WRN v0.93 beta
==============

What is WRN?
============
WRN is a Windows-based Usenet news and mail user interface for the
DOS-based Waffle v1.65 UUCP news & mail system. WRN provides
easy-to-use, icon-based access to mail and/or news which Waffle has
downloaded from a Unix host. The user may then reply to or send mail, or
post news items. These are stored by WRN, ready for Waffle to upload to
the host site when it next connects.

WRN is designed for a single user who has been using Waffle simply as an
offline Unix mail/news system. To this end:

        *       There is no login/password mechanism

        *       Once a newsgroup has been read, it is deleted


Registration
============
This is a beta-test version of WRN. You may use it for up to one month,
after which you should register it. Registered users will be able to
upgrade their registration to new versions when they are released. This
is distributed as share-ware; you may make as many copies as you wish,
and distribute them wherever you wish, so long as the entire contents of
this archive are kept together, and not modified.

As an incentive to registration, this program displays a reminder screen
when it is started, and always appends an "Unregistered user" signature
to messages you send. Both of these are disabled when you register.

Registration costs US$10. This may be sent to me as a cheque, money
order, cash or whatever, in any currency you like, so long as I can
convert it to about the equivalent of US$10 here in NZ. Funds should be
sent to:

        Tech-Soft Systems
        101 Epuni St
        Lower Hutt
        Wellington
        New Zealand.


In return, I'll send you a UserCode to plug into WRN to make the
incentives go away. You'll also be encouraging me to produce more
shareware (let's keep the price of software down). You'll also get a
nice warm righteous feeling in the pit of your tummy...


Setting up WRN
==============
WRN is written in Visual Basic, so VBRUN100.DLL must be accessible in
your PATH. VBRUN100.DLL is freely available from many sites; it is not
included in this archive to reduce network load and file transmission
times.

As mentioned earlier, WRN is a user interface for Waffle 1.65. You must
first install Waffle and get it running correctly, downloading files and
uploading replies. I won't describe that process here, partly because it
is long and involved, partly because it's described in the Waffle
documentation, and partly because it's not really my problem. Once
Waffle is working correctly, you can probably discard large parts of it.

You're now ready to get WRN itself set up and runnign.

You need to create a file called WRN.INI in the directory from which you
will be running WRN. I suggest that you keep all the WRN files in the
same directory. WRN.INI will contain 17 lines of plain ASCII text
(terminated by CRLF), with one entry per line. It is a standard Windows
.INI file. I've included my WRN.INI file in this release as an example

The following entries are required:
[WRN]           The group identifier

UseNetFile      Location of your Waffle newsgroups file. This is
                normally called USENET and located in your WAFFLE\SYSTEM
                directory. It contains a list of all the newsgroups that
                Waffle expects/knows about, and the directories where it
                places articles belonging to these newsgroups.
                e.g. UseNetFile=C:\WAFFLE\SYSTEM\USENET

NewsDir         Name of your Waffle news directory. This is the "root"
                of the directory structure in which Waffle will place
                your news articles.
                e.g. NewsDir=C:\WAFFLE\NEWS\

QuotePrefix     This string is added to the beginning of each line when
                you reply to a mail or news message.
                e.g. QuotePrefix="> "

StaticFile      The name and location of your Waffle STATIC file. This
                will be in the same directory as your USENET file. It
                contains information that Waffle needs for
                communications, etc. Some of that is useful to WRN too.
                e.g. StaticFile=c:\waffle\system\static

UserID          Your username on your Waffle system. This is used by
                Waffle (& WRN) to locate your mail, and included as part
                of your Email address.
                e.g. UserID=frank

UserCode        This number will be sent to you when you register WRN.
                It is calculated from your full name. After registering,
                you'll be able to add your own signature to your
                messages, and the introductory reminder screen won't
                appear.
                e.g. UserCode=12345

TimeZone        Your time-zone: appended to the date and time of your
                messages.
                e.g. TimeZone=NZT

SiteID          Your site's "Internet name". Typically this will be a
                name, you've chosen tacked onto the front of the name of
                the site you get your newsfeed from.
                e.g. SiteID=whare.cavebbs.welly.gen.nz

UserName        Your full name; put whatever you like here, but if you
                change it, you're going to have to re-register.
                e.g. UserName=Frank van der Hulst

Organisation    Your organisation's name: included in outgoing message
                headers. Put whatever you like here.
                e.g. Organisation=Tech-Soft Systems, Wellington, NZ

MailOutDir      Directory where outgoing mail is stored until it can be
                uploaded to your host site. Waffle on my system uses my
                host's siteID as part of the path. The spool variable in
                my WAFFLE/SYSTEM/STATIC points to C:\SPOOL.
                e.g. MailOutDir=c:\spool\cavebbs

SeqFile         The name of Waffle's outgoing sequence file. Waffle
                keeps track of outgoing messages by storing the number
                of the last message sent (or is it the next message to
                send) in a file in its UUCP directory. My
                WAFFLE/SYSTEM/STATIC file's dialers variable points to
                the same directory.
                e.g. SeqFile=c:\waffle\uucp\sequence

NewsReply       Directory to store your outgoing news postings until
                they can be uploaded to your host site. These files are
                stored in a different format from outgoing mail, and in
                a different directory. You will need to delete messages
                from here periodically, otherwise your disk will
                gradually fill up with out-of-date replies. I've created
                a directory off the WAFFLE\NEWS directory, but you can
                put them wherever you want.
                e.g. NewsReply=c:\waffle\news\reply


NewsOutList     File to store a list of replies until they are batched
                and sent to your host. This name is created by appending
                your host's name to SPOOL\COMPRESS
                e.g. NewsOutList=c:\spool\compress\cavebbs

SigFile         Location of your signature file. After registering WRN,
                you will be able to add a signature to the end of
                outgoing messages. The signature file may be as long as
                you like, containing ASCII text. You may find it
                convenient to use the same signature file as Waffle
                uses.
                e.g. SigFile=c:\user\frank\mailsig

UUDecode        The name of your UUDecode executable program. This
                allows you to specify what program WRN should execute
                when you select its UUDecode function. WRN will execute
                this program, with the full path of the currently
                selected message as a command-line parameter. There is
                no support for multi-part messages.

                I recommend Extract 3.00, which is a shareware program
                written by Darren E. Penner. EXTRACT is free to
                individuals who should register with Darren.
                Corporate/Educational cost is $10. Darren can be
                contacted by Email at dpenner@ee.ualberta.ca or by snail
                mail to

                 Darren E. Penner
                 #904-17327 69th Avenue
                 Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5T 3S8

                e.g. UUDecode=c:\windows\util\extract.exe

Starting WRN
============
Change to the directory where WRN.INI and WRN.HLP are located (I suggest
putting these files in the same directory as WRN.EXE), then run WRN.EXE.
You could do this

        *       from PROGMAN's Run command,
        *       by creating an icon in a PROGMAN group
        *       by using a PIF file
        *       from an icon bar such as CLYSMIC


Using WRN
=========
Across the top of the WRN form is a "tool-bar"; a set of icons to
perform various functions. They are (from left to right):

        *       Catchup		-- Delete all messages in current newsgroup
        *       New     	-- Write a new message for mail/posting
        *       Load    	-- Load a text file for mail/posting
        *       Save    	-- Save a message to disk
        *       Cancel  	-- Cancel a reply/new message
        *       Rot-13  	-- Decrypt encrypted messages
        *       Mail    	-- Send a message as mail
        *       News    	-- Post a message to a newsgroup
	*	UUDecode	-- Decode a UUEncoded file from a message
        *       About   	-- Informaation about WRN
        *       Help    	-- Read WRN.HLP (this file)

Below the tool-bar are two list boxes; the left-hand one (yellow
background) shows newsgroups (including MAIL if you have some mail
waiting) which contain messages. A newsgroup may be selected by clicking
(why does Windows need double-clicks every-where?) once on the group you
want to read. The right-hand list box (green background) contains a list
of message subjects (and authors) in the currently selected newsgroup.
Click on the message you want to read, it appears in the large
message-box (white background) at the bottom of the screen.

To reply via Mail, click on the message-box (quote marks should appear
at the beginning of each line) & edit it. Use the Mail icon to send
mail; you will be prompted for a Subject, and who to send it to. You
also get the chance to add a signature (contained in a file specified in
WRN.INI) to the end of your message. If you have second thoughts, use
the Cancel icon.

Similarly, to follow-up to a newsgroup, click on the message-box, edit
it, and use the News icon to post it; you will be prompted for a
Subject, Newsgroups to post to, and whether to append your signature
file.

To send new mail or post new news to a newsgroup, click on the New
icon, then type your message in the message window, followed by clicking
on either the Mail or the News icon.

To mail or post an ASCII file, click on the Load icon... You will be
prompted for the source drive/path/filename. When you've selected the
file, it will be loaded into the message-box, and can then be sent by
clicking on the Mail or News icon.

The Save icon is used to save the displayed message to a file...a dialog
box allows you to select the destination drive/path/filename. If the
file already exists, the message is appended to the existing file. Note
that this saves the entire file, including the header.

To decrypt a message which has been Rot-13'ed, use the Rot-13 icon.
Similarly, to encrypt a message in Rot-13 format, use the Rot-13 icon.

To extract a file which has been UUEncoded, select the UUDecode icon.
This will run the external UUDecode program specified in your WRN.INI
file.

The Catch-up icon DELETES ALL MESSAGES in the selected newsgroup/mail.
WRN was designed for a system like mine... one user downloading
newsgroups and/or mail overnight. So once you've read the group there's
no need to keep it clogging your disk.

The Help icon will bring up a form which displays the WRN.HLP file
(that is, this file). You may like to customise this file... feel free
to.


PLANNED IMPROVEMENTS
====================
*       Proper context-sensitive help

*       Fix a problem which (because of strange internals in VB) limits
        messages 16K. Currently, if one is displayed which is more than
        16K, WRN will beep at you and add a "*** Truncated ***" line to
        the beginning of the displayed text. If you select Save, it will
        still save the *entire* file.

*       Allow cutting and pasting via the clipboard.

*       One alpha-tester asked for Catch-up to work like Waffle... (i.e.
        don't delete old messages) so that it can be used in a
        multi-user system. If more people ask, that may be added
        (although I like it like this :-)

*       Combo-box for newsgroups.

*       Any other suggestions??


FEEDBACK
========
Please send any comments (both positive and negative) or suggestions to
me so that I can improve this product. That still applies even if you
don't register.

I can be reached via Internet Email at:

        f_vander@comp.vuw.ac.nz
        frank@cit.ac.nz
        frank@whare.cavebbs.welly.gen.nz

If you don't have Internet access, you could even resort to Snail-mail.

