Subj : Top date?
To   : William McBrine
From : Jim Hanoian
Date : Mon Feb 05 2001 07:28 am

-=> William McBrine wrote to Jim Hanoian <=-

 JH> The packet list shows the month, day, time on each packet
 JH> except the top one... which shows month, day, year.

 JH> When I re-stamp the top packet, it shows correctly.

 WM> The algorithm is, if the packet is older than about 6 months
 WM> (15,000,000 seconds, to be exact), it prints the year; if
 WM> newer, it prints the time. I copied this from the behavior of
 WM> the "ls" command in Unix (basically the equivalent to "dir" in
 WM> DOS). If you remember, back in MultiMail < 0.26, it printed
 WM> both the year and time, but I thought this took up too much
 WM> space.

Agree about space waste.


 WM> Anyway, where it gets weird is if a packet is timestamped in
 WM> the _future_; in that case, it again prints the year instead of
 WM> the time. (I'm no longer sure why I did that, though I believe
 WM> it also copies ls. I think there's another reason, too...)

This is the culprit <g>.  I can understand the thinking, but it
looks too much like a "bug".


 WM> Of course, such packets shouldn't exist; but they may, if
 WM> you're getting packets from another time zone, or if the zmodem
 WM> transfer doesn't handle time zones properly, or both. I used to
 WM> get future-dated packets from Fonix, and I get packets dated
 WM> way behind from Comm Port. That's why, when I got some requests
 WM> for this date-preserving behavior, I used to say that I
 WM> actually _counted_ on MultiMail changing the date, to get rid
 WM> of those screwy dates. :-) But I've come to believe that the
 WM> Touch function is a better approach.

You're right... the packet is from Fonix, and shows as being "future" 
because of the time zone difference.  MTel32 is the comm program I'm 
using, and I don't think it can adjust for the time zone.  This would
be all moot if it did, ya know?

Touch does fix the time zone hassles between England, Texas, and Maine <g>.


.... Jim Hanoian, Augusta, Maine, USA
.... The dog and I will do the dishes.  He'll wash, and I'll dry.
--- MultiMail/MS-DOS v0.38
 * Origin: COMM Port OS/2 juge.com 204.89.247.1 (281) 980-9671 (1:106/2000)

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