Copyright: Copyright (c) 1994 Todd Henschell


CMPQwk Reader Help System      [image] Close TOC

If you've got lots of screen real estate, use the floating table of contents on the left.  Users with video running at a resolution of 800 x 600 (or better) should do that, they'll find it's fast and easy.

If you're using plain 640 x 480 VGA, you can close the Navigator window by clicking the button Close TOC that's displayed in the blue region at the top of this window.  If you click that one, click the CONTENTS button above, too.  That'll load the Table of Contents into this help window.  You'll find the help easier to read on VGA systems if you maximize this window.

Feel free to poke around.  If you need to search there are well over 230 search key words, so you'll probably find what you're looking for.

If you want, you can close this window (by double-clicking the radio button in the upper-left-hand corner) and leave open the smaller Table of Contents Navigator window.  From the Navigator you can pull up any topic you want, any time you want it.

There are control buttons on the Table of Contents page in this window that you can use to bring up the floating TOC any time you want, (if you close it by mistake), to close it (if you decide you don't want it), and there's a red button that'll close both windows with one click.  The EXIT button on the button bar will also close both windows from within any section of the help file..


CMPQWK
Welcome to CMPQwk 1.4

Main Window Table of Contents

Load floating Table of Contents

Close floating Table of Contents

Close both Help windows

About the program

Express setup

How to read mail and create replies

What the program is supposed to do

What the program isn't supposed to do

Important features you won't want to miss

Coming attractions

Keyboard shortcuts

Magic mouse shortcuts

General information & conventions

The toolbars

Conference, Read, Quick message list, and Write windows.

Carbon copies

Spell checker

Menu contents

Disclaimer & copyright notices

Registration information

Support sources and how to contact them

Frequently-asked questions

Advanced user Information

Index of terms used

Known quirks and required files

Thank you, thank you...

Documentation credit


about the program

Off-line mail was invented because a BBS has limited resources.  Users don't like busy signals, and that's what you get when everybody reads and writes mail while connected to the system.  With off-line mail, the BBS uses a program (usually called a door) to "package" the mail for you in a format you can read on your own system, using a program called an "off-line mail reader."

There are several different formats used to package mail for consumption off the BBS.  One of the most popular---if not the most popular---is the QWK format.  Once you've had the BBS prepare a QWK packet for you and you've downloaded it, you can read, reply, browse new files (if the system offers that feature) and examine news or bulletins without tying up the BBS phone line.  When you're through with your mail, you can quickly upload your replies, and the mail door will process them and put them in the appropriate conference.

All of this will take much less time than if you did it on-line (few on-line editors are as good as those built in to even the most feeble off-line mail readers), and the whole process will tie up the sysop's board for only a short while.

Off-line mail helps the sysop keep his system available, and it improves the quality of the mail you send.  You can take the time to compose a clear, concise message, and you also have the chance---while off-line-to take back any snippy messages you've written, but after you thought it over, don't want to send.

CMPQwk was designed to be your tool for helping the sysop keep his system free so it can serve the maximum amount of users.   Its most important purpose, though,  is to make you look good by having nicely-formatted and well-thought-out mail coming from your end.

This software was conceived and created by Derek Backus, a self-taught programmer who writes largely in Turbo Pascal.  Derek and his dedicated and hard-working beta testing team slaved away, squashing bugs, thinking up features, and otherwise doing everything possible to insure that CMPQwk was full-featured and ready to go out into the world.

The documentation and accompanying text and Write format files were designed and created by Todd Henschell, a nationally-published author, technical writer, and screenwriter who has written for Computer World and has co-authored the book At Home with Terminal Illness. It is to be released on April 15th by Regents Prentiss-Hall.  Amazingly enough, he never realized just what he'd gotten himself into...until it was too late.


express setup should get you up and running

If you're already installed the program (and are not just browsing this file after unpacking the CMPQwk archive files), you don't need to read this section.  If you're browsing, please read this section, it might save you some time.

Generally, the default setup will work for everybody.  Once you've told CMPQwk where to keep its working files, where you store your QWK and REP packets, and what packer you'd like to use (it must be in your path if you pick an external packer), you're ready to roll.  Here are the nine simple steps you'll have to follow on "full installs":

Please note that the installation will be slightly different if you procure the program on floppy disk.  In that case, put disk #1 into the appropriate drive, and from Program Manager's File menu, select Run, and then enter d:\setup (where d: is the correct drive, a: or b:).

If you've gotten the program from a BBS, the procedure is outlined below.  Other than the initial "unpacking" the disk-based setup is virtually identical, except the program will ask for disk #2 when it's time to install the files on that floppy.  The CMPQwk Sound Upgrade disk has its own install, and you must install CMPQwk itself before installing the optional voice announcement files.

  Unpack program file #1 to a temporary directory.  Be sure it's not the same directory where you want to install the program.  Unpack the program file #2 into the temporary directory.  Version 1.4's setup requires that you install using the contents of both archives.  Earlier versions only needed the first archive.

  Using File Manager or Program Manager's File, Run menu item, run the SETUP.EXE that came in the CMPQwk archive.

  Once Setup is running, read the release notes it will display.  They will contain important information that may not be in the on-line help (this file).  Follow any instructions there carefully to insure a reliable installation.  Note that you will have the option to select which files are installed if you pick "Custom Installation."  Click on that anyway, to see what your options are.  If you are short of space, it might be possible for you to install the main program but not the sounds or help file.

  Type in where you want the program to install itself, including a drive letter and directory name, if you want something other than the defaults (C:\CMPQWK) and press Enter again.  It will begin copying (or, if you're installing from disk) expanding and copying the files.  Don't do anything rash during this time, some of the files are large and on a slower machine they may take a moment to copy.  Setup will tell you when it's completed this process.

  SETUP.EXE will ask your permission to create a program group in your shell, and it'll give you the option of deleting obsolete files used by prior releases if it detects one on your system.  Let it do this, it might recover some disk space if you have used prior (or beta) releases, and it can't hurt anything if you haven't.  Once the program is finished copying and deleting, you can delete the files you unpacked into the temporary install directory.

  During the last part of the process, Setup will ask you if you're converting from one of several mail readers.  If you are, type the path to your mail reader if the displayed path isn't correct.  This will allow you to use the same tagline, subject, and to list files.  If you make a mistake, you won't get your taglines (or other files) copied, but you can do that later if you refer to the help section Upgrading from a Mail Reader not Supported by CMPQwk.

  Start CMPQwk by clicking on the icon it created in Program Manager for you (or by double-clicking CMPQWK.EXE inside a File Manager window).  Under the Options Menu select Path Configuration, and then tell the program what unpacker/packer you want to use (be sure it's in your path if you use an external program).  The internal packing and unpacking is the default, and should work for everybody who uses QWK files packed with PKZip 2.x.  Type in the name of the drive and directory where you keep your QWK packets, and the drive and directory where you'd like to keep your REP packets.

  Enter a drive letter where you want CMPQwk to create its WORK directory.  Important!  The drive---or drive and directory---must exist.  If you want the program to create its work directory in R:\MAIL, for example, you must have a drive "R:" and a directory already there called "MAIL."

Note: Be sure a directory of the destination target name r:\mail\work (using our example drive and directory) doesn't already exist on that drive.  Also be sure that other programs will not try to use the same work directory.  (Such as they do with the common "temp" directory other Windows programs access cooperatively.)

Important!  CMPQwk will indiscriminately delete the contents of its work directory when it exits!

Don't let any other program access the CMPQwk work directory (or don't you store stuff there if you'll expect to find it later).

  Click on OK or press Enter.

You're finished.  If this is the first time you've opened CMPQwk, it will open the sample packet that ships with it.  (Sample packets are only shipped with major upgrades.)  Follow the directions in the sample messages, and you'll see how easy the program is to use.  If you've used it before, look through the packet anyway, some significant features have changed since 1.3x and there may be some things you don't know about 1.4.

CMPQwk's install will also create an icon for CMPView (our handy file viewer) and CMPEdit, the unlimited-file-size editor we ship for those folks who need a powerful tagline editor.  It will add the significant txt files that ship with the program to the CMPQwk group (or whatever group you asked it to install itself into).  Please read all the text files carefully, there is important information in them that may not be in the on-line documentation (this file) of the manual!

Try the program the way it comes out of the box first, then change things if you discover you'd like them done a little differently.  It shouldn't be work to set up software.  Our goal with CMPQwk was to make it easy.

See Also

How to read mail and create replies

Important features you won't want to miss

Advanced User Information


If you've gotten this help file with a program "update" you probably will only have to copy the unpacked files into your existing CMPQwk home directory.  There may be a program called UPDATE.EXE in some releases.  Before you do anything to your existing install, look for the file README.TXT and the other TXT files that are shipped with each release.  There you will find instructions on how to install updates.  It may vary from version to version.  Failure to follow the instructions in the text files may cause problems later on, so read them carefully.


how to read mail and create replies

The real basic stuff - you can skip this part if you're an advanced user

First off, you have to know what QWK mail is and how you get it to use our program.  Version 1.4 does not contain any communications components.  We assume two things to be "true."

Our first assumption is that if you're reading this on-line help file you have a modem and some type of communications program with which to operate that modem.  We're also assuming you call BBS systems of some type, because that's the only way (right now) you can get CMPQwk.

Our second assumption is that you know what QWK mail is, know what a mail door is, and how to get to one.  We can't possibly instruct everybody on the procedures for getting QWK mail on all the different types of BBS software.

We suggest that if you don't know how to get QWK mail, you should call your favorite BBS and leave a comment to the sysop, asking him which bulletin explains it (if they have bulletins) or if he'd please tell you how you get, use, and reply to QWK mail.

Since 99% of our sales have been upgrades from people using other readers like OLX and WinQWK, we decided it was better to spend our time improving our program than writing a manual on how to get mail on every BBS system in the U.S.A.  Your sysop won't mind the message at all, it means you're probably not a file gerbil.  If you don't know what a file gerbil is, then ask your sysop about that, too.

Once the program is installed, you'll want to look through all the options.  Open the various dialogues (without a packet open) and see what options you have.  You can set colors, sounds, and so on.  Play with those items for a bit, and get familiar with how things work.  You'll find we organized the program not with one huge and complicated configuration dialogue, but with little ones that apply to the various windows the program uses.

I'll say this again: CMPQwk is like any toolbox, and there are hammers, saws, and screwdrivers.  Just like you don't use a screwdriver to pound in a nail, you don't use the Read window to add or drop conferences---you use the Conference list for that.  With CMPQwk you use the different windows to do different things.  Think of windows as you do a toolbar now, it's the same idea.

So you'll find that each window has attributes or settings that apply only to what you're doing when you're in that window.  Some menu items (and toolbar functions) are available when you're in one type of window, but not in another.

This is by design.  It's how we like to work.

You'll find you can set just about anything you'd want to set, including fonts, colors, quoting, signature, and so on.  Don't worry about the advanced settings until you feel at home with the program.  But do poke around and see what's available to you.  We think CMPQwk has one of the deepest feature sets of any Windows off-line mail reader, and we're proud of that.

We also think it's the easiest to set up, because other than telling the program where you want to keep your QWK and REP files, you just don't have to do anything else to get it to work.  (Unlike some of our competitors who make you enter horrific command lines or worse, hack ini files to set basic program parameters.)

Anyway, look through the program's configuration dialogues, see what they do, and come back to this file when you have things the way you want them.

Okay, now that you've got the program feeling how you'd like it to feel (and you can change it at any time, in most cases the changes will take effect right away) you'll want to get a packet open.  It doesn't need to be a big packet, any packet will do.

The basic stuff - first steps to reading and writing mail.

Click on the File menu, then Open (or press ALT,F,O) to see a list of QWK packets in the directory you designated as your QWK storage area.  Once you've found a QWK file you want to open, if you double-click on it, the archiver you selected will open the packet, the Conference list window will present itself in the default position, and if you have personal mail, a Read window will appear in the default position.

The Conference list is CMPQwk's "home" window.  If you have a packet open, the Conference list should always be open.  You can't really navigate through a packet without it, so don't close it (the program may not even let you do so).

To read mail, just double-click on the conference you'd like or press Enter while the cursor bar is over it.  A Read window will appear in the default position (the first Read window may have already done so if you have personal mail in the packet).  Grab the borders of the Read window and size it how you'd like to see it.

CMPQwk remembers window positions (unlike other products, we put you in control of the MDI).  Place all the windows that appear where you'd like to see further instances of them to appear and that's where they'll go.  This setting is remembered from session to session.

Navigation - fast ways to get around a packet.

If you want to go the next message in a conference, with the Read window as the front window, you need only press the right arrow key.  You can quickly flip through a small conference in this manner (although you'll find the Quick message list better for this when you're doing heavy net mail, and I'll get to it in a moment).

If you want to reply to a message, just press "R" while a Read window (or a Quick Message List) is the "active" window, and the message header dialogue box will appear.  Pick a subject, a tagline, flag the message private if you want, and click on "OK" to begin editing your reply.

If you're replying to a message on RIME that's been routed to you, CMPQwk will automatically pick up the sender's RIME address and put the correct routing string on the first line of the message.  If you're looking at an Internet packet, it will pick up the sender's Internet address and put it on the first line, as is custom with QWK-to-UUCP doors (more on that in later sections).  Like we said, we wanted to make it easy for you.  That was our main goal: ease of use.

If you've got a really big conference, press I when a Read Window is active to bring up the Quick message list.  In fact, it probably has already come up.  If you position the QML in a comfortable place below a Read window, you'll find it's a better tool for navigating.  You can scroll up and down without moving the Read window's contents (use the elevator bar).  Look for something that might interest you, and simply click once on the line with that message.

The Read window will change to reflect the contents of that message.  Find one you want to reply to, press R and jump into the Write window.  We'll be covering more of these windows in detail later, but you should glance at them now.  The Write window is the editor in CMPQwk.

Type in what you'd like to say, editing as you see fit.  You'll notice a small button bar on the editor that gives you quick access to the clipboard and several other features.  The underlined key in each button also responds to ALT+[key] keystrokes.

Once you've finished entering your text, ALT+S, F10, or clicking the Save button will save the message (spell-checking it if you've enabled that feature and have the corresponding files from the second CMPQwk archive) and it will then put you back at the same Read window.  If you want to send multiple copies of the same message to different users, just click on the Save CC button, and you'll be prompted for a list of users to whom you'd like to send a message.  Type in their names, and when you're finished, click on OK to continue.

Pressing the Spacebar, right arrow, or selecting Message/Next will take you to the next message, or the next conference, if the current Read window message is the last one in the selected conference.  The QML in 1.4 can now navigate between conferences.  You can also Reply, and Enter a new message right from the QML window in version 1.4.

When you're through reading or creating replies, you can click on File, Close (or ALT, F, C) and CMPQwk will prepare your REP packet for uploading.  If you're through with your mail for the day, you can select File, eXit (or ALT+X) and CMPQwk will create the REP packet automatically before it exits.

This was just a simple walk-through, you'll read more about advanced features (like spell-checking and the rubber stamp tool) later.

See Also

Rubber stamps and auto signature

Spell checker

Read, Write, Conference, and Index Windows

Carbon copies


(Personal mail, if you have any, is always the first listed in the Conference list---unless you've created replies and don't have any personal mail.  In that case, the replies conference will appear first.)


The term file gerbil has been credited to Robert Koeppel, founder of our home BBS The Patchbay.  I like the term, and in our sysop-ly discussions it stuck.  If you press F and then N immediately after logging onto a Wildcat! BBS, you might be a file gerbil.  If you press F, N, M, and finally A after logging onto a Wildcat! BBS, you might be a file gerbil.  I'll never tell.


The elevator bar is that long stripe that runs up and down every page that's longer than the screen in any Windows application.  If you grab the "car" that's in the elevator, you can quickly whip through a long conference (perhaps missing some messages).  You can click on the up arrow at the top of the bar, and the down arrow at the bottom of the bar to scroll in a more controlled fashion.


what the program is supposed to do

It's pretty simple, really: CMPQwk lets you open QWK packets, read the messages and other information in the packet, write and edit replies to your mail, and do it all without leaving the warm nest of Microsoft Windows®.  For most users, it won't require clunky DOS shells.  For users running in Standard Mode, that means you can continue to use your Windows communications program while you do mail.

CMPQwk is full-featured and quite powerful.  You can read and reply to as many messages as memory will allow, browse through a complete index of every conference, check out the "new files" listings and messages in their native ANSI colors, and even store important messages in a powerful, yet simply-organized folder system.


Microsoft Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.  Since we all know that Bill Gates hires more attorneys than the Justice Department, we wanted to make this perfectly clear.  They are in no way affiliated with us.  Notice I didn't say we are in no way affiliated with them.  Wishful thinking, I suppose.  In any event, if you don't know about Windows, how are you reading this?


what the program isn't supposed to do

It won't read mail that's not in QWK format (yet).  It won't call out and get your mail for you (yet).  It won't edit your SYSTEM.INI or WIN.INI or do anything else but let you read and reply to BBS mail.  CMPQwk won't balance your checkbook or keep a record of all the people you've called this year to discuss the national budget, or track your recipe database, or anything like that (unless you want to put that data into our Folder Tools, which I guess you could do).

It's just a mail reader, but we'd like to think that being a mail reader is good enough.


important features you won't want to miss

There hasn't been a gusher of good mail readers created for the Microsoft Windows® environment.  Most of them have had ugly interfaces, lousy setups, horrible documentation, and they load stupid DOS shells or crash-prone hard-to-configure Visual Basic kludges to unpack your mail.

That's sad, because Windows is perfect for mail reading: you don't have to tie your system up while you do mail, you have superb control over how things look to you, the mouse is supported by the nature of the beast, and it's fairly easy to stuff the program with slick features because the environment allows them.

Well, maybe not easy...

CMPQwk is different from most other Windows mail readers.  Its fast C++ internal packer/unpacker is fully PKZip and PKUnzip 2.x compatible.  (See the section covering the Path configuration dialogue, or the section regarding ini file editing if you need PKZip 1.x packing.)

CMPQwk is a full-featured (MDI) multiple-document-interface application.  That means you're not stuck in a single message or conference.  If you want to jump back and grab some text you saw a few messages ago and paste it into your current reply, no sweat: hop to the quick message list, find the other message, snag the material, and whip it into the clipboard.  Paste it into your message and continue.

Note: If you have enabled color quoting you can't copy from the Read window until you click the left-button on it.  It then shifts to a "text" window, from which you can copy simply by highlighting the text you want and selecting Copy from the Edit menu..

CMPQwk has plenty of user-configurable options.  There are many features you can set with the program, like quote text colors (so you can quickly see what material has been quoted) and display font (in case you don't like terminal font for some reason), to name two.  CMPQwk supports user-selected sounds for the personal mail and new conference beeps.  (And we'll be adding more sounds in upcoming versions.)

Unlike a typical out-of-control MDI application, CMPQwk lets you define positions for the Read, Write, Quick message list, and Conference list windows.  You tell the program how you'd like it to look---it doesn't tell you.

CMPQwk should work right out of the box.  The defaults that come up when you first install it should be acceptable for just about everybody.  But---if you're a tinkerer---you can play with the settings and optimize them to your taste.

CMPQwk automatically understands the command lines for most major file archivers (Zip, Arj, Lharc) so you don't have to type in silly and complicated command strings to get at your mail.  We think forcing the user to hack an INI file to read mail is idiotic.  If you'd like to use the internal packer/unpacker, we'd be delighted.  If you want to use something else, that's okay, too.  It's your mail reader, after all.  Click on the name of the archiver you'd like to use and you're finished.

But you won't have to type in silly nonsense like wruz -g -r -u -a -b -c or something like that to get it to work!

See Also

Packer considerations

Options Menu


coming attractions

First off, keep in mind that good software is always improving.  Our incentive for you to register (which means you send us money) is to convince you that you're not buying into a blind alley.  Many times with shareware a year down the road it's still the same, with no improvements, no bug fixes, and so on.  We have big plans for CMPQwk!

Here are some of the things on the drawing board for consideration to be included in future releases:

  In/Out boxes.  They are already in development, and will appear in the next major release.  OLX users, rejoice!  Also multiple message tagging for read, and batch shipping into folders, etc.  Complete user control over what to read, what to keep, and what to delete.  Think "power" if you want to know what it's going to be like.  We're testing it now and loving it.

  Object-oriented text-handling.  Highlight text and then do what you want with it.  Want to put it into the subject list?  Okay, do that.  Want to put it into the address book?  Fine.  You'll manipulate text in just about any practical fashion.  Status: design phase.

  Object-oriented mail.  In other words, outside of doing "replies" you can do mail to a "person" and it doesn't matter where that person is---or on what system you reach him or her.  If you're doing some mail on the Patchbay BBS and you get the urge to send a note to Derek Backus on ASACompuHelp BBS, then you just tell the program to do that, and when you're done with the Patchbay mail, you'll have a single-message REP for ASA, too.  It'll get packed up on exit just like Patchbay's.  Status: design phase.

  Object-oriented address book.  Our book will know where a person is, what routing information you need to reach him or her, what board you reach them on, and when you select them to send a message, it will fill in all the important information (including RIME, Internet, etc. routing) and leave you with nothing to do but compose your message.  Status: Alpha testing.

  "Libraries" of old messages, with full database and index functions.  You'll be able to store and search through "canned messages" such as those sysops use, with long descriptions for each message, and a fully-featured search function that'll find exactly the message you need.  To save space, old messages will be stored in compressed format if you want to.  The Folder Tools are already in the process of being enhanced, and improved folders will appear in version 1.5 or 2.0.

  Old QWK packet database.  If you want to archive QWK files, you'll be able to do so and store them with a long description, date you received it, and so forth.

  Fully-configurable keyboard.  There are limitations with what Windows can do here, but within reason, you could set the keystrokes to match the mail reader you use now, if you use one, or to the keys that "make sense" to you.

  Free-floating Toolbar and configurable Toolbar positions.  Along with this a "build-able toolbar" so you could put buttons on it to call your communications program, or do other useful things.  This feature is already in the early stages of development, and should show up in version 2.0.

  The ability to read multiple QWK packets simultaneously.  That can get pretty hairy, with windows scattered fourteen-deep, but some folks will no doubt want to do it, so we think it's worth some effort.  Currently we're planning for a "virtual application workspace" where you view one QWK file's contents at a time but can instantly switch back and forth between open packets, copying messages, text, etc. from one to another.  For now you're limited to one at a time, although you can get messages easily from one packet to another by using the folder tools.  We may change how we approach this, but the idea is a solid one and we should address it.

  Ability to read mail other than QWK.  For example, Blue Wave.  It'll be tough to work this in, and Blue Wave is a dinky part of the market (less than 10%), but it's something to shoot for.  Should we get the demand for it, we'll also consider reading MCI and CompuServe mail.

  The ability of the program to call host systems and directly upload mail for you while you're writing other mail.  We'd like to be able to have our users click a button and the program will look in the REP directory for "new" replies, check which systems they are from, and in the background dial those systems and upload mail while you work.  This is something already in the rough stages of R & D, but it'll be a while before it appears.

  User suggestions.  Users often come up with the best ideas.  When they come in, there's a solid chance they'll make it into a future version.  Many of the program's current features were first suggested by the beta team.  We don't want to discount the opinions of those using the software.  If you have a good suggestion, please make it!


keyboard shortcuts

You'll want to peruse this list in order to learn the various keyboard shortcuts you can use.  It's usually faster to use the keyboard during message reading and editing than it is to keep grabbing for that rodent.

OLX users should pay special attention to the keypad controls, because you can do (more or less) everything you can do in OLX's keypad and perhaps a bit more, including replying to a message and bringing up the Conference list window.

Read Window

-	Back one message.

g	Go back one message.

+	Forward one message.

a	View an ANSI message in color.

left arrow	Back one message.

down Arrow	Scroll down one line.

up Arrow	Scroll up one line.

PgDn	Scroll down one page.

PgUp	Scroll up one page.

Space	Go to next message.

r	Reply to current message.

e	Enter a new message.

f	Forward the current message to another user.

i	Quick message list, QML (message index).

j	Join a conference (Make conference list active).

s	Adds current message to a folder (you pick which folder).

p	Prints current message to the default printer.

t	Steal tag line.

z	Zip to reply---takes you to the a reply for the Read window

CTRL+S	Search for text.

CTRL+Q	Quick search for text (headers only).

CTRL+	Next conference.

CTRL-	Previous conference.

CTRL+right arrow	Next conference.

CTRL+left arrow	Previous conference.

DEL	Delete a reply if it's the current window.

Read Window keypad controls (numlock turned off)

*	Reply to current message.

Ins	Quick message list, QML (message index).

Enter	Go to next message.

-	Go to prior message.

+	Go to next message

5	Conference list..

[arrow keys]	Same as Read window keys.

Conference Window

A	Add a conference to your scanned conferences list.

D	Delete a conference (stop scanning it for future mail)

up arrow	Move up one conference.

dn arrow	Move down one conference.

Enter	Open the highlighted conference.

Quick Message List Window

up arrow	Move up one message.

dn arrow	Move down one message.

Enter	Make the Read window the "focus."

CTRL+right arrow	Next conference

CTRL+left arrow	Previous conference

r	Reply to the message highlighted in the QML window.

Write Window

F10	Save the current reply.

CTRL+B	Wraps or cleans up any selected text.

CTRL+Q	Wraps the selected text and attributes it to recipient.

CTRL+S	Save the current reply.

CTRL+Y	Delete Current Line.

Shift+Del	Cut marked text into the clipboard.

CTRL+Ins	Copy marked text from current reply to the clipboard.

Shift+Ins	Paste text from clipboard to current cursor position.

Del	Delete marked text (doesn't cut into the clipboard, it's lost)

CTRL+Del	Clear all.

up arrow	Move cursor up one line.

dn arrow	Move cursor down one line.

left arrow	Move cursor left one space.

Shift+arrows	Highlight text to cut, copy, or delete.

 Note: You may use all of the standard Windows editing controls in 1.4.  These include CTRL+C for copy, etc. following Windows 3.1 conventions.  The Windows 3.0 keys (Shift+INS and so on) work, too, as we like them better than the non-intuitive and clunky 3.1 Mac-like keys.

ANSI View Window

up arrow	Move graphic up one line

dn arrow	Move graphic down one line

PgDn	Move one "screen" down

PgUp	Move one "screen" up

ESC	Close ANSI window

 Note: these keys apply only to the "internal" ANSI screen viewer.  If you use CMPView or another program, refer to the help file for that program for applicable keys.


magic mouse shortcuts

There are some nice tricks you can do with the rodent in several of CMPQwk's windows.  Most programs sorely neglect the mouse's right button.  We figured it was there for a purpose, so we gave it some things to do.  Once the mouse menu is "up" pressing the key in bold will make the mail reader take the described action, or start the described process.  Let's start with the Read Window.  Clicking the right mouse button anywhere in the read window will bring up a menu with the following options:

Read window right mouse shortcuts

Next message - moves to next message

Previous message - backs up one message

First message - jumps to first message in conference

Last message - jumps to last message in conference

Previous conference - backs up one conference

Next conference - goes forward to next conference

Reply - opens the reply dialogue

Print - print the current message

Export - export the current message to ASCII

Index - bring up that conference's message index

Write window right mouse shortcuts

Save - saves the message (same as F10 or the save button on button bar)

Cancel - cancels the reply or message

Cut - cuts highlighted text into the clipboard

Copy - copies highlighted text into clipboard

Paste - pastes highlighted text into clipboard

Wrap paragraph no quotes - cleans up a badly-wrapped section of selected text

Wrap paragraph with quotes - wraps paragraph as above, but quotes it as from recipient

Spell check... - starts spell-checking the message

Import text - brings up the dialogue for importing a plain ASCII file into the message

 Note: there is a hard-coded limit to your text file of 65,000 characters.  If it's larger than that, it will get truncated on import into the program.  Since this is also the limit for the number of characters in the Read window, this should not be a problem.

ANSI screens right mouse shortcuts

If you click the right mouse button on any ANSI view window, you'll be presented with a list of available ANSI screens in the packet.  As this changes from packet to packet, we can't tell you every one that'll be available, but you can pick the one you want from the list and it'll be loaded into the current view window, replacing the original ANSI screen you selected to view from the main menu.


general information & conventions

If you're an experienced off-line mail user or a Windows guru, you can probably skip this section.  If you're not, I want to take a minute to familiarize you with some of the conventions used in this help file.  Knowing about these few small points may accelerate your ability to get full use from the program.

When you see something in the help file or documentation like this: ALT+dn arrow it means you need to press both of the keys at the same time, not ALT,+, and then an arrow key.  It sounds silly, but sometimes people think it's the + key.  When the + key is involved, it'll usually be as a singular key press, and if not, it'll be explained in plain text.

During the description of a menu function such as File, Open, the letters in bold represent the keys you may hit if you prefer using the keyboard.  So if you see ALT, File, Close it's probably a safe bet to assume you can type ALT,F,C and save your file.  In the case of buttons, usually either a Tab to the buttons and then the boldfaced key, or ALT+the boldfaced key will do the job.

Any time you see something like ALT, O, S that means to press those keys in the order displayed, not all at once.

The keys CTRL, ALT, spacebar, dn arrow, up arrow, and so on are always spelled out rather than illustrated.  That's because not everybody has a font that will display a keyboard graphically, and a bitmap for every key of this type would make the help file enormous.

If you see Important! it means just that, and failure to pay attention may result in the program behaving in a fashion you won't like.  If it's in red, like: Important!  It means if you don't pay attention you may lose data or, by setting something wrong, cause the program to malfunction.  Don't skip the Important! sections!

Note: followed by some text simply means that you'll find an interesting fact there that may affect the way you use a certain feature, or represent a limitation of that feature.

  Followed by some text means that's the answer to a frequently asked question.

Where bitmaps were used to illustrate the various dialogue boxes, they may look differently from what you will see because of wide variations in screen drivers, monitors, color selections, and so on.  It's what's checked, filled-in and not-checked that's important, not the appearance of the illustration.

Starting with version 1.3, screen captures showing dialogue boxes or other features will be made on a system running at 800 x 600 resolution.  Since most of our users are running in this resolution, we wanted the bitmaps in the help file to show this "enhanced" view.  This will affect users running at lesser resolutions.  When the bitmap "pops up" it may be truncated on the right and bottom.  Due to the fashion in which Windows Help displays bitmaps, this is unavoidable.  We apologize for any inconveniences this may cause our users, but we felt the improvements overall were worth it.

See Also

Magic mouse shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts


At the time this help file was compiled, all of the screen captures used were accurate, but that may change somewhat after release 1.x as features are added.  We will attempt to keep this file as accurate as possible, but make no claims that all illustrations are 100% accurate.


the toolbar

You mouse-happy folks will love the toolbar.  The functions of the toolbar duplicate, to some degree, the keyboard functions.  Users with Super VGA will get larger buttons with somewhat different graphics.  There are also two new toolbars (not shown).  One is black & white for laptop users, the other contains some different buttons for printing and bringing up the conference quick message list.  Also some of the arrow buttons were changed on this toolbar, which is known as "Derek's" toolbar.

If you're not sure what a toolbar button does, click on it with the right mouse button and look at the status line.  The program will list out the button's function in plain English.  Generally the different toolbars will show buttons in the same relative order for each function, with the exception of Derek's which contains functions not found in the other three.

See the General Options section for setting toolbar sizes.

VGA Toolbar - 640 x 480 or less resolution

Just click on the button illustrated to see what its function is.  The position on the toolbar may not be exactly what you see here, but the button's graphic is the same.

SVGA Toolbar - resolutions above standard VGA

The same principle applies here: click on what you want to know about.  The SVGA toolbar is cut into three sections so it'll display all the buttons when shown on non-SVGA systems..


This button loads the Windows help engine with the CMPQwk help file (the file you're looking at right now).


This button opens the File Management dialogue.  From here you can open QWK files, delete and rename them, and specify sort order (by date or name).


This button closes the current QWK file (saving your replies) but does not exit the program.


This button cuts any highlighted text into the clipboard, deleting it from the source Write window.


This button copies any highlighted text into the clipboard.  It will work on non-color Read windows and any Write window.  (The Folder tool has its own copy button.)  Remember, if you copy to the clipboard multiple times, you will destroy the previous contents of the Windows clipboard each time you use it.


This button pastes any text from the clipboard, into the current Write window.  It does not function in a Read window.


This button jumps the Read window back one conference number.


This button jumps the Read window back one message (same as left arrow).


This button is the same as Page Up on the keyboard.


This button is the same as Page Down on the keyboard.


This button jumps the Read window forward one conference.


This button jumps the Read window forward one message.


This button toggles the delete status of a Reply window (it works only in the Replies conference).  It doesn't delete the reply, it only toggles whether or not the message will get packed into the outgoing REP file.


This button loads the message header dialogue to begin a new message (not a reply).


This button loads the message header dialogue to start a reply to the message in the front Read window.


This button will copy the text contents of the clipboard into the current Write window with a quote string (the initials of the recipient of the message and another character you have specified) appended to it.  It will appear as if the material was quoted from the message as written by the recipient, to you, in a prior message.


This button starts the Windows character map utility, if it's installed (in the Windows directory or your DOS path), so you can have access to extended characters in a Write window.  Note: load the same font you're using in your CMPQwk setup into Character Map before selecting characters to paste into the message.  If you fail to do this, the selected characters may not appear as desired in the Write window, or may not appear correctly in the final plain ASCII message packed into the REP file.


This button will steal the tagline (if one exists) from the current message Read window.  It will append the tagline text to your tagline file.  It does NOT check for duplicate taglines.  You may edit the tagline text before pressing OK by clicking with the mouse in the text window and changing it as you'd like.


This button will copy the contents of the current Read window into one of your folders.  If you have not created any folders to store messages, or you want to create a new one, you can do so in the same process.  Folders can have long descriptions and can hold many messages.


This button will paste any text you have placed into the Rubber Stamp text box into the current Write window at the cursor's location.  Note : you must have already put text into the rubber stamp text box before selecting this tool.


Read, Write, Conference, and Index Windows
conference, read, quick message list, and write windows

Because CMPQwk uses the Multiple Document Interface, it creates several different window types in the course of operations.  Each window has special characteristics, and to some degree, special keystrokes for getting things done.  The program is like any good toolbox: there are hammers, saws, and screwdrivers, and you don't get the same job done with each tool.  That's the beauty of an MDI program, the windows can be tailored to do the task "just right."

You'll want to read this section and the Keyboard Shortcuts section closely if you're at all confused as to how to use the program.  You shouldn't be, but perhaps you're new to Windows, new to reading mail, or both.  Relax and have fun with it.  If you open a packet and fool around, it'll come to you quickly.

In an hour or so you'll find the way the program works is a lot like the way you work, and a few QWK packets later you'll be buzzing through mail so quickly and smoothly, you'll never know how you got along without CMPQwk.

Or at least we hope that's the case.

Conference window

Read window

Quick message list window

Write window


the conference window

Once you've opened the sample packet (or any packet), the first window that will appear is the Conference List window (followed very quickly by the first Read window, but more about that in a moment).  The main option you have here in the Conference window is the choice to show all conferences the current BBS packet lists, or just those with mail.  Since it conserves screen real estate, checking the box for showing only those conferences with mail makes plenty of sense, but set it how you'd like to see it.

You can navigate through the conferences with either the mouse or arrow keys.  Moving the arrow keys to the conference you'd like to browse (personal mail is always the first listed) and pressing Enter will bring up a Read window displaying the first message in that conference.

With the mouse, double-click on the conference you want.  This will pop up a Read window, also.  If you've already been reading mail, a new Read window will appear in the default position (or in custom positions if you've specified any) with the first message in that conference as its contents.

The Conference window is also where you'll be able to send a message to the mail door to Add or Drop a conference.  Put the highlight bar on the conference you want to change (in either fashion) and press---yeah, you guessed it---A or D to add or drop the conference.  CMPQwk will politely confirm that adding or dropping is, in fact, what you want to do.  It will then silently prepare the outgoing a/d message for the mail door.

Mouse-addicts will find that this option is on the menu, as well, under the appropriate section: Conference.

There are a few caveats here.  One, the mail door must produce a DOOR.ID file that tells CMPQwk what it wants to be called in the message header.  And two, if it wants some kind of non-standard message format for an add/drop message, it probably won't work.

This feature has been tested on most popular doors (Rosemail, Tomcat, and so on).  However, there are dozens of QWK doors by Mom 'n Pop programming outfits, it seems, and this appears to be one of the areas where they foul up a lot.  So if it doesn't work, look in the work directory when you have a packet open and see if there's a DOOR.ID file.

No DOOR.ID file, no Add or Drop.  If there is a DOOR.ID file, then consider sending us the packet for analysis, there may be something we can do to adjust to that door's fancies.

See Also

Read window

Index window

Write window


the read window

The Read window works in concert with the Quick message list window.  They're a team, and you can really buzz through a mail packet efficiently once you've gotten used to the idea of switching back and forth between them.  You have several options once you're in the Read window.  You can press R to begin a reply, you can export the current message to a text file (see the Message Menu section), or you can paste the current message into a folder using the folder tools (see the Folder Menu section).

Note: try clicking the right mouse button on the Read window, also, to see what that does.  There are almost always multiple methods to get at a function in CMPQwk.  Some people like the mouse, others hate to take their hands off the keyboard.

You can copy text from a "colorized" Read window into the Windows clipboard as long as you click that window once with the left mouse button.  That shifts the color-highlighted window to "text" mode, allowing you to highlight and copy at will.  After you're finished copying text, when you move to the next window it will appear as a color window until (or if) you click on it.

The right mouse button menu for the Read window isn't affected by this, clicking the right mouse button simple brings up the correct menu for that window.  You must enable color in the Read window options dialogue, of course, before any of this takes effect.  If color is disabled, you will only see the text window, and left-clicking it will have no special effect.

You may also quickly copy text from a Read window (color or not) by picking Select all from the Edit menu, then picking Copy from it.  It will turn the color window into plain text and highlight the entire thing for you in one step.

In addition to copying message text, if you try to steal a tagline (press T) but the Tagline thief doesn't snag the tagline because the user's reader inserted strange or non-standard formatting characters before it, you can highlight the tagline text you want and press T to steal it.

If the text you highlight (it needn't be the user's tagline, by the way, it can be any Read window text) is too long, the Tagline copier will tell you.  If it is an acceptable length (about 59 characters) the program will bring up the Tagline thief dialogue and give you a chance to edit the captured text before appending it to the tagline file.  Press OK when you're finished.

Highlighted capture was designed for coping with systems or readers that use non-standard formatting.  You may also highlight and then click on the Tagline thief toolbar icon, instead of pressing T.

The Read window is also where you might see an icon appear in the message header.  This means that a file has been sent to you (attached to your message) by the author of the message.  If you do mail on a system where the sysop allows attachments, and you see an icon appear in one of your message's headers, that means there's a file waiting for you to look at.

The icon may be one from an application on your system (which means you and the person who sent it might use the same program), or it may be an exclamation point on a piece of paper (which means CMPQwk can't find the associated program because your WIN.INI isn't correctly configured, or it conflicts with the REG.DAT file).  It might also be a ? on a piece of paper, which means there is no association on your system for this file type.

 Click the Notepad icon to the left to see what happens when you double-click on a message header file attachment icon.

There are several ways to navigate a packet in CMPQwk.  If the packet or conference is small, just pressing the right arrow key while you're looking at a Read window will suffice.  If it's huge, you'll find this method too slow---and you'll find yourself looking at a lot of boring mail.  You'll want to use the Quick message list, or QML for that.

Before we cover anything else, let's get into the Quick message list (Index) window.  Press I to bring it up.  If you haven't set a position for it, it'll appear in the default position.  Once it has appeared, though, you have a powerful tool for navigating through the packet and quickly reading the mail you'd like to read---and ignoring mail with which you don't want to bother.

See Also

Conference window

Index window

Write window


The Index Window
the quick message list (index) window

As I mentioned, this window works in concert with the Read window.  If you move the right and left arrow keys you'll see that the highlight bar in the Quick message list window moves---and the Read window itself changes to reflect the contents of the highlighted message.

Using the Quick message list, you can quickly peruse the first pages of all the messages in the current conference.  The windows are linked, the QML is used to control the Read window, although you can drag the QML to completely cover the Read window if you need the space for it.

With the QML you can scroll (using the scroll bar and the mouse) through a huge conference without changing the contents of the Read window (a factor if you have the slower color-highlighted Read window enabled).

I need to mention a few points about last-read pointers.  First off, if you have both the Read and QML window visible, and use the QML to scroll through a packet, you will not be marking messages as having been read.  This is how OLX works, too.  The logic behind it is simple.

Because you can have the QML maximized (filling the application workspace), if it were set to that size there's no way you could have read a message with the QML focused...  Since we can't track whether or not you're using the QML maximized (it would make pointer logic very slow and sheer hell to debug), we (like OLX) use the Read window to write that pointer.  So to mark a message as read, you must bring a Read window to the front (or make it focused) to make the message as read.

To tell if you've read a message (say your short term memory is failing because the 60's were good to you) just look in the QML, it'll put a little * character to the right of the message's number.  If you don't see a *, the program does not think you've read that message.

This fact may also explain some of the confusion with respect to coming back to a packet and expecting the program to continue reading at a certain place.  You will---you'll continue according to what's marked "read" in the QML index.  If nothing is marked read (which means you never had a Read window focused) then you'll go back to the beginning of the packet.

I think this little fact is the source of much of the "last-read" confusion.  The pointers will only work if you actually "touch" the Read window.  Users with plain VGA rarely have this problem, but power users with 1024 x 768 (and better) resolution video drivers are able to spread the windows out and use the QML by itself.  When they exit the packet and come back, they're not at the place they remember.

Of course not...they haven't marked any messages as "read."

If you see a message you think might be interesting, you need only click on it with the mouse and the Read window will grab focus and display the contents of that message.  Try this and you'll see it's much faster for large conferences.

Using CMPQwk 1.4 you may also use the QML to navigate the entire packet.  The CTRL+right arrow and CTRL+left arrow keys will take you to the next or previous conferences.  If you reach the end of a conference and press the right arrow key, it will take you to the next conference.  If you back up to the first message and press the left arrow key, you'll go to the prior conference.

For small conferences, using the Read window to get around is okay.  If you've got a 5,000 message conference, though, you'll go bonkers trying to right-arrow through it.

The fastest way to use the QML with a huge conference is to drag it open so it fills the application workspace, slap your fingers down on the keypad or T-shaped arrow keys and just go to work.  Right arrow moves to the next, left moves back.  If you see a message you want to read, all you have to do is press Enter (the numerical keypad Enter works fine).  The Read window (which can be obscured behind the QML if you like) will pop up.

The arrow keys will work (up and down and page down page up) in the Read window.  Browse what you want, then press either I, or the numpad 0 to pop the QML back to the front.  You'll find the two windows work together very smoothly like this.  You can zip through a conference with the QML in front, using the arrow keys, and pressing Enter, R, I or 0 to get back to the other window.  In fact, if you use the numerical keypad, you'll find the only time you need lift a finger is to hit R.  And that's the other hand, which will be bored anyway.

If you see a message to which you'd like to reply, you can do one of two things: press R from the QML window and it will start a reply.  Or press Enter when the highlight bar is over that message, (or click it with the mouse) and the Read window will become the "front" or "focus" window.  Then you can press R to start a reply.  If you're not sure you want to reply, press Enter to view the Read window.

When the Read window appears, press R to start a reply, which takes you to the message header dialogue and then the Write window, which is our next stop.

See Also

Conference window

Read window

Write window


the write window

The heart of any mail reader is its editor.  The editor in CMPQwk is the Write window.  It's where you'll spend a lot of your time, and it's where we spent a lot of time and thought trying to make things simple.  Version 1.4 has a completely new (and more powerful) editor under the hood.  There are keystrokes to do many things more quickly than a mouse can do.  Visit the Keyboard Shortcuts section to see them all.  I'll just cover the few you need to know to get up and running now, but there are many more with which you'll want to become familiar.  The best way to learn them is to look at the list of shortcuts and then try them to see how they feel.

Before you'll see the Write window, though, you'll see the Message Header dialogue box.  It's here that you'll be able to pick your subject, taglines, and select if you'd like the message to be flagged "private" or not.  You may also disable taglines through a check box in this dialogue.

Note: You cannot disable taglines on unregistered copies of CMPQwk, nor can you select the contents of the tagline.  Unregistered copies will declare that they are unregistered in the tagline.  This is so we can track users and see if they are illegally using our product beyond the 30-day evaluation limit.

Note: If you're replying to a message and you want to add either the subject or the recipient's name to your pick lists, just click the small button with > on it beside the "To" and "Subject" text entry boxes.  The text or name in the box will get appended to your pick list.  This does not check for duplicates, though, so you could add the same person multiple times if you're not paying attention.

The Message Header dialogue is also where you'll set outbound file attachments if you want to send one to a BBS that supports them.  Look for the box at the bottom of the dialogue, and at the right-hand side of it is a button with ... on it.  If you press that button you'll get a pick box that'll let you pick a file to attach.

Navigate through your directories to the location of the file you'd like to attach, then pick it, click on OK, and continue with the header or begin writing.  When you exit from the message and pack your REP file, the file you chose to be attached will be packed into the message with a standard QWK data file telling the mail door there's a file included and to what message it is attached.

Before you try to attach a file, make sure the sysop allows attachments in the conference you want to send that message to, and that in general he doesn't frown on them.  Many sysops find them annoying, and until the message is deleted, the attachments file stays on the sysop's disk.

All of the navigation boxes (including this one) are "sticky" and they remember where you've been, so (assuming all is well) they'll come up in the last place you used them.  By default they come up in the home directory.

 Note: You can not attach files if you're using the old PKZip option in the path dialogue, or have edited CMPQWK.INI's packer line to read: UseOldZip=yes.  Only the new 2.x compatible packer can handle attached files.

You may bring up this dialogue any time during the writing of a message to alter the information contained in it.  There is a button on the Write window that says, "Header."  Clicking that will cause the Message Header dialogue to re-appear, where you can alter the tagline (or disable it for this message only), set the "to," "subject", "conference," and then go back into the message to continue.

In other words, unlike the limitation in some readers (such as Mustang's fine Off-line Express) that ask if you want to edit this material before or after, we let you do it whenever you want, even in the middle of a message.

Ever been writing a note and noticed it migrating off the listed topic and wanted to change it (but you'd had the mail reader set to edit the header on the way in)?  Not a problem here.  Click on Header and fix it any time you want---and this includes changing to whom the message is addressed, the tagline, conference, and subject.  The changes will be reflected in the message header shown at the top of the Write window.

 Note: there is an annoying quirk in the Windows drop-down list box we use in the message header dialogue.  If you enter an ampersand character [&] in the header subject field, it will get turned into an underline and placed under the next character.  Darned if we can figure out a way around this one, either.  So if you want an ampersand, you need to put two of them together like [&&] for them to stay that way.

Version 1.4 has a feature called "auto RIME."  If you are doing mail on the RIME network, and you receive a private message to which you'd like to reply, CMPQwk will snag the sender's Postlink code on the way into the Write window, and place the correct routing string on the first line of the message.

This requires nothing on your part unless you don't want to route.  If that's the case, just delete the ->[postlink number] text that you see on the first line.  You must turn off the private flag, too, or Postlink will bounce your message back to you as undeliverable.  With version 1.4, turning off the route flag or "disabling" it will automatically turn off the private flag.  But turning off the private flag will not turn off the routed flag.  Why, you ask?

Because contrary to common belief, a message can be public and routed.  It will appear on the destination system as a public message, but it won't get posted on other systems.  This is the method we prefer to use for bug reports and other messages not of general interest to all users.  It saves sysops from spending money shipping our dirty laundry around the world, and the local users still get to read the gossip.

The flip side of all of this is that to be private on RIME on any system other than your local system, you must route the message.  Since it's easy to clip out the routing string if you don't want it, we felt it was best to include it by default when the program detected a RIME packet and a private, routed message to you.

If you are responding to mail from a RIME system, CMPQwk will put the routing string into the message header for you when you click on the private checkbox.  It will not do this if you are creating a new REP without a packet, of course, since it doesn't know the destination's RIME address.  This feature only works for replies to existing messages.  (This will change in 1.5, which is scheduled to have an address book that tracks a user's network addresses and "home" BBS names.)

If you're doing mail on a system that has an Internet gateway program (like Mustang's UUCP Gateway for Wildcat!) the "to" string will be very different from local QWK mail.  It may be longer than the QWK-standard 25 characters, and because of this, the systems supporting this type of mail have a few special features that require some explanation.

If the "to" string contains the @ character (as Internet mail does) CMPQwk detects this when you enter this information in an original message, and the program will automatically take that string and put it on the first line of the message, as: To: name@address.  What you enter in the "to" string isn't used by the doorway, and if it detects on the first line of the message a To: text string, it uses that and not the "to" message header field.  At this writing, most QWK-to-UUCP gateways work in this fashion.  See the section on Reply window options for more information regarding this feature.

The other thing to remember is that most of these gateways require messages to be sent to "All" and not to the sender of the message to which you're replying when you're creating a post in a public conference.  Some doors will strip the "to" field data automatically, some may not.

For maximum compatibility, if you press "R" while reading a public message on an Internet conference on a system using a gateway, you should delete the original user's Internet name and address from the "to" field and replace it with "all."  Be sure the To: name@address does not appear on the first line, or your mail might get bounced back to you unless you upload it to an Internet "personal" conference.  Be on the lookout for Internet hosts that put the user's address in brackets, the message header capture logic will not strip them out, and you'll have to do it or your mail will bounce.

Ask your sysop for detailed information, each doorway (like all non-standards in the PC world) may vary a bit here.

Note: If you want to reply to the recipient of the original message, by the way, if you bring down the "to" pick list on the message header you'll see that the first name listed is the sender, and the second is the recipient.  It's an easy way to jump into a running thread and reply to the original person who posted the message rather than one of the respondents.

Once you've finished with the Message Header dialogue, (hit Enter or click OK), the Write window appears.

If you've enabled Quote Original (see Reply Options) the Write window will appear with the original text of the message to which you are replying.  It'll be set off from the margin with the initials of the person who sent it, and a character separating that from the body of the text on each line.

The cursor will start at the top of the page, allowing you to easily edit out the portions of the original message you don't want to quote.  You can highlight the text with the mouse, or use the other shortcut keys to muck about and format things how you'd like them.  For more information about that (see Keyboard Shortcuts).

If you want to insert material into or paste from the Windows clipboard, select the text (using either the keyboard or mouse) and click on the COPY button to copy into the clipboard.  To paste in text, put the cursor where you'd like the new text to appear then click on PASTE.

Note: remember that if you copy text to the clipboard multiple times, the previous contents of the clipboard will be erased!  You can put as much text as you want into a Write window (up to available free memory) but the Read window has a 64K global limit.  So if you do a message larger than that, you won't be able to display it.  We suggest you split your messages (if they are that long) into segments of 32 or even 16K.  That's a pretty large message, by the way.

Edit the material as you see fit.

If you find a paragraph that, when you paste it in, gets garbled or wraps at strange points, highlight the text after it's in place and then press CTRL+B to "clean it up."  Marking text and doing this will remove any carriage returns, extra spaces, and other bad formatting.  It makes your mail look quite nice.  You can use this feature to fix badly-wrapped Waverider 1.0 messages or messages sent from a Macintosh (they often wrap at the wrong place) or UNIX machine.

Should you want to clean up the quoted material (say its right margin is too far out, or it has badly-wrapped lines) and quote it in the process, delete the original quote characters (if any), select the text you wish to format and press CTRL+Q.  The extra carriage returns will be deleted, and the text will be re-formatted and attributed to the recipient (the person in the to: field of the message header).

These two functions, CTRL+B and CTRL+Q are also affected by a CMPQWK.INI file setting called ManualWrapMargin=.  Please see the section on General Options, Advanced Options, or the section regarding ini file editing for further information regarding that and other ini file parameters.

Should you want to change your right margin for some reason, you'll also find that rarely-used setting in the CMPQWK.INI section under EditorRightMargin=.

The usual Windows keys for editing apply here (highlighting by holding down shift and moving arrow keys, etc.).  You can use the menu, the button bar on the top of the Write window, or SHIFT+INSERT to paste text from the clipboard into your message.

There is also another special tool on the Edit menu you may find helpful, Select all.  If you're in a Write window and click on this, it will grab the entire contents of the window ready for manipulation.  Let's say you want to kill the whole thing?  Just pick Select all and then hit DELETE.  It'll kill the text and leave you back at the first line.

A few notes about re-editing a message.  Say you goofed up, or found the factino you were looking for when you wrote the message (but couldn't find) and you want to add it in.  This is simple.  Open the REPLIES conference and look for that message.  When it occupies the front Read window, simply press "R" to reply to your own message.

CMPQwk knows you don't actually want to do that (if you're in the habit of sending mail to yourself, please don't tell us about it) and it realizes you want to re-edit.  It deletes the original message (flags it for deletion, you can recover it later if you want) and re-opens the contents in a new Write window.  Save it as usual.  (A tip: if the changes were small, you'll want to select Cancel and Save Rep when the spell-checker comes up, or it'll check the entire message again).

When you're through with the message, press ALT+S to save it, or click either the Save or Save CC button.  The program will begin spell-checking the reply if you've enabled spell-checking in Reply Options

(If you clicked Save CC, you'll be prompted for a list of people to whom you'd like to send a copy of the current reply.  Your To List---if you've defined one---appears in the pick box, and you can select to add any of those people, or type in a new name and add it to the list of to receive the message.)

There are a few other special features available with the Save CC option, and how the Save CC dialogue works is covered in more detail in the next section.

See Also

Conference window

Read window

Index window


This character (or characters) is called a "quote prefix."  The quote prefix is used so you can attribute by whom the text was written.  For example, if you get a message from Derek Backus and you've set Quote Original to on, and have selected %f%l> as your quoting string, text from Derek will appear like DB>text of the message...


carbon copies

The Write window Save CC button will bring up a special dialogue box where you can select from any user in your "To List" or type in other names and add them to the list of recipients of your message.

There's also a powerful feature which allows you to import a plain ASCII file as a list of users to whom you'd like to send a message.  When you create the file (use Notepad or any other editor that creates plain, unformatted text), put one user's name (first name, last name) on each line.  After you've selected Save CC, when the list box appears, click on the Import button or press ALT+I and pick the name of the ASCII user list file you'd like to use.  Click on OK or press enter and all the names in that file will appear in the box.

This feature is handy if you need to send specific messages to different groups (say marketing in one group and research in another).  Rather than picking names one by one from a list, you can get them all into the routing box (the box on the right) in two easy steps.

Note: Currently Carbon Copies can only be sent to one conference.  This will change in future versions.

See Also

Write window


the spell checker

CMPQwk has a multi-thousand word dictionary, and for version 1.4 and above, a new spell-checker.  We think the speller is much-improved.  One thing that is different is that the speller loads the dictionary into memory the first time you spell-check.  It keeps it there, so once the dictionary is loaded, it is referencing data from memory, not disk, and it operates quickly.

After the first message spell-checking is---we modestly feel---blazing fast.

If you've enabled the spell checking feature (see Reply Options) when you press ALT+S or click the Save button, Save CC button, or pick Message, Reply, Spell check from the main menu, the spell-checker will load and begin examining your reply for spelling errors.

Note: if you didn't get the second archive file with the dictionary in it from the BBS or service where you got the main program, you cannot enable spell-checking.  Internet and CompuServe users don't have to worry about this, their versions are usually posted in one file only.  But BBS users must make sure they have downloaded both the program and spell-checker files (and correctly installed them).  Just copying in the files from one zip will not a program make in version 1.4.  Get both of them and run SETUP.EXE to insure a correct install.

If the spell-checker finds a word not in either the main or user dictionary (more about that in a moment) it will pop up a dialogue box with the word it thinks is misspelled, and a suggestion for a replacement (if one is available) will be at the top of a list of other, less-likely suggestions.  If you click on the first or any of the rest of the suggested words, that word will get put into the "replace with" box.  The default word in the "replace with" box is always the misspelled word, giving you a chance to edit it if the speller doesn't make a suggestion you can use.

The spell-checker skips words in all caps, and skips words combined with numbers.  It is designed to skip DOS filenames, however under certain conditions (depending on the surrounding words) it may think the filename is a "mistake" and flag it just in case.  Your mileage may vary.  It will also skip words in single quotes like 'word' due to a complication in handling that ['] character that cropped up during testing.

You'll also have the options to Replace, Skip, Skip All, Add to Dictionary, or Cancel the spell-checking process or Cancel and Save Rep (which means the spelling is discontinued and you save the reply without checking the rest of it.).

If you know the word is spelled correctly (be sure) you can elect to Add it to the dictionary so it won't be flagged later on, or you can tell the spell-checker to Skip it.  If this word is likely to be repeated in this message, click on Skip All so it ignores it throughout the text.

If you know the word is misspelled and the spell-checker shows you the correct replacement, just select Replace.  The error will be fixed and the spell-checker will continue.

If the spell-checker doesn't show a replacement (or shows one you know is wrong) you can click on the text box where the flagged text is displayed (above the suggested replacement list box) and type in your correction.  If you then click on Replace, your typed text will replace the flagged text in the message.

Double-clicking one of the words in the suggestion list is the same as picking that word and then selecting Replace.  It's also a lot faster.

If you decide you want to jump back into the message and edit something, selecting Cancel or pressing ESC will allow you to do this, but you'll have to spell-check the entire message again when you save it.

If you use many specialized or technical words and they're getting flagged by the spell-checker, there's an easy way to get them into the user dictionary.  Send yourself a "nonsense" message that's nothing but all of the special words you use (many technical words aren't in the dictionary).  Keep your mouse pointer poised where the "Add to Dictionary" button appears, and just click away until it's finished.

You may also manually add words by using the Options, Edit private dictionary dialogue, although you'll have to enter them one word at a time using that method.  Try to keep your personal dictionary below several thousand words, the speller will search through it much more quickly if you keep it tidy.  If you need more than five thousand words, you're probably using a language other than English!

The first few times you use the spell-checker, if you tell it to add the words you use (such as slang) you'll find it'll only mark "real" spelling errors by the second or third packet.  Of course, if you don't add them, unusual words will always get flagged as a spelling mistake.  Just make sure you have spelled them correctly before you add them.

The dictionary is as large as we could practically make it, but by no means does it contain the entire Webster's Unabridged!

See Also

Write window


(And by the way, the dictionary doesn't know the difference between "your" which means an item belonging to you, and "you're" which means "you are."  So it won't catch that type of error, that's a common grammatical---not spelling---mistake.)


menu contents

The following sections walk you through all the menu items you'll find in CMPQwk.  Most of them are pretty self-evident, and if you're a Windows guru you won't need them explained.  But if you're not a veteran Windows user, or you're new to off-line mail readers in general, you'll want to browse through this section.

File Menu

Edit Menu

Conference Menu

Packet Menu

Message Menu

Folder Menu

Options Menu

Window Menu

Help Menu


file menu

Open - Opens a new packet.  It shows you a list of the packets in your designated QWK directory.  You also can pick how you'd like the QWK file listings sorted, by file date or alphabetic order.  From the Open window you can delete old QWK packets, and using the Directory box, rename packets, and navigate through your directories and drives in the event you've stashed QWK files in a directory or on a drive other than the one you told CMPQwk to use.

If you've enabled QWK Management, every time you open the File Open dialogue, the program compares the dates of stored QWK files against the delete date you've targeted for "aging them."  If it finds any packets older than the target, it will delete them without prompting you for permission.  It doesn't matter if you've opened the packet and read it or not, if it's old enough to qualify for auto-delete, it will be deleted.

The second time you open a packet, you'll see the name of the BBS that created it adjacent to the packet's DOS filename.  This information is automatically extracted by CMPQwk, and requires no work on your part.  You must open at least one packet from the corresponding BBS for this feature to be present.

There are several options you can set (and later ignore) right from the File/Open dialogue:

Sort options: You may specify that you want the QWK file display to be sorted by alphabetic (name) order or date order (ascending or descending).  If you select ascending order, the newest QWK files are displayed at the top of the list.  If you select descending order, the oldest QWK files are displayed at the top of the list.

QWK management: You may elect to ignore your QWK Management settings (say you get a packet you want to keep for a couple of days but don't want to bother copying it or resetting your "kill date").  If you click this check box, the program will not delete your QWK packets according to the settings in QWK Management until you un-check it.  You may also bring up the dialogue for setting permanent QWK Management options by clicking on Edit Settings.  Keep in mind if you change the settings and have "Ignore" checked, nothing will happen until you un-check it.

Close - Closes the packet being read, saves messages into a REP packet if you're created any new ones.  Your pointers are saved, and you can pick up where you left off if you'd like to do so at a later time.

Save replies - Will save any replies you've created.

Create a new packet - This feature lets you build a new REP file without having a QWK open.  If you've opened QWK files from different BBSes, CMPQwk has stored information from each regarding the conferences available.  Selecting this menu items brings up a dialogue that allows you to pick from a list of "known" systems to which you want the REP directed, or you can type in the name of a system's QWK (don't add the suffix, just the prefix) and build a single-conference list that will allow you to upload a message to conference 0 on that system.  This allows you to direct mail via pre-built packet even to systems you have never gotten mail from before.

Once the packet has been created, if it's from a known system you can enter a new message (or messages) in any supported conference and save the REP file just like you usually do.  Caution: the typed-in name (if you add one) takes precedence over a highlighted QWK file.  So if you type something in the box and then select a QWK file with the mouse, the mouse selection will be ignored.

You can highlight a system name and click on delete to remove the record for that system.  If you get mail from a system one time, and decide not to call back, you can save a bit of space in your database by deleting the information for that system.  However, after doing so, you won't be able to create a new packet for it until you get another packet.

You can also use this feature to edit an existing packet.  Just make sure that Open existing reply is checked in Options, Read window options.  Then tell the program to Create a new packet for the system whose REP you'd like to get back into.  It'll open it up and take you right into it without missing a beat.

Re-open existing replies - If you have some REP files in the specified directory and you'd like to open one of them back up (but the QWK for it has been deleted) you can do that by selecting this menu item, then picking the reply file you'd like to open from the list.  It'll show you the available REP files by the long BBS name (since you can only have one REP in a directory) rather than the short DOS file name.  Pick the REP you'd like to work with again and the program will re-open it for you and put you in the replies conference.

Print - Prints the current message to the default Windows printer.

Printer setup - Calls a dialogue box for selecting (and if desired) changing the printer setup.  Pick the printer you'd like to use or change its settings.

Quick exit - bails out of the program, but doesn't build a REP packet - your messages are saved, but no REP packet will be built.  When you re-enter the program, CMPQwk will re-open the same QWK packet you were working on when you chose Quick Exit, and any replies you created will re-appear in the REPLIES conference.  Important!  If you use a RAM disk for the work directory, don't re-boot between mail sessions and expect to come back to your packet: it'll be gone, as will all of your outgoing messages.

Exit - Leave CMPQwk, saving any messages you've created into a REP packet.


edit menu

Cut - cuts selected text to the clipboard, deleting it from the message in the process.

Copy - copies (without deleting) selected text to the clipboard.

Paste - pastes the clipboard contents (if it's text) at the cursor's position.

Delete - deletes without copying to the clipboard.

Clear all - clears current reply window and the clipboard.

Select all - selects the contents of the current Read or Write window.

Wrap Paragraph - if you highlight some badly-formatted text (say something you pasted in from the clipboard and it came out looking poorly because of carriage returns placed longer than the margins) and press CTRL+B, that text will be "cleaned up."  The program will remove any returns in the highlighted text, and bump the text back into a solid, block-like paragraph.  For example:

For example, a     paragraph that looks        like

this and has badly-placed

returns or spaces in

it

(for whatever reason), will get turned into:

For example, a paragraph that looks like this and has badly-placed returns or spaces in it (for whatever reason), will get turned into this.

This feature is handy when you're replying to Internet mail, which is often produced by folks using crude line editors running under UNIX or other non-DOS platforms.

Wrap para & quote - wraps the selected paragraph (as above) and attributes it to the recipient.

ROT13 encode/decode - messages on services such as the Internet (which may be released internationally, thus prohibiting "true" encryption) are commonly "encoded" using the ROT13 method.  Using this method you may send a message that contains potentially offensive text and you can be assured that only those people who want to read it will be able to do so.  The text is shifted 13 characters to the right, so A becomes N and so forth, continuing back through the beginning of the alphabet.  Imagine all the letters on a hula-hoop so that Z and A touch in the middle.

To encode/decode just highlight text you want to alter in the Write window and select this menu item, or select it  with no text highlighted to encode the entire Write window.  This can easily be "un-done" by selecting it again.

 Note: the text to be encoded must have a true hard carriage return at the end of every line and not be "wrapped" text.  Due to the way the text is handled, the encoder wants to have a return terminate the line.  If it does not have a return at the end of each line (a forced carriage return, not a "wrap") the text will be truncated at the end of the first line.  If you bring in a text file that has no returns, highlighting the text and selecting the Edit, Wrap text function will put hard returns in place.  You should prepare wrapped text in this fashion, also, to ensure correct encoding.

To decode a message that has been encoded in this manner, either highlight the encoded portion in the Read window and select this menu item, or select it with no text highlighted to "shift" the entire Read window (including portions possibly not encoded, thus encoding them).

Note that color highlighting in the current Read window will be "disabled" during the process of decoding and viewing an ROT13 message, but the next message in the conference will appear in color if you have color enabled.  This is to insure maximum speed, as doing both processes (decoding then coloring) would take too much time to be convenient on slower machines.


conference menu

Add a conference - Add a conference to your "scanned for mail" list in the BBS.

Drop a conference - Delete a conference, stop scanning it for mail in the future.

Select - pick a conference from which to read mail.

Next - jump to next conference from your current position.

Previous - jump back to previous conference.


packet menu

New files - displays the "new files" listing if the BBS supplies one.  If it's a colorized ANSI screen, and you have a color monitor, CMPQwk will display the ANSI graphics as if you were on-line, in full color.  You can scroll through the list by using the arrow keys or hitting page down and page up, but you can't copy text from the colorized viewer as it is a graphics window.

If you use the external viewer, you can copy text from the new files listing.  ESC will close any of the ANSI view windows except for the external ANSI viewer, CMPView.  You need to press ALT+F4 or click on File, Close to close it.

Note: If you want to jump out of this help file and view CMPView's help, click on CMPView.  Navigate through that file with the browse buttons in this window, and when you want to come back to this file, choose "back" above (you might have to click it several times), or if you've got the sidebar table of contents open, click on any topic there to re-load CMPQwk's help file into this window.

Once the New files list (or any other ANSI window) is open, you can press the right arrow key to view the next ANSI screen packed into the QWK file.  That way, you can quickly cycle through the bulletins and other listings in the QWK.

You will also find a right mouse button menu item on the packet screen if you simply click anywhere on it with the right mouse button.  It will allow you to cycle through the ANSI screens much more quickly than going back up to the menu and picking the next one from the list.

The ANSI graphics windows do not display the "non-standard" PCBoard "ANSI" codes.  If your BBS uses those, ask the sysop if he can arrange an option to pack standard ANSI listings.  The windows will also not display "moving" ANSI.  But color attributes are accurately portrayed.

Bulletins - displays any bulletins supplied in the QWK packet, again, in color if that's how they were created.  (Also a graphics window.)  The same keys are used here, as well.

News - displays news screens, if available.  Ditto with respect to ANSI, keyboard, etc.

View session - displays the session screens (quote of the day, etc.) if any are contained in the QWK file.

Welcome - displays the BBS's welcoming screen, including ANSI graphics and colors.

Closing - displays the "goodbye" screen from the BBS.

With all of the ANSI screens (except the external viewer), you can click the right mouse button on the window and you'll find a menu there that gives you the option of loading any of the other available ANSI screens into the viewer.  This is a faster method than opening multiple windows (and uses less memory).

Board stats - statistics about the BBS or your account with it, as available in the packet.  PCBoard systems usually provide more information here than Wildcat! BBSes seem to do.  If a field is blank, it's because the system didn't provide any information to fill it.


message menu

List - displays an index of all messages in the current conference.

Next - go to the next message in the current conference, or jump to the first message in the next conference if you're at the last one in the current conference.

Previous - jump back one message.

First - go to the first message in the current conference.

Last - go to the last message in the current conference.

Enter new - Enter a new message - select recipient and conference.

Reply - submenu...

Enter - begin a new message (you'll pick to whom and subject, etc.).

Quote - Quote material from a previous message.

Edit - Edit a message.  Deletes the original and creates a new outgoing message for you to edit.

Delete - toggle the "delete" status of an outgoing reply.  Note, you can "undelete" before you build a packet by selecting this again when the same reply is the current window.  Allows you to toggle on and off whether or not a message gets sent.  (We all change our minds from time to time.)

Note: The message will still appear in the reply conference, although if you look at the deleted status indicator on the message header, you can see if the delete flag has been activated.  "Deleted" messages will not get sent out in the outgoing REP packet.

Import text - Paste in a text file, it will appear at the cursor's position.  If it has hard returns, you'll probably have to fool around to format it correctly once it's inside the message.

 Note: there is a hard-coded limit to your text file of 65,000 characters.  If it's larger than that, it will get truncated on import into the program.  Since this is also the limit for the number of characters in the Read window, this should not be a problem.

Spell check - loads the spell-checker and begins examining the current reply for errors.  (Independently of "saving" the message.)

Steal tag line - Grabs the tag line from the message you're reading and appends it to your tagline file.  If the Tagline Thief can't find a tagline, it'll tell you.  Some tagline managers add special characters to the beginning of the tagline that may interfere with the Tagline Thief's ability to grab the line.  If this is the case, you'll have to manually mark the text you want (you can't mark text if you have enabled color highlighting until you click once on the Read window to turn it to plain text, then you can mark it).  Press T to copy the highlighted text into the tagline file.  You'll have a chance in the Tagline Thief dialogue to edit the text if you want.  Then press OK.

Search - Searches through the packet for specific text.  It then builds a new conference called "Search" that contains any "hits" for what you searched on.  Open that conference to browse through the messages containing the word (or words) you searched for.  Searches may be directed to either the current conference or the entire packet.  You may also search just the message header---but for that function, use Quick search, below.

Quick search - blazing fast search in the current conference only, and just the header.  You must have a Read window open to use this.  It creates a conference called "Search" just like regular search, only this method is significantly faster.

Export - Save the current message to a plain text file.  You can either append to an existing export file, or create a new one each time by typing in a unique file name when the export dialogue opens.  If you have set APPEND EXPORT on in General Options, you will append to the filename you pick from the list box.  Otherwise, it will OVERWRITE the file if you pick one from the list box.  Important!  Be sure you know which way it is set, because you can't recover the file once you've overwritten it!

File attachments - brings up a dialogue letting you manage (copy) any files that are attached to your downloaded messages.  You can select a destination for the attached file and CMPQwk will copy the file to your selected drive and directory.

Note: Version 1.4 has a new feature that automatically scans your WIN.INI [extensions] section for associations to an attached file.  If it finds one, it will put the icon for the associated program in the message header.  This feature will only work if your [extensions] section correctly specifies a program that both exists (you have) and the line for that program defines the full path to the message.

For maximum speed CMPQwk will not scan your DOS path looking for the program to find the icon.  You'll know you have a file attachment, however, because the mail door will often put a note to that effect in the body of the message, and CMPQwk will put up an icon with an explanation point, or question mark, which means it knows there's a file, but can't find what might load it on your system, or the association is incorrectly established.

Note: For CMPQwk to correctly launch the associated application, your REG.DAT file (the OLE database) must agree with your WIN.INI.  There is no way around this.  If you don't get the correct icon, or a different program loads with the file open, it's caused by a disagreement between these two.  Windows always follows REG.DAT over WIN.INI.

To clean up both of them, launch File Manager, highlight a file that's the type you're trying to view, click on File/Associate, and navigate using the directory and file box in that function until you locate the correct program .EXE file.  Click on OK when you've found it and selected it.  This step will repair both WIN.INI and REG.DAT, making them "agree" so that double-clicks and the CMPQwk association functions will perform predictably.

View ANSI - lets you view a message with special ANSI codes so it appears in color, and with the graphics allowable when using ANSI.  Press ESC to close the ANSI viewer.

Forward - brings up a dialogue that allows you to forward a message to another user.  With a Read window as the "focus" window, if you press F or select this menu item, the program will insert some text into the message telling the recipient that the message was originally to somebody else and forwarded to them by you.  You may forward to any conference in your current packet.

Please make sure what you forward isn't "off-topic" if you select a different conference for the forwarded message.  Forward will make a copy of the message and place it into your Replies conference for packing into the REP file.  You may alter the stamped message that's put on the forwarded mail, it appears in an editable text entry box in the dialogue.


folder menu

View and Maintain Folders Dialogue

Add a folder - adds a new folder item (where you can store messages).  You can use long names and have as many folders as you'd like.  Folders may contains up to 16,000 messages.

Delete selected folder - deletes the selected folder (and all the messages you may have stored there, so be careful!).  Important!  You cannot undo this!

Read selected message - reads the selected message in the current folder.

Note: from the folder read window you may copy the selected message to the clipboard for pasting into your current mail packet---great for sysops who have dozens of "canned messages" and for sharing important messages with others (see Add Current Message, below).

Delete selected message - deletes the selected message in the current folder.  Important!  You cannot undo this.

OK - exit when you're through.

Add current message - brings up a dialogue box for adding the contents of the current Read window into a folder.  It won't copy a Write window, only an "original message."  Pick the folder into which you'd like to put the message and select OK.  If you haven't created a folder already, you can do so from this dialogue and then put the current message directly into the new folder.

Pack folder database - use this every now and then to reclaim space in your folder database.  As you add and delete messages, the database will grow quite large unless you periodically compress and re-organize it.  This function may take from one-half second to several minutes, depending on the size of your folder database file.

A few notes to avoid confusion are in order here.  Pressing enter while you've got a message highlighted will not "view" that message.  It will close the folders.  To view a message, highlight it and then click on the View selected message button.  Enter in this dialogue always maps to the OK button (which closes things up).  The second thing is to look carefully at the buttons you click.  Since delete can't be un-done (and you may have turned off confirmations) you can quickly---and mistakenly---smoke a message you want if you're careless.

If you use the keyboard hot keys (the underlined letter) you will not find yourself accidentally deleting messages or folders you want to keep, so we suggest you do just that.


options menu

This is where you'll find most of the settings CMPQwk will use to control its day-to-day functions.  It's also the most critical part of the program.  Fouling up this section will adversely affect how the program works, so be sure you understand everything here if you want to change something.

Best rule of thumb: if in doubt, leave it at the defaults, they'll probably work just fine.

Path Configuration & Packer Dialogue

General Options Dialogue

Read Window Options Dialogue

Reply Window Options Dialogue

Font Settings dialogues

Packet Management Dialogue

Lists & rubber stamp dialogue


Path Configuration Dialogue
path and packer dialogues

These two dialogues represent some of the most critical settings in the program.  If you foul any of these up, the program will not open your QWK files or may not correctly pack your REP files.  So please pay close attention to the settings here.

Path dialogue:

QWK path - Set the path to the directory where you keep your QWK files (drive and directory name).  If you click the button with three periods on it to the right of the box, you may pick from the directories on your hard disk.  Selecting OK will then use the "current" path in the program's function.  This applies to all program paths where you see that button.

Default setting: CMPQwk home directory.

REP path - Set the path to the directory where you want your REP packets built (drive and directory).  Type in a path or select one with the mouse by clicking on the button to the right of the path list box.

Default setting: CMPQwk home directory.

Export path - This is where you can set a path for exported text files, in the event you'd like to keep them someplace other than the home directory.  This is where the program will default to putting any text file you export from a message.  You can select an alternate directory, however, at the time of export---but this will be the "first" directory shown in the file list.  To set a default export directory, pick a directory with the "directory picker" button.

Default setting: CMPQwk home directory.

Import path - This is where you can set a path for imported text files, in the event you'd like to keep them someplace other than the home directory.  This is where the program will look first when you pick "import text" from a right mouse button menu in a Write window.  Of course, you can navigate anywhere on your system that you'd like.  To set a default, though, just pick a directory with the "directory picker" button.

Default setting: CMPQwk home directory.

Work path - This is where you want CMPQwk to put its "work" files.  A directory called "WORK" will be created here, you don't need to supply the name, just the drive you'd like to use.  A RAM disk is best, if you have the extra memory to set one up---but be sure it's large enough to hold the opened QWK packet and all your replies.  See the Advanced section if you're not sure how to do this (and how to determine how large it must be).  Important!  DO NOT set this to a floppy disk!  A floppy is too slow and may not contain sufficient free space, resulting in who knows what horrible problems.  Use a hard disk or RAM disk.  A drive and directory of the target name (if you want CMPQwk to put its work directory under another) MUST exist.  Don't put any files you want to keep into the work directory while you're reading mail, because they'll be deleted when you exit the program.

Important!  If you put the work directory on a RAM disk, choose Quick Exit, and then re-boot your system, Quick Exit will not be able to resume your packet, and you will lose ALL of your replies.  You can pick a path with the directory picker.

Default setting: under the CMPQwk home directory.

Packers dialogue:

Here is where you tell the program what the BBS uses to pack the QWK archive.  Most systems use PKZip of some type, and that's the default.  There are other packers, though, and we support most of the common ones as external programs.  If you have a Windows program that can unpack your program type, and it takes command lines, you can enable that here as an external or "other" packer.  The possible archiver selections are listed below.

Internal (Zip 2.x comp) - fast and PKZip/PKUnzip 2.x compatible.  To get 1.x compatible zipping with CMPQwk 1.4 see internal compression options below.

LHA/LHA - LHARC is a freeware archive utility by Yoshi, and you must already have it on your system and it must be in your path like all external packers.

ARJ/ARJ - a shareware product by Robert K. Jung, same path restrictions apply here, too.

PKUnzip/PKZip - by Phil Katz, this option is provided in the event he changes the Zip standard.  If this happens, until we release a replacement unpacker DLL, you could use this method.  Otherwise, use Internal.  This program, like all the external archivers, will require you to load a DOS shell to use.

Other - For any other archiver you want to use (or if you need special options with a standard packer), you must enter the correct commands in a second dialogue that will appear when you click on the ... button.  Be sure to type in %1 %2 after you've typed in the parameters your packer needs, or your mail will not be unpacked, and your replies will not be packed (if you manage to open mail at all).

Both lines, unpacker and packer, need the %1 %2 variables.  Let's say you're using ZAPPO.EXE to compress and UNZAPPO.EXE to de-compress.  Your unpacker line would be: UNZAPPO.EXE %1 %2.  Your packer line (not surprisingly) would be ZAPPO.EXE %1 %2.  When packing, the percent variables represent the archive file to create (or pack) including the file name and path, and the file(s) to pack into the file, respectively.  When unpacking, %1 represents the source file (QWK) and %2 represents the destination path (your work directory).

Default setting: Internal, 2.x compatible.

Internal packer options:

You can set the compression used in this section of the dialogue.

High (Zip 2.x) - this format is compatible with any system using PKZip 2.x to accept REP packets.  It is the "tightest" format, and if you are uploading long-distance, or exceptionally-large REP files, you may want to enable this option to save a bit on the phone bill.

Medium (Zip 2.x) - this format is PKZip 2.x compatible, and is a good "median" setting because it's both tight and very brisk.  You can't use this if you need to upload mail to a system that requires 1.1-compatible Zip format, though.

None (Zip 1.x) - REP files packed with this method will be accepted and processed by any system requiring any version of Zip file from 1.1x and later.  It is also the fastest, and if you do very small REP files, or call a local BBS, you might want to enable it.  It is the fastest of the options.

Default setting: Medium, 2.x compatible.

Internal unzip options:

Process in b.g - You may select here whether or not you want the unpacker to work "cooperatively" or not.  If you want maximum speed, click on NO.  However, if you do this and try to open a very large packet while downloading in background communications process, you may time out your transfer.  Leave this setting to "Yes" unless you need more speed.  Use with caution if you have any timing-critical programs you are likely to be using as background tasks while opening mail.

Select OK when you're finished, or CANCEL if you don't want to save your changes.  Clicking on the help button will automatically bring you to the section of the help file you're reading now.

Default setting: process in b.g. "on."


If you're currently using QWK files packed with any version of Phil Katz's PKZip that's 2.x compatible, pick internal as your packer selection unless you have a good reason not to.  This way you won't start a DOS shell to run the packer.  The internal is quite a bit faster than the combination of a DOS shell plus the time the packer takes to work on the files.  If you need 1.1 packing, you can set the internal packer to create "zero compression" packets (see Internal unzip options).  Every 1.1 unpacker we tested was able to open packets made in this fasion.  For maximum speed, set the unzip option Process in b.g. to no, and set packer compression to zero.


User Options Dialogue
general options dialogue

Start Maximized - tells CMPQwk to start in full screen mode.  It will take over the Windows desktop if you enable this, blocking the view of all other running applications.

Default setting: enabled.

Remember window positions - tells CMPQwk to set the Read, Quick message list, Conference, and Reply windows to the positions you've used in your most recent session.  If you don't check this box, the program will place windows in the default cascaded positions.  If you enable it, every time you move a window, it will adjust the setting so it "remembers" it.  Therefore, don't exit the program unless you've left the windows how you'd like them to appear.  The program blindly remembers what you do, and there's no "going back" to the prior settings if you mangle them.

Default setting: disabled.

Open existing reply file - this option tells CMPQwk to re-open and load your replies if it finds a REP packet belonging to the same system as the QWK you are opening.  This way you can add to replies in multiple sessions.  If you do not enable this, you might over-write a REP file you want to keep, so we suggest you enable this option and leave it enabled.  That way you don't accidentally delete important mail.  If in doubt, leave this one alone.  Better to upload a few dupes (which should get rejected on a good BBS) than lose a few hours worth of work.

Default setting: enabled.

Auto-open existing packet - if you check this, the program will reload the contents of the work directory if any open mail detected there during load.  In the event of abnormal program termination, it will attempt to pick up right where it left off.  This also enables Quick Exit's restart no matter what the reason was for the program's termination.

 Note: if you use a RAM disk for the work directory, and re-boot your system between sessions, Quick Exit (or this setting) will have no real effect, since the contents of the work directory will be lost during re-starting your system.  So watch your step!

Default setting: enabled.

Display confirmation messages - if you check this, the program will display dialogues like, "Spell check finished," and it will confirm QWK file deletes or other file operations.  Unchecked, the program performs the function silently.  Un-check with caution, the program will immediately perform the action you select (including deleting QWKs and closing packets).  A "power user" feature.  Use the program for a few weeks before trying this unchecked.  Even our seasoned beta testers find themselves with an occasional surprise with this disabled.

Default setting: enabled.

File open dialogue on load - if you'd like to have the program automatically present you with the File Open dialogue when it starts (you're going to have to get at it unless you double-clicked a QWK anyway) check this box.  Then, after the program has loaded, if you didn't Quick Exit from a packet or experience an abnormal program termination, it will pull up a list of the QWK files for you in the File Open dialogue.  Pick one and click on "Open" to read your mail.

Default setting: disabled.

Use filenames - you can tell the program by unchecking this that you want to see your mail presented in long-description format only.  Unchecking this (it's checked by default) will force the program to show you your QWK and REP files by the name of the source BBS.  It's a nice way to shield yourself from the ugly 8.3 DOS file naming convention.  The long name won't appear unless you've opened a packet, but if you have a packet from a system you've never called before, you'll still see the DOS name (until you open it, from then on CMPQwk knows its long name and will use that if Use filenames is unchecked).

Most folks do mail from the same systems repeatedly, and we think it's nicer to open mail from The Patchbay BBS by picking its name rather than selecting PATCHBAY.QWK.  It has no other effect on the program's functions (like exporting text files, etc.).  You disable this item if you want to see only the long description.

Default setting: enabled, or show DOS filenames as well as descriptions..

Use external ANSI viewer - checking this disables the color, internal ANSI viewer and allows you to load a color-stripped version of the text in the BBS-supplied ANSI screens (such as new files lists) into the program of your choice.  If you enable this, you must then fill in a path to the program you want to use as your substitute ANSI viewer.

There are many utilities suitable for this, and if you download QWK packets with very large new files lists, be sure the program you use can handle a large text file.  Notepad will be suitable for most folks, but if it doesn't work take a look at some of the fine shareware Windows editors, most of them can handle very large files, or use CMPView, listed below.

Default setting: disabled.

External viewer - type in the path to the program you want to use to view "stripped" or "colorless" ANSI text supplied by the BBS and packed into your packet.  You can also pick it using the button to the right of the path text entry box.  The program must exist for you to view ANSI screens.  If in doubt, try notepad.exe, the default.  It will work for most new files listings unless they are into the hundreds of files.  In that event, pick a more capable editor.

In versions 1.4 and later you may also select the CMPQwk external viewer, a very capable file browser provided with CMPQwk Reader.  There's a button marked Select CMPQwk's External Viewer, and if you click that, the program will fill in the path and filename to it.  (You may also create an icon for the viewer and use it as a stand-alone program.)  Please see the viewer's help file for further information regarding its operation.

Default setting: notepad.exe.

Toolbar - you may select which toolbar you'd like the program to display, overriding (or accepting) the default which is based on your screen resolution.  Your options are: DEFAULT, VGA (smaller buttons), SVGA (large buttons), DEREK'S (large, with some different functions) MONOCHROME, small VGA buttons for laptop users, or NONE to disable the toolbar in the event you want to conserve screen real estate.

The default is---surprise!---the default.

Advanced options - this loads a dialogue that lets you set advanced options that are rarely accessed by most users.  These include:

Editor right margin - If you need a smaller or larger right margin in your Write window you can set that here.  Leave it at the default unless the system you call requires less than 72 characters.

Default setting: 72 characters.

Wrap right margin - this is the setting for the "manual wrap" features on the Edit menu.  Logically, it should be equal to (or less than) the Editor right margin.

Default setting: 72 characters.

Display splash - disables the display of the bitmap when the program loads (the nifty little rectangle I spent lots of time on, but go ahead and turn it off if you get tired of it).

Default setting: enabled.

Use voice - enables the use of voice comments on how many personal messages you have.  This option will not be available unless you've downloaded the current sound file Zip for the voice option (or procured the program on floppy disk, the sound files are included in that event), and correctly installed it in the \CMPQWK\SOUND directory.  It will not work in any other location, and you can't use any sound files except those named exactly how they are named in the CMPSOUND.ZIP (or other Zip files that will be created by us for this purpose).

 Note: You must not enable any system utility like Wired for Sound, Plug-in for Program Manager, or Whoop it Up! that watches for dialogue boxes, windows, etc. or they will interfere with CMPQwk's use of sound.  If you can exclude a program from your sound utility, we suggest you exclude CMPQWK.EXE, as we intend to put more multimedia functions into our product in upcoming releases.

Default setting: disabled.

Use status bar - enables the display of the status bar at the bottom of the display.  If you want to reclaim some screen real estate (and we suggest VGA users do this) remove the bar and you'll get two or so lines for more text.

Default setting: enabled.

Folder Options - external viewer - you can tell the Folder Tools to load the text of your stored messages into an external viewer when you elect to view them.  CMPView, the fine file-viewing utility we ship with our reader works nicely, and is the default if you turn this on.  (For help using CMPView, load CMPView's help file.)

You can set this option to any program you want, as long as the program accepts filenames passed to it and can read plain ASCII.

Default setting: disabled (use internal viewer).


Well, is anybody really sure what a power user is?

It seems to me a power user is somebody that knows more than you do.  It also seems that a power user is somebody who is so at home with his or her PC (yup, there are lots of female power users, I know a few) that how it works is just second-nature.  You may be a power user with the software you have now, however I bet if I dropped a complicated piece of computer software in your lap with no manual (and it was something you'd never touched before) you'd quickly degenerate---just like the rest of us---into a "regular" user.

So the rule here is to leave confirmations on until you know exactly what will happen when you press a key.  If you can roll off---by memory---what every keystroke does in every window, you can feel safe turning confirmations off.  Quickly, what does S do in the Read window?  How about J, P, or Z?  Did you get them all correct?  (Check the keyboard shortcut section.)  If not, leave the confirmations on.

Or...you could turn them off and lose all your mail by deleting that QWK you just downloaded---because you didn't know DEL in the File Open dialogue smoked files instantly...  So help yourself.  But don't yammer to us if you turn them off and then close a packet with unsaved replies!  We warned you first.


Read Window Options
read window options dialogue

Switch to/from - swaps the positions on the message header fields from From/To to To/From---a matter of personal preference.

Default setting: disabled.

Subject sort - sort messages by thread rather than by number.

Default setting: disabled.

Auto [Ansiart] - when this is enabled, CMPQwk will automatically load the ANSI viewer if it comes across a message with [ansiart] on the first line.

Default setting: enabled.

Start read window maximized - forces the Read window to start maximized, overriding any saved window positions you may have created.

Default setting: disabled.

Append export - set whether you'd like the default export file to be appended to or overwritten when you export a message to a text file.  If you elect to overwrite the file and export multiple times during a reading session, you will destroy all but the last export.  You can also export to a specific file name, as well, to prevent this.

Default setting: enabled.

Read replies during scan - if you check this, CMPQwk will jump from your personal mail into the stored replies, allowing you to scan through them before continuing on to other public mail.

Default setting: disabled.

Notify of re-read during scan - CMPQwk will notify you if you're about to re-read a message you've already read (for example, if you go back to a conference you've already finished).  Otherwise it will just load that conference silently.

Default setting: disabled.

Auto-open message list - the program will automatically open the Message List Window if you enable it here.  Most folks navigate large packets using the Quick message list, and rather than making you press "I" every time you loaded a QWK packet, we thought you might like it to just "appear" with the rest of the windows.

Default setting: enabled.

Enable text effects - if you leave this box clicked the program will create the italics and underlined attributes for properly marked words (see Color highlighting below).  You can disable this feature on slower machines to gain scrolling speed in the color read window.  This feature is independent of color, however the setting for it has no effect if color is disabled.  In other words, you will only get the italics and underlined characters if you have both color and this feature enabled.

Default setting: enabled and active in color Read windows only.

Color highlighting - define the colors you'd like to use for quoted and general text in the message Read window, as well as the background color of the Read window (if you'd like it different than the Windows default).  You can have different colors for each, just select the colors from the pick box that you'd like.  Check "Enable color" to turn color on.  You must close any open Read Windows (but not the packet or re-start the program) to see any changes you make take place.

Enabling color highlighting also enables the program's ability to translate the commonly-used conventions of *word* and _word_ into word and underlined word, respectively.  (Due to the nature of help files, we can't underline a word in the text, but CMPQwk will underline words when it encounters a word bracketed by the underline character.)  It's a nice feature and is seamless in that users of programs without this capability will still see just what they've always been seeing.

Note:  If you use color highlighting, the way CMPQwk handles the Read window will change from text to graphics, and this will slow down the text scrolling speed.  This is an unavoidable consequence of using colored fonts.  You will also not be able to copy text from a Read window into the Windows clipboard when color highlighting is enabled until you click on it once with the left mouse button which forces it to shift to a "text" window.

Default setting: color is enabled (set to black text and white background).

Wrap non-color text - if you do mail on a mail door that removes carriage returns from the text, such as Silver Express, you may need to enable this feature.  If your mail appears as a single line and is thus unreadable, enable this feature.  Most folks will NOT require this to be on, and enabling it will cause text to be badly-wrapped if your mail door does not strip returns from the text.  Don't enable this unless we've asked you to in order to diagnose a wrapping problem.

Default setting: disabled --- enable this ONLY if you use Silver Express.

Sounds  - enables beeps (or a wav file you select) when you've received a personal message and are viewing it, or have jumped to another conference.  You may use either the default beep if you don't select wave files, or you may browse through your system and pick two wave files, one for each function.  The WAV files that ship with CMPQwk will be fine to start with.  After you've picked them, press "Test" to hear the file you've selected and decide if it's suitable for the function.

Note: if you do not want sound in the help file, you can disable sounds for it here, but that will also disable sound effects for the main program, as they're linked in this manner.

Default setting: enabled, default Windows beep.


Reply Options Dialogue
reply window options dialogue

Fido taglines - enables the FIDO-style network taglines (the special character signifying taglines must be a " * " when sending mail over FIDO networks).

Default setting: disabled.

Start maximized - start the Write window so it  covers all the other windows in the application workspace.

Default setting: disabled.

Re-open REP files - tells CMPQwk to re-open any replies related to the packet you want to open---important if you do mail in multiple sessions you will want to re-open the rep file so you can add to it during the second session with the same QWK file.

Default setting: enabled.

Split msgs - forces the program to split long messages that might be too long for some systems to handle.  If you write unusually large messages, enabling this will prevent problems with your host system.  Wildcat! 3.x (and earlier) have a 150-line limit for messages.  Should you upload a message longer than that, it will not get correctly accepted into the system or posted.  If in doubt, enable it, it doesn't hurt anything.

Default setting: disabled.

Spell check - enables the built-in spell-checker so it can scan your replies for spelling errors.  Spell-checking will begin when you save the message or if you select that process from the message menu.

Note: You must have already unpacked the spell-checker dictionary and other files into the CMPQwk directory (or installed them with the rest of the program) for this to work.  If you do not have the speller files, you must procure them.  They may be shipped in the second archive, depending on where you got your version of the program.

Default setting: disabled.

Quote original - duplicate the original message and place it into the editor before you begin replying (and insert "quote marks" before the message text).  It will appear as the initials of the original author followed by the quoting charcter or characters you've selected, followed by the quoted text.

Default setting: enabled.

Wrap quotes - enables "wrapping" of incoming quoted text.  If you disable this, the program will truncate incoming text after 72 characters, possibly cutting off parts of the quoted material if the quote attribution characters cause the line to be longer than 72 characters.  Quote-wrapping---while not always perfect---is usually preferable to truncation.  Quote-wrapping is still a work in progress, it does not work perfectly all the time at this writing.

If you do mail with a lot of high ASCII graphics, it will usually get garbled when the program tries to wrap "nonsense" characters."  In that event, truncation would preserve the format of the original message, even if a few characters were missing from the right hand side of the window, but for most folks, Quote-wrapping is a better alternative.

Default setting: enabled.

Auto Internet - when you check this, the program will compare the length of the "to" string in the message header dialogue and if it's longer than 25 characters, the program will automatically add the contents of the string to the first line of the message, and begin the rest of the message down one line further, as is the convention with QWK doors able to send Internet mail.

The length of the "to" pick list field has been increased to accept longer, Internet addresses.  The program will scan for the @ sign in the "to" field, and when it sees this (in every Internet address we've seen) it'll assume that you want the to string placed on the first line and then do so.

If you put dbackus@patchbay.com in your "To" pick list, and then send a message "to" him on a system that's got an Internet gateway, the program will automatically know that you are sending Internet mail and it will act accordingly.

If you disable this feature, you can still respond to Internet gateway mail, however you will have to manually add the To: name@address on the first line of the message, and the program will not detect the @ character.

If you find a QWK gateway system that works differently, please tell us what's different about it and we'll see if we can support it.  At this writing we do not support SOUP or other non-QWK formats---only QWK-to-UUCP gateways are supported, and only those that match the Wildcat! method of operation, which seems to be the standard now.

Default setting: enabled.

1ST line quote prefix - sets the quoting style for the Reply window.  Pick the characters you'd like to have used on the quoting line.  For example, %f%l} in the 1ST Line Quote Prefix box would result in a quote from a message by Derek Backus looking like: DB}.  You can use any high ASCII character in this line, although traditionally the } sign is used on most BBSes.  If you want to use a trailing space in this, you must use the %s character.

Default setting: %f%l>.

Other lines quote prefix - establishes the quoting style for every line following the first quoted line in a paragraph.  The formatting rules are exactly the same.  If you want all the quoted lines to appear the same, just set both boxes identically.  If you want to use a trailing space in this, you must use the %s character.

Default setting: %f%l>.

Quote header - Will enable a header that appears before any other material in the message.  You can put in text, the original sender's name, who it's from, who the message is to, and so on.  To have a header on a message originally from Derek Backus and sent to you that would appear like "Derek Backus said to (your name)" you'd put: %f %l said to %i %a in the Quote Header box.  Be sure to include spaces where you want them (such as between first and last names).  Just about any text can be put here, although on netmail, less is better.

Default setting: blank.

Auto signature - enables the automatic "end of message" signature if you've placed one into the Signature Text box.  You cannot enable this unless you put something into the signature box.  This is handy because if you enable it, you won't have to type your name or insert a text file (like a lot of users do) into the tail of every message.  CMPQwk will do that for you, correctly spacing it after the last paragraph, then inserting the tagline below.

Default setting: disabled.

Signature text - Just like the Rubber Stamp Tool, you can place high ASCII or other text in here (up to 256 characters).  If you've enabled Auto Signature, when you save your message CMPQwk will insert the text you've put into this window at the bottom of the message, above the tagline.  Use the clipboard to get high ASCII into this box if you have a special "graphical" signature you use in mail.  You can also have the time and date you wrote the message inserted into the signature line or lines by using the %d (date) and %t (time) variables.

To bring in a plain ASCII file click on the "Import text" button and navigate to the directory where this file exists.  Pick it from the displayed files (sorted by suffix if you'd like) and click on OK.  That file will be placed into the signature text box.  You do not need to keep the source text file, as the program copies it to its own format.

Default setting: blank.

Text conversions - If you are using a non-U.S. codepage or character set, you can enable the correct display of foreign characters like the umlauted vowel or the accented letters used in French and other languages if you enable the correct conversion protocol.  The options are below.

Convert ANSI to OEM - converts Windows-style ANSI sets to OEM (DOS) sets.

Convert OEM to ANSI - converts DOS-style character sets to Windows ANSI character sets.

Do not convert - display the character set using the default process (Windows normal display method).  No swapping of the character sets takes place.  This replicates the way CMPQwk's earlier versions displayed (sometimes incorrectly) forgeign code page sets.

Default setting: do not convert.


Define Window Positions
packet management dialogue

Days to keep packets - enter a number here telling CMPQwk how long you'd like it to wait before automatically deleting your old QWK packets.  If you enter "0" it will never delete them.  You may keep them up to 365 days.  This setting is acted-upon each time you load the File, Open dialogue---so if you have the program open for days at a time but do not load a QWK file (unlikely) and you look into the QWK directory, you may see QWK files older than the preset "kill" age.  Simply opening that dialogue (which the program does on load) will clean up the QWK directory.

Default 0, or never delete a packet.

Auto rename packets - enable the feature where the program will increment your packet's suffix with a letter of the alphabet (skipping K) going through Z and then starting on the numbers 0 through 9.  If you auto-rename and don't also auto-delete (enable packet management) then eventually you will run out of numbers and names if you keep packets long enough.

Default is disabled.

Disable packet management - temporarily disable your settings in the event you want to work for several days with a packet but don't want to go through and "re-set" the other options.

Default is unchecked, or packet management "enabled" but set to "0" so it doesn't delete.


Font Settings
font settings dialogues

Your options here (two menu items) are Write font and Read font.

You can select from most available Windows fonts as well as chose different fonts for both the Read and Write windows.  Remember that not all fonts support high ASCII, so if you select one that does not, you won't be able to correctly interpret any such characters that are in the message.  There are advantages and disadvantages in using other than fixed fonts, being that the probable destination of a message will be someone using a DOS-based mail reader.

The character set they will be using might be different.  So if you pick any font other than Terminal and then use characters from the new font's high ASCII set, don't expect other folks to get the same characters unless they, too, are using the same font.

Default setting: Terminal.


Lists
lists & rubber stamp dialogue

Edit rubber stamps - CMPQwk now allows you to have virtually an unlimited number of rubber stamps, or "user texts" that you can, with a key press and a mouse-click, quickly insert into a message.  You can enter a new item by clicking ADD.  You will be asked for a long description, so type in what you'd like to call this stamp item.  Then you may import a text file into the stamp or type text in the edit box.

From this dialogue you can delete the highlighted rubber stamp item if you no longer need it.  Simply emptying the contents of the stamp edit window will not delete it from the stamp database, you must delete the long name, as well.

When you're through, click on OK and go back to the Edit rubber stamp box.  If you're finished, you just click on OK (you can have just one if you want).  If you want to add more, repeat the process until you're satisfied.  It's perfect for phone numbers, directions to your house or business, or whatever small text item you might need to quickly insert into a message.

From within the Write window if you click the rubber stamp tool, or press CTRL+U, you'll be presented with a list box of all of your stamps.  Pick the one you want, double-click it (or press Enter) and it will be inserted at the cursor's position.  You'll be left ready to continue in the Write window.

There is a limit of 2,400 characters for each rubber stamp text tool (no overall limit on the number of 2,400 character tools).  That includes spaces, commas, etc.  That's also a real big rubber stamp!

Default setting: blank.

Edit taglines - loads your tagline file into a simple editor so you can edit, delete, and otherwise manage your taglines.  External "tagline managers" are not supported.  If you have a tagline file larger than 32K, the small internal editor may not load it.  You can have an unlimited tagline file size in CMPQwk (it doesn't care) but to edit it in the internal editor, you'll need to keep it below 32K.  That's a pretty hefty tagline file, about 50 pages, give or take a page.  If your tagline file is too large to load into the internal editor, read the section below.

There is a button that will load the tagline file into our external editor, CMPEdit, and it will load any size file as long as you have sufficient memory in which to hold the tagline data.  If you have at least a megabyte of free RAM, you can load a one-megabyte tagline file.  Just select External Editor to load the tagline into CMPEdit.

If you'd like to use another editor, copy it to your CMPQwk home directory and rename it CMPEDIT.EXE (we don't care) and your tagline file will load into that, instead.  We provide CMPEdit as a bonus utility for our users who have gigantic tagline files, or otherwise want a very nice little editor to use as an accompanying utility to our mail reader.

Default setting: blank or imported from prior reader.

Edit to pick list - Allows you to enter, edit, or delete users who will appear on your quick-pick "to list" when sending messages.  Add the names you want to add, delete those you do not want, and select OK when you're finished.  You may also add a user's name to this list when you are replying to mail from them by pressing the > button next to the "to" field in the message header.  If they already exist in the to pick list, they will be added again, it does not check for duplicates.

Default setting: blank or imported from prior reader.

Edit subject pick list - Allows you to enter, edit, or delete subjects that will appear on your "subject list" when sending messages.

Default setting: blank or imported from prior reader.

Edit twit lists - Opens a series of dialogue boxes where you can assign user names and words to three skip lists.  That means if a user's name (assuming it's spelled correctly) is in a message header, and you've entered that name in the To and From skip list boxes, you won't see any mail to or from that user.

Default setting: blank.

There is also a Subject Twit list.  If you type in the appropriate key word (like TAXES, for example) you won't see any messages with TAXES in the message header subject field, even if they're sent to you directly.  (You will receive these messages from the BBS, but they will not appear when you browse through the conferences in the QWK file.)

To put something in the skip lists, after you've clicked on Edit Twit Lists (ALT,O,K), click on the box you want (or Tab to the button below the section you want) and select Add.  When the Add Skip To (or Skip From, or Subject Skip) dialogue box appears, type in the item you want to skip and press enter or click OK.

This feature is handy if you have a pesky user you'd like to ignore, or if you're sick of seeing messages about a certain subject.

If you decide you want to remove somebody or a topic from the skip list, select that item and click on Delete.  This will clear the person's name or subject key word, and from the next packet on you'll see messages to or from this individual, or with the specific key word in the message subject header.

Note: You may also add a person or subject to the respective pick list when you are creating a reply.  There is a small button at the right of each pick list (Subject and To) on the Message Header dialogue.  When you are creating a reply and this box pops up, click on either of the buttons with > on them, and the text in the respective field will be appended to your permanent pick list.

Say you're replying to "Bob Smith" and you think you might want to correspond with him regularly.  Click the button with the > character on it and his name will be appended to your "To" pick list.  If the subject of the message is, "Global Thermonuclear Politics," clicking the > button next to that will put this item on the list of subjects you may choose from when preparing future messages.

Edit private dictionary - when you pick this item, the words in your user dictionary are loaded and you may delete items from them (or add them).  Also, depending on the version of the program you have, you may be able to import a plain ASCII text file (one word only per line) directly into the user dictionary.

The dictionary is automatically sorted for you when you save it (close the dialogue).  If you need to add words manually, don't worry about their alphabetical order, just add them as you want and the reader will alphabetize them on the fly.

Note: If you add words they will not get used until you close the program and re-open it if you've spell-checked during that session.  The dictionaries are loaded into memory when you begin spell-checking and aren't re-loaded except during spell-checking if you select Add (to add a word to the user dictionary).  The manual editor edits the saved copy on disk, not the copy stored in memory.

Unless you have plenty of memory, try to keep your personal dictionary smaller than 500 to a several thousand words.  You may add words with a simple text editor like Notepad, by the way.  Don't worry about sorting it, the program will do that for you the next time you open the internal editor.

Default setting: blank.


window menu

Cascade - overrides any selections you've set up in the "define window positions" menu and cascades all the open windows down the screen, from left to right.

Tile - tiles all open windows with no regard for the text contained within them, they're simply packed onto the screen however they fit.

Arrange icons - lines up all the iconized windows along the bottom of the screen, from left to right.

(Active windows) - Once multiple windows have been opened, allows you to quickly select between them with the keyboard or mouse.


help menu

Index - brings up the help file at the Index page - from here you may pick the subject with which you require assistance.

Keyboard - a list of all keyboard shortcuts you can use.

Using help - how to use the Windows Help engine.

About - shows your registration information and the version of the program you're using.  Will print a registration form if you haven't registered your copy.  It also shows your free system resources.  And there's an Easter egg here if you want to look for it.  It's on the About box, and is one single keystroke to bring up the egg.  No big deal, but if you're in the mood to play, and you approach it intelligently, you'll find we have already indicated our intentions in respect to this one.  If you get what I mean.


disclaimer & copyright notices

Here's the section where we spell out all the legalese stuff.  Be sure you understand everything here before you use the program.  Our liabilities are strictly limited with respect to non-registered (read that non-paying) users.

Legal disclaimers

Copyright notices.


legal disclaimers

This program isn't warranted to do anything other than fill up disk space.  If you use it, and it eats your hard disk's FAT and all your data and you lose 5,000 replies in your mail that morning, we're very sorry, but we're not liable.  By evaluating this program you assume all liability for its use and operation, or its failure to operate as expected.  No warranties either expressed or implied are in place during the evaluation period.  Finito.

Registered users will have other rights that will vary from state to state, regarding fitness of purpose and other features.

Todd Henschell and Scrazner Graphics (creators of this documentation) are not liable for any omissions, typographical or other errors that cause program malfunctions, or by omission, neglect to provide the user with information required for correct operation of the software.

About other operating systems...

Because we cannot heavily test them, we can not warranty the correct operation of CMPQwk if you run it under anything other than Windows 3.1 or 3.11 running on top of MS-DOS of some flavor.

Although they claim to be "compatible," the fact that sometimes otherwise well-behaved programs fail proves that these other operating systems are not 100% compatible.  We test CMPQwk thoroughly in wide-area beta on machines running  3.1 and 3.11.

We do not test, develop for, or support the use of CMPQwk with Windows NT (which currently has poor 16-bit app support with many incompatibilities and limitations in the use of hardware), WABI under UNIX of any flavor, Insignia's Soft Windows under the Mac, or OS/2 2.1, which is not 100% compatible in the use of video and memory, especially in "seamless" mode.  Although we have done (but no longer do) "light" testing of CMPQwk under OS/2 2.1, we will not warranty its performance under any circumstances.

If you use one of these, don't complain to us if things don't work right.  Of course they don't, you're not using Windows.  You're using something that tries to "fool" software.  That includes OS/2 2.1 "for" Windows (an IBM marketing ploy which runs your copy of Windows 3.1 in an OS/2 2.1 virtual machine, producing the same "seamless" video and memory complications as regular OS/2 2.1).

These are all fine products, and we're happy you like them, but if you register and then feel the need to run Windows NT, OS/2 2.1, or something else, we're very sorry if CMPQwk doesn't work any more, but we warned you in advance: CMPQwk may not function as designed under anything but Windows 3.1 or 3.11.  It might, but it might not.

It is one hundred percent your gamble to fiddle with these other systems.

We choose not to gamble.

User assumes all liability with regard to operation of CMPQwk Reader.


copyright notices

CMPQwk Reader is Copyright © 1994 by Derek Backus, and all rights are reserved by him.  You may not use this software beyond the evaluation period without registering or you will be in violation of the copyright.  This software is not in the public domain, and may not be distributed by any method where the user is charged (except normal access fees by a public BBS) without prior written permission by the author.

Shareware vendors MUST notify users that by purchasing or downloading this software for a nominal fee they are NOT registered users of same.  Registration fees are above and beyond any costs incurred by the user as a result of obtaining this software.

Certain program functions, such as the translation of common ASCII characters into specific fonts or font types are protected under the copyright of this product, as are all of the features unique to this product.  Infringement of this intellectual property by appropriating features unique to it will be considered a violation of the author's copyright and actionable.  Other aspects of the product are under consideration for patent applications.

The terms Folder Tools™ and Magic Mouse Shortcuts™ are trademarks of CMPQwk Reader and are protected by law.

This help file and all printed documentation derived from it is Copyright © 1994 by Todd Henschell and Scrazner Graphics, and may not be copied, altered, or in any other fashion used except as it was meant: in support of CMPQwk Reader.

The Scrazner Dog logo is a trademark.  If you try to steal her, she will bite you on the hiney and rip off a very big chunk of bleeding meat.  Despite the goofy expression on her face, she is extremely vicious, so beware.

Microsoft Windows® is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation, and is in no way affiliated with CMPQwk Reader or its author.

CMPQwk Reader is not affiliated with or connected in any way to CMP Publications, the folks who produce Windows magazine although for some absurd reason, our names are similar.  We like their magazine, though.

Off Line Express (OLX, mentioned several times in this file) is a product of Mustang Software, Inc.  We think it's the best DOS-based QWK reader on the market, and if you need a DOS reader, we suggest you give this one a look-see.  You won't be disappointed.

Any other software products mentioned in this help file are the respective properties and/or trademarks of their owners, and as such, have no connection with CMPQwk Reader.


Registration Information.
registration information

Here's the section that, like the annual PBS fund drive, is where everybody goes out to get something from the refrigerator.  Well, sorry, but we have to talk about it.  Without registrations, continuing to support and improve the program will be impossible.

How to register & why register

What do you get when you register?

What do you get when you don't register?

Where can you register?


how to register & why register

That's an easy one to answer.  You register by sending a check or money order to the address listed under Where can you register?.  Once you've registered, your key and registration numbers (which will disable the reminder that comes up when the program loads and enable your taglines) will be mailed to you via U.S. Mail.  If you prefer, that information can be posted in a message on our support BBS The Patchbay (818) 441-3965.

Due to security problems, we will not post E-mail that includes key information to any other systems unless you're willing to accept the chance that your numbers will (probably) get pilfered.  We'd prefer to keep this sort of thing under close control.

Why register?  Because you're an honest person who recognizes the amount of work, dedication, and general pain it takes to produce a piece of software like CMPQwk.  You don't like to hear about penniless programmers dying of starvation, yet it's an awful fact in today's heartless shareware world.  This terrible tragedy hasn't made 20/20 yet, but rumor has it that Geraldo might be interested, so stay tuned and watch out for flying chairs.

If you send a check (or slam the 'ol VISA again), the author can pay his rent, pay for the electricity to continue to power his computer system, and improve CMPQwk even further.  Our goal is to make this product the best mail reader---period---not just the best mail reader for Windows.  The best is the only place to be.

That's an impossible task without user support.

With the support and suggestions of users like yourself, who appreciate the complexity of the task (you're reading this, that means you liked it enough to peruse this deeply into the help file), something approaching "the best" is within reach.


what do you get when you register?

I'm not going to say "peace of mind."  Nobody gets peace of mind by spending money.  Well, nobody except the bureaucrats running the government.  You get $40 or thereabouts poorer, of course, but you gain the honest use of a superb piece of software that, if it were marketed through retail stores, would cost well over $100.

You also get free support via the regular channels, and reduced prices for future versions.

You get the programmer's ear if there is some feature you just can't live without.  Registered users who make suggestions about requests for new features in future versions will always get a nod before folks who say, "I'd buy it if it only did (fill in the blank)."  One is a commitment that deserves reward and encourages us to work harder.  The other is a annoying half-promise that may or may not come true.

You can guess which is which, I'd wager.

If you're a BBS sysop (or even a user who is a student) and can get ten or more users to register at once, notify us of this and we'll give your users a discount price if they all submit their payments (through you) in one order and with one check from the BBS sysop (or instigating student).  We'll mail you a single card (or post a single message) with all the key information and you can distribute that to your users directly.  It helps us, and your users love the convenience of registering locally through their favorite sysop.

In exchange for helping us, we'll give the sysop (or the instigator of the ten sales) a free registration.  That's worth up to $40 in case you weren't paying attention.

We strongly believe in the old, "scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" way of doing business.


By the way, CMPQwk version 1.5 (with many added and improved features) will be a free upgrade to all registered users.  Version 2.0 (already in preliminary planning stages) will be a moderately-priced upgrade, probably $20 or less.


what do you get when you don't register?

Nothing.

You can continue to use the software, of course, although you'll be in violation of the copyright if you don't register it within the trial period.  And no, we're not going to send the Copyright Police out looking for you.  We're too busy working on the next version.  If you don't register, and you're confused about something, or have a technical question or other problem, you'll have to be content to get your questions answered after we attend to registered users.

Fair is fair.

Uninstalling CMPQwk Reader:

If you try CMPQwk and hate it, we're sorry.  We've worked thousands of man-hours on it and we did our very best.  If you don't want to use it and despise it, we suggest you delete it from your system and move on.

Here's how you do that: delete all the files in the \CMPQWK directory and then delete that directory.  Delete ZPDCMP.DLL and OPTION.DLL from the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory (they may not be there, depending on your version), and CMPQWK.INI from the Windows directory.  Depending on which version you installed, you may have some files called 001-009.* that may have been copied to your \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory.  Delete them, also, or rename them *.WAV and enjoy them as system sounds, you have our permission to keep and use them.  Delete the appropriate icon from whatever Program Manager group it's in.

You're finished, it's all gone...and we're very sorry we couldn't please you.

Not everybody likes every piece of software.  As Ross Perot might say, "It's just that simple."  There are other fine mail readers out there produced by very talented programmers.  Try one of them, you might like it better.  We won't feel bad if you'd prefer to use something else.  Dan Page writes a very nice Windows mail reader called VBReader, and of course, there's always OLX, by Mustang Software, still the best DOS off-line mail reader in the world.

Trying to be all things to all people is why Look magazine went down the tubes, you know.  We have a certain philosophy as to how things should look and work, and we want our program to reflect them and not somebody else's way of doing things.

Not everyone will like the way everything is done in CMPQwk.

We feel there's room for more than one off-line mail reader, but we also like ours the best and we're  not one bit ashamed to admit it.


where can you register?

Send a check or money order (U.S. dollars only, please) to:

Derek Backus

CMPQwk Reader

P.O. Box 1017

Arcadia, CA 91077

Upgrading from another product?

If you're a registered user of OLX, SLIMER, WinQWK, etc. and you register CMPQwk, it will only cost you $25.

If you're a registered user of WaveRider, it'll cost you $15 (this price is available only when you pay by check).  You must mail in your original WaveRider disk and key to get this upgrade.

You must take a few extra steps to prove your legal ownership of these other mail readers.  Any generally-recognizable off-line mail reader is acceptable for an upgrade.  You can not upgrade WaveRider via credit card, you must mail a check for that offer.

Upgrade Procedure

 Call one of the support BBS systems and send Derek Backus a message in the CMPQwk conference asking him to upgrade you.  In the message you must leave the name and serial number of your  original mail reader.  You will not receive a reply until after we receive and process your check.  Since your messages are routed to a central hub, please repeat the name of the system  you called to place the message if that's the system you'd like to call to get your numbers.

 Mail your check and the completed order form immediately after leaving the message.

 We will mail (or post on the support BBS or other site) your registration numbers.  Tell Derek which method you prefer.  You will have to call back and check for a post to you if you'd prefer electronic registration.  If you have not received a reply to a query about your numbers, remember: allow four to seven days for a reply via support BBS.  We will send your upgrade paperwork via mail in about four weeks.

Or, instead of sending the message you can...

 Remove the original title page of your OLX or other manual  and mail it with the upgrade form you can print from this section of the help. Your original mail reader's serial number must be written on the title page, along with your full name, phone number, address, etc. (as well as this form).  Put this information in both places in case your page and form get separated.

You must include a check for $25 with this form in any case, (or $42.50 plus applicable tax if you want us to ship you a manual and disks).

 Important note:  You do not need to do both.  Either a message with number (followed by the form and a check) OR your title page, etc.  (if your reader has a manual).  You will get a reply (with registration numbers) about four weeks after your check clears.  We will mail an invoice to you in any event.

Registration Forms

If you want to print registration or upgrade forms, click the appropriate button below to view a form, then select "Print" from the Windows Help button bar above.  Select "Back" from the button bar to return to this section and continue reading the help file.

 Click this button for a regular registration form.

 Click this button for an upgrade registration form.

You may register using your VISA/MC card, on ASACompuHelp BBS listed below.

Registering on ASACompuHelp BBS:

Users wishing to register via credit card can contact ASACompuHelp BBS.  This system is located in Ohio, U.S.A..  You may register via VISA by mail, voice, or modem.  The procedures, for those of you interested in registering via VISA/MC on ASACompuHelp follow:

Voice:

Call the people at ASACompuHelp BBS, Inc. via voice at (614) 475-1466.  Tell them you want to register CMPQwk Reader.  They'll take down your VISA/MC order and process it on the spot.

Mail:

Print the registration forms in this help file (then fill in all the information) and include your VISA/MC card numbers.  Mail the completed form to ASACompuHelp BBS at the address below.  You will receive a receipt with your registration numbers via mail once it's been processed.

If you want to print a registration form, click the button below and then click on the "Print" button on the Windows Help button bar.  That'll create a nicely-formatted form that you can fill in and mail.  Select "Back" from the button bar to return to this section when you're through.

 Click this button for a VISA mail-in form.

Print CMPQwk Registration in the lower-left corner of the front of the envelope.  Mail it to:

ASACompuHelp, Inc.

12 Westerville Square Suite 359

Westerville, OH 43081

Via modem:

call ASACompuHelp BBS at (614) 476-4058

Log on under your REAL NAME - then join conference 9, the CMPQwk Support conference.  From there you'll see a menu option for registering.  Select that option and follow the prompts.  It is similar to any on-line registration service, and will request information such as your name, address, etc.  Fill out all the required information until you are back at the main screen.

Due to increased costs, registering via ASACompuHelp BBS is slightly more expensive than registering directly with the author.  This is not because it is a VISA/MC transaction, it is because of costs passed directly back to us by the BBS.

Upgrades are $30 without a manual, $52.00 with one.  New registrations without a manual are $47 and $69.00 with a manual.  Prices include shipping of the manual (where applicable). Please note that the charges on your VISA/MC will appear as, "ASACompuHelp, Inc." and not CMPQwk.

Prices may change without notice.  You'll be informed of the current price at the time you place your order.  You will receive your key and registration numbers immediately.  Please allow four to six weeks for us to ship your manual (if you ordered one) we print them in batches and do not print until there is sufficient demand to do so.


Regular registration form
CMPQwk Registration Form

Don't use this form if you're upgrading.  Go back and click the upgrade button!  If this is a sysop order, you'll need to print an additional form mentioned at the bottom of this one.  Complete all required sections to prevent a delay in processing your order.  Allow four to six weeks to receive your numbers.

Name __________________________________________________________

Address 1 ______________________________________________________

Address 2 ____________________________________Country___________

City____________________________ State________ZIP/ Postal__________

Daytime Phone (_____)_______________________

Qty:_______ CMPQwk Reader Regular $         40.00

Qty:_______ CMPQwk Reader w/manual           57.50

Qty:_______ CMPQwk Reader Sysop deal         250.00

If this is a Sysop order of more then 10 copies specify no. at $25 @_______

total number_______ subtotal price $___________

Sales Tax $___________

(California only)

Total Amount Enclosed $ __________

If you're making a Sysop order, click the word SYSOP to see an extended list you can print with information regarding that type of order.  Print that page, fill it out, and attach it to this page.  If you're ordering more than ten copies, print that page as many times as you need to fill in all of your user names.  Click the "Back" button to return to this form, or "Back" again to return to Where can you register?

Mail the completed form(s) to:

Derek Backus

CMPQwk Reader

P.O. Box 1017

Arcadia, CA 91077


Upgrade registration form
CMPQwk Upgrade Only Form

Don't use this form if you're registering without an upgrade!  Go back and click the regular order form button!  Allow four to six weeks to receive your numbers.  Complete all required sections to prevent a delay in processing your order.  Competing product name and serial number is mandatory!

Name __________________________________________________________

Address 1 ______________________________________________________

Address 2 ____________________________________Country___________

City____________________________ State________ZIP/ Postal__________

Daytime Phone (_____)_______________________

Competing product__________________________serial________________

Qty:_______ CMPQwk Reader upgrade   $ 25.00

Qty: _______upgrade from WaveRider $ 15.00

Qty:_______ CMPQwk Reader upgrade w/manual $ 42.50

total number_______ subtotal price $___________

Sales Tax ___________

(California only)

Total Billing Amount $ ___________

Mail the completed form(s) to:

Derek Backus

CMPQwk Reader

P.O. Box 1017

Arcadia, CA 91077


Visa registration form
Visa/MC Registration form for ASACompuHelp BBS

This form is only for mailing a VISA registration to ASACompuHelp BBS.  Do not mail this form to Derek Backus.  You can make any type of VISA/MC order with this form.

Note that for every upgrade you order, you must fill in a name and product serial number of a competing product from which you want to upgrade.  If you don't have sufficient space in which to do this below, attach another piece of paper. Prices may change without notice!  If this help file is more than six months old we suggest you call AsaCompuHelp by voice for current pricing and information!

Name __________________________________________________________

Address 1 ______________________________________________________

Address 2 ____________________________________Country___________

City____________________________ State________ZIP/ Postal__________

Daytime Phone (_____)_______________________

Qty:_______ CMPQwk Reader Regular   $ 47.00

Qty:_______ CMPQwk Reader w/manual     69.00

Qty:_______ CMPQwk Upgrade     30.00

Qty:_______ CMPQwk Upgrade w/manual     52.00

Qty:_______ CMPQwk Sysop order (minimum)    300.00

If this is a sysop order of more than ten copies specify no.at $30@

sysop total number_______ subtotal price $___________

Sales Tax ___________

(Ohio only)

Total Billing Amount $ ___________

VISA/MC Number ________________________________EXP _____/_______

Signature___________________________________________

Competing product__________________________serial________________

VISA/MC  credit card numbers should only to be sent to the mailing address for ASACompuHelp BBS.  DO NOT SEND VISA NUMBERS TO Derek Backus!  Mail the completed form(s) to:

ASACompuHelp BBS, Inc.

12 Westerville Square Suite 359

Westerville, OH 43081

If you're making a sysop order, click the word SYSOP to see an extended list you should print so you can provide the information we need for that type of order. Complete that page and attach it to this page.  Print as many copies of that page as you require.  Click the "Back" button to return to this form, or "Back" again to return to Where can you register?


Sysop Order Form Extension

Print this form to give us the extended information we need for this type of order.  You do not need to print this unless you are ordering a single-check sysop-level order!

Give us the name of the user who gets the "free" registration below.

Sysop order freebie:____________________________________________

Enter your ten user names below.  Print additional sheets if you need more space or have ordered more than ten copies.

.

Name 1_______________________________________________________

Name 2_______________________________________________________

Name 3_______________________________________________________

Name 4_______________________________________________________

Name 5_______________________________________________________

Name 6_______________________________________________________

Name 7_______________________________________________________

Name 8_______________________________________________________

Name 9_______________________________________________________

Name 10______________________________________________________


Support sources and how to contact them.
support sources and how to contact them

Technical support is provided first to registered users, and then if we have the time, questions from unregistered users are addressed.  There are only so many hours in the day, and we feel this is the most fair way to distribute support time.  After all, registered users paid for it!

By the way, if you feel compelled to send a letter through the U.S. Mail, please leave an E-mail address or a way of contacting you via an electronic medium.  Derek doesn't have the time to compose, print, stuff into envelopes, and stick stamps onto old-fashioned letters.  We feel this is the decade of E-Mail, and we'll start  that movement right at home.

If you want to get a response (rather than just notifying us of a problem or sending a compliment), please send your message via an electronic medium.  The following sections give you the details on how to do that.

How to report a problem if you have one (or a compliment!)

CompuServe

Net support sites (RIME, etc.)

Los Angeles Area BBSes


how to report a problem if you have one (or a compliment!)

If you have encountered a problem with the program and you are a registered user, want to register, or have other non-technical questions, feel free to contact the author.  Derek Backus can be reached via multiple methods.  The fastest way to reach Derek is to leave him a message on one of the Los Angeles-area BBSes in the list.  You can also get E-mail to him on several networks, on the Internet, and via U.S. Mail, of course, if all else fails.  See the next two sections for detailed information on how to contact Derek.

If you have a problem involving what you think is an "atypical" QWK file created by a little-known off-line mail door, please take the time (if you're interested in seeing the problem diagnosed and fixed) to call the support sites and upload the QWK.  We will want to take it apart and see what makes it tick---or not tick, as the case may be.

If you do this, please leave a message on the support system letting Derek know on what system you left the packet, and what it was called.  Mail for Derek gets routed to our development network, and if you don't tell him where the file is, he's not going to be able to find it, see what might be causing the difficulty, and remedy it.

Keep in mind that no E-mail method is 100% reliable.  If you do not get a response, don't assume we're ignoring you.  We aren't.  Re-send the message again and again if you need to, sometimes things happen that just make it impossible to answer right away.

There's an old saying, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease."  Take that to heart.  Please remember we're just a two people working our tails off, and things can back up on us.  We have no secretaries, no assistants, and if we miss a day due to something beyond our control, that day's mail will be there tomorrow---in additon to tomorrow's mail...and the next day after that...and on and on.  We are growing beyond our expectations, and there will be growing pains.

For those of you interested in the runtime error messages we hope you will never see, the table below covers all that might occur during "abnormal program termination."  (Otherwise called, "The program freaked-out.")  The descriptions are taken directly from Borland's Pascal manual.  Exactly what some of them might mean is beyond my expertise, but the numbers mean something to Derek, so write them down if you see one flash by!

Error # Error Message

------- -------------------------

1	Invalid function number

2	File not found

3	Path not found

4	Too many open files

5	File access denied

6	Invalid file handle

12	Invalid file access code

15	Invalid drive number

16	Cannot remove current directory

17	Cannot rename across drives

100	Disk read error

101	Disk write error

102	File not assigned

103	File not open

104	File not open for input

105	File not open for output

106	Invalid numeric format

200	Division by zero

201	Range check error

202	Stack overflow error

203	Heap overflow error

204	Invalid pointer operation

205	Floating point overflow

206	Floating point underflow

207	Invalid floating point operation

210	Object not initialized

211	Call to abstract method

212	Stream registration error

213	Collection index out of range

214	Collection overflow error

215	Arithmetic overflow error

216	General protection fault


CompuServe

Derek's CompuServe ID is:  72233,3255.  Feel free to E-mail him on CIS.

As for registering, it's 15% cheaper to register by check or money order mailed directly to the author, but for some folks, CompuServe may be more convenient.

On CompuServe type GO SWREG.  You'll find mention of CMPQwk there and instructions on how to register.  Derek will leave you a message within 48 hours with your key and registration number to unlock the CMPQwk Reader program.

The cost of registering via CompuServe is $47.  Registering through CompuServe causes us to incur some increased costs.


net support sites

Derek is "reachable" via the Internet at dbackus@patchbay.com

You can generally reach him via the RIME Windows conference.

Please DO NOT route messages from the Internet to Derek's CompuServe address!  If you do this, may the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits!

On RIME, if you have a question not of general interest to Windows users, we ask that you route mail to the author at the ASACompuHelp BBS support site.  You do this by placing a routing address on the first line of the message.  To route to Derek on AsaComp put ->5092 on the first line.  Don't put anything else after it.  You do not need to mark the message private.

Note: At the request of the RIME Windows conference moderator, we ask CMPQwk users to please preface the subject line of any non-routed message sent to us regarding our program to begin with Z: (subject).  The parenthesis isn't required, but the Z: is.  This way messages regarding our product can be sorted and will appear at the end of a packet when a RIME user has his reader's "sort by subject" turned on.

Please send bug notices to Derek Backus (not Todd Henschell).  Derek is the programmer, I'm the guy who writes the documentation and designs the "look" of certain elements of the program.  I haven't created any bugs that I know of, and if you forward a message to me regarding a malfunction or other issue you'll just delay getting a response because I'll just forward it to Derek.

Save time.  Cut out the middleman and contact Derek directly.

If you have other questions relating to the program or our policies I'll try to help you.  On RIME please forward questions to me at the Hottips BBS by putting ->487 on the first line of the message.

I answer 100% of all mail from our users asking honest questions.  Neither Derek or I will answer netmail that's hateful or sarcastic, we're far too busy improving our software to waste time with that.  We also won't get dragged into a stupid and pointless discussion of other products in this market and why you like them better.

If you have a question regarding the documentation (the thing you're looking at now) or something other than bug problems, you can usually reach me there.  This isn't a good BBS on which to reach Derek, however, as he doesn't do mail there.

Please understand that if you simply report a problem, you may not get a response.  Derek logs all reports and then works on the problem.  Given the limited amount of time he has to enhance the software, he gives priority to writing code, not mail.  If you require a response (other than, "Yup, there's a problem all right,") be sure to mention that, and ask specifically what it is you need to know.  Things like, "Will this be fixed?" don't fall under this banner, and therefore will not get a response.

Of course we want to fix it.  Don't be silly.

There are other support sites that have embraced our product as their "official" mail reader or are areas of active support where we monitor mail and have posted our current releases.

The Ledge at (818) 896-2007 is a fine BBS run by Joseph Sheppard, one of the founders of U'NI Net.  If you leave messages for Derek Backus in conference 0, or to Todd Henschell in the U'NI Windows conference, we will get them.  We don't post betas much on the Ledge, but our current release version is always here.  We encourage you to call (and support) this superb BBS.  It's a first-class system run by a true professional sysop.

ASACompuHelp BBS at (614) 476-4058 - an official support site - Midwest Home of CMPQwk

The absolute best method (guaranteed of success) to reach Derek is a message left on one of the two Los Angeles area BBSes acting as direct support sites.  See the next section.


Los Angeles area BBSes

Several Los Angeles area BBSes are supporting CMPQwk.

 The Patchbay BBS (818) 441-3965 is one site where you can leave a request for support.  You may post a message there in Conference 14, CMPQwk Support, to Derek Backus.  If you have a question regarding the documentation, or wish to contract for documentation production services, post it in the same conference to Todd Henschell.  Don't ask the sysop, Daniel Bise, questions about CMPQwk.  Post those questions to Derek Backus directly.

If you wish to download the latest updates, you may log on as CMPQWK DOWNLOAD with the password UPDATE.  No registration is required to obtain our latest builds.  If you leave a message for us, however, be sure you leave your real name in the message, and of course, if you want to get the message anywhere except on CompuServe or the Internet, you'll need to call back and register under your real name.  If you leave a message to us with a CompuServe or Internet address and request a response there, we will attempt to reach you on the service you request.

 The Labyrinth BBS (818) 445-0281 is Derek's personal system.  You may call his BBS directly in order to obtain the latest version and any updates, although this system is not available at all times (as are the main support sites).  You do not have to be a registered user to call, although public beta builds won't run on your system unless you are a registered user.  The point here being you can download the new builds for a friend if you'd like, or if you expect to receive your registration number shortly.  This system will cease operation on May 15th, 1994.

 The Labyrinth Shareware Registration System - (818) 792-2523.  This system will be operational by May 15th, 1994.  We are in the process of setting up a large, multi-line BBS that will be available as a support site, but it was not operational at the time this help file was prepared.  It is scheduled to be operational by the date above.  When calling this system you must log on using your real name.


The sysop of The Patchbay, Daniel Bise, does not have time to answer your queries regarding our program.  Please do not bother him with them, you will only delay getting a response because Dan will have to forward them to us.  Join conference 14 (the CMPQwk support conference).  Leave your message to Derek Backus in conference 14, please do not leave mail by using the [C]omments to the Sysop menu item in conference 0.  You may not get a reply at all if you do this.


This system will be in service until about May 15th, 1994.  After that time there will be a notification pre-log screen displaying the name and telephone number of the new support system.  The pre-log screen (and this number) will be available for one month and then this number will be taken out of service.  Please see SUPPORT.TXT in future releases for the numbers of current support systems.  If in doubt, call The Patchbay BBS and ask us what the current numbers are, or reach us via the other methods explained in this file.


Derek and a business associate are in the process of establishing a new (primarily commercial) BBS system.  This system will initially have one line and then expand to four lines or thereabouts.  Until this system goes into service, you can call the other support sites mentioned in this documentation.  While this system will require a subscription to call for "normal" use, CMPQwk support will be provided at no charge to our users.  We'll also be putting in a second support line on The Patchbay BBS some time during 1994 or early 1995.  User support is important to us, but you'll have to bear with us as we experience the inevitable growing pains of going from a product with no users to a product that's heading into the thousands of registered users.


frequently asked questions
frequently-asked questions

What this section attempts to do is answer some questions before you write to us with them.  There are several very common questions our users always ask.  We hope that you'll read this file and find the answer to your questions here.  Please read through this section before you call us.  The questions are in no particular order, so scroll through the window until you see (or don't see) what it is you're looking for.  If you see it, read it, if not, contact us for support as required.

Our policies

 When will you be hitting me up again for money?

 Not anytime soon, it's taken almost eight months to go from 1.1 to 1.4.  We'll be giving out free upgrades to 1.50 (and every update up to but not including 2.0) for any 1.x registered user, and believe me when I tell you that 1.5 will make 1.3 and 1.4 look weak by comparison.  Remember, it'll do everything that the current release does and much more.  And it'll be free.  All you'll have to do to get it is call our support systems (or CompuServe or the Internet) and get the update Zip file when we release it.

Generally figure you're covered all the way through a full number release, just like the big boys do.  We have not set firm policy yet, but our ball park estimate for an upgrade from 1.x to 2.x will be from $10 to $20.  When you consider the thousands of man-hours of work that goes into a new build, we think you'll think it's a bargain when it comes out.

And we plan to have extremely inexpensive fees for upgrades from other products when we ship 1.4.  Registered users of our off-line mail reader will be able to register some of our upcoming products at a discount, too.  So when you're in our family---just like the Mafia in the movies---you're in our family.  We feel it's important to reward loyalty.

  Is printed documentation available?

You can order, if you are interested, a ringbound lay-flat copy of this documentation that includes all the sections in this help file, plus several chapters not included in it.  It's a little over 100 pages, has a complete index, table of contents, and is nicely finished.  If you'd like to order it, print the correct registration form (see Where can you register) and check the manual item, adding the amount to the rest of your total..  The manual's price includes handling and postage to anywhere in the 48 lower states.  If you register via VISA on ASACompuHelp BBS, you can upgrade with a manual for $52.00 and procure a new registration with a manual for $69.00  Allow four weeks for delivery.  You must be a registered user to order a manual.

Manuals will not be shipped until the "public" release of 1.4 (when features are locked) and may not be shipped at all unless we receive at least 50-100 orders requesting it.  We will not cash checks received for a manual until the time that we ship it  Manuals ship with 1.44 disks containing the current version at the time the order was placed.

  What products make me eligible for an upgrade?

Any of them.  That includes OLX, Waverider, RoseReader, you name it.  If it's shareware and it's released in the U.S., and you paid the author for it to register, you're eligible for an upgrade to CMPQwk.  Send us (with the upgrade form and a check) the registration number to what you use now, and you're halfway there.  You can also upgrade on ASACompuHelp by using your VISA/MC card.

  What about VISA and MASTERCARD?

CompuServe is one method of registering using a VISA (and you have to have a CompuServe membership to do that).  See the section covering Compuserve for more details.

The registration process outlined below by calling ASACompuHelp is in effect.  You may call that BBS at any time to register via credit card.

Registering on ASACompuHelp BBS:

Users wishing to register via credit card can call the ASACompuHelp BBS.  This system is located in Ohio, U.S.A..  The procedure, for those of you interested in registering via VISA/MC on ASACompuHelp follows:

Via modem call ASACompuHelp BBS at (614) 476-4058

Log on under your REAL NAME - then join conference 9, the CMPQwk Support conference.  From there you'll see a menu option for registering.  Select that option and follow the prompts.  It is similar to any on-line registration service, and will request information such as your name, address, etc.  Fill out all the required information until you are back at the main screen.

Due to increased costs, registering via ASACompuHelp BBS is slightly more expensive than registering directly with the author.  This is not because it is a VISA/MC transaction, it is because of costs passed directly back to us by the BBS.

Upgrades are $30 without a manual, $52.00 with one.  New registrations without a manual are $47 and $69.00 with a manual.  Prices include shipping of the manual (where applicable). Please note that the charges on your VISA/MC will appear as, "ASACompuHelp, Inc." and not CMPQwk.

Prices may change without notice.  You'll be informed of the current price at the time you place your order.

Call back approximately 48 hours later (under your name) to receive your registration number and key in a private message.

 I want my money back!

 Tough luck, I'm afraid to say.  You had plenty of time to use our program for free, you saw what you were getting into long before you sent in the cash.  That's one of the things that's nice about shareware, you don't have a pretty box at Egghead or CompUSA luring you into spending money: you actually get to use the thing.  We don't issue refunds, credits, etc.  We're sorry if you registered it and then decided you don't like it, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

 Can I sell my copy ?  Can I use it on my laptop, too?

 Nope, not at this time, and yes, sure.  The license to use CMPQwk is not transferable, but you can use it on as many computers as you own, as long as no more than one copy can run at once.  We use the "book" analogy here: if you've got a laptop at home and a machine at work that you want to use CMPQwk on, help yourself.

 I have a large corporation, are site-licenses available?

 Yes, they are, and we are racking up some impressive clients who are in the process of negotiating large (more than 500 copies) site licenses, including CitiBank and a very large drug company.  We even have some folks in the White House (Office of the President of the United States) using our program.  If you want to talk with us about a site license, you must contact us directly on the support boards or via the Internet and leave a telephone number where you can be reached during normal Los Angeles business hours.  We'll call you to discuss pricing and policy.

Gimme gimme gimme!

 How do I get the latest version?  Do you mail me a disk when I register?

 Call one of our support sites.  We don't ship out disks except in extreme circumstances.  See the sections on Los Angeles area BBSes and Net Support sites for further information.

 How do I find out about upgrades and new releases?

 Call our support sites (both L.A. and Net) and ask us or browse new files.  We generally only issue public messages on RIME or elsewhere during beta cycles or major releases, there may be point releases you won't know about unless you dial us up and check for them.

 Can I get your latest versions via FTP?  I have an Internet account and I'd like to do that rather than calling long-distance.

 Yep, you can almost always get the latest public versions (and sometimes registered-user betas) by ftp.netcom.com from the directory /pub/markwarn.  That's a directory maintained for us by one of our key beta testers, Mark Warnsdorfer, and he kindly lets us use it for this purpose (for which, we thank him).  Netcom has several systems, and if netcom.com doesn't work because it's saturated, you can try netcom1 through 12 or thereabouts until you find a free one.  They limit anonymous FTP to ten users per node.

 Hey, when do I get my registration?  It's been two weeks since I sent my check in!

 You'll get it no later than two to four weeks after your check CLEARS the bank.  People forget that cashing a check from Florida or Maine can cause a ten-day wait to see if it clears.  Unless you register by Visa on ASACompuHelp BBS, figure three weeks minimum.  If you register via VISA, you should have your numbers immediately.

So relax, we're not taking your money and running off to Aruba.  If your check has cleared, start counting to three weeks.  If you don't have it after then, contact us on the support sites and start complaining, something has happened to the paperwork.

But don't nag us about it before then, okay?  Please be patient.

 When will you have feature X?

 When we will add a new feature during the beta program (and eventually features will be "locked" as we approach release) depends on several things.  The first thing is whether or not the current structure of the program can even do the thing you want to do.  In some cases it just can't.  (The Quick message list, for example, is strained to the hilt.  Don't ask us to put in anything there, it's "finished" until the beta for 1.5 appears.)

The second thing is how many people want the feature.  Sometimes only one person will request the suggestion, but it's such a good one we put it in right away.  Other times, it's not something we feel compelled to add, but if ten or more users ask us for it, we'll try to put it in.

We pride ourselves on our responsiveness to our users, and we think we support them better than just about any other Windows off-line mail reader production team---but there are limits.  If you want us to read Bob 'n Ted's Zappo Mail for UNIX or something, and you're the only one who wants it, it would be safe to assume it's not going to make it into the program unless you can give us a very persuasive reason why we should do it (say you know 6,000 users reading Bob 'n Ted's Zappo Mail for UNIX and they've promised to register 6,000 copies immediately after we release the first beta that reads BnTZMfU format).

We are market-driven just like a "real company" and so there's the rub.  Niche markets like Blue Wave (for which we've had a total of four requests) will take a back seat to better packing, better sorting, better editors, better folders, and so forth.  We're sorry, but that's the way it works for us.

 You told us you'd have feature X in two weeks, how come it's not in there yet?

 There could be several reasons.  Perhaps we couldn't figure it out (we're just normal folks, not Lotus or Microsoft with legions of highly-paid programmers), or possibly putting it in caused more problems than it solved, or---and most likely the case---we haven't had the time!  Hang on, we've only been around for a short while, we'll get the features in there that you want.

Ask our users on RIME, CIS, and elsewhere.  They'll tell you.  Compare us to our competitors, we're not afraid of that, either.

Program operations

  My registrations numbers don't work...help!

Nine-tenths of the time this is caused by the user entering the wrong number in the wrong slot.  Key number is not the same as Registration number.  Your registration number is where you stand in the line-up of folks who've actually paid for using the program.  If it says 900 then you're user 900 (899 before you have registered).  The key number is a different animal---and herein lies the problem.  Users try to enter the key number in the reg number box and vice versa.

That's not going to work---and wait---just like the cheap knife commercial on late-night television, there's more---your NAME exactly as it appeared on your order form and check when Derek registered you, is an integral part of your registration.

So if you sent him a check with Robert Wienersteinski on it and you try to register as Bob Wienersteinski, you'll get a rude error message.  And of course, being only human---and every now and then fatigued from 14 hour work days---Derek may mis-type your name when he enters your registration data.  If this happens, try entering what Derek thinks your name is...and it'll probably work.

The only other place your name is relevant is when you click on Help, About and see your name listed there.  If Derek accidentally gets it wrong by a letter or two (or reverses your gender as he did to one poor user) you can delete CMPQWK.CFG after you've gotten a corrected registration.

 Note: if you're using a registered-user-only beta, don't delete that CFG file---you won't be able to load the program to re-register!

The program will become "non-registered" once the CFG file is gone, then you can re-register with your correct name...and our apologies.

 Note: although it may really bug you to see your name misspelled in your registration when you do Help, About, there is another drawback to deleting the CFG file to re-register: you will lose your rubber stamps and signature contents.  If you haven't built many of these, that won't be a problem.  If you have, I suggest you copy the text out of the stamps and signature list box, paste the contents into Notepad or some other editor, delete the CFG, re-register, and then put your text back into the rubber stamps, signature, etc.

We'll try to keep those gender swaps to a minimum, too...sorry about that, Joan.

 Help, I can't get it to run, what do I do?

 First read this help file to see if you've changed anything that might cause it to fail.  Look in the Options menu sections for the defaults, and set the program back to those.  If it still won't operate, or fails immediately on load, delete the contents of the work directory.  If that doesn't fix it, you either have a corrupt copy, or something in your system is preventing it from loading.

Only under very rare circumstances will you have to re-install, and in those cases you DO NOT have to delete the contents of your home directory.  Just delete the CMPQWK.INI file from the Windows directory, and the CMPQWK.CFG file from the home directory (unless you're using a registered-user-only beta, in which case NEVER delete the CMPQWK.CFG file).  Run the install from the prior "full release," telling it to install into the same directory.  Then install the upgraded files.

When the program loads the next time you'll find your folders, personal dictionary, and most everything else still in place.  Manually copy all the files from the upgrade Zip files into the \CMPQWK directory, as well, just to make sure they're all up-to-date.

But try deleting the \WORK directory before you resort to this.

 I get NO CONTROL.DAT messages!

 Then you've got one of several things fouled up.  Either the directory where you told CMPQwk to put its work directory (always called WORK when CMPQwk creates it) doesn't exist, you told CMPQwk to put the work directory on a drive that doesn't exist, or you're missing some components of the program if you're set to use internal unpacking.  The files you might be missing are ZPDCMP.DLL and UNZIP.EXE.

If you're set to use external unpacking of some type and you get this message, either your packer is not in the path (copy it into the CMPQWK directory and you won't have to re-boot your system like you do when you change the path) or it doesn't exist at all, or it terminated abnormally.  We don't trap error messages from external packers (such as a corrupt Zip message).  You'll have to watch the screen for error messages if you use an external unpacker.

 I get a GPF right when it's unpacking the QWK file.

 This problem is always caused by a corrupt Zip file.  Windows Unarchive, the unpacker we licensed from James N. Hughes, does not always correctly identify Zip files with corrupt allocation tables, and when this happens, the unpacker will GPF and then you'll get a NO CONTROL.DAT file.  Delete the QWK in question, call the system back from which you got the mail, reset your message pointers, and re-download your mail using a reliable protocol like Zmodem.  Ymodem-G used on a bad connection can sometimes cause this, despite what modem makers say.  We've seen this happen first-hand.

 I call a Major BBS (Galacticomm) system, and when I upload mail, it says, "Invalid replies!"  What's wrong?

 What's wrong is Major BBS is a little funky...it can't run PKUnzip 2.x because it can't run DOS programs at all without a "slave" machine that boots from DOS.  The mail door on a Major BBS isn't a "door" at all, but a part of the operating-system-like BBS central program.  If you call a Major BBS you almost always must use the old PKZip 1.x-compatible packer.  In some very rare cases people have worked around this pretty annoying limitation in Major BBS, but for most sysops it's not worth the time (or the hassle).  If you get this message, save your REP, select File/Re-open replies from the menu, pick the system, and then before you close the REP, change your packer setting from 2.x-compatible to 1.x-compatible.  Close your REP and it'll convert it for you to 1.x.  Then you can upload it to the system.

 I can't find the Conference list.

 If this happens, I'd take odds you've got all your windows (Read, Write, etc.) set to run maximized and you're buried the Conference list  Press the 5 key and see if it appears.  You cannot close this window and read mail (it closes the packet).  So if you can't find it, it's because you haven't looked hard enough.  It's there.  Use the Window menu if all else fails.

 How do I rename a folder, copy a message from one folder to another, etc.?

 You can't in version 1.4 but see the Folder Fun section anyway for tips.

 Help, I updated to version X and now it doesn't run or unpack my QWKs!

 Follow the update instructions---and this means reading all of the text files in the release---and then carefully check to make sure you put all the new files in the correct places.  Generally, unless we say otherwise, the files will always go into the \CMPQWK home directory.

If you don't confirm that all of the required files are in place, there's no way to diagnose the problem.  See the section Quirks for a list of what files are required and where they go.

 Where does the file X go?

 Everything except CMPQWK.INI and OPTION.DLL go into the \CMPQWK home directory.  If you download the optional CMPSOUND.ZIP file, the contents of that file go into a directory called \SOUND under the CMPQwk home directory.  All other WAV files shipped with the program go into the home directory.  If you put them elsewhere, the help file will not operate properly.

 I want to use my MegaCoolPowerEdit for DOS with CMPQwk!  Can I?

 Nope.  Not any time soon.  Nor can you use (or will you be able to use) any external Windows editor.  It just puts too many flies into the soup for us to handle.

 How come the program runs so slowly on my 386 SX-16

 We don't suggest you run it on anything less than a DX/25 with four megabytes of RAM.  In fact, we don't suggest you run it if you expect it to run "briskly" with all the bells and whistles enabled on a system less than a 486/33 and 8 megabytes of RAM.  On a system like that, Windows (and our program) is quite enjoyable.

 My system crashed with a hardware error and now the program won't load!  What happened?  It gets a runtime error or GPF on loading.  Help!

 You've probably got corrupted replies.  Go into the work directory and delete any files called with the extension *.TMP.  You will lose your replies, but we can't take system errors into account, especially when you've got staged-write disk caches.  If this happens to your computer a lot, get it fixed or turn off staged writes.  As they say, "Stuff happens."  If you're not over 18 don't you dare click on "Stuff happens."


If this program really exists, please don't tell me about it, okay?


Even if a file is corrupt from a disk crash, if you have used a good utility to clean up your disk, you can (in 99% of these cases) just copy the correct files back into the directory.  You gain nothing at all by blowing off the entire directory.

I see this as an alarming trend in the way people deal with Windows software: it's so complex, with so many files, that rather than learn what files do what, people just nuke the directory (or even Windows altogether) and start over.  I've seen people re-install the entire Windows environment when all they needed was a fix for a typo in SYSTEM.INI.  So calm down, re-set the program to the defaults before you do anything else, and do things like compare the sizes of the files in the home directory with the sizes inside the CMPQwk archive---which you should keep---that you downloaded.

Try copying the files back into the directory (or at worst, deleting the CMPQWK.INI file, it'll make a new one if you've botched it up and don't know what you did).  That will probably fix it.  You could be missing a file, have two versions of a DLL (both in your path) and so on.  Approach a problem methodically, not emotionally!


No, they say shit happens, but this is a PG-rated help file, so we can't say shit or we'll get in trouble.  If you popped this up, you must be over 18, right?  I thought so...


advanced user information

The following tips are for users who want to squeeze the most out of the software that they use.  If you're happy with the way things are running "stock" then you're all set and don't need to read any of this.  If you'd like to delve more deeply into how the program works, what follows are some practical tips.

Included is information about what the minimums and optimum system configurations are, and what type of performance you can expect from various system configurations.

Keep in mind that with the wide variances in screen drivers, monitors, memory configurations, and so on, there was no way to cover every possible event that might come up when running the program.

How to make the most out of the program.

Rubber stamps and auto signature

Folder fun

System requirements, both minimal and optimal

Packer Considerations

For VGA only users

For SVGA users

For high-color/high end graphics boards users

Problems with colored fonts

Scrolling speed problems

Inaccurate window placements if you change video modes

Big Netmail packets

Upgrading from a mail reader not supported by CMPQwk

CMPQWK.INI editing for advanced users

Other considerations


How to make the most out of the program.
how to make the most out of the program

It should be obvious that if you have a marginal Windows system, you also have a marginal CMPQwk system.  That means if you can barely run Windows (let's say you have a 386SX 16mhz with 2 megabytes of RAM and you like to torture yourself by trying to run Windows) then CMPQwk will be no fun at all.  Only standard and enhanced mode are supported (which shouldn't be a problem, because Windows 3.1 only supports them, also).  You can not run CMPQwk with Windows 3.0.

To make the most of this---and every Windows program---you should have at least some type of a 386 (so your PKZIP windows don't have to go full screen, for example) and you'd be a lot happier with four megabytes of RAM.  If you're running something less, it just won't be as enjoyable as on a more powerful system, and in some cases you will not even be able to open a moderately-large QWK file.

CMPQwk is compiled with the code optimized for a 386, also, and will not function correctly (if at all) on a 286 system.  In the case of systems with only two megabytes of RAM, you just won't have enough memory to make things work..

If you have a "minimalist" system, stick with the internal PKZip compatible unpacker and packer.  The internal archiver won't cause you to load a DOS session, and that might speed things up.

Since CMPQwk is a multiple-document interface program, the more screen real estate you feed it, the better it looks.  It is "optimized" for use on a full SVGA/8514 resolution system.  It looks "best" at 1024 x 768 (or higher) but is certainly usable at lesser resolutions.

If you run in VGA try it full screen first, and arrange the windows (see the section on setting window places) so that your Read and Write windows appear on top of each other.  That way you get the maximum size in which to do the body of your work---reading and writing.  Stuff the Quick message list and Conference windows where they fit or ignore them---you can spacebar through mail and thus you won't need them most of the time.


If you're low on memory, try running CMPQwk by itself, with just Program Manager and no other software running.  That'll speed things up a tad.  CMPQwk needs about 650K of RAM before opening a packet, and another 600K when you spell-check.


rubber stamps and auto signature

One of the drudgeries associated with heavy mail is, for many users, inserting a signature or other file into every message.  Sometimes a corporate ID number must be inserted into mail, other times a "power user" just wants to have a distinctive signature with high ASCII.  We've taken such users to heart with the Rubber Stamp tool and the Auto Signature feature.

If you have a small text file (or several) you'd like to selectively insert into messages (such as a corporate logo that uses high ASCII) you can, using the rubber stamp button on the toolbar, paste it into a new message or a reply.  If you haven't already placed the text you'd like to use into the Rubber Stamp Text box in the Rubber Stamp setup dialogue box, you can do so at any time, and it'll be available right away.

Open CMPQwk's Options, Rubber Stamp dialogue box.  You'll be presented with the option to Add, Edit, Delete a stamp.  If you don't have one, pick Add.  A new box will come up.  On of the options there will be to import a pre-existing text file.  If you have some text you'd like to use (and it's no larger than 2,400 characters or so) click on Import and locate that file with the directory picker.  Once you've found it, click on OK and the contents of that file are put into the rubber stamp tool.  You can select more (as many as you want, practically) although keep in mind each one increases the size of the stamp file stored in the CMPQwk home directory.  (This also means you can delete the original text file without losing your stamp.)

You can edit the stamp with impunity without affecting your original file, as well.

From now on, when you click the Rubber Stamp button on the main Tool Bar, or press CTRL+U, all of your special text stamps will appear first in a dialogue where you can pick which one you want to use, and after you've pressed Enter (or clicked OK), at the cursor's location inside the message.  The stamp tool will default to the topmost stamp so simply pressing Enter will slap it into the message.  If you want a different stamp, you can scroll up or down in the list of stamps you've entered and press Enter to use it.

If you have a special ASCII signature file or other text item you want to appear in every message, open the Reply Options dialogue and look for the Signature Text box.  Just like the stamp tool, you can type in a signature or import a pre-existing text file.  Once you've put something in the box, you can enable Auto Signature, and from that point on, the contents of the Signature Text box will be inserted at the end of your message (before the tagline) automatically when you save your message.  There is a 256 character limit in the auto signature tool.

You can modify either the Signature or Rubber Stamp text at will and the changes will be reflected the next time you use either tool.  Restarting the program is not necessary.


folder fun

If you're an experienced off-line mail user, you probably already know what folders are used for.  If you're not that experienced, I'll explain a little bit of folder philosophy and why they're handy to have around.

Many times while reading mail you'll come across a message that contains some information you want to keep.  You can scribble it down onto a piece of paper, of course, or---and this is their primary reason for being---you can grab the information and put into a folder.  Plainly put, folders are for holding messages you want to keep.  It's a simple idea, but when you begin using them, you'll see the folders can lend quite a bit of power to the program.

Folders are simple to use.  If you see a message you want to keep (even if you haven't yet created a folder in which to put them), while that Read window is the "focus" window, click on the folder toolbar icon (it's the one that looks like a yellow file folder).  A dialogue will appear, asking you to pick a folder in which to put the message.

If you haven't yet created any folders, you can click on Create new, and then enter a name for the folder.  You can use long names, like, "Messages from Bob about setting up Windows comm drivers."  If it fits in the text list box, it'll work.  Once you've created your new folder, then select that one with the mouse by clicking it once, and click on OK to store the message.

Now you've got one folder with one message in it.  Let's say you want to look at it.  On the menu select Folders, View and maintain.  It'll show the main folder dialogue, with all the folder names (maybe just one, I've got several).  If you click on a folder name you'll see in the list box at the bottom, the names and subjects of messages stored in that folder.  If you want to read a particular message, just double-click it with the mouse and it'll come up in another dialogue.

From the message viewer, you can copy the text to the clipboard or just read the message.  If you wanted to quote the contents of that message in a current message, copy the portion you want into the clipboard, by highlighting it and selecting Copy to clipboard, return to the Write window, put the cursor where you want it to go and either select Edit, Paste from the menu or press SHIFT+INSERT.  The clipboard's contents will be slapped into the message.

There are some limitations to the folders in version 1.4: you can't move messages directly from one folder to another, you can't copy them anywhere except to the clipboard, and you can't print them directly (there's a way to do that, I'll cover it in a moment), and you can't rename a folder.

If you've enabled an external viewer for folders (General Options, Advanced Options) you may be able to get around some of these.  Your viewer may print, allow you to edit, and so on.  You still won't be able to rename a message, or move it (elegantly), but the addition of the external viewer option makes it possible to print, and that's worthwhile just by itself.

These limitations will be eliminated in a future release of the program.  You need to keep them in mind, though, or you'll have to fix something you foul up by using the less-than-elegant methods of getting around these limitations.

Here's how you get around them.

 Printing a stored message: to print a stored message, copy the contents into the clipboard.  Start a new message using the subject you want and to whoever you want.  Save the message using either the menu, pressing F10, or clicking the SAVE button on the write window button bar (if you've enabled spell-checking you might want to pick Cancel & save rep when it comes up).  Double click on the replies conference.  Using the index, locate the reply you just created.  Click on the Read window with the right mouse button and pick Print.  It'll print the message.  When it's through, just click the bomb icon on the toolbar if you've got a plain VGA monitor, or the burning paper if you've got SVGA.  The "scratch" message will not be packed into the rep.

If you want to print more than one, paste multiple messages into the Write window, save the "big" message, open that message in a Read window, select Print from the right mouse button menu, and doing so you can quickly print several messages

 Note: if you've enabled the external folder viewer CMPView, you can print directly from its File menu.  That option is in General Options, Advanced Options.

 Moving a message to another folder: It's pretty easy, really, and almost like printing.  Pick the message you want to move from the folder it's in and view it.  Copy it to the clipboard.  Create a new reply and change the TO and FROM fields in the Message header to match the original message.  Paste in the clipboard's contents.  Press F10 (or use the other methods) to save the message.  Don't bother spell-checking it.

When the message has been saved, open the replies conference by double-clicking it.  Find the message you just created.  When it is the focus Read window, click on the Folder toolbar icon.  Pick the folder into which you want to move the message and click on OK.

While the Read window showing the new message is the focus window, click on the bomb or burning paper toolbar icon.  That'll set the "deleted" flag and the message will not be packed into any outgoing rep.  Open the folder the message was originally put into.  Delete the original copy by selecting that message and picking Delete selected message from the buttons on the right.

 Copying a message to another folder: same as moving, just don't delete the original.

 Renaming a folder: more work than it's worth at this writing.  You can do it by copying all the messages into new replies (chaning the to and from fields to match the originals), creating a new folder, grabbing all the new replies and putting them into the new folder, then deleting the original.

 Replying to a message in a folder: to do this you have to have a packet open or you have to have opened a packet (at least once) from the system on which you want to post your reply.  All you need to do is open the Folder Tools, find the message to which you want to reply, and copy it into the clipboard.  Either open a packet or select Create new from the menu.  Open the conference into which you'd like to put the reply.  Start a new message to the person who sent the original message, and when the Write window comes up, click the toolbar icon that has the quote character on it.  That will "quote" from the clipboard as if you were replying to a message.  Edit as you see fit, save the message, and you're done.  It takes an extra step, but it's simple enough.

All of these roundabout techniques will change in the next major release, but people have asked how to do these things and we wanted to help them, so here they are.


system requirements, both minimal and optimal

The rule of thumb to remember here is that if Windows runs poorly, so will anything you run under Windows.  That includes, but is not limited to, CMPQwk.

 Windows Version:

If you're running anything less than Windows 3.1, all bets are off.  You MUST have Windows 3.1 to use CMPQwk.  It will not work correctly with Windows 3.0 or earlier versions.

 Disk space:

The program takes about three megabytes, plus the small files it will put in the directory it creates under itself to track your messages.  If you have huge tagline, subject, and to-list files, you'll need more space.  If you've downloaded and installed the sound files for the UseVoice= option, you'll need another 600K, so the total will come close to four megabytes.

 Memory and CPU:

Minimum memory requirements will vary, but it's safe to say that if Windows runs slowly on your system because you don't have much memory, CMPQwk will run slowly, too.  A 386 25mhz machine with four megabytes of memory is a good start.  From there up, things will only get better.  From there down, Windows will get intolerably slow for most folks, and CMPQwk will not function optimally.

CMPQwk uses about 650 Kbytes of memory when a packet isn't opened.  When you spell-check your replies you'll load the spelling dictionary, and that takes an additional 600K which it uses until you close the program.  With a large packet open (thousands of messages) the program may use more than 1.5 megabytes of RAM during spell-checking and normal operations.  Under extreme circumstances with a huge packet, heavy spell-checking (and the addition of dozens of "skip-alls" to the memory stack) the program's memory requirements may exceed two megabytes.

 Ram Disk minimums/maximums:

Figure twice the size of your QWK packet plus one-half of that for replies to be safe.  More if other applications will need temporary space.  Remember, if you use a RAM disk for your work directory, pick Quick Exit, and crash your system somehow, you'll lose all of your replies!

 Laptop without a mouse:

You'll want to have a mouse.  If you're using Windows and you don't have a mouse, for example on a laptop, there are "mouse substitute" programs like NoMouse™ from Abacus.  Some of the things you'll want to do (such as setting window positions) are a real pain without a mouse.  Most folks using Windows have the little rodents, but some don't.  Your best bet: get one if you can do so.

"Other" operating systems:

Because we cannot test them, we will not warranty the correct operation of CMPQwk if you run it under anything other than Windows 3.1 or 3.11 running on top of Microsoft DOS 5 or 6.

See the disclaimers section for more information on this.


How much the program will take when a packet is opened depends on the size of the packet.  A QWK file with thousands of messages in each conference may require several megabytes once you've opened the List window and a batch of Read windows.  CMPQwk allocates from the global pool as it needs memory.  If you don't have enough contiguous memory to perform a certain function, that function may not operate properly.


packer considerations

If you want to use an external packer, be sure that it can be called from a directory in your path.  If you're not sure what your path is, it's the list of directories that DOS has been told to look into when a program is "called" and the program can't be found in the "current" directory.

Open a DOS window, change to the directory where you put CMPQwk, and type the name of the program you want to use.  Let's say it's ARJ.  From a DOS window inside the C:\CMPQWK directory type "ARJ" with nothing after it.  If DOS gives you the message "bad command or file name"... ARJ isn't in your path.

Either edit the path statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file so the directory where ARJ lives is listed, or copy the ARJ.EXE file from where you're keeping it into the CMPQwk directory.  Either procedure will work fine.  The first just saves a bit of disk space and makes better sense technically, but will require you to close Windows and re-boot your system before it takes effect.

If all of this confuses you, best to crack that DOS manual for a refresher course.

And of course be sure that you and the BBS to which you're sending mail are using the same packer!

If you're not sure (for example most Major BBS systems insist that you use the old 1.1-compatible Zip, and many folks don't know this), make a test REP packet using the internal 2.x packing.  If, when you upload it to the door, you get a message such as, "Invalid replies," or "corrupt REP," re-open the reply file (File, Re-open REP), and while it's open, change your packer setting to the old 1.1-compatible format.

Close the packet, and try re-uploading it.  If it works, that system requires 1.1-compatible packing.  That also means you cannot attach files to messages sent to that system, because the 1.1-compatible packer isn't up to that task.

If you're not sure (or don't want to ask the sysop) try this before you do mail in earnest.


For VGA only users; managing screen space
for VGA only users

VGA (16-color 640 x 480) users should run the program maximized (full-screen) and use the terminal font that ships with Windows.  At that resolution, it's just not practical to run in a smaller window.  If you try it, you'll have to choose a font size so small you'll need an electron microscope to read your mail.

Try setting the positions of the Read and Write windows so they take up most of CMPQwk's workspace, with one stacked on top of the other.  That way you can use a larger font, and generally you don't read mail while you're writing replies.  The conference list will fit, somewhat truncated, to the right of those windows in most cases (depending on the font you use).

Play around a bit and find a font that's comfortable for you and maximizes the screen real estate.

We also suggest that all of our users download and install the updated True Type MS Line Draw font, as it's a fully scalable fixed-pitch font with a correct set of line-drawing characters.  You can get this from our support sites, CompuServe, or the Microsoft BBS in the file GC0651.EXE.  Expand it into TTF form and use the Control Panel font applett to install it.  It works well in all resolutions, and will let you pick a size that can be used in less-than-full-screen even on VGA systems (as long as you can read fine print).

If you find you need even more space, you can disable the status line and the toolbar (see the sections on Advanced Options and ini file editing).  That'll create quite a bit more screen space for you, enough for several ines in the QML or a line or two in the Read window, depending on what font you use.


for SVGA users

There's sufficient screen real estate at 800 x 600 and above to run the program in a window that's less than full screen.  You can also fool around with some other fonts that are available, such as those that come with Procomm Plus for Windows© by Datastorm Technologies Incorporated.

We also suggest that all of our users download and install the updated True Type MS Line Draw font, as it's a fully scalable fixed-pitch font with a correct set of line-drawing characters.  You can get this from our support sites, CompuServe, or the Microsoft BBS in the file GC0651.EXE.  Expand it into TTF form and use the Control Panel font applett to install it.  It works well in all resolutions, and will let you pick a size that can be used in less-than-full-screen even on VGA systems (as long as you can read fine print).  For SVGA systems it is a bit thin for some folks, but this is outweighed by the scalability.

If you use Procomm Plus for Windows, you can install the fonts it ships with into your system and use one of them.  These fonts are only available when Procomm is running unless you install them manually.  They're the PWKEYMAP.FON and PWTRMNL.FON files located in the Procomm directory.  Also the 8514OEM fonts that ship with Windows work nicely (in addition to MS Line Draw).

To use the Procomm fonts (or any of these), start Control Panel, double-click on the FONT microapp, then click on ADD, and point it at your Procomm directory (or the directory where you expanded CG0651.EXE), you'll see the fonts listed there.  Install them both and test them at different point sizes by opening a mail packet, then selecting "Font" from the Options menu.  Look for "PC Plus" (or MS Line Draw) in the available font names.

The Read window will reflect whatever font you select once you've clicked OK.  The PC Plus SS at 9 points is a good size for 1024 x 768 resolutions.  If you don't use Procomm Plus for Windows, or don't want to call one of our support systems (or CIS, etc.) and download the MS Line Draw font, pick the Terminal font that ships with Windows, it's the best choice, and it'll display the high ASCII characters correctly on all systems.

If you arrange your window positions so the Read and Write windows appear on top of each other filling about two-thirds of the application workspace, put the Conference List to the right in a narrow column, and the Quick message list window along the bottom in a narrow strip, you'll find the results generally pleasing.


for high-color/high end graphics boards users

Scrolling speed with some high-color drivers and frame-buffer video boards (non-accelerated products) is quite slow.  This is a problem with the driver and not with CMPQwk.

The colors in the highlight color palette may not appear the same in different color-depths on all systems.  This is a function of how the Windows 3.1 palette-manager works, not a bug.  Also your colors may not appear the same if you shift color palette depth between uses of the program.  Some video board drivers will use somewhat different colors in the same palette positions when they operate at varying color depths.  The ATI Ultra boards are one of the most notable offenders because they default to "locking" the palette, which often fixes the system colors in ugly or bizarre defaults.

You'll get the best appearance with an Ultra board if you "unlock" the palette and use the standard VGA colors.  See the next section for more on this.


problems with colored fonts

Some graphics boards (such as the ATI Ultra Pro) can fix the Windows palette, display higher-than normal colors, or shift the amount of available colors on the fly.  If you set your Read window color highlighting a certain way and then change the available color depth---or lock the Windows palette as this and other cards can do---you might find the colors won't appear as you set them.  You'll have to re-set them for the current session.

In some cases, high-color drivers will incorrectly report the number of available colors to software, or they'll report a number the software doesn't understand, and so the color palette might not appear correctly.

The only work-around for these problems is to pick your colors for each session if, when you originally set colors, you were using a different color-depth driver.


scrolling speed problems

On accelerated boards such as the ATI Ultra Pro, and most S3 boards, using the arrow keys to page-down (holding the key down) may result in the message scooting by so quickly you can't read it.  It's not a problem in the slower-scrolling graphics or "colorized" Read window, but prevalent in a non-colored Read window.  This is a function of the hardware, and the way around it is to watch how long you hold down that key!

Please note that if you enable color quoting, the Read window changes from a text window to a graphics window.  Because of this, scrolling speed will slow down.  There is no simple way around this, Windows 3.1 manipulates graphics much more slowly than it does text.

(Remember: to copy text from a colorized Read window, be sure to click it once with the left button to change it to a text window.)

If CMPQwk scrolls the Read window too slowly for your taste, you'll have to disable color.


inaccurate window placements if you change video modes

If you set window places in one resolution, they may or may not appear the same relative to the application workspace in a different resolution.  This isn't a bug, it's a function of how your screen driver describes screen sizes to a running application.

In a related problem, some 800 x 600 SVGA drivers do a poor job when set to large DPI fonts (the video driver's install program or its INF file doesn't set DPI correctly).  This can cause CMPQwk and other programs that depend on accurate DPI reporting to save window places with poor accuracy or not at all.  It may also cause some programs, including CMPQwk, to display fonts incorrectly.

If you experience this problem, Ken Smith (a user on RIME) has reported that it will go away (Windows setup will correctly update the DPI setting) if you change video modes and always tell it to use a "new" driver from a floppy.  Setup reads the INF file and corrects the misaligned setting.

However...if the INF file was created with a faulty setting (some cheaper boards exhibit this problem) there is no way around it except to manually edit the INF file and try different DPI settings.  I don't suggest inexperienced users attempt this.

If you know how to do this, then go ahead and try it.  If not, leave it alone and contact your video board's technical support department.  Other programs are affected by incorrect DPI as well as CMPQwk.


big netmail packets

If you routinely download and read huge netmail packets (thousands of messages) and you want to use a RAM disk to speed up the mail reader's operation, be sure you have sufficient space on the RAM disk to hold the size of the uncompressed packet (probably twice its compressed figure) and at least half as much in addition to contain replies.

If your QWK file is one megabyte, you'll need a 2.5 megabyte RAM disk to be safe, and three would probably be better if you're likely to run other programs that create temp files.

Should you get a huge mail packet that causes CMPQwk to act strangely, we want to hear about it.  It's been tested up to and beyond 12,000 messages and worked flawlessly.  The actual limit for messages is 16,000 messages per conference and 64,000 conferences.

And by the way, that's not messages numbered up to 16,000, that's 16,000 messages in each conference.  My calculator tells me that's 10,224,000,000 messages.

In English: ten billion messages.

Don't plan on trying to read a packet like that unless you have a very fast modem and a few hundred megabytes of RAM to play around in, too.

If by some fluke you call the largest BBS in the galaxy and get a QWK with more than 64,000 active conferences, the program will fail to read your incoming packet and will probably crash.  We feel that 64,000 active conferences is more than adequate.

Note: your ability to open and read through a packet this large will also be affected by how much memory you have on your system.  If you're running low, it'll be hard to read packets of this magnitude, and it may not be possible at all, depending on packet size and your total free RAM.  Setting a permanent Windows swapfile may help if you run out of memory while reading monster QWK mail packets.  See your Windows manual about how to do this.  In fact, I'd suggest this for Windows in general, it speeds up DOS sessions, too.

So if you need more than 64,000 conferences, we're sorry, CMPQwk will not work for you.  (And where are you getting these packets with more than that?  No BBS in the world we could find had much more than 7,000 conferences!)


upgrading from a mail reader not supported by CMPQwk

Two of the most popular mail readers (Rosemail and OLX) are directly supported when it comes to copying certain parts of their configurations.  There are others out there, and it may be possible for you, by doing a few things on your own, to get your new mail reader quickly into the shape you'd like to have it.

 Taglines:

If your mail reader keeps its taglines in a plain ASCII file, you can just copy it into the CMPQwk directory (renaming it in the process) as TAGLINES.CMP.  If your mail reader keeps taglines in some other format, you'll have to manually add them into CMPQwk's tagline data file using the tagline editor built into CMPQwk, or with some other plain ASCII text editor (like Notepad or Qedit).  The taglines should have one tag per line and no other extraneous formatting characters.  Other formats may cause unpredictable results, so we don't recommend you experiment if you're not sure what ASCII is.

 To Lists:

The same rule as taglines applies: plain ASCII can be copied into the mail reader's directory as WHOTO.CMP.  The same as taglines applies except use one name per line.

 Subject Lists:

Yup.  You guessed it: SUBJECT.CMP.

 Twit Lists:

You already know the answer, I bet.  SKIPTO.CMP and SKIPFROM.CMP

 Canned Messages:

If you've got a huge database of canned messages you send often (like support professionals or sysops) the best way to get them into the CMPQwk folder system is to use your old mail reader to e-mail them to yourself (flagged private) on a system where the sysop won't mind, and put them in via the program's Add Current Message to folder option.  It'll be a lot faster than the clipboard, retyping, or anything else I can think of.


CMPQWK.INI editing for advanced users

Just like the old saying, "There's more than one way to skin a cat," there are multiple ways to get things done in CMPQwk.  Before we list off the various sections you can edit (and if we don't mention it here, it's probably a good idea to let that section be) we should mention two truths.

Truth number one is to do all editing of CMPQWK.INI while the program is closed.  Changing the INI file of a running application is hardly a good idea.  So close it out, edit, and re-open the program.

The second truth is that "spelling counts."  If the parameter is, let's say, PlayWavFile and you type in PlayWaveFile, not much is going to happen.  Please pay attention to spelling.  The program will give you a failing grade if you don't.

By the way, you can alter most (if not all) of these via regular dialogues.  But some folks like to poke around, so we figured better to help them than let them screw up the program by poking unknowingly.

Command line parameters:

There is something that's related to the INI (and CFG) files that we added in 1.4, and there was no other logical section in which to put it but this one, so I put it in here.

CMPQwk 1.4 will allow you to have multiple CMPQWK.INI and CMPQWK.CFG files if you need that in order to effect "custom" configurations for different systems.  Please note that this feature is intended to help Windows NT users, whose systems often have a problem finding the path to the CMPQwk directory and CFG file.  A side-effect of this option is that you can have multiple configurations by using these parameters if you like, with some limitations.

You must share folder files and tagline files.  Other items of the configuration can be discrete, including signatures, rubber stamps, paths to  QWK and REP files, and so on.  The parameters follow, with explanations on how to use them.

/I:[INI file path and file name]

This can be used to force a different CMPQWK.INI file path and file name for the program to use.  You can copy CMPQWK.INI to, say, NEWCMP.INI, then load the program with the switch above and it will force it to use that INI file.  If you make changes to the system's basic configuration (such as paths, packers, etc.) and then load it as:

CMPQWK.EXE /I:C:\WINDOWS\NEWCMP.INI

the program will use the configuration settings stored in that .INI file and not CMPQWK.INI.  This command line works in tandem with the next one.

/C:[CFG path and file name]

You may use this to isolate the CFG files into discrete file names so that you can protect signatures, window placements, and rubber stamps.  This would allow you to copy CMPQWK.CFG to  NEWCMP.CFG and then load the program with a discrete set of rubber stamps, window placements, and signature text.

These commands should be used in pairs for maximum control over the program, so your command line in the shell you use would be:

CMPQWK.EXE /I:C:\WINDOWS\NEWCMP.INI /C:C:\WINDOWS\NEWCMP.CFG

which would allow you to have two different configurations.  This may be handy for calling different systems that prefer you don't use taglines, or for a husband-and-wife team who want to have their own signatures, and so forth.  Full path and filename are required if you specify these variables.  You do not have to specify these variables, the program will "automatically" look for CMPQWK.CFG in the \CMPQWK directory and CMPQWK.INI in the \WINDOWS directory (except under NT, which requires these parameters on the command line due to a dysfunctionality in  NT's path handling).

INI File editing:

What follows are sections of the INI file you can safely edit (or you might want to edit) to alter how the program works.  Remember you will have to restart the program for any change to take effect (it shouldn't be running when you edit the file anyway).  The red text where yes/no selections are possible is the default.

CMPDir=d:\directory

If you need to move the program to another directory you can change this line to the name of the new directory (and make sure any references to it elsewhere in the INI file and in Program Manger are changed, also).

WorkDir=d:\directory\

If you want to change the work directory to another drive or directory, changing this line will do so.

QwkPath=d:\directory

It's easier to do so in the program's setup, but if you wish to select another path for the program to look for QWK files, changing this will have that effect.  This directory must exist or you'll have some problems on program loading.

RepPath=d:\directory

Same as QwkPath.  Be sure the directory exists before you load the program, by the way.

StartMaximized=[Yes/No]

Just what you think it is: should the program load full screen or default windows size?

RepMaximized=[No/Yes]

ReadMaximized=[No/Yes]

Same thing for the Write and Read windows.  Should they take over the workspace or not?

UseWindowPos=[No/Yes]

Should the program save window positions and re-start in the same places?

FileOpenOnLoad=[Yes/No]

Want the program to load the File/Open dialogue on start up?  Want it to not load it?  Specify that here.

SplitLongMessages=[No/Yes]

This line can be changed to "yes" in order to split messages that may be too long for some BBS systems.  The program defaults to "no" since very few people write messages beyond the limit.  However, if you do, or if you paste in tons of text and go well over 100 lines, you may want to change this to "yes."

ListsMsgsOnOpen=[Yes/No]

This tells the program to load the Quick Message List window automatically on opening a packet.  If you have personal mail, the list will be opened as well as a Read window.  Most folks wanted the QML opened anyway.  If you don't want it opened, change this to "no."

StripAnsi=[No/Yes]

This line works in concert with the following line.  If you do not want to use the internal, colorized ANSI viewer, make sure this line reads Yes and make sure the following line points to a valid program that can read text.

Important!  If you do not point the program to a substitute viewer, you may experience problems if you try to view ANSI (like the new files listing).

StripAnsiViewer=NOTEPAD.EXE

This line defaults to Notepad, because everybody that gets Windows has Notepad.  You can change it to any application that can be passed a file name and load.  The program must be able to read ASCII (so a paint program wouldn't make sense, right?).

You can use anything you like here, but if it's not in the path, you must type in the path to it.  For example, if you wanted to view your ANSI screens in Qedit, you could type in QEDIT.PIF---with one qualification.  Be sure the PIF file specifies a %1 variable.  If you wanted to use another program that's in a directory not in the path, you'd type in: d:\directory\program.exe.

Note that the program MUST be able to take filenames passed to it.  Not all programs will accept a filename on load.  A good programmer's editor will do the job nicely, and there are several Windows items such as MegaEdit, WinEdit, and PFE, a very nice freeware editor.  Take your pick.

ImportFromDir=

ExportToDir=

These two are related.  You can now define the default directory where CMPQwk will look for text files to import.  You can also define the directory where it will automatically put exported text files.  For those of you working with large volumes of imported and exported ASCII, this will help you manage that a bit better.  You can set this through the Paths dialogue, as well.

ChangeConferenceSound=soundfile

PersonalMailSound=soundfile

UseSound=[No/Yes]

These options are also related.  ChangeConferenceSound= can be used to specify what sound the program will play (any standard Windows WAV format sound file) when you move to another conference.  Type in the path and file name.  The same goes for PersonalMailSound= as well, which will be played when you page to a personal message.  It makes your personal conference noisy if you're a busy mail writer, so I'd pick a short sound if I were you.

The line UseSound=Yes can be changed to "No" for those who do not have a sound card or who don't like things to make unusual noises like blasters or bird chirps or whatnot.  This line also affects the help file shipped with CMPQwk, which is sound-enabled as well.  If you do not want it to make sound, changing UseSound= to "no" will shut it up.  Both the help file and program are affected by this setting.

ShowResourceInfo=[No/Yes]

If you want a running total of your resource use (system-wide) enable this feature and CMPQwk will put a resource meter on the reader's title bar, updating it at fixed intervals.  This can be used to track the program's resource requirements if you suspect there may be something amiss, or to keep track of your system if you're concerned because of other programs running.  It lists the percent of your system resources free (not used).  As you may or may not know, Windows is still limited by this, you have 128K of resource space and the lowest free heap (usually the GDI heap) is the value most limiting to your ability to load more programs.  If your resources drop much below 10 percent free, expect your software to begin acting strangely.  This is different from memory, or "global memory" that Windows uses.

On some systems with some video drivers, it will cause a garbled display on the title bar if you maximize any of the application's child windows at the same time the resource meter is on.  This is because Windows doesn't know how to wrap title text (it doesn't expect it to be that long) and so it just overwrites it, continuing on across the title bar with text that really should be wrapped.  If the path to your QWK file directory is long, and you maximize a QML window, for example, those two bits of text in addition to the program name will be much longer than a standard VGA title bar (or even 800 x 600) can handle, so it'll get messed-up.  If it does this, either "size" the windows or turn off the resource meter.  We can't make Windows work any better, unfortunately.

ManualWrapMargin=

This setting is used to adjust the right margin, if you do not want the default of 72 used, when you use the CTRL+B and CTRL+Q manual wrapping functions in the write window.  Set this to anything you want, but a value between 60 and 72 is the most logical setting.  If you do mail on the Internet, 60 is probably the best.  Quoting strings can quickly build up and send the incoming material into the right margin.  This gives the text a little breathing room.

EditorRightMargin=

This is the default right margin the Write window will use.  It defaults to 72 characters, but you can bring it in if you like.  A value between 60 and 72 is probably the best.

DisplayWelcome=[Yes/No]

You can change this to No if you want to stop the program from displaying the "splash" bitmap it shows over its screen when it loads.  The default is Yes.

UseOldPacker=[No/Yes]

If you must use the old 1.1x compatible REP packer you need to change this line to yes.  Unless you change this line to yes, your REP files will be packed into 2.x compatible Zip format.  Beta 1.4 releases were not able to effect file attachments with 1.1 packing, however the released version with a new packer can do this.

UseVoice=[No/Yes]

If you want to enable the voice capability that lets CMPQwk tell you, in a human voice, how many personal messages you have, change this from No to Yes.  You must also have the sound files, which do not ship with the program (to save space).  You can download those files from the support BBS systems.  They will be posted in the CMPQwk file area and plainly marked.  Both male and female voices are available.  To use the sound files, create a directory underneath the CMPQwk home directory called SOUND.  Unpack the sound files you wish to use into that directory.  The next time you load the program, if you've enabled this option, it will tell you by voice how much mail you have.  It's silly, but we think it's also fun.

DoEffects=[Yes/No]

This item enables CMPQwk's ability to translate properly-formatted incoming text into underlined text and italicized text.  If you want to improve the scrolling speed of the Read window, disabling this feature, or changing this line to NO (done more easily with the Read window options dialogue) will significantly speed it up, perhaps by a factor of two.

UseFilenames=[Yes/No]

If you'd like to see files in the File/open dialogue presented to you by long description only (or short description for a packet you've never opened before) changing this from yes to no will tell the program to ignore DOS filenames.  It makes file handling more "friendly" we think, and it's a way to get around DOS's ugly filename limits.

UseStatusBar=[Yes/No]

You can disable the gray status bar if you want to reclaim some screen real estate.  This is handy on systems running at plain VGA resolution.


I'm not sure, precisely, why anybody would want to skin a cat.  I'm a dog person myself, but even so, skinning cats sounds like a terribly unpleasant job...no matter how many methods one might find available.  I move we drop the saying altogether, the final image it produces is reasonably revolting, and has nothing whatsoever to do with using our mail reader.  I promise not to use it again.


other considerations

 Fun with "QWK" files:

CMPQwk has been tested on QWK mail packets assembled by many different QWK doors.  If you run across a QWK packet that it will not open correctly or read, please send it to us so we can examine it.  At this writing, we have opened and correctly read packets prepared by Tomcat, Markmail, Rosemail, and several others.  The support board telephone numbers where you could upload a sample packet (as a file, not into the mail door) are listed elsewhere in this file.

Odds are, however, if it doesn't work with some small obscure mail door, it's probably the door's problem, and not CMPQwk's.  Even large systems (like Exec-PC) have fouled-up mail doors that cause problems.

 Crash recovery:

Because of how troublesome this corrupt QWK problem can be, and because we've detected that some doors are (on occasion) sending out "faulty" packets with bad IDX files that can cause problems, we've changed 1.4 in a few ways to work around this.

The first major change was in the way the program handles the packets and executes some functions internally.  It's too technical to go into here, but we feel fewer packets that contain conflicting information will cause the program to terminate abnormally.  Our testing indicates this is the case.

The second change was the addition of some "crash detection" code.  If the program (or Windows for that matter) fails for some reason, the program will detect this the next time you try to start it.  It will automatically scavenge any replies you created and saved in the prior session (it can't save "unsaved" replies, they were held in memory only).  CMPQwk will pack them up into a rep for safe-keeping, and proceed with phase 2 of the recovery process.

Upon detecting that your prior session has failed (no matter the reason), the program will examine the packet, delete what might be faulty IDX files---and just like a mail door---it'll build new IDX files for you.  I suppose having an author who also wrote a mail door for PCBoard made this easier...

We've kept (and examined) many packets that have caused the program to fail.  Since the IDX replacement process can be lengthy on a very large packet, we don't want to force everybody to go through it every time the program opens a packet (most mail doors work fine a high percentage of the time).  We decided that in general, folks don't encounter problem packets, so we took this approach to counter the problem if it happens, rather than assuming it always will.

So if a packet causes the program to fail, this process should repair the packet and make it possible for you to continue reading it.  It fixes most of the problems we've seen in QWK mail prepared by the various doors in widespread use.

Of course if something else caused the program to fail, this won't help anything (but it won't hurt, either, and recovering your replies is a nice touch).

If Windows itself crashes while CMPQwk has an open packet, or if you have a power failure, you'll see the program will go into the crash recovery procedure the next time it loads.  Just tell it to proceed with recovery (it'll say recovery failed, don't worry), it can't harm anything and it's always nice to let it clean up after an aborted session---no matter what caused the system to go down.

If for some reason the crash (because of delayed-write disk caches, for example) causes your work directory contents to become corrupt, delete any files in that directory called *.TMP, restart Windows and attempt to load the program again.  You will lose any replies you have created, but it will allow the program to operate again.  It attempts to recover your replies, where possible, even corrupted ones, but it can't work magic on zero-byte TMP (reply) files or mangled FATs.

 Auto file attachment detector:

CMPQwk 1.4 (and later) has a feature that detects the extension of any attached files, and looks for an association for that type of file in your WIN.INI [extensions] section.  If it finds an association, it will attempt to display the icon of the associated program in the message header.  However, the program's success at doing this depends on three things:

1.) Your [extensions] section can't be a mess.  Many folks feel the need to diddle with it and thus the commonly-attached files like TXT and BMP won't get displayed.  (Usually those are associated with Notepad and Paint Brush, which ship with Windows 3.1.)  If CMPQwk can't find the program, or WIN.INI specifies an incorrect path, you won't get the icon---or you'll get an "error" icon that's a yellow piece of paper with an ! on it.  It looks like the icon below.

 - if you click this icon (not this one, a real one), when it appears in the right side of the message header, the program will ask you to clean up the association or pick a new one.  You can browse through .exe files, and once you've selected a program to associate with the attached file type, CMPQwk will immediately load the attached file into the program you specify (and use that program from then on unless the association in WIN.INI gets mangled).

2.) If your WIN.INI [extensions] entry requires a search along the DOS path to find the .exe, you won't get an icon either.  To speed up the display of message, CMPQwk uses the exact entry and it doesn't search your path (which could take a few seconds to well over a minute on a network).  If you have any entries that don't have the complete path to the program in question, and you want to use the automatic attachment logic, you must change the entry to specify the full path to the program's EXE file.

3.) Your OLE registration database and your WIN.INI [extensions] section must agree or you'll get unpredictable results.  Common offenders who mangle the OLE database but don't correctly change the WIN.INI section are Micrografix Designer and Corel Draw 4.0.  If they conflict, the icon shown may be the INI file entry, but the program loaded may be what's pointed at in the OLE database.  Since we can't clean up your system for you, you'll have to take care of that yourself.  Make everything agree (like it's supposed to) and it'll work fine.

For example, if you want to see the icon for Ami Pro and your [extensions] section says:

[extensions]

SAM=AMIPRO.EXE ^.SAM

You'll need to change it to:

[extensions]

SAM=D:\PATH\AMIPRO.EXE ^.SAM

Where D:\PATH is your drive and path to the location of AMIPRO.EXE.  If you fail to do this, CMPQwk will not be able to find the program and load the icon.  There's another benefit from putting the complete path in your WIN.INI: if you put the complete path on the association line, double-clicked files will load much faster, as Windows knows exactly where to find Ami Pro, and it doesn't have to search through directories in the DOS path to find the program.

You can clean up both databases (WIN.INI and REG.DAT, the OLE database file) by starting File Manager, highlighting a file that's the same type as the attachment, and selecting File/Associate.  Use the directory navigator in that dialogue to locate the .EXE you'd like to assocate with that type of file.  The complete path will be added to WIN.INI, REG.DAT will get updated to reflect this fact, and Windows will update the copy of WIN.INI held in memory so further attachments of this type will show up correctly.

 OS/2 2.1 and NT 3.1

These two operating systems are not supported, (see Legal Disclaimers) however we've done some light testing under OS/2 2.1 in order to determine the source of a problem loading the program onto the OS/2 2.1 desktop in "seamless" mode.  As far as we can tell, the reason for it failing is that the OS/2 2.1 system has some problems with BWCC.DLL.

On our test systems we've discovered that the BWCC.DLL must be in the OS2\MDOS\WINOS2 directory.  If it's anyplace else, even in the path, the program will fail to load on the desktop, but somehow seems to function normally in a full-screen Win-OS/2 session.

This method of operation has been tested on only two machines: a 486/50 EISA box with 16MB of RAM, and a 486/33 VESA box with 8MB of RAM.  In both cases moving the BWCC.DLL from the original Windows 3.1 \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory (where it lived), to the ...\WINOS2 directory remedied the problem and allowed CMPQwk 1.4 to function normally on the OS/2 2.1 desktop and with no problems whatsoever.

Your mileage may vary.

With respect to Windows NT 3.1---also not directly supported---there seems to be a problem with the program in that it can't locate its path properly, or mangles it in the CMPQWK.INI preventing it from finding its DLLs.  We are attempting to procure an evaluation copy of Windows NT (quite an expensive item, that one) so we can install it and try to fix this problem.  Several users have reported being able to run the program under NT, but most users can not.

Until we can test it further to see exactly what the heck is going on, there's not much we can do.  Purchasing a very limited-market $300-plus operating system when you produce inexpensive shareware isn't very practical.  To date, we have just three users (out of thousands) who want to run NT and our program together.  Until we can get an evaluation copy of NT (not a several-hundred-dollar copy) we won't be able to fix this.

At least OS/2 2.1 was inexpensive---it was donated by one of our Benefactor users on Patchbay who'd dumped it to go back to using Windows 3.1.

 Sprechen Sie Deutsche?:

Users in countries where English isn't the dominant language will find that the keyboard mapping (the special keys used in Germanic and other languages) will be best if they select Microsoft Line Draw as their font.  This font is available on the MS BBS and other online services as GC0651.EXE.

Non-English users should also investigate the Reply options dialogue item Text Conversions, as you can now implement OEM to ANSI and ANSI to OEM conversion, which should greatly help those folks using a non-U.S. codepage.


It works like this: if you get a "funny" QWK and you don't send it to us, we can't look inside it and see if the system that made it is doing something strange.  If we can't look inside it, we can't compensate for it in our program.  We usually find ways of working around some of the non-standard QWK packets that turn up.  You'd be surprised what kind of junk is inside QWK mail.

If our program will  not open a certain QWK, and you don't send us that QWK, there's simply no way we can write code to work around the problem.  We can't afford to call every BBS in the world to sample their mail.  We have to rely on users to help with this.


Okay, I see...you're one of those kind, ehh?  I tell you not to click, and what happens?  You click.  Fine.  Go ahead and click...see if I care.


index of terms used

If you didn't understand a term used in this help file, it's probably in this list.  If it's not, there's always a dictionary...

ANSI: American National Standards Institute.  In this case, it refers to the colored graphics that a BBS that supports ANSI can display.  Usually there will be ANSI graphics in the BBS's "new files" or "welcome" display under the Packet, New Files and Welcome selections, for example.

ASCII: in this context it refers to a "plain" text file, or a file that has no special formatting characters, and thus can be read by most any software that can open "text" files.  The tagline file CMPQwk uses is plain ASCII.

Application Workspace: the space inside a Multiple Document Interface application where it places its various windows.  These windows are called Child Windows.  Child Windows that CMPQwk uses are the Conference List, Read, Write, and Quick message list.

Button Bar: a row of buttons with function labels on them.  CMPQwk has a button bar on the Write window, and it can be used to tell the program what functions (like saving a reply) to perform.  Some people think they're faster than menus or simple keyboard combinations.  It's a matter of taste.

Dialogue Box: a box containing instructions, pick lists, or buttons that give you the options to set program runtime parameters, pick files to open, or define other variables that affect the way a program runs.  If you select Help and then About, CMPQwk will show you an "About" dialogue box, with an OK button to close that box,  for example.

Frame Buffer Video Board: the basic type of graphics board where there is no hardware acceleration (such as an S3 chip) present and the system's CPU is called on to draw all the elements on the screen.  Some of these boards will, with the use of a high-color DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) chip, allow you to set your color depth beyond 256 colors.  However, in such high-color modes, text scrolling is often unacceptably slow.

Multiple Document Interface: a standard by which a Windows application can open multiple windows "inside" itself.  This means it can edit (or do various functions) while holding different text or information inside other windows, but it needn't load multiple copies of itself to do it.  Windows Notepad and Write are both "Single Document Interface" applications.  If you want to edit or cut and paste between two Write files at once, you'll need to open two copies of Write.  CMPQwk and Sysedit, for example, are both Multiple Document Interface applications, or MDI apps, for short.  We consider messages documents (which they are) and you can have as many of those open as you'd like (memory permitting) using CMPQwk.

Off-line Mail: versus "on-line mail," which is mail you do while you are still connected to a host, or BBS system.  Off-line mail you can do on your own system, using an off-line mail reader, and you don't need to be connected to a host system to do anything except upload it when you're through creating messages.  See QWK Packet below for more.

QWK Packet: a file created by a BBS "Mail Door" that contains a specially-formatted and compressed collection of messages extracted from the BBS system's mail database.  To open and read a QWK packet, you'll need some software called an Off-line Mail Reader.  Our preferred choice for you to use is CMPQwk, of course.

RAM Disk or RAMDISK: a virtual "disk" created with software (ramdrive.sys ships with DOS) that happens to be much faster than a "real" or "physical" hard disk.  If you have extra memory (say eight megabytes or more) setting up a RAM-based disk and using it as your work directory will speed CMPQwk's handling of the temporary files it needs when you do mail, and even save some wear and tear on your hard disk.

Shareware: a concept where eternally optimistic (some say naive) and enterprising programmers release their finished software products out into the world in the hopes that users who download and use them will see the justice in paying for them.  Sometimes they "cripple" the software so it only works partially as intended, or they put in "pester screens" with pictures of VISA cards to make the user feel bad.  The best approach is just to make the product so good that the user feels horrible about not paying for it.  Shareware registrations approach four to ten percent of actual use, depending on who's giving the figure and the software package used.  Of course we'd like to beat the odds...and only you can help us do that.

SVGA: "Super VGA," or Super Video Graphics Adapter.  Usually it means a display system (including video board and monitor) capable of displaying at resolutions and colors beyond IBM's old standard of 640 x 480 x 16.  If your video subsystem can display resolutions greater than this and at higher colors, you've got SVGA.

Toolbar: usually a strip of buttons with colored or other graphics on them that, when pressed by the mouse, will perform a function that could involve multiple menu selections.  Similar to a Button Bar, but a Button Bar only has text on the buttons, not bitmapped graphics.

VGA: Video Graphics Adapter, based on IBM's standard 640 x 480 x 16 and below.  Sometimes extended to include that resolution at 256 colors, although technically that's Super VGA.


Gotcha!  This is a pester screen.

Please register the shareware that you use!  We can't continue to create products like this unless people actually pay for them.  Some folks think that it's "okay" to continue to use this product "forever."  Well, here's a little reminder.

Remember that after 30 days, you're using our program in violation of our wishes (and copyright law) if you do not register it!  There...I feel better now.

And don't act surprised, you knew something like this was going to appear before you clicked on pester screens!

Click the button below to return to your regularly-scheduled help file...

Click either of the credit cards to get information on registering via plastic on one of our support systems...


Often incorrectly spelled "dialog" which, like "lite" and "flammable" should be retired to the scrap-pile of the English language.  See Strunk & White's Elements of Style for more on this if you have nothing better to do.


Known quirks, bugs, and the history of the program.
known quirks and required files

Please see the readme.txt and other txt files that accompany the program for changes and bug fixes.  This version contains numerous changes and this file was prepared well in advance of release, so it's impossible to document them all here.  The program is so dynamic and always improving, it was driving me nuts changing this section every fifteen minutes.  So forget it, have at the TXT files inside the zip, I have to write those, too!

Required Files List

A list of required files for the program and their "correct" locations follows.  I won't give dates or sizes, because that changes dynamically, and this list is valid only for the 1.4 release (and may change without notice).  Use this list to determine if you're missing a file only if the program malfunctions.  In some cases certain versions or internal betas use a file that ends up not being required by the released version---but you might be using a 1.4 beta that does use the file.

Main Program

All of these files go into the \CMPQWK home directory, and should be nowhere else.  Earlier releases required some files to be in the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory, but with 1.4, that's no longer the case.  If you haven't done so, please move them, further updates may get complicated if they are not in the home directory.

CMPQWK.EXE - just what you think it is, you're not doing anything without this

CMPEDIT.EXE - the optional large-file tagline (or general) text editor

CMPVIEW.EXE - the external viewer used for ANSI and other functions

CMPQWK.CFG - file created during first loading - required for public reg. user betas

CMPSPELL.DLL - spell-checker - optional

CMPQWK.DIC - dictionary used by spell-checker - optional (as is spell-checking)

CMPQWK.INI - created by the install program in \WINDOWS directory

DEWCC.DLL - used by the main .EXE program for internal functions

DEWSC.DLL - used by the unpacker display

DEWTC.DLL - used by the Write window

DODAD.DLC - used by the main .EXE program - (select Help, About to hear this)

DUNZIP.DLL - (not in all releases, if you got a 1.4 beta after 1.4D delete this)

DZIP.DLL - this is what packs your REP files, it's the 2.x-compatible zipper-upper.

FOLDERS.DAT - folder database file - user-created

FOLDERS.MSG - folder database file - user-created

FOLDERS.NDX - folder database - user-created

MEMDLL.DLL - used by the Read window for internal functions

PRIVATE.DIC - file created by the speller when you select "Add" - user-created

SHRINK.EXE - PKZip 1.x compatible packer - optional

*.CMP - created by user settings & lists

UNZIP.EXE - required for internal unpacker

WINSYS.DLL - used by the main .EXE program for internal functions

WINSYSH.DLL - used by the main .EXE program for internal functions

ZPDCMP.DLL - required for internal unpacker

Help File

 Note: OPTION.DLL is only "optional" if you delete or do not use the help file.  If you keep it, you must keep OPTION.DLL and all the WAV files to prevent the help engine from issuing "routine not found" error messages.

CMPQWK.HLP - main help file - optional - in \CMPQWK directory

CMPVIEW.HLP - help file for external ANSI viewer

OPTION.DLL - help external functions - in \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory - optional

001-010.WAV - help sounds - in \CMPQWK directory - optional

Optional Sounds

If you've enabled UseVoice=yes you must create a directory under the CMPQwk home directory called \SOUND and place these files into it.  The actual Zip file name that contains the sounds may vary.  What the various WAV files will say when played on use is entered to the right of the files.  For numbers beyond twenty they are combined on the fly.  Numbers beyond 59 personal messages are not reported.

00.WAV - "You have no personal messages."

01.WAV - "...one"

02.WAV - "...two"

03.WAV - "...three"

04.WAV - "...four"

05.WAV - "...five"

06.WAV - "...six"

07.WAV - "...seven"

08.WAV - "...eight"

09.WAV - "...nine"

10.WAV - "...ten"

11.WAV - "...eleven"

12.WAV - "...twelve"

13.WAV - "...thirteen"

14.WAV - "...fourteen"

15.WAV - "...fifteen"

16.WAV - "...sixteen"

17.WAV - "...seventeen"

18.WAV - "...eighteen"

19.WAV - "...nineteen"

20.WAV - "...twenty"

30.WAV - "...thirty"

40.WAV - "...forty"

50.WAV - "...fifty"

PRSNLMSG.WAV -"...personal messages"

TOOMUCH.WAV - "You have way too much mail!" (if you have over 59 messages)

U_HAVE.WAV - "You have..."


thank you, thank you...

Thanks to the many people who registered this product, we deeply appreciate your show of support.  Because of you folks, CMPQwk will only get better and more powerful.  Your comments and suggestions have been helpful.  We're listening...

Kudos to the ßeta Testing Team who plugged away during thick and thin, their only payment being able to see the software come into shape, help it get that way, and to get to use it once it was ready to be used.  Without those guys, this would never have seen the light of day.

Great work!  Roll those credits:

One and only Programmer: Derek Backus

Docs & Interface Design: Todd Henschell, Associate Sysop The Patchbay BBS

Beta Wrangler: Pye Scrazner, (lost forever in the æther and sorely missed).

Front-line Beta Testers: Mark Whitney, Mark Warnsdorfer, Bob Long.

Program Security Analyst: Ben Chiu, Jensen Gema Volstatic, Inc.

Thanks to: Daniel Bise, Sysop The Patchbay BBS home of CMPQwk

Thanks to: William Padilla, Sysop Panasia BBS

Thanks to: Ron Amick for nifty interface suggestions.

Special Thanks to Mike W. Smith and Mark Warnsdorfer, who helped greatly with the spelling dictionary.  Way to go Mike and Mark!

And Extra Special thanks to Colette and Leslie for unwavering moral support and having that special quality Significant Others possess.  And they were nice and let us play with our computers long enough to create this program, instead of making us do things like cleaning the house or washing the laundry.  The neck-rubs after 14-hour typing sessions aren't exactly chopped liver, either...


{bmc dogtm16.bmp}
documentation credit

If you wish to contract for documentation (on-line help & general text file) services, you may leave a message for Todd Henschell on The Patchbay BBS (818) 441-3965.  Describe your project and how large you think the documentation should be.  (Compare it to this file if that helps you.)  I'll get back to you with an approximate quote.

Turnaround time for the original and revisions varies by how complex the project is, how much original material is available, how often your program crashes during beta (and screen captures), and how thoroughly you'd like your program documented.  Figure from one to two months for projects similar to this one.  Version revisions later on cost less than start-from-scratch help files.

Prices vary by the same token, as you might've guessed.

Please don't submit requests for "spec" or "sample" work.  This file should suffice for that.  If it doesn't, I wouldn't be able to make you happy anyway.

Click button to see the documentation logo.


Expanded Contents
CMPQwk Help System Navigator™

Introduction and general information

About the program

Express setup

General information & conventions

How to read mail and create replies

What the program is supposed to do

What the program isn't supposed to do

Important features...

Coming attractions

The interface and basic controls

Keyboard shortcuts

Magic mouse shortcuts

The toolbars

Conference window

Read window

Quick list window

Write window

Carbon copies

Spell checker

Basic menu contents and operations

File menu

Edit menu

Conference menu

Packet menu

Message menu

Folder menu

Program configuration and control

Path config & packer dialogues

General options dialogue

Read window options dialogue

Reply window options dialogue

Font Settings dialogues

Packet management dialogue

Lists & rubber stamp dialogue

Window menu

Help menu

Important information

Legal disclaimers

Copyright notices.

The part we hope nobody skips

How to register & why register

What do you get when you register?

What do you get if you don't register?

Where can you register?

How to get support and ask questions

How to report a problem

CompuServe

Net support sites (RIME, etc.)

Los Angeles area BBSes

Frequently asked questions.

Advanced user information

Making the most out of the program.

Rubber stamps and auto signature

Folder fun

System requirements

Packer considerations

For VGA only users

For SVGA users

High-color graphics boards users

Problems with colored fonts

Scrolling speed problems

Inaccurate window placements...

Big netmail packets

Upgrading from an unsupported reader

CMPQWK.INI editing

Other considerations

Index, notes & the credits

Index of terms used

Known quirks & required files

Thank you, thank you...

Documentation credit