Version 2.0b21 
==============

December 5, 1994.


Internet Config Support
-----------------------

NewsWatcher supports the "Internet Config" system for shared
preferences. Internet Config is a new system developed by Quinn, Peter
Lewis, and Marcus Jager in Australia. The goal is to provide a way to
configure common preferences used by many Mac Internet applications.
For example, you can configure your email address, full name,
signature, server addresses, URL helper programs, file type mapping
preferences, and other information just once, and all of your programs
will use them.

If Internet Config is installed on your system, NewsWatcher uses it for
the shared preferences. If you change a shared preference in Internet
Config or in any other program which supports the Internet Config
system, NewsWatcher automatically gets and uses the changed value of
the preference. Similarly, if you change a shared preference in
NewsWatcher, Internet Config and any other programs which support the
Internet Config system automatically use the new value of the
preference.

See the new section titled "Internet Config" in the "Preferences"
chapter of the user document for more details, including a table
showing the details of how NewsWatcher's preferences correspond to
Internet Config's preferences.

The Internet Config software is available at:

   ftp://ftp.acns.nwu.edu/pub/helpers/

(The Internet Config system is very new, and few programs support it
yet, so for now it isnšt very useful. We hope that more programs will
support Internet Config in the future. When most or all of the major
Mac TCP/IP programs support Internet Config, it will be very useful
indeed.)


Printing Improvements
---------------------

You can use the new preferences topic named "Printing Font" to set a
separate font and size for printing. The old "Font and Size" topic has
been renamed "Screen Fonts". The default printing font is the same font
you currently use for displaying text windows on your screen.

NewsWatcher now remembers your page setup information on its
preferences file.

When you print a message window, NewsWatcher now prints the header
lines and your signature in addition to the body of the message.


Errors Fixed and Other Changes
------------------------------

The "shared bit" is now properly set on the NewsWatcher application file
so that it can be placed on a file server and used by more than one
person at the same time.

NewsWatcher uses the system "desktop databases" to locate helper
programs when it needs to run them. Sometimes your desktop databases
can get damaged, and this can cause problems with NewsWatcher. In the
new version, when you set a helper in the preferences dialog,
NewsWatcher checks to see if the helper properly appears in the
databases. If the helper does not appear, or if you have multiple
copies of the helper installed and the one you selected is not the same
as the one which will be used, NewsWatcher presents a message which
describes the problem. The messages refer to Appendix A in the user
document, which has been expanded to discuss desktop database problems
in more detail.

When NewsWatcher searches the desktop databases to locate a helper,
with some kinds of damaged databases, it is possible for the search to
result in a pointer to a file which no longer exists on a disk. In this
case, NewsWatcher uses a fallback algorithm which can sometimes
successfully locate the program.

The keypad shortcuts are now disabled in message windows. For example,
if you type a number using the keypad when a message window is active,
the number is inserted in the text of your message, even if you have
keypad shortcuts enabled.

Because of limitations of Apple's List Manager, NewsWatcher has a limit
on the maximum size of lists, including the full group list. In the old
version, this limit was set to 16,383 items. Unfortunately, the List
Manager can't handle this many list items, even though in theory it
should be able to. In the old version of NewsWatcher, if your news
server had more than 16,383 groups, NewsWatcher would crash or hang
because of this List Manager problem. In the new version, the limit is
set to 16,000. If your news server has more than 16,000 groups, the
full group list is truncated to the first 16,000 groups received from
the server, and NewsWatcher issues a warning message. NewsWatcher no
longer crashes or hangs in this situation.

In the old version, if a saved font preference was for a font which was
no longer installed on your system, NewsWatcher presented a warning
message at startup and changed the font preference to Monaco. In the
new version, NewsWatcher instead silently substitutes Moncaco for the
missing font whenever it is used, without changing the preference
setting for the font. If Monaco also doesn't exist, NewsWatcher uses
your system's default application font (e.g., Geneva).