POSTINO PRO is a program developed in Perl to create and mantain HTML archives of e-mail messages.
The features that this program offers are:
Have fun with it.
This program is distributed under the terms of Larry Wall's Artistic License.
POSTINO PRO
Version (Date) | Changes |
1.30 (20/11/96) |
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1.24x (06/11/96) |
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Version (Date) | Changes |
1.24 (03/10/96) |
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1.2 (09/09/96) |
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1.11 (04/09/96) |
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1.0 (12/08/96) |
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readme.txt | a file that wants to be read... |
HTML/example.html | example of introductory page for an archive |
HTML/*.gif | sample images that you can use with POSTINO |
DOCS/index.html | POSTINO PRO Reference (this file) |
DOCS/registry.html | POSTINO PRO Registry entries |
DOCS/license.html | Larry Wall's Artistic License |
BIN/postino_pro.pl | the Browser program |
BIN/postino_adm.pl | the Administration program |
BIN/install.bat | the Install program |
...and
http://www.divinf.it/cgi-bin/postino_pro.plYou can digit this URL in your Web browser's location field (and then probably bookmark it), or you can go there from an HTML page with an hyperlink like this:
<A HREF="http://www.divinf.it/cgi-bin/postino_pro.pl">POSTINO<A>which will let you browse the Default archive (if one was specified). If you instead want to access a specific archive, you can add a parameter "archive" to the link, like:
<A HREF="http://www.divinf.it/cgi-bin/postino_pro.pl?archive=archivename">POSTINO<A>Where archivename is the name of the archive you want to access. Alternatively, you can write a form like this:
<FORM ACTION="http://www.divinf.it/cgi-bin/postino_pro.pl"> <INPUT TYPE=hidden NAME=archive VALUE="archivename"> <INPUT TYPE=submit VALUE=POSTINO> </FORM>The first line after the title of each page generated by the Browser program will display the available commands. The three main functions are:
In Thread mode only the first message of each thread (eg. topic) is shown; the presences of replies to a topic is indicated by an icon before a messages data. This icon is usually a plus sign that you can click to expand the thread (eg. see all the replies to a topic); once expanded, the plus on the icon should becomes a minus; click it again to collapse the thread. You can have only one thread expanded at a time.
In Unthread mode, instead, all the messages are shown at the same level with the selected sort option.
With a sort by Date option, each page will show the messages in a week. You can then browse by changing the Year, the Month and the Week that you want to see, or you can choose to Group by days instead of weeks.
With the sort options by Subject or by Sender, the archive is sorted alphabetically, and each page will show all the messages with the same first letter on the choosen field. Click on a letter on the Letters line to choose which page you want to see.
The text is made up of keywords, eventually combined with AND/OR and parentesis operators to build complex queries.
Examples:
You can eventually select a name from the senders list and restrict the search only to the messages posted by that user. You can also choose a sender and leave the text blank to see all the messages posted by that user.
When you have filled the form, press the Search button to start the search. From the results page you can click on a message's subject to display it, as in Viewing a message.
http://www.divinf.it/adm-bin/postino_adm.plYou can digit this URL in your Web browser's location field (and then probably bookmark it), or you can go there from an HTML page with an hyperlink like this:
<A HREF="http://www.divinf.it/adm-bin/postino_adm.pl">Administer POSTINO<A>If your site is publically accessible through the Internet, you would probably place the program in a password-protected CGI directory, otherwise everyone will be able to change your configuration and delete the archive you created.
Once you have called the program, you will see a list of the
Archives defined; you can select an archive from this list and
then click one of the buttons on the right to modify
its configuration, set it as the default archive,
update its content,
delete it and finally modify
manually the messages data.
If you never created an archive, however, the list will be empty.
Then you have a New Archive field in which you can enter the name
of a new archive and click the Create button
to create a new archive.
Then again, there is the name of the Default Archive
that you can choose by clicking on the Configure POSTINO button.
Default: the name of the archive just created Examples: Perl - Win32 - Archive MY E-MAIL ARCHIVE
Default: none Examples: d:/users/dada/mail c:/mailbox/dada
Default: *.msg Examples: 1996*.msg *.*
Default: none Examples: d:/http/postino/index.html d:/www/mailarchives/privatemail/info.htmThe HTML File should contain the following HTML comments:
<!--POSTINO_LAST_UPDATE-->...<!--POSTINO_LAST_UPDATE_END--> <!--POSTINO_MESSAGES-->...<!--POSTINO_MESSAGES_END-->The text between the comments (...) will be replaced with the actual values: respectively, the date/time in which the archive was last updated and the number of messages it contains.
A. Calpini > Aldo Calpini A.Calpini > Aldo Calpini Calpini Aldo > Aldo Calpini dada > Aldo Calpini dada@divinf.it > Aldo Calpiniand so on.
Default: none Examples: d:/users/dada/postino.aliases d:/www/mailarchives/privatemail/aliases.txt
Default: none Examples: Postino DSN=Postino;UID=myname;PWD=mypassword
Default: none Examples: Perl-Win32 privatemail
Field | Type | Use |
ID | Counter | The identification number of the message |
ParentID | Number (integer) | Used to thread messages |
Year | Number (integer) | The year number |
Month | Number (integer) | The month number |
Day | Number (integer) | The day of the month number |
Hour | Number (integer) | The hour |
Minutes | Number (integer) | The minutes |
Subject | Text (255 chars) | The subject of the message |
Name | Text (255 chars) | The name of the sender |
Text (255 chars) | The e-mail address of the sender | |
File | Text (255 chars) | The name of the file (in the message directory) that contains the body of the message |
Default: /postino/expand.gif Examples: http://www.divinf.it/perl-win32/expand.gif http://www.name-at-will.com/icons/plus_sign.gif
Default: /postino/collapse.gif Examples: http://www.divinf.it/perl-win32/collapse.gif http://www.name-at-will.com/icons/minus_sign.gif
Default: /postino/void.gif Examples: http://www.divinf.it/perl-win32/void.gif http://www.name-at-will.com/icons/nothing.gif
Default: <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFF0"> Examples: <BODY> <BODY BACKGROUND="email.gif" LINK=red>
Default: <FONT COLOR=red>POSTINO</FONT> <FONT COLOR=indianred>PRO</FONT> Examples: <FONT SIZE=+2>MY E-MAIL ARCHIVE <IMG SRC="http://www.name-at-will.com/images/email_big.gif">Note that this title will be preceded by the HTML Title Font you specify; POSTINO will try to close the HTML tags left open; this applies actually on FONT, B, I, U, TT, PRE and BLINK tags.
Default: <FONT FACE=Arial SIZE=3><B> Examples: <I> <FONT COLOR=green SIZE=7><B><U>Note that POSTINO will try to close the HTML tags left open; this applies actually on FONT, B, I, U, TT, PRE and BLINK tags.
Default: <FONT FACE=Arial SIZE=2> Examples: <FONT> <FONT COLOR=yellow><I>Note that POSTINO will try to close the HTML tags left open; this applies actually on FONT, B, I, U, TT, PRE and BLINK tags.
When updating the archive, the files matching the given specification are searched for in the given directory and, if a corresponding record is not found in the database, they are added to it. In fact, when you have just created an archive you would probably perform an Update to insert the records in the database.
This is the workflow of the Update procedure:
When the program is adding records, you will sometimes get warning messages about unrecognized timezones; this is due mainly to the presence of non-standard or meaningless timezone information that comes from some mail server. If you encounter such a case, I please you to inform me via e-mail so I can patch the program to recognize it. That's why there is an Update timezones option.
Trouble: | I get an error "Can't locate Win32::Registry..." when running the install program. |
Reason: | You either don't have Perl for Win32 version 5.001m build 110 installed, or it is not installed properly. See Obtaining the latest versions and go to the Perl for Win32 Home Page for info on how to downlad and install Perl. |
Trouble: | I get an error "Can't locate Win32::ODBC..." when running the install program. |
Reason: | You either don't have the Win32::ODBC Perl extension installed, or it is not installed properly. See Obtaining the latest versions and go to the Win32::ODBC Home Page for info on how to downlad and install Win32::ODBC. |
Trouble: | I get "Error opening ODBC connection" when running POSTINO PRO. |
Reason: | You either misspelled something regarding the ODBC connection in the archive's settings or the ODBC DSN is not accessible from your Web Browser. See the Obtaining the latest versions and go to the Win32::ODBC Home Page for info on how to setup a correct DSN. |
Trouble: | I get an URL not found error when clicking any link of POSTINO PRO and/or POSTINO ADM. |
Reason: | Your Web Server doesn't pass the correct "SCRIPT_NAME" environment variable to the script. This could happen for example if you call the script with PerlIS.dll on a server like Alibaba, that supports PerlIS.dll as an ISAPI alias and gives the script name as an extra-path information. To solve the problem, go in the Registry Editor and set the URL and/or AdminURL values in the POSTINO registry key to the complete URL you use to call them. See also Registry Entries for more info on the registry structure of POSTINO. |