WAFTOGT beta updates
====================

Please be sure to pick up E02/761 for support of WAFTOGT, bug fix info,
and other related information.  I am working on a better way of doing
UUCP for GT systems.  Be sure to read there for the latest news on the
new project.

BETA 7  - 11 JAN 94
===================

        Here's the first beta of the new year.  Enjoy, everyone...

        1.  Lots of new date formats handled:

            Date: Sun,  3 Oct 1993 17:37:27 UTC
            Date: Mon, 11 Oct 93 03:08:44 +010
            Date: Mon, 11 Oct 93 21:22:00  GMT
            Date: 15 Oct 93 11:46:42 NZDT
            Date: Thursday, 14 Oct 1993 11:56:28 EDT
            Date: 11-NOV-1993 17:23:54.41

            Also added some new things to hopefully stop those annoying
            errors resulting from new date formats.  WAFTOGT should now
            stop processing the date, and use 1-1-80 instead.  This is
            much better than bombing and stopping the import of news.

        2.  Fixed from fields missing closing parentheses ...

            From: user@place.com (User

BETA 6  - 03 OCT 93
===================

        1.  Some people like to go on rabidly hitting TAB until
            they get the cursor where they like it when they
            post.  Unfortunately, when this gets into MMR after
            passing through WAFTOGT, it makes MMR die.  MMR just
            can't handle too many consecutive TABs.

            So, WAFTOGT is going to play arbitrator now, and
            translate ALL tab characters found in news to
            nine spaces.  This should be a solution all programs
            can handle.

        2.  Fixed a problem where messages without subject lines
            would be blank.

            Here's what the offending header looked like.

            Path: moes!news
            From: coplex!uunet!acad3.alaska.edu!FURGM
            Newsgroups: volcano
            Message-ID: <9309102320.AA01664@relay1.UU.NET>
            Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1993 16:18:09 MST
            Sender: news@moes.coplex.com
            Reply-To: VOLCANO <uunet!VM.USC.EDU!VOLCANO%ASUACAD.BITNET>

            Thanks to Mike Powell for the report.

        3.  Found someone with a from line like:

            From: First Last <flast@somesite.org

            Note the missing >.  WTG now adds the > before parsing.
            Previously, that From line would kill WTG.

        4.  Date-related fixes...

            a. Date: Monday, 20 Sep 1993 17:47:12 EDT

               ...this is the first one I've encountered with
               a full day rather than just Mon, Tue, etc.

            b. Date fields with mixed case such as
               "Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1993 14:10:51 -0500 (cdt)"
               would throw the logic that looks for the timezone off.

            c. Support for AEST, MEST, and MES timezones:

               Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 11:52:56 AEST
               Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 14:10:05 MES
               Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1993 19:13:34 MEST

            d. Support for offsets from GMT:

               Date: 29 Sep 93 20:05:30 GMT+12
               Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1993 08:28:34 GMT+2

BETA 5  - 11 SEP 93
===================

        The new FTP site is now operational.  Releases of WAFTOGT
        and other RKWARE programs can now be found at:

        Anonymous FTP to csn.org, cd /Computech.  Remember to set
        binary mode before getting the things you want!

        1.  Support for names like "Joe User" added.  The "'s are now
            stripped when importing news.

        2.  Support for X.400 from fields like:

            From: mc/G=Brad/S=Hicks/OU=0205925@mhs.attmail.com

            Is now just "Brad Hicks".  Note the /G= for given and
            /S= for surname.

            This only works for incoming news from mhs.attmail.com.
            If you find more sites posting news with this format
            of from field, let me know and I'll add them to the
            internal list.

        3.  Being unregistered would sometimes overflow (!).

        4.  Logging is now available.  Here is a sample log output:

            (Note it says beta 4 since I hadn't given it the 5 number yet)

            9-03 23:59   ; WAFTOGT 1.04: IMPORTING NEWS
            9-03 23:59   ; 0 articles imported in comp.dcom.telecom
            9-03 23:59   ; 0 articles imported in comp.dcom.fax
            9-03 23:59   ; 0 articles imported in comp.dcom.modems
            9-03 23:59   ; 0 articles imported in alt.folklore.computers
            9-03 23:59   ; 0 articles imported in alt.dcom.telecom
            9-03 23:59   ; 0 articles imported (total)
            9-03 23:59   ; WAFTOGT 1.04: EXPORTING NEWS
            9-03 23:59   ; 0 articles exported in comp.dcom.telecom
            9-03 23:59   ; 0 articles exported in comp.dcom.fax
            9-03 23:59   ; 0 articles exported in comp.dcom.modems
            9-03 23:59   ; 0 articles exported in alt.folklore.computers
            9-03 23:59   ; 0 articles exported in alt.dcom.telecom
            9-03 23:59   ; 0 articles exported (total)
            9-03 23:59   ; WAFTOGT 1.04: DONE

            This should be helpful if the program bombs, since
            you will be able to tell where it's been getting to.
            Here's what an error might look like:

            9-11 13:06   ; Error stop: (5/613) 7 in cmptech.test

            This means error 5 occurred at line 613 while reading
            message 7 in cmptech.test.

            Add LR= to the WAFTOGT.CNF to tell it where to write
            the logs to.

        5.  Very long From fields like...

            From: wagner@mala.bc.ca (TOM WAGNER, Wizzard of old
            Audio/Visual Equipment........Nanaimo Campus)

            ... are now supported.  Too bad these guys can't
            trim it down a bit.  It is a bit wasteful.

        6.  If you had a .BAK of a Waffle message, it would
            affect the calculation of RESETLO and RESETHI
            operations.  Fixed.

        7.  Time zone "ARG" now supported.

        8.  The user file is now only read in when the MAILIN option
            is being used.  This speeds up news operation for
            registered users.

        9.  From lines like: "From: (Ryan Hilbelink)" are now
            supported.  People should not use from fields like this,
            since WAFTOGT has no way to determine the return path
            for e-mail.  When it encounters names like this, it will
            set the reply-to field to "Unknown".  People using
            from fields like this should make sure that they are
            including a Reply-To field in their posts.

            The fix programmed for that kind of From line also
            added support for from lines like:

            From: wintera@kenyon.edu (Andrew Q. Winter (In the [...]

            This guy's name goes on forever, so it gets truncated.
            The problem was the double parentheses (( and )) in
            his name.

BETA 4  - 29 AUG 93
===================

        Lots of stuff for this beta release!

        But first, some news...

        New releases in the future will be available by anonymous
        FTP at csn.org in the /Computech directory.  They may also
        turn up at uhdux2.dt.uh.edu in /incoming, but don't rely
        on that one.

        1.  Support for another date format added:

            8/6/93 8:49AM

        2.  Fixed a problem where if WAFTOGT couldn't determine the
            person's real name, sometimes it would leave it blank
            on the GT side.  It now uses the reply-to address that
            appears in the message in these situations.

        3.  RESETLO or RESETHI, when done on a newsgroup without
            any articles, would either set to 9999 or 0.  It will
            now set the pointer to 1 instead.

        4.  Exporting messages is now much faster than before.  WAFTOGT
            will now only check messages that it has not updated before.
            You shouldn't see the "Advancing ... " so much now since it
            jumps right to where it needs to start working.

            I also received a report from Mike Powell of it going on
            forever.  WAFTOGT now checks to see if it's gone too far,
            and will stop if it has.

        5.  The ";Reply-to" line in messages will now be generated using
            the Reply-To line from the article if it exists.  If it
            does not exist, the Reply-to line in the GT message will
            be generated from the "From: " line of the article like before.

        6.  Article breaking.

            WAFTOGT, if given a valid number, will split posts coming
            into GT so that they do not contain more than that
            number of lines.  This is quite handy if you have QWK
            mail users whose readers can't handle very long messages.

            The line to add to WAFTOGT.CNF is TR=.

        7.  Exporting from GT would increase the Waffle pointers too much.
            Fixed.

        8.  Someone has a nasty .sig with about 100 tab characters in it.
            This would cause MMR to lock up cold.  To prevent such nasty
            things from doing that again, WAFTOGT now strips all incoming
            lines down to 80 characters before writing them out to
            the .MES or .MSG file.

        9.  WAFTOGT will now import E-mail from the spool directories.
            Here is how it works:

            In my poll batch file for Colorado Supernet (csn), I do
            the following:

            WAFTOGT
            BATCH
            UUCICO -SCSN
            WAFTOGT MAILIN G:\SPOOL\CSN
            UUXQT
            WAFTOGT

            The explanation:  Line 1 exports messages from GT, which
            then get batched up by BATCH.  UUCICO in line 3 then calls
            and does the transfer.  Next, in line 4, WAFTOGT imports
            the E-mail before letting UUXQT get at it (more on this later).
            I then run UUXQT to take care of the rest, then WAFTOGT
            again to bring in the news.

            Now, the reason for importing E-mail before running
            UUXQT is that if someone sends e-mail to "Russell.Kroll",
            UUXQT will look for that user in the Waffle files.  Since
            that person doesn't exist in the Waffle user file, it
            will bounce it back.  We don't want that happening, so
            we get the message out of there.

            What you have to do is tell WAFTOGT to delete the incoming
            E-mail after writing it to the GT message base.  This is
            accomplished by putting "KE=yes" into your WAFTOGT.CNF
            file.

            OK, I hear the questions coming - what if someone sends
            a message to my board and that person doesn't exist?
            Well, I took care of that too.

            Registered users may set a flag in WAFTOGT.CNF that
            will check the user file before importing the e-mail.
            (BC=YES).  If you have this and KE=yes set, and the
            user does not exist, WAFTOGT will override the
            KE setting and NOT delete the message.  It will still
            be imported to GT, however, with the name changed.
            "Russell Kroll" would become "<B> Russell Kroll" to
            show that the message was bounced.

            When UUXQT sees the message sitting there and doesn't
            find the corresponding user, it will bounce it back.

            So, to re-cap:

            KE=yes    -- kill incoming E-mail
            BC=yes    -- check for bounces.  Override KE if user not found.
                      ** Registered users only **

       10.  Registration code has been added to WAFTOGT.  When
            registered, certain things such as bounce checking
            are enabled.  In the future, more options will be
            restricted to registered users only.

       11.  Names such as... Dave "Spud" Kalin ...are now handled
            properly.  Previously, the "Spud" part was just "spud".

       12.  The GTPATH is now checked for the WAFTOGT.CNF file if not
            found in the current directory.

BETA 3  - 18 AUG 93
===================

        1.  As promised:  gating from GT back to Waffle.
            For this to work, WAFTOGT must be able to find RNEWS.EXE
            in the path so that it can export the messages.  RNEWS
            must also be able to find COMPRESS.EXE if you are
            compressing outgoing news.

            If RNEWS can't be executed, the messages won't go
            out.  If this happens to you and you want to re-export
            some messages, edit the LASTREAD.GTW in the GT directory
            with the MESSAGE.CTL.

            Be sure you setup the 4 new fields in WAFTOGT.CNF!
            Check the DOC file for more information on them.

        2.  Found yet another format of date line, this one
            ending with "MEZ" for the time zone.

        3.  Discovered if that the Date: field doesn't come
            within the top 9 lines or so in the Waffle article,
            it will die.

            Thanks to Sam Hale for helping me find this.

BETA 2  - 14 AUG 93
===================

        0.  **** The configuration file format has changed ****

            This was done to allow room for more improvements in
            the future.  Please look in the included WAFTOGT.CNF
            file for more information.

        1.  If you are having problems getting Waffle to decompress
            the incoming mail packets and you are using the 16 bit
            compressor program, check your STATIC file.

            In COMP16.DOC, it says to use "compress : -dv" when you
            install it.  However, that is wrong.  You should change
            that to "compress : -dV".  It took me awhile to figure
            that out.  Hopefully this will relieve some frustration
            out there.  I'm not sure why it works, but it uncompresses
            the news, and that's all that matters to me. <g>

            It also seems that DESQview keeps things from working
            correctly.  Whenever I get the setting correct for
            uncompressing news, it doesn't work for compressing
            outgoing news.  I set the line for csn to just
            /batch so it won't run compress.  My connect to them
            has V.42bis anyway, so it won't affect throughput
            much.

        2.  Fixed a problem where articles entered in Waffle would
            cause an error since there is no "Lines:" header.

        3.  It turns out that comp.dcom.telecom articles no longer
            have two CR's and now terminate lines with CRLF.
            I noticed some time ago that certain lines would
            end with CRCRLF.

            I'm glad that went away since it would have been a little
            tricky to correct.

        4.  Fixed another little problem where some messages would
            be marked as private even when they should be public.

        5.  Added some upper/lowercase handling routines for the
            "From:" field so that things like "b.j. guillot" come
            out as "B.J. Guillot" as they should.

            Since this would have made for some interesting mixes
            of upper and lowercase in "From" fields where WAFTOGT
            uses the e-mail address, I made it so that any "From"
            fields with an at character (@) do not get processed.
            This way, "rkroll%cmptech.uucp@csn.org" stays that way.

        6.  You can now strip out unwanted headers from the
            articles as they come into GT.  You may have up to
            50 of them.  This size was picked arbitrarily, and
            can be expanded if anyone needs a bigger buffer.

            Check out the HE= line in the included WAFTOGT.CNF
            file for more information.  The format of the actual
            file with the headers is just one line after another.
            Use caution with this, since it might lead to
            stripping out more than you might want.

            For example, if one of the lines in my header file
            was "Reply", then an article with a line that begins
            with "Reply to my post" would get that line stripped.
            In this case, you should use "Reply-to:"  to make
            sure it wouldn't affect 'innocent' lines in the
            articles.  You should use the full header line in
            your strip file whenever possible.

        7.  Added a couple more lines of code for yet another
            method of specifying the date of the posting:

            Date: 07 AUG 93 08:00

            Is now properly handled.  If you come across
            an article that makes WAFTOGT choke, please send
            me the Waffle .MSG file as soon as possible so
            that I can make a fix.

            With all those different kinds of newsreaders,
            computers, gateways, etc. out there, you can't
            ever be sure that all the bases are covered.

            Those date formats keep coming!  I found a couple
            of new ones just today that would make WAFTOGT
            die.  If you run into one that kills it, let
            me know so I can cover that format.

        8.  Added some "checks and balances" so that even if
            WAFTOGT encounters a date field that it can't handle,
            it won't corrupt your MESSAGE.CTL file by making
            the record too big.  Beta 1 would occasionally put
            more than 128 bytes out whenever it would hit a
            bad date format.

            Beta 2 supports many more types of date fields,
            so this hopefully won't be needed.

BETA 1  -  5 AUG 93
===================

        1.  Initial release.
