Format of the exported messages in Messages.Dat


         This file contains records with a length of 128 bytes.  There
         are 3 types of these records: (1) Packet Header, (2) Message
         Header, and (3) Message Text.  All unused fields in the
         records are normally filled with spaces, although you will
         sometimes find the final Message text record will be filled
         with nulls (#0) after the last text.


                              Packet Header

         Packet Header - is always the first record in the file and
         only occurs once.  It contains only normal ascii text
         (limitted to at most 128 characters) and should always
         start with "Produced by ".  The remaining text normally
         includes a product name and copyright message.


                              Message Header

         A message header immediately preceeds zero or more message
         text records.  Each Message header has the following
         format:

         Start
          Pos  Length              Description
        ------ ------ -----------------------------------------
           1      1   Message status flag (see below)
           2      7   Message number (ascii left justified)
           9      8   Date (MM-DD-YY)
          17      5   Time (HH:MM)
          22     25   To (left justified space filled - uppercase)
                      (Be sure to check the to field to spot
                      configuration type messages)
          47     25   From (left justified space filled - uppercase)
          72     25   Subject (left justified space filled - uppercase)
                      (a subject starting "NE:" should not be
                      echoed into a network)
          97     12   Password (not really used leave blank)
         109      8   Message reference number (ascii left justified)
         117      6   Number of blocks (ascii left justified - number
                      of 128 byte blocks including 1 for the message
                      header)
         123      1   Message activeÿ(á or #225 = Active,
                      â or #226 = Inactive)
         124      2   Conference number (Binary Word) (Lo in 124, Hi
                      in 125).  Note that some older programs only
                      supported conferences 0 thru 255 and left byte
                      125 as a "blank" unused field.  I recommend
                      checking the word value and if it is over 8191
                      to only use the lower (0 thru 255) part of it.
                      I've also seen notes that this field is really
                      a 4 byte LongInt field, although with the above
                      limitation (and 8000 conference seeming sufficient
                      for a while), I documented it this way.

         128      1   Indicates whether the message has a Network
                      tagline or not.  A value of "*" indicates that
                      a network tagline is present, a value of " "
                      indicates there isn't.  Messages sent to readers
                      (non-net-status) generally leave this as always
                      blank since only net utils need this info.

         Message Status Flag has the following possibilities:

         '`'  Comment to sysop, read      '~'  Comment to sysop, unread
         '-'  Public, read                ' '  Public, unread
         '*'  Private, read               '+'  Private, unread
         '^'  Password protected, read    '%'  Password protected, unread
         '#'  Group password, read        '!'  Group password, unread
         '$'  Group password to all



                             Message Text Records

         The message text records immediately follow the the message
         header.  They contain straight ascii text (lines are
         normally limitted to 72 chars/line although you may see
         longer lines).  Each line is followed by a "ã" or #227
         character to mark the end of the line (in place of the normal
         CR/LF that would exist in a straight text file).  The text
         continues consecutavly and text lines do continue across
         block boundaries.  Some systems or readers may have problems
         with messages longer than 99 lines or 199 lines, although more
         recently this no longer seems to be a limit.  The last block
         should be padded with blanks to fill the block, although on
         input you may find it padded with nulls (#0).