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2.6 Support, Contacting the Author, Reporting Bugs, Contributing Code

There are numerous reasons why you might wish to establish contact with me, the author of MsgEd TE.

  1. You have decided to use MsgEd TE on a regular basis. In this case, please do send me an e-mail at the address listed below. How much time I will spend on developing MsgEd TE in the future will heavily depend on the number of mails I receive from users that tell me that they do use MsgEd TE.
  2. You have a general questions on how to configure or on how to use a certain feature of MsgEd TE. In other words, you need support. In this case, you’d best post your question to one of the following echos:
    MSGED_ECHO

    The international MsgEd conference. English is the preferred language here.

    OS2BBS.GER

    This German echo covers OS/2 Fidonet software. I monitor it regularly.

    OS2NET.BBS.GER

    The equivalent of OS2.BBS.GER in the German OS/2 net. I monitor it regularly.

    If you do not have access to any of these echos, you may of course also contact me via netmail or e-mail at the addresses listed below.

  3. You want to report a bug. There are two sorts of bugs:
    1. Normal bugs. You think that a certain function of MsgEd TE does not work as expected, e.g. it is producing garbage, or doing strange things, or similar. In this case, either post to the echos listed above, or contact me via netmail. Please do supply all information that is necessary to understand your problem.
    2. Fatal bugs. A fatal bug occurs if MsgEd TE crashes. Depending on your operating system, the symptom might be a core dump, or a SYS 3175, or a general protection fault, or a system lockup, or a spontaneous reboot. I do consider a crash untolerable. No matter how stupid things you do, you should not be able to crash MsgEd TE.

      If you are running the precompiled Linux binary, reporting a fatal bug is exceptionally easy. If you experience a crash, simply send me the core file that has been generated. You do not need to try to reproduce it or write extensive descriptions. Simply send the core file, and in most circumstances I will be able to fix the problem.

      If you are running any other binary version (like OS/2, DOS, Windows), you will not get a core file on a crash. (On OS/2, you can write me a mail and ask me for sending you a debugging executable. This will require the EMX runtime, but generate core files just like the Unix version does. On DOS and windows, you do not have this option). Write down as much information as you can, try to find a way to reproduce the crash and contact me at the addresses below.

  4. You want to contribute to MsgEd TE. If you are a programmer and have fixed a problem in MsgEd TE on your own, please submit your changes to me. The preferred way for doing so is to send me a difference file in GNU diff format. Your work will be highly appreceated and honored in an appropriate place. If you want to regularly work on MsgEd TE, we also have a CVS server online that you can have access to if you like.

    If you want to write a new feature for MsgEd TE, please contact me beforehand to avoid that we do duplicate work. Again, I will appreciate and honor eny efforts done by you. Please note that for writing a MsgEd TE enhancement, you should be familiar with C. Also, MsgEd TE uses a special indentaion style throughout the source code, that I would like you to adhere to.

So here are my addresses if you want to get in contact with me:


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