About Newton Register
Newton Register lets you pay for a shareware program with a credit
card via electronic mail. Your payment will be sent to the Kagi
Shareware clearing house (or another, if you prefer) and forwarded,
minus a percentage, to the author. If you have PocketMoney (or any
Newton application which supports the Financial Package Posting
Standard), the transaction may be automatically entered into your
records.
Requirements
Register supports but does not require the ScrollingDoPopup extension;
if you have the extension installed, you may try to register any
program installed on your Newton, not merely those programs
pre-configured in Registerıs menu. If you choose a program from
beneath the ³In Your Extras² line, see the caveat below. The
program you are registering gets a chance to react to your
registration; for example, if the program has expired, it might extend
the expiration date.
Paying for a Program
To pay for a program, select it from the ³Program² pop-up menu,
select the price,* and enter your credit card information. Then
select ³Mail² from the envelope button; Register will look up
your name and address and generate the proper form. Double-check the
form, then press the ³Mail² button. *If youıre unsure of the
price, enter ³<² followed by the most youıre willing to pay.
A clearing house which supports this feature (none, as yet) will look
up the proper amount and bill it if itıs less than or equal to the
figure you specified.
Security
Note that Register merely sets up a mail message; the responsibility
for actually executing it is yours. In particular, you may not want
to risk sending your credit card number via email. If demand
warrants, in the future Kagi Shareware may accept PGP encrypted credit
card numbers. The ³normal² encoding method should discourage
casual sniffers, but is not as secure as PGP. Other methods should be
used only for registration companies other than Kagi.
Credit Card Numbers
For security reasons, I donıt let you store your credit card
number. Sorry. But if youıve stored the number somewhere else,
you can enter the entire number (or NetCash certificate) into the
first field.
Caveat
If you try to register one of the programs beneath the ³In Your
Extras² line, if the author has not given Kagi Shareware permission
to collect payments, Kagi will try to email you notification that your
registration did not succeed. Authors interested in receiving checks
from Kagi Shareware should send their mailing address and developer
signature to shareware@kagi.com. For use of this program with
shareware clearing houses other than Kagi Shareware, see below, under
³For Programmers.²
Cash and Checks
Kagi Shareware can accept checks in US dollars, or cash in many major
currencies. But please donıt send cash or checks until you have
received a registration number which must accompany your payment. To
do this, select the program you wish to pay for, and send an email
message with the payment method set to ³Query². You will
receive an email reply with further instructions.
For Programmers
ProtoMoneyButton
If you want to add a registration button to your package, I provide
sample code to make this almost trivial, available on my home page.
In the simplest case, just make sure that the constants kAppSymbol and
kSharewareFee are defined, add the file MoneyButtonProto to your
project, and drag out an instance of a ProtoMoneyButton. This will
put a ³$² button on your packageıs status bar. When the user
presses the button, Register will be opened with your package and
shareware fee selected.
SharewareFee slot
I suggest that programmers who donıt want to use a protoMoneyButton
at least put a slot at the top level of their packages named
SharewareFee, preferably containing an integer number of US dollars.
Register will also report the value of a top level slot named Version
or VersionString.
The :IPaid() Method
After the user has successfully entered his credit card number and
selected your package, Register will try to call your top-level method
entitled ³:IPaid(frame)², if it exists. See the sample code for
details; one possible use is, if you have a nag dialog for
unregistered users, to disable it for a week or two, presumably until
youıve been notified of the userıs registration.
An Open Standard
The sample code shows how to do a great deal more customization. In
particular, you donıt have to have your shareware payments sent to
Kagi; you can even use my sample code to call another registration
package. The sample code and the :ExternalRegister(RegFrame) protocol
are free to be modified and used for any reasonable purpose,
specifically including use with competing registration programs and
shareware clearing houses. I intend this to be a fully open standard.
Other Clearing Houses
A competing shareware clearing house can even supply its own encoding
method by using the EncodingType and EncodingFunction slots in the
registration frame. The ³normal² encoding scheme is proprietary
to Kagi; I will supply the decoding algorithm for the ³minimal²
encoding scheme to any clearing house of whose good faith I am
convinced. Note that the supplemental encoding function in the sample
code is for illustrative purposes only and may not deter a skilled
cryptanalyst.
Shareware Fee
Register itself is freely distributable but not free; itıs
shareware, but with an unusual fee structure. If your users use it to
register your software with Kagi, you donıt have to worry about the
fee; my 1% royalty will be collected by Kagi. For use with other
shareware clearing houses (or if you have the payment sent to you
directly), the shareware fee for using Register (not the sample code)
is still 1%, payable by the recipient of the payment.
Where to get
ScrollingDoPopup
Hardy Maciaıs ScrollingDoPopup extension should be available on
CompuServe, America OnLine, eWorld, the University of Iowa Newton
Archive , and on my home page
at
Financial Package Posting Standard
The specifications for the Financial Package Posting Standard should be in the above places or
My Stuff
The registration sample code should be at
The latest version of Register should be at
Kagi Shareware
1442-A Walnut Street #392
Berkeley, California, 94709-1405 USA
Email: shareware@kagi.com
FAX: +1 510 652 6589
Donıt send checks or money to this address until you have received
confirmation that Kagi can accept payment for the program you are
trying to register, and a registration number, which must accompany
your payment. Cash received without a confirmation number may be
donated to charity, and checks may be shredded.
The Author
Please send any comments about this program to FlaSheridn@kagi.com.
Flash Sheridan
180A Hamilton Avenue #601
Palo Alto, California 94301-1682
Copyright and Acknowledgment
This program may be freely distributed, and is free to end users;
İ1994 Flash (K.J.) Sheridan. Programmers and shareware clearing
houses should see above for licensing details.
It was inspired by Peter N Lewisıs Register for the Macintosh, but
problems with the Newton version are not his fault. Thanks to Chris
Owen for the credit card checking code, and to Hardy Macia and Rob
Bruce for the buttons.
Version 1.0