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YA-NW Revision History This is a list of some but not all of the changes that have in going from one version of YA-NewsWatcher to the next. 2.2.0b7 • Fixed a bug introduced in 2.2.0b6 of line count and date filters not working when either the XOVER option is enabled, or the corresponding header is shown in the subject window being filtered. These filters now work as intended, and unlike earlier versions of YA-NW, the Date and Lines headers are not fetched a second time for filtering if they've already been obtained for display in subject windows (or if XOVER is in use). Also fixed a problem with enabling and disabling the OK button when editing a date and line filter. • When the XOVER news server option is enabled, it's now possible to sort subject windows by author and date and line count, even if authors or dates or line counts are not displayed. (Previously the test to disable sorting by line count when line counts weren't available was missing). 2.2.0b6 • Fixed a bug when removing filters from the group list dialog, as well as some other related filter editing problems. • Added the option to fetch headers using the XOVER command. • Changed how the Message-ID and Path: headers are formatted. As a side result, posting on some systems may now be faster. • Added support for a second kind of global filter to permit the benefits of user group fie specific filters without having to use separate filter files. • Added support for option-clicking to create a filter that defaults to filtering by author rather than by subject. • Added support for auto-launching and quitting the binary decoder helper apps. • Added a preference to keep rather than deleted "bad" binary attachments. • Added the option to create article sections on MIME type boundaries, to keep CyberDog droppings out of sight. • Replaced the "+" and "-" characters used to indicate sorting order in the label region of subject windows with standard "stacked box" icons. • Finally (fingers crossed) fixed the long headers fetching problem the correct way. The bug could cause crashes when doing searches with long (over 255 characters) header lines. • Fixed how the popup menus were handled in message windows to deal with multiple open windows having different encoding methods selected. 2.2.0b4 • Fixed a problem with cycling windows when the full group list window was hidden. • Finally introduced the improved filter list editing dialog that displays all the filters and allows copy, paste, etc. 2.1.8 • Solved a problem with filters using "word ends with," "phrase ends with," etc. • Changed how window cycling was done to work around a cosmetic bug in the System's handling of windows that's been around since the Lisa! • Fixed a problem with erroneous filter count information in the filtering status window. 2.1.7 • Solved a problem with case-insensitive filtering not always finding all matching articles. • Fixed a problem with crashes that occured at the end of a binary extraction when cross-posted articles were being marked as read. 2.1.6 • Complete rewrite of the filtering code. Non-regular expression searches are now typically 3 times faster and use less memory. The new regular expression code is NOT guaranteed to give the same results as the previous version. Note in particular that case-insensitive regular expression searches are not currently supported. Also, at long last, there's documentation that describes the regular expression syntax understood by this version of YA-NewsWatcher. • The order in which filtering is done has also changed. Previously, a given article was matched against all the filters in a given filter group, then the next article was processed, etc. This has changed. Now a given filter is matched against all the articles in the given newsgroup, then the next filter is processed, etc. This affects the status dialog displayed during filtering (it now reports the number of filters processed rather than the number of articles). • When filtering using scores, the score is applied for every filter match, even if the filter is a (killed) or (unlabeled) one. • Optimized sorting a bit to eliminate performing the same sorting comparisons on the contents of a multi-article thread more than once. • Simplified the digest processing feature a bit. It now just does a Find command for the a line of text that begins with "Subject:". Any existing search string is preserved. Also, digest searching using the spacebar key no longer pauses at the end of the current section for multi-section digests. • Fixed a problem with marking cross-posted articles read when extracting binaries. 2.1.5 • Added a dialog when there is a failure trying to automatically send a group list to a remote host. You are given the option of ignoring the failure (which allows the group window to be closed without sending the group list to the remote host), or proceeding normally (which means you get a second dialog explaining what error occurred, and the group window is not closed). If you often experience network problems when fetching or sending the group list, you probably should not have these operations done automatically. But if you do keep this option enabled, and you encounter errors sending the group list to the remote host, you can now close the group list window without successfully sending the to the remote host. If you haven't saved the group list locally, you'll see the usual dialog asking if you want to save your unsaved changes. • Fixed the problem of various windows not being fully erased when they should be. 2.1.4 • Changed the handling of the .newsrc file when the resulting group list window is saved to disk. What used to happen is the .newsrc file would be ftp'd back to your host system only if it had unsaved changes. Of course, if you saved the group list on your Mac, and then made no further changes, the .newsrc file was considered unchanged and was not automatically ftp'd back to your host system when the group list window was closed. You had to manually send the .newsrc back in this situation. This behavior has been changed. What happens now is that the .newsrc file will be ftp'd back if it has changed since it was last ftp'd. In addition, if you also save the user group list on your Mac, you will get the usual unsaved changes prompt even if the .newsrc has been ftp'd to your host machine. In effect, the state of saved or unsaved changes is handled separately for ftp'ing the .newsrc file and the local user group list file. • Fixed a possible problem when zooming a subject, group, or message window after hiding or showing the icon buttons. • Solved a problem with finding the YA-NewsWatcher Settings folder when performing a fresh, "private" installation. • Found and fixed yet another problem with very long headers that could cause crashes when choosing "Filter this Subject" or "Filter this Author" from a message window. • Fixed the problem of cross-posted articles being marked as read when they were selected for an "extract binaries" operation and no attached binaries were found. • Fixed the cosmetic problem of the cursor still changing to an I-bar when article, message, and text windows had been rolled up using WindowShade. • Changed some window update code to remove some unneeded full window erasing and redrawing. • Fixed the problem of being unable to drag newsgroup names into most text fields in message windows (such as the message body). 2.1.3 • Added an option to modified the behavior of the "Next Group" command (and other commands that translate to this, such as pressing the enter key. Previously, even if there were still unread articles in the group (because there were more article that the number fetched from the news server), the next newsgroup in the list would be opened. Now, when the "Next Group Command Ignores Unread Articles" option in Newsreader Options is not checked, this only happens if there are no unread articles in the current group. If there are unread articles, a new subject window for the current newsgroup is reopened with newly fetched unread articles. • Added the "Get FAQ for this Newsgroup" command to the Special menu that may be used to get the FAQ for many newsgroups via the Ohio State web server. • Fixed a problem with message windows that were initially zoomed to a width less than the minimum permissible width. This usually only happened when using a fixed width message window font like Monaco. • Fixed a problem with icon button text being incorrectly positioned and erased in some cases (dependent on the window font in use). • Solved another 68000 compatibility problem caused by a bug in the Metrowerks linker. • Found and fixed yet another problem with very long headers that could cause crashes. 2.1.2 • Added an item to the Filters menu to remove marked as read messages from subject windows without refiltering. • Removed a delay loop from the Show/Hide Icon Buttons code for message windows that was used for testing and never removed. • Fixed some problems in resizing subject windows after a refilter command. • Solved a problem with default filters being saved under the name of a group window rather than simply as YA-NewsWatcher Filters when the default filters were created after starting the program. This could also cause problems when the YA-NewsWatcher Filters with user group windows rather than a user group specific filters file. • Fixed a problem with lower priority filters not being overridden by later, higher priority filters if the filter label order had been changed. • Added a warning alert and program restriction that good people should never encounter. • Synched with John Norstad's 2.1.1. 2.1.1 • Filters created from message windows to filter your own posts and their followups are now added to all the open filters files, not just the YA-NewsWatcher Filters program-wide filter collection. • Fixed the problem of the bogus unexpected error -43 when there is no pre-existing default YA-NewWatcher Filters file in the YA-NewsWatcher Settings folder. • Fixed a problem with browsing filters from full group or new group windows. • Fixed a problem with the Filter button not being properly hidden and unhidden in message windows when toggling Show/HideIconButtons. • Added a check for the type and creator of filter files. 2.1.0 • Synched with John Norstad's 2.1.0 final. Note that because of the way John Norstad's replacement list manager works, it will often be necessary for a window to be resized after a change to the window font, or if an information or control panel (column labels in subject windows, icon buttons in most windows) is added or removed. This means the window will be resized even if its size has been locked with the padlock icon. • Improved marking as read of cross-posted articles. Formerly, only articles that were opened had any cross-posts also marked as read. Now this also occurs when an article is saved to a file (including binary extraction) from a subject window. • Filters are now once again saved (and optionally backed up) after editing. • Added a filter icon button to message windows. When checked, a global filter will be created for the message you create. The filter is added to the program-wide filter set (stored in the file YA-NewsWatcher Filters). The filter is configured to use the topmost (highest priority) label, filter on the Subject: header, and expire in 10 days. These defaults should be editable in a future version. The default label is not employed in case the user has set the default to (killed). • Fixed the problem of edits to filters being lost. • Fixed a memory corruption problem that occured when all the articles in a newsgroup were killed by filters. • Previously undocumented. You can change the text in STR# 128 number 272 to modify what YA-NW puts at the end of the Path: header. The default value is !user. 2.0.6b4 • Reintroduced a form of labeling for icon buttons. When "Show Icon Labels"is enabled, and the mouse is over an icon button in a group, subject, or message window, a prompt explaining the function of the button is displayed in the area below the icon buttons. • Added (still inactive) icon buttons to subject and group windows. Like the inactive PGP button added to message windows in a previous version, these buttons will become functional in due course. Note that because the subject and group windows are now taller, the minimum height for these windows is increased. It's possible that in opening group or locked size subject windows that the window will be misdrawn because it is not tall enough. Simply resizing the window will solve the problem. • Added the option to filter on the Xref header. • Added the option to have a horizontal scroll bar in subject windows. In previous versions, the width of the subject was truncated as needed to fit all the displayed fields within the subject window. The narrower the window was made, the more severely the subject was truncated. There's now a new subject windows options preference to instead use a horizontal scroll bar, and maintain the full subject width (or at least the first 79 characters of the subject). • Fixed crashes that occured when multiple message windows were open at the same time. • Fixed a missing CNTL problem in 2.0.6b3 2.0.5b3 • Modified the Article Filter dialog to change the various filter editing controls based on the type of header being for the filter. Previously, the Date and Lines headers were filtered like the rest, using the various string matching options. To do anything useful usually required a complicated regular expression that might or might not do what was desired. Now date and lines filters are handled differently. For dates you can choose to filter articles more than a given number of days old, or less than a given number of days old. YA-NW is smart enough to know that if you enter a number of 2 for "less than," and 4 for "more than," that you want to filter articles that are less than 2 OR more than 4 days old; while having the numbers reversed means you want to filter articles that are less than 4 AND more than two days old. Filtering on lines works in a similar manner. With dates there is an option to filter or not filter articles with missing or invalid date headers. For lines there is an option to filter or not filter articles with missing or zero line counts. Note that any old date or lines filters are made inoperative by this change. It's up to the user to open the Group Filters dialog for the various filter groups, find the old date and lines filters, and edit them appropriately. • Changed the interpretation of filter priority. Previously, the first matching "kill" filter would kill an article, while the last matching non-kill filter would provide the article's label (or hilight color in previous versions). Starting with YA-NW 2.0.5, the rank of a label (its order in the list of labels) is used to determine whether a later filter will override a previous filter's labeling of an article. The new rules are as follows: 1) A kill label always overrides any previous label. A kill label may itself be overridden by any subsequent filter. Thus it is possible to unkill an article with a later filter. 2) Non-kill labels will only override a previous label of equal or lower rank. • Because of the changes in how articles are killed and labeled, the status dialog displayed when filtering articles no longer shows how many articles have been killed. The subject window does still show this information at the top, and now also shows the number of articles labeled (which in this contect means given a label other than (killed) or (unlabeled)). 2.0.4b6 • Replaced the fake icon buttons in message windows with true (icon checkbox) controls. The regular checkboxes were also replaced with 3-D versions, and the entire panel area is now drawn in light grey. • The panel areas in windows are no longer redrawn in white when the window is moved to the background. • Removed the hand cursor when dragging in subject windows. • Added a test when emailing (only) an attached file for an empty part 0 message. If the part 0 description is empty it is not sent. You still need to supply a part 0 description for binary posts. • If a filter group has no filters, filtering for that group is not done. This solves the problem of empty filter groups with the "Articles not matched are deleted" option set killing all messages. • Changed how filters are handled. Previously, there was one set of group filters that were applied to all newsgroups. Now filters are associated with a user group file, and are saved in a new settings file that is created in a new "YA-NewsWatcher Settings" folder (which is created in the same folder as the active preferences file). This means you can have different sets of global, regional, and local filters defined for different sets of newsgroups. In the future, the settings files will also be used to store usergroup and newsgroup specific preferences. • Changed filter "hilighting" again. Under the old system, filters were set to either kill, keep, or hilight articles. An arbitrary single marker character and arbitrary hilight color could be used to mark articles in subject windows. All three of these functions have now been combined into a Finder-like label function. Labels are chosen from a popup menu in the Article Filter dialog. All filters will label a matching article in some way. There are two special labels: "(unlabeled)" which simply passes the article unmodified (as the keep option did before), and "(killed)" which functions like the old kill option. The remaining 32 labels are completely user configurable in the preferences dialog. The color and label text can be edited, and the 32 labels can be dragged to change their order. • Owing to the above two changes in how filters are handled, the old filter files will no longer work. The new version of Filter Converter (1.0.2) can convert existing YA-NewsWatcher or VA-NewsWatcher filter files to the new format. • If "Show line counts" is enabled for Subject windows, when saving a file (binary or otherwise) to disk, the NewsWatcher Status dialog will show progress information (i.e. "Saving File 1 of 2 line 200 of 566"). • Changed the Attachment line in message windows to indicate the sizes of the attached file's data and resource forks. • Fixed a problem that erroneously caused all the articles in a group to be marked as read. If the unread article count was greater than the number of articles being fetched, and if all the articles fetched from the server were killed, then the entire group would be marked as read. • Changed status display during filtering to show as killed all articles that are removed from a subject using the "Articles not matched are deleted" filter group option. • Fixed a problem with Bcc email recipients not being properly blinded by all mail servers. To solve this problem, the Bcc header is now no longer sent as part of the message (fix supplied by John Norstad). • Fixed a problem with erroneously marking as read all messages in a newsgroup. If there are initially more unread articles in the group than are being fetched, and all the fetched articles are either killed or not on the server, then all the unread articles were erroneously marked as read (fix partially supplied by John Norstad). • Fixed a problem in b5 with an incorrect CDEF. Also recompiled with the latest bug fixes to the CW7 compiler. 2.0.3b0 • Resurrected the old "Sort Hilighted to Top" option and removed the old "Sort by Hilight Color" sorting option. When "Sort Hilighted to Top" is enabled, articles in subject windows are first sorted by hilight color, and then by the regular sorting criterion (author, subject, etc.) The reverse sort option does not affect sorting by hilight color. • As part of the above change, and to minimize future compatibility problems, a number of preferences are now stored in a private YA-NW resource and are no longer shared with VA-NW. The effect of this is that several preferences will have to be re-entered. They are: In "Newsreading Options" - "Spacebar Digest Shortcut" In "Subject Windows" - "Initial Default Sort Mode" In "Filter Options" - "Disable Filtering", "Show Killed Articles", and "Expand Threads That Contain Hilighted Articles" • Added balloon help for the labels in subject windows. • Added the option to hide the status window (except at startup, since the window is shown before the preferences are read). When the status window is hidden, and there's therefore no cancel button to press, you can still cancel a long process by pressing command-period. • Changed the (optional) expired filters notification to display in the status window, beep, and then pause 5 seconds rather than putting up an alert. • Solved a problem with changes in preferences not being properly detected by the "intelligent" prefs saving feature. • Fixed a bug that erroneously deleted the last item in the full group list when other items were being deleted. There was a comparable bug in the original NewsWatcher code that did the same thing when groups were automatically deleted when they were no longer on the news server. That's been fixed too. • Fixed a bug in the LDEF and a few other places that caused crashes when dealing with long subject lines, etc. The code foolishly assumed that header text would be no longer than 255 characters, which is no longer true. • Changed for the second time how the test for the presence of the original Color Picker is performed. The original method should have worked, but failed on at least one user's PowerBook 100. The method used in 2.0.2 used Gestalt, which unfortunately won't work if the new Color Picker extension isn't installed, which means that people with older System software are erroneously excluded from using the Color Picker. So I'm back to a variant of the one used in 2.0.1. Someday Apple will make stuff like this reasonably reliable and foolproof. Not today however. • Fixed the old cosmetic defect of Filters menu items being enabled when a group or subject window is topmost and there's not exactly 1 item selected. Also updated the balloon help for the menu appropriately. 2.0.2 Final • Increased the maximum length of header that can be fetched from the server from 255 to 4095 characters. This will help to alleviate a problem some people have encountered when trying to filter using the References: header (filtering failed when the long header was truncated at 255 characters). • Added the ability to filter on the NNTP-Posting-Host header. This makes it easier to kill spammed or inappropriate commercial posts from badly managed sites without having to download and deal with the much longer Path: header. • Modified filtering status code to be a bit more efficient and also to give time to other applications more often. • Prefs and filters file backup and saving is more intelligent. The prefs file won't be saved (and optionally backed up) if nothing has changed (for example, when you could not connect to the news server). Because the article cache is kept in the prefs file, the save and backup is usually done if you open any newsgroups. Similarly, the filter file won't be saved (and optionally backed up) if the filters are not edited or expired. • Added the traditional hand cursor when dragging items in a list. • Added the option to immediately quit if unable to connect to the news server. • Fixed the problem of the Shift and Option keys not being recognized when sending a message. • Fixed a memory problem when cancelling a post or email message with an attached file. Also improved error handling when posting binaries. • Fixed the detection of the availability of the Color Picker routines by using Gestalt instead of MyTrapAvailable (which should have worked but didn't). • Changed sorting by hilight color for non-color Macs to simply test a given hilight color against black. A future version of YA-NW may enable true sorting by hilight color for all Macs, even those without the Color Picker routines. 2.0.1 Final • Fixed a number of schoolboy howlers: 1) Moved the misplaced line of code that "fixed" the handling of the nested Article Filter dialog from within the Filter Groups dialog when a new filter was being created and edited. 2) Corrected a typo that caused many multi-part plain text messages to be misidentified as MIME Base64 attachments and therefore wrongly truncated when displayed in an article window. 3) Corrected the erroneous double Latin-1 translation of filenames of binary attachments in new messages, and added proper Latin-1 translation for all parts of non-encoded attached files. • Did some more bomb-proofing of the Cleanup822Date function to better prevent problems on machines that don't have their location set correctly in the Map and Date & Time control panels. This may solve some of the out of memory problems and crashes experienced by a few people. Now, when show date and/or time are selected in prefs, but the machine location has not been set, the date and time will be displayed as ? in subject windows. • Made a number of changes to the color related code to better deal with old, non-ColorQuickdraw machines and multiple screen depth monitors. • Fixed some spelling errors/typos in dialogs or help balloons. 2.0 Final • Fixed problem with old scores and filter hilighting/marking not being reset when refiltering an open window. Also fixed the related problem of read articles not being removed when a subject window is refiltered and the preference to remove read articles is selected. • Fixed the old, old problem of the group filter moveable modal dialog becoming erroneously non-modal after it had been used to open a filter dialog. • Remedied some of the other problems with the filter group dialog relating to crashes when dragging or scrolling items in the list. • Fixed the problem of filtering by additional header (References, etc.) not working for global and regional filter groups. • Added a work-around for the 16000 limit in the full group list. Instead of truncating the list (both as displayed in the program and saved on disk) to 16000 items, now the full newsgroup list is maintained and you can see and subscribe to the first 16000 groups. You can delete the groups that you don't want, creating slack at the bottom of the list for the groups that could not be displayed previously. When the full group list is rebuilt, the deleted groups are added back in, and can then be left in the list or again deleted to make room for any undisplayed groups at the end of the alphabet. Note that if you've already run into the 16000 limit, you need to rebuild your full group list to fetch the names of all the newsgroups, since previous versions of NewsWatcher only saved the first 16000 to your preferences file. This method of dealing with long newsgroup lists is not an elegant one. There are a number of better ways to deal with more than 16000 new groups. All would require significantly more changes to the program. This solution, though not pretty, is available NOW and will be useful to many people. IMPORTANT: Because of the way the program checks for new newsgroups, you can't delete any groups that have appeared in the last day or two and have them stay deleted. The next time you check for new groups at startup, they will be added back in. Just wait two days and then delete any unwanted new groups. In the meantime, any older groups that you delete will stay deleted until you rebuild the full group list. This is a bit annoying, but it's part of a safety feature that prevents new groups from being overlooked. LATE BREAKING NEWS: John Norstad has announced that he has reconsidered his earlier decision not to modify the original NewsWatcher to handle larger group lists. He now plans to have a beta version with support for larger group lists available sometime in late September. • Fixed another problem with the detection of MIME Base64 attachments. • Fixed the bug that caused the Group Filter dialog to be presented when "Regionally Filter This Author" was selected while an article window was topmost instead of the correct Article Filter dialog. • Spell checked this document. :-) Maybe one day it'll be proofread too! 2.0b30 • Changed method of backing up prefs and filters files, to work better with launching utilities like QuicKeys that keep track of files. Also added status dialogs during the backup operations. • Made sure that the names of attached files are converted to the Latin1 character set before being added to the subject line or the begin line of a uuencoded attachment. • Added a status dialog when a subject window is being resorted or refiltered. • Changed the status dialog displayed when filtering is occurring to show the number of filter groups being applied. Previously, the "processed" number was incremented once per filter group, leading to the number of articles processed being a multiple of the total number articles in the subject window. Now this number repeatedly counts up from 0 to the number of articles in the subject window for each filter group, and is reset back to zero for the next filter group. • Added a checkbox to Subject Window Options preferences dialog to have read messages removed from subject windows when they are refiltered. • Added an item to the Special menu to disable or re-enable the truncation of messages that seem to be binary posts. Sometimes the logic used to detect binary posts fails, causing normal text messages to be truncated. This menu option lets you (presumably temporarily) disable truncation so that the message can be read, or printed or ... • Fixed detection of BinHex encoded binaries that was broken when Base64 detection was added. • Reduced the time articles are kept in the cache from 60 to 30 days. • Added the option to flush (empty) the article cache when quitting by holding down the option key when selecting Quit. There's a confirmation dialog so that you can change your mind about emptying the cache. A large cache can cause some out of memory errors, since the number of articles actually added to a subject window for processing and actual display is the number fetched PLUS the number in the cache. The latter number can be very large, causing apparently inexplicable memory problems. Note that, if you have the option to backup your prefs file enabled, you can "undo" the cache flushing by using the backup prefs file the next time YA-NW is launched (the article cache is stored in the prefs file). • Changed how killing by scores works. Originally, as the various groups of filters were encountered, as soon as an article's score dropped below the kill point, the article was killed. Now it is not, and there is a final pass through all the articles after all filters have been applied to kill or not kill based on score. This may permit somewhat more selective killing. For example, you might want to kill all posts with "money" in the subject lines unless you're reading alt.make.money.fast. You would then set up a global filter to score at -500 all articles with money in the subject line, and a local filter in alt.make.money.fast to score these articles at +500. Then the posts will be killed everywhere except in alt.make.money.fast (assuming the default kill threshold score of 0). • The filter file (kill file) is now saved to disk whenever a filter is edited, after the dialog's OK button has been clicked. If the backup filter and prefs file is enabled, the filter file is only backed up the first time the filter file is saved. Therefore, the backup filter file preserves the filters that were defined at the start of a newsreading session, while the active file is updated after each edit. 2.0b29 • Added support for saving files or extracting binaries from multiple open windows. By holding down the shift key while selecting Save from the File menu, all open windows of the same kind as the topmost window will be saved. For example, if a subject window is topmost, all the selected articles in all open subject windows will be saved to disk. If a user group window is topmost, all the user group windows will be saved. Similarly, if shift is held down when choosing Extract Binaries, all selected articles in all open subject windows will have their binaries extracted. In all cases, the way this works is that the topmost window is processed normally, then the windows are cycled through one by one, until you're back at the original window. During the cycling, whenever the new topmost window is the same kind as the original topmost window, the save or extract binaries operation is performed on it. Note that this all happens sequentially. There is still no thread manager support for doing multiple tasks simultaneously. • Similarly, you can send all the open message windows by holding the shift key when clicking on the Send button or selecting Send from the News menu. This works by rotating through the open windows as described above. The difference, of course, is that each message window is closed after it is successfully sent. • Added a test and error alert when an attempt is made to attach a file that has 0 parts (for example, a uuencoded Mac application or resource file). • Fixed a problem with editing killfiles (the expiration date was being reset to 1 if it was non-zero). • Fixed a problem with Filter Converter (if you over-wrote an existing file the file's type and creator weren't changed). Note that the kill file format is the same in 2.0b29 as in 2.0b28, so you do NOT have to run Filter Converter again to convert a 2.0b28 kill file (and in fact attempting to do so will only create an older VA-NW compatible kill file, and not one that will work with the last two versions of YA-NW). You need only use Filter Converter to convert a VA-NW or a pre-2.0b28 YA-NW kill file to the format used by YA-NW 2.0b28 and 2.0b29, or to convert a YA-NW 2.0b28 and 2.0b29 kill file to a format that can be used by VA-NW 2.0b27.1 (see the comments below for version 2.0b28). • Added "regional" hierarchical filters, and removed filter menu commands from the Edit menu into the newly added Filters menu. So, there are now three classes of filters: 1) The global filter, with a filter group name ".". Any filters in this group are applied first. The global filter group matches every newsgroup. 2) Regional hierarchical filters, with filter group names of the form "name1.name2.". These filter groups match any newsgroup whose name starts with the filter group name, excluding the final period. For example, if you have the newsgroup comp.sys hilighted when you select "Edit Regional Group Filters" you will get a dialog showing all the filters defined for the regional filter group named "comp.sys.". This filter group will match the newsgroups comp.sys, comp.sys.mac, comp.sys.mac.comm, and comp.sys.next. These filters are applied in order of length. For example, suppose there are filters defined for the filter groups "comp.sys." and "comp.sys.mac.". When filtering the newsgroup comp.sys.mac.comm, first the "comp.sys." filters would be applied, then the "comp.sys.mac." filters. To enable editing of the regional group filters for the parent of the selected group, hold down the option key when selecting one of the regional filter menu items. For example, as described above, if you have the newsgroup comp.sys hilighted when you select "Edit Regional Group Filters" you will get a dialog showing all the filters defined for the regional filter group named "comp.sys.". If instead you hold down the option key while selecting "Edit Regional Group Filters" you will get a dialog showing all the filters defined for the regional filter group named "comp.". 3) Local filters, with names identical to a newsgroup name. These apply only to the newsgroup named, and are applied last. • Added a Filters menu item to refilter the current subject window (to apply any filters that were changed or added since the window was opened). • You no longer get an empty subject window when all the articles in the window have been killed. 2.0b28 • IMPORTANT! To prevent future problems caused by incompatibilities between the kill file formats used by YA-NewsWatcher and VA-NewsWatcher, I have changed the kill file type used and expected by YA-NewsWatcher. The old file type was 'KILL' while the new type is 'FILT'. Included with YA-NewsWatcher is a simple droplet named "Filter Converter" for converting kill files. You will need to run it to convert your present (YA-NewsWatcher 2.0b27 or VA-NewsWatcher) kill file to the form expected by YA-NewsWatcher 2.0b18 and later. You can also convert a YA-NewsWatcher 2.0b28 kill file to the format expected by VA-NewsWatcher 2.0b27.1. HOWEVER, when you do this you will lose the marker hilight information for all your filters, since this is stored in a different format. Converting in the other direction does not lose any information. To convert a filter file, simple drag it on top of the Filter Converter application. You will get a standard file saving dialog. Choose a name and location for the converted file. Note that you cannot chose the same name and location as the file being converted. • Synched with John Norstad's 2.0.0 final. Now that original NewsWatcher has gone final, YA-NW can use more normal version numbers for beta releases, and not have to add on the extra .0 .1 etc. • Fixed yet another problem with uncollapsed message threads in subject windows. I _hope_ that's all of the pesky buggers. • Threads are now sorted according to their contents, and not just the first message in a thread. So, if you sort by score, and a message in the middle of a thread has a high score, that high score will move the whole thread towards the top of the list. • Fixed an apparent problem with updating the sample hilight color box after it had been edited with the color picker. • Fixed not being able to toggle the spacebar digest option in the preferences dialog. • Added the option to expire filters after a specified number of days has passed. The default is still perpetual filters, indicated by setting the expire time to 0. Filters are actually expired when YA-NW starts up and reads the killfile. An alert will optionally be displayed at startup when filters have been expired. This is enabled under "Filter Options." • Changed the method used to count words in message part 0 of binary posts, to solve a crash on some old System 7.0 machines. • Fixed the gibberish prompt text in the filter dialog's color picker dialog. The prompt text is only displayed when using the old style color picker. • The preferences and filter files are now optionally backed up before being saved when YA-NewsWatcher quits. This is enabled or disabled under "Miscellaneous Options." 2.0b27.5 • Fixed a problem with the acur resource not being preloaded and nonpurgeable, which caused crashes on some machines. • Added detection of Base64 encoded binary files, and decoding via a new helper application "Yet Another Base64 Decoder." Unlike MPack, this new decoder will handle (indeed it requires) the concatenation of all parts of the original message, and it will run in the background without user interaction after being sent an apple event. • Relabeled some preferences for greater clarity. • Changed the default sort order for dates, markers, and scores. Now normal order is new, marked, and high first, respectively. • Fixed a problem with subject window in which threads were not kept together and expanded/collapsed properly if the collapse threads option was off or the expand hilighted option was on. • Fixed a problem with marker characters with ASCII codes above 127 not being drawn in subject windows. • The asterisk character drawn in subject windows when a collapsed thread contains a marked article is now drawn in the default hilight color. • Improved saved message file compatibility with the other versions of NewsWatcher. If you open a message file saved with one of the other versions, you'll get an alert telling you that some of the settings may have been changed. 2.0b27.4 • Fixed testing of clicks in subject window labels to only register a click within the actual label text (and not the full width of the column). Also added hilighting of clicked labels and test to see if the mouse button was released within the label text. • Fixed a problem for with the "you can't sort by author/date" alerts. • Removed no longer used "sort recent to top" and "sort hilighted to top" options which are superseded by full date and hilight color sorting. • Added filtering by lines, newsgroups, and path headers. • Added sorting by line count. • Added new preference for sorting in descending order. For sorting by date, this means threads with newer articles are at the top of the window. For sorting by subject or author, the z's are at the top and numbers at the bottom. Reverse sorting can be changed on a window by window basis by using the "Sort in Descending Order" menu item in the hierarchical Sorting menu. When subject window labels are shown, there is a '+' or '-' character at the far left of the label area, indicating if sorting is currently in ascending or descending order. Clicking on the character toggles the sort order. • Moved the sorting options to the subject window options dialog. • Filter hilight colors are now fully editable. You can choose as many different colors as you wish. The default hilight color can be set in the Filter preferences dialog, and individual filter hilight colors can be edited in the Filters preferences dialog. Because of this change, when sorting by hilight color you are sorting first by hue, then by lightness. • Because of the change in how filter hilight colors are handled, the filter file format has been changed. When you first run the new version of YA-NW with an old killfile, you'll get a prompt warning you of the file format change. The old killfile will be saved, so that you can revert to using an older version of YA-NW or VA-NW. (You will have to change the type of the saved file from 'KILB' to 'KILL'.) • GLOBAL KILLFILES!!!!! Holding down the option key when clicking on the Edit menu changes "Edit Group Filter…", "Filter this Author…" and "Filter this Subject…" to "Edit Global Group Filter…", "Globally Filter this Author…" and "Globally Filter this Subject…". These commands are used to edit a set of special global filters that are applied to all newsgroups (after an local filters have been applied). The global filters are applied first, then the local filters. Processing of matches within a set of filters is also sequential according to the position of the filter in the group's filter list. This means two things: 1) the FIRST matching "kill" filter wins, eliminating the article from being displayed. This can not be undone by a subsequent hilight or keep filter. 2) the LAST matching hilight filter wins, setting the hilight color for the article. The local filters are processed last so that their hilighting will win out over any performed by the global filters. • Added "nn killed" to the status panel in subject windows. • Modified the format of anonymous remailer messages sent using Cypherpunk remailers to place the Anon-To or Anon-Post-To header at the beginning of the body text using the special :: line in order to work around a bug in the remailer software. The headers were further modified to ensure that the References header line is also contained in the anonymous post or email message as appropriate. See the file "Anonymity and YA-NewsWatcher" for more information on what is and is not included in anonymous messages. • You can now assign weighting factors to filters. As an article is filtered, a running sum of the weighting factors for all matching filters is kept as a score for the article. It is then possible to sort by score or kill based on score (for example, all articles with a score of less than 0). There are new preferences in the Subject Options preferences dialog to enable or disable showing the score in subject windows (showing will probably be off in everyday use, but turning it on may be helpful in debugging filters) and in the Filter Options preferences dialog (where the threshold for killing based on score is set). There is also a new Sorting menu item to permit sorting by score. 2.0b27.3 • Marker character in subject windows is now drawn in bold. • Various remaining conversion errors fixed. • Fixed the problem of anonymous posts having no subject lines • Fixed a problem with date displays in article windows. • Default anonymous remailer addresses changed from the obsolete usura@replay.com to remailer@replay.com • Updated anonymous remailer help and information files • Fixed a problem with the Balloon help strings for the post selected parts dialog. • Clicking on the marker, subject, author, or date labels in subject windows changes the sorting to by subject or by author (and the label is underlined to indicate the sorting mode). Shift clicking the currently underlined marker switches sorting to by article number (and no labels are underlined). • Added sorting of subject windows by date and marker hilight color. Also removed the "author threads" sorting option. • Added a new "Subject Window Options" pane to the preferences dialog, which contains most of the preferences that affect subject windows. • Added a preference to disable by default the display of column labels in subject windows. • Labels in subject windows can be enabled or disabled on the fly using the "Show Labels/Hide Labels" item in the Edit menu. 2.0b27.2 • Fixed various conversion errors that occurred in VA-NW 27.0 (missing prefs dialog items, misformatted message window controls, missing balloon help, etc.) • Added an option to use a marker character to mark hilighted articles in subject windows (in addition to being able to choose a hilight color). • Added column labels in subject windows, and changed the order of the columns. • Added a preference item to enable or disable the displaying of times in subject windows, and changed the functioning of the similar dates preference to enable or disable only the date display independent of the time. • Added the ability to post a selected range of parts of an attached binary file, to deal with the problem of having to repost all the parts if one or more parts are damaged or incomplete. If the option key is held down when clicking on the Send button (or choosing Send from the menu), a dialog appears in which the range of parts to be sent can be entered. • Added support for using anonymous remailers for email or usenet messages. (See the file Anonymity and YA-NewsWatcher for more information on this.) • Fixed a problem with creating killfiles. Formerly, if no valid killfile was found on startup, a new killfile was created in the Preferences folder in the System folder. Now it is created in the same folder as the current YA-NW preferences file. • Increased the number of available filtering hilight colors to 24. (Thanks to Bob Boonstra and his daughter for the colors).