MS-DOS.
> My manual does not show any option to "resend" from the Posted or
> Mailed folders. What keystroke do you use for this?
It's Shift-B in Yarn .79.
> >> One can copy a folder (being a file) into the Replies
> >> subdirectory and cause it to be named news or mail.
> >
> >...NOT to any files per se. Everything I talked about above
> >occurs *within* Yarn, while Yarn is running, *except* for
> >renaming the folders, which you have to do (with Yarn .79) from
> >DOS after exiting Yarn. You don't have to do nuthin' in the
> >temporary Replies subdirectory a-tall. (You'd have to do it by
> >shelling to DOS from within Yarn anyway, since the subdirectory
> >exists only when Yarn is running. I think it would confuse Yarn
> >a *lot*.)
>
> I have been able to _replace_ the mail or news folder file in the
> replies subdirectory with a new file
Created how, just out of curiosity?
and Yarn doesn't get
> confused. But what I want to do is _add_ to an existing packet.
> I suspect a folder manipulation utility ought to be able to do
> this from the shell.
What is it you want to add? I don't know of any way you could do
this from the shell. You *should* be able to do it from within
Yarn, but it depends on your having a Resend feature.
Originally we were talking about having a half-finished reply in
the REPLIES folder you wanted to hold onto for the time being,
i.e., not have Yarn put it in the reply packet (presumably
because you wanted to upload and post/mail everything else in the
REPLIES folder but the half-finished reply). You wanted to be
able to get the half-finished reply out of the REPLIES folder,
put it somewhere else, exit Yarn, and upload your reply packet.
Then you wanted (as I understood you) to be able to run Yarn
again, retrieve the half-finished reply from wherever you'd
stashed it, get it into the REPLIES folder, and presumably finish
it for your *next* upload.
I said you could flag the half-finished reply (by putting a
searchable string in the text, or by doing the same with the
subject heading), save the reply, then delete it from the REPLIES
folder. Yarn would automatically put a copy of the flagged
half-finished reply in the MAILED or POSTED folder, even though
you'd deleted it from the REPLIES folder. The next time you ran
Yarn, you could go into the MAILED or POSTED folder, search for
the flag string, and Resend the article/message with Shift-B (in
Yarn .79). That would put the article/message in the Replies
folder again, where you could Edit it and finish it.
Alternately, if you had a bunch of half-finished replies you
wanted to hold onto, but other finished replies you wanted to
upload and mail/post (let's say for this explanation they're
articles rather than messages), you could copy the unfinished
ones to a special folder (let's call it REDO), and delete them
from your REPLIES folder. Then you would exit Yarn and upload
your reply packet. *Then*, from DOS, you could temporarily
rename the POSTED file (let's say to POSTED.BAK), and temporarily
rename the REDO file to POSTED. (When you're in Yarn, these are
folders; when you're not, they're files, terminologically
speaking.)
Then you run Yarn again. You go to the POSTED folder (which last
time you ran Yarn was called REDO and contains all the
half-finished articles) and Resend the articles in it with
Shift-B, which puts them into your REPLIES folder, where you Edit
them and finish them.
Then you exit Yarn and upload the new reply packet containing the
now-finished articles.
If you like to have the POSTED folder keep a complete record of
everything you sent, you'd run Yarn again and copy the completed
replies (which Yarn had copied there from your REPLIES folder) in
the POSTED folder (which used to be called REDO) to POSTED.BAK
(which used to be called POSTED). Then you exit Yarn, from DOS
delete the file named POSTED, and rename POSTED.BAK to POSTED.
If you don't care about keeping a complete record, you'd skip the
copying step within Yarn and from DOS just delete the POSTED
file and rename POSTED.BAK to POSTED again.
The same procedure would apply if you had half-finished messages
rather than articles, except you'd be dealing with the MAILED
folder/file. You'd need to create different REDO folders to hold
messages and articles--let's say REDO.ML and REDO.PT.
This procedure, obviously, involves a lot of steps, and you'd
only follow it if you were dealing with a large bunch of
articles, such that it would be simpler to do it this way than
use the flagging method.
But above you say you want to add to an existing packet, so I'm
confused!
> >The reason for doing the renaming is that Yarn will *resend*
> >articles/messages from the folders named POSTED and MAILED, but
> >*only* from those folders.
>
> I don't seem to have this feature. I don't see it in the manual.
Can't help you there! I'd be surprised if the version of Yarn
you're using didn't have some method of resending
articles/messages, though. If it doesn't, *neither* of my
methods will work for you.
> > Assuming the
> >> folder file structures are identical and also that Yarn is not
> >> relying on any other information then Yarn would create a packet
> >> from these (news and mail) folder files.
> >
> >NO, the MAILED folder/file structure is not identical to the
> >MAIL.MSG file that gets zipped up into the reply packet, nor is
> >the POSTED folder/file structure identical to the NEWS.MSG file
> >that gets zipped up into the reply packet. The *.MSG files are
> >created from whatever you put into the temporary REPLIES folder
> >when you're in Yarn, i.e., when you reply to an article or
> >message. A *copy* of what goes in these *.MSG files is put into
> >the POSTED and MAILED folders, but I'm virtually positive there's
> >some different coding involved, even if it doesn't show up when
> >you look at the files in DOS.
>
> I think we are mainly having semantical difficulty here,
> compunded by the differences in our versions.
>
> Are you saying that the POSTED and MAILED folder/files exist in
> the \REPLIES subdirectory in your version?
Nope. They're in the MAIL subdirectory, where they appear in the
Folder list when you're in Yarn. Unlike files in the REPLIES
subdirectory, they're permanent. Whatever is in the REPLIES
subdirectory is there *only* when you're running Yarn. When you
run Yarn, it creates this subdirectory for the purpose of holding
your replies while you're in Yarn. When you exit Yarn, it zips
the files in the REPLIES subdirectory up into a reply packet,
erases the files, and removes the subdirectory.
In Yarn .91 the
> POSTED and MAILED files are ordinary folders in the \MAIL
> sudirectory. The two temporary folder/files in the \REPLIES
> directory are NEWS and MAIL.
Same with .79. I think I may have confused you by referring to
the files in the REPLIES subdirectory as NEWS.MSG and MAIL.MSG.
The NEWS and MAIL files are renamed NEWS.MSG and MAIL.MSG when
they're zipped up into the reply packet, I believe.
> I realize the folder/file is not the *.MSG file which gets zipped
> up into the reply packet for uploading (different files and
> format - same data).
I'm not sure this is the case, but you could be right. Yarn may
convert NEWS and MAIL into a different format before it zips them
into the reply packet, which would account for the *.MSG
extension.
Yarn handles this quite nicely. I just
> want a convenient way to get an article from a folder/file (any)
> into my editor (without changing any headers except perhaps the
> msg-id or the timestamp) and from there either back into a
> folder/file or else into the temporary replies folder/files mail
> or news.
In Yarn .79, you can get an article or message into the REPLIES
folder only with the Resend feature, and only from the MAILED and
POSTED folders. (And it doesn't change anything, including the
msg-id or the timestamp.) If something is in the REPLIES folder
(i.e., while you're in Yarn), it's also in one of the temporary
files MAIL or NEWS. Every time you save a reply, it gets put
into one of those temporary files. The REPLIES folder, while
you're in Yarn, is a combination of what's in the MAIL file and
the NEWS file, and anything in it is accessible for editing.
The REPLIES folder, as noted, exists only when you're in Yarn,
and only if there are existing replies in the MAIL or NEWS files.
These can be replies you've just created and saved, or they can
be from your previous Yarn session, assuming you haven't uploaded
(and deleted or renamed) the reply packet after your previous
session.
When you run Yarn, if there's already an existing reply packet,
Yarn unzips it and puts the contents into the temporary MAIL and
NEWS files in the temporary REPLIES subdirectory it created when
you invoked Yarn. Yarn puts the contents of these files into the
temporary REPLIES folder, where you can edit them if you like, or
simply add new replies to them.
Reading this over, it all sounds unbelievably complicated! But
it's really a matter of understanding how Yarn (at least, .79)
operates. Once you have that under your belt, you can figure out
lots of different workarounds, depending on what it is you want
to accomplish.
I can't remember if I explained yet another method I use if I
have half-finished replies. I exit Yarn, and from DOS make a
copy of my reply packet (if it's called, let's say, REPLY.REP,
I'd call the copy REPLY.BAK). Then I run Yarn again, open the
REPLIES folder, delete all the half-finished replies, exit Yarn,
and upload the REPLY.REP packet. Then from DOS I rename
REPLY.REP with the date (I save all my reply packets), rename
REPLY.BAK to REPLY.REP, run Yarn again, go into the REPLIES
folder, and delete all the replies I had uploaded, leaving only
the half-finished ones to be worked on.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ Judy Stein * The Author's Friend * jstein@ziplink.net +
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++