I get a blank red screen if news.dat is 20 bytes. I normally run
full-screen in 80x34 mode, it looks like its trying to switch to 80x25
(VioPopUp()?) to display an error message?
Will keep you posted.
>Well this is *really* scary. If anyone wants to try this i can't strongly
>enough advise backing up your news.dat and history.pag first... in fact
>just to be safe backup your entire %HOME%\YARN\* and %YARN%\* with
>subdirectories. (-: In fact backup your entire hard drives. Then backup the
>backups, in case one of the backups goes bad. You can't be too safe!!
>(-;
>
>I have finally hacked together a pack-in-place program for the Yarn
>news.dat... which, of course, also doesn't reset the import dates.
>
>Some dire warnings:
> * Chin has never given out (in public, or to me) the format for
> the "history.*" files. I had to figure it out for myself. And
> I haven't managed to figure it ALL out -- but *think* i have
> figured it out enough to be able to patch it -- so far...
> at least my program is working here, so far... (-:
> * My "supersed.pag" file is always blank. It contains only 2048
> null characters (0). So i haven't been able to figure out
> if it also stores news.dat offsets -- therefore my program
> at this time does not touch the supersed.pag file -- your
> supersed.pag file is not 'blank' it is quite possible that
> my program will put it out of sync with the news.dat file...
> therefor DO NOT run my program... don't risk it. If someone
> has a supersed.pag file that isn't completely blank, send it
> to me so i can examine it... (archive both history.pag
> and supersed.pag and f/a the archive to me)
>
>(Hey Chin, if you are reading this and getting more and more terrified by
>the word that I'm going to mess up all the Yarn/2 users, how about tossing
>me a few clues. heheh.)
>
>So far i've only done an OS/2 version (but before all you DOSers groan and
>possibly go out and do something desperate (like install OS/2! <G>) i have
>programmed it in such a way that it shouldn't be too hard to modify for a
>dos version... in the future... if it proves to work...).
>
>If any of you OS/2ers want to risk this...
>
> http://www.io.org/~tm/files/yarnpack.exe
>
>First backup everything! Then simply run the thing. There are no switches.
>As i said, it's a "pack-in-place", so no extra drive space is needed --
>except to make a backup first!
>
>The yarnpack program has been quickly thrown together, so doesn't have a
>whole lot of error checking. It could potentially screw your news pretty
>good if you run it on a corrupted news.dat or history.pag file -- but
>basically if expire and nnign both work for you without complaining you
>should be in good shape, I think.
>
>I'm a little nervous about this program. As i said, it's very kludgy. And
>i'm working quite a bit in the dark -- not knowing all of yarn's structures
>FOR SURE... or what files exactly do what... but as I also have said, it
>works here, so far... i've tried it on several different news.dats ... so
>far so good...
>
>SO, if anyone out there gives it a try Please Please let me know... let me
>know, of course, if there was some horrible problem and you have put out a
>hit on me... but also let me know if it WORKED as well! Just so I can
>confirm for myself that it generally works. <-: And then maybe i'll patch
>it up for DOS. And also optimise it generally. It could be a bit faster...
>
>Or fix it, if it didn't work.
>
>Ok... on to my next gross hack job...
>
>--
> .+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.
> Tim Muddleten =As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning= as544 torfree.net
> -=-=-= begging you to read Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis =-=-=-
> `'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~`'~
> Yarn/2 Bells & Whistles Page: http://www.io.org/~tm/bells2.html
> * January 2nd * International Day of Greek Tragedies
>
-- Phil Crown pcrown@airmail.net http://web2.airmail.net/pcrown/