Quick Start Instructions for setting up VSoup for Win95/98/NT


Port done by Andreas D. Bauer 1997, also Hardy Griech 1998-2000

This page has been created by Robert Keith Elias, Feb. 2000


Table of Contents


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:


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


2 Sample VSoup Install


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


    NEWS.MSG
    MAIL.MSG
    REPLIES

Typical set of Import News message files
    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

Typical set of Import Email message files
    0000001.MSG
    AREAS

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.
 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


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.



 The end of the vsoup 'quick' start instructions


This page was created on Sat, 26 Feb 2000 22:07:47 MET by a modified version of emxdoc (0.9c/rg081299) from Eberhard Mattes. Contact Hardy Griech for more information.