The following list of changes is more or less in the order that I made them, 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 V6.30 -> V6.40 ------------------------------ With the exception of "links", all the following changes are as result of users' requests, or users' reports of problems. 1. WinPack now supports SV2AGW's Packet Engine. See WINPAGW.TXT for more information. This is a major change. The packet engine supports a large number of different types of hardware, and it means that WinPack can now be used in multi-channel mode with most popular types of TNC. Please note - the Packet Engine is a Win95 application. 2. Many internal changes made to stop WinPack taking the focus from other applications and to get rid of the problem which caused WinPack to sometimes not be accessible using Alt+Tab. WinPack should not now take the focus from other applications. BUT some servers might - I only have have control over servers that I have written! The old version of REQDIR would grab the focus, so a new version is supplied with this update. If you still find that WinPack grabs the focus, please try it without any third party servers that you might be using, to see if they are causing the problem. NOTE - WinPack will grab the focus if you enable "Restore On Beep" - that is by design, because the idea of "Restore On Beep" is to alert you to the fact that something is happening in WinPack. 3. As part of the above, all speech is now handled internally, in previous versions a copy of SPEECH.EXE was lauched every time speech was needed. SPEECH.EXE is not now used by WinPack, but some third party add-ons may be using it, or may use it in the future, so don't delete it. 4. WinPack speech now supports the "PLAYTUNE RANDOM" script command. which was previously only supported by a special version of SPEECH.EXE. To use this command, you must create a sub-directory of the WINPACK\WAV directory called RANDOM and put in it some MIDI or WAV files. "PLAYTUNE RANDOM" will randomly pick one of these files and play it. E.g. you might put in your BBS.TXT script:- SEND C $BBS WAITCON PLAYTUNE RANDOM etc. A new option "Stop Tune" has been added to the Action menu, to allow you to stop any tune that is being played. Also, there is new STOPTUNE script command - in the above example you might want to put STOPTUNE in BBSBYE.TXT, so the music stops when the auto BBS session ends. (BBSBYE.TXT is a script that is automatically run at the end of an auto BBS session.) 5. A facility added to automatically send messages from "links" embedded in normal bulletins or personal messages. These text links are also supported by the AX25MAIL protocol which can be used with Netscape. Please read WINPLINK.TXT for detailed information about how text links work, and AX25MAIL.TXT for details of the changes that have been made to the AX25MAIL protocol. 6. To help in correctly inserting links in messages, there is a Link Editor. This is accessed with the new "Insert Link" option on the edit window pop-up menu. To make room for this option, the "Unquote" option has been removed - I don't think it was ever used, but please let me know if you used it. 7. The various status windows, that pop up during auto BBS sessions, can now be permanently positioned anywhere on the screen. Just drag them to where you want them and the position is saved between WinPack sessions. The status windows also have a small button on the left of their caption bar. If you click the button the window is reduced to just a caption bar. (Another click restores it). The size settings are also saved between sessions. The old FORMS_AT_TOP setting in PACKET.INI is no longer used. PLEASE NOTE - if you position any of the status windows so they are partially off the edges of the main WinPack window, then they will move back onto the window if it is resized. This is by design. 8. A problem fixed in LOC.EXE which caused inaccurate results when used in countries where ',' is used as the decimal separator. 9. Write A Message will now allow message type 'T'. To enable it, you need to edit PACKET.INI, look for T_ALLOWED in the [MAIL] section and change FALSE to TRUE. PLEASE NOTE - type 'T' messages are not allowed in the UK. 10. There was a slight probem with messages containing HTML having line breaks inserted if the title didn't contain the "^.HTM" trigger. This is now fixed. 11. The tags and are now ignored if they are in a string literal when stripping HTML out of a message for viewing. This is a very obscure problem, but it occurred with one HTML bulletin. 12. It was previously possible with some html bulls on some BBSs to miss the tag because WinPack discarded the first five lines. Usually these would be header lines, but on some BBSs the fifth line was the first line of the bull. This is now fixed. 13. Tokens are now substituted in shortcuts. For example, you can put something like F4=De $MYCALL $HH:$NN UTC >>^M in the [SHORTCUTS] section of PACKET.INI and use Ctrl+F4 as an end of over key. 14. The maximum length for a shortcut has been changed from 100 to 500 chars. 15. The REQFIL server now looks in HTMLIB for any files that aren't found in the PUB directory. This is to make it easy to request image files from people who send HTML bulls. (This new REQFIL can be used with older versions of WinPack.) 16. A problem fixed which occurred when using the FBB unproto headers, if the type of a message was a number. This was shown up by a corrupt message with the type set to '8', which seemed to manage to make its way all round the world! 17. Sending a 7plus reply to a personal message did not set the message status to 'R' in the "Read Mail" list. This is now fixed. 18. An Auto Viewers option now available, which stops WinPack asking "View this file using..." This is on the "Options", "Viewers..." sub-menu. 19. A Scan For HTML option now available. This is on the "Options", "Viewers..." sub-menu. If it is checked (the default) then all messages are scanned for HTML, and the viewer is called if any HTML content is found - that is how WinPack V6.3 behaved. If it isn't checked, then the ^.HTM trigger in the message title is used to decide if a file contains HTML - that is how WinPack V6.2 behaved. Which is best depends on how the use of HTML develops. The V6.2 technique is not so good when people send replies to HTML bulls and leave the ^.HTM in the title, even though their reply doesn't contain HTML. The V6.3 technique is not so good when people put a small amount of HTML in a message, but the main content of the message is not HTML. 20. A new DDE item has been added - labMonDDE. See DDE.TXT for more information. Note the comment about it being disabled be default! 21. In response to requests to provide a facility to send the same message to several recipients, a "Copy A Message" option has been added to the Mail menu. It behaves like "Edit A Message", except that the original message is left in the mail queue and the addressee information is blanked when the mail header form is loaded. All you have to do is input the recipient information for the copy, click "Ok", then, when the copied message appears, click the rocket button or select "Send" from the edit window pop-up menu. I appreciate that this only allows one copy to be made at a time. The other alternative was to make it possible to select multiple recipients from the address book, but I thought that might be a step backwards in ease of use for the majority of users who would never need the facility. (Please note that WinPack already has support for mailing lists.) 22. The text sent when someone disconnects from your system by using /BYE has been put in a file called BYE.TXT, so you can alter it. The default is the normal disconnect text of "Thank you for calling, and 73 from $1STNAME, $MYCALL...". Also, purely for fun (What! Fun on Packet?? :-) you can now create several different versions of both the BYE text and also of the TALK text. Besides BYE.TXT and TALK.TXT, you can have BYE1.TXT, BYE2.TXT, TALK1.TXT, TALK2.TXT... up to BYE9.TXT and TALK9.TXT. If WinPack finds that more than one file is available, it will select one at random whenever BYE text or TALK text is needed. 23. Two new tokens added - $CONNECTED_CALLSIGN and $CONNECTED_NAME. These are mainly for use in CTEXT in BPQ or TF host mode, for putting in BYE_TEXT, and for putting in shortcuts which can be used in live connections to other stations. $CONNECTED_CALLSIGN will show the same information as is shown in the bottom left corner of the screen. NOTE - if you connect via a node, this can be wrong! $CONNECTED_NAME is obtained by looking up the connected callsign in the address book. If it can't be found, the default is nothing, but a default can be set by editing the NO_CONNECTED_NAME parameter in the [TERMINAL] section of PACKET.INI. 24. Because the connected callsign that WinPack displays in the bottom left corner of the screen can sometimes be wrong, particularly for outgoing connects via a node, it can now be changed by right clicking on it. 25. The maximum value of the CPS bar graph, displayed during Yapp and compressed mail transfers, can now be changed by right clicking on it. 26. The maximum length in WinPack for a message title has always been 30 characters. I have had a report of this restriction causing problems when sending mail via a REDIST server, so the maximum length can now be changed by editing TITLE_LENGTH in the [MAIL] section of PACKET.INI. 27. It is now possible to put gaps between the buttons on the button bar by editing BUTTON_GAP in the [TERMINAL] section of PACKET.INI. The units are screen pixels. The default setting is 0, but this gives a slightly more obvious black line between the buttons than previous versions of WinPack. Putting BUTTON_GAP=-1 gives exactly the same appearance as previous versions. 28. I have been asked by a few people to change the icons on the button bar with the black crosses on them. Either on the grounds of ugliness, or because the difference between the active and inactive states is not very obvious. Unfortunately, when god was handing out artistic talent, I was very near the end of the queue, so the existing icons are as good as you're going to get from me! However, I am sure that some users will be able to improve on the icons themselves, so all the icons for all the buttons are supplied with this update, and can be edited as required. They are in a subdirectory of the main WINPACK directory called ICONS. It should be obvious from the names wihch icon belongs to which button. When WinPack starts, it now loads the icons from that directory, if they exist, and uses them to replace the default ones. Perhaps someone will be able to produce a really nice collection and send them out on packet - they zip up into only a few kb. The "icons" can be either icons created with an icon editor (file extension .ICO) or small bitmap files (file extension .BMP). For example, if you want to create a bitmap file to appear on the bulls button, call it BULL.BMP. If you use bitmaps, don't use a colour depth greater than 256 colours. 29. If you are using Win95 and you right click in the edit window, you now get the WinPack pop-up menu with the first right click. With previous versions, the Win95 default pop-up menu for text boxes appeared with the first click and you had to click again to get WinPack's own pop-up menu. (If you want it to behave as it did previously, then edit PACKET.INI, look for RIGHT_CLICK_WIN95 in the [TERMINAL] section and change it from FALSE to TRUE.) 30. If you run WinPack in telephone modem mode, by using the "/modem" command line switch, the comms settings are now saved separately to those used when not in modem mode. This makes it easier to switch between using a modem and using a TNC. 31. In TF and TFEMU host modes, the virtual TNC now has a new parameter - BADDRESS (beacon address) - which allows BTEXT to be sent to an address other than UNPROTO. This has been done because many users will need to set UNPROTO to their BBS callsign in order to collect the FBB message headers, and beacons are better sent to a more conventional address, such as CQ, BEACON, etc. BADDRESS defaults to UNPROTO unless set to something different. 32. Changing the setting for BBS_UNPROTO, which used to have to be done by editing PACKET.INI, can now be done from the "Mail Options" window. 33. Extra buttons can be added to the button bar, which are linked to "Extras". To do this you add a "BUTTON=" line to the XTR file which starts the Extra. For example, to add a button to ALARM.XTR you could put:- Start Alarms $WINP_PATH\ALARM.EXE False True BUTTON=$WINP_PATH\ICONS\CLOCK.ICO This will add a button and use an icon for it called CLOCK.ICO in your ICONS directory. (I have supplied CLOCK.ICO with this upgrade, to allow you to test out this new facility.) The title line in the XTR file, in this case "Start Alarms", is used as the tooltip for the button. The picture file can be either an icon file (file extension .ICO) or a bitmap file (file extension .BMP). If you don't want an icon on the button, there is room for only about two letters as a text caption. To specify a text caption you would put, for example:- BUTTON="SA" 34. A minor problem fixed in WinpScape that could result in it closing down with an "Out of memory" error message. 35. A problem fixed that could result in WinPack displaying text twice if an add-on program was running that used a DDE link. 36. In previous versions of WinPack, scripts timed out if they were stuck at the same step for five minutes. The timeout can now be altered by means of the new TIMEOUT script key word. 37. UNINSTAL.TXT is included in the update, which explains how to uninstall WinPack. 38. The following documentation files, which were previously in the main WINPACK directory, are now in the WINPACK\DOCS directory - CHANGES.TXT, LICENCE.TXT, README.TXT, WINPACK.TXT. 39. The line of text that the ACK server puts in its messages can now be configured in ACK.INI. This was requested so that people who use text to HTML converters can now stop ACK messages being converted to HTML. 40. A problem fixed which would very occasionally result in compressed forwarding failing with the error message "* An error occurred encoding the message *". 41. Year 2000 ------------- (a) When WinPack uses compressed download, it extracts the date of the message from the first R: line. Current versions of FBB will put three digits in the R: line for the year 2000 onwards. 1 minute past midnight on 1st Jan 2000 is R:1000101/0001. The year is shown as 100 ^^^ WinPack will now extract the date correctly from an R: line with that format. (b) I have put four digits in the year in the date on the caption bar. I know of no other Y2000 issues that affect WinPack, I have run it on test with the year set to 2000 and it works ok. If you know of any Y2000 problems that WinPack will definitely have, please let me know. (NOTE - problems that WinPack will have, not problems that your PC may have!) 42. A "Sync Request" option added to the Action menu, with a shortcut of Shift+F5. This provides an internal command to manually send an FBB sync, the old method of using F5 (which is still available) relied on running a script. For a list of the changes that were made between WinPack V6.10 and V6.30, please see CH610630.TXT. Roger Barker, G4IDE April 1998