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-
- News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4
- Written by W.L. Ken, Ng <kenng@HongKong.Super.NET>
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- ----------
- Overview
- ----------
-
- News Xpress(NX) is a Windows Sockets compliant USENET newsreader for
- Microsoft Windows that uses the NNTP to access newsgroups and articles on
- a news server.
-
- Some of the key features of NX are:
- - An integrated MDI application
- - Support XOVER to access overview database from news server
- - Support AUTHINFO for authorization
- - Support XPAT for searching articles remotely
- - Support threads
- - Support signature
- - Built-in uuencode and uudecode
- - Support kill and auto-selection, accept regular expressions for specifying
- patterns
- - Local folders for storing articles, and outbox for queueing posts and mails
- - MIME-conformant, support Base64 and Quoted-Printable
-
- --------------
- Installation
- --------------
-
- 1. The distribution is a compressed ZIP file. Create a directory for NX,
- cd into it, and unzip the ZIP file in that directory. For example:
- C:\> MKDIR NX
- C:\> CD NX
- C:\NX> PKUNZIP C:\DOWNLOAD\NX10B?.ZIP
-
- If you don't have CTL3DV2.DLL in the Windows SYSTEM directory,
- C:\NX> MOVE CTL3DV2.DLL C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM
- otherwise remove it from your NX directory,
- C:\NX> DEL CTL3DV2.DLL
-
- 2. Copy or move the file MIME.EXT into your NX working directory
-
- 3. Create an icon for NX in the Program Manager.
-
- 4. If you want NX to use the INI file in the directory other than
- Windows, you can either specify it in the NX environment variable
- or command line parameter.
-
- NX environment variable example:
-
- C:\NX> SET NX=C:\NX\MYNX.INI
-
- Command line parameter example:
-
- C:\NX\NX.EXE C:\NX\MYNX.INI
-
-
- ---------
- History
- ---------
-
- Several bugfixes and changes from V1.0 Beta #0
-
- Fixed:
- - Catchup problem
- - Save windows position and size correctly
- - UUdecode multipart files
- - Crash if SPACEBAR is pressed while there is no article in the
- list window
-
- Changes:
- - Perform authorization check right after connection is established
- - The "File|Quit without saving" command forces NX to cancel
- socket call and terminate NX
- - Add filter for selecting newsgroups
- - Single click on a folder icon of thread will open/close thread
- - Added an option for prompting new newsgroups
- - Added an option for opening all threads automatically
- - Configurable Subject header template for attachment
- %s - original subject string
- %f - filename
- %p - current part number
- %t - total number of parts
- - Extended tilde escape sequence for more files attachment control
- ~N new article
- ~H add or replace header
- ~A attach file
-
-
- Several bugfixes and changes from V1.0 Beta #1
-
- Fixed:
- - Should work with Novell LAN Workplace
- - Append signature into outgoing mails
- - NEWSRC problem
- - Groups filter problem
- - "No overview database" problem should be fixed
- - Authentication password encryption problem
-
- Changes:
- - Configurable port numbers for both NNTP and SMTP
- - Display the number of articles of each thread
- - Support different printer font
- - More keys binding
- - Articles navigation (next and previous)
- - Added stop command. The stop command serves for multiple purpose,
- e.g. terminate headers information transfer, cancel print job, and
- stop downloading multiple articles.
- - Added update command to update the selected groups information
- (unread count)
- - Can be specified to use different pathname for NEWSRC file in the setup
- dialog box
- - NX environment variable tells NX where to look for the INI file,
- e.g. SET NX=C:\NX\MYNX.INI
-
- Several bugfixes and changes from V1.0 Beta #2
-
- Fixed:
- - Very long groupname problem
- - Handles long ( > 512 bytes) incoming lines improperly
- - Printer devices problem
- - Catchup does not work after invoking "More" command
- - Hang while displaying Base64 encoded articles
- - Hang while reading groupname in NEWSRC if the groupname contains
- non-ASCII characters
-
- Major changes:
- - No longer sort the newgroups automatically
- - File|Save command can be used to update NEWSRC by activating the
- newsgroups window
- - Articles|More -> Group|Check New Articles
- - Reload old articles
- - Word wrap
- - Carbon copy and blind carbon copy for mail
- - Automatic update subscribed newsgroup for a given time interval
- - Kill and auto-select articles
- - Implementation of local folder (mailbox format), and outbox
- - Indent threads
- - UUencode/UUdecode is done "on-line" to increase the performance
- - Accept command line parameter for the pathname of the INI file
- - Tilde escape sequences obsoleted
- - Mail/Post log obsoleted
-
- Several bugfixes and changes from V1.0 Beta #3
-
- Fixed:
- - Kill and autoselect problems - GPF while comparing bogus e-mail
- addresses, incorrectly autoselects articles which are suppose to
- be killed
- - Doesn't accept e-mail addresses which contain hypen in the setup
- dialog box
- - List control does not display correctly under Windows NT
- - GPF while attempting to transfer articles into an empty folder
- - Doesn't remember window positions and sizes if the frame window is
- maximized
- - Release wrong device context resources after choosing list font
- - Doesn't recognize URLs which contain 'URL:' prefix
-
- Major changes:
- - Additional sort option - sort by lines
- - Copy-self folder for archiving your own messages
- - CC-by-mail for following-up posts
- - Late winsock initialization
- - Property sheets control (tabbed dialog box) for the preference dialog
- box
- - Improvement of the search functions
-
- 1. modeless dialog box
- 2. accept regexp so that user can specify more than one search key
- at a time, e.g. 'faq|help'
- 3. automatically tag articles
-
- - Keystrokes for article window and threads window
-
- SPACEBAR page down or next unread
- n next unread
- < or , previous article
- > or . next article
- r reply
- m forward
- f followup
- d decode
- p print
- h toggle full headers mode
- o switch article font
- w toggle wrap mode
-
- - Pack/Unpack MIME articles. Support two additional coding schemes -
- Base64 and Quoted-Printable for MIME. You are encouraged to use
- Base64 instead of UUencode for MIME binary attachments. NX decodes
- attachments automatically and allow you to double click the filename
- imbedded in article to launch associated viewer
- - Use extended NNTP command to provide remote search articles feature.
- For example, the steps to grab FAQs in several groups are:
-
- 1. activate newsgroup window and tag the desired groups
- 2. select the Article|Find article command
- 3. select the "Subject" for header field,
- 4. enter "[fF][aA][qQ]" in the pattern field
- 5. specify the folder
- 6. press the OK button
-
- all matched articles will be stored in the specified folder and
- you can read them later on
- - Automatic NewJIS to SJIS and SJIS to NewJIS conversion for reading and
- posting articles in fj groups (for Japanese Windows only). To enable
- this feature, you have to add the following line under [Config] section:
-
- [Config]
- ...
- NewJIS2SJISConv=YES
- ...
-
-
- Known problems:
- - Edit control limitation ( < 64K bytes )
-
- Note: Outbox format is incompatible from the previous version and please
- make sure to clean up all those pending messages before you install
- the new version.
-
- ---------------
- Acknowledment
- ---------------
-
- I wish to to express my appreciation for all the people who participated
- in the extensive NX beta test program, who have contributed a great deal
- to the user-friendliness, and robustness of NX.
-
- Special thanks to
- Michael Denny my project supervisor
- Brian Smither the author of NX FAQ
-
- -----------
- Copyright
- -----------
- News Xpress is the property of City University of Hong Kong. Permission to
- use, copy and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose
- and without fee is hereby granted, provided that it is not modified.
-
- THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
- WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
- MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
-
-
- ----------------
- Reporting Bugs
- ----------------
-
- Mail your bug reports to Ken Ng <kenng@hk.super.net>. Please include the
- steps to reproduce the bugs, and any other information that might help
- me locate and correct the cause.
-
-
- ---------------------------------------
- W.L. Ken, Ng <kenng@HongKong.Super.NET>
- ---------------------------------------
-