From: MERC::"uunet!ORYANA.PFC.MIT.EDU!BULLETIN" 24-NOV-1992 19:13:50.41 To: galaxy::gleeve CC: Subj: BULLETIN utility. You are about to receive version 2.11 of the PFC BULLETIN. BULLETIN is public domain software. (I will gladly accept recommendations for new features, not for changes that are due to "personal" preference.) If you are running a version of BULLETIN older than 2.11, this version will modify the format of some of the data files. (This will be done automatically when the new version is run). After successful installation, the older versions of these files can be removed. NOTE: Problems can occur if the old version of BULLETIN is run after the data files have been modified. Such a situation is possible on a cluster where each node has installed the executable separately. To help installation, a new command procedure UPGRADE.COM has been included. Read the comments in the file for information on how to use it. As of V2.0, BULLETIN is able to read USENET NEWS via TCP/IP using either CMU, MULTINET, UCX, TWG, or via DECNET. It can also serve as a NEWS gateway for DECNET nodes without direct access to the NEWS server, i.e. a DECNET node without Internet access will be able to read NEWS. NOTE: The following commands can be sent to BULLETIN@ORYANA.PFC.MIT.EDU: SEND ALL [SINCE time] Sends all bulletin files. If SINCE time specified, only files created since that time will be sent. SEND filename Sends the specified file. BUGS Sends a list of the latest bug fixes. HELP or INFO Sends a brief description of BULLETIN. SUBSCRIBE Subscribes to mailing list for upgrade notifications. UNSUBSCRIBE Unsubscribes from mailing list. There is also a documentation file written by Chris Tanner from Chalk River Nuclear Labs which can be used as handout. To obtain this, request the file BULLETIN.DOC. (This does not describe the NEWS reader feature, however.) NOTE: An old bug might have changed the protection on the BULLETIN data files. The protection on all data files (i.e. B*.DAT, *.BULLFIL, and *.BULLDIR) should be (RWED,RWED,,). You will be receiving 21 files (NOT NECESSARILY IN THIS ORDER!): 1) BULLETIN.FOR 2) BULLETIN0.FOR 3) BULLETIN1.FOR 4) BULLETIN2.FOR 5) BULLETIN3.FOR 6) BULLETIN4.FOR 7) BULLETIN5.FOR 8) BULLETIN6.FOR 9) BULLETIN7.FOR 10) BULLETIN8.FOR 11) BULLETIN9.FOR 12) BULLETIN10.FOR 13) BULLETIN11.FOR 14) ALLMACS.MAR 15) BULLCOMS1.HLP 16) BULLCOMS2.HLP 17) BULLET1.COM 18) BULLET2.COM 19) PMDF.COM 20) MX.COM 21) NEWS.COM (They will be identified in the SUBJECT header.) BULLET1.COM and BULLET2.COM are command procedures which when run, will create several small files. After you run them, you can delete them. If you have PMDF at your site, you should also run PMDF.COM. However, this only applies to PMDF V3.2 or earlier, as later versions of PMDF have the necessary interface code for BULLETIN included in it. In that case, or in case you don't have PMDF, you can delete it. The same applies to MX. Then, read AAAREADME.TXT for BULLETN installation instructions. If you are using the news feature, NEWS.COM contains files which pertain to news. NOTE: When creating these files (using the EXTRACT command) from the VMS MAIL utility, you will have to strip off any mail headers that are present, including blank lines. MRL@NERUS.PFC.MIT.EDU V 2.11 Added SET NEWS command. Used for setting a news group or a class of news groups to be stored on disk for quicker access by users (rather than being read by users directly from the server). Can also disable access to a group. Users can set NOTIFY on stored groups. 11/5/92 NEWS command now by default shows only groups which are active. Can show all groups with /ALL command. /STORED and /COUNT are new qualifiers. 11/5/92 Stored news groups are stored with data compression. Normal folders can also be stored that way if set with the SET COMPRESS command. 11/5/92 INDEX command modified to make it more useful. /NEW is now the default, and now only shows folders or groups that have new messages. /SET added to show only folders which have READNEW, SHOWNEW, or BRIEF set, and /SET is the default. 11/5/92 Fixed bug with BROADCAST routines which could cause BULLCP to go into MWAST state. 11/5/92 Modified code which adds BBOARD messages to speed it up when multiple messages are being added. 11/5/92 Folder names can now be up to 44 letters long. 11/5/92 BULL_BBOARD_UPDATE and BULL_NEWS_UPDATE are now continuously translated by BULLCP so that they can be changed dynamically. 11/5/92 BULLCP now is created with reasonable working quotas rather than PQL_ defaults which are usually way too low. 11/5/92 Changed all variables to be long word multiples in order to be more ALPHA compliant (and maybe faster because of it?). 11/5/92 /ROTATE added for read commands to allow reading messages encoded in ROT-13 coding. This is used by some news groups to display messages which could be taken as being offensive (i.e. rec.humor.funny). 11/5/92 Fixed many minor bugs that no one mentioned, so I won't either. 11/5/92 Fixed ADD/BROADCAST/EDIT not working with TPU. 8/13/92 V 2.10 Allow non-digest messages to be added to a folder which has DIGEST set. 8/6/92 Added ADD_ONLY attribute. If a mailing address is present, when messages are added to a folder, they will also be mailed to the address. Users are prevented from using the POST command. Instead, the ADD command will be used if the POST command is entered. One use for this is a local board which is also distributed to non-local users. 8/1/92 Added POST_ONLY attribute This causes the ADD command to mail messages to the mailing address if it is present, rather than add it to the folder. 8/1/92 Fixed several shutdown bugs. 7/23/92 Fixed PMDF broken by V2.09. 6/16/92 Added system logical name BULL_CUSTOM. It is equated to a hex number string. Bit 0 set = need privileges to create folder, 1 set = captive account can write files, 2 set = captive account can use editor. 5/25/92 V 2.09 Allow having more than one database by redefining BULL_DIR. However, only directories that are defined in the list of equivalence names pointed to by the system logical name BULL_DIR_LIST are allowed. See AAREADME.TXT for more info. 5/10/92 GENERAL folder can now be renamed or modified (not deleted). 4/22/92 /FROM, /NOREPLIES, & /NEGATED added to SEARCH and DIRECTORY commands. 3/18/92 Mail routines now use MAIL$ calls for outgoing mail for faster execution. 3/15/92 Changing keypad definitions using initialization file now possible. 3/12/92 Subscribed news groups are now listed in alphabetical order. 3/7/92 V 2.08 Fixed bug which caused missing news groups. See NEWS.TXT for info. 2/25/92 Allow setting local protection on remote folders. 12/12/91 Fixed bug with creation of folder files. If they were deleted after the folder was created, the files that would be created by BULLETIN to replace them (when the folder is selected) would be created with the wrong protection. 12/12/91 Fix problem with MULTINET V3.0 and DECNET/NEWS gateway feature. BULLCP will hang without this fix if there is an attempt to read news via it. 12/9/91 Fix bug that causes incorrect time on news postings after the first post. Display time when reading news messages in local rather than GMT time. 12/8/91 Add 30 second timeout for connecting to nameserver for news. Can be increased up to 99 seconds via defining BULL_NEWS_TIMER. 12/3/91 Allow list of numbers when specifying message numbers for PRINT and FILE commands. 11/27/91 Fixed bugs in BBOARD code: Messages with lines > 255 characters would not be included. Subject line not correctly extracted if next line was simply a To:. (relink PMDF driver if using PMDF for patch to take affect). 11/27/91 V 2.07 NEWS listing now shows the status of the news group, i.e. active, inactive, moderated, or renamed. 10/23/91 Fixed PRINT command so that if a print qualifier (i.e. /QUEUE) is specified, it will cause any pending print jobs to be printed if the qualifier for the pending jobs is different. 10/23/91 Added /NOSIGNATURE qualifier for POST & RESPOND commands. 10/21/91 Fixed error in POST & RESPOND command. If a file was specified on the command line, and /EDIT was specified, the file would be sent even if the user quit out of the edit, rather than exitting (i.e. outputting a file). 10/21/91 Fixed REPLY option in READNEW, as it was possible for users with only read access to a folder to be able to add REPLY messages. 10/10/91 Add REPLY option to READNEW feature when reading messages. Also, really fix the REPLY command, as mentioned in V2.06. 8/11/91 V 2.06 Added code to keep track of which messages have been read a per message basis. Added SEEN & UNSEEN commands. Added /SEEN, /UNSEEN, and /UNMARKED to DIRECTORY, INDEX, READ, and SELECT commands. Modified directory listing to indicate which messages have been SEEN. 7/31/91 Added /NOW to PRINT command. Messages no longer have to be printed one message at a time. It now works identical to VMS MAIL. 7/31/91 Added code to NEWS users when new groups have been created. User will be alerted when selecting a news group that new groups are present, and will be instructed to type NEWS/NEWGROUP in order to see them. 7/31/91 Added /PRINT to DIRECTORY command to allow printing of messages which are found by using the DIRECTORY command. 7/31/91 Modified directory listing display so that the first and last message in the folder are now displayed at the top. Fixed bug which truncated very large news group names. 7/31/91 Added FIRST command to read first message found in folder. 7/31/91 Modified REPLY command for folders associated with mailing lists, so that the reply message to the mailing list rather than adding a local message. 7/31/91 Modified code to correctly store subject headers from BBOARD mail which are more than one line long. Previously, the subject would be truncated. 6/18/91 V 2.05 The MARK code was modified to work with NEWS folders. 6/3/91 Added /FOLDER=(folder,[...]) to the SEARCH command to allow searching more than one folder at a time. 6/13/91 NEWS/SUBSCRIBED listing was fixed. If the list could not fit on a single page, a folder was skipped when the next page was shown. 6/3/91 INDEX was fixed. If it was used with the qualifiers /NEW or /MARK, and the directory listing of a folder was displayed, and then RETURN is entered to skip to the next folder, the directory display of the next folder would be incorrect. 6/3/91 Fixed broadcast bug. If a message was added with /BROADCAST to a remote folder from a node in a cluster which was not the node that BULLCP was running on. The broadcast would appear twice on the cluster. 5/24/91 Added code to alert user if message too large to be fully broadcasted. 5/24/91 Added code to avoid erroneous notifications of new messages for an empty NEWS group. Unlike a similar fix in V2.03 which was due to a bug, this fix may not affect all sites, as it depends on the behavior of the server. 5/22/91 Fixed NEWS to FOLDER feed. A recent change broke it. 5/22/91 Added /EDIT qualifier for MAIL. 5/20/91 Added /HEADER qualifier for LAST, BACK, and CURRENT commands. 5/19/91 Added TWG (Wollongong) interface for NEWS. 5/18/91 Fixed bug which truncated subject headers of messages created when using REPLY and RESPOND to messages which have long subject lines. 5/12/91 V2.04 Added ALWAYS attribute for folders. Any SYSTEM messages in a folder in which ALWAYS has been set will be displayed every time a user logs in, rather than just once. Also, non-SYSTEM messages will be displayed continuously (via whatever mode is set, i.e. READNEW, SHOWNEW, or BRIEF) until it is actually read. 4/29/91 Added capability of controlling the time between updates for BBOARD and NEWS in BULLCP by defining the logical names BULL_BBOARD_UPDATE or BULL_NEWS_UPDATE to the number of minutes of desired time in minutes. 4/27/91 Added /GROUPS= qualifier to all commands which post to NEWS groups. 4/26/91 Fixed bug which prevented SET SHOWNEW or READNEW from working with subscribed news group folders. 4/25/91 V2.03 Added /FOLDER to SHOW USER in order to show the latest message that a user has read in the specified folder. Also added /SINCE and /START (the former for real folders, the latter for news groups). 4/11/91 Fixed logic so that defining BULL_NEWS_ORGANIZATION will override the definition defined in BULLNEWS.INC. 4/10/91 Fixed SEARCH command, as it broke in V2.02 when /EDIT was added to read message commands. There is a missing QUALIFIER EDIT in BULLCOM.CLD for the SEARCH verb. /EDIT now works with SEARCH. 4/9/91 Fixed bug in BULLCP which prevented the DECNET/INTERNET NEWS gateway software from working with UCX. 4/9/91 Fixed bug caused by V2.00 which caused incorrect listing of message during BULL/LOGIN for remote folders. 4/3/91 Fixed bugs which caused erroneous new message notifications for subscribed NEWS groups that were empty. 3/27/91 V 2.02 Include BBOARD support for MX (courtesy of goathunter@wkuvx1.bitnet). Changed BBOARD algorithm so that it is now possible to have only one real BBOARD account, and have all the others be VMS MAIL forwarding entries. See HELP SET BBOARD MORE_INFO for more info (it's been updated). Added hook to allow postings from BULLETIN to a LISTSERV mailing list to use the BBOARD account from it was subscribed to. See HELP SET BBOARD LISTSERV. Fixed many bugs in POST, REPLY, and RESPOND. Fixed /ALL for COPY, PRINT, and EXTRACT when using NEWS groups. Included RMS optimizer procedure for indexed files to optimize BULLNEWS.DAT to speed up NEWS updates. Can be used on other files (in particular BULLINF.DAT) in order to save space. Add /EDIT to BACK, NEXT, LAST, and when entering message number. Modify ADD/REPLY command to local (non-NEWS) folders so if there are new messages present, it doesn't reset the newest message count. Previously, adding a message would reset the user's last read message date to that message in order to avoid notifying the user of new messages due to the user's own message. Fixed code so that when reading new messages, and if READ/EDIT or DELETE/IMMED- IATE IS entered, a carriage return will read the next new message. Previously the wrong message would be displayed. V 2.01 Fixed many bugs associated with USENET NEWS reading feature. Added UCX interface for NEWS. Added signature file for POST and RESPOND messages. Added capability to specify file name for POST, REPLY, and RESPOND. Added the line "In a previous message, wrote:" to the beginning of a message when /EXTRACT is specified Added hook for network mail to run command procedure rather then using VMS MAIL. BULL_MAILER can be defined to point to the procedure, and it is called with the username and subject as the parameters. V 2.00 Added USENET NEWS reading feature. V 1.93 Fixed bug which wouldn't allow a permanent message to be added by a non-privileged user in a remote folder (the folder had been setup to allow permanent messages from non-privileged users, of course). Fixed bug which causes the DELETE command not to delete a SHUTDOWN message without the use of /IMMEDIATE. Fixed the algorithm which prevented duplicate notification of messages in remote folders on different nodes, as duplication was still possible. V 1.92 Fixed bug which causes BULLCP to loop when trying to cleanup a folder which has more than 127 identifiers granted access to a folder. Also correct SHOW FOLDER/FULL, which had a similar problem when trying to display the identifiers. Fix PMDF interface to recognize to recognize PMDF_PROTOCOL. V 1.91 Disallow SPAWN command for CAPTIVE account. Fix MAIL command to correctly allow passing addresses with quotes, i.e. IN%"""MRL@NERUS.PFC.MIT.EDU""". V 1.90 SET NOTIFY now works for remote folders. Avoid generating notification message due to SET NOTIFY flag if the message was broadcasted when added using ADD/BROADCAST. Bug in DIR/SINCE for remote folders fixed. If no new messages were present, it would incorrectly show messages. Added /FF to EXTRACT command to seperate messages in the file with form feeds. Allow specifying CURRENT and LAST when specifying a range of messages for commands that accept a range, i.e. EXTRACT 1-CURRENT, CURRENT-LAST, etc. Open folder files with READONLY when not writing to them in order to avoid changing modification date, which results in unnecessary backups. Modify HELP so that it won't prompt for Subtopic is there is none. Prevent screen from being erased after exiting HELP. Fix bug which causes CREATE/NOTIFY to crash. SET NOTIFY/CLUSTER has been removed. As of VMS V5.2, it is possible to obtain the list of users logged in to all nodes of a cluster, so this qualifier is no long necessary. NOTE: You can delete all the BULL_DIR:*.NOTIFY files, as they are no longer used. BULLETIN now will use the editor specified by the SET EDITOR command within MAIL for editing messages. Typing BACK after typing a DIRECTORY command will now show the previous DIRECTORY display entries rather than reading the previous message. Several bugs related to the MARK command were fixed. Also the software has been optimized so that scanning for MARKed messages should take less time. /EXPIRATION added to DIRECTORY command to show expiration rather than creation date of messages. Any BULLETIN interactive command can be executed at DCL level by typing BULLETIN "command" or BULLETIN "command1;command2;etc.". The CHANGE command has been modified so a range of message can be specified, i.e. /NUMBER=1-10. Also, the code incorrectly misinterpreted /TEXT as meaning to extract the old text message, whereas it should have meant that only the text was to be changed. This prevented a user from specifying that only the text should be changed if that user didn't have editing enabled. This has been fixed. To eliminate confusing, the /TEXT qualifier on the ADD command has been removed (previously it was a synonym for /EXTRACT). SHOW FOLDER/FULL display of access IDs was fixed to correctly display UICs. Removed security hole which occurs if you are using the old method of accessing a remote node via /NODES (it would have required looking a the sources to find, which one installer did and was worried about). Because of this, if you use this old method (i.e. via BULLETIN.COM), the object BULLETIN must be installed in the NCP database pointing to the file BULLETIN.COM, i.e. the command "MCR NCP SET BULLETIN FILE directory:BULLETIN.COM NUMBER 0" must be executed during the system startup. Fixed bug in /LOGIN display when erasing page if terminal is hardcopy. No page would be erased (of course), and the next line outputted would start where the previous line left off, rather than starting on a new line. Added BULLETIN/WIDTH=page_width for users who have BULLETIN/LOGIN in their login procedure before the terminal is known, and whose default page width is larger (i.e. 132) than what the terminals are (i.e. 80). Added BULLETIN/PGFLQUOTA and /WSEXTENT in order to set those quotas for the BULLCP process. Added ATTACH command. Modify SET STRIP so that it saves the date that the message was sent and leaves it at the to of the message. BULLETIN will search BBOARD message headers for a line that starts with "Expires:" or "X-Expires:", followed by a date (DD MMM YYYY or similar). It if finds that line, it will use that date as the expiration date of the message. Added /REPLY to SEARCH command. Modified so that it's possible to abort out of a /SUBJECT or /REPLY search using CTRL-C (previous possible only if searching the text for a string. Also, if you hit CTRL-C at the wrong time, BULLETIN would abort totally rather than just aborting the search). Added /SEARCH= /SUBJ= and /REPLY to the DIRECTORY command. Basically this is combining the DIRECTORY and SEARCH commands. Fixed design flaw which allowed the following to occur: If a folder is a remote system folder, when BULLETIN/LOGIN was executed, the same messages might be displayed on both the local and remote nodes. BULLETIN now will know that the user has seen the message on one node and will not display it if that user logs in on the other node. Optimized code which caused slow display of new messages when executing BULLETIN/LOGIN without /REVERSE for a remote folder. Added /PERMANENT to SET NOTIFY, SHOWNEW, BRIEF, and READNEW. The affect is that users will not be allowed to change the setting. The main intent here was to allow the removal ofthe permanent setting of SHOWNEW from the GENERAL folder. Fixed bug which would cause a SYSTEM message not to be shown if SET BRIEF was selected for that folder, and a non-SYSTEM message was also present. Added SET CONTINUOUS_BRIEF. This causes the SET BRIEF setting to show that there are unread new messages every time BULLETIN/LOGIN is executed, rather than just the one time. The BRIEF notification code has also been optimized so that it'll take less time to notify you of new messages. A major bug was fixed which was introduced in previous mods to speed up BULLETIN/LOGIN. The effect is that no notifications will appear for certain folders via BULLETIN/LOGIN. This would only happen if a folder was removed at some time.