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msged A Freely Available FTS-0001 Compatible Message Editor Version 1.99 Copyright 1988,89 by Jim Nutt All Rights Reserved Changed February 24, 1989 1 A. Disclaimer This Software is distributed for free and with no restrictions on its use in non-commercial settings. If you desire to use msged in a commercial application, please contact me at the address listed in Section D. The complete source code of this program is also available, it is not to be modified and redistributed in any fashion. Commercial licensing of the source code is available at a reasonable cost. This is NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN SOFTWARE, as author I retain all rights to this product. This program is guaranteed to work only on my computer system, in my home! Use it anywhere else at your own risk, I am not responsible in anyway for anything bad that happens as a result of your use of msged. Remember, you got this for free! B. Credits I would like to thank the Binkley Trio (Bob Hartman, Vince Perriello and Alan Applegate) for permission to use the code to do fidouser.lst lookups in msged. Particular thanks to Vince for writing the Video Fossil routines and integrating them in for me! Additionally, I would like to credit James A. Woods, Jeff Mogul and Frank Whaley with the module BMG.C, which does the Boyer-Gosper-Moore search that makes the msged find command useful. Finally, thanks to all the sysops and point operators who have suffered through the bugs and poor documention of msged and encouraged me to keep improving it... there are too many to list! 2 C. Introduction Msged was written to fill a specific need in the fidonet community, that of a small, fast message editor that had the source code readily available. When I started this project, the only editors readily available for free were Sirius and Dutched. While Sirius is nice, I found it to be somewhat cumbersome to learn and use, a fact complicated by an almost total lack of documentation. Dutched, while being a full screen editor and having lots of nice features, was incredibly slow and took enormous amounts of disk space. And neither was particularly easy to install. So I set out to write an editor that would require minimal installation (none was preferred), disk space and time. I think I was successful. For a person running Binkleyterm and Confmail, no installation is required, msged can find all the information it needs from the configuration files of those two products. Msged requires only msged.exe to run and will run in less than 64k of memory in a pinch (admittedly, its pretty useless in that situation!). And finally, it will search 100 messages for an imbedded text string in under 13 seconds, and will let you look at each of those messages in under 20 seconds (if you read very, very fast <grin>). D. Contacting The Author I can be reached a number of ways. I prefer netmail messages or messages in the msged echo, but will answer questions anyway I get them! (except voice calls at 3 am.. I tend to hang up on those!) ■ Netmail: Jim Nutt @ 1:114/15.11 ■ Usenet: jnutt@stjhmc.uucp ■ US Mail: Jim Nutt 3935 E. Greenway Rd. #101 Phoenix, AZ 85032-4661 USA ■ Direct File Request: Data Phone #: (602) 482-5646 Private Net#: 1012/11 (minimalist opus) ■ The MSGED echo: The msged echo is currently available on the backbone, ask your friendly *EC for MSGED. ■ Voice Phone: (602) 482-3987 -- Please, don't abuse this! Remember, I am in the Mountain Standard Time Zone year round (7 hours behind UTC [GMT]). If I'm not there, talk to the machine... it gets lonely 3 too! E. Distribution Msged is distributed as three ZOO archives, one containing source code, the other two different variations of the executable file and this documentation. The xxx in the file names below stands for the version number. In parenthesis after the actual file name is the magic name for requesting the latest version from an SDS system or one of the distribution systems. ■ msgdxxxb.zoo (MSGEDBIG) This is the large model version of msged. This version supports use of the video fossil, as well as being able to manipulate very large messages. ■ msgedxxx.zoo (MSGEDEXE) or (MSGED) The 'normal' version of msged. Compiled in small model, this version uses considerably less memory and disk space than the big version. Use this one if you can. (don't need the video fossil or large message support). ■ msgdxxxs.zoo (MSGEDSRC) The source code. Use this to hack away at msged. ■ Distribution Systems: The latest versions of msged will always be found on: 1:114/18 1:114/15 1:163/115 2:512/26 (exe only) F. Installation One of the primary design goals of msged was easy installation. With this in mind, msged tries to get as much information as possible from configuration files that already exist on your disk. This auto-configuration works best if you use binkleyterm and confmail, but will work with varying degrees of success with other systems as well. ■ Batch Files To take full advantage of msged's more advanced features, you need to create a batch file that runs msged. When you exit msged, it sets the DOS errorlevel to a value corresponding to whether or not messages were entered and where. It also creates a file listing all the echomail areas containing new messages. With a correctly written batch file, you can have your messages exported and packed up only when you've actually entered them. See Appendix A for a sample batch file called "readmail.bat" 4 ■ Using msged without Binkleyterm and Confmail To use msged on a system that is not running Binkleyterm and Confmail, you will have to create a configuration file. Essentially, this file tells msged who and where you are and what message areas exist on your system. See Appendix A for a sample configuration file. Section G, Configuration, contains a complete list of all the configuration commands recognized by msged. ■ Using msged with Binkleyterm and Confmail If you're running both Binkleyterm and Confmail, you've got it made! Msged requires no further installation unless you want to override something it finds in Binkley.Cfg or Areas.Bbs. Msged pulls as much information as it can from the Binkley.Cfg file, including screen colors. If you have a COLORS statement in your Binkleyterm configuration, msged will use the listed colors as its default colors, otherwise it reverts to black and white. You can override a given Binkleyterm configuration statement in two ways, 1) by using the "include" directive to insert a msged configuration file into the binkleyterm configuration or 2) by adding the msged configuration statement to the end of the Binkleyterm configuration and prefixing it with "APPLICATION MSGED". This tells Binkleyterm to ignore the statement. If you are using the default binkleyterm configuration, you should make sure that the "BOSS" statement precedes the "POINT" statement in your binkley configuration file. This is only important if you are a point system. ■ Using msged with a FOSSIL This does NOT refer to using old bones! FOSSIL is an acronym for Fido Opus Seadog Standard Interface Layer. It is system designed to give a fair amount of hardware independence to BBS software and utilities. The big version of msged can make use of the Video FOSSIL extension to run on a variety of non-ibm clone MS-DOS systems, including the DEC Rainbow. To use the FOSSIL driver, obtain an appropriate FOSSIL for your machine and an appropriate Video FOSSIL extension. The following Video FOSSILS have been tested with msged. 1) Version 0.15 of the DEC FOSSIL will not work. It won't scroll the screen. 2) Version 0.20 of the DEC will work. 3) VFOS_IBM version 1.10 does not work. Doesn't scroll the screen and there appears to be a bug in the VioWrtCharStrAtt function. 4) VFOS_BIO version 1.10 does work. 5 G. Configuration These are all the statements msged recognizes in its configuration file. If quotation marks are shown, they are required! ■ Username your-name-here The name you want the From: field of your messages to default to. Synonyms: Sysop, Name ■ Include filename Include the information located in the file named filename in the configuration file. [optional] ■ Origin origin-line origin-line is the text msged will put in your origin line. [optional] ■ Node zone:net/node.point>domain This is your FULLY qualified network address. Can also be specified as "Address" ■ Pointnet netnumber If a point, this tells msged what address to use when sending messages to your boss node. Can also be specified as "PrivateNet" [optional] ■ Domain domain-name domain-gate Use the command to specify the address of alternate network domain gateways. [optional] ■ Mail "description" directory Tells msged what to call your netmail area and where it is. There can be more than one. [optional] ■ Netmail directory Same as Mail, but this defaults the name to "Netmail". [optional] ■ Echo "description" directory tag This describes an echomail area to msged. If you wish to use the tosslog feature of msged, you must supply a tag for each echo area. [optional] ■ Local "description" directory An area for local messages, doesn't echo, so no tag. [optional] ■ Tearline flag Flag is either "Yes" or "No". Tells msged whether or not to generate tear and origin lines. [optional] [default: Yes] ■ Seen-Bys flag Flag is "Yes" or "No". Should msged display SEEN-BY lines initially? [optional] [default: Yes] 6 ■ Shownotes flag Flag is "Yes" or "No". Should msged display hidden lines? [optional] [default: No] ■ Quote quote-prefix Quote-prefix is the string that preceeds each line of a quoted message. If it contains an '*', the '*' is replaced with the first initial of the quoted message's author. A '^' is replaced with the second initial. [optional] [default: >] ■ Userlist userlist1-pathname,userlist2-pathname Defines where the list of names and addresses for the address lookup is kept. The address files MUST be sorted, with each line of equal length. The names should be lastname, firstname with the address starting no sooner than column 35. This is the full path and filename of the files. You may specify two different files, separate the filenames with a comma (','). [optional] ■ Tosslog pathname This is the name of the file to list the area tags of areas with new messages. [optional] [default: confmail.out] ■ FlashHelp flag Where flag is "Yes" or "No". Loads the optional flashup help system. (msgedxxx.hlp) [optional] [default: No] ■ Right number Sets the right margin for wordwrap and message display. [optional] [default: maxx - 1] ■ Tabsize number How far apart tabs should be. [optional] [deafult: 8] ■ Confirm flag Should msged ask for confirmation of message deletes and aborts? Flag is "Yes" or "No". [optional] [default: Yes] ■ SoftCR flag Flag is "Yes" or "No". Should msged add soft carriage returns to the end of wrapped lines for compatibility with brain-dead message editors? [optional] [default: No] ■ Privileged flag Where flag is "Yes" or "No". Should msged make your messages privileged by default? [optional] [default: No] ■ Kill/Sent flag Should messages default to being deleted after they are set? [optional] [default: No] ■ Crash flag Should messages have the Crash attribute set by default? [optional] [default: No] 7 ■ Hold flag Should messages be held for pickup by default? [optional] [default: No] ■ Maxx number Maximum number of columns supported by your display. [optional] [default determined by hardware] ■ Maxy number Maximum number of lines supported by your display. [optional] [default determined by hardware] ■ Color where foreground / background Sets up your various screen colors, may also be spelled Colours. Values for where are listed below. foreground and background do what the names suggest, foreground is the foreground text color and may be modified with +INTENSE, background is the background text color and accepts no modifiers. Available colors are: BLACK, BLUE, GREEN, CYAN, RED, MAGENTA, BROWN (or YELLOW) and WHITE (or GREY or GRAY). where possibilities: 1) Normal The color used for text entered by you or that comes from a message. 2) Quote The color used to highlight the quoted portion of a message. msged looks for a '>' in the first five characters of a line to recognize a quote. 3) Block The color used to mark the line where the current block is anchored. 4) Info General purpose color used for text issued by msged. 5) Warn The color used for warning messages. Also used to indicate hidden lines in a message (when hidden lines are shown). 6) Hilite The color used when msged needs to highlight some text. Generally for text that doesn't need the Warn color. ■ VideoSeg number Allows you to specify the starting segment address of your video display. [optional] [default determined by hardware] ■ Video setting Setting is "DIRECT", "BIOS" or "FOSSIL" (big version only). Controls how msged writes to the screen. Direct means that msged 8 writes directly to the screen buffer (although it is desqview aware). Bios means that it uses the rom bios for the video display and FOSSIL means it uses the Video Fossil for screen i/o. [optional] [default: direct] ■ Editkey scancode function Allows redefinition of the keyboard for the editor. Scancode is the code dos returns for a particular key. It is easiest to express it as a hexadecimal constant. (i.e. the scan code for down arrow is 0x5000). For control keys, the scan code is simply the ascii value of the key (i.e. <ctrl><a> is 0x0001). Function should be one of the following: [optional] 1) backspace -- backspace and delete 2) del -- delete character under cursor 3) left -- move cursor one left 4) right -- move cursor one right 5) up -- up one line 6) down -- down one line 7) wordleft -- go left one word 8) wordright -- go right one word 9) pgup -- up one page 10) pgdn -- down one page 11) newline -- break line at cursor position 12) delline -- delete current line 13) cut -- cut from anchor point to current line 14) anchor -- mark beginning of a cut zone 15) paste -- paste clipboard into text 16) goeol -- go to end of line 17) deleol -- delete to end of line 18) top -- go to the top of the screen 19) bottom -- go to the bottom of the screen 20) first -- go to the first line of the message 21) last -- go to the last line of the message 22) quit -- save the message, exit to the reader 23) abort -- exit to the reader without saving 24) tab -- go to next tab stop, insert spaces 25) format -- reformat paragraph (visually hazardous!) 26) shell -- shell to dos 27) import -- import a textfile 28) export -- export message text to a file 29) null -- do nothing, unassign a key 30) gobol -- go to the beginning of the line 31) insert -- toggle insert mode ■ Readkey scancode function Same as editkey, only this controls the commands needed for the editor. Functions available are: [optional] 1) previous -- previous message 2) next -- next message 3) last -- highest message you've read 4) link_to -- next message in thread 5) link_from -- previous message in thread 9 6) reply -- reply to current message 7) quote -- quote the current message 8) areas -- change message areas 9) view -- toggle hidden lines, seen-bys 10) home -- go to first message in thread 11) search -- search messages for text 12) delete -- delete current message 13) newmsg -- enter a new message 14) move -- move, copy or forward current message 15) export -- export message to a text file 16) config -- change configuration options 17) help -- pop up help screen 18) list -- list of messages in area 19) change -- change current message 20) exit -- exit from msged 21) null -- do nothing, unassign a key ■ Gate switch Where switch is "domains", "zones", "both", or "none". Controls whether msged automatically routes messages to zone and domain gates. [optional] [default: both] ■ Quotestyle style Where style is "usenet" or "fidonet". Usenet style quotes start with a line identifying the quoted party. [optional] [default: usenet] ■ Outfile filename This sets the default file name for the <Write> command. Use this if you don't want to default to prn. [optional] [default: prn] ■ Kludge-Lines flag This is for those who really want to see all the extended address lines. If you turn this on, be careful when changing messages as msged does not strip the original address lines out before adding the new ones. I highly recommend leaving this out unless you know what you are doing. [optional] [default: no] ■ Function number string This command allows you to assign a keystroke macro to a function key. Number is from 1 to 40, where 1-10 are the unshifted function keys, 11-20 are shifted, 21-30 are control function key and 31-40 are ALT function keys. The string can be anything, but must fit on a single line. To place control characters into a macro, use the letter key for the control character prefaced with a caret (^). In other words, to place a tab (control I) into a macro, use ^i. To put a special key, the up arrow key for instance, into a macro, use a 5 character string of the form "\0xnn" where nn is the scancode (in hexadecimal) of the desired key. For the up arrow key, that would be \0x48. As a further example, I have my signature defined as a macro, the command is: function 10 jim nutt^m'the computer handyman'\0x1f 10 The trailing \0x1f sends an <alt><s> and causes msged to save the message. This macro would be assigned to function key F10. H. Starting Msged You can start msged up either at the DOS command line by typing "msged" and a carriage return or you can run it from a batch file (see Appendix A). In either case, msged recognizes two command line parameters, the first tells it what the configuration file name is (default is msged.cfg or binkley.cfg) and the second tells it what the name of the areas file is (default is areas.bbs). The names must be given in that order, you cannot specify a different areas file without giving a configuration file name (this restriction will be removed in version 2.00). I. Reading Messages Msged was designed to make message reading quick and easy. All commands are either single mnemonic <ALT><letter> keys or cursor keys. Any of these keys may be changed by using the "readkey" command in the configuration file. ■ Next Message -- Right Arrow or <Enter> Moves to the next message in the current message area. ■ Thread Next -- <CTRL> Right Arrow Moves to the next message in the current message thread. ■ Previous Message -- Left Arrow Moves to the previous message in the current area. ■ Thread Previous -- <CTRL> Left Arrow Moves to the previous message in the current message thread. ■ Thread First -- <Home> Move to the first message in the current message thread. ■ Highest Read -- <End> Go to the highest numbered message in this area that you've read. ■ Scroll Up -- Up Arrow Scroll the current message up one line. ■ Scroll Down -- Down Arrow Scroll the current message down one line. ■ Next Page -- <PgDn> Display the next page of the current message. ■ Previous Page -- <PgUp> Display the previous page of the current message. 11 ■ Area Select -- <ALT><A> This command brings up a menu listing all the message areas available. Msged supports more areas than any sane person will ever need, at least three to four hundred... The exact number depends on the number of messages in each area. The highlighted bar cursor can be moved with the listed commands. 1) Scan -- <ALT><S> Scan all available message areas for new messages. Place an asterisk ('*') next to areas that have new messages. 2) Next Area -- Down Arrow Moves the cursor down one line. 3) Previous Area -- Up Arrow Moves the cursor up one line. 4) Next Page -- <PgDn> Moves the cursor down one screen page. 5) Previous Page -- <PgUp> Moves the cursor up one screen page. 6) Select -- <Enter> Select the highlighted area as the current message area. 7) Abort -- <Esc> Return to the original message area. 8) Additionally, you can type enough characters of the message areas description to uniquely identify it. ■ Change Message -- <ALT><C> This command allows you to change the header and text of any message without leaving a trace. DON'T ABUSE IT! ■ Delete Message -- <ALT><D> Deletes the current message. You are asked to confirm that you do indeed want to delete the message. ■ Enter Message -- <ALT><E> Enter a new message ■ Find Text -- <ALT><F> This command searches all messages in the current area for a text string. The string can be anywhere in the message, the subject line, or the to and from lines. A search starts from the first message in the area unless you are continuing a previous search (press <Enter> on the default search string). The search can be terminated by pressing <Esc>. ■ Goto Message -- <ALT><G> or Enter a number Prompts for a message number. If the message exists, it becomes the current message. 12 ■ HELP! -- <ALT><H> If the optional flash up help module is installed, brings up that. Otherwise, a brief keyboard reference is displayed. ■ List Messages -- <ALT><L> Lists messages by who they are to, from and the subject. Extended addresses are not displayed by this command. There are a couple of subcommands available. 1) Up -- Up Arrow Moves up one message 2) Down -- Down Arrow Moves down one message 3) Page Up -- <PgUp> Moves up one screen 4) Page Down -- <PgDn> Moves Down one screen 5) Addresses -- <ALT><A> In a net (matrix) mail area, turns on and off display of the to and from addresses. ■ Move Message -- <ALT><M> Allows you to move, copy or forward a message to another message area or user. 1) Move To move a message, press <m> at the prompt, you will then be asked to select an area to move the message to. The original message will be deleted and a copy will be made in the selected area. 2) Copy To copy a message, press <c> at the prompt. Again, you will be asked to select an message area. This time, the original is left intact and a copy is made in the selected area. 3) Forward To forward a message to another person, press <f> at the prompt. The message header will be displayed for editing. The original source of the message is left intact and two lines indicating who the original message was to and who forwarded it and when are added to the message text. ■ Operating System -- <ALT><O> Temporarily exits to a DOS shell. Type 'exit' followed by a carriage return to return to msged. 13 ■ Quote Message -- <ALT><Q> Quote the current message by copying it into a new message and adding the contents of the quote string to the beginning of each line. Addressing information is automatically inserted from the current message. ■ Reply -- <ALT><R> Reply to the current message. Similar to quote, only the new message starts out blank. Addressing information is automatically inserted from the current message. ■ Settings -- <ALT><S> Allows you to change several of your configuration file settings temporarily. Use the arrow keys to select the item you want to change or type the highlighted letter in the name of the item you wish to change. Press <Space> to actually change the item. When you have completed making your changes, press <Enter> to put them into effect or <Esc> to return to the current message without changing anything. 1) Name The name that the From: field of messages will default to. Use the normal editing keys to change. 2) Address The default address that your messages are from. 3) Userlist ■ Primary The first list searched when looking up an address ■ Secondary Searched if the address isn't found in the primary list 4) Quote String The string prepended to each line of a quoted message. If this string contains an '*' it is replaced with the first initial of the quoted message's author. A '^' is replaced with the second initial. 5) Origin The text to be placed in the origin line put at the end of echo mail messages. 6) Tab Size How far apart the tab stops are. This can be as large as the right margin setting minus one. 7) Right Margin How long a line can grow before being wrapped by msged. This value can be as large as the number of columns your screen displays. 8) Seen-Bys Controls whether or not seen-by lines are displayed in an echo 14 area. 9) Soft CRs Controls whether soft carriage returns (0x8d) are added to the end of wrapped lines. These are not in theory necessary, however, in practice some other message editors require them. 10) Hidden Lines Are lines prefixed with a 0x01 (^A) displayed or not? 11) Tearlines Should msged put in the tearline? 12) Confirm Deletes Should msged ask you if you really want to delete a message or abort message entry? 13) Read Threads Experimental, should msged use 'ThreadRead' mode in echo and local message areas? 14) Privileged Should the privileged message attribute be on or off? 15) Kill/Sent Should the kill/sent attribute be on or off? 16) Krash Should message default to crash priority? 17) Keep (hold) Hold messages for pickup? ■ View -- <ALT><V> Toggles the display of hidden lines. If seen-bys are turned off and you turn on hidden lines, seen-bys are turned on as well. ■ Write Message -- <ALT><W> Writes the message to an ascii text file or a device. Includes the header information. If writing to a device, a formfeed (ascii 12) is sent at the end of the message ■ Exit -- <Esc> or <ALT><X> Exit msged. J. Entering Messages You begin entering a message by selecting one of the three reader commands that initate a new message: Enter, Quote or Reply. When you select one of these commands, the current message is cleared and you are presented with a blank message entry form. You may then edit the message header and then the message text. ■ Message Header When entering a new message, only the From: name and address are 15 defaulted, otherwise all the fields contain default values. To change any value use the arrow keys to move to a field and then edit it using the standard editing keys (left and right arrow, insert, delete, etc.). You'll notice at the bottom of the header is a list of message attributes. To toggle the value of an attribute, simply press the first letter of the attribute. If it is turned on, it will be highlighted, otherwise it will be displayed as normal text. 1) Attach To attach a file or files to a message, list the file(s) to be attached in the Subj: field of the header and turn on the Attach attribute. 2) Request and Update Requests File requests are done essentially the same way as file attaches, place the name of the file you want to request in the subject field and select the request (or update request) attribute. Don't bother entering any text into the message, it won't be sent (an oMMM limitation), simply save the empty message. 3) Kill/Sent Setting this attribute tells the message packer to delete the message as soon as it has been sent. 4) Privileged Setting this attribute indicates that only other sysops or the recipient may see this message. 5) Crash This attribute tells your mailer that this message is to go out ASAP. 6) Hold This attribute tells your mailer to hold onto this message, the recipient will pick it up. ■ Carbon Copies Msged allows you to create messages that will be sent to several people automatically. To create a carbon copy message, simply enter the message as you would normally. Then, before saving the message, go to the first line of the message and put the letters "cc:" in the first non-blank position on the line. Follw that by the name and optionally, address, of the first person (other than the one listed in the To: field of the message header) you want to send the message to and press return. You can continue adding names and address, one per line, simply by typing them in. When your finished, make sure there is a blank line between the last carbon copy address and the first line of the actual message. The "cc:" should only be on the very first line of the message. If you later change a carboned message, it WILL NOT be recarboned. ■ Extended Addressing 16 Msged transparently supports all forms of IFNA kludge extended addressing transparently except for UUCP addresses (this feature will be added soon). These addressing lines are NEVER shown by msged. 1) Point Addressing Point addressing is accomplished by placing the address of the points boss node into the message header address fields and adding either "^ATOPT pointnumber" or "^AFMPT pointnumber" lines to the message text. Msged is smart enough to realize that if you are sending a file attach or crash mail to a node, that it should change the From: address of the message to that of your boss node and add the appropriate point addressing kludge to your message. 2) Zone Addressing Zone addressing is used only when a message is going to a zone other than your own. If the message is not crash mail, it is redirected to the proper zone gateway, otherwise it remains addressed to the destination node. In either case, an INTL line of the form: ^AINTL destzone:net/node srczone:net/node is added to the beginning of the messge. 3) Domain Addressing Domain is a brand new IFNA kludge that has not been finalized. It is used to send messages to alternative networks utilizing fidonet technology. Domain addresses are of the form: zone:net/node.point@domain When a message is addressed to another domain, it is rerouted to the domain gateway for that domain unless marked crash. If no domain gateway is found listed for a particular domain, the address is left untouched. In any case, a line is inserted into the message of the format: ^ADOMAIN destdomain zone:net/node srcdomain zone:net/node 4) UUCP Addresses Automatic UUCP addressing is not currently implemented in msged. ■ Quoting Messages Msged makes quoting messages easy, simply use the Quote command (<Alt><Q>) and msged will read the message you are replying to into the message buffer. What it does with it once it is there depends on what style of quoting you want to use. Usenet style quoting adds minimal extra whitespace to the message and uses an 'attribution' line to indicate who entered, where they are located and when the quoted message was entered. Each line is prefixed with the quote string specified in the "quote" configuration variable. Fidonet style quotes add more whitespace 17 and don't use the attribution line. Again, the quote string is taken from the "quote" configuration variable, however, this time it has a blank space added before and after it. Additionally, the * and ^ characters are treated specially in the quote string, they are changed to the first and last initial, respectively, of the quoted person. Usenet style quoting is the default in msged. To change it, use the "quotestyle" configuration variable. (see Section G for details). ■ Message Text Msged incorporates a fairly complete and fast editor internally. The editor supports full word wrap and automatic line reformatting. The cursor pad keys work much as you would expect them to, with the arrow keys moving the cursor around the screen. Again, any of these commands can be changed, in this case by using the "editkey" configuration command. Other commands are: 1) Home -- <Home> Go to the beginning of the current line. 2) End -- <End> Go to the end of the current line. 3) Word Left -- <Ctrl> Left Arrow Move one word to the left. 4) Word Right -- <Ctrl> Right Arrow Move one word to the right. 5) Delete -- <Del> Delete the character under the cursor. This will delete past the end of the line. 6) Insert Mode -- <Ins> Toggle Insert mode on and off. 7) New Line -- <Enter> Inserts a fixed new line into the text. 8) Backspace -- <Bkspc> or <Ctrl><H> Deletes the character to the left of the cursor, will delete past the start of a line. 9) DelEol -- <Alt><K> Delete to the end of the line. 10) Bottom -- <Ctrl><PgDn> Go to the bottom of the screen 11) Top -- <Ctrl><PgUp> Go to the top of the screen 12) First -- <Ctrl><Home> Go to the start of the message 18 13) Last -- <Ctrl><End> Go to the end of the message 14) Anchor -- <ALT><A> Mark the first line of a block. 15) Cut -- <ALT><C> Cut out the block encompassed by the anchored line and the current line. 16) Paste -- <ALT><P> Paste a cut block into the message before the current line. The block remains in the paste buffer until a new block is anchored. The block is retained even if you switch to another message. 17) Del Line -- <ALT><D> Delete the current line of text. 18) Import -- <ALT><I> Import a text file into the message after the current line. 19) Write -- <ALT><W> If the paste buffer contains text, write it's contents to disk, if not and an anchor point is defined, write the block of lines between the anchor line and the current line to disk. Otherwise, write the entire message to disk. 20) Save -- <ALT><S> Save the current message and return to the reader. 21) Abort -- <Esc> Exit to the reader without saving the current message, you are asked for confirmation. K. Redefining the keyboard With version 1.95 of msged the ability to reassign reader and editor commands to different keys of the keyboard was added. This feature requires that you know the extended ascii code of the key you wish to assign a command to. Key assignments are made with a statement in the form: readkey keycode command or editkey keycode command Keycode is the extended ascii value of the key you wish to assign command to. It is easiest to express this value in hexadecimal. For instance, the extended ascii code for the <F1> key would be 0x3b00 and the code for a carriage return would be 0x0d. The 0x prefixing each number indicates to msged that the remainder of the number is to be evaluated in hexadecimal. See Section G for more information on which commands are available for key assignment. 19 L. Macros! Version 1.98 of msged adds the ability to define up to forty different keystroke macro commands. These macros are assigned to the 10 original function keys (and their shifted, ctrl and alt states). The length of the macros is limited only by available memory (in other words, if you want to use very lengthy macros, you should probably use the large version of msged). For details on defining macros, see the "function" command under configuration. M. Recompiling msged If you have obtained the source code for msged (distributed as MSGDxxxS.ZOO, where xxx is the version number) and have a compatible compiler, you can recompile msged to use a larger memory model or to incorporate changes you have made to the source code. All the compilers except Quick C will compile msged under any memory model, the distribution executable is compiled small model with Zortech C version 1.07e. ■ Zortech C To compile msged under Zortech C the only compiler option that must be set is -a (byte align structures). The other compiler defaults will work fine. On linking, I suggest you link in the module 'int.obj' which is included with Zortech c, this prevents the floating point libraries from being linked in. ■ Turbo C To compile with Borland's Turbo C use the '-a-' compiler option to force byte alignment of structures. I also suggest you use '-w-stv' to disable warnings about passing structures by value. The floating point libraries are not required. ■ MSC 5.1 When compiling with Microsoft C version 5.1, you must use two compiler options '/D __MSC__' and '/Zp'. The first tells msged what compiler is being used (the other compilers do this automatically), the second tells it to byte align structures. The floating point libraries are not required. ■ Quick C Quick C uses the same compiler options as MSC 5.1, however, with Quick C you must compile msged under either the medium or large memory models as Quick C generates too much code to link under small model. Quick C version 2.00 may be different, I don't have it yet, so i've not tried it. 20 N. Appendix A ■ Readmail.Bat echo off msged if errorlevel 5 goto end if errorlevel 3 goto export if errorlevel 2 goto export if errorlevel 1 goto pack if errorlevel 0 goto end :export confmail export areas.bbs -c -r -nf -np -f confmail.out :pack ommm -mmail -houtbound -ibinkley.prm -croute.ctl :end exit ■ Msged.Cfg username jim nutt node 1:114/15.11>fidonet pointnet 10121/11 origin 'the computer handyman' mail "Matrix" mail echo "C Programming" mail\c_echo\ c_echo local "Local Messages" mail\testarea seen-bys yes tearlines no softcr yes privileged yes crash no kill/sent no hold no quote *^> userlist userlist.txt,fidouser.lst flashhelp no video direct ; I don't necessarily recommend these colors... color normal grey/blue colour hilite blue/gray color warn red+intense/blue color info green/blue color quote white+intense/blue colour block black/blue ; set function keys, F1 goes to the areas menu and scans for new 21 ; messages, F10 signs and saves a message function 1 \0x1e\0x1f function 10 jim nutt^m'the computer handyman'\0x1f 22 23