probs with TRN Files

Hello everyone,

two of my players use an AOL E-Mail account. The Use WinPlan 3.5 SHAREWARE
to play the games. Everytime they send there TRN File via AOL E-Mail the
file has errors.

CheckTrn.log:
----------------------------------------------------------------
*** Searching for commands for The Solar Federation ***
The time stamp on the file reads.
02-17-2007
17:33:33
ERROR : PLAYER1.TRN has been garbled. . . will try to fix. . .
xmodem or ymodem may be the cause

Unable to fix. . .
ERROR : Data transmission error (or HACKER WARNING!)
using Xmodem and Ymodem can cause this error
because they change the size of the .TRN file
and fill the file with garbage
(error was in PLAYER1.TRN )
PLAYER:= 1 REG:=DOSREGISTED
**** ERRORS FOUND!!! ****
ErrorLevel = 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------

I've written a script to transmit the TRN File online. Then it is ok!
Can anyone tell me where the problem is ?

Jim Bob

Lukas Heyen wrote:
> two of my players use an AOL E-Mail account. The Use WinPlan 3.5 SHAREWARE
> to play the games. Everytime they send there TRN File via AOL E-Mail the
> file has errors.
[...]
> I've written a script to transmit the TRN File online. Then it is ok!
> Can anyone tell me where the problem is ?

The problem is, obviously, in one of the two email clients.

Check the "source code" of the mail they sent you. It should contain the
turn file encoded as base64, ideally as MIME type
application/octet-stream. Some mail programs don't know what encoding to
use for turn files, and encode it as quoted-printable, which means they
come out garbled. Some ancient versions of OE did that, if I recall
correctly. I also know of a library retrieval system which registers
".trn" as text files in the Windows registry and therefore effectively
explicitly tells all mail programs to use QP, not base64.

If they cannot instruct their mail program to send turn files in binary,
using online (HTTP) turn file submission is a good idea. Another
workaround is to accept zipped turn files, simply because more people
agree what a .zip is than what a .trn is.


Stefan