I've made a new release of SlyMail, which should hopefully address/fix
some of the issues we've discussed (I've added notes in the change log in the release page):
If you'd rather pull the changes and build it yourself rather than
download one of the binary release zips, you can do that too (not sure if that's what you've been doing already).
Re: New offline QWK mail By: Accession to Nightfox on Mon Mar 30 2026 06:23 pm
I've made a new release of SlyMail, which should hopefully address/fix
some of the issues we've discussed (I've added notes in the change log in the release page):
https://github.com/EricOulashin/SlyMail/releases/tag/SlyMail_054
If you'd rather pull the changes and build it yourself rather than
download one of the binary release zips, you can do that too (not sure if that's what you've been doing already).
Nightfox
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
* Origin: Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com (46:1/150)
I've made a new release of SlyMail
I've made a new release of SlyMail
I had to edit this pending message, and wrote this just to send it out with some content.
SlyMail sent this to my external editor (nano) so I could reply, and while I aborted the message (I didn't save it), SlyMail still kept it as a pending message. That probably shouldn't happen.
I've made a new release of SlyMail
Before I forget, I'm displaying the kludges, and "TZ: fe5c" seems to be showing, and I don't know what that is. Are you trying to do "TZUTC: "?
There also seems to be a lot of kludge lines missing, but I'm not used to the QWK format, which probably carries a lot less so that's probably why I noticed.
Lastly (for this run, anyway), I had 8 messages in AGN_ADS when I grabbed my QWK packet, and there was a checkmark under the "New" tab. Once I read all 8 messages and went back to the sub-board (maybe Conf in this case?) list, there was still a checkmark under the "New" tab.
I imagine this would need some kind of implementation of last read pointers, which I don't think you've done (or are going to do?).
If you don't plan on it, then the "New" tab, or even any keeping track of read/unread messages is kind of pointless.
1) The MSGID kludge is still at the top of all messages that includes ANSI, whether kludges lines are turned on (expected) or off (not expected).
2) If you're using UTF-8 in your local version, take a look at the AGN_TST area. It looks like some of those messages that contain high ascii (CP437) characters aren't displaying properly.. and while I want to assume it's because none of them contain a "CHRS: " kludge, I'm unsure as to what is going on there. I'd imagine if ANSI can display properly, those messages should be able to also..?
Looking great dude!
Do you mean you initially had an empty message, then went back to
edit it, then aborted, and it still sent out that message?
If you aborted out of the editor, I'd think the editor would not
have saved the changes.. So I'm a little confused - What was the
original message, and what did you add when editing the message?
I actually hadn't directly done anything with those; it must have
been something Claude AI decided to do. I'm actually not entirely
sure what "TZ: fe5c" means or what that is; and does "TZUTC" mean
UTC time zone?
I'll have to file that as an issue and look into it later.
Yeah, it doesn't keep track of last read messages yet, so it
probably thinks any message in a packet is "new".
I do plan to implement last read pointers at some point (not sure
where you got the impression that I wasn't).. I had filed an issue
for that a couple weeks ago:
I haven't gotten to that yet, so when I get to that, hopefully that
fixes the "New" indicator issue.
I'm not entirely familiar with what the MSGID kludge is. I'd need
to look that up to learn more about it, and probably other kludge
lines too, to understand what they're for.
No, it wasn't empty. SlyMail sends the quoted text over to nano. When I got into nano, I hit CTRL-X and then "N" so as to not save. When I got back to SlyMail, it still said it was a pending message, and asked me if I wanted to make a REP packet.
Yes, I aborted out of the editor, SlyMail still considered it a pending message, and when I went to edit it with SlyMail, it gave me the quoted text I originally aborted out of nano with. When I edited the message, I added all of the unquoted text you replied to.
I'm not asking for anything outside the QWK standards, so if everything is correct, by all means leave it. I just have no idea what "fe5c" means. ;)
The only assumption I had was that you haven't gotten into lastread stuff yet.
I would imagine it would. With that said, and once this is actually implemented, do you plan on adding another column between "Msgs" and "New" with "Unread"? ;)
No, it wasn't empty. SlyMail sends the quoted text over to nano. When I got into nano, I hit CTRL-X and then "N" so as to not save. When I got back to SlyMail, it still said it was a pending message, and asked me if I wanted to make a REP packet.
fe5c could be a hexadecimal number, which is 65116 in decimal,
though after trying to do a few calculations, I'm still not sure
what that number would represent. I'll need to look into it.
I actually did ask Claude AI to implement some tracking of last-read pointers, which should be in this latest release. In your .slymail
directory from your home directory, there may now be a file called lastread_<QWKID>.json (where <QWKID> is the QWK ID of the BBS you
got it from). Maybe SlyMail still isn't keeping good track of those
last read mesasge numbers everywhere.
Then I tried subtracting it from 65536 for whatever reason I don't know (maybe because QWK format stuff still has 16bit limits or something?), ended up with 420. I double checked all of your messages, and didn't see any posted at or near 420 (even a couple hours each way). So, I'm at a loss and am probably way off anyways. ;)
I was thinking "New" and "Unread" would mean the same thing for a
QWK reader - It seems that a BBS would only include messages in the
QWK packet if they're new messages for you (which you haven't read
yet) - but maybe I'm mistaken about that.
I've just pushed an update just now that should fix that issue, so
if you want to pull the latest changes and rebuild, you can try it
out.
I've just pushed an update just now that should fix that issue, so
if you want to pull the latest changes and rebuild, you can try it
out.
The "New" column is currently only a check mark if there are new messages in any listed area. Once all 10 of those messages are read, I would assume the check mark would disappear.
Just looking at how MultiMail handles this, it looks like the area#, and description is highlighted if there are new messages (bright cyan whereas any areas without new messages are regular cyan; kind of like how SlyEdit does it, I believe). Then, there are only two columns on the right, "Total" which would be the same as your "Msgs" column, and "Unread".
When I go into a different area, read two messages, and back out. "Total" shows 22, "Unread" shows 20, and the entire line stays highlighted. Read messages end up with a star next to them in the message list.
Then, when I read all messages in the area, "Total" stays 22, "Unread" is 0, and the entire line is back to regular cyan (ie: not highlighted any more).
"The message was not changed in the editor. Message not posted. Press any key..."
Much better, thank you. ;)
I've also noticed that the "New" column is updated with no check mark after reading the entire area now. Thumbs up!
420 looks like the most reasonable number of all of this though, but
like you said, I'm still not sure what that would mean. If it's
minutes, 420 would be 7 hours, but I'm not sure if that would be
applicable (I don't think +7 would be right, and -7 from UTC might
be too far west - although I think -7 from UTC is considered to be
my time zone accounting for daylight saving time; normally we're -8
here).
| Sysop: | Amessyroom |
|---|---|
| Location: | Fayetteville, NC |
| Users: | 65 |
| Nodes: | 6 (0 / 6) |
| Uptime: | 03:30:54 |
| Calls: | 860 |
| Calls today: | 1 |
| Files: | 1,311 |
| D/L today: |
6 files (5,910K bytes) |
| Messages: | 275,556 |