NewsWatcher 2.1 =============== November 17, 1995 NewsWatcher is a free Usenet newsreader for the Mac. This version eliminates the limit of 16,000 maximum groups in the full group list. Many news servers now carry more than 16,000 groups. The new version also uses memory much more efficiently, especially with servers which have a large number of groups. The new version is also faster on Power Macs. If you currently use NewsWatcher 2.0 or an older version with a server which carries more than 16,000 groups, run the new version, then use the "Rebuild Full Group List" command in the "Special" menu to synchronize NewsWatcher's copy of the full group list with the real full group list on your server. 16,000 group limit removed -------------------------- There is no longer a limit of 16,000 maximum groups in the full group list. NewsWatcher can now handle any number of groups, provided you give it enough memory. Memory improvements ------------------- The full group list now uses considerably less memory - 23 bytes less per group on a Power Mac and 21 bytes less per group on a 68K Mac. This is significant. For example, with 20,000 groups in the full group list, this is a saving of 460K on a Power Mac and 420K on a 68K Mac. Even with smaller servers which only carry 5,000 groups (like the puny one we have here at NU), the savings add up to over 100K of memory. NewsWatcher makes more efficient use of memory when getting the full group list from your news server (the first time you run the program, and when you used the "Rebuild Full Group List" and "Check for Deleted Groups" commands). Much less extra memory is required to complete these operations than in the previous version - for example, about 400K less memory is needed with servers which carry 20,000 groups. This is in addition to the savings discussed in the preceding paragraph. The "Rebuild Full Group List" and "Check for Deleted Groups" commands now use temporary memory if it is available and needed. This makes "not enough memory" errors much less likely with these commands. The about box now displays the amount of available memory in in kilobytes (K). Because of these memory improvements, most people should be able to significantly decrase the amount of memory allocated to NewsWatcher. See the next section for details. How to adjust NewsWatcher's memory ---------------------------------- The is the new FAQ #56 in Appendix F of the user document. FAQ #56 - How much meory should I give NewsWatcher? That's not an easy question. The answer depends on many factors, including whether you use a 68K Mac or a Power Mac, whether or not you have virtual memory turned on, how many groups your server carries, and how many large article and subject windows you need to have open at the same time. As a good rule of thumb, for most people, NewsWatcher works well with about 500K of available memory with only your user group list window and the full group list window open. This is enough memory to open subject windows with a few thousand articles and still have enough memory left to open large article windows. Here's detailed instructions for adjusting NewsWatcher's memory using this 500K available memory rule: 1. Run NewsWatcher. 2. Use the About NewsWatcher command in the Apple menu to open NewsWatcher's about box. Do this right after running the program, before you open any subject or article windows. 3. Check the amount of available memory displayed at the top of the about box. Write down this number. 4. Quit NewsWatcher. 5. Select the NewsWatcher program icon in the Finder. 6. Use the Get Info command in the Finder's File menu to open the information window for NewsWatcher. 7. Adjust the minimum and preferred memory sizes in the information window so that NewsWatcher will have about 500K of available memory. For example, if in step 3 above, NewsWatcher had 100K of available memory, you should increase the memory sizes by 400K. As another example, if NewsWatcher had 700K of available memory in step 3, you should decrease the memory sizes by 200K. Start with this 500K available memory rule. If you get alerts telling you that NewsWatcher does not have enough memory to complete a command or operation, increase the memory size. Performance improvements on Power Macs -------------------------------------- All operations involving list windows (group lists and subject lists) are significantly faster on Power Macs in the new version. This includes window drawing and redrawing (updating) and operations like the "Find" command. The reason for the performance improvement is the new "Big List Manager" (see below), which is fully native on Power Macs. Apple's List Manager is emulated on Power Macs. In the old version of NewsWatcher, there were a large number of expensive context switches between the List Manager's emulated 68K code and NewsWatcher's native PPC code. These context switches have been eliminated in the new version. Other changes ------------- The previous limits of 16,000 maximum items in user group list windows, new group list windows, and subject list windows have also been removed. These kinds of windows are unlikely to be this big, however. When you scroll down by a page in a list window, NewsWatcher now always scrolls the list so that the previous bottom item is the new top item, even at the end of the list. This makes it easier for the eye to pick up where it left off when reading down a list in order and scrolling by pages. This often results in white space at the bottom of the window when you get to the end of the list. This makes NewsWatcher's list windows behave the same way as its text windows. Many people have requested this feature. Added "Quit" buttons to three of the dialogs which appear at startup if something goes wrong: The "retry" dialog you get if NewsWatcher has problems establishing the initial connection to your news server, the error message dialog you get if NewsWatcher cannot open MacTCP or Open Transport, and the dialog you get which tells you that there was a problem at startup and you will only be able to adjust preferences. On 68K Macs, NewsWatcher now uses Open Transport if it is installed. The previous version only used OT on PowerMacs. Apple says this is now OK - the new 68K OT libraries NewsWatcher is now built with will be compatible with the 68K libraries which Apple will ship with Open Transport 1.1. The default and maximum value for the "Maximum number of articles to fetch" preference is now 999999 instead of 15000. Errors fixed since 2.0 ---------------------- The "Check for Deleted Groups" command mistakenly deleted the last group in the full group list. Fixed. If you had the "max articles to fetch" preference set, and you opened a group from a user group list window, and no articles were found, NewsWatcher mistakenly marked all the articles in the group as read. This has been fixed. The new version marks just the last "max articles to fetch" articles as read, leaving any earlier articles unread. On a Power Macintosh with Open Transport, there was a very unlikely situation in which NewsWatcher could crash if you canceled at the very beginning of a domain name lookup. Fixed. In theory, it was possible for NewsWatcher to crash or hang if you canceled a "Get Group List from Host" or "Send Group List to Host" operation before the FTP transfer got a chance to start. I was never able to reproduce a crash or hang during testing, however. In any case, the error has been fixed. The old version of NewsWatcher relied on mail transport software to strip "Bcc" headers from mail messages. This wasn't working on some systems, and "Bcc" headers were appearing when they shouldn't. Fixed. In some circumstances, sequences of shift arrow keys didn't work properly in text windows. Fixed. If you had details shown in a message window, with the mail icon unchecked, and the self icon checked, NewsWatcher failed to properly display the extra mail header lines field in the window. Fixed. Fixed an error which could cause hangs during printing in some situations with some kinds of printers. NewsWatcher no longer unchecks the news icon when you cancel a send operation. Unexpected system errors during the prefs dialog are now reported properly. Errors fixed since 2.1b1 ------------------------ Some of the newer dialogs did not use color when they should have. Fixed. Some of the newer dialogs did not have appropriate balloon help. Fixed. Fixed a few errors which could have caused problems opening and performing operations with very large subject windows with more than 16,000 articles. Fixed errors which could cause crashes or very strange window appearances if you changed the font size for list windows in some circumstances. Programmer notes ---------------- I wrote a new resuable "Big List Manager" to replace Apple's List Manager. The Big List Manager removes the limits of 16K cells and 32K cell data in Apple's LIst Manager, and offers a number of other improvements. See the new source code module biglist.c for details. NewsWatcher now uses the Big List Manager for all of its lists (group list windows, subject list windows, the URL Helpers preferences topic, and the extract binaries manually dialog). The Big List Manager source code is available as part of the regular NewsWatcher source code distribution. It is also available separately, along with a test and sample program, at: The old LDEF resource, ldefstub project, and ldef.c module have been eliminated. The Big List Manager does not use ldefs. The old module listutil.c is still in the shared code folder, but is no longer used by NewsWatcher. The code to present the extract binaries manually dialog has been split out of subject.c into the new module binmandlg.c.