Release History

Agent 0.99 - 7/6/95

This is the first release of Agent. If you are upgrading from Free Agent version 0.55, the items listed below all apply.

Free Agent 1.0 - 7/6/95

Improved the Purging option to give you more control over which articles are purged. Also, you can now purge groups manually, and automatically on program exit.

Added an option to compact the databases. To compact your databases, choose Compact Databases from the File menu.

Significantly improved download, threading, and purging performance. Now, purging most groups should only take a few seconds at most.

You can now send an email carbon copy (CC) when you post an article. This is especially useful when you want to post a follow-up response and email the original author at the same time.

Moved some commands from the File menu to a new Options menu and the Window menu. Commands that control program configuration are now on the Options menu. Commands that open new windows are now on the Window menu.

Agent now allows you to edit all header fields (Distribution, Keywords, etc.) for messages you send.

You can now mark an article unread while you are viewing its body.

Selecting Watch Thread on an unread article now skips to the next unread article. You can disable this option with the Navigation tab of the Preferences dialog box.

You can now control whether or not Agent should validate email addresses in your messages.

You can now cancel a post after you send it. To cancel a post, highlight the article in the Article pane and choose Cancel Article from the Article menu.

Agent now accepts a command line parameter to specify the location of AGENT.INI. The optional argument can be either the directory containing AGENT.INI or the name of the INI file to use as AGENT.INI.

If no command line argument is specified, Agent looks for AGENT.INI in the current working directory. If the file doesn't exist, Agent creates it.
If the argument is a filename, Agent uses that file as AGENT.INI. If the file doesn't exist, Agent creates it.
If the argument is a directory, Agent looks for AGENT.INI in the specified directory. If the file doesn't exist, Agent creates it. Note: If the directory doesn't exist, Agent assumes that you are specifying a filename. You can prevent this from happening by appending a \ to the end of the directory name to force Agent to always treat it as a directory. For example: c:\agent\.

Added support for Spry's winsock dialer. This fixes problems using Agent with Internet in a Box and CompuServe. You no longer have to manually start the Spry dialer prior to having Agent go online.

Agent is now less strict when searching for the articles composing a binary attachment. It ignores case and leading/trailing whitespace when comparing the article subjects.

Added "Delete Body" to the Article menu. Select this option to delete the selected article's body but not its header.

Add drag-select support to highlight multiple groups or articles with the mouse. Just click and drag the mouse over the groups or articles.

Agent now starts a new thread when a follow-up article has a different subject than the original. You can control this behavior with the Navigation tab on the Preferences dialog box.

Agent's dialog boxes now have the correct 3D look when running in Windows 95.

After unsubscribing to a group or leaving a group you just sampled, Agent now asks if you want to keep the group's articles. If you say "No," it will immediately delete articles in the group. This feature helps you delete unwanted database files from your disk.

Agent now includes all newsgroups from the original article when you post a follow-up to a cross-posted article. This option is controlled by an AGENT.INI parameter:

   [Message]
   CurrentGroupOnly=0

Added a confirmation message when you mark all the articles in group as read or unread. You can turn this message off from the Confirmations tab of the Preferences dialog box.

Agent can now retry refused connections that can occur when the news server is very busy. For details, see the Online Operation tab of the Preferences dialog box.

Added context menus to the Composition and Outbox windows. Context menus are activated by clicking the right mouse button.

Add a preference option for selecting which mouse button selects items from the context menu. See the Navigation tab of the Preferences dialog box for details.

Skipping to the next unread article from the Group pane now moves the focus to the Article pane for the next group with an unread article and selects that article. You can disable this behavior by unchecking the "Skipping to next unread article jumps..." box on the Navigation tab of the Preferences dialog box.

Agent now adds a leading zero when posting multi-part attachments. E.g., [04/15].

When an article does not contain a timezone, Agent now assumes local time. It used to assume GMT. This feature is controllable via an AGENT.INI parameter:

   [TimeZone]
   AssumeLocal=1

Choosing Get Selected Article Bodies when a collapsed thread is selected now retrieves the bodies of all the articles in the thread.

You can now specify a location for your database files (*.IDX and *.DAT). To keep your database files in a directory other than Agent’s normal working directory, edit the Home parameter in the [Directories] section of AGENT.INI.

Ctrl+A now works in the Outbox window.

Added an option to AGENT.INI to override the Port numbers used for the NNTP and SMTP servers. See the online help for AGENT.INI for details.

Agent now deletes the Outbox files when all the messages in the outbox are deleted.

Agent now strips EOF characters from signatures when posting.

The various debugging parameters are now documented in the AGENT.INI help topic.

Agent now purges all but the most recent article in an ignored thread.

Agent now detects when the news server renumbered the articles in a group. When this occurs. Agent adjusts the high article numbers accordingly and retrieves all new articles.