headers from one server then retrieve from a different server. If you're one of the lucky dogs with a broadband connection and your server is throttling your speed, you can split your download into two separate queue folders and download simultaneously. Read the manual's section on folders for more info.
+ Smart decoding: if a multi-part decode is interrupted, the program can now resume from the last part rather than doing the whole file over. Right now, what some people do is transfer into a folder then decode from there. But that's a pain and takes up disk space (plus you occasionally run into the 2GB limit). Hopefully, this is better. See manual's Q&A "How do I decode binaries" for more info.
+ In folders, server names and group names are now split into separate, independently sortable columns.
+ When you double click on a URL, I now guess whether something is a message-id or an email. Basically, if the part to the left of the @ has 5+ numbers, it's considered a message-id. Crude, but usually effective.
+ You can now edit a URL before passing it to Windows: right click on a URL then select Edit URL... Hint: if a URL is broken by line wraps, select it with mouse or keyboard then right click and choose Edit URL... I suppose I should join wrapped URLs automatically, but as usual, laziness prevails.
o The sig file field in Setup | Servers gets truncated whenever it's changed.
o Plonk file kills are overridden by ReplyNotify.
o Expire value in Storage Options dialog occasionally is not saved.
x Compensate for articles that say they're MIME but aren't.
x Add delay to popup hints in the article listing to make them a bit less annoying.
x Queuing with the mouse now either queues or dequeues in a single move rather than toggling. Hopefully, this makes it a bit easier. It's still rather flaky, e.g., if you move the mouse too fast, it'll miss some lines.
x Autorewrap now defaults to true.
2.11.08:
o Fix broken date in articles listing (European countries).
o If a multipart article's subject contains [ ] or ( ) _after_ the (xx/yy) part designation, the program occasionally gets confused and truncates the subject.
o "Invalid pointer" error after reading an article with a bogus "begin 644 <filename>" line
o In the Compose window, if you click the ... button to edit the Newsgroups: field and select all but one group, nothing changes.
+ Add /m to command line if you wish to allow multiple instances of the program to run concurrently.
+ New Xnews.ini [Misc] settings: StorageOpt (0=use default; 1=save nothing; 2=save headers; 3=save headers and articles; default is 0). StorageExp (purge after this many days; 0=purge when expired from server; default is 0). These can be set via setup and overridden on per group basis in groups.ini. Read section on Storage in manual for details.
+ New Xnews.ini [Misc] settings: LaunchAfterDecode (default 0); determines whether "Launch file" checkbox is checked by default.
+ You can now edit the range for XPAT search.
x I disabled autobrowse because all it does is confuse people. (However, it's still listed in keyboard mapping dialog to torment the nitpickers, and you know who you are.)
2.09.30:
o Had to put out a quick fix for bad Message-ID (in European systems) to avoid full scale riot.
+ New "presets" in "Add to score file" dialog.
x setup.bat is no longer included because it's no longer needed.
2.09.25:
o OnOpen in Xnews.ini doesn't do anything. Fixed.
o Shortcut key for "List Attachments" doesn't work.
o Rot13 the To: edit box in Compose window gives a strange error message.
o The title panel displays '&' as a shortcut underline.
o Number of lines shows up as zero when article does not contain the Lines header.
o Incorrect MIME header "Content-Type: message/partial:" should be "message/partial;"
o Fixed Fetch to storage, broken last version.
+ New Xnews.ini [Display] settings: Panel1Width/Panel2Width: width in pixels of the display panels at the bottom of an articles window. Change this to make them smaller/bigger so you can see more/less of the progress bar.
+ New Xnews.ini [Compose] setting: FollowupPrompt = Prompt to set followup when posting to more than this many groups.
+ New Xnews.ini [Misc] setting: AutoResumeDelay (in seconds). Does what you think.
x I now prompt to set followup up front.
x Refreshing headers while in a folder no longer automatically removes all filters.
x If you add a ,! (that's a comma, followed by exclamation point) to OnLoaded, it will be executed only once (as opposed to after every time you do a refresh headers).
2.09.02:
+ New Xnews.ini [Misc] settings: OnOpen/OnLoaded. List of comma separated commands to execute when articles window is first opened and after headers are loaded, respectively. (The main difference is OnOpen executes only once, whereas OnLoaded executes after each time you refresh headers.)
Example: if you don't like threading, set OnOpen=acvThreaded. This will toggle off threading.
What can I say? It's the poor man's macro capabilities. You can override both in groups.ini.
+ New Xnews.ini [Misc] settings: OnOpen/OnLoaded. List of comma separaboth in groups.ini.
+ New Xnews.ini [Misc] settings: DejaPage and DejaSearch. See manual for details.
+ New Xnews.ini [Misc] setting: HardKill={0,1} self-explanatory.
+ In viewer, the caret now turns into a hand cursor when you move the mouse over something that appears to be a URL (You still need to double click to launch.)
+ Added "Launch file after saving" checkbox to "Select directory..." dialog. Note: even if you have this set, it will still not automatically launch *.exe *.bat and *.com so it's sort of safe.
o Fixed cosmetic problem with tool buttons being slightly cropped at the bottom on some display.
o Fixed weirdness with attachment saving.
o Fixed weirdness with Keep Copy button thinking it's the Wrap button.
o Open the compose window (do a post or followup). Switch back to main window and open Folders window. Switch back to compose window. Now Ins and Del keys are trapped by Folders window.
x Changed Xnews icon for no particular reason.
x Changed the Winamp-look-alike icon to avoid (C) violation.
2.07.14:
o Somehow managed to break right click menu in the editor last time. Fixed.
o Given group where first message#=last message#, it erroneously reloads the last message even though you caught up last time.
o If you double click a message-id like <blahblahblah@www.abc.com> it launches your browswer with www.abc.com instead of loading the message-id.
+ if you have a ton of folders (>30 or so), they won't all fit on the menu. I added a "more..." item to the Folder/Transfer menu. Selecting "more..." will pop up a window with complete list of folders.
x Improved folder compacting speed.
x Improved crosspost kill of large groups (>10000 articles).
2.07.01:
+ New filters: "Show threads with (unread/new articles/>0 score)". As usual, you can assign keyboard shortcuts for them.
+ If you try to retrieve a message-id that doesn't exist on the server, you're now given a chance to search for it on Dejanews, or Deja.com as it calls itself nowadays.
x I no longer expand binary threads when you single click on them. Press return or double click instead.
2.06.23:
o (This bug affects usenetserver.com users in particular.) If the list of groups contains groups starting with a period, the list retrieval stops.
o If you read an article, archive it, move to another article, then go back to the first article, you get a "hdr file corrupted" error.
2.06.20:
+ You can now Esc to close editor window. Press Shift+Esc to close and discard any changes.
+ Added (fixed) shortcut keys for Send and Save in editor window.
+ Added key to toggle full screen edit in editor window.
+ Added command "Skip down and out" in articles window. This jumps to next unread article having a lower depth than the current article. This is useful for skipping a subthread.
+ Added "Open offline" command to right click menu in groups window. This opens the group w/o connecting to the server. Works only if you have storage on, of course. But remember, folks: Xnews is still NOT an offline reader. If you need an offliner reader, use Agent, etc.
+ Automatically removes the old sig and adds the appropriate one when you change identity on the fly. It does this by looking for the sig separator '-- ' so if you mess around with that it's not guaranteed to work.
x The [Metrics] section in Xnews.ini can get too long, so I no longer save window placement for individual folder windows.
2.06.14:
o Reply-To custom header gets dropped. How did we miss that?
+ New Paste Indented command in editor's right click menu.
+ New Xnews.ini [Compose] setting: PasteIndent; number of spaces to indent with the Paste Indented command; default is 8.
2.06.11:
Note on newsrc compatibility: as some of you have found out, Xnews' newsrc format gives some newsreaders indigestion. Therefore, I added a new command Special|Export Standard NewsRC. This will save all open newsrcs using standard format. The files will have the extension '.nrc'. If you want it to always use a standard newsrc so you don't have to bother with Exporting, add ForceStandardNewsRC=1 to Xnews.ini under [Misc]. Caveat: this will break the Keep feature and slow down saving a little (or a lot).
Alert: I changed the mailbox headers file format. When you open a folder, the header file will be automatically rebuilt. No harm will come to your folders (I hope). However, if you've been using the storage options, all your newsgroup cache will be invalidated and emptied. Therefore, if you have any special attachment to your newsgroup cache, either delay upgrading or install in a separate directory.
o Fixed bug with out of sync folders. Occasionally, if you're transferring articles into a folder which is currently opened, make some changes to the folder (e.g., delete some articles), you may lose the newly transferred articles when you close the folder.
o If you make a change in Setup|Compose, it clears out the [Compose] section in Xnews.ini and you lose certain settings, such as WarnExcessiveQuote.
+ Using an IP address instead of a host name should work now
+ I decided to put the Scroll Lock key to work. When Scroll Lock is ON, pressing "Next/Prev Read/Unread/etc" won't open that article but simply highlight it (you'll have to press Return if you actually want to read it). Small tradeoff: you can no longer assign Scroll Lock to some function (but you probably didn't even know you could do that anyway, right? :)
+ New command acaScanScore. Just try it. (Note to RM: you owe me one.)
+ New command Article|Fetch to storage. Basically, this lets you pre-load queued articles into storage (i.e., cache). (I like to put in these pseudo offline features to torture people who need true offline capabilities :-)
+ New filter: show only cached articles (those that can be retrieved from the cache and therefore do not have to be downloaded from the news server).
+ New Xnews.ini [Display] setting Use24hrClock={0,1} whether to use a 24 hr clock instead of am/pm, default is 0.
+ If you're satisfied with the date format except for the am/pm thing, then just use the setting above. Otherwise ... new Xnews.ini [Display] settings: DateFmtxxxxxx. You can now have complete control over all the date formats. Read the Xnews.ini section in the manual for details.
+ New attribution switch: %z = show full date/time in usenet format, using GMT time zone.
x Improved error handling w.r.t. transferring/saving. If you're transferring/saving a multipart file and get disconnected, it won't try to transfer/save the already done parts again (if you're decoding, then it WILL have to restart from the first part). If saving, the interrupted part will be renamed with an __error suffix.
x Improved searching: 1) search in both subject and author; 2) you can search in the article body; just put the cursor in the viewer then press F2; 3) it's a regular expression search now, not just a plain string matching. In addition, the subject is always stripped of '^re:\s*' if present, so if you search for '^xnews', it will match 'Xnews somthing' as well as 'Re: Xnews something'.
x Separate "Next high score (>=9999)" and "Next >0 score" keyboard shortcuts.
x When reading an article (i.e., cursor is in viewer), only "mark read" now applies to whole thread. Mark del/undel/keep/unkeep/unread applies to current article only.
x (You may not want to read this.) Improved the way crossposts are marked to speed up loading headers. Basically, when you read groups that have a lot of crossposted articles between them and you do a "Catchup and kill Xpost", the read string tends to become fragmented. Say you have a group which you caught up last time so the read string is 1-1000. You read another group with 5 articles crossposted to the first. Now your read string becomes: 1-1000,1003,1005,1010,1011,1014. So when you open the group, Xnews has to download headers for 1001-1002,1004,1006-1009,1012-1013,1015-(last). That's 5 separate queries going back and forth between the newsreader and server. It's usually faster to just ask for 1001-(last), download the whole thing in one chunk, and throw out the unwanted headers along the way. This is exactly what I do now. I separate the crossposted numbers from the read numbers with a dummy 0. In the above example, the resulting string becomes 1-1000,0,1003,1005,1010,1011,1014. When you open the group, I download headers for 1001-(last) and throw out the ones that were crossposted. So what does this mean to you? Well, probably nothing. Depending on your newsreading habit, you may or may not notice any improvement.
x More esoterica: after XOVER hi-lo, any missing article in {a,b} inclusive is assumed to have been removed from the server and will never show up; consequently, it's marked read by Xnews.
2.05.24:
o Custom headers "mime-version", "content-type", "content-transfer-encoding" are ignored when they shouldn't be. Note: you still cannot override these headers when you're posting attachments.
o Custom headers get messed up if there's an error during posting and you resume posting.
x ReplyNotify ignored when reloading old (read) headers.
2.05.21:
o "Compact folder" incorrectly greyed out on occasions.
+ New folders window that lists all folders. Invoke with Window|Folders (shortcut key assignable). You can manage your folders in this window (it obsoletes Setup|Folders).
+ New Xnews.ini [Misc] setting: CompactPercent {0..100} percent of "wasted space" taken up by deleted messages in a folder allowed before it is automatically compacted on closing. Default is 30.
+ New shortcut key for "edit subject".
+ MailAttrib, NewsAttrib, and ForwAttrib are now customizable on per group basis (groups.ini). Sorry, I'm too lazy to do it on server or identity level also. (I assume it works; haven't tested it.)
+ Mailbox files saved under Unix with lf instead of crlf are now correctly handled.
2.05.14:
o Fixed weirdness with keyboard shortcuts & the filter box.
o Fixed dropped connection with certain smtp server.
o Fixed Setup|Compose|"Show file count" not saved.
+ Xnews is now 100% GNKSA compliant :)
+ New Setup|Display option: Start new thread when subject changes. Per request. Caveat: since the program can't easily judge whether the subject has really changed (as opposed to minor spelling changes or space trimming, etc), it doesn't even try to except in the most perfunctory way (case-insensitive string comparison). Consequently, spurious subject changes will lead to separate threads. By the way, if you have this option on, it'll be turned off temporarily when you issue a reconstruct thread command. (Think about it, you'll see why this is a good thing.)
+ New Setup|Compose option: Automatically rewrap quoted text (on by default). I'm too lazy to hit reformat, so this does it for me. If you have this turned on and don't want quoted text rewrapped for some reason, immediately hit Undo right after hitting followup or reply by mail.
+ New Xnews.ini [Misc] setting: ExpiredScoreOpt 0=remove expire scores automatically; 1=notify you of expired scores. Default is 0.
+ New Xnews.ini [Misc] setting: ReplyNotify={-1,0,1,2,3,...}. You already know that Xnews can flag followups of your posts. This setting lets you have more control over how deep into the thread Xnews should continue to flag followups. 0=disable (don't flag at all); -1=flag all followups; 1=flag immediate followups; 2=flag immediate followups, plus followups to those; etc. Default is 4. The idea is that discussion tends to diverge and you probably aren't interested after a while.
2.05.10:
o fixed bugs with get parent.
o fixed broken get headers.
o fixed broken stop after this file.
o if you do a "followup and mail reply" it stops after sending mail (doesn't post followup).
o miscellaneous buglets.
o The autoresume function occasionally gets too overzealous. It will now only try to autoresume after "Connection reset by peer"-type error. As a last resort, you can always cancel autoresume by pressing Esc.
o In attribution lines, %g is sometimes substituted with the first group in the Newsgroups header rather than the actual current group (the two are not necessarily the same).
o when switching to fixed font, the blank line between the headers and message body gets deleted.
o while decoding, if you open another article and save it, the file being decoded is corrupt.
+ Posting attachments! Read manual section "How do I ___" for details. POST IN TEST GROUP FIRST TO MAKE SURE YOU KNOW HOW IT WORKS (OR DOESN'T) !!!!!!!!
+ New editor option: "Start new thread". What this does basically is clear the References: header and start a new thread even though you are doing a followup. Important: to enable this option, you must first modify the subject.
+ New Xnews.ini [Compose] option: KeepCopies=1 (whether to keep copies of sent messages). You can turn this on/off on the fly, also.
+ New Xnews.ini [Display] option: ViewerWordWrap (obvious meaning; default=0)
+ New Xnews.ini [Misc] option: Autoresume=1 (whether to attempt to resume batch operation after disconnection). You can also toggle autoresume on the fly; look under Special men).
+ New right click editor menu item: Insert Text File. Does what it says. Attempting to insert a binary file will create a big mess.
+ New right click groups menu item: Reload read articles. This reloads all articles in the group from the beginning; previously read articles will show up but marked as read. This is equivalent to selecting Open Special and then moving the slider all the way to the left, with the option "retrieve headers only." Shortcut is Shift+Enter. If you want this to be the default action, check the corresponding box in Setup | Misc. (This is for people with a fast or local newsfeed who always want to load the entire group.) In this case, pressing Shift+Enter does the reverse, i.e., load unread articles only.
+ add or remove '[posted and mailed]' as needed when you change your mind.
+ add acknowledgements section to manual.
+ compensate for readers that (incorrectly) insert "cut here" boundary in the middle of a UUencoded stream.
+ you can now set SortOn=none to not sort at all. Articles are listed in the order of their arrival on the server.
x no longer notify you of a followup if you yourself wrote the followup.
x now suggest followup if xpost to > 3 groups; warn about excessive xpost if > 5 groups.
x no longer warn about followup to a X-No-Archive article; no longer propagate the X-No-Archive flag along. You should be aware that setting X-No-Archive doesn't prevent other people from quoting you, refer to your article, etc. In fact, future public archives may not even respect the X-No-Archive flag. Noral: there's no guarantee in life. If you don't want your words to become permanent part of an archive somewhere, consider NOT posting on usenet.
x When you supersede, now add the correct References header (if needed) and copies in the original article and subject line.
x I just realized some of the menus are too long and may not fit on some screens, so I split them up.
x you can now click and drag with the mouse in the Q column to queue multiple items.
x you can now add Control: header. You'll only use this for good, right?
x per GNKSA requirement, I put it a limit of 4 simultaneous connections to the same news server.. This should not affect most people, since many servers already have a limit anyway.
x no longer automatically copy viewer text to the clipboard when you select using the mouse. This seems to throw people off.
x changed From: format to email (fullname). This takes care of cases where full name needs to be quoted. Also, I now check name for illegal characters in namec.
x for those who like that way of doing things, if you multi-select then press decode/save/transfer, it'll now queue the selection for you if there's currently nothing in the queue (one less keystroke, woohoo).
x if something happens during a decode, I rename the file to name__error.ext.
Note: in the outbox, if you have nothing queued and only one item highlighted, then when you click Send, it'll queue and send everything in the (visible) list. By contrast, if you hit decode/save/transfer, it'll only decode/save/transfer that one file. The assumption here is that you usually want to send everything but rarely want to decode/save/transfer everything. Hope that's not too confusing.
2.04.09:
o rare alignment of planets causes queuing with space bar to skip articles.
o numerous little fixes.
+ now automatically resumes batch operation 20 seconds after disconnect. Note to those using DUN: you must set it to auto-dial on network activity for this feature to work.
x now shows all expired scores at once (instead of popping up a message box for each expired score). You can turn this off altogether by setting NotifyExpiredScore=0 in Xnews.ini [Misc]
2.04.05:
+ It went away for one version, but it's back, baby: non-blocking host lookup. Maybe it even works this time.
+ News xnews.ini settings: WarnXNoArchive,WarnExcessiveQuote,WarnBadWrap,ViewerLeftMargin. See manual under the new section on Xnews.ini for details.
+ Setup|Misc|Make Xnews your default newsreader.
Xnews recognizes:
news:[//]server[:port]/(group|msg-id)
news:[//](group|msg-id)
note: msg-id has no < >
news maybe replaced by nntp. The // and portno are optional. If no server specified, it uses the default server.
Caveats: If you have netscape running, it'll intercept the DDE message and run its own newsreader. If you have MSIE, after registering Xnews as your newsreader, MSIE will complain that it is no longer the default browser when you click a news link. I did NOT replace your browser (MS thinks news=http apparently). Just say yes when MSIE asks if you want to make IE your default browser; otherwise it'll keep bugging you. (Xnews will still be your default newsreader.)
2.04.01:
o For reasons I can't fathom, the new networking code causes corrupt downloads on high speed systems. So, back to the old code for now.
+ Drop bad message IDs in References line.
+ Add handling for EET time zone (even though news servers really shouldn't use non-standard time zones since no newsreader can be expected to handle ALL the possible time zones in existence).
2.03.28:
o Various bugs with the thread toggle.
o Encoded headers that span multiple lines displayed incorrectly.
o sundry little problems.
o reduced (but not entirely elminated) desktop repaints while opening windows.
+ Non-blocking DNS lookup (program no longer freezes while looking up server name).
+ Added "Show tool tip" toggle to SetUp|Display. This turns on/off the hints for the buttons, etc.
+ The mailto address field in the compose window is now a combo box. You can add the current email to the drop down list for later retrieval. It's quite as good as a real address book, but at least it saves you from having to type in the most frequently used addresses. Good enough for me.
+ You can now specify an external score file editor. Add this to Xnews.ini
+ Added Threaded view toggle and a command to explicitly thread the list (look at the button marked T).
+ Added "Rewrap and Join lines" in editor right click menu. This does the same as rewrap but also join short lines together into a single paragraph.
x I took my email out of the About box because I'm tired of people emailing me without reading the manual first. Now at least they have to get to the manual or web page to find my email :)
2.03.08:
o Starting a few versions back, I introduced a bug that causes saved messages to have no wrapping, which means if you send messages from the outbox rather than the editor window, they're not wrapped. Eek,
o "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx not an integer" error when threading articles whose subjects contain a large number followed by )
o If you press esc to cancel the decode dialog, decode/save/etc. are subsequently disabled.
+ When you press space in the viewer, if the last non-blank line is already visible, it'll jump to the next article.
+ I bitch, I moan, I deliver, part II: right click context menu for group/article list, viewer and editor. The menus are a bit sparse, but that is by design. You can add the commands you want on there. To wit,
[Popups]
; commands for pop up menus
; value is list of comma separated command IDs;
; put - (a hyphen) where you want a menu separator
; see keyboard mapping dialog for available command IDs
Yes, you have to edit Xnews.ini yourself. I make it possible; I don't make it easy.
x If you have multiple items selected, I no longer remove the selection after a command, e.g., after you perform "Mark selected as read" the selection persists and you can apply another command to the same articles.
x Handle discrepancy between xnewsrc and newsrc a little better: if something exists in xnewsrc but not in newsrc, it's automatically added.
2.03.02:
o quoted-printable decode error causes soft line breaks to be displayed as hard line breaks.
o autocollapse causes list to flash under certain circumstances..
+ editor window position and height saved between sessions (the width is dependent on the word wrap column).
+ for people who find it too much to press "next group" (you DO know there's a "next group" command right? see keyboard mapping), new option: Misc|Open next group after catchup. If you close the window without doing catchup, it won't open the next group automatically (otherwise, you'd keep closing a group and it'd keep opening the next one).
+ you can now customize what the catchup button does, add this to Xnews.ini under [Misc]
x View|raw text no longer resets after each article.
x Change file sharing mode so you can now read a file while it's being decoded.
2.02.27:
o Found a very yucky bug with Plonk file that causes names to be truncated. Don't know why it went unnoticed til now (guess nobody uses it). Unfortunately, what this means is that your plonk file, if you've been using it, is probably useless. You should delete it and start anew. (To avoid problems, I have it set to use plonker.ini and ignore the old plonk.ini.) Sorry, folks. Don't sue me!
+ New command in editor: Reformat (fix badly wrapped quoted text). See the manual (What is ____ section) for details. By the way, did I mention I assume everyone reads the manual religiously? ;-)
+ When you try to retrieve a reference that doesn't exist, it will reload the article you were reading after the error message.
+ In the article viewer, press Ctrl+A (or whatever you assigned to select all) to select all the text. Ctrl+A also works in the editor.
x Dump score debug info now puts the file into your Xnews dir rather than C:\
2.02.23:
o The folder auto compact features hangs when the mailbox is empty.
o The add to score dialog generates the wrong locale date format for Expires. E.g., it uses mm/dd/yyyy instead of dd/mm/yyyy for those in UK.
Note: the date format used for the Expires field in the score file is not fixed but locale-dependent. It's mm/dd/yyyy for those in the US and dd/mm/yyyy for those in the UK and elsewhere. This fact is now documented in scoring.txt
x When you followup and mail reply, it no longer puts a To: header in the newsgroup post (to protect the privacy of the recipient).
2.02.21:
o After adding a score via the dialog, it rescores the current window even if you tell it not to.
+ Put PromptDecodeDir=0 in Xnews.ini under [Misc] if you do NOT want to be prompted for the decode directory.
2.02.20:
o MAJOR bug fix: messed up text display in article viewer. Caveat: there are some scrolling anomalies, e.g., the window doesn't automatically scroll when you extend selection with the mouse.
o Access violation if you click stop while opening an article w/ an attachment then close window.
o When you copy text from a richtext source such as a word processor or web browser and paste into the compose window, it doesn't convert the text to plain text.
o Tool buttons get slightly chopped off at the bottom on small font (96dpi) display.
o zillions of little bug fixes, +/- a few millions.
+ New "Article|Add to score file" command. This is a simple interface that makes adding entries to the score file a bit easier. See score file section in the manual for details.
+ Folders are automatically compacted when wasted space > 25% total.
+ Toggle Autocollapse from the menu.
+ When you append to a file (Article|Save as... then enter a file name), it will supply a default '.txt' extension if none is given.
+ New Xnews.ini settings (you have to manually edit the file to set them):
[Display]
; position the cursor past headers when loading article
SkipHeaders=1
; hide horizontal scroll bar in viewer to make more room for text (use keyboard to scroll)
HideHorzScrollBar=0
If you're ok with the default values, then you need do nothing.
x When you forward an article by mail, it no longer does any wrapping (article sent as is).
x When you are viewing an article (i.e., the focus is in the viewer and not the list), "Mark selected as ______" now acts on the thread you are reading. For example, if you select "Mark selected as high score", the entire thread is assigned score 9999. In addition, if you select "Mark selected as read", it will mark the thread as read and jump to the next unread article automatically. ("Mark all as ___" is unchanged.)
x "View|Change subject width" now expands to fit subject of longest line currently visible.
2.02.13:
o when posting a new msg inside a group, it mysteriously puts the message-id in the Followup field. Boy I really screwed that one up!
o Fix some documentation errors in scoring.txt
+ add AlwaysXNoArchive=1 under [Compose] in Xnews.ini if you want to set X-No-Archive by default.
x When sorting by lines, it now by default sorts by # of lines and # of articles in threads. If you want to sort strictly by # of lines, hold down the control key when you click on the Lines column. (This is the reverse of what I had before).
2.02.12:
o Double click to open article broken.
x Got rid of theater mode. It doesn't do anything but confuse people.
x Somewhat improved quoted text wrapping, so if you have
let's say this is a really long line.
this is the next line.
You won't end up with
>let's say this is a really long
line.
>this is the next line.
but this
>let's say this is a really long
>line.
>this is the next line.
Though ideally you should get: (next version?)
>let's say this is a really long
>line. this is the next line.
2.02.10:
x When you reply by email, it uses PubEmail instead of private email. Eek. How did that happen?
x When you save a message to the outbox, all extra header keywords become lower case when you send the message.
+ Strip properly delimited signature from followup text (except when followup to a only a portion of the article)
+ Suppress headers in split screen is OFF by default.
+ Supersedes.
+ Automatically prepend the standard sig delimiter '-- ' when adding sig file.
+ You can now assign a key to "Skip quoted text" (shift+space still works).
x Limit sig text to 10 lines max. If you don't like it, tough.
2.02.06:
o Deleting multiple items in plonk list is seriously broken.
o If you set a string value in the ini to null, it incorrectly uses the default instead of the null value.
o Numerous little bugs.
+ In the article viewer, press Shift+Space to advance to the next unquoted paragraph. Doesn't always work, but there it is.
+ When you plonk a user, you will be asked for an expiry date. (There's little point in having somebody permanently in the plonk file; it'll only clutter up your list and make the program runs slower.)
x Improved attachment handling. Xnews no longer automatically saves attachments in articles when you open them. You can change this in Setup|Files. You can also specify which types of files you want to be automatically saved. To manually save an attachment, click the attachment icon (it looks like a pin) and select the attachment from the list. Selecting an attachment that's already saved will open it.
x perlre.dll is no longer needed (it's compiled right into the exe). You can delete it or keep it in case you want to go back to a previous version.
2.01.30:
o Setup | Compose | Extra Headers box should not have word wrap on.
o SMTPHost for individual server not saved in Setup.
+ You can now change the attribution lines for followup and reply.
+ You can now set the font used for the editor (message composing) window.
2.01.29:
o If you set sort descending by default, it still incorrectly sorts ascending.
o Made Autocollapse a bit TOO aggressive last time; had to ease it back a notch.
+ You can now organize subscribed groups into folders. See manual for instruction.
+ When you add a group manually, it now checks to see if the group already exists.
x Disabled rename of newsgroup in groups window.
2.01.23:
o Articles window doesn't show until after address lookup. This sometimes makes it look like nothing is happening.
+ The push buttons in editor window can now get focus (i.e., you can tab to them with the keyboard).
2.01.20:
x If you add a server using the add button in SetUp (rather than Server|New from the main menu), the server isn't saved to the ini.
+ I bitch, I moan, then I deliver: ROT13 handling. Read manual.html for tips on using it.
x More aggressive autocollapse.
2.01.19:
+ My Setup dialog runneth over. By popular request, I added "Hide groups with no unread msgs" and "Refresh count every X minutes". See Setup | Misc
2.01.18:
o X-No-Archive: yes header isn't set if you send the message from the outbox rather than the edit window.
o "Compact folder" grayed out after deleting all.
+ Added custom message headers handling. Look under the "How do I..." section in the readme for instruction.
x Converted readme.txt into manual.html.
2.01.14:
It's Jan 14 and noone has complained, so Xnews is now officially Y1.999K compliant!
o When server returns a bad message count, Xnews now tries to supply some reasonable value rather than choking.
+ Now handles quoted printable and base64 encoding in headers (us-ascii and iso-8859-x charsets only).
+ You can change status font (Setup | Fonts & colors).
+ In the newsgroup list filter, if you want to match the start of string (as opposed to matching anywhere in the string), mark the checkbox next to the filter.
+ New Xnews.ini [Misc] setting: WrapColumn (default editor wrap column) Should be between 65-80.
+ You can now just stop a batch operation when the current file is done (sort of a delayed stop), ctrl+click on the Stop button.
x Xnews now distinguishes between scores that you set manually (mark high score/0 score) versus scores assigned by the score file. This way, once you've marked something as high score, it doesn't wipe out the score when you reload the score file.
2.01.09:
o Minor bug fixes.
+ New construct for score file. If you have an empty section, then scoring for groups matching that section will halt at that point. For example, if you want to apply some scores to binaries group, but not discussion binaries group, you can do this
[binaries.*\.d$]
% this section is left intentionally empty. It prevents the scores below from
% being applied to binaries groups ending in .d
[binaries]
Score: 2000
......
2.01.06:
o "Undo last filter" not grayed out after you undid last filter.
o Menu items and buttons incorrectly grayed out after header retrieval.
+ Added shortcut key for "switch filter column." which previously could only be done with the mouse.
+ New Xnews.ini setting under [Misc]: ScoreStoredHeaders, whether to score stored headers when they're reloaded. If you turn this on, it'll slow down loading of the .hdr file a bit. You may not want old headers scored anyway. In any event, you can rescore the whole list any time manually. It's off by default.
2.01.05:
R: Holy version inflation, Batman!
B: It's a new year, Robin.
o In the editor window, when you select a different identity from the drop down list, it still posted using (incorrectly) the previous IDToken.
o Methinks I nailed down the "List index out of bound" error, or one of them anyway.
o Menu items on articles window not properly updated when the app is in the background.
+ Added "Undo last filter" command.
+ Put "Expand/Collapse thread" on the keyboard shortcut dialog.
+ Some new Xnews.ini settings ([Misc] section)
; Automatically collapse inactive threads (keep only 1 thread expanded at a time).
One of these days, I'll do file handling properly. This will have to do for now.
x By request, changed extension score.rc.txt and plonk.rc.txt to score.ini and plonk.ini. (You need to rename these files yourself; otherwise the program won't recognize them.)
x Made some changes to the way the filters are handled. Please read the section in readme.txt on filters.
1.12.30:
o Fixed nasty crosspost bug in 12.29. If you d/l and used 12.29, your newsrc and data\ directory may be corrupted. Big apology.
o Fixed flakiness with regex filter box in articles window.
o Fixed icon corruption. D*mn the video bug.
1.12.29:
o If interrupted while decoding the last part of a multipart binary, it doesn't put the file back in the queue.
o Messed up display in groups window when text in Read column gets too long.
o In setup, changes to ID section on Server tab not saved under certain circumstances.
+ Added word wrap toggle to message editing window. Note: you should normally avoid turning off word wrap, as this will generally annoy your readers.
+ Xnews now skips to the next file if it encounters a non-existent article (error 423 or 430) during batch decoding.
+ Added catchup and purge (same as mark all delete then catchup)
+ After threading, articles in same thread as one or more kept articles are also marked with the kept score.
x The Mark all as ... commands are now much faster.
x In the outbox, if you've queued some messages, when you click send, the program will ask whether you want to send just the ones in the queue or all messages in view. Note: if you want to send all messages in the outbox, be sure to remove any filter you currently have.
x In articles window, when you clear the text in the filter box, it no longer automatically threads. (I find this annoying as the threading takes a long time if you have lots of articles.) It will thread when you press Enter.
x pressing "goto next score" now jumps to 9999 score first, then > 0 score.
Hint: if you want to view an unthreaded list of headers, type in ".?" without quotes in the filter box. This matches all subjects, including blank subjects. If you then sort by No, this gives you more or less the raw list of headers as it was read from the server.
Hint: Xnews has no "watch thread" feature, but you can fake it by retrieving the top article in the thread (use reconstruct thread if necessary) then keep it.
1.12.19:
o Deleled articles showing up again.
o Kept threads not shown as kept after rethreading.
+ Select all/Invert selection in articles window.
+ Invert filter (show everything not shown and hide everything shown). I find it quite useful.
1.12.18:
o "Window" menu disappears after opening a dialog.
o ctrl+click toggle on but doesn't toggle off selection in articles listing.
o display artifact in articles list.
o autobrowse activating even when not using a cursor key.
+ Save position of split window. Note: because it only saves the ratio of list height to window height and not the absolute position, the restored window may be a pixel line off due to rounding error. Don't get too bend out of shape over it :)
+ Mark all delete/undelete in articles window. When storage is on, deleting an article basically "expires" it immediately. If storage is off, deleting basically is the same as mark read. The difference is if you later turn on storage, the deleted headers won't be saved.
Note: in folders, "mark all delete" is NOT the same as "purge folder", since the latter physically empties the file and cannot be undone with "mark all undelete".
x if you close the window while in article viewer and full screen mode, either by Esc or ctrl+F4 or X button, it switches back to the list. This helps people who are used to the way NewsXpress works.
1.12.15:
o Stop button sometimes grayed out even though there's an active connection.
o 1st cached article doesn't have the yellow icon.
o (Partial fix) a multi-part binary with only one part available shows up as a regular article instead of an incomplete binary.
+ A new and improved Perl-like regex library. Expanded syntax, and faster too. Be sure to unzip the file perlre.dll. See the Regular expression section in readme.txt for details.
+ Put back scoring filter under view menu.
+ Toggle high/zero score shortcut. If score>0, set to 0; otherwise, set to 9999. You can do the same by left clicking on score column.
+ You can now assign to the Scroll Lock key. (Is that thing ever used or anything?)
+ By request: a feature that automatically switches to the list when you are at the last article of a thread and press Next or Next unread. This applies to full screen view only. To turn on this feature, add SwitchViewAtThreadEnd=1 to [Display] in Xnews.ini.
+ Icon on toolbar showing current storage status. Click to change.
x Terminology change: caching is now storage. Not sure if it's clearer, but there it is.
x Right (instead of left) click on score column to bring up score filter popup menu.
x Got rid of the gray icons that show when mouse is not over the button. I'm sure someone will complain, but the deed is done. See what you have to put up with when you're not a paying customer? :)
1.12.10:
o Catchup in groups window adversely affects kept articles.
o Get message count incorrectly calculates unread when read count has duplicate entries.
o a.v. when closing groups window while it's getting message count.
o you can now assign shortcut to keys on the numeric keypads (num 0..9, - + * /). For the 0..9 and del keys, you must have numlock on, however. Otherwise they'll be treated as cursor keys.
o if you mark an article as hi score (9999), then mark it keep, then mark unkeep, the score is incorrectly reset to 0 instead of 9999.
+ added expand/collapse all threads to keyboard mapping dialog.
+ clicking on the Score column in the articles list will bring up a menu that lets you do a quick score filter. This replaces the previous "Show only high score" command. (I know someone will complain that there is no keyboard shortcut, but it won't kill you to use the mouse once in a while :)
+ added AutoBrowse. This feature automatically opens an article when you move the highlight (selection) bar over it in the listing, provided the article is in the cache (or folder). Autobrowse has no effect unless you are in split screen mode. You can turn Autobrowse on and off manually at any time (under View menu). In adition, you can control when it should be on by default. Set AutoBrowseOpt in Xnews.ini under [Misc] section as follows: 0 = never; 1 = when viewing folder or caching of article body is on; 2 = always.
+ use a yellow icon for articles that have been cached. In folders, all articles are cached so there is no point in differentiating; hence, I just use the regular icon.
x when you collapse a thread, it now shows the author of the 1st article in the thread.
1.12.08:
o List of opened windows under window menu disappearing.
o No more quotes around name in From: header. Not exactly a violation of the standard, but not a good idea nevertheless.
o If you switch identity in the message editor, it did not storee the correct identity when saving mesdsage to outbox.
+ Added command to switch between article viewer / list. You can assign a shortcut to it, of course. Clicking on the second panel does the same thing.
+ Added delete and undelete to keyboard mapping dialog.
+ Added option to automatically assign a score to kept articles, so the next time you open the group, kept articles will stand out. You can change this in SetUp | Misc. Set to zero if you don't like this option.
x Click on progress bar (gauge) to see queue progress.
