Table of Contents

• 1 Introduction
• 2 Sample VSoup Install
• 3 Other General Info
• 4 Other Tools

1 Introduction

These are the (hopefully) quick start instructions for setting up and running the version of Vsoup adapted for Windows95/98.

Vsoup assumes that a DUN (Dial Up Network) connection has been established to your ISP (Internet Service Provider).  Once this has been done you can run BATch files like one of the three below to call vsoup to download or upload Email or News 'soup' packages to and from your ISP.  Vsoup packages are imported and exported by yarn and similar news/email readers.

To get these batch files to work you will need to ask your ISP for the names of its 'nntp' (news) as well as the 'pop3' and 'smtp' servers. Those names will probably look something like the following:

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  news.myISP.net
  pop3.myISP.net
  mail.myISP.net

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2 Sample VSoup Install

• put vsoup.exe into your path (e.g. c:\bin, c:\my-binaries, c:\windows or whatever)

• create the following subdir structure:

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    c:\vsoup
    c:\vsoup\in-mail
    c:\vsoup\in-news
    c:\vsoup\out
  

  ---

• in c:\vsoup\in-news create a file named 'newsrc' which contains the news groups you'd like to receive;  format as follows:

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    comp.databases:
    alt.test!
    news.admin.net-abuse.email:
  

  ---

  and so on...  Note, that fetching of alt.test is disabled when vsoup runs due to the trailing '!', the ':' enables group reception.

  If you want a complete list of ALL the newsgroups available from your ISP you will need to remove your existing 'newsrc' file and execute a command like the following:

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    vsoup -a -m -h c:\vsoup\in-news nntp://username:password@my.news.server
  

  ---

  This will create a new very long 'newsrc' file, which you will need to edit with a text editor.

• for mail reception use the following BAT script:

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    c:
    cd \vsoup\in-mail
    vsoup -n pop3://username:password@my.pop3.server
    rem
    rem  here you zip (and maybe copy) the files so yarn can import them
    rem
    import -u ...
  

  ---

  Change 'pop3://...' to fulfill your own needs

• for news reception use the following BAT script:

  ---

    c:
    cd \vsoup\in-news
    vsoup -m -h c:\vsoup\in-news nntp://username:password@my.news.server
    rem
    rem  here you zip (and maybe copy) the files so yarn can import them
    rem
    import -u ...
  

  ---

  Change 'nntp://...' to fulfill your needs.  Note that most news servers do not require 'username:password', thus 'nntp://my.news.server' will be enough.

• for news & mail transmission use the following BAT script (assuming Yarn puts the replies into c:\vsoup\out\reply.zip and pkunzip.exe exists somewhere in the path):

  ---

    c:
    cd \vsoup\out
    pkunzip -o reply.zip
    vsoup -s smtp://my.smtp.gateway nntp://username:password@my.news.server
    rem
    rem  here again you zip (and maybe copy) the files so yarn can import them
    rem
    import -u ...
  

  ---

  The above import is required for status messages generated by VSoup, although you could just open and read the STSMAIL.MSG file created by vsoup.   'smtp://...' has to be adopted according to your needs (smtp:// does not know anything about usernames and passwords), 'nntp://...' has to be modified as in the section above.

  You can of course run the 'smtp' and 'nntp' elements separately. Also once a DUN connection is opened you can run vsoup any number of times until the connection is closed.

3 Other General Info

To help in debugging it may be of interest to know that the files uploaded and downloaded by vsoup look like the following:

Typical set of Export files

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    NEWS.MSG
    MAIL.MSG
    REPLIES

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Typical set of Import News message files

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    0000001.MSG
    0000002.MSG
    0000003.MSG
    0000004.MSG
    0000005.MSG
    0000006.MSG
    0000007.MSG
    0000008.MSG
    0000009.MSG
    0000010.MSG
    0000011.MSG
    0000012.MSG
    0000013.MSG
    0000014.MSG
    AREAS

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Typical set of Import Email message files

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    0000001.MSG
    AREAS

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This is what the help screen for vsoup(95/98) looks like.  See the main doc (which was written with OS/2 in mind) for further details.

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 usage: %s [options] [URLs]
   URL:  (nntp|pop3|smtp)://[userid[:password]@]host[:port]
 global options:
   -h dir   Set home directory ('.' is legal)
   -m       Do not get mail
   -M       Generate status mail
   -n       Do not get news
   -Q       Query some information from the servers (for reception only)
   -r       Read only mode.  Do not delete mail or update newsrc
   -s       Send replies
   -T n     Limit for throughput surveillance [default: 0]
   -Z       new handling of command line options: -m, -n, -s will now *enable*
            the corresponding action
 news reading options:
   -a       Add new newsgroups to newsrc file
   -c[n]    Mark every article as read except for the last n [default: 10]
   -C n     Set initial catchup count of newly subscibed groups
   -k n     Set maximum news packet size in kBytes
   -K file  Set score file
   -N file  Set newsrc file
   -S n     News reading strategy [0..2, default 1]
   -t n     Number of threads [1..%d, standard: %d]
   -u       Create news summary
   -x       Do not process news Xref headers
 mail reading option:
   -D       Force deletion of mail on POP3 server on each message
   -Y       Do not use APOP even if available
 news transmission options (multiple destinations allowed):
   -S n     News transmission strategy [1=standard (default), 0=push feed]
 mail transmission options:
   -X       exclude CC/BCC from addressee list

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4 Other Tools

(created for use with vsoup and available with the 95/98 version)

CONVSOUP.EXE

transforms all articles from binary SOUP format to mailbox/USENET format

OWNSOUP.EXE

News to a mail folder: with the help of the Yarn import program, this program copies news articles matching a specific pattern (ie addressed To: you) into a separate mail folder which will show up when you read your mail with Yarn.

QSOUP.EXE

This appends mail and news messages to the Yarn reply packet file for transmission by VSoup.

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 The end of the vsoup 'quick' start instructions

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