[Dialog] New newsreader available for download
Marcus Mönnig
After almost two years of development and lots of closed alpha and beta
testing I am very happy to announce the first version of "40tude Dialog", a
new Windows news- and mailclient, available as freeware for private users
and as shareware for commercial users.
Dialog supports multiple servers, identities and simultaneous connections
to newsservers and internally works with Unicode, supporting most
characters sets. It combines a modern and intuitive GUI with
offline-capabilities, email support and a powerful message editor.
If you want to know more about Dialog's features or would like to download
it and give it a try, please visit http://www.40tude.com/dialog/.
The current version is 2.0.1.1, which is Beta 23, the first public beta
release.
Best regards,
Marcus Mönnig
--
Marcus Mönnig
No replies in private e-mail, please, unless explicitly requested!
David B
> If you want to know more about Dialog's features or would like to download
> it and give it a try, please visit http://www.40tude.com/dialog/.
Very impressive, from my first impressions. Abolutely *loads* of options,
this thing's going to take a while to work out ;-) Great effort, I
especially like the option to import Xnews (and Agent) serer settings
automatically - very nice touch. One tiny thing though - on these dialogs,
it should be written as 'Xnews', not 'XNews'.
I'll contine playing with this for a while, and try to post a few more
thoughts later on over the weekend.
--
David B
da...@davidbreach.co.uk
J.B. Moreno
> internally works with Unicode
How does it deal with the dk.test.utf8-æøå newsgroup?
--
JBM
"Your depression will be added to my own" -- Marvin of Borg
Marcus Mönnig
>> internally works with Unicode
>
> How does it deal with the dk.test.utf8-æøå newsgroup?
I never saw that group, but I assume this is about utf-8 in group names and
possibly about utf-8 as the default header encoding as it is said in
usefor?
Currently, Dialog does not support utf-8 in group names and expects 7 bit
only, but it's on my list for one of the next releases and is not too
difficult to add.
Marcus
Paul Batchie
> If you want to know more about Dialog's features or would like to download
> it and give it a try, please visit http://www.40tude.com/dialog/.
Very impressive. But mine keeps getting "illegal From address"
from the server, though it's specced correctly.
--
Paul Batchie
Marcus Mönnig
> Very impressive. But mine keeps getting "illegal From address"
> from the server, though it's specced correctly.
Just to make sure: In the composition window, click on the "All headers"
tab. What does it say in the "Your name" and "Posting email address" field?
You might want to try to send me an email, so I can take a look at the
header Dialog generated.
Marcus Mönnig
> Currently, Dialog does not support utf-8 in group names and expects 7 bit
> only, but it's on my list for one of the next releases and is not too
> difficult to add.
I should add that Dialog handles 8 bit in newsgroups name just fine, but
simply does not handle it as utf-8.
Paul Batchie
>> mine keeps getting "illegal From address"
>> from the server, though it's specced correctly.
>
> Just to make sure: In the composition window, click on the "All headers"
> tab. What does it say in the "Your name" and "Posting email address" field?
>
> You might want to try to send me an email, so I can take a look at the
> header Dialog generated.
Whoops - sorry, my proxy was changing fields on the fly. Not
Dialog's fault at all. All seems well now.
--
Paul Batchie
John De Hoog
> Dialog supports multiple servers, identities and simultaneous connections
> to newsservers and internally works with Unicode, supporting most
> characters sets. It combines a modern and intuitive GUI with
> offline-capabilities, email support and a powerful message editor.
>
> If you want to know more about Dialog's features or would like to download
>
> it and give it a try, please visit http://www.40tude.com/dialog/.
Thank you for providing this. As you can see in the first line above, it
fills a real need that other programs have ignored.
When I use it with Japanese groups, it generally displays them fine, but an
"out of range" error screen is displayed each time it encounters Japanese
iso-2022-jp. I hope this is fixed in a subsequent version. Also, is there a
way to have mail checked periodically?
--
John De Hoog
http://dehoog.org
Matthias Wallner
>
> After almost two years of development and lots of closed alpha and beta
> testing I am very happy to announce the first version of "40tude Dialog", a
> new Windows news- and mailclient, available as freeware for private users
> and as shareware for commercial users.
looks very interesting!
thanks for the tip
but i have a small problem with it. it ignores the Reply-To header. (or i'm
to stupid to set it ;)
in the post message dialogue i can see the reply to header in the upper
right of the form and its in the "All Headers" tab, but it is not in the
post.
--
mfg, Matthias Wallner
Bitte Antworten nur in die Newsgroup.
Marcus Mönnig
> but i have a small problem with it. it ignores the Reply-To header. (or i'm
> to stupid to set it ;)
> in the post message dialogue i can see the reply to header in the upper
> right of the form and its in the "All Headers" tab, but it is not in the
> post.
It's a bug. The Reply-To header is not set in outgoing messages. I'll fix
this for the next release.
Marcus Mönnig
> When I use it with Japanese groups, it generally displays them fine, but an
> "out of range" error screen is displayed each time it encounters Japanese
> iso-2022-jp. I hope this is fixed in a subsequent version. Also, is there a
> way to have mail checked periodically?
Would you be so kind and email me the dialog_err.log from the installation
directory and let me know which group you get the error with? Thanks.
Tattoo Vampire
> After almost two years of development and lots of closed alpha and beta
> testing I am very happy to announce the first version of "40tude Dialog", a
> new Windows news- and mailclient, available as freeware for private users
> and as shareware for commercial users.
> Dialog supports multiple servers, identities and simultaneous connections
> to newsservers and internally works with Unicode, supporting most
> characters sets. It combines a modern and intuitive GUI with
> offline-capabilities, email support and a powerful message editor.
> If you want to know more about Dialog's features or would like to download
> it and give it a try, please visit http://www.40tude.com/dialog/.
> The current version is 2.0.1.1, which is Beta 23, the first public beta
> release.
VERY nice program, although it will take me a while to figure out all the
options. :-)
I've noted that if you switch to three-pane layout, if you resize the panes
these settings don't "stick" between sessions, so for now I'm running
Dialog with its Xnews-like layout.
The tagline manager is a nice touch, although I can't seem to get it to
work.
Scoring and filtering capabilities are quite impressive.
--
[tv]
...The plural of spouse is spice.
Note antispam measures in address if replying via email
Jim Crowther
>Matthias Wallner wrote in <annmcl$fkjah$1...@ID-117602.news.dfncis.de>:
>
>> but i have a small problem with it. it ignores the Reply-To header. (or i'm
>> to stupid to set it ;)
>> in the post message dialogue i can see the reply to header in the upper
>> right of the form and its in the "All Headers" tab, but it is not in the
>> post.
>
>It's a bug. The Reply-To header is not set in outgoing messages. I'll
>fix this for the next release.
Let me know when that is. I'm not going out bare-assed on UseNet
without that fundamental.
--
Jim Crowther "It's MY computer" (tm)
OEnemy tamed by OE-quotefix: <http://jump.to/oe-quotefix>
J.B. Moreno
> J.B. Moreno wrote in <1fjl9pq.14duoy46sq4p8N%pl...@newsreaders.com>:
>
> >> internally works with Unicode
> >
> > How does it deal with the dk.test.utf8-æøå newsgroup?
>
> I never saw that group, but I assume this is about utf-8 in group names and
> possibly about utf-8 as the default header encoding as it is said in
> usefor?
Yep.
> Currently, Dialog does not support utf-8 in group names and expects 7 bit
> only, but it's on my list for one of the next releases and is not too
> difficult to add.
I'm not too concerned with the display, figuring that'll get there
eventually as long as the bits are left alone -- what does it do when
someone tries to read/post to such a group (if you don't have access to
a server that carries the group, just email me).
greg andruk
> If you want to know more about Dialog's features or would like to download
> it and give it a try, please visit http://www.40tude.com/dialog/.
Now here's something you don't see every day, a Windows newsreader that
doesn't suck.
It looks like you've picked up on the important details that tend to get
overlooked. Nice work!
°Mike°
Marcus Mönnig scrawled:
Why do the full headers show my 'From' field as
From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?=B0Mike=B0?="
?
--
______
°Mike°
¯¯¯¯¯¯
--
______
°Mike°
¯¯¯¯¯¯
those who know me have no need of my name
>I should add that Dialog handles 8 bit in newsgroups name just fine,
it selects the appropriate character set based on the hierarchy?
--
bringing you boring signatures for 17 years
greg andruk
> Why do the full headers show my 'From' field as
> From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?=B0Mike=B0?="
> ?
That's how MIME encodes non-ASCII text. Any standards-compliant newsreader
will display your little circles just fine.
Marcus Mönnig
<m1fzvkz...@usa.net>:
>>I should add that Dialog handles 8 bit in newsgroups name just fine,
>
> it selects the appropriate character set based on the hierarchy?
It tries to find the default charset for articles with none defined based
on customizable regular expressions and if that doesn't work, it does an
educated guess based on charsets used in encoded words. The default charset
is a per-group setting.
J.B. Moreno
> those who know me have no need of my name wrote in
> <m1fzvkz...@usa.net>:
>
> >>I should add that Dialog handles 8 bit in newsgroups name just fine,
> >
> > it selects the appropriate character set based on the hierarchy?
>
> It tries to find the default charset for articles with none defined based
> on customizable regular expressions and if that doesn't work, it does an
> educated guess based on charsets used in encoded words. The default charset
> is a per-group setting.
A discussion on USEFOR lead to Andrew Gierth examining his (Supernews)
spool, and that showed that first checking for valid UTF8 is nearly
infallible -- less than 1 out of every 20,000 articles was a false
positive.
Timothy Luders
>
> After almost two years of development and lots of closed alpha and beta
> testing I am very happy to announce the first version of "40tude Dialog", a
> new Windows news- and mailclient, available as freeware for private users
> and as shareware for commercial users.
>
In the HelpFile you refer to this link:
Perl-documentation for regular expressions can be found at:
http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local/doc/manual/html/pod/perlre.html
The site requests that it be changed to:
www.cpan.org/doc/manual/html/pod/perlre.html
Your program looks interesting.
T
Timothy Luders
°Mike°
in message <5bceb6cc2c4f25...@40tude.net>
greg andruk scrawled:
So does that mean that 40tude is non-standards compliant?
I have used O.E., Agent (& Free Agent), Xnews, WinVN, Gravity
amongst others, and non of them display this anomaly.
--
______
°Mike°
¯¯¯¯¯¯
greg andruk
It only means that when you show the full headers, you are being shown the
literal raw headers instead of the formatted version of From: you still see
in the window margin. Hm, that's a nice touch, you can see how the header
was transmitted and what it represents at the same time.
°Mike°
in message <bb511f29e3...@meowing.net>
greg andruk scrawled:
Aha, I see. Thank you.
--
______
°Mike°
¯¯¯¯¯¯
Mike Buckler
horizontal separator with the subject line between the message pane and
the two windows above. The default color is red which changes to black
once the message has been read.
Mike
Tekguru (Daron Brewood)
news:d7763a877c...@40tude.com:
> Marcus Mönnig wrote in <6637ee9227...@40tude.com>:
> I should add that Dialog handles 8 bit in newsgroups name just fine,
> but simply does not handle it as utf-8.
Hi Marcus, off topic to the above, but a few comments if I may. Yesterday I
decided to give Dialog a go and was enjoying working with it but noticed
the following problems:
- Using zoomed mode there seemed no way to use the keyboard to enter a
newsroup.
- I use Hamster (currently with XNews) to bring my messages in, and
therefore as soon as Dialog boots I wish it to automatically download the
new messages. I tried to find the option for this but could not.
- Testing had to stop at that point as while reading a message I right
clicked to breing up properties and the program locked up solidly,
appearing the make the screen flicker very rapidly. At this point I had to
use End Task to stop it running. On restarting all the newsgroup config
data, list of groups, etc had been trashed. I tried to use the options to
get a new list of groups but nothing.
At this point I gave up. Lookis like it will certainly be powerful in the
future though. Goods luck with it's development.
--
Tekguru
ICQ: 35431363
*The* UK Pocket PC Site: http://www.tekguru.co.uk
Mike Buckler
Mike
Matthias Wallner
> It's a bug. The Reply-To header is not set in outgoing messages. I'll fix
> this for the next release.
thanks
btw: is it possible to arrange groups in folder (like in xNews; picture is
here: http://xnews.newsguy.com/xnews1.png )?
i treies to drag'n'drop them in a folder but they just went up or down in
the list.
Marcus Mönnig
> A discussion on USEFOR lead to Andrew Gierth examining his (Supernews)
> spool, and that showed that first checking for valid UTF8 is nearly
> infallible -- less than 1 out of every 20,000 articles was a false
> positive.
And how many positive did he find?
Marcus Mönnig
<Xns929F5245EB7C4te...@127.0.0.1>:
> - Using zoomed mode there seemed no way to use the keyboard to enter a
> newsroup.
Did you try the Enter/Return key? Esc key goes back.
> - I use Hamster (currently with XNews) to bring my messages in, and
> therefore as soon as Dialog boots I wish it to automatically download the
> new messages. I tried to find the option for this but could not.
It's not available (yet).
> - Testing had to stop at that point as while reading a message I right
> clicked to breing up properties and the program locked up solidly,
> appearing the make the screen flicker very rapidly. At this point I had to
> use End Task to stop it running. On restarting all the newsgroup config
> data, list of groups, etc had been trashed. I tried to use the options to
> get a new list of groups but nothing.
You didn't get an error message, right? It would be useful to know if you
can reproduce this in general or if you can find out if this only happens
under certain circumstances.
Marcus Mönnig
> Now that you've released the program to the public, do you plan to
> build up a forum or something like that to centralize bug reports,
> feature suggestions and such things?
Your initial stop is news.software.readers with "[Dialog]" in the subject.
I'll come up with another group on a server for longer discussions of
specific bugs and features and for postings of log files very soon.
Marcus Mönnig
> btw: is it possible to arrange groups in folder (like in xNews; picture is
> here: http://xnews.newsguy.com/xnews1.png )?
>
> i treies to drag'n'drop them in a folder but they just went up or down in
> the list.
No, sorry. It's a newsgroup list, not a tree.
Marcus Mönnig
> I've noted that if you switch to three-pane layout, if you resize the panes
> these settings don't "stick" between sessions,
I can't reproduce this and didn't see any other reports about this, but
I'll look into it.
> The tagline manager is a nice touch, although I can't seem to get it to
> work.
I am not sure what you mean with tagline _manager_. What exactly isn't
working for you?
Marcus Mönnig
> Does anyone know how to change the "un-read" color setting for the
> horizontal separator with the subject line between the message pane and
> the two windows above.
This currently hardcoded to red. I'll change this, so it uses the unread
color that can be changed in the settings.
Lone Wolf
On 5-Oct-2002, "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Marcus=20M=F6nnig?="
<usenet...@40tude.com> wrote:
> After almost two years of development and lots of closed alpha and beta
> testing I am very happy to announce the first version of "40tude Dialog",
> a
> new Windows news- and mailclient, available as freeware for private users
> and as shareware for commercial users.
Is it an off line reader?
Any mirror sites apart from USA - Asia perhaps? I am in Australia.
Mike Buckler
move the cursor.
Mike
Mike Buckler
> Matthias Wallner wrote in <anos1j$ga4ot$1...@ID-117602.news.dfncis.de>:
>
>> btw: is it possible to arrange groups in folder (like in xNews; picture is
>> here: http://xnews.newsguy.com/xnews1.png )?
>>
>> i treies to drag'n'drop them in a folder but they just went up or down in
>> the list.
>
> No, sorry. It's a newsgroup list, not a tree.
Why not indent the groups under headings in the same way that article
threads are displayed in the "tree" on the right.
Mike
Joerg Walther
> After almost two years of development and lots of closed alpha and beta
> testing I am very happy to announce the first version of "40tude Dialog", a
> new Windows news- and mailclient, available as freeware for private users
> and as shareware for commercial users.
I've just read about it in another group, downloaded it and am using it
now. Right at the moment I have 5 remarks:
1. The program, in comparison to eg. Agent, is very slow, even sluggish on
my 1GHZ machine running on WinXP, lots of RAM (retreiving ~10 Megs of news
from my local Hamster took some 30 minutes, dialogues pop up slowly, etc).
Is this due to the beta code?
2. The editor doesn't remember its last window settings.
3. There is no hotkey in the editor to send news (how about ctrl+s?).
4. Dialogues don't look very nice with large fonts.
5. Since you are German: Is there a German language file available (not for
me, of course, but for some friends whom I'd like to persuade to use your
program <g>).
All in all this imho is a very promising start, your program being only
freshly released.
Since progress at Forté appears to be excrutiatingly slow and version 2 of
Agent looks like ages ahead I think it isn't very unlikely that your
program soon might become popular, it having "all the features" that Agent
is missing right now.
So, keep the good work going! :-)
ratzilla
>
> After almost two years of development and lots of closed alpha and beta
> testing I am very happy to announce the first version of "40tude
> Dialog", a new Windows news- and mailclient, available as freeware for
> private users and as shareware for commercial users.
"This version expires on October 31st 2003"
After that, it'll refuse to start.
Why? Are you going to continue this with non-beta versions? Will it
expire for users with keys? And will you provide a work-around for users if
the project goes tits-up, à la Zeonews?
Marcus Mönnig
> 1. The program, in comparison to eg. Agent, is very slow, even sluggish on
> my 1GHZ machine running on WinXP, lots of RAM (retreiving ~10 Megs of news
> from my local Hamster took some 30 minutes, dialogues pop up slowly, etc).
> Is this due to the beta code?
There is an issue when using Hamster, or more exactly when retrieving from
localhost. I am looking into this.
(Just to get an idea about Dialog's actual speed, you might want to connect
to a remote newsserver directly.)
> 3. There is no hotkey in the editor to send news (how about ctrl+s?).
Select "Options>Configure buttons and shortcuts" in the composition window
to set it manually.
> 5. Since you are German: Is there a German language file available (not for
> me, of course, but for some friends whom I'd like to persuade to use your
> program <g>).
You might have noticed "Language..." in the "Settings" menu. Once there is
a version not labeled "Beta", a german version will follow.
Joerg Walther
Gosh, you are fast. :-)
>> 1. The program, in comparison to eg. Agent, is very slow, even sluggish on
>> my 1GHZ machine running on WinXP, lots of RAM (retreiving ~10 Megs of news
>> from my local Hamster took some 30 minutes, dialogues pop up slowly, etc).
>> Is this due to the beta code?
> There is an issue when using Hamster, or more exactly when retrieving from
> localhost. I am looking into this.
OK, I can wait, thanks for the input.
>> 3. There is no hotkey in the editor to send news (how about ctrl+s?).
> Select "Options>Configure buttons and shortcuts" in the composition window
> to set it manually.
Oh, right, I hadn't discovered that when I wrote the last news. :-)
>> 5. Since you are German: Is there a German language file available (not for
>> me, of course, but for some friends whom I'd like to persuade to use your
>> program <g>).
> You might have noticed "Language..." in the "Settings" menu.
That's why I was asking. :-)
> Once there is a version not labeled "Beta", a german version will follow.
Great, thanks again.
Tattoo Vampire
> 2. The editor doesn't remember its last window settings.
Once you get the editor window the size and position you like, select
options/save current window size and pos. as default.
--
[tv]
...It's not whether you win or lose. It's whether *I* win or lose.
Note antispam measures in address if replying via email
Tattoo Vampire
> "This version expires on October 31st 2003"
> After that, it'll refuse to start.
> Why? Are you going to continue this with non-beta versions? Will it
> expire for users with keys? And will you provide a work-around for users if
> the project goes tits-up, à la Zeonews
Maybe he doesn't want old betas in use once Dialog goes gold.
From reading his site, registration is strictly optional, unless you're a
business user.
--
[tv]
...Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.
Joerg Walther
>> 2. The editor doesn't remember its last window settings.
> Once you get the editor window the size and position you like, select
> options/save current window size and pos. as default.
Ohhh, I must've been blind. Thanks! :-)
ratzilla
news:f391d3556c...@tattoovampire.localhost:
> ratzilla wrote:
>
>> "This version expires on October 31st 2003"
>
>> After that, it'll refuse to start.
>
>> Why? Are you going to continue this with non-beta versions? Will it
>> expire for users with keys? And will you provide a work-around for
>> users if the project goes tits-up, à la Zeonews
>
> Maybe he doesn't want old betas in use once Dialog goes gold.
Maybe. Hence the question - "Are you going to continue this with non-beta
versions?"
J.B. Moreno
> J.B. Moreno wrote in <1fjllg1.x9pd1a117var5N%pl...@newsreaders.com>:
>
> > A discussion on USEFOR lead to Andrew Gierth examining his (Supernews)
> > spool, and that showed that first checking for valid UTF8 is nearly
> > infallible -- less than 1 out of every 20,000 articles was a false
> > positive.
>
> And how many positive did he find?
Only 49 positives, 4 of which were false positives. Yeah, I know, not a
lot of use at the moment -- but hopefully that'll change.
--
JBM
"Your depression will be added to my own" -- Marvin of Borg
Marcus Mönnig
> Only 49 positives, 4 of which were false positives. Yeah, I know, not a
> lot of use at the moment -- but hopefully that'll change.
And at that time I'll be the first to jump on... ;-)
Marcus Mönnig
> Maybe. Hence the question - "Are you going to continue this with non-beta
> versions?"
All beta versions will expire. There might be non-beta versions that will
expire. There always will be a freeware version and within the next 12
months (hopefully sooner) there will be a non-beta, freeware version that
will not expire, with the same functionality as you see it in this first
public beta (apart from features that might have been dropped for technical
reason if things go very wrong).
>> From reading his site, registration is strictly optional, unless you're
>> a business user.
Exactly.
J.B. Moreno
> J.B. Moreno wrote in <1fjmv0x.1acxlnwpbjdfiN%pl...@newsreaders.com>:
>
> > Only 49 positives, 4 of which were false positives. Yeah, I know, not a
> > lot of use at the moment -- but hopefully that'll change.
>
> And at that time I'll be the first to jump on... ;-)
If you do the check first then you'll already be on board when it does
happen.
Erland Sommarskog
> Dialog supports multiple servers, identities and simultaneous connections
> to newsservers and internally works with Unicode, supporting most
> characters sets. It combines a modern and intuitive GUI with
> offline-capabilities, email support and a powerful message editor.
It's nice with a newsreader that supports Unicode, and this sounds
promising for the future.
However, I found no way of using raw 8-bit. Dialog appears to even
to change the subject line when it includes 8-bit characters. You may
conclude from standards that 8-bit is not permitted in headers, but
in practice 8-bit chars are far more common in use than RFC2047. (Numbers
on this was posted by Andrew Gierth to the Usefor list. Actually, they
were so astonishing, that I found it difficult to believe them.)
I also found what appears to be a bug. I Window Layout, I selected the
pane setting which is the second from the right, and checked the box
"Either group list or headers...". I did not alter Pane content. Then,
when I read an article and clicked the article pane, the green square
to the right started blinking, and Dialog become unresponsive consuming
a lot of CPU.
--
Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, som...@algonet.se
ratzilla
> within the next 12 months (hopefully sooner) there will be a non-beta,
> freeware version that will not expire
This is a Good Thing - I'm disinclined to use a program that will die as soon
as the developer goes bust/loses interest (or which forces me down an upgrade
path by disabling the old version).
Jens Wahnes
> However, I found no way of using raw 8-bit.
Really? That's great!
> Dialog appears to even to change the subject line when it includes
> 8-bit characters. You may conclude from standards that 8-bit is not
> permitted in headers, but in practice 8-bit chars are far more common
> in use than RFC2047.
Yes, there are indeed many broken newsreaders out there that send 8bit
characters in headers. I'm glad this new reader doesn't, which will
hopefully lead to a diminishing number of those broken postings in the
future.
Jens
--
"What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?"
- Bertolt Brecht
Marcus Mönnig
>>> Only 49 positives, 4 of which were false positives. Yeah, I know, not a
>>> lot of use at the moment -- but hopefully that'll change.
>>
>> And at that time I'll be the first to jump on... ;-)
>
> If you do the check first then you'll already be on board when it does
> happen.
:-)
J.B, I appreciate your hints and I am reading the usefor list for things
like this and have most of the things that need to be addressed in mind
when I code, but right now, things are a bit chaotic and I am concentrating
on getting a stable release out, so I am reluctant to add or change
anything that has a rather low priority combined with an unknown effect on
functionality. I will come back on this though.
Frank Schmitt
> On 5-Oct-2002, "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Marcus=20M=F6nnig?="
> <usenet...@40tude.com> wrote:
>
>> After almost two years of development and lots of closed alpha and beta
>> testing I am very happy to announce the first version of "40tude Dialog",
>
> Is it an off line reader?
Yes it is.
--
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Frank Schmitt
> On Sat, 5 Oct 2002 15:01:04 +0200, Marcus Mönnig wrote:
>
>> After almost two years of development and lots of closed alpha and beta
>> testing I am very happy to announce the first version of "40tude Dialog", a
>> new Windows news- and mailclient, available as freeware for private users
>> and as shareware for commercial users.
>
> I've just read about it in another group, downloaded it and am using it
> now. Right at the moment I have 5 remarks:
>
> 1. The program, in comparison to eg. Agent, is very slow, even sluggish on
> my 1GHZ machine running on WinXP, lots of RAM (retreiving ~10 Megs of news
> from my local Hamster took some 30 minutes, dialogues pop up slowly, etc).
> Is this due to the beta code?
It seems that most of the people who have speed problems run Seti@home
or something similar on their PC. Is this the case for you, too? Does it
help to quit Seti?
J.B. Moreno
> However, I found no way of using raw 8-bit. Dialog appears to even
> to change the subject line when it includes 8-bit characters.
Which is really wrong -- a newsreader should preserve the Subject
exactly as it was (with the exception of adding "Re: "), regardless of
what it does when the user creates a new Subject.
Blinky the Shark
> Erland Sommarskog <som...@algonet.se> wrote:
>
>> However, I found no way of using raw 8-bit. Dialog appears to even
>> to change the subject line when it includes 8-bit characters.
>
> Which is really wrong -- a newsreader should preserve the Subject
> exactly as it was (with the exception of adding "Re: "), regardless of
> what it does when the user creates a new Subject.
Comparisons:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~js/gnksa/gnksa-evaluations.html
--
Blinky
Timothy Luders
> "Joerg Walther" <sg.october2...@spamgourmet.com> writes:
>
>> On Sat, 5 Oct 2002 15:01:04 +0200, Marcus Mönnig wrote:
>>
>>> After almost two years of development and lots of closed alpha and beta
>>> testing I am very happy to announce the first version of "40tude Dialog", a
>>> new Windows news- and mailclient, available as freeware for private users
>>> and as shareware for commercial users.
>>
>> I've just read about it in another group, downloaded it and am using it
>> now. Right at the moment I have 5 remarks:
>>
>> 1. The program, in comparison to eg. Agent, is very slow, even sluggish on
>> my 1GHZ machine running on WinXP, lots of RAM (retreiving ~10 Megs of news
>> from my local Hamster took some 30 minutes, dialogues pop up slowly, etc).
>> Is this due to the beta code?
>
> It seems that most of the people who have speed problems run Seti@home
> or something similar on their PC. Is this the case for you, too? Does it
> help to quit Seti?
I am running it with Prime95 <http://www.mersenne.org> another program
that does background work. Neither seems to be much affected by the
other I'm happy to report. Well the compose window does use considerably
more CPU time.
Vorlon Dude
>If you want to know more about Dialog's features or would like to download
>it and give it a try, please visit http://www.40tude.com/dialog/.
>
>The current version is 2.0.1.1, which is Beta 23, the first public beta
>release.
Looks like you've done a lot of work on this. Congratulations to a
nice looking entry to newsgroup software.
Undoubtedly I'm doing something wrong but I'm pulling header
connections and There's a couple things I notice. There is no
indicator I can see to show how the header download is progressing.
The screen locks up but the mouse pointer is the hour glass showing
over the dialog program. I can move the window but I can click on
nothing on dialog's functions. Same with the status window; can move,
won't allow button function.
It's been 10 minutes and it seems to be hanging in this state.
alt.binaries.myltimedia.babylon5 says 43315 new on server (I'm pulling
the first batch so everything is fresh) Status says Server Markers
3250956-3290344 and retrieving 39389 headers.
Since it's hanging I'm going to close the program & see what shows:
(XP says the program is not responding)
Rats, It lost all the newsgroups & what I subscribed to are lost.
I'll re-do & see what happens this time.
Cheers,
Kosh
P.S:
In case this is of use to you since I'm having a problem...
I'm running XP Pro, SP1, 1.4Ghz AMD 512 Meg Cas 2.2.2 ram, IBM ATA/100
Deskstar drives Iwill KK266Pro rev 2 motherboard, Lynxone 24 bit Sound
card, Geforce II video card, DSL . Few programs installed except for
recording and data management.
Vorlon Dude
Vorlon Dude
greg andruk
> Erland Sommarskog <som...@algonet.se> wrote:
>> However, I found no way of using raw 8-bit. Dialog appears to even
>> to change the subject line when it includes 8-bit characters.
> Which is really wrong -- a newsreader should preserve the Subject
> exactly as it was (with the exception of adding "Re: "), regardless of
> what it does when the user creates a new Subject.
Be conservative in what you generate. It is not okay to transmit broken
article headers, even when responding to articles with broken headers.
Joerg Walther
>> 1. The program, in comparison to eg. Agent, is very slow, even sluggish on
>> my 1GHZ machine running on WinXP, lots of RAM (retreiving ~10 Megs of news
>> from my local Hamster took some 30 minutes, dialogues pop up slowly, etc).
>> Is this due to the beta code?
> It seems that most of the people who have speed problems run Seti@home
> or something similar on their PC. Is this the case for you, too? Does it
> help to quit Seti?
I've just tried and yes: fetching news is a lot faster without it.
Opening menus, esp. settings-general settings is still very sluggish,
though.
Vorlon Dude
>
>I'll re-do & see what happens this time.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Kosh
>
>P.S:
>
>In case this is of use to you since I'm having a problem...
>
>I'm running XP Pro, SP1, 1.4Ghz AMD 512 Meg Cas 2.2.2 ram, IBM ATA/100
>Deskstar drives Iwill KK266Pro rev 2 motherboard, Lynxone 24 bit Sound
>card, Geforce II video card, DSL . Few programs installed except for
>recording and data management.
Sorry Marcus,
usenetserver is having some growing pains and I inadvertantly sent
this more than the once I intended.
Marcus Mönnig
> Which is really wrong -- a newsreader should preserve the Subject
> exactly as it was (with the exception of adding "Re: "), regardless of
> what it does when the user creates a new Subject.
ACK.
Marcus Mönnig
> However, I found no way of using raw 8-bit. Dialog appears to even
> to change the subject line when it includes 8-bit characters.
Yes, I do need to address this.
> You may
> conclude from standards that 8-bit is not permitted in headers, but
> in practice 8-bit chars are far more common in use than RFC2047.
You are describing a common problem as a feature request. ;-)
I don't plan to send out raw 8-bit.
> I also found what appears to be a bug. I Window Layout, I selected the
> pane setting which is the second from the right, and checked the box
> "Either group list or headers...". I did not alter Pane content. Then,
> when I read an article and clicked the article pane, the green square
> to the right started blinking, and Dialog become unresponsive consuming
> a lot of CPU.
Yep, some others ran into this. I wasn't able to reproduce this yet, but
I'll look into it again.
Frank Schmitt
>> It seems that most of the people who have speed problems run Seti@home
>> or something similar on their PC. Is this the case for you, too? Does it
>> help to quit Seti?
>
> I've just tried and yes: fetching news is a lot faster without it.
> Opening menus, esp. settings-general settings is still very sluggish,
> though.
Marcus is working on it, next version should be improved.
Marcus Mönnig
>> I've just tried and yes: fetching news is a lot faster without it.
>> Opening menus, esp. settings-general settings is still very sluggish,
>> though.
>
> Marcus is working on it, next version should be improved.
Ups, I didn't know that. ;-)
Speed of the general settings dialog is not addressed with next release,
but the speed of feching is, yes.
Joerg Walther
>> Marcus is working on it, next version should be improved.
> Ups, I didn't know that. ;-)
LOL :-)
> Speed of the general settings dialog is not addressed with next release,
> but the speed of feching is, yes.
Obviously, when first installing/configuring your program one comes to
use the settings dialogue a lot, but, of course, fast fetching is more
important.
BTW: Are you going to rename your program to "Dialogue" which is
American and British English , or are you going to stay with the
American English only spelling "Dialog"? :-)
Marcus Mönnig
> Undoubtedly I'm doing something wrong but I'm pulling header
> connections and There's a couple things I notice. There is no
> indicator I can see to show how the header download is progressing.
Settings>Show Status window>Active threads
> The screen locks up but the mouse pointer is the hour glass showing
> over the dialog program. I can move the window but I can click on
> nothing on dialog's functions. Same with the status window; can move,
> won't allow button function.
Could you do the following please?
Start Dialog and right click on the status bar. Select "0 - All debug
messages" from the menu.
Now, do the same as you did before until Dialog locks up. Finally, kill it
through the task manager.
After that, could you email the log file (the one with today's date) from
the "logs" subdirectory, so I can take a look what's happening? Thanks!
Frank Schmitt
> Frank Schmitt wrote in <elb2li...@hschmi22.userfqdn.rz-online.de>:
>
>>> I've just tried and yes: fetching news is a lot faster without it.
>>> Opening menus, esp. settings-general settings is still very sluggish,
>>> though.
>>
>> Marcus is working on it, next version should be improved.
>
> Ups, I didn't know that. ;-)
> Speed of the general settings dialog is not addressed with next release,
> but the speed of feching is, yes.
Actually I meant the "There's a little bastard which consumes all CPU
before the worker threads get it" issue.
Kai-Olaf Runge
> J.B. Moreno wrote in <1fjnjs1.aqtece1heue1zN%pl...@newsreaders.com>:
>
>> Which is really wrong -- a newsreader should preserve the Subject
>> exactly as it was (with the exception of adding "Re: "), regardless of
>> what it does when the user creates a new Subject.
>
> ACK.
NACK (in this special case).
Or do you want to publish a newsclient that is not MIME-conformant?
Kai
Marcus Mönnig
There is a more general point here. What Dialog does when you follow-up is
to decode the subject of the original article to Unicode and it then pastes
this into the subject line of the composition window as Unicode. When you
send your follow-up Dialog picks a charset for encoding the subject header
which is not necessarily the same as the charset used in the original
message. This is wrong and Dialog should use the original charset for the
subject encoding.
Regarding raw 8-bit in subjects, I am not too sure what to do, but I tend
to encode this properly.
Marcus Mönnig
> BTW: Are you going to rename your program to "Dialogue" which is
> American and British English , or are you going to stay with the
> American English only spelling "Dialog"? :-)
Eh.. no. I don't think so.
Erland Sommarskog
> Be conservative in what you generate. It is not okay to transmit broken
> article headers, even when responding to articles with broken headers.
You break more by changing the subject line that obeying to obsolete
standards.
--
Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, som...@algonet.se
Erland Sommarskog
> You are describing a common problem as a feature request. ;-)
> I don't plan to send out raw 8-bit.
Leave that to the user to decide. In some natioanl hierarchies de.*
8bit is frowned upon. In others RFC2047 are mighty impopular and is
likely to give you new enenmies.
(I was even (friendly) flamed for posting with RFC2047 in a test
group!)
No matter what the standard says, raw 8-bit is generally better
understood than RFC2047.
Erland Sommarskog
> Erland Sommarskog wrote in <Xns929FE9761...@127.0.0.1>:
>> pane setting which is the second from the right, and checked the box
>> "Either group list or headers...". I did not alter Pane content. Then,
>> when I read an article and clicked the article pane, the green square
>> to the right started blinking, and Dialog become unresponsive consuming
>> a lot of CPU.
>
> Yep, some others ran into this. I wasn't able to reproduce this yet, but
> I'll look into it again.
I don't know if its helpful to know, but I'm running Windows XP
Professional SP1, which I failed to mention in my previous post.
Erland Sommarskog
> BTW: Are you going to rename your program to "Dialogue" which is
> American and British English , or are you going to stay with the
> American English only spelling "Dialog"? :-)
Isn't "Dialog" the German spelling? :-)
Marcus Mönnig
> Joerg Walther (sg.october2...@spamgourmet.com) writes:
>> BTW: Are you going to rename your program to "Dialogue" which is
>> American and British English , or are you going to stay with the
>> American English only spelling "Dialog"? :-)
>
> Isn't "Dialog" the German spelling? :-)
IMHO Dialog is the American and German spelling, while Dialogue is the
British.
HH
> Erland Sommarskog wrote in <Xns92A14F46...@127.0.0.1>:
>
>> Joerg Walther (sg.october2...@spamgourmet.com) writes:
>>> BTW: Are you going to rename your program to "Dialogue" which is
>>> American and British English , or are you going to stay with the
>>> American English only spelling "Dialog"? :-)
>>
>> Isn't "Dialog" the German spelling? :-)
>
> IMHO Dialog is the American and German spelling, while Dialogue is the
> British.
I'd say Dialog is perfect danish ;-)
--
/ Henrik
J.B. Moreno
It's a question of what you break -- and breaking threading is much more
serious than using the "wrong" encoding (which you aren't really doing
anyway, 1036 is completely useless as it limits you to ASCII only, MIME
is according to the RFC's only for mail, anything you do can be
justified as "lesser of two evils" EXCEPT when you are also breaking
threading by changing the Subject).
J.B. Moreno
MIME doesn't apply to news -- and when it does (when USEFOR comes out or
a program that follows it now), then raw 8 bit will be allowed for news
(preferably in UTF8).
J.B. Moreno
> Regarding raw 8-bit in subjects, I am not too sure what to do, but I tend
> to encode this properly.
Well, there are two distinct situations, and what you do depends upon
which one you are operating under.
One, and by far the most common, you are inheriting a Subject from a
previous post as you make a follow -- in that case the answer is clear:
you treat the Subject as sequence of bytes and the only change you
should make to that sequence is adding "Re: " if it doesn't already
start with it. You can do whatever you like for the display, but for
posting it should be identical.
Two, the user has entered something into the Subject, and it now
contains 8 bit data -- now you have three choices: (a) refuse, (b) 2047
encoding, (c) some form of "raw" (either UTF8 or a local encoding).
The first is *not* going to be popular with users, the other two have
their good and bad points, and will be accepted and rejected by various
hierarchies.
Personally I think UTF8 is the best solution -- it's the only one that
could possibly work across hierarchies and with mixed charsets without
the programmer taking a lot of extra steps (if you're on a platform that
does unicode it can work without having to add the complexity of MIME
decoding, and the two most popular platforms are going unicode).
And regardless of what a fifteen year old RFC says, transmitting 8 bit
in the Subject of news messages *is* the current best common practice.
Joerg Walther
> Isn't "Dialog" the German spelling? :-)
> IMHO Dialog is the American and German spelling, while Dialogue is the
> British.
Not quite: In American English it can be Dialog OR Dialogue, although
I think the latter one is more commonly used (Americans: set me right
if I'm talking nonsense). :)
Marcus Mönnig
> One, and by far the most common, you are inheriting a Subject from a
> previous post as you make a follow -- in that case the answer is clear:
> you treat the Subject as sequence of bytes and the only change you
> should make to that sequence is adding "Re: " if it doesn't already
> start with it. You can do whatever you like for the display, but for
> posting it should be identical.
ACK.
> Two, the user has entered something into the Subject, and it now
> contains 8 bit data -- now you have three choices: (a) refuse, (b) 2047
> encoding, (c) some form of "raw" (either UTF8 or a local encoding).
>
> The first is *not* going to be popular with users, the other two have
> their good and bad points, and will be accepted and rejected by various
> hierarchies.
>
> Personally I think UTF8 is the best solution --
You mean raw utf8? Seen from the drawing board you are absolutely right.
Seen from the user's perspective? AFAIK the support of the popular
newsreaders for raw utf8 is rather limited. (Though you do your best to
spread the word ;-)
> And regardless of what a fifteen year old RFC says, transmitting 8 bit
> in the Subject of news messages *is* the current best common practice.
I agree it is common practice.
I can't see that this is best. Not at all. Maybe once there is a common
consensus that raw 8bit is utf-8, but as long as you have to look up the
correct charset for a group or hierarchy from the group's FAQ, surely not.
Marcus Mönnig
> No matter what the standard says, raw 8-bit is generally better
> understood than RFC2047.
Could somebody please list the software that does not do mime coded words?
Are there any other arguments I am missing why some hierarchies/groups
prefer raw 8 bit?
Frank Schmitt
> Erland Sommarskog wrote in <Xns92A14952...@127.0.0.1>:
>
>> No matter what the standard says, raw 8-bit is generally better
>> understood than RFC2047.
>
> Could somebody please list the software that does not do mime coded words?
> Are there any other arguments I am missing why some hierarchies/groups
> prefer raw 8 bit?
Old versions of free Agent, new ones do.
Gravity
Virtual Access
Readers which can deal with it:
XNews
Outlook Express
Netscape/Mozilla
Opera
Gnus
slrn
tin
Knode
pan
Nowryota Newsreader
Forte Agent
Forte Free Agent (now)
Sylpheed
Mutt (it has a news plugin)
NewsSIEVE
MacSOUP
Mcubed
news:anuep3...@ID-1524.user.cis.dfn.de:
> Not quite: In American English it can be Dialog OR Dialogue, although
> I think the latter one is more commonly used (Americans: set me right
> if I'm talking nonsense). :)
It seems to me that "dialogue" is more common than the shortened version.
My Am. Heritage Dictionary 3rd Ed. gives the shortened form as an alternate
spelling.
And my Princeton U.P. edition of Plato spells it "Dialogues." "Plato's
Dialogs"? That just doesn't look right! :-)
--
Michael
New York, NY USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist
sanely under conditions of absolute reality..."
Barbara
> Marcus Mönnig wrote:
Dialog is the more modern, preferred American spelling of the word.
You are correct that the other spelling is accepted.
Barbara
Sebastian Brocks
> It's a question of what you break -- and breaking threading is much more
> serious than using the "wrong" encoding
Proper newsreaders thread using the References: header.
tschau, Sebastian
--
/"\
\ / ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN
X AGAINST HTML MAIL
/ \ AND POSTINGS
J.B. Moreno
> J.B. Moreno wrote in <1fjp91i.klwson1mjfy2uN%pl...@newsreaders.com>:
>
-snip-
> > Two, the user has entered something into the Subject, and it now
> > contains 8 bit data -- now you have three choices: (a) refuse, (b) 2047
> > encoding, (c) some form of "raw" (either UTF8 or a local encoding).
> >
> > The first is *not* going to be popular with users, the other two have
> > their good and bad points, and will be accepted and rejected by various
> > hierarchies.
> >
> > Personally I think UTF8 is the best solution --
>
> You mean raw utf8? Seen from the drawing board you are absolutely right.
> Seen from the user's perspective? AFAIK the support of the popular
> newsreaders for raw utf8 is rather limited. (Though you do your best to
> spread the word ;-)
No, *use* of raw UTF8 is extremely infrequent, *recognition* is another
kettle of fish entirely -- the three biggest programs (OE, Netscape,
Agent) will all recognize it (and on the Mac side MTNW and I believe the
latest version of MacSOUP will do likewise, and the new OS X newsreaders
like Halmime and Newsferret should do so "out of the box" without any
extra effort by the programmers).
Now, Xnews doesn't display it properly, but won't corrupt it when it
encounters it -- and it's support for 2047 is rather limited as well.
On the unix side -- Gnus and tin can be set up to display it properly,
and I forget what slrn can do.
> > And regardless of what a fifteen year old RFC says, transmitting 8 bit
> > in the Subject of news messages *is* the current best common practice.
>
> I agree it is common practice.
> I can't see that this is best. Not at all. Maybe once there is a common
> consensus that raw 8bit is utf-8, but as long as you have to look up the
> correct charset for a group or hierarchy from the group's FAQ, surely not.
The people in the group usually know what charset they are using,
without looking it up in the groups charter or FAQ.
It's not ideal, but it works better than 2047 -- which requires that the
other persons software have code to deal with it, raw just requires that
they be able to choose a suitable font.
J.B. Moreno
> "Marcus Mönnig" <usenet...@40tude.com> writes:
>
> > Erland Sommarskog wrote in <Xns92A14952...@127.0.0.1>:
> >
> >> No matter what the standard says, raw 8-bit is generally better
> >> understood than RFC2047.
> >
> > Could somebody please list the software that does not do mime coded words?
> > Are there any other arguments I am missing why some hierarchies/groups
> > prefer raw 8 bit?
>
> Old versions of free Agent, new ones do.
> Gravity
> Virtual Access
>
> Readers which can deal with it:
>
> XNews
Relatively recent addition, and that not very well.
J.B. Moreno
> pl...@newsreaders.com (J.B. Moreno) wrote:
>
> > It's a question of what you break -- and breaking threading is much more
> > serious than using the "wrong" encoding
>
> Proper newsreaders thread using the References: header.
Threading is more complex than that -- not all newsreaders do proper
threading, some that *can* can also be configured to do so only when the
Subject is the same (which is sometimes a useful feature).
Regardless, it *does* break threading/grouping in some programs. So you
have the choice of (a) introducing a new problem and "maybe" solving an
old problem (I say maybe because when you "fix" it you'll actually be
exchanging one problem for another), or (b) leaving things exactly as
you found them, no better and no worse.
Marcus Mönnig
<081002.143822...@awesome.sebastian-brocks.de>:
>> It's a question of what you break -- and breaking threading is much more
>> serious than using the "wrong" encoding
>
> Proper newsreaders thread using the References: header.
But if they are even better, they unthread a message if the subject line
changes.
Drazen Kacar
> Marcus Mönnig <usenet...@40tude.com> wrote:
> > I can't see that this is best. Not at all. Maybe once there is a common
> > consensus that raw 8bit is utf-8, but as long as you have to look up the
> > correct charset for a group or hierarchy from the group's FAQ, surely not.
>
> The people in the group usually know what charset they are using,
> without looking it up in the groups charter or FAQ.
But I would like to use something other than ASCII in the From header.
Knowing which charset is usually being used for article body (and thus
Subject) is not going to help you guess what I wanted in the From header.
Attributions could get quite interesting, too.
> It's not ideal, but it works better than 2047 -- which requires that the
> other persons software have code to deal with it, raw just requires that
> they be able to choose a suitable font.
The problem is when you want to read two newsgroups where charsets don't
fit in a single font (say Latin 1 and Latin 2), unless that font is
some unicode thingy.
--
.-. .-. I don't work here. I'm a consultant.
(_ \ / _)
| da...@willfork.com
|
Marcus Mönnig
>> Could somebody please list the software that does not do mime coded words?
>> Are there any other arguments I am missing why some hierarchies/groups
>> prefer raw 8 bit?
>
> Old versions of free Agent, new ones do.
> Gravity
> Virtual Access
So, do we have an issue here?
What are the arguments I get when I post mime encoded to raw 8 bit
hierarchies?
Sebastian Brocks
> But if they are even better, they unthread a message if the subject line
> changes.
>
Hopefully only optionally.
--
"The PROPER way to handle HTML postings is to cancel the article, then
hire a hitman to kill the poster, his wife and kids, and fuck his dog
and smash his computer into little bits.
Anything more is just extremism." -Paul Tomblin