Readme for ProNews/2 Version 1.60
--------------------------------------------------------------

       CONTENTS:
       =========
       Thank You:

       Pre-requisite fixes to your system!

       Release notes for 1.60:

       Release notes for 1.59: Includes important info

       Release notes for 1.58:

       Release notes for 1.57:

       Release notes for 1.56:

       Adding new charset/codepage/alias entries to Pronews/2:

       Release notes for 1.55:

       IMPORTANT NOTE for <= 1.53 upgraders:

       New features in 1.54 not in previous releases:

       Fixes in 1.54 that you may need to know about:

       New features in 1.53 not in previous releases:

       Fixes in 1.53 that you may need to know about:

       Making Mozilla work as a helper for Pronews:

       Memory related issues and tips:

       New features in 1.52 not in previous releases:

       Whats new in version 1.50 ib098 (ancient!):

       Good Net Keeping Seal of Approval (GNKSA):

       Notes about this version:

       Non obvious features:

All proceeds from the sale of this product are donated
to the Save the Children fund - http://savethechildren.org/
--------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for evaluating ProNews/2, the best USENET reader for
OS/2!

We do advise that you take a backup of your existing ProNews
setup BEFORE you install this version.

To install simply run the install program. If you are upgrading
from a 1.00 beta 1, 2, 2b, 2c, 3, 3b, 4, or 4b you MUST delete the
entire program and all its data and index files and install from
scratch.

If you are upgrading from 1.00GA you must switch to the ProNews
directory and run upgrade.exe after the install has completed but
before you start ProNews 1.58 for the first time. You are STRONGLY
recommended to backup your Pronews directory prior to this! The
new authors have no access to source for the "upgrade" program
that Panacea wrote nor do we know the format of the old files and
thus are unable to provide support for the 1.00 -> 1.5x upgrade
path. Sorry, we would if we could! The only option we can offer is
to install 1.58 in a new directory and to run the releases in
parallel for a while. We are fairly convinced that you'll prefer
1.58 ;-)

If you are upgrading from any ProNews release up to and including
1.53 to this one, you should backup your filter files prior to
running the new release for the first time. 1.54+ uses a new format
of *.FLT and will convert older versions automatically when they
are used. However, older releases will not work with the 1.54
format files so, if there is a possibility that you may want
to return to your older release, then you will need a backup of
these files in order to restore them before doing so.

We are aware of some outstanding problems that we haven't fixed.
There's a list in the file UNFIXED.TXT that's been installed in
your \PRONEWS directory.

ProNews does not modify CONFIG.SYS or any system settings.
Uninstalling ProNews is as easy as deleting its directory.

Pre-requisite fixes to your system!
===================================
Before using Pronews/2 to do large amounts of work, we strongly
recommend that you apply the latest TCPIP stack fixes if you are
running Warp 4. One machine used for testing experienced a number
of fullscreen black TRAP 000E's when running Pronews under extreme
loads for testing purposes. On this machine, running inetver
reported a TCPIP level of 4.0e. After downloading and installing
IC16063.EXE and the "LATEST40.EXE" TCPIP fixes so that inetver
reports 4.02w these TRAPs haven't appeared since. TCP/IP 4.1 and
newer do not seem to have these issues.

It also appears that there is a bug in uconv.dll which is used
by Pronews/2 1.56+ for charset translation. This is an IBM
supplied file and reports say that there is a memory leak
associated with this file, fixed in versions dated after
2000. Symptoms of this bug will be that Pronews stops translating
characters correctly and pronews.log contains error messages like

01 Jul 12:37:45.32 TID 7  [ERROR] UniCreateUconvObject(IBM437,
70C8F7C) ULS_NOMEMORY error (0x0002040d)

Release notes for 1.59
======================
This is a maintenance release and only contains a few fixes
over previous builds. There are no changes that require action
although a backup is always recommended prior to installation.

Release notes for 1.59
======================
1) Format of toolbar.ini has to change to fix a bug with fonts
with long names. You are strongly advised to backup toolbar.ini
prior to running 1.59 or later in case you need to backout and
revert to a previous release.

Release notes for 1.58
======================
1) Pronews 1.58 has a few bug fixes and one new feature: it
can now talk to SMTP AUTH servers if they use an authorisation
mechanism from the list CRAM-MD5, LOGIN or PLAIN. Pronews will
attempt to use them in this order, i.e. CRAM-MD5 being preferred
over LOGIN if both are supported etc.

2) CRAM-MD5 SMTP AUTH support can be disabled by adding the line

PNNOCRAMMD5=1

to pronews.env (or SET PNNOCRAMMD5=1)

Other bug fixes are listed in fixed.txt in your \pronews directory
after install.


Release notes for 1.57
======================
Only one bug is fixed above 1.56, posts made in us-ascii omitted
the charset name from the charset= parameter of the Content-Type
MIME header. This caused problems for PMiNews and PMMail and
possibly other newsreaders.


Release notes for 1.56
======================

New features in 1.56 not in previous releases
---------------------------------------------
1)
Pronews 1.56 uses a new method of character set and codepage
support from all previous releases. It now uses the IBM supplied
Universal Language Support code (ULS). For this reason, you
may only run Pronews/2 1.56 on systems that have ULS support.
This includes all copies of OS/2 Warp 4 and later releases. It
is also available for Warp 3 users by installing the Java 1.1.8
JDK from IBM as this adds the necessary files. Pronews/2 is no
longer supported on OS/2 2.1x if it ever worked there at all!
If you have ULS support installed then you will have a directory
called \language\codepage on your boot drive (or possibly
pointed to by the config.sys line SET ULSPATH=).

Pronews/2 1.56 adds support for posting and reading articles
in UTF-8. This support should work for the body of any articles
that were retrieved by any previous versions but the article
window index will not show the correct display in the subject
or the composer fields for articles that were fetched prior to
1.56. The article window index will only show the correct display
for those articles that were fetched by Pronews/2 1.56 and higher.
To correct existing headers it will be necessary to perform a
group reload.

In addition, it may be possible to add support for new charsets
reasonably easily now. Please see the section below titled
"Adding new charset/codepage/alias entries to Pronews/2" if you
intend to try this!

The new support for differing charsets/codepages does have
limitations. It has to translate all articles you wish to
read from the charset specified in the article into the
codepage you have specified. If a character does not exist
in the codepage you are using then it will be replaced by
a "not translatable" symbol which looks a little like a
child's drawing of a house but without any doors or windows.
If you now reply to this article then the quoted text will
also contain the 'house' even if you are posting in the
same charset as the original article. I cannot think of
any easy way to code around this - all articles have to
go through the codepage you are using and will lose any
characters that don't exist in that codepage.

2)
Pronews.env - Pronews now reads its environment variables
from a file called pronews.env in the \pronews directory.
Any variable names found in this file will override those
set in the OS/2 environment. It's fairly basic - no embedded
blanks allowed except in the directory name specified in
the new PNLOGDIR environment variable. A sample version
of this file is supplied in your \pronews directory after
the install as sample.env. A restart is required to make
any changes take effect except for the two environment
variables listed in the sample.env file comments.

3)
New PNLOGDIR environment variable. Use SET PNLOGDIR=x:\dir
from an OS/2 command prompt or from config.sys or add
PNLOGDIR=x:\dir
to pronews.env. All pronews log files will be created/used
in the directory it specifies - default \pronews.

4)
Pronews will now base64 encode any subject or composer name
that contains non-ASCII characters if base64 encoding is
specified on the Codepage tab in the group or global settings
notebook. Prior to this, only Quoted-Printable was used
in these fields regardless of the notebook setting.

Base64 is preferred over Quoted-Printable and should be used
if there is no good reason not to! To see why, look at a
Quoted-Printable encoded UTF-8 encoded subject line and you
can see ugly in action.

Adding new charset/codepage/alias entries to Pronews/2
======================================================
This release relies on 3 new files in the \pronews directory
in order to determine which charsets and codepages to add to
the menus and notebooks in Pronews/2. These files are:

charsets.pn - the items to include on the charset submenu of
              the article window popup menu and in the global
              and group notebooks.
codepage.pn - same as charsets.pn but for the codepage menus
              and notebook entries.
cpalias.pn  - a table of charset and codepage names to codepage
              filenames installed in \language\codepage.

You should not alter charsets.pn or codepage.pn as the line
numbers of the items in this file are used to select which
items appear where and which are selected. Adding a line
in the middle of the file will cause any group or setting
that refers to lines after the new one to pick the wrong
entry. Adding lines to the end of the file may cause conflicts
with new releases that support new charsets or codepages.
If you would like to try to add a new charset/codepage, please
send an email to trevor-hemsley@dsl.pipex.com and I'll add
the right line to the file and send it back and include it
in new releases.

The cpalias.pn file can be freely edited by end users to add
read support for new charsets. However, any added entries
will be lost if a new release is installed and you have not
informed the developers of the change. There are entries in
this file at present for DBCS character sets like ISO-2022-JP
but they all currently translate to IBM1252 as I have no beta
testers capable of testing the code on a DBCS enabled version
of OS/2. The (I believe) correct entries for these character
sets are commented out in cpalias.pn. Anyone that can test
the commented out lines is welcome to mail me and tell me if
it works or not.

Release notes for 1.55
======================
Pronews 1.55 is primarily a bug fix release to fix a problem
that users of the 16 bit TCP/IP stack have with posting new
articles on systems running a Warp 4 post fixpak 13 kernel. The
16 bit IP stack cannot utilize high memory. There are another
8 or 9 fixes in 1.55 that are not in 1.54. If you are upgrading
from 1.53 or a previous release then you need to read the relevant
sections below - sorry!

New in 1.55: you can SET PNALTDATE=1 to have the date column in
the article window include the year in the posting date field.

IMPORTANT NOTE for <= 1.53 upgraders
====================================
Change of the on-disk format of the Pronews filter files.
--------------------------------------------------------
Several bug reports about crashes while filtering showed a design
problem in Pronews' filter file format. Each filter was limited
to 255 characters in total but some subject fields could be that
long in themselves. It's easily possible to code a filter that
exceeds the old size limit and cause a crash. To avoid this it
was necessary to change the filter file format as it exists on
disk. When you start Pronews/2 1.54 for the first time, it will
convert your global filters to the new format. As you open each
group the local filters for each one will be converted. If you
think that you may need to return to an older version of Pronews
than 1.54 then it is essential that you backup the old filter files
BEFORE you start Pronews 1.54 for the first time. The files in
question have an extension .FLT and all except one reside in
.\pronews\headers. The exception is .\pronews\global.FLT which
will also need to be backed up prior to starting Pronews 1.54+
for the first time.

New features in 1.54 not in previous releases
---------------------------------------------
1) Not so much a feature but... several people reported bugs and
crashes while running in single window mode. When I looked at
the code, it became obvious that I had two ways to fix this:
 a) I could hang the SIQ for the duration of closing one newsgroup
    and opening the next OR
 b) I could change single window mode to work correctly. However
    the only way to make it work correctly involved making it
    almost exactly the same as multiple window mode.
For this reason, 1.54 and subsequent releases have had the single
window option disabled.

2) There is now a "Stop after current operation" option on the
  popup menu on the Connections tab of the Control Panel. This
  tells the current connection to complete processing its current
  task and then stop. If the current task is a multipart article
  decode then the entire file will be processed before the thread
  stops.

3) It is now possible to search the body text of retrieved articles
  within a newsgroup from the Alt-F "Find" dialog.

4) ISO-8859-15 and Windows-1252 codepage support

5) Environment variable PNCKPTQUEUE added. Use
   SET PNCKPTQUEUE=1
  to have Pronews checkpoint its current work queue each time
  something is added to or removed from the queue. If Pronews
  crashes, when you restart it it will ask if you want to reload
  the queue.

6) Environment variable PNMAXLOGSIZE added. Use
   SET PNMAXLOGSIZE=kkk
  to have Pronews keep your pronews.log file under kkk kilobytes
  in size. Keeps pronews.log & pronews[1-9].log. Default size
  1024 KB.

7) Environment variable PNNOTTOLERANT added. Use
   SET PNNOTTOLERANT=1
  to have Pronews expect correct CRLF pairs in the
  article data as the RFC specifies. Without this, it will
  now tolerate plain LF characters and that will let PN/2
  decode articles posted by broken user agents that post
  LF not CRLF. It should not need to be specified...

8) Mozilla support. If the browser helper path is left blank
  in settings, Pronews now searches PATH for a copy of
  mozilla.exe and, if this is not found, then for netscape.exe.
  If you specify a path to a web browser in this field then the
  directory that the executable resides in will be added to the
  LIBPATH for the current process. If you leave the field blank
  and allow Pronews to search for Mozilla then the directory the
  executable was found in will be added to the LIBPATH for the
  current process. If the parameters field in settings is left
  blank then Pronews will use "-url %U" if Mozilla is in use or
  just "%U" if not.

8a) DDE now works with both Mozilla and with Netscape. Netscape
  works without any additional information but Mozilla must
  be enabled. To enable DDE for mozilla, you must specify
  "/dde -url %U" in the browser parameters. It appears that
  /dde must be given in lower case for it to be acceptable
  to Mozilla as a parameter!
  Pronews must start the copy of Mozilla to be used for
  DDE purposes, it will not reuse one that's already running.
  It will however use a running copy of Netscape and it will
  use it in preference to starting its own copy of Mozilla.

9) You can now see the XRef information for an article by hitting
  the X key in the article window.

10) Environment variable PNXREFFILTER=1 added. With this specified
  Pronews will pass the complete list of newsgroups to any filter
  that uses the GROUP= keyword. Without it, just the name of the
  current group is passed (the same as pre-1.54 releases). You can
  use this to filter on the groups to which an article has been
  crossposted - e.g. eliminate any crossposted to advocacy groups.

11) New filter file format on disk. Important. This release will
  update your current filter files (.\headers\*.FLT) to a new
  on-disk format that cannot be read by older releases. You should
  backup your existing filter files prior to starting 1.54 for the
  first time. If you need to return to your old release of Pronews
  then you will need to restore these files first.

12) Hotfilters now allow up to 255 characters to be specified in
  the filter string. Older releases only allowed 102.

13) Sample hot filter buttons to prompt and mark read on subject
  and composer have been added to any toolbars created for newly
  subscribed groups. Delete toolbar.ini or use an ini file editor
  to delete applications from toolbar.ini if you want these buttons
  added to existing toolbars. You can also Ctrl-drag them from one
  group menu to another to copy them if you'd prefer.

14) Pronews now tokenises filters on first use and will use the
  tokenised copy on subsequent uses of the same filter. This gives
  ~30% increase in speed of filtering. To disable this you can use
  SET PNFILTERNOOPT=1

15) Pronews now uses high memory on releases of OS/2 that support
  this (Warp 4 post fixpack 13, Warp Server Advanced, WSeB, and the
  convenience packs and eCS). This should allow use of significantly
  larger newsgroups. With VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=1536 in config.sys I
  have been able to open a single group containing 1,200,000 articles.

16) Environment variable PNBULKUPDATES=1 tells Pronews that it should
  bundle up all database updates for a "Mark (un)read" operation and
  commit them to disk in one set of writes. This is quicker than the
  default mode of operation but not as safe - if a crash occurs while
  marking articles read in the new scheme, then none of the updates
  will be made on disk.

17) New switches added to Pronews.exe startup.
    a) "-noid" wil disable Pronews's ability to track replies to your
       own articles by generating a random message id for all articles.
    b) "-noua" will omit the User-Agent: line from posts that Pronews
       makes.
  It should be noted that use of these two switches does NOT mean
  that you cannot be tracked on Usenet! It just makes it more difficult.

18) The default codepage for posts made by Microsoft Outlook Express
  is set to Windows-1252 unless another header has already overridden
  it.

19) The maximum number of parts in a multipart binary decode has
  been changed from 2048 to an unlimited number. When posting, the
  2048 part limit still applies.

New features in 1.53 not in previous releases
---------------------------------------------
1) yEnc decode support

2) Changes to use less memory - details of how to configure this
are below.

3) speed ;-)

4) Addition of the %G variable in Pronews/2-->Settings tab
"Group Defaults (page 4 of 9)" to allow quoting of the group name
in both "Reply Message" and "Forward message" templates. This also
works in the local copy of the group settings.

Fixes in 1.53 that you may need to know about
---------------------------------------------
You can find a complete list of the fixes in this release in the
file FIXED.TXT in your \PRONEWS directory when the installation is
complete. The following is a partial list of things that you may
need to know have been fixed before installing.

1) On all previous releases, the file GROUPS.DAT was randomly
corrupted when you fetched a new list of groups from the server.
This release contains code that will inspect GROUPS.DAT as it is
loaded, will issue warning messages to PRONEWS.LOG for each group
in error then ignore the group. If any errors are detected it will
then rewrite GROUPS.DAT so that it contains only the groups that
have been validated. The first time you look at the groups trees
in this release may log a large number of errors to PRONEWS.LOG
(one of the beta testers had over 21,000 invalid groups deleted)
and take a long time. Hopefully the bug that corrupted the groups
file is also fixed in this release.

2) In 1.52, articles with Message IDs with more than 49 characters
on the lefthand side of the @ sign were not stored in the database
correctly. Articles in reply to one of these will not be correctly
threaded in the article index. To correct this you need to delete
the article with more than 49 characters in its id and then
retrieve ALL headers for the group to make it refetch it. Or let
it age off and forget about it ;-) Mozilla for Linux seems to be
the prime offender for triggering this bug.

3) Contents of some filter files may now be ignored. There's now
some checking of the validity of the FLT files in the headers
directory and Pronews will not process those that it finds are
corrupt. Rather this than crash :-(

4) Pronews should now coexist with other running programs more
readily. Users who have experienced SYS0008 "Cannot start, not
enough memory" errors from OS/2 should be helped by this release.
Most of the problems I have had reported have been from users of
the Polarbar Mailer and Netscape.

5) Changed the behaviour of the article index when it scrolls.
When it had the last article on the screen highlighted and you
pressed the spacebar to go to the next, it used to move the
article index up to the next unread post but place it on the last
line of the display still. It now moves the index up and places
the selected article on the line below the top. This is
intentional for those of you who notice it and are just about to
send me a mail telling me it's a bug ;-)

6) When you select an article for decode, there is now a fastpath
to cater for articles that are self-contained - i.e. (1/1). This
is to speed up the selection of articles for decode. A side effect
of this is that if you swipe a whole range of articles with the
same subject, it will now select all of them for decode where the
old code would have selected just one of them - but very very
slowly. In addition, selection of articles for multipart decodes
has been speeded up.

7) The ROT13 shortcut keys were different in article and post
windows. Both now use Ctrl-T to be consistent.

8) If you have GNKSA compliance set on in the global settings
notebook then you will now be warned when an article that you are
reading and replying to in one group has a Followup-To: header
that points to a different newsgroup.

9) The popup menu that allows you to select which group(s) to send
a post to is now arranged according to the books you have defined.
This means it will not tend to drop off the bottom of the screen
if you have a lot of groups (or a small screen).

10) When you select one of the Groups tabs (All Groups or New
Groups) on the Control Panel, GROUPS.DAT is read and the number of
groups on the server selected in the Servers pane is displayed on
the tabs. The numbers are retained if you switch away from those
tabs, and also if you subsequently select a different server in
the Servers pane. Only if you now switch back to the All Groups or
New Groups tab will the group count be updated.

Memory related issues and tips
==============================
The last release introduced an environment variable PNMAXHEADERS
that allowed you to specify how many articles any of your
newsgroups could contain. The default was set at 100,000 and still
is in this version. However, this has a negative side effect when
you have many small groups because each group allocates memory
when it's opened, requesting approximately 8 times PNMAXHEADERS
(in bytes) plus the size of the IDX file for that group. To try to
help this PNMAXHEADERS has been given a slightly different
meaning. It is now the maximum number of articles that any group
can be set to use. If you set the "Automatically limit to" setting
in the global settings notebook to a lower number then this number
is used for all groups. For large groups which exceed this global
number you can override the "Automatically limit to" number in the
local settings notebook. The maximum that you can set either
"Automatically limit to" value to is the one that you've specified
using PNMAXHEADERS.

As this is a complex issue an example might help. Suppose you have
a lot of groups that never have more than 10000 articles, and a
small number that have between 60000 and 120000 on a regular
basis. To handle this situation, you SET PNMAXHEADERS=150000
(largest expected group size plus a bit of leeway), then go into
the local settings notebook of each of the large groups and turn
to the "Other" page. Uncheck "Use Group Defaults", turn on
"Automatically limit to" and enter 150000 in the spin control
there (you can overtype it, you don't have to spin it!). Now you
OK your way out, go to the global settings notebook and set the
"Automatically limit to" setting there (page 9 of the Group
Defaults) to a sensible number like 15000 or 20000. This reduces
the memory requirements for the remaining groups that normally
have around 10000 posts or less. For any groups still smaller you
can override the default settings too, adjusting its
"Automatically limit to" downwards as appropriate. Note that you
shouldn't set this value lower than the current group size or the
purge limit (whichever is greater).

On the old release 1.52, setting PNMAXHEADERS=150000 would
allocate 1.2MB per group, regardless of its actual requirements.
With 30 groups, of which 2 large, the new scheme as above requires
6.8MB against 36MB previously. In both cases the groups' index
file sizes should be added to this.

This way of working should help people who have subscribed many
small groups and a few large ones.

For people that have many small groups and no large ones, we
strongly recommend that you SET PNMAXHEADERS to a lower value than
100000 as this will reduce your memory requirement to the minimum.

New features in 1.52 not in previous releases
---------------------------------------------
1) Missing parts in a multipart article decode are now listed when
you attempt to decode them. Messages are written to both
PRONEWS.LOG and to the article window.

2) New environment variable: PNNOOFASFILEPART. Set this to any
value and Pronews will ignore "x of y" in article subject fields.
For use where posters use subjects like "Some huge set of binaries
(1/256) File 1 of 6" to ignore the "File 1 of 6" part of the line,
as otherwise ProNews will incorrectly try to match the "File 1 of
6" to "File 2 of 6" instead of (2/256), (3/256), etc. (it works
backwards from the end of the line). It just requires the
environment variable to be set, the actual value is irrelevant.
Example: SET PNNOOFASFILEPART=whatever

3) New environment variable: PNMAXHEADERS. Previous releases of
Pronews were hard coded as to how many articles in a single
newsgroup Pronews could deal with. More recent releases have had a
limit of 100000 articles per newsgroup, older ones had a limit of
30000. You can now set an environment variable to tell Pronews how
many articles to expect in any newsgroup in your subscription
list. Note that this ideally should allow for the current number
of articles in any newsgroup plus the number of new headers
requested from the server. The default is 100000 as before. You
can change it to a lower value than 100000 in order to save on
memory allocated by Pronews, or set it to a higher number to allow
you to view more populous newsgroups. The larger the number you
use, the more memory is allocated (and vice versa for those on low
memory systems), as ProNews keeps the allocated memory associated
with a newsgroup even when it is closed.
Example: SET PNMAXHEADERS=200000 DO NOT SET TOO LOW!! This is a
loaded gun that lets you blow your own foot off ;-) Setting the
value too low can cause horrible crashes, while setting the value
too high will cause memory to be allocated unnecessarily. Trailing
or leading blanks on the numeric argument are not allowed and
should not be specified. Default if not specified is 100000.

4) Autodetection of occasions where the server has had the current
newsgroup rebuilt and reset the message numbers of the articles
within it. Also could happen when switching a group from one
server to another, we now detect the new message numbers and
download all.

What's new in version ib098
===========================
Y2K Compliance!
---------------
+ Installation of this beta 2 will not fix any Y2K problems that
exist in the current *database* of your old release. We have added
code to recognise the database corruption and "tolerate" it but
the database will remain corrupt until posts made after Jan 1,
2000 and downloaded with a non-Y2K compliant copy of ProNews have
been deleted. The net effect of these changes should mean that you
do not _see_ any Y2K related problems with old posts/articles.

Otherwise, build ib098 should be entirely Y2K compliant.

Good Net Keeping Seal of Approval (GNKSA)
-----------------------------------------
+ A number of issues for GNSKA compliance have been addressed
in this release. A new checkbox on the Settings notebook
Group Defaults tab page 6 has been added to turn on strict
GNSKA compliance for the following items.
        - maximum server connections no more than 4
        - warn user if more than 4 lines in sig
        - warn user if a reply to a post is directed away from
          the current newsgroup by the presence of a Followup-To:
          header.

The following GNKSA items are in force regardless of the setting
of the Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval compliant check box:
        - signature should be prefixed by "-- \n" line on posts
          made ("-- \n" is dash, dash, blank, carriage return on a
          line by itself)
        - strip out addressee's signature when replying (anything
          after "-- \n" on a line by itself in original post)
        - subject must be specified (no default). ProNews will now
          refuse to post an article with a null subject
        - don't post empty or unchanged messages. This is done to
          stop accidental posts with no changes made.

+ The Spell Check code is completely new in this version. The
program still uses the Spell Guard API and dictionaries. Our
thanks go to Robert Mahoney of 2Rud Software for his assistance
in making this work.

+ The "Explore Thread" option on the Article Pop Up menu has been
replaced with a new "DejaNews" sub menu that includes the "Explore
Thread" choice and adds two new choices.

  "Classic DejaNews" starts Netscape and passes an URL that asks
     www.deja.com to look for the message ID for the article and
     displays the article in the Classic Deja News format.

  "Group Search" starts Netscape and passes an URL to www.deja.com
     that asks for a search for the selected text. The menu item
     will be disabled unless a text block is selected in the
     Article window.

+ The tasks "Retrieving all articles for %newsgroup%" have been
moved from "Article Activities" to "Miscellaneous Activities"
queue. This requires that you have at least 1 Miscellaneous
Activity thread configured to run. The more MISC threads that you
configure then the more "Retrieving all article" threads will run
at any one time. This affects the rate at which "Retrieving
article xyz" posts will appear in the "Article Activity" queue.
It's these last ones that actually transfer articles from your
news server to ProNews. You need to find a balance between the
number of MISC threads that run putting Article Activity tasks
onto the queue and allowing enough of them to run to transfer
data.

Notes about this version
========================
This version is brought to you by:

        Bob Eager
        Trevor Hemsley
        Will Honea
        Lorne Sunley

building on the original foundations supplied by Panacea software,
Bill Young, William Lamb et al.

We also wish to thank Robert Mahoney of 2Rud Software for his
assistance in making the SpellGuard code work again with ProNews.

yDecode code initially written by Brian Smith and integrated into
the current version of the program by Trevor Hemsley.

Portions of the CRAM-MD5 code are copyright RSA Labs Inc.

Help file and screenshots updated for 1.5x release by Peter
Weilbacher. Readme files proofread and amended by Rik Steenwinkel.

+ There are probably numerous bugs, and without your help we won't
be able to find them. If you have a problem, please email us
(Pronews_Support@os2warp.org) and let us know.

Wherever possible we need to know accurate ways to recreate the
problem. If you have a crash then we'll want the popuplog.os2
entry for the crash and, if you're running a debug version, the
*.TRP file from the ProNews directory. The last few lines of the
PRONEWS.LOG file would also be useful. If you can recreate the
problem and we cannot then mail us and ask for the debug version
of the code, run with "pronews -3" to turn on debugging logging
then recreate the problem and let us know.

+ This software is Shareware. It will work unhindered in ANY way
for 45 days. After this there will be a delay upon starting the
program. Please see the programs help files for information on how
to register.

Non obvious features
====================
+ Using the TAB key on the article windows switches between the
article bodies and article headers windows. In the control panel
it will switch between the server field and the list of subscribed
groups.

+ The SPACE key pages down the article body window, and when the
end of the article is reached, advances to the next unread
article. The default action of the spacebar may be configured in
the program's settings notebook. If you reach the last unread
article in a newsgroup, ProNews will open the next newsgroup that
has unread article bodies and close this one.

+ Control+Space acts as the space key, but does not wait until the
article is at the end to skip to the next. Follows the same rules
as the spacebar.

+ Each toolbar in the program can be customized. Right click on
the toolbar to learn more. Toolbars for individual groups are
saved so you can give each group you read it's own toolbar suited
to it's content. To copy an item from one toolbar to another
CTRL-Drag it.

+ Double clicking on the [+] [-] items in the tree views expands
all subtrees.

+ Just like OS/2, pressing Ctrl-* (on the numeric keypad) expands
ALL trees in the current window.

+ Selecting all articles in a group and then using the decode
option will automatically scan for multipart binaries and properly
decode them for you. Binaries with missing parts are not
downloaded, and are highlighted to let you know they have missing
pieces.

+ To edit an article or message that is queued for send you have to go
into the Queue window and double click on it.

+ Drag
   - articles to the desktop to save them.
   - articles into user groups to store them.
   - servers onto groups to change which server is used for subscription.
   - books/groups in the control panel to arrange them.
   - queued items to arrange them.
   - outgoing post queue items to a server to transfer the post.

+ Right click on everything. Nearly every part of the program has
a context sensitive menu. Some options may only be reached in this
manner.



Again, thank you for trying ProNews/2!
