Forté [Free] Agent Links and Utilities

Terminology:

Unless an exception is specifically indicated,

"Free Agent" refers to Forté Free Agent version 1.21 (either bitness)
"Agent" refers to Forté Agent version 1.8 (either bitness)
"[Free] Agent" refers to either program (either bitness)

Y2K issues and other bugs:

If you are using an earlier version of either program, you are STRONGLY
urged to update; see the cautionary notes on the basics page for details.

Structure:

For those who came directly to this page, download information for
Free Agent, Agent and the full Agent manual plus other important
information can be found on the basics page.

The major sections of this page are

Help
FAQs
Tips
Utilities

Some of the very best stuff is in that last section; if you decide to
give this (fairly lengthy) page a miss after reading this section,
at least take a quick look at Utilities.

Dying links:

Links on this site are checked every ten days with the excellent freeware program
Xenu's Link Sleuth. (I previously used Linkbot Express [the freeware version of
LinkbotPro] -- and I do appreciate a few features in LE not available in Xenu --
but I finally got tired of dealing with LE's limitations in other areas.)

Any URL marked

[DYING]

points to a page no longer available at its original location. I have re-directed such links
to the cached copy at Google; when that expires, the link will be dropped.

Anyone knowing a current location for a page so marked is urged to contact me.

Aside to users of browsers lacking Style Sheet support:

Your browser is rendering this document entirely flush-left. You will probably find it more readable
with topics indented as intended; to access a version of this document which does not rely on Style Sheet
support (but uses certain HTML tags in a non-standard way to get almost the same effect) click here.

The newsgroups:

Newbies are always welcome, but you should (as with any group) lurk for a while.

news:alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent

You will make life easier (for yourself and others) if you make sure before posting
that your question isn't covered at Help | How to or in one of the FAQs (below).
You can even get fast and detailed answers without having to post (and wait for an
answer) by searching Google.com (also below).

BTW: if you have suggestions for [or comments about] these pages, I can [usually]
be reached in auorfa or via the guest book on my home page.

Discussion of very advanced tweaks and hacks

news:alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent.modified

The (new) mailing list:

To subscribe Jim Hill's new [Free] Agent mailing list, send a message to

mailto:mailserver@agent-users.co.uk

with a single line in the body of the message

SUBSCRIBE agent-users

Note: if you already have Agent running, you can use this URL

mailto:mailserver@agent-users.co.uk?SUBSCRIBE%20agent-users%0D%0A

instead; if you have another email client, this URL

mailto:mailserver@agent-users.co.uk?body=SUBSCRIBE%20agent-users%0D%0A

may get the same effect.

Whichever method you use, send the resulting message.
The usual security subscription message will be sent in response.

Subscriptions will be private (unless you choose to change your
settings) and the list is closed with proxy subscriptions
disabled. Your subscription details will, of course, be treated
with the utmost confidentiality and the list will be spam free.
Message distribution will take place every two hours (24 x 7).

Groups.Google.com (successor to Deja.com):

You may be able to save time (and get more information) by finding answers
to questions similar to yours posted days, weeks, months, even years ago.

Note: Deja had an excellent feed so (although it excluded messages with the
X-No-Archive: yes
header) it was very complete. Its database was a veritable treasure, and Google
is to be commended for preserving it. They seem to be responsive to requests
to improve their interface, but it remains to be seen whether they will put the
required effort into ensuring a complete feed; early indications are disconcerting.

Quick search:

Enter a word or two and find messages in any group

http://groups.google.com/

Advanced search:

Select a group, date range or other criterion and enter a word or two

http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search

Subsequent searches can easily be done on the selected subset.
For example, to select all messages currently available in auorfa, go here

http://groups.google.com/groups?num=100&as_ugroup=alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent

To find messages about your question, add the desired keywords to the box
in the results screen and hit 'Google Search'.

Specific message:

Enter the complete Message-ID (copied from the References: header
or the body of another message, for example)

http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search

Note: surrounding <angle brackets> are allowed but not required.

Web-based Web-based newsreader-like interfacess:

Google doesn't really have one (although it has just now [22 Aug 2001]
implemented a superb threaded view], but the sites listed here

http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Usenet/Web_Based/

http://www.news2web.com/

http://www.nooz.net/

http://www.usenet4free.com/

(for 'current' articles, at least) do.

Note: some of those services are _very_ newsreader-like [bordering on usable]
and/or include a search function for newsgroup names/descriptions [a feature missing
from Google (and from [Free] Agent, for that matter, although an add-on is available)]
and/or have special features too far off the topic of this page to describe.

Help add-ons:

STRONGLY RECOMMENDED:
Installing the 32-bit help system with 16-bit [Free] Agent

Some 32-bit applications (including WINHLP32.EXE) run well under Win3.1
with the Win32s extensions (see

http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/c/a/cascon/microsoft/win32sfaq.htm

for instructions and information) installed. IMO, the update is quick and
painless, and _well_ worth the effort for the improved help system.

Note: the [Free] Agent program itself doesn't work smoothly under Win32s,
so you should NOT install the 32-bit version on a 16-bit system; the purpose
of this upgrade is to get the new help system (and other, unrelated, features).

Also: [Free] Agent seems to call "WINHELP.EXE" explicitly (instead of
launching help by the Windows association for .hlp files), so to get the full
text search (and other advanced functions) you have several choices:
    create a separate program icon for AGENT.HLP and/or
    make a copy of WINHLP32.EXE named WINHELP.EXE and/or
    hex-edit the AGENT.EXE file to not call WINHELP.EXE

You gain the ability to do a full text search in any help file; the hits will be
highlighted on the pages where they are found (something that the 32-bit
help application in Win95 doesn't even do because of a bug). Agent users
will also be able to access the help contents tree (see the next section).

Installing the 32-bit Help 'Contents' tree with Agent [only]

Although Agent's help file contains a wealth of extremely useful
information, it can sometimes be hard to locate quickly - especially
for new users of the program and the help file. Since Forté doesn't
provide an AGENT.CNT file (which can make navigating the help file
somewhat easier by providing a graphical tree view of the contents),
Michael Malcolm Andersen created one.

The file is really for 32-bit users (as the contents tree is a feature
of the 32-bit help application), but 16-bit users who have installed
WINHLP32.EXE can also benefit; if you use the 16-bit version of
Agent and haven't yet installed that [highly recommended] program,
follow the upgrade instructions in the preceding section.

Download this file

http://andersen.dk/agentcnt.zip

and unzip the AGENT.CNT file to any folder/directory containing
an Agent AGENT.HLP file.

After starting Agent Help, for instance by choosing Contents on the
Help menu, 32-bit users can now simply press the Contents button;
the contents tree should appear. It contains links to all the most
often used reference sections of the help file, including a couple
that are not obvious where to find. If you want to get back to the
original first page of the help file, you simply choose the topmost
item in the list.

In English:

The Forté site is essential; it includes (among other things)

The [Free] Agent Support Page

http://www.forteinc.com/agsup/index.htm

The official Forté FAQ list

http://www.forteinc.com/agsup/csfaq.htm

A seriously out-of-date and incomplete list of known bugs

http://www.forteinc.com/agsup/csbugs.htm

A quite out-of-date list of frequently requested enhancements

http://www.forteinc.com/agsup/csenhreq.htm

A .zip package of Forté support web pages in the original HTML

ftp://ftp.forteinc.com/pub/agent/support.zip

Instructions for installing the above on your system and acessing them with a browser

http://www.forteinc.com/agsup/csfaq.htm#DownloadFAQ

Caution: embedded in that section is a link to a .zip file which as of this writing [18 Apr 1999]
points to a file containing out-of-date support pages; you should use the instructions given
at the http URL for accessing the pages, but download the file using the ftp URL, above.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
V1.6 of the unofficial [Free] Agent FAQ by William Guynes and Jeffrey Kaplan

http://world.std.com/~gordol/agentfaq.html
Also available as as a text file in .zip format

http://world.std.com/~gordol/files/agentfaq.zip

V1.5 [even more out-of-date than V1.6] is available as an HTML page
without internal #links

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/off-line-readers/usenet/forte-agent/

or as a text file

http://world.std.com/FAQ/Internet/usenet/forte-agent-faq.txt

More [Free] Agent FAQs with links to even more detailed answers

FIRST20.HTM

A [very] lightly HTML-ized mirror of the most recent monthly posting
of useful links in auorfa by Don Kirkman

POINTERS.HTM

In English (about support for other languages/character sets):

Important Note:

The single-byte language support in Agent 1.6 and later far exceeds any prior version;
in fact, for 'languages' using Latin glyphs it works right out of the box. As a result,
some instructions in the next section and at linked sites [especially about .CSM files]
don't apply.

Single-byte languages:

Adding non-Roman character sets to Windows and [Free] Agent and
other information

http://armscontrol.ru/timur/agent.htm

the instructions are primarily for Russian, but the principles apply to
other non-Roman character sets.
Russian is also available in five encodings: Windows-1251, KOI8-R,
IBM866, Mac and ISO-8859-5.
Note: that site has crashed hard and will be down for some time
so you will instead want to access

http://home1.swipnet.se/~w-11055/Timur/agent.htm

which mirrors the English and two Russian encodings (Windows-1251
and KOI8-R) of Timur's site [and is generally faster anyway].

Using Russian characters on computers:

http://visitingrussia.org/rusintnt.htm#Cyrillic

If you would like to get a feel for how little it may take to add a language
to [Free] Agent, this message gives step-by-step instructions for adding
a simple one (Turkish) and this message goes on to describe how to create
the matching .csm file (trivial in this case) for Agent 1.5.

Instructions and fonts for Hebrew (another 'simple' case) can be found
in this message.

Double-byte languages:

Adding CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) language support to any
Windows application (not [Free] Agent specific):

http://www.geocities.com/fontboard/cjk/dbcsapps.html

Configuring Agent 1.6 and later for CJK is quite easy, but there are some
platform-specific issues; this message gives the complete details for one
case (Chinese); the others (Japanese [[alternate link explanation]], Korean) require
the same steps but, obviously, the settings appropriate to each language.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
MViewPro

http://www.sling.to/mviewpro/

provides CJK support with the ability to control the language display
on a window-by-window or font-by-font basis. Superb, and incredibly
cheap, shareware.

RECOMMENDED:
NJStar

http://www.njstar.com/menu.htm

is a trial-ware standard; it provides CJK (display) support for
[Free] Agent and browsers (including built-in fonts and the common
coding methods [but its Unicode support is somewhat weak]).

CJK input to [Free] Agent is far easier with a purpose-built program; many
freeware/shareware editors are available for various platforms, languages
and input methods (including the ones from NJWin and MViewPro).

BTW: for Hangul users of Agent 1.5, this message gives detailed instructions
for creating the KOREA.CSM file [but it would be far better to upgrade].

In Chinese [Big5]:

Translation of William Guynes' FAQ by Chen Tai-Wei

http://netcity1.web.hinet.net/UserData/terry/agentfaq/index.html

Translation of the Forté [Free] Agent FAQ by Chen Tai-Wei

http://netcity1.web.hinet.net/UserData/terry/agent-faq/index.html

In Danish:

This page

http://www.usenet.dk/info/agent.html

has very basic notes on getting started.

This site

http://www.kajsvenningsen.dk/opsat/agent.shtml

has a huge amount of detail but is not quite up-to-date
and there is very little explanation.

In Finnish:

This page

http://www.malibutelecom.fi/yucca/nyysit/forte.html

contains some basic hints on using Agent and Usenet.

In French:

Translation of the Agent help file

http://www.teaser.fr/~sjacquemin/Agent/traduction.html

Excellent Agent menu-by-menu configuration

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/cathozie/aideinternet/agent.htm

Versions françaises désuètes de [Free] Agent

http://perso.club-internet.fr/clovis/Agentfr.htm

Free Agent (and internet beginner) step-by-step help

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/la.mirandole/Informatique/Logiciels/FA/fa.html

In German:

This extensive site

http://www.paefken.westfalen.de/forteagent/

gives pointers to German-language (and other) resources;
it seems to be unavailable fairly often, so keep trying.

The newsgroups

news:de.comm.software.forte-agent
news:de.comm.software.newsreader

Seh' auch

Agent-Schnellkurs

... oder "Wie lerne ich, den Agent innerhalb einer Stunde zu benutzen,
um OE in die Tonne zu werfen?".

In Italian:

Mini manuale per iniziare ad usare Free Agent
e la guida di Agent [1.5] tradotta in italiano

http://space.tin.it/cinema/claveron/alessio/

Come si installa, si configura e si usa Free Agent?

http://bertola.eu.org/icfaq/softwar3.htm#fre

Guida ipertestuale in italiano di Free Agent (utile anche per Agent)

http://skyscraper.fortunecity.com/email/499/internet.htm [click on "guida"]

Agent Italian users - mailing list

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agent-ita/

In Japanese [Shift-JIS]:

How to read and write news in Japanese with [Free] Agent:

http://member.nifty.ne.jp/usr/negi/agent11.html

English

http://member.nifty.ne.jp/usr/negi/english_env.html

is also available.

In Polish:

A translation of the Agent 1.5 help file among other things [ISO-8859-2]:

http://pitow-154.pitow.wroc.pl/home/yss/help/

An Agent mini-FAQ [ascii (so there are no diacritical marks)]:

http://www.sinus.phg.pl/fa.php

Agent filter notes [mostly Windows-1250]:

http://www.torun.pdi.net/~macias/comp/agent.html

Note: Use with caution; a number of expressions contain small errors,
some of which are copied straight from the [erroneous] Agent help file.

In Russian [Windows-1251]:

Useful links to Cyrillic resources with a good [Free] Agent section

http://shlimazl.nm.ru/soft.htm

A [somewhat out of date] introduction to Agent for beginners:

[Mirror] http://www.omsk.elektra.ru:8101/agent/index.html

Agent 1.8 specific:

http://www.geocities.com/pvasili/programm.r/r_agent.html

In Spanish:

An excellent, detailed guide to Free Agent

http://www.aered.com/usuario/jrotger/guiaesfa/

Pointers to a Spanish translation of the German FAQ

http://www.paefken.westfalen.de/forteagent/

(often unavailable; keep trying) or at the mirror site

http://www.ontinet.com/faq/

Installation:

Out-of-date but still RECOMMENDED:
Jessie's and Adrian's step-by-step guide to Free Agent 1.11:

http://www.geocities.com/adrianabraham/FreeAgent/

Operation:

Agent Tips and Tricks (and other good stuff):

http://pw1.netcom.com/~nmt1/computer/index.html

Filters:

"Classic" (word) filters and other basics:

CLASSIC.HTM

"Advanced" {regular expression} filters and much more:

REGULAR.HTM

A utility to sort/print filters:

FILTERS.HTM

Ôàáåðæå:

All versions of [Free] Agent except FA1.0:

Go to
Help | About ...
Press and hold SHIFT+A and click anywhere on the picture.

Service specific:

Free/open/'corporate' services:

Any news service which will allow you to connect can be accessed using
[Free] Agent via your normal internet connection. These sites

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/1248/nntpeng.html
http://www.newsservers.net/
http://www.newzbot.com/
http://www.muenz.com/sdienst/html/sgroup_e.html
http://freenews.maxbaud.net
http://www.nyx.net/~bkraft/
http://tools.rosinstrument.com/proxy/news.htm
http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/Chats_and_Forums/Usenet/Public_Access_Usenet_Sites/
http://www.nojtech.com/nh/

(among _many_ others) list free/open/'corporate' news/NNTP services
Note: the last site [in addition to lists of servers and other information]
has a freeware program available with which you can search for servers yourself.
There are also at least two newsgroups

news:alt.free.newsservers
news:alt.binaries.news-server-comparison

in which you may find some information.

There are (unfortunately) too many open SMTP servers.

Pay services:

These sites

http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/Communications_and_Networking/Internet_and_World_Wide_Web/Usenet_Servers/
http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/providers/
http://members.tripod.com/~newscompare/
http://www.nojtech.com/nh/

(among others) list pay/commercial news/NNTP services.
Note: the last site [in addition to lists of servers and other information]
has a program available with which you can search for open servers yourself.
Also: some services emphasize one aspect or another of the 'news' function
[completeness, retention period, binaries, speed] so consider your needs.

AOL:

Any news service which will allow you to connect can be accessed using
[Free] Agent via the AOL internet connection. The previous sections
have pointers to lists of free/open services and pay/commercial services.

Alternatively, you can do the reverse: sign up for a different ISP [one
with a good news service presumably] and connect from there to AOL;
see AOL KEYWORD: BYOA for more information about that approach.

As for accessing AOL's own news and mail servers with non-AOL clients,
the answer given here

http://www.aol.com/nethelp/top20memberquestions.html#TWO

fails to mention

eNetBot POP3/SMTP interface

but be warned: not only is that program rather pricey for what it does IMO,
AOL may block it at any time (just as Hotmail/Microsoft blocked CWebMail).

@HOME:

The 'generic' server names are

POP3: mail
SMTP: mail
NEWS: news

but some @HOME systems require 'specific' server names (with domain suffixes)
for some or all of the above.

See also

FIRST20.HTM#A24

for configuration instructions.

CompuServe "Classic" [not to be confused with CompuServe 2000, below]:

The 'generic' server names are

NEWS: news.compuserve.com
SMTP: mail.compuserve.com
POP3: pop.compuserve.com

Accessing the POP3 service requires special activation at the CompuServe site
and accessing the news service is subject to problems and conditions described
in Forté's FAQ and in mine.

CompuServe 2000 [not to be confused with CompuServe "Classic", above]:

The 'generic' server names are

NEWS: news.beta.compuserve.com
SMTP: mail.compuserve.com
POP3: (not available, although IMAP [which Agent doesn't do] is)

Note: given the name of the news server (valid as of this writing [18 Aug 2000])
it wouldn't be surprising if the name were to change soon, and without warning.

Demon [UK]:

The server names are

NEWS: news.demon.co.uk
SMTP: smtp.demon.co.uk [outgoing; see Note:, below]
POP3: pop3.demon.co.uk

Note: Demon can deliver email via SMTP (a feature available at few ISPs),
and does so automatically when the connection opens and every ten minutes
thereafter. Agent can be configured to receive email in that manner, but a
small trick described in this message may be required to reduce the chance
that the first transamission attempt by Demon in a session will miss (causing
an annoying ten-minute wait for the next cycle to occur).

Also: Demon can deliver email via POP3, the key features (not available
with the SMTP method) being that logging in as
subdomain
retrieves all mail addressed to @subdomain.demon.co.uk while logging in as
subdomain+user
retrieves only mail addressed to user@subdomain.demon.co.uk, and that
POP3 email can be picked up from non-Demon IP addresses (provided that
a POP3/Webmail password for the purpose has been created [and entered
in the proper box in Agent, of course]).

Complete FAQ and technical notes for the Demon Internet POP3 service
are available here:

ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/demon/doc/pop3.txt

or by sending an email to

mailto:support@demon.net?subject=send%20pop3

Freeserve:

The server names are

NEWS: news.freeserve.net
SMTP: smtp.freeserve.net
POP3: pop.freeserve.net

Accessing the POP3 server requires the normal password selected
when you signed up the Freeserve POP3 service and a Username.

The Username field may take either of two forms; these

something@yourdomain.freeserve.co.uk
other@yourdomain.freeserve.co.uk

would pick up only messages addressed specifically to the
[arbitrary] mailbox name(s) your are using, whereas this

yourdomain.freeserve.co.uk

would pick up all messages addressed to yourdomain.freeserve.co.uk
[regardless of the mailbox name].

Note: Agent 1.6 and later will handle '@' embedded in a Username;
the work-around for all other versions with this service is to use '+'

something+yourdomain.freeserve.co.uk
other+yourdomain.freeserve.co.uk

instead.

Image Scandinavia:

The server names are

NEWS: news.image.dk
SMTP: smtp.image.dk
POP3: mail.image.dk

The Username field may take either of two forms; this

name

would pick up messages addressed to 'name@image.dk' while these

second@domain.dk
another@nospam.dk

would pick up messages addressed to those 'extra' mailboxes.

Note: Agent 1.6 and later will handle '@' embedded in a Username;
the work-around for all other versions with this service is to use '%'

second%domain.dk
another%nospam.dk

instead.

MSN:

The server names are

POP3: pop3.email.msn.com [requires SPA login]
SMTP: smtp.email.msn.com[see Another development, below]
NEWS: [see Recent development:, below]

Other Microsoft news servers

NEWS: msnews.microsoft.com [see Note:]
NEWS: publicnews.msn.com [see Also:]
NEWS: msnnews.msn.com [see Also:]

do not require SPA (or indeed any) logon; they are 'public'.

Note: as of 11 Oct 1998
     pssnews.msn.com
is the official name for msnews.microsoft.com (the two are aliased to each other).

Also: as of 11 Oct 1998
     publicnews.msn.com
and
     msnnews.msn.com
are identical (although not aliased, they resolve to the same addresses).

Recent development: it appears from reports that on or about 20 Oct 2000
MSN discontinued its NNTP service [formerly netnews.msn.com] without notice.

Another development: on or about 24 Jul 2001 MSN began blocking
connections to external SMTP servers on port 25 and modified their own
SMTP servers to require SPA login. Agent 1.8/32.553 supports SMTP+SPA;
if you have an earlier build or version and are on MSN, you should upgrade.
Users of Free Agent (or other clients lacking that feature) can still connect
to an external [public] SMTP server but must do so on a non-standard port;
see this message for a list of four such services. If the nearest geographically
is unsatisfactory, try another; all are either free or advertiser supported.

UKGateway:

The server names are

NEWS: news.ukgateway.net
SMTP: smtp.ukgateway.net
POP3: pop.ukgateway.net

Note: Agent 1.6 and later will handle '@' embedded in a Username;
the work-around for all other versions with this service is to use '%'

identifier%ukgateway.net

instead.

WorldNet:

The server names are

POP3: postoffice.worldnet.att.net
SMTP: mailhost.worldnet.att.net
NEWS: netnews.worldnet.att.net

Basic:

CAUTIOUSLY RECOMMENDED FOR FREE AGENT USERS
VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR AGENT USERS:
Agent Group Order [AGO]
(arrange [Free] Agent groups/folders in any order and much, much more)

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~jonzonk/ago.html

HEY! IF YOU HAVE AGENT, GET THIS UTILITY!

Caution: you will find AGO useful even if you have Free Agent, but watch out!
As described in the 'Disclaimer' section of AGO's README.TXT file, its primary
function interferes with certain group-specific overrides in Free Agent.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR FREE AGENT USERS
(even Agent users may find it useful):
Agent Global Search [AGloBS]
(standalone [Free] Agent Global [Body] Search; powerful and fast)

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~jonzonk/aglobs.html

RECOMMENDED FOR FREE AGENT USERS
RECOMMENDED FOR AGENT POWER USERS
Agent Message Finder [AgtFind]
(standalone [Free] Agent message finder; handles multiple instances and much more)

http://home.t-online.de/home/juergen.haible/

Note: The download page is in German; the program and display are in English.
If you find the notes in German intimidating, you can get a quick-and-dirty (but
quite serviceable) translation by copying the above URL to the clipboard and then
either going to

http://babelfish.altavista.com/raging/translate.dyn

pasting the URL in the box and selecting the desired language or going to Google
and using the complete URL itself as the search argument.
Also: if you have occasion to work with messages in unix [Berkeley] mbox format
(used for exporting by [Free] Agent, importing by Agent and many other programs,
and even used intermally by some) take a look at MsgFind at the same site.

IF YOUR DATABASE BECOMES CORRUPTED,
YOU WILL WANT TO HAVE THIS UTILITY:
Agent Group Recover [AGReco]

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~jonzonk/agreco.html

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR AGENT USERS
(doesn't work with Free Agent):
Agent to Google.com (or other web site) interface [NewsDde]

NewsDde32 or NewsDde

Note: as [currently, 16 Feb 2001] shipped, NewsDde[32] defaults to a [now useless]
Deja[News] URL; any text editor can be used to replace it with the Google equivalent
http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:%1

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR USERS OF ANY VERSION OF 16-BIT OPERA
OR PRE-3.51 VERSIONS OF 32-BIT OPERA
(in fact, one of following two programs is almost essential):
Browser to email client interface

MailDde32

MailDde32 uses the Windows Registry to determine how mailto: URLs
should be handled; it sends the request to any registered program (not
necessarily Agent). 32bit support only.

Note: some users report that MailDde32 works so much better than
AgentDde32 [next item] that the latter should be avoided.

Browser to Agent interface for mailto: links

AgentDde and AgentDde32

AgentDde and AgentDde32 are 'hard coded' to send mailto: requests to Agent
(regardless of what is in the Windows Registry). Both 16bit & 32bit support.

Note: I had no difficulty with either program, but some users who had
no trouble getting MailDde32 [previous item] to work properly right out
of the box couldn't get AgentDde32 to work no matter what they did.

Also: 32-bit Opera 3.51 and later can call Agent (or another client) directly
(without a helper application) using the Opera setting 'Use system default'.

BTW: Opera 4.01 has a buglet which makes it difficult to change the external
email client setting; either update to Opera 4.02 or later or see these messages
for work-arounds.

Advanced (filters):

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR FREE AGENT USERS
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR AGENT USERS
This 32-bit freeware program

http://www.nfilter.org/

can be used to add filtering to Free Agent or extend filtering in Agent.
Unlike Hamster [see below] and Agent, Nfilter can act on any header
that may appear in a news article [provided that the news service
you access delivers the header(s) in question in response to an XHDR
command (a significant restriction)]. Selected messages can be killed or
the Subject: header can be 'flagged' with a distinctive string (which Agent
can act on automagically but Free Agent simply displays for human review).

Note: there is a link at the above site to a mailing list.

Also: for other features in addition to filtering, see Hamster or NewsPlex, below.

Advanced (other):

This site

http://www.skuz.net/madhat/agent/

[by Mad Hatter] is a basic resource for unofficial modifications to [Free] Agent.
It is _NOT_ newbie oriented, and some of it is probably not for the faint of heart;
it has many very useful items, including the 'charter' for the associated newsgroup

news:alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent.modified

For adding headers, the programs here

http://home.t-online.de/home/pelegi/

are the most elegant solution by far IMO.
Note: if you prefer not to use a 'canned' program to modify AGENT.EXE and have a hex editor,
you can use information availalbe at the above site to make the required changes 'by hand'.

For modifying or adding headers, Tweak

http://www.meow-labs.de/

is the quintessential tool.

AgentHere, terselog and other good, er, stuff (including, in most cases, source code)
can be found here:

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~jonzonk/stuff/

Extensive, detailed information about file and record formats can be found in
Ray Delio's repository of, er, structural analysis

http://www.wotsit.org/ [then search for 'AGENT']

Miscellaneous:

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
Despite the caveats above, one of the pages on MH's site

http://www.skuz.net/madhat/agent/util.html

[an extensive list of third-party utilities] is indispensable and not intimidating.
ALWAYS check that list in addition to the following individual mentions.

Automation:

RECOMMENDED:
This utility

RtvReco

will monitor your system looking for dialog boxes that meet criteria you establish
(a great way to have those annoying "Operation timed out - stop remaining tasks?"
dialog boxes taken care of automatically in the wee hours of the morning).
See the RtvSoft main page

http://www.clearlight.com/~rtvsoft/index.htm

for (among other things) an online user's guide to the program.
If you need more than five events, the current version of RtvReco (5.15)
is shareware (£10); if you can get by with five or fewer events
[completely automating Agent requires only three to five], it is freeware.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
The prior version (5.0b8, still available at the above site or by
ftpsearch as rtvreco*.zip [47,762 bytes]) is freeware (although the
.WRI file contains instructions for making an optional $10 donation).

Other choices can be found in the FAQ on automating [Free] Agent

http://www.bigfoot.com/~geoff.m/

on MH's Utility page (URL above) and elsewhere on the web.

Signature Managers:

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
Random Taglines

http://world.std.com/~jkaplan/files/taglines.zip

Agent .Sig Manager (adds additional signature functionality to [Free] Agent):

http://www.skuz.net/madhat/agent/util.html#909

SigChanger (works with [Free] Agent and other programs):

http://www.xs4all.nl/~fwolsink/sigchanger/index_e.html

RndSig (works with [Free] Agent and other programs)

http://www.lacave.net/~fred/divers/rndsig.html

has the [unique AFAIK] ability when invoked via hotkey to select
an 'appropriate' sig based on user-specified keywords it finds in the
currently open window.
Note: the web site is in French; a [possibly serviceable] translation
can be made at Google or AltaVista/BabelFish.

Encryption:

Important note: PGP6.51 or later can integrate smoothly with Agent using hotkeys
and the clipboard; no plug-in is needed. This message recommends some settings.

PGPClick

http://www.ncinter.net/~rewilson/PGPClick/

integrates well with [Free] Agent and the site has very complete information.

PGP tools oriented specifically to [Free] Agent (some of them freeware) are
available at MH's site, above.

More general PGP tools may be found here:

http://www.cix.co.uk/~net-services/pgp/

Group scan:

Scan group names for sub-strings and multi-select for crossposting

http://www.albany.net/~gwoods/ftp/aghook.zip

Runs on 32-bit systems; hooks to the composition window of any version
_except_ FA1.0; won't work if the number of groups/folders exceeds ~32K.

Search group descriptions for keywords and/or display them in [Free] Agent

http://dev.nullmodem.de/bluescreen/showdesc/showdesc.html

Requires a list of group names and descriptions (which can be retrieved from
any news service using Telnet, transferred from Hamster, or downloaded

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agent-ita/files/

from the web).

Multiple Server Interface:

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
The 32-bit freeware program Hamster ("classic")

http://home.knuut.de/tgl/

accesses multiple news servers and/or multiple POP3 accounts (including the
ability to delete messages at the server without having to download them in their
entirety) WITHOUT having to set up multiple instances of [Free] Agent. It also
adds 'scoring' to Agent and both 'scoring' and 'filtering' to Free Agent, plus
many other features.
Hamster is a powerful addition to either program and keeps getting better.
There are several active developers and at least four mailing lists

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/usehamsternet [German]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ehamster [English]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fhamster [French]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/plhamster [Polish]

[there may be others of which I am not aware] and there are quite a number
of groups in the [widely carried] news:hamster.* hierarchy.
Note: for binaries, see NewsPlex, below; for filtering only (or for filtering
on headers other than those in the OVERVIEW provided by the server
[generally Subject:, From:, Date:, Message-ID:, References:, Lines:, Xref:]
which Hamster ("classic") doesn't do), see Nfilter, above.
Also: a preliminary "how to" for Hamster ("classic") can be found here

http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/hamster2.htm

and a hit-the-ground-running recipe can be found at

http://ianhoare.free.fr/hamster/hamagent.htm.

The 32-bit freeware program NewsPlex

http://newsplex.webstylists.com/download

appears to be THE killer app for reasonably sophisticated users
not satisfied with Hamster's weak handling of binaries.
Note: NewsPlex doesn't handle multi-POP3; Hamster, above, does.

Other programs (most not [Free] Agent specific):

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
Pop3ScanMail

http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~kempston/smb/index.html

Brilliant freeware program that (among many other features) allows you to access
the email 'headers' on the server. You can delete messages without downloading
them (something Agent won't do) and easily manage multiple mailboxes.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR FREE AGENT USERS:
RECOMMENDED FOR AGENT USERS NEEDING MORE/BETTER DICTIONARIES:
Spell Checker for Edit Boxes

http://www.quinion.com/mqa/spell.htm

User-configurable hotkey invokes the spellchecking TSR from the Free Agent
(any version) composition window or from other applications. Dictionaries are
available for several languages, and it works excellently on various platforms.
Win3.1x, Win95 and OS/2 have been tested [and Win98 should certainly work].
Win3.1x with WIN32S extensions and NT 3.5x have not been tested.
May not work on Win/ME. Definitely does not work on NT 4+ or Win2K.
Freeware for personal use.

Mouse-wheel support for [Free] Agent (and other applications)

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/2060/freewheel.html

Highly configurable 'wheelie' driver.
The site has a detailed explanation of what it does and why you may not need it.
Freeware.

Newsreader tools:

http://download.cnet.com/downloads/newsreaders

Viewers and similar utilities:

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
(by many others; I've never tried it myself):
Irfanview (freeware)

IrfanView32

integrates with [Free] Agent and supports many formats.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
ACDSee

http://www.acdsystems.com/

integrates _very_ slickly with [Free] Agent, is fast and has lots of features but
no image adjustment/editing. Pay-for-ware.

CompuPic

http://www.photodex.com/

is somewhat slower and has some additional functions (including light editing and
image adjustment functions); if you do a lot of image manipulation, however, you
will probably want a more powerful application for that purpose. Pay-for-ware.

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
NoteTab

http://www.notetab.ch/

A brilliant freeware/shareware combination (in the style of [Free] Agent).
Among its bezillion features is the ability to strip tags from HTML messages
passed to it by Agent; it can even emulate Clipmate (see next item).

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
Clipmate

http://www.thornsoft.com

allows you to cut-and-paste multiple selections without being limited by the
Windows clipboard one-in, one-out behaviour. It also allows you to file and
organize frequently used 'boilerplate' (such as URLs). Pay-for-ware.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
Columbine Bookmark Merge

http://home.earthlink.net/~garycramblitt/

can (among other functions) edit, merge, and translate among MSIE, Netscape,
and Opera bookmark formats; it can also watch the clipboard for URLs (similar
to URLSaver, the next item). Freeware, but memorial donations are encouraged.

URLSaver

http://home.welfen-netz.de/owitte/urlsaver/1st.stm

is sort of a special case of a multiple-item clipboard; it neatly organizes URLs
(copied from [Free] Agent or elsewhere) into HTML pages which can then be
opened in any browser for later exploration. Freeware.

Decoding:

Free Agent doesn't handle BASE64 encoding, either 'raw' or in MIME-format
messages; when you go to decode or launch them it gives the message
No binary attachment found
and leaves the encoded text in the body. If you receive a lot of files of that
type you need something else.

Of course, one choice is to upgrade to US$29 Agent (worth that amount IMO
for its filtering or cross- and multi-post detection alone).

If you stay with Free Agent (even if you upgrade, you may occasionally
encounter an attachment encoded with a method such as BinHex which
even US$29 Agent can't handle), you can use

File | Save Messages As...

to create a text file with an appropriate .ext, then use one of these:

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
SJHB64 v1.6 (small, fast, powerful, freeware)

http://www.sjhdesign.com/

WinZip (not free, but you may already have it for other functions)

http://www.winzip.com/

Stuffit Expander (freeware)

http://www.aladdinsys.com/expander/index.html

handles a very wide range of encoding and compression formats.

Yuck, ptui:
If you happen to have a member of the Outlook Express family,
they can read/display messages saved with an .ext of .NWS.

FORMERLY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
Wincode (freeware, but the "full" help file costs US$10)

http://... [see following note]

or one of the _many_ other alternatives.

Note: The web site of _Snappy_ Software (home of the author of Wincode)
seems to have vanished some time in May '98, and global2000.net (their
[evidently former] ISP) apparently doesn't respond to inquiries.

The latest version of Wincode is v2.7.3c (distributed as WC273R16.ZIP,
1022466 bytes); some archive sites have that, others have 2.7.3a (same
filename, different size). AFAICT the differences between the two are
trivial and [FWIW] the .exe files are almost the same size; v2.7.3c is
584464 bytes, v2.7.3a is 583968 bytes.

If you can't find Wincode 2.7.3? at one of the major archives, this URL

wc273r16.zip&s1=1022466

should give you a list of 2.7.3c sites only.

Warning: listings of files at ftp sites usually include permissions (these

-rw-r--r--
-r--r--r--
-r--------

would be typical patterns); NEVER download from a site that has a
w (write permission) in the ninth position

-rw-rw-rw- <-BAD

and avoid (where possible) those that have a w (write permission)
in the sixth position

-rw-rw-r-- <-Not best

Also: I have no idea where a 'full' Wincode help file may now be found, much
less how one would pay for it. The most comprehensive free WINCODE.HLP
file (181775 bytes) is included in WNCOD23.ZIP (229229 bytes). You may find
the latter on a few archive sites; if not, copies may be located via the ftpsearch,
above, possibly named WINCODE.ZIP (but watch for the size; other Wincode
versions [and possibly other, related files] may have the same name).

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