Changes from Version 1.7.3 to 1.7.4 -- 25 May 2000

(a) Added wildcards to search string matching.  Thanks to Joan J.
Ordinas for the code.

(b) When you right-mouse on foxynews.exe and select Properties, you
can now see a tab with version and copyright information.  Thanks to
Susanne Kruse for telling me how to do that.


Changes from Version 1.7.2 to 1.7.3 -- 5 May 2000

(a) Fixed Y2K problem (or, rather, a problem with news clients that have
Y2K problems):  if someone else's news client posts an article with a
date earlier than 1970, Foxynews adds 100 to the year.

(b) Percentage complete for operations that take any appreciable time
is now displayed numerically as well as graphically in the toolbar.

NOTE: When Foxynews is extracting multiple attachments from an article,
the percentage displayed will be the percentage of the whole article,
not the percentage of the individual attachment.


Changes from Version 1.7.1 to 1.7.2 -- 18 December 1999

(a) Now sorts the newsgroup names on the "list newsgroups" command.
An experiment with dynamic allocation of string arrays and sorting
that I'll be using to sort articles by name, etc.


Changes from Version 1.7 to 1.7.1 -- 14 October 1999

(a) Minor bugfix eliminates a spurious error message when you have
no news server data.

(b) F1 works as well as Help/Help topics


Changes from Version 1.6 to 1.7 -- 28 September 1999

(a) Replaced all the documentation files except this one with a Windows
Help file.


Changes from Version 1.5 to 1.6 -- 26 September 1999

(a) Fixed the bug where Foxynews would only extract half the binary
attachments from some multi-attachment files.

(b) Fixed a bug that would sometimes create zero-length filenames and
spurious duplicate files.

(c) Added a far more serious scan of filenames.  Now Foxynews should
never fail to create a file, no matter what name it's given.

(d) Decided that maybe spaces in filenames weren't that bad.  Stopped
replacing them with underscores.

(e) Changed the name of duplicate files from foo(1).jpg, etc. to
foo.1.jpg, etc.


Changes from Version 1.4 to 1.5 -- 25 September 1999

(a) Added login/password capability for those news servers that require
it.

(b) Added URL extraction.  But watch out for spam!

(c) Fixed a bug that would crash Windows if you made too many mistakes
in entering data.  That seemed entirely too severe a punishment ;-)

(d) Fixed a bug that had been annoying me from the very beginning: when
you resized the window, it used to make the border of the Headers window
just a trifle too big on the right-hand side and bottom.

(e) Moved login and password out of the Options menu.  If you check the
"Server requires login" box, Foxynews will prompt you when it needs
the information.


Changes from Version 1.31 to 1.4 -- 24 September 1999

(a) Considerable improvement in the way Foxynews handles non-US-ASCII
character sets in subject lines, sender names, and file names.  It now
supports binary-encoded characters as well as quoted-printable, and it
handles Unicode (ISO-8859-1), Asian (ISO-2022), and Russian (KOI8-R)
character sets.

NOTE: If you don't have fonts on your machine that support those
character sets, expect to see something less comprehensible than you
might wish.

(b) Added an option not to save duplicate files (on the Preferences menu).


Changes from Version 1.31 to 1.31a -- 23 September 1999

(a) Fixed the problem where the news host name would invalidate after you
came back from "list newsgroups".

(b) Partway there on adding logins.  That's why it's not a real release
number.

(c) Added the option to make or not make a log of downloaded files.


Changes from Version 1.3 to 1.31 -- 22 September 1999

(a) Moved the progress bar into the status bar.

(b) When you search for matching files to extract attachments, Foxynews
no longer checks the server for new articles, figuring that you probably
just listed the headers.  In the past, this sometimes led to an article
being downloaded that wasn't displayed on the list of headers.

NOTE: Always select "Show Headers" before you get select "Get Articles".

(c) Creates a log file in the "Attachments\<newsgroup>" folder that
shows information about all the files that were extracted: sender,
subject, date posted, file name, and date and time downloaded.

(d) Fixed the GMT bug.  Now days end at midnight local time instead of
midnight GMT.

(e) Added a check for the "Stop" button when listing newsgroups so that
users who have made a horrible mistake and are now receiving tens of
thousands of newsgroup descriptions can now rectify their mistake more
gracefully.

(f) Now displays a correct message when authorization fails, but I
haven't written the code to get login and password yet.


Changes from Version 1.2 to 1.3 -- 21 September 1999

(a) I made the last change (I promise!) to the log file format.  You MUST
delete all log files (e.g., povray.binaries.images.log) that you have
created in versions 1.2 and earlier.

(b) Foxynews now handles quoted-printable strings in subject lines and
sender lines.  You can't see the sender lines yet.  I'll start showing
them when the display doesn't look so awful when you show them.

(c) I made a change that speeds up the time it takes to display headers
some, but I'm still not satisfied with how long it takes to display all
the headers of newsgroups with thousands of articles.

(d) Foxynews now deletes extraneous tab characters found in subject lines
and sender names.

(e) Complete restructuring of the state machine.  Now all states are
"pure" in that they only handle one kind of event.  I also got rid of
some global variables.  When I did this, some small, mysterious,
hard-to-repeat bugs disappeared.

(f) Made the notifications in the status bar more informative, including,
at the suggestion of Bill Schnackenberg, displaying how many articles
matched the search string and how many attachments were downloaded.

(g) This time I *really* fixed the "bouncing highlights" problem.


Changes from Version 1.1 to 1.2 -- 19 September 1999

(a) You may now enter an IP address (e.g., 204.213.191.228) instead of a
hostname (e.g., news.povray.org) in the "News Server Name" line.

(b) Foxynews now uses a faster method of getting newsgroup headers if
the news server supports that method.  This is completely transparent
to the user, except that the status bar displays "Reading new headers
(slow method)" or "Reading new headers (fast method)".  If your news
server doesn't support the fast method, there's nothing I can do about
it.  You could ask your ISP to get more up-to-date news server software.

(c) The log file format was changed.  The "boundary" string no longer appears
in a line following the subject line.  This means you MUST delete all log
files (e.g., povray.binaries.images.log) that you have created in version
1.1 and earlier.

(d) Foxynews now displays an icon in the top line and on the minimized
window on the toolbar.

(e) Against my better judgment, I put in "list newsgroups".

(f) I fixed the "bouncing highlights" problem when downloading files whose
headers have similar subjects.

(g) I added menu items for "List headers by subject", "List headers by
date" and "List articles by article number", but not the code to implement
it yet.

(h) I fixed the problem of the selected news server name disappearing when
you click on the news server drop-down list.


KNOWN BUGS AND DEFICIENCIES:

(1) When you extract attachments, Foxynews reads headers from the news
server, even though it doesn't display them.  This can lead to an
article being downloaded even though it doesn't appear in the window.
I'll fix it by not updating the headers when you select "Get Articles".
RATIONALE: It's better to require the user to list the headers before
getting articles than to have a user inadvertently download a file that
might be objectionable because of size or content.
STATUS: Fixed in Version 1.3.1

(2) Foxynews has no ability to combine files split across multiple articles.
STATUS: Open

(3) Listing headers is still way too slow when there are more than a few
hundred headers to be listed.
STATUS: Open, researching the list box control, alternate uses of the
plain edit control, and EM_STREAMIN.

(4) Listing the sender makes the header display look bad.  Need to keep
the columnar arrangement when the sender is listed.
STATUS: Open, researching the list box control.

(5) Foxynews doesn't give login and password when servers require it.
STATUS: Fixed in 1.5

(6) Headers are displayed only in numerical order.  Foxynews can't sort
the header display by subject, sender, etc.
STATUS: Open, solution postponed until a decision is made on whether or
not to use a listbox control.

(7) When you select a news server and hit "List Headers" the newsgroup
name retains the mouse focus, so when the popup goes away, the list
of news servers is sometimes invalidated.  Need a way to get the
mouse focus off that window.
STATUS: Fixed in 1.31a,

(8) In order to make speed acceptable, I'm now convinced I'm going to
have to eliminate the rich edit window and use a custom text window in
which I have handlers for all the events and a way to buffer lists
larger than 32K.
STATUS: Open.

CRAZY IDEAS (email crispen@hiwaay.net if you like any of them):

(1) Extract URLs from postings -- probably get a lot of spam URLs, but if
you set your search string properly, it might be worthwhile.
STATUS: Added in 1.5

(2) Spam blocking -- filter out posts that are crossposted to more than
a few newsgroups.  Maintaining a list of known spam addresses won't
get very many of them: most spammers hit and run.
STATUS: Open.

(3) Make the download log one file, and make it an HTML file.
STATUS: Open.

