Ready for volunteers

[Shannen Durphey]

Ok, I think we've got something to work with here.  First, I've trimmed the
gmecm archives and posted them on /incoming as "proofread_these_archives.zip." 
Second, I've hacked the heck out of Jay's very nicely written and commented file
and made a couple of utilities to help in checking the "cut-uppedness".  These
utilities should count the number of messages in an archive file.  There are two
versions.  Oldcount is intended to be used on the big html files downloadable
from the gmecm page.  Newcount is for the files that are in proofread.  

I'm hoping this works, and that it takes very little time.  The list of
volunteers is big enough so that everyone can choose one or two archives, invest
anything from 10 minutes to 1/2 hour max of "babysitting time" into it, and be
done checking one of the most time consuming portions.

Heres the way to do it.  Pick an archive from the proofread file, download the
matching archive from the gmecm page.  Run oldcount on the old file, get the
total number of messsages in it.  Run newcount on the new file, see if the total
number of messages match.  If they don't match, take a quick scan through the
two archives and look for missing parts.  Send me a note mentioning which
archives don't match.  (I'm probably going to see 21 messages saying "no match
in archive number x" with the exception being archive number 8 which I have done
most of my testing on.)  

Even if the count matches, take a few minutes to scan through the new archives. 
Maybe look through the old, too.  Don't be afraid to read a few threads.  That's
how you notice there's stuff missing.  If you happen to see any html, or
attachments, or those annoying lines added by the 'net mail services then delete
'em or let me know which file they are in (and where), or both.  Or neither, if
you want.  I haven't looked at any archives later than number 8, and I only
looked through the earlier ones only briefly.  If you get an archive that's
really badly hacked up, please let me know.  After there's a "basic" set of
archive files we can sit around and discuss the other things, like a reply that
includes copies of fifteen previous messages or deleting one-liners that don't
contain any information (there go most of my messages.)

The format for using the counters is:  newcounter [filename.ext] and oldcounter
[filename.ext] .  Be warned that these two programs run from a command line in a
dos box under minnows.  I dunno if they'll run in anything newer than minnows
98, so no promises there.  I can send the source to anyone who wants it,
provided they excuse my horrible coding and commenting (about 4 hrs sleep since
9:00am on Tuesday ) and that they send a note to Jay telling him not to release
any more source code to a butcher like myself.


For the curious, the biggest PITA has been with inconsistent formatting in the
archives.  The date, from, and subject lines all play musical chairs between
files and even within any one file.  And they may change again in files after
number 8.  I have taken a liberty (which I can un-take) and copied the date the
message was recieved by the server into the message date field of the new file. 
When using an email browser it will be easier to sort the messages by date if
the year in the date field agrees with the year the message was sent. : ) 
Thanks to Jay also for suggesting that option.  

  The program oldcount looks at the beginning line of each header (from
owner-gmecm) to determine when a new message begins.  Newcount looks for the
"End---" at the end of each message to determine its count.  Both of these
programs are zipped into the proofread file.


Thanks in advance.  I'm crossing my fingers that all goes well. 

Shannen

P.S.  I was unable to include archive number 12 as the diy server tells me it's
33Mb large!  That doesn't sound right and I'm wondering anyone has a "real" copy
they could send to me?
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