WinPack Update To V6.30 ----------------------- UPDAT630.EXE updates WinPack V6.xx to V6.30 (xx = any number). Please read the copy of CHANGES.TXT below, before you decide whether to install this update! In particular, please note that this update changes a lot of files and cannot really be reversed. You may decide that making a complete backup of your whole WINPACK directory tree is a good idea, so you can restore it if you have problems with V6.30. When the WinZip Self-Extractor window opens, make sure the "Unzip To Folder" is correct for your WinPack installation - otherwise you'll have WinPack in one directory and the updated files in another! Leave "Overwrite Files Without Prompting" checked, or you may finish up with a partial update. When the Self-Extractor has run, CHANGES.TXT will be opened in NotePad. Here is what it says:- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is more or less in the order I made the changes, it is not in any sort of order of importance. I suggest you read it all, because the change you wanted might be at the end! All programs get bigger as new features are added and so tend to run more slowly on PCs with slow processors or relatively low amounts of memory. If your processor is less than a 486DX2/66, or you have less than 8Mb of memory with Win31, or less tha 12Mb with Win95, then I would recommend making a complete backup of your existing WinPack before you install this upgrade. You can then easily revert to your old system if you find that the performance of this version is unacceptably slow. Changes WinPack V6.10 -> V6.30 ------------------------------ 1. Phone modem support added. This allows WinPack to be used on the land-line port of an FBB BBS. See the "Phone Modem Support" section of the help. 2. A sixth speed is available in "Options", "Comms Setup". This defaults to 38400 bps, but it can be toggled between 38400 and 57600 by right clicking on the button. 3. Several servers made formless, so they don't open a small window in the corner of the screen when they run. This was done to try and reduce the problem of WinPack grabbing the focus from other applications. The servers affected are LOC.EXE, ACK.EXE, REQCFG.EXE and REQFIL.EXE. 4. A "Stay Connected" option added to the "Action" menu - this allows you to stay connected to the BBS at the end of an Auto BBS session. Also a STAY_CONNECTED script key word added - see the "How Scripts Work" section of the on-line help for more information. 5. An "Auto BBS Disable" option added to the Action menu - this allows you to temporarily disable Auto BBS sessions. 6. WinPack now supports "themes" when reading bulletins. Using a theme allows you to make a selection from your bulletin list based on a combination of "To", "From", "At" and "Title" selections. A themes editor is provided. 7. The "LEDs" in WinPack now work better when using TF host mode. 8. [NOT AT] now works in the Selection List Editor. 9. A problem fixed with the viewers editor which could cause it to mess up the viewers list. 10. The ACK server removes any viewer triggers (^.) from the titles of ACK messages. Also viewer triggers are removed from the titles of messages when you use WinPack's reply options. 11. If the title of a message contains an '&',it now displays properly in the title line of the edit window. 12. If you somehow delete the BBS.TXT script file, WinPack now warns you rather than closing down. 13. If you are writing or editing a message and select Abandon, you are asked for confirmation. 14. You can now specify exclude texts in the ALARMS add-on, and it has an option to log all monitored traffic containing an alert text. 15. You can stop the registration information being shown when the program starts - it used to appear for 5 seconds. This feature is only available if the program is registered and the registered callsign matches the callsign set in "Personal/BBS Info". 16. A problem fixed which could cause WinPack in BPQ mode not to respond to an external command from a user if a "cmd:" had just been received from the software TNC. 17. Support added for specifying BTEXT in BPQ mode. 18. The window background colours of the BPQ terminal can now be changed. (PLEASE NOTE - the fonts and colours menus for the terminal are options on the system menu, which is the menu you drop down by clicking the top left corner of the window, or by pressing Alt+space). Different colours and fonts can be set up for Terminal_1, Terminal_2, etc. 19. The BPQ terminal transmit window now has scroll back buffers and automatic line wrap. Also, pressing or in the transmit window will scroll the receive window - this makes the terminal behave the same as the main WinPack screen. 20. A problem fixed which could stop the bull list scrolling. 21. A problem fixed which would result in the help file being sent to a user if they sent just '/' on its own. 22. WinPack can now read messages to you - If you have a viewer configured for an extension of SPK (speak), then, if you press Ctrl+T whilst reading a message, WinPack will use the SPK viewer to speak the message. SPKVIEW.ZIP contains an SPK viewer which can be used by anyone who has a Sound Blaster sound card which was supplied with the TextOle utility as part of its bundled software. Unzip SPKVIEW.ZIP into your main WINPACK directory and read SPKVIEW.TXT. This file also contains details of the rules used by SPKVIEW, which may be off help to anyone thinking of writing a different (better?) SPK viewer. 23. WinPack now counts the mail in the MAIL\SEND directory at least once every 5 minutes. This means external programs can put messages in the directory without having to tell WinPack that they have done it. 24. Several changes to WinpScape, including support for some new special protocol types and support for graphics - see WINPSCAP.TXT and WINPSCAP.HLP. 25. The ^.HTM trigger is no longer necessary in the titles of HTML messages. WinPack now decides whether a message contains HTML by scanning it. However, it is still recommended that the ^.HTM is used, because it provides a method of selecting files of interest (or not!) in the Selection List Editor. It is also of course needed for backward compatibility with older versions of WinPack. 26. Support for a special HTML protocol type - AX25MAIL - added to WinPack. If you use Netscape as your HTML viewer, then clicking on an AX25MAIL link in a viewed HTML file will automatically put WinPack into message reply mode. 27. Support added for automatically submitting a form contained in a viewed HTML file. For more information on both this and point '26', please read AX25MAIL.TXT. 28. An attempt made to fix the problem of the bull list sometimes not appearing when "Read Bulletins" is selected. If you get this problem, I would be interested to know whether you are running Win31 or Win95, and how much memory your PC has. 29. The connected station's callsign, displayed in the bottom left corner of the screen is now on a lighter coloured background. On some PCs it was previously difficult to read. 30. WINPLZH1.DLL partly rewritten to try and fix an occasional GPF problem. 31. (With serious misgivings!), the LASTNUM internal variable, used for FBB sync requests and "$NUM" in bulletin list commands, can now be changed from within WinPack. Previously you had to close down WinPack and edit LASTNUM.TXT. 32. As part of the battle to stop WinPack grabbing the focus from other apps, external programs and servers are now started without being given the focus. If you have any external programs or servers which are DOS apps, you should make sure that the PIF settings do not prevent them running in the background. With Win31, the "Execution: background" option in the PIF should be checked. With Win95 you should make sure that "Background Always suspend" on the "Misc" tab of Properties is not checked. 33. In case point '32' gives people problems running DOS add-ons, two new variables have been added to the [TERMINAL] section of PACKET.INI, they are EXTERN_MINIMIZED and EXTERN_FOCUS. They allow you to alter the way that servers and external programs are run. The default now is that they are both FALSE. The default for previous versions of WinPack was "EXTERN_MINIMIZED=FALSE", "EXTERN_FOCUS=TRUE". 34. The maximum allowable setting of TXDelay in the TF host mode software TNC increased to 500. This fixes a problem when using WinPack with the version of TF in the SYMEK TNC3S. 35. WinPack will now attempt to process any 7plus .COR files which are received. 36. For some reason, FBB V7 won't allow a user to use both compressed download and compressed forwarding in the same connect session. Previous versions of WinPack required you to edit PACKET.INI and put "SPLIT_SESSIONS=TRUE" in the FBB session in order to work round this problem. "Use Split Sessions" is now an option on the "Mail Options" setup screen. 37. The alternative BACKUP server for outgoing messages, which I have personally used for at least a year, is included in this update. This server creates subdirectories of ARCHIVE\SEND named according to the topic for SBs or the recipient's callsign for SPs. Individual messages within the subdirectories have names derived from the date you sent the message. This makes it much easier to find particular messages. However, so as not to overwrite your old BACKUP server - with which you may be completely happy - the new BACKUP.EXE is put in the main WINPACK directory. If you want to use it, you must replace the old BACKUP.EXE in SERVERS\SEND with this new version. 38. An updated version of the documentation file WINPACK.TXT is included. This file, written by Mike, G0OPC, was included with WinPack up to V5.53, but left out of V6 because of lack of disk space. 39. Expanding a compressed message which had become corrupted whilst downloading it could result in WinPack creating a HUGE file called FBBDECOD.$$$. A limit of 1Mb has now been put on the size of this file. 40. An extra bulletins list prune option has been added:- If you click the Prune button when reading bulletins, but you haven't first marked a block of lines in the bulletins list, then Prune will now trim the list down to the last 'N' lines. 'N' is a number which you can set using "Options", "Bulletin Deleting...", "Bulletins List Prune Size" - the default is 5,000. (If you mark a block of lines before clicking Prune, then it behaves exactly as it did on previous versions of WinPack.) 41. The Options menu has been slightly rearranged. 42. There is now a "splash screen" to give you something to look at while WinPack is starting up. It displays SPLASH.BMP from the main WinPack directory. SPLASH.BMP is included in the update, and also SPLASH2.BMP which can be used as an alternative. However, I'm not very artistic, so I'm sure a lot of people will be able to create a much better SPLASH.BMP themselves! If you don't want a splash screen, you can either delete SPLASH.BMP, or add /NOSPLASH to the WinPack command line. (Hint - if you try another SPLASH.BMP, first copy the original SPLASH.BMP to SPLASH1.BMP, so you don't lose it.) 43. WinPack now has internal support for mailing lists. See "Help", "Help Contents", "Writing Messages", "Creating And Using Mailing Lists". 44. The background colours of the receive windows and the transmit window can now be set independently of each other. Previously they all had to be the same colour. 45. README.TXT has been brought more or less up to date. 46. A Baycom driver package which allows you to use WinPack with BPQ and a Baycom modem is included in the update. It is NODBAY13.ZIP. If you are interested in using a Baycom modem, unzip this file and read NODE2BAY.TXT. 47. The BPQ Terminal now applies ANSI to ASCII conversion to keyboard input in the same way as the main program. This fixes a problem with not being able to input some accented characters. 48. Other applications can now put text files in MAIL\RECEIVE which don't conform to WinPack's message format, and they will still be made available in the "Read Mail" list. The message status will be 'X', the "To" and "From" will be blank, and the message title will be the file name. 49. Two new virtual TNC commands added to WinPack-TF. They are AUTOSSID and CHANCALL. For more information, read the help on the commands from within WinPack by sending "?AUTOSSID" and "?CHANCALL" to the virtual TNC. 50. Support added for PC Flexnet. This is a major addition and is somewhat experimental. Please read WINPFLEX.TXT, which is part of this update, for further information. 51. The BPQ Terminal and the TF Terminal both now support the WinPack text short-cut keys (Ctrl+F1 to Ctrl+F9). 52. A log is created of all Yapp file transfers. The file name is YAPPLOG.TXT and by default it is put in the MAIL\RECEIVE directory so that it can be read as an 'X' status message. However, if you put "PERMANENT_YAPP_LOG=TRUE" in the [TERMINAL] section of PACKET.INI, then the log is created in the TEXT subdirectory of the main WinPack directory. 53. When creating 7plus parts, the 7plus program converts a few special characters in file names to '_', e.g. a file called EXAMP~1.ZIP will be converted by 7plus to EXAMP_1.ZIP. WinPack didn't allow for this happening and sometimes couldn't find the 7plus parts. 54. If you try to close WinPack while you are in the middle of writing a message, you now get a warning. 55. The keyboard Scroll Lock LED can be made to flash if you have unread mail in your mail box. If you tend to leave your monitor switched off, you can see if there is any new mail without having to switch it on. There is a new option on the Options menu - Flash Scroll Lock - to enable/disable this facility. 56. Auto-prune of the bulletins list is now available. If you add the command line option /AUTOPRUNE, then the list will be pruned when the program starts. If you put entries in "Auto Times" in the Selection List Editor which end with "PRUNE", then the list will be pruned at those times. In both cases the pruning is as if you have clicked the Prune button, when reading bulletins, without having marked a block. (See point '40' above). 57. Not a WinPack change, and only of interest to people who use WinPack with BPQ:- A slight problem has been found with the BPQ file BPQDLL.DLL which results in WinPack (or any other program using it) terminating with a GPF if an unusual format of nodes broadcast is monitored. The same problem also affects the BPQ DOS applications PAC4.EXE and SWITCH.EXE. How many people are affected by this problem depends on how many nodes put out these unusual broadcasts - I know of one that definitely does it, so I am sure there must be others. The file BPQPATCH.ZIP contains patched versions of BPQDLL.DLL, PAC4.EXE and SWITCH.EXE which fix the problem. Please read BPQPATCH.TXT in the ZIP for more information. 58. The "quick reply with auto-quote" feature which was introduced in V6.2 couldn't be used if you used WinPack without a mouse, because it required you to right click on the reply button. You can now activate this feature by holding down Shift and pressing the speed key for the reply button - Alt+T for a bulletin reply or Alt+S for a personal reply. (Yes, I know that pressing three keys is a bit much, but for anyone who habitually uses Windows without a mouse, it's probably quite easy! :-) 59. WARNING! The WINPACK\TEMP directory is strictly for WinPack's own use, and WinPack frequently deletes the contents. Some WinPack functions will not work properly if WinPack cannot empty the TEMP directory. DO NOT put your own files in that directory, DO NOT write protect files in the directory, and DO NOT create subdirectories in it. IF WINPACK V6.3 FINDS WRITE PROTECTED FILES IN THE WINPACK\TEMP DIRECTORY WHEN IT IS CLEARING IT, IT WILL ATTEMPT TO REMOVE THE WRITE PROTECTION. NOTE - these comments refer to the WINPACK\TEMP directory, they have nothing to do with C:\TEMP, C:\WINDOWS\TEMP, or your TEMP environment variable. 60. Some minor problems which could occur when using multi-user mode fixed. Sticking Scrollbars ------------------- No, I haven't fixed it! The effect is that some times when you scroll a WinPack text window by clicking the mouse on the arrows on the ends of the scrollbars, the scrolling doesn't stop when you release the mouse. Also, if you move the mouse away from the scroll arrow and then move it back, the scrolling restarts without you clicking the mouse. I can't fix it, because the problem is either in Visual BASIC or in one of the third-party VBXs which I supply with WinPack. If it happens, all you have to do is click the mouse somewhere on the scroll bar other than on the arrow which is "stuck" - the arrow will then become "unstuck". For those upgrading directly from V6.1 to V6.3, here is the previous CHANGES.TXT:- Changes WinPack V6.10 -> V6.20 ------------------------------ ************************ IMPORTANT!! ************************** This is an "experimental/development" update. It is designed to be used by people who have got WinPack V6.10 working totally successfully and who want to try something new. IT IS NOT FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH V6.10! There aren't any "magic" fixes in it - problems aren't going to disappear that aren't mentioned in the notes below. Some of the changes are new features not only to WinPack, but to AX25 packet in general, to understand them you must read the help or you won't even be able to understand what some of these features do! *************************************************************** Most of the changes listed below are explained by reference to the relevant sections of the help file. Please read them! 1. Support for Viewers for messages and for 7plus files. THIS IS A MAJOR NEW FEATURE. See "Help Contents", "Viewers". Also a Viewers editor is available from the File menu. 2. Host mode support for TF2.7b and WA8DED. THIS IS A MAJOR NEW FEATURE. See "Help Contents", "Host Mode Support". 3. An extra program - WinpScape - allows you to use Netscape interactively on AX25 packet. THIS IS A MAJOR NEW FEATURE. It is also highly experimental! See WINPSCAP.HLP. 4. Quick reply with auto-quote - for an explanation of this, read a message, press F1 and read the "Quick Reply With Auto-Quote" section. 5. MD2 Password support files included. They are MD2PASS.EXE, MD2PASS.CFG, MD2PASS.TXT and G4IDEMD2.DLL in the directory WINPACK\SCRIPTS\PROGRAMS. 6. The help has been restructured - there is now a separate index window. 7. Extra support for DDE links from other applications - see DDE.TXT. 8. Control keys supported in scripts - see "Help Contents", "How Scripts Work", "Control Characters". Also the character to tell the scripts SEND command not to send a at the end of the text has been changed to '~'. 9. SUSPENDREMOTE script command added - see "Help Contents", "How Scripts Work" SUSPENDREMOTE. 10. Support added for using WinZip instead of PKZIP/PKUNZIP. See "Help Contents", "PACKET.INI", "Section [TERMINAL]", ZIP and UNZIP. 11. Outgoing mail now counted before and after every Auto-BBS session, because some servers mess up the outbox count. 12. When WAIT_PROMPT is used in a script, the optional arguments are checked even if a connection doesn't exist - this helps to exit from scripts when a connect to the BBS fails. 13. The "Mail only this session?" prompt can be disabled from the "Mail", "Mail Options" form. 14. Warning if saving a message to file fails. 15. Renumber program - if you put NOCHECK on the command line, it won't attempt to check if WinPack is running. Apparently the way the check is done caused a problem with some versions of Windows NT. 16. If you use FBB compressed forward, the default value for SEND_FQ is now TRUE. See "Help Contents", "PACKET.INI", "Section [FBB]". 17. The '@' is now NOT needed in 'At' selections in the bulls list. 18. If you use TF host mode or BPQ, FBB sync requests will be sent even when a connection is progress. 19. An option added ("Options", "Log Frequency/Power") to easily change the frequency and power used in the auto-log. The defaults are the frequency and power set up in "Options", "Personal/BBS Info", but you can create a file in the WINPACK directory called LOGFREQ.TXT containing extra frequencies and power levels. These will then appear on the "Log Frequency/Power" menu. However, WinPack always reverts to the default frequency and power when the program is started. The required format for the entries in the file is, for example, "432.650MHz/10dBW". 20. An option added to show the FBB unproto beacons being held in memory, waiting for gaps in the list to be filled. This gives an indication of how well you are hearing the beacons. If there are usually a lot of beacons in the buffer, you aren't hearing them very well. If the buffer is always empty, you are either hearing them perfectly, or you aren't hearing them at all! (This option is obviously only available if you use the beacons). 21. If you read a personal message and send a reply, the message status becomes 'R'. 22. "Select A Message To Read" window made bigger. 23. The maximum 7plus part size can be set to 30,000 bytes, previously it was only 10,000. (This is not for use on the UK network! However, some other countries have networks capable of handling 30kb parts.) 24. The Selection List editor now makes a better job of evaluating times input like 1:25 rather than 01:25. 25. A few errors in the help file fixed (but some more probably introduced with all the new features!) 26. Debugging beeps removed when using the Prune or Delete options on the message list. 27. Fixed a problem with right clicking on the sig button - it didn't do what the help said it should do. 28. When reading bulls, after a selection was made, the PgUp, PgDn and Esc keys appeared not to work. 29. Yippee!! For a long time I have had occasional reports from people who use the FBB beacons that they sometimes get duplicate occurrences of the same messages in their list. I knew it only occurred when people heard the beacons both direct and via digi, but I had never been able to reproduce the problem. Totally by accident I managed it. If only someone had given me a proper bug report a year ago... Anyway, I'm confident the problem is now fixed. 30. A corrupted file in the MAIL\RECEIVE directory could stop the personal mail list from loading, the code has now been made more robust. 31. If you used BPQ mode, FBB message beacons would be collected whilst you were connected, but syncs would not be sent. This has now been fixed. 32. A change made to SPEECH.EXE to try and stop it taking the focus from other applications. Roger Barker, G4IDE October 1997