Subject: possible bug...request feature

From: Robert Larmon <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 08:57:40 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)

Hi all,
	I have a possible bug with PC-Pine 4.21.  One or two users have
reported the keyboard freezing when they are composing a long email, and
when they reboot the PC, the email is lost.  Any thoughts or help?

	Regardless, I am requesting that a new feature be added to Pine -
an AutoSave function which saves the state of your composed email every x
minutes, where x is an integer that can be configured in the pinerc file.  
It could reside in a temporary file of Pine's choosing (perhaps an
incremental temp001 in case multiple postponed messages exist as well as
the current open email).  Also, I am requesting that Pine detect the
presence of this file every time it starts, and ask the user what they
would like to do with the file (open/postpone/export).  I think Corel
WordPerfect 8 (or the currently unstable 2000) offers a good example of
this recovery feature.

	Any thoughts/additions or comments appreciated.  Also, can anyone
forward this to the Pine Dev group, or do they check this listserv?

Thanks,

Robert

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
`			Robert Larmon				      `
`			PC Systems Analyst			      `
`			USC Law School Computing Services	      `
`			[email-masked]			      `
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 For information about this mailing list, and its archives, see: 
 http://www.washington.edu/pine/pine-info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Seth Kurtzberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 10:04:09 -0700 (MST)

Robert,

Postponed messages are already persistent.  You can shut down pine,
restart it, and all your postponed messages will be there.

A save/recover mechanism is always a good idea.

Seth Kurtzberg
Machine Independent Software
Cell (602) 478-5511
Fax: (480) 614-8909
email:  [email-masked]
pager:  888-605-9296 or email [email-masked]

---

From: Robert Larmon <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 09:17:07 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)

You're right.  I guess I was just thinking of a secondary measure if the
postponed messages didn't appear to be there anymore, but Pine didn't have
a record of it's deletion.

RCL

---

From: Scott Leibrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 11:14:13 -0800 (PST)

> a record of it's deletion.

In Unix Pine using pico as your editor, it saves a file called #picoXXXXX#
and updates it every few lines.  If it doesn't save an interrupted-message
file, you can sometimes read in that file.  I assume PC-Pine has a similar
function.

-- 
Scott Leibrand
[email-masked]
http://students.washington.edu/leibrand
* RCW 19.190 notice: This email address is located in Washington State. *
* Unsolicited commercial email may be billed $500 per message.          *

---

From: Robert Larmon <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 11:26:20 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)

Ah, I see it now.  So all that PC-Pine doesn't do is tell you that this
file exists when you restart PC-Pine.

RCL

---

From: Scott Leibrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 12:21:45 -0800 (PST)

> file exists when you restart PC-Pine.

That'd be my guess.  I think the way Unix Pine works is that when it
detects a dropped connection, Pine writes out an interrupted-message file
for the next time you open it.  With PC-Pine, if the computer freezes,
Pine can't do anything before it's terminated or the computer is reset.  
You'll have to play around with it and figure out exactly how everything
works, but hopefully you'll be able to recover the composer's temp file.

---

From: Robert Larmon <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 13:45:35 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)

Yes, I was able to recover the file, at least on my PC.  Do you think the
Pine Dev's would be able to add some code into PC-Pine to check to see if
Pine closed properly, and if not, open the last temp file and ask what the
user wants to do with the file?  (like I mentioned before about WP8).  
Maybe creating an option to turn this on in the pinerc?  I know Win98 also
does this, where it detects if you've booted up or shutdown properly, If
it hasn't, it goes through safe mode or runs scandisk to check the
integrity of the hard drive, respectively.

Any other thoughts?

Robert

---

From: Scott Leibrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 18:27:18 -0800 (PST)

Sounds like a good suggestion to me.

To the Pine team:

I think I understand how Unix Pine handles interrupted messages, but I'm
not sure exactly what PC-Pine does.  Can someone please explain how
PC-Pine handles interrupted messages, and whether Robert's suggestion
below is either a feature that PC-Pine is supposed to already have, or a
feature that should be added?

Thanks,