Version History of Nomad News newsreader

See of List of Approved Usenet newsgroup providers

v2.00.b1 (11/29/99):
First release since version 1.43. Major overhaual to user-interface. Rules, Article references, windows and tools.

v2.00.b2 (12/2/99):
Fixed problem where settings requiring an entered number did not provide an edit-box large enough for multiple digit numbers to be displayed.

v2.00.b3 (12/3/99):
Fixed problem where program could crash on start-up if Nomad News was not installed in the default folder (C:\Program Files\DMP Software\Nomad News).

Fixed problem where program would crash if user selected "Settings" "Auto-Dial" when they did not have any phone-book entries set-up for Dial-up Networking.

Added more default rules to show examples of hiding headers and using compound if conditions.

v2.00.b4 (12/7/99):
Handle condition where Nomad is being installed on top of an existing version of Nomad News prior to version 2.00 by renaming any existing NOMADNEWS.INI file to _NOMADNEWS.INI on first program run then creating a new, default NOMADNEWS.INI.

If default.rle rule file not present, create a new one on startup with the same rules that are present the first time the program is run.

Fixed problem where selecting a new download folder would result in files being download to the installation directory.

Fixed problem where download progress button's tool-tip progress percent would go negative after downloading over 21 Megs of a single attachment.

v2.00.b5 (12/11/99):
Determined that Nomad News version 2.00 and higher will require users of Windows NT 4.0 to have at least Service Pack 4 installed.

Fixed problem where window positions would not be remembered on start-up if they were not completely visible the last time the program was exited.

v2.00.b6 (12/13/99):
Now allow users to manually add a newsgroup from the "Avail" page of the "Newsgroups" window. "Add Manual" button added which allows the user to type the name of the newsgroup to be added without first having to download the list of available newsgroups from the news server.

Added automatic download folder selecting based on the newsgroup's name.

Now gracefully abort auto-loading if modem is disconnected and user has "Auto-Dial" disabled instead of attempting then failing to connect to the news server on all remaining check-marked articles in the open newsgroup.

Now header's tag is only saved in archive if no error occurred retrieving the associated article..

Fixed problem where Nomad would delete the group's archive if the user chose not to load archived headers when opening a newsgroup.

Added "Tip-of-the-Day".

No longer resort headers after new headers arrive.

Fixed problem where pressing the "Enter" key to retrieve an article would not show a yellow check-box as the article was downloading.

Fixed problem where deleting a news server would result in a dialog-box asking user if they were sure they wanted to change the server's URL.

Stopped having Text and Post Windows always open in upper-left corner of application window..

Fixed problem where if user selected a header for an article that had not been downloaded yet then chose "Post Reply" from the context menu, Nomad would not open a Post Window.

Now automatically attempt to retrieve the available article counts for subscribed newsgroups on program start-up.

Added "Hide Part 0", "Hide Missing Parts", and "Hide all not tagged Get" settings to the "Settings" "Tagging Rules" dialog.

Fixed problem where E-mail accounts would not be checked and available article counts would not be retrieved on start-up if user had Dial-up Networking installed but was not using it to connect to the Internet.

Fixed problem of "Quit" being disabled on the "File" menu.

Increased maximum allowable time-out on "Settings" "News Hosts" from 300 to 999 seconds.

v2.00.b7 (12/23/99):
Fixed problem where downloading a corrupt JPEG file could cause the program to crash.

Fixed problem where rules using "matches wild-card expression" could misfire if user did not start expression with an asterick wild-card character.

Fixed problem where if user chose a new root download folder then chose to apply the change to existing newsgroups, Nomad would not change the download folder for newsgroups that were currently open until they were closed.

v2.00.b8 (2/4/00):
Redesigned header database for faster header list management with significantly less RAM usage.

Implemented "Smart Select", "Hide Selected", "Show All", features which allow quick selection of group's headers to be marked permanently read or quickly hidden. Allows user to quickly create sub-set views of newsgroup headers.

Implemented "Goto Next Read", "Goto Prev Read", "Goto Next Checked", "Goto Prev Checked" tool-bar buttons. Also added "Purple check-box" state to signify article has been "Viewed".

Added "View sub-parts" to Newsgroup context menu which launches "Sub-parts dialog" to allow users to view which parts of multi-part posts are missing and allow downloading of individual sub-parts. This feature allows users to manually download sub-parts from different newsgroups/servers to reconstruct incomplete multi-part posts.

Redesigned "Settings / News Servers" and "Settings / Mail Servers" dialog-boxes into one "Settings / Accounts" dialog box. Simplifies and clarifies adding/removing News Server and E-Mail Server accounts.

No longer display headers as they're being retrieved. Replace with download progress indicator window. Was causing confusion because multi-parts and refs were not resolved until all headers were retrieved.

Allow user to selectively View/Hide individual News Server progress tool bars. Also implementd remembering tool-bar positions on program termination.

Added estimated download time remaining field to status bar.

Fixed bug where "Settings / Headers" would not accept user's setting of disabling automatic checking for new headers.

Fixed bug where program could crash if a newsgroup contained a header whose subject field was longer than 256 characters.

Fixed bug when attachment's filename wasn't in article extracting the filename from the subject field would leave off last character.

Cleaned up quite a bit and fixed many other minor bugs.

v2.00.b9 (2/6/00):
Fixed problem on NT4.0 where Nomad could crash reading newsgroup header database file on start-up or whenever headers were added to the database.

Changed autoload algorithm... OK, during autoload when Nomad finishes retrieving all check-marked articles in a given newsgroup it looks at the Active list of subscribed newsgroups and begins downloading the next check-marked newsgroup ("Newsgroups" window, "Active" page) If that newsgroup is ALREADY open Nomad simply downloads the check-marked articles in the open group. If a newsgroup were open but NOT check-marked in the list of newsgroups, Nomad would never download it's check-marked headers. Changed the algorithm so Nomad FIRST looks for open newsgroups that aren't check-marked in the active list, THEN looks for the next check-marked group. This way if you're autoloading a newsgroup while check-marking headers in another newsgroup, when Nomad finishes autoloading the first group it will automatically begin autoloading the second group without the user having to make sure the second group is check-marked in the list of active newsgroups (get all that?).

v2.00.b10 (2/22/00):
Fixed bug introduced in version 2.00.b9 where the space key was being ignored in the "Post" window.

Fixed problem introduced in version 2.00.b9 where the header database was only remembering 1 header.

Fixed problem where program could crash if user manually applied rules and a header that wasn't to be filtered out was a reference to a header that WAS to be filtered out as a result of a new rule.

The "Newsgroup Actions" dialog-box no longer opens every time the user opens a newsgroup. The same dialog-box is now accessed via the "Settings" menu under "Group Options". This allows the user to change group actions without having to interrupt autoloading.

Program now supports the command-line arguments "/max" and "/download". The "/max" argument causes Nomad to launch maximized and corresponds to the short-cut property "run maximized". The "/download" argument causes Nomad to automatically begin downloading newsgroups that were check-marked the previous time the program was closed. Note that the user's current settings for "Group Actions" will be used when opening the groups.

Added support for the Ctrl-A hot-key to select all text in the article text view window.

The "Help" / "About" dialog-box now uses the "hand" cursor when the mouse is moved over the hyperlink text.

v2.00.b11 (3/27/00):
Added the tabbed "Download" screen which shows all check-marked headers for all news servers as well as the history of downloaded and posted articles. Articles are now retrieved in the order listed on the server's download page. Context-menu and short-cut keys allow groups of headers to be moved to the top/bottom of the list, and reversed. The user can also rearrange the list by "dragging" groups of headers up or down. Clicking on a column header button also sorts the list.

Increased the maximum allowable number of news servers from 6 to 12.

Added new settings to the "Newsgroup Window Preferences" dialog which allow the user to specify how/when window position and column sizes are stored as well as how the initial size and location of newly opened newsgroup windows should be determined.

v2.00.b12 (3/31/00):
Fixed problem where if "Tag Gets" Newsgroup Action was selected when a newsgroup was opened then headers could be added to the "Download List" twice.

Fixed problem where "Autoload" button could end up in wrong state after a newsgroup finished loading.

Fixed problem where temporary connections were not being removed from the progress tool-bar.

Fixed problem where downloading file could be renamed even if user had "Auto rename" disabled. This situation only occurred when two connections were simultaneously attempting to download to the same file name.

Aborting downloads now causes the corresponding file to be deleted.

Previously Nomad News would only look for the filename in the header's subject when applying tagging rules using the "Filename" if clause. Now Nomad also applies these tagging rules to the filename when it is extracted from the downloading article.

v2.00.b13 (4/19/00):
Returned the complimentary NVIEW.EXE to the Nomad News distribution! Yes, we heard you and are once again including our complimentary JPG and GIF image viewer application as part of the Nomad News installation. We also upgraded NView to support viewing successive images with the click of a button based on File Name Order, Date Order, or Download Order. Image files can also be deleted as they're being viewed.

We also modified the "Preferences / Image Views" main-menu dialog to allow users to specify either NVIEW.EXE or their associated viewer as Nomad's default Image Viewer application.

Fixed problem when user chose to hide selected and selected included check-marked headers, then those check-marked headers would not be removed from the news server's download list (in Download Window). If user then hit "Autoload", nothing would happen.

Fixed problem where Header with "From" field > 255 chars could cause Nomad to crash.

Fixed problem where resuming a timed-out or disconnected download of a multi-part post would not always resume in mid-part correctly and would result in a "File Error" tag.

Fixed problem where user would have to attempt to reply to an article twice before Nomad would open the Post Form Window.

In addition to logging Posted articles to the "Download Window", the Session Log Window now shows "Article Posted: Group: _groupname_, Subj: _subject_"

v2.00.b14 (5/9/00):
Fixed problem where next newsgroup would not automatically open if the user's "Group Actions" did not include "Get Tagged".

The newsgroup header windows now support "sub-sorting". For example, if the user sorts by subject, then sorts by author, the result will be a list that is sorted by author, with all headers posted by each author sub-sorted by subject. Technically this is a sort with a primary key of "Author" and a secondary key of "Subject". Note that the sub-sort works for any 2 successive column sorts.

NView - Viewing images in "Download Order" now causes the file's corresponding check-box to be turned purple in it's Group Window in Nomad News, indicating the file has been viewed.

NView - Fixed problem where NView would say "File not found" if the filename and/or filepath contained a space character.

NView - Fixed problem where some JPGs could cause a crash if certain JPEG decompression errors were encountered.

v2.00.b15 (5/10/00):
Fixed the problem where user would get a "File not found" error when Nomad News attempted to launch the user's associated JPG/GIF viewer application to view a downloaded image file.

NView - Fixed problem where the incorrect version (v2.00 vs. v2.01) was being shown on the start-up screen.

Fixed the problem where user would get a "File not found" error when Nomad News attempted to launch the user's associated JPG/GIF viewer application to view a downloaded image file.

NView - Fixed problem where the incorrect version (v2.00 vs. v2.01) was being shown on the start-up screen.

v2.00 (5/25/00):
Out of beta! Official release, version 2.00

Added on-line help. Select "Contents" from "Help" menu.

Fixed problem where the first time an upgraded version was run, all progress tool-bars would be hidden.

Fixed problem where "Autoload" tool-bar button would not redraw if user pressed Ctrl-D to start autoloading (as opposed to clicking the tool-bar button).

Fixed problem where headers uncheck-marked as a result of applying rules would not be removed from the news server's page on the Download window.

Fixed problem where downloaded JPG and GIF files with uppercase chars in file extension would get ".jpg" or ".gif" appended (pic.JPG => pic.JPG.jpg).

v2.10 (11/5/02):
Official release, version 2.10

yEnc: "Y" Encoded binaries are now automatically identified, recombined and decoded on download.

Added concept of "Mark-as-Read" along with tool-bar buttons for it. "Mark-as-Read" is the same as choosing "Hide Selected" with "Never show the headers again in any newsgroup".

Added "Jump to previous viewed" and "Jump to next viewed" tool-bar buttons.

Fixed problem where hyper-text links were not correctly tagged when viewing text articles.

Sped up Newsgroup window's initialization after header retrieval completes (better response when downloading > 10,000 headers).

Added a "Group Actions" option to limit the maximum number of headers to download from a newsgroup.

Now correctly reposition to top article after a "Group Actions" sort.

Fixed problem where posting replies to articles that had attachments sometimes failed.

Now "remember" whether the "Log" and "Newsgroups" windows were open or closed on program termination and copy that state the next time the application is run.

Fixed problem where some base64 encoded ".gif" files did not "unroll" in the "Image View" window.

Fixed problem where not all ".jpg" files showed up in "Image View" window.

"Newsgroup" row-header button widths now sized to accomodate the actual number of headers listed.