                          MsgMerge Documentation
                         ------------------------

  MsgMerge was written by Mike Bowler (CIS 74040,1540) and has been released
as freeware.  This program may be freely distributed but may not be sold
without the written permission of the author.  MsgMerge has been extensively
tested with message files created by Golden Commpass** but has not been tested
with any other navigation programs.

  MsgMerge allows the user to merge one or more CompuServe message files into
one file.  As the files are merged, extraneous information is removed from the
individual messages to decrease the message size.

  The following messages are completely removed from the archives:
- Message headers ( ie 'Welcome to OS2DF1...' )
- Duplicate messages

  The following portions of messages are removed:
- Reply comments i.e.'There is 1 Reply' or 'There are 2 Replies'
- Forum prompts i.e. 'Forum !' or ' !'
- Whitespace at the end of the message

  The first filename specified on the command line will be the output file.
MsgMerge will create a new file with this filename and will abort if this file
already exists.  All the remaining filenames specified on the command line are
input files.

Switch          Description
-------------   -----------------------------------------------------------
overwrite       Overwrite the output file if it already exists
sort:thread     Sort by thread topic.  (This is the default)
sort:number     Sort by message number.
?               Display the help screen
verbose         Display all diagnostic messages
log:"filename"  Redirect all the output to the file specified in "filename".
                The default is to send all output to the screen.
find:"string"   Filter all the messages according to the string specified.
                Only messages that contain the specified string will be placed
                in the output file.  If a find string is not specified then
                all messages will be placed in the output file.

Example
--------
  msgmerge.exe /find:"notebook" /log:"new.log" new.msg os2df1.msg os2df1.old

This will search through the files 'os2df1.msg' and 'os2df1.old' for the
string 'notebook'.  Any messages that match this string will be placed in the
file 'new.msg' and all status messages from msgmerge will be placed in the
file 'new.log'.

**Golden Commpass is a trademark of Creative Systems Programming Corporation
