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 MESSAGES.DAT

 This file contains records with a length of 128 bytes.  There are 3 types
 of these records: (1) Packet Header, (2) Message Header, and (3) Message
 Text.  All unused fields in the records are normally filled with spaces,
 although you will sometimes find the final Message text record will be
 filled with nulls (#0) after the last text.

 Packet Header
   Packet Header - is always the first record in the file and only occurs
   once.  It contains only normal ascii text (limitted to at most 128
   characters) and should always start with "Produced by ".  The remaining
   text normally includes a product name and copyright message.

 Message Header
   A message header immediately preceeds zero or more message text records.
   Each Message header has the following format:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Start | Length | Description
---------+--------+---------------------------------------------------------
      1  |    1   | Message status flag
         |        |  (see below)
      2  |    7   | Message number
         |        |  (ascii left justified)
      9  |    8   | Date (MM-DD-YY)
     17  |    5   | Time (HH:MM)
     22  |   25   | To
         |        |  (left justified space filled - uppercase) (Be sure to
         |        |  check the to field to spot configuration type messages)
     47  |   25   | From
         |        |  (left justified space filled - uppercase)
     72  |   25   | Subject
         |        |  (left justified space filled - uppercase) (a subject
         |        |  starting "NE:" should not be echoed into a network)
     97  |   12   | Password
         |        |  (not really used, leave blank)
    109  |    8   | Message reference number
         |        |  (ascii left justified)
    117  |    6   | Number of blocks
         |        |  (ascii left justified - number of 128 byte blocks
         |        |  including 1 for the message header)
    123  |    1   | Message active                                                                                              U
         |        |  (. or #225 = Active, . or #226 = Inactive)
    124  |    2   | Conference number
         |        |  (Binary Word) (Lo in 124, Hi in 125).
         |        |  Note that some older programs only supported
         |        |  conferences 0 thru 255 and left byte 125 as a "blank"
         |        |  unused field.  I recommend checking the word value and
         |        |  if it is over 8191 to only use the lower (0 thru 255)
         |        |  part of it. I've also seen notes that this field is
         |        |  really a 4 byte LongInt field, although with the above
         |        |  limitation (and 8000 conference seeming sufficient for
         |        |  a while), I documented it this way.
    128  |    1   | Indicates whether the message has a Network
         |        |  tagline or not.  A value of "*" indicates that
         |        |  a network tagline is present, a value of " "
         |        |  indicates there isn't.  Messages sent to readers
         |        |  (non-net-status) generally leave this as always
         |        |  blank since only net utils need this info.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Message Status Flag has the following possibilities:

    `   Comment to sysop, read
    ~   Comment to sysop, unread
    -   Public, read
        Public, unread
    *   Private, read
    +   Private, unread
    ^   Password protected, read
    %   Password protected, unread
    #   Group password, read
    !   Group password, unread
    $   Group password to all



 Message Text Records

   The message text records immediately follow the the message header.
   They contain straight ascii text (lines are normally limitted to 72
   chars/line although you may see longer lines).  Each line is followed by
   a "." or #227 character to mark the end of the line (in place of the
   normal CR/LF that would exist in a straight text file).  The text
   continues consecutavly and text lines do continue across block
   boundaries.  Some systems or readers may have problems with messages
   longer than 99 lines or 199 lines, although more recently this no longer
   seems to be a limit.  The last block should be padded with blanks to
   fill the block, although on input you may find it padded with nulls
   (#0).