Ink Spot CE 1.14r3
Usenet wherever you are
Ink Spot allows you to take full advantage of your Windows CE device's portability and Internet connectivity. Instead of being tied to your workstation for net news, you can download it and read on the train, waiting in line, or while someone else uses your workstation. Features include:
- Find messages containing a word or phrase in the subject or body of an article.
- Download as many or as few messages as you want. There is no pre-set limit on the number of messages you can download, or the size of individual messages.
- Download full headers or discard headers to save space.
- Reply off line and upload replies when you next connect. Unfinished replies can be edited later to preserve the calm, rational tone of your favorite news groups.
- Filter messages by sender or subject.
- Ink Spot is completely customizable. Set your news groups, fonts, signature, view settings and other cool stuff.
Looking for documentation? Look no further; the Ink Spot CE Manual is now online.
Having trouble? Try consulting our troubleshooting page.
You may have some questions about downloading and installing. We have the answers.
NOTE: Ink Spot CE is at end-of-life! With the continuing decline of Usenet we have decided to halt development of Ink Spot CE. While we will continue to support it on a best effort basis, we won't be releasing any new versions.
If you aren't sure which processor type to choose, then see our download answers page.
To download Ink Spot CE for your machine, follow our easy three-step process:
NOTE: DO NOT PAY FOR OUR PRODUCTS unless you have already gotten them working on your computer. All of our software is shareware, which means that you should "try before you buy." Free trial versions are available in the Download Now section of this page.
Ink Spot CE is $25 $10 shareware. The unregistered version will only allow
users to download news 25 times before expiring.
Once you have Ink Spot CE installed and working properly, click here to add Ink Spot CE to your shopping cart. (You can always remove it later.)
The following are known bugs in the current version.
- If you're connected to the internet by way of your desktop, and the desktop loses its internet connection, Ink Spot does not recognize the failure and hangs. (Note that this would also happen if any other machine between your device and the news server went down, but that is much less likely.)
- When databases are stored on external storage cards, some devices incorrectly inform Ink Spot CE that it's OK to access the databases even when the card is not yet ready. This can happen when the device first powers up for instance. In this case Ink Spot gets an error that it interprets as the database being corrupt. We should have a built-in workaround for this OS problem in a future release. In the meantime, be sure to quit Ink Spot before powering off your device.
- Adding an entry to a single group's killfile is broken. The workaround is to check the "Add to all group killfiles" box and then (in Preferences) delete the entry from those groups to which it shouldn't apply.
- A few of the preferences panes have lines of text which are partially cut off.
- The software keyboard doesn't pop up, and the window doesn't resize properly, on the post view for PocketPCs.
- Another PocketPC goodie: if you have "fit to screen" turned off in PocketIE, and you have auto-remove CRs turned on in Ink Spot CE, the article will display with a horizontal scroll bar and some very long lines of text. (An obvious temporary workaround is to turn on "fit to screen" in Pocket Internet Explorer. Note that you may have to restart one or both in order for this to take effect.)
- PocketPCs sometimes lose the "OK" button in the upper-right corner forcing the user to tap on the screen to get it back. This seems to be a PocketPC problem, but we're working on ways to get around the problem.
- A user reports that his Jornada device forgets to store downloaded articles on an external card after a reboot.
- PocketPC 2002 users report that attempting to forwarding by e-mail returns a "No transports configured" (or similar) message.
- Ink Spot doesn't work with news servers that run WBNews, because they return a non-standard Message-ID header. This will be fixed in the next release.
If you encounter a problem that is not on this list, please let us know.
1.14r3: (Released 9/25/2003)
- Fixed compatability issues with WM2003. Specifically, any window with a progress bar may have crashed a WM2003 device (because of an apparent bug in WM2003).
1.14r2: (Released 3/11/2001)
- Due to a bug in the way we wrote out the preferences, they would sometimes become corrupt and prevent Ink Spot from opening the preferences pane.
- Sometimes a message would be posted with half an end-of-line character at the end, due to a bug in our posting code. The article would then be displayed in Ink Spot with an 'nbsp;' at the end, due to a bug in our display code. Both bugs have been fixed.
- Using compression while reading articles caused a memory leak.
- Messages are now wrapped to between 72 and 80 columns before posting.
- When attempting to post a message to a group which doesn't exist on the server, Ink Spot would keep, but corrupt, the post. They are now kept intact.
1.14: (Update 12/29/2000)
- We mistakenly bundled the MIPS version of the bzip2 DLL with the PocketPC distribution for SH3 devices. If you have one of these, you'll have seen a "unable to load bzip2... compression will not be available" error. Download the archive from our site again and re-install.
1.14: (Released 12/28/2000)
- Improved threading code in a variety of situations. It still isn't cached (this is on the list for our next release), but it is much faster.
- Cached the count of articles in each group. This means Ink Spot CE doesn't have to count them every time it starts up.
- Fixed the missing labels for H/PC Pro devices.
- Added BZIP2 compression support for downloaded articles. This achieves 30-40% compression, and is especially useful on CE 2.x devices using the internal store (since there's a maximum single-file size). Note that this is still experimental, and we've left it disabled by default. This will definetly hang any H/PC 2000 device. We've tested it on PocketPCs and original H/PCs without incident.
- Fixed a memory leak when frequently threading.
- Some error messages didn't pop to the top, but sat behind some other dialogs. This should be fixed.
- Fixed some situations where the database could grow beyond the Windows CE (2.x) limit of 4 MB and corrupt the database.
- Removed the 4MB size limit for CE 3.0 devices, since they don't have a limit any longer.
- Improved the error message when ISCE runs out of storage space while trying to update the "read" flag of a message that you've already downloaded.
- Re-enabled the ESC key to go back one view.
- We've improved the accuracy of the threading progress bar.
- Fixed some situations where returning to the thread view from the article view forced a re-thread.
- Ink Spot CE 1.12r2 and previous drop the connection to the news server without properly logging out. We've fixed this. Users that previously got a "user '[username]' is already logged in" message from their news server should stop being bothered by this now.
- If Ink Spot CE detects that the GDBM databases are corrupted, it now offers the user a chance to delete them rather than forcing the user to find them.
- Added a user-configurable port number to connect to (per-server).
- We've added a progress bar while compacting the database.
- Made paging inside the HTML view more consistant for PocketPCs.
- Fixed "tap-and-hold" for PocketPCs in the post queue.
- If Ink Spot CE has to scan the newsgroup to find the next article to download, you can now cancel it without waiting 30 seconds.
- Reversed the logic of "Keep All Headers". More news programs are starting to ignore the traditional thread-by-subject method and rely exclusively on the newer thread-by-references model; if Ink Spot CE discards its headers, it doesn't use any reference tags, and these other news clients don't see the threads in the right place.
- Fixed a rather serious bug in "reset prefs to defaults" (from the Preferences->Advanced tab) which caused some pretty nasty corruption (especially related to killfiles).
- We've removed the option to check for duplicate articles while downloading. There's no significant performance impact, and we're now relying on the fact that we only have one of each article anyway. Ink Spot CE now always check for duplicates.
- Added colorized text for anything that's quoted in a message. We assume that quoted text begins with either a '>' or ':' character. For the more stoic out there, this option can be disabled.
- Fixed a long-standing problem with References headers where we would refer to the parent of our article, but not the others in the thread. Since storage is now cheap(er), we keep more information.
1.12r2: (Released 9/15/2000)
- We inadvertantly broke the ability to modify or delete posts from the post queue window on PocketPCs in our last release.
- PocketPCs were also unable to un-check the check boxes on the group list.
- The selected server wasn't persistent.
1.12: (Released 8/31/2000)
- Added PocketPC support.
- Used to have a problem when the total number of articles on the server was less than the number of articles to be downloaded (a rare problem indeed).
- The Add to Killfile dialog has been revamped, it's now simpler and more compact.
- If the first article to be downloaded was cancelled, used to skip to the next group.
- Ink Spot (if not the whole PDA) used to crash if you didn't specify any search terms in the Find dialog.
1.10: (Released 4/19/2000)
- The article view can now be scrolled using the arrow keys.
- When you moved the button bar below the menu bar, and quit and re-executed, the bar wasn't visible.
- Added NTLM (SPA) support.
- Created a build specially for PsPC's running 2.11 and above.
- When an email address was entered by hand (when sending a post via email) it wasn't being put into the pop-up list for next time.
- PsPC's had problems with the thumb of the scroll bar being in the wrong place.
- Users were able to toggle the "server requires an extra login" box even when there were no servers.
- The button bars were in weird places after a clean install.
- Crashed when you went into Prefs with no groups after a clean install.
- Crashed when deleting the last server in the prefs.
- Crashed when pressing the Add button in the Server prefs with no servers.
1.08: (Released 12/26/1999)
- Added the ability to change font types and sizes on all views.
- Purge wasn't correctly clearing the message counts in all situations.
- Imported articles are no longer mistaken for downloaded articles if you have done both in one session.
- Deleting the last queued post didn't always automatically compact the posts database.
- When saving articles, the default file name is now the article's subject.
- Progress bars occasionally acted strangely, not resetting to the beginning when appropriate.
- Changing the "use threading" preference from the article view didn't rethread the thread list appropriately.
- Added the ability to move the tabs to the right side of the screen.
- The text hilited by the "Find" command was incorrect when "Show Headers" was turned on.
- Fixed a bug in the email-sending mechanism that would strand articles in the Outbox.
- User's return email address (when sending email) now comes from the preferences in the Outbox rather than Ink Spot CE. (This does not apply to posting.)
- Added the ability to select which Outbox email transport will be used to send email.
- Deleting articles from the thread view will no longer leave the thread view blank until Ink Spot CE was restarted.
- Fixed "find again", which wasn't searching in headers
- Improved article view focus for PsPCs.
1.06: (Released 10/20/1999)
- Removed some development debugging code; downloading is slightly faster, and users who downloaded an incredible volume of articles no longer get "overran ptrmap size" errors.
- Fixed a problem with small MTU buffers and downloading.
- Fixed connecting to news servers by IP address for older CE 2.x devices.
1.04: (Released 5/26/1999)
- LP-Ethernet cards caused 628 errors erroneously.
- If an error occurred while dialing RAS, the connection was not properly torn down.
- Reading internet data was improperly buffered. It was possible that machines with small MTUs would chew up the data as it came in, throwing off the state machine.
- The Article and Thread view prefs have been consolidated into one prefs view.
- Added options to move the tabs to the side or bottom.
- The count of posts in the queue was improperly maintained.
- Deleting the last post from the post queue no longer returns to the queue window.
- Deleting all articles in all groups would cause the posts that are queued to be deleted.
- Auto-remove CRs has been added to the article view menu.
- Changing article prefs (while on the article view) when there's no current article caused minor problems.
- Adding a group to the group view now counts the articles in that group as it is added instead of assuming 0.
- Sped up downloading by streamlining some unicode/ascii conversions.
- When deleting articles, the count sometimes showed "4/1" (or similarly broken numbers).
- Purging databases wasn't properly disposing the thread list
- Added a workaround for "does not exist on server" (when the currently pointed-to article has expired).
- Sped up skipping of large articles by estimating size from the "Lines" header (if it exists).
- Some other minor bugfixes.
1.02: (Released 4/14/1999)
- Added GDBMce support; removed built-in CE database support. The new databases don't shrink when you delete articles; to reclaim the space, users now have to either delete all articles (which should delete and recreate the databases) or select "Compact" from the "database management" tab in the prefs. The database is about 20% faster than the CE implementation.
- Marking articles read/unread didn't always update the count on the group view
- Removed 30k maximum article size. Now we're only limited by the amount of free RAM.
- Improved response while aborting download in progress
- Improved RAS password usage, which should remove some 'RAS error 628' problems
- Sped up downloading significantly
- More verbose while skipping large articles
- Added database management tab in the prefs box
- Added support to store databases on any store
- Old CE databases are deleted by the installer
- Fixed deleting of a newsgroup
- Sped up preparsing of large articles to view them by about 5000%
- Fixed cosmetic bug ("Deleting articles in group xxx (4/1)") in deletion code that showed the wrong index
- Fixed a free of NULL if the user connects to just post articles
- Some menu items were still showing control key equivalents on PSPCs
- Added gdbm version string to server debugging tab of prefs
- Added checks for the 4 megabyte internal store file limit imposed by Windows CE
- Fixed progress bar related functions to simulate user activity to prevent the PDA from going to sleep immediately after finishing them
- Moved databases into "\Ink Spot CE News" on whatever store is selected
- Fixed errors with ISCE no longer downloading news under specific conditions
- The currently threaded group is now selected when returning to the group view
1.01: (Released 3/17/1999)
- Added "Registered to:" to about box
- Added a 30k limit to article size. We're moving away from CE Databases, which will remove this restriction, and plan to be there within two releases.
- Login credentials are now server-specific.
- Removed some unnecessary registry keys.
- Fixed uninstall routine to properly remove registry keys and databases (user may choose not to do this).
- Fixed problems with text being munged when the user searches for certain characters.
- Reduced the number of situations where the thread list is rebuilt.
- Added the ability to cancel the quick-setup wizard from its first screen.
- Fixed a memory management problem that caused threading to hang (rarely)
- Now checks to make sure the user doesn't have the maximum number of articles for every group before connection (to avoid connecting but not downloading anything)
1.0r2: (Released 1/15/1999)
- Registering Ink Spot CE now reliably saves the registration string (Oops!).
1.0: (Released 1/12/1999)
- Choosing an Email recipient for the first time no longer produces bogus "tried to free null" messages.
- Some menu items have been shortened for PSPCs.
- Added an mbox format import.
- Deleting databases and registry entries no longer causes (unseen) errors.
- Date on sent email fixed again. We got it right this time.
- If the easy post view has no subject, the subject field will be automatically selected after the error is shown.
- "Abandon prefs changes" now obeys the "disable all confirmations" preference.
- PSPC: unless the user opened 'Options' when saving, error 1222 appeared, and has been fixed.
- Showing all headers now builds the headers in the article view area.
- Download newest and oldest calculates where to begin correctly. It was off by one occasionally.
- Added tool tips for buttons.
- An extra nonprintable character was inadvertently left on the end of downloaded headers, and has been fixed.
- Saving an article as a text file also saves the headers.
- Auto-remove CRs now stops if it detects the start of a signature ("-- ").
- An additional alias has been added to the start menu.
- Added a Quick Setup assistant to help first-time users get up and running quickly.
- Added new graphics for buttons.
- Fixed a signed/unsigned bug which would have caused Ink Spot CE to download all of the articles in a group if the user decreased the number of articles to download below the number of articles currently stored in that group.
- Turning on and off "Server requires an extra login" should show and hide the options that are dependant on that feature.
1.0rc1: (Released 01/28/1999)
- Second public release. This version will expire around the 14th of February, 1999.
- Cleaned up downloading code, which generated a significant improvement in download speed.
- Fixed bugs that caused various errors if Ink Spot CE was not yet set up fully and the user tried to connect.
- Added verification around abandoning prefs changes.
- Made group actions all use check boxes (delete group had been using the selected group in the list).
- Made connection error strings more user-friendly, and removed some of the error strings which were only for debugging.
- Renamed "Message" tab to "Article" for consistency.
- Fixed broken error checking on easy post view (for empty headers, emailing, posting, et al.)
- Fixed problems with post queue menus, post queue disappearing, and such.
- Fixed bug which caused some URLs to be displayed with trailing '>' characters.
- Added initial support to rewrite mailto: links.
- Fixed posting routine: wasn't properly deleting posts.
- Group view display of how many posts are queued wasn't being updated properly in some circumstances.
- Posts made with the (default) easy post view had an extra return at the end of the header area, which improperly exposed some headers after posting.
- Changed default signature to reflect our new domain name.
- Easy post view now automatically removes illegal space characters from the newsgroups line, instead of telling the user to fix them.
- Easy post view was unable to email properly.
- Post queue: editing one post would occasionally wind up with the contents of another post.
- Added "download newest" feature.
1.0rc0: (Released 01/07/1999)
- First public release. This version is not disabled in any way, and will expire in early February; the final release version will cost $25, registered via Kagi, and will allow users to download news 25 times before expiring (just as our Newton version does).