This is the README for Phone.3.5.NIHS.b.tar.gz [Download] [Browse] [Up]
Phone Version 3.5
=================
Phone is a personal information manager used to keep addresses, or generic
information in a nice, clean format. It supports NeXT .address files,
flat files, user defined font, and background color, automatic phone
dialing (through modem and speaker), email window opening, and quite a
few other cool things.
Thanks go to our beta testers, Helmut Heller, Steve Hayman and Hanspeter
Schaub for their unrelenting testing and excellent suggestions. Thanks go to
our users for their support and suggestions. Thanks go to Todd Thomas for
his programming efforts.
You can get it from:
ftp://ftp.cs.orst.edn/pub/next/submissions/Phone-3.5.mihs.tar.gz
ftp://sonata.cc.purdue.edu/pub/next/submissions/Phone-3.5.mihs.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.hasc.ca/pub/next/Phone-3.5.mihs.tar.gz
- darcy
New for 3.5
-----------
(1) Main browser now updates when the main window changes, or a record is
added or removed.
(2) Don't allow the user to choose encryption when using .address files.
(3) Can now change the color of text object even if it is first responder.
(4) NS Help.
(5) Double clicking on documents that are already open only make them the
main window (without opening a second copy as before).
(6) Dropped in the newest MiscString classes (MiscKit 1.5.0). I didn't
replace MiscDictionary since nothing had changed and someone as HASC
added some custom methods.
(7) Umlat problem tracked down and fixed. (Was in the MiscKit).
(8) Browser used to screw up what the .address phonebooks thought was
the current document and display the wrong one when you went to modify or
delete an entry.
(9) When you log off and you have unsaved phonebooks, Phone now asks if
you would like to save them.
(10) Direct editing of plain text files. Preference to disallow it.
(11) Added many services. Check out Tools->Services and Services->Phone.
(12) Grayed the encryption button on .address phonebooks.
(13) Now can export .address files to plain text. See Phonebooks->Export.
(14) Next/Previous buttons will now repeat (if set in preferences).
(15) Command-m to modify is now a preference (no by default)
(16) You can use alt-up/down to scroll the main text view. I suppose I should
allow the editing text object to do the same thing.
(17) New phonebooks will no longer keep incrementing themselves right off the
screen.
(18) Phone will now autosave all unsaved phonebooks (if set in preferences).
(19) New and different Preferences panel.
(20) Browser now grays out any letters that have no entries.
(21) Many other minor bug fixes.
(22) Changed the modify key equivalent in preferences to take effect
immediately.
(23) If "Modify" is clicked and current record is being edited (direct edit)
the record will first be reformated. Same with saving, viewing plain
text.
(24) Bug with "Dial using Modem" on the preferences panel was fixed.
(25) A couple of serial ports added for intel users who may have more than
two ports.
Phone Version 3.4
=================
Several powerful features were added in version 3.4, with more planned
for 3.5. Version 3.4 features a rewrite of the recognition engine to use
regular expressions. This means that the user can customize Phone to
recognize patterns and hook them onto service menu items. For instance,
support for WWW was added to version 3.4 by writing adding these two
lines to "pattern.tbl" and "action.tbl" underneath the .app directory:
# action:path-to-bitmap:what-kind-of-action:additional-info
url:url.bmp:service:SpiderWoman/Open URL
...
/* pattern.tbl: URL (ie. http://www.next.com, or ftp://hasc.ca/pub/next) */
"[^ \t]+:/[/]?[^ \t]+" = "url";
So, a user can now add their own data types, and what should happen
when their associated button is clicked. For example, when the URL
pattern is found by Phone, it will insert a button, using "url.bmp" to
draw the button (a .bmp is just an ASCII file). When the button is
clicked, the action table instructs phone to call the service menu under
SpiderWoman/Open URL. If the user prefers OmniWeb, they can easily
add their own action.tbl under Phone's preferences. They can then edit
this action.tbl (with their favorite text editor) and have this
action.tbl contain the line:
url:url.bmp:service:OmniWeb/Open URL
This will override the default action for the "url" pattern.
Similarly, users can override the default "mail" action:
email:email.bmp:mail:Mail
with:
email:email.bmp:mail:Eloquent
Which will cause Eloquent to be used when you click on a mail icon. The
format of the "bmp" files is simple, and is used to allow the user to
pick their own color schemes dynamically (by command-clicking on the
icon in question).
A .bmp file is 14 columns by 11 rows. For example, the handset icon used
to hook onto phone numbers looks like this:
_________lddb_
________lddddb
_______ldldddb
______lddbldb_
_____lddb__b__
____lddb______
___lddb_______
___lddb_______
___ldddb______
___lldb_______
____lb________
The codes mean:
'_' or ' ': transparent
'l' : computer-calculated light shade
'd' : dark shade chosen by user
'b' : black
Feel free to download Phone and use it. It's a shareware program, and
costs a measly ten bucks. It's well worth it! Phone contains, by
default, patterns to recognize North American phone numbers, and some
European phone numbers. The German patterns are commented out, as they
will also recognize zip codes as phone numbers (because they can both be
five digits). If you need German phone numbers recognized, just
uncomment the patterns.
Other new features in 3.4
=========================
(1) Fixed a bug which would cause the program to crash when reverting an
UNTITLED document.
(2) Dynamic searching. Searches can narrow each time you type an
additional character.
(3) Record tracking in title bar [current record / total records].
(4) Cleared up the confusing "Modify" button.
(5) Fixed the wacky "Confirm" panel.
(6) Preserving last open record for reference on re-open.
(7) New Recognition Engine -- 5x faster, and user extensible via
regular expressions!!!
(8) Minor bug fixes.
(9) Browser, like in Jargon
(10) Fixed "View Plain Text"
(11) Command-click an icon to change its color.
(12) To debug regular expressions, do dwrite Phone DebugRegex YES
(13) Displaying "Info" in .address files
###
### Revision History
###
NEW IN VERSION 3.3
==================
The latest Phone.app is ready for public consumption. Phone is a cheap (but
neat) shareware address book manager. There's some pretty powerful
features in it, but I'm just going to list the "diff" from the last
version here.
(1) Compiled 4xfat (not tested on HP or SPARC)
(2) Extensive use of HKEmacsText for emacs keybindings everywhere.
(3) Hayes modem dialing support. Hurray. Thank Helmut for bugging me
until I did it ;-). Helmut is in Germany, where he was unable to
do tone dialing, so this should work fine for other Germans, if
not Eurpopean phone systems in general.
(4) Service advertising for the full entry... so if you want to put
something into Mail.app, you just need jump right to the services
menu without having to do a select-all first.
(5) Fixed pasteboard bug (the Text object graphics handling workarounds
I wrote were placing NULL characters on the pasteboard for graphics,
and most other apps don't like that...)
(6) Worked around a Text object bug in which it decides the first
paragraph starts at (-1) instead of (0).
(7) Added UUCP locking to modem dialing.
(8) Added font setting... you can change the font family used to display
addresses on a per-window basis through the font panel.... finally.
If you have "Gill" try using Gill-Italic. It looks very nice.
(9) Fixed a bug in which the color didn't properly reset under revert.
That's it. Try em out. Buy 'em if you like 'em. Phone is $10.00
and you'll not find a better deal under NEXTSTEP. Well, except for the
GNU compiler and debugger. And Carl Edman + friends' port of Emacs.
Still, this is a good deal :-).
NEW IN VERSION 3.1d
===================
This is the latest (3.1-beta) version of Phone.app. There's quite a few fixes
implemented, along with some suggestions. There's more to come later... the
most notable improvements include:
3.1d:
- Fixed the MiscKit stuff that wasn't handling 8bit characters properly.
- Also, translates RTF in the address book files to ASCII. You'll lose
any special formatting you've done, but oh well.
3.1c:
- numerous bug fixes
- PDA access (downloading and uploading phonebooks)
- password protection
- faster phone dialing
- dialing prefixes (comma for pause)
- support for NeXT address book files
Feel free to download this. For those of you that don't know, Phone is a neat
little address book manager, which will work on flat-file plain text, of
near-arbitrary format ;-). It's shareware, with a $10 fee. The Sharp Wizard
downloading bundle is an extra $20.00. There's also an API available if you
want to implement your own PDA downloading/uploading bundle.
Contact me for info about the API. I'll only give the API out to registered
users, so expect that response if you've not registered the app ;-).
- darcy
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.