Hey Nightfox!

On Wed, Apr 08 2026 19:32:05 -0500, you wrote:

fe5c could be a hexadecimal number, which is 65116 in decimal,
though after trying to do a few calculations, I'm still not sure
what that number would represent. I'll need to look into it.

Heh.. I did the same thing, and when I got the same answer, I didn't bother saying anything because I had no idea what it meant, either. I even went so far as searching an AI that did seem to mention it was indeed timezone related.

Then I tried subtracting it from 65536 for whatever reason I don't know (maybe because QWK format stuff still has 16bit limits or something?), ended up with 420. I double checked all of your messages, and didn't see any posted at or near 420 (even a couple hours each way). So, I'm at a loss and am probably way off anyways. ;)

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm, because beating people up is illegal.
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Hey Nightfox!

On Wed, Apr 08 2026 19:34:15 -0500, you wrote:

I actually did ask Claude AI to implement some tracking of last-read pointers, which should be in this latest release. In your .slymail
directory from your home directory, there may now be a file called lastread_<QWKID>.json (where <QWKID> is the QWK ID of the BBS you
got it from). Maybe SlyMail still isn't keeping good track of those
last read mesasge numbers everywhere.

That file is definitely there. At the moment it contains:

{
"2002": 19887,
"2007": 8261
}

I'd imagine it's because I've only accessed two message areas with SlyMail since updating. However, that doesn't seem to be keeping track of the new messages in the QWK packet, or which ones in that QWK packet are actually read. Looks like some totals from the BBS side, maybe by reading MESSAGES.DAT or something similar.

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm, because beating people up is illegal.
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Re: Re: New offline QWK mail
By: Accession to Nightfox on Thu Apr 09 2026 04:58 pm

Then I tried subtracting it from 65536 for whatever reason I don't know (maybe because QWK format stuff still has 16bit limits or something?), ended up with 420. I double checked all of your messages, and didn't see any posted at or near 420 (even a couple hours each way). So, I'm at a loss and am probably way off anyways. ;)

420 looks like the most reasonable number of all of this though, but like you said, I'm still not sure what that would mean. If it's minutes, 420 would be 7 hours, but I'm not sure if that would be applicable (I don't think +7 would be right, and -7 from UTC might be too far west - although I think -7 from UTC is considered to be my time zone accounting for daylight saving time; normally we're -8 here).

Nightfox

Hey Nightfox!

On Wed, Apr 08 2026 19:35:44 -0500, you wrote:

I was thinking "New" and "Unread" would mean the same thing for a
QWK reader - It seems that a BBS would only include messages in the
QWK packet if they're new messages for you (which you haven't read
yet) - but maybe I'm mistaken about that.

Maybe I didn't explain that correctly, or enough. Yes, when you download the QWK packet, all messages are new and unread.

However, if you download a QWK packet, and there are 10 "Msgs" messages in an area, then go into the message area, read 2 out of 10 messages. Then exit the area (or the entire program), "Msgs" would still be 10, and "Unread" would now be 8.

The "New" column is currently only a check mark if there are new messages in any listed area. Once all 10 of those messages are read, I would assume the check mark would disappear.

Just looking at how MultiMail handles this, it looks like the area#, and description is highlighted if there are new messages (bright cyan whereas any areas without new messages are regular cyan; kind of like how SlyEdit does it, I believe). Then, there are only two columns on the right, "Total" which would be the same as your "Msgs" column, and "Unread".

When I go into a different area, read two messages, and back out. "Total" shows 22, "Unread" shows 20, and the entire line stays highlighted. Read messages end up with a star next to them in the message list.

Then, when I read all messages in the area, "Total" stays 22, "Unread" is 0, and the entire line is back to regular cyan (ie: not highlighted any more).

You definitely don't have to copy how MultiMail does this, I'm just giving you a better explanation as to the ideas I was trying to convey.

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm, because beating people up is illegal.
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Hey Nightfox!

On Wed, Apr 08 2026 19:56:10 -0500, you wrote:

I've just pushed an update just now that should fix that issue, so
if you want to pull the latest changes and rebuild, you can try it
out.

"The message was not changed in the editor. Message not posted. Press any key..."

Much better, thank you. ;)

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm, because beating people up is illegal.
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Hey Nightfox!

On Wed, Apr 08 2026 19:56:10 -0500, you wrote:

I've just pushed an update just now that should fix that issue, so
if you want to pull the latest changes and rebuild, you can try it
out.

I've also noticed that the "New" column is updated with no check mark after reading the entire area now. Thumbs up!

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm, because beating people up is illegal.
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Re: Re: New offline QWK mail
By: Accession to Nightfox on Thu Apr 09 2026 05:15 pm

The "New" column is currently only a check mark if there are new messages in any listed area. Once all 10 of those messages are read, I would assume the check mark would disappear.

Just looking at how MultiMail handles this, it looks like the area#, and description is highlighted if there are new messages (bright cyan whereas any areas without new messages are regular cyan; kind of like how SlyEdit does it, I believe). Then, there are only two columns on the right, "Total" which would be the same as your "Msgs" column, and "Unread".

When I go into a different area, read two messages, and back out. "Total" shows 22, "Unread" shows 20, and the entire line stays highlighted. Read messages end up with a star next to them in the message list.

Then, when I read all messages in the area, "Total" stays 22, "Unread" is 0, and the entire line is back to regular cyan (ie: not highlighted any more).

Makes sense. I should be able to implement that or similar in SlyMail.

Nightfox

Re: Re: New offline QWK mail
By: Accession to Nightfox on Thu Apr 09 2026 05:21 pm

"The message was not changed in the editor. Message not posted. Press any key..."

Much better, thank you. ;)

Good to hear that fix is working for you. :)

Nightfox

Re: Re: New offline QWK mail
By: Accession to Nightfox on Thu Apr 09 2026 05:24 pm

I've also noticed that the "New" column is updated with no check mark after reading the entire area now. Thumbs up!

Ah cool, thanks for letting me know.

Nightfox

Hey Nightfox!

On Thu, Apr 09 2026 17:24:23 -0500, you wrote:

420 looks like the most reasonable number of all of this though, but
like you said, I'm still not sure what that would mean. If it's
minutes, 420 would be 7 hours, but I'm not sure if that would be
applicable (I don't think +7 would be right, and -7 from UTC might
be too far west - although I think -7 from UTC is considered to be
my time zone accounting for daylight saving time; normally we're -8
here).

You might be on to something there. ;)

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm, because beating people up is illegal.
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