Guester 1.3 Readmeby Ray Rischpater for Raw Thought ProduktInitial Date: May 30, 1994 Revised Date: July 1, 1994Ą What is Guester? Tired of wading through menus to put your Newton in guest mode every time you go to a meeting? Bored with the double-tap on the "A", scroll down, and click? Wonderingwhich mode you left your Newton in the last time you made the mistake of using itat lunch? Then Guester may be for you. Guester is a small application for your Newton to give you an easy-to-get-at way to flip your Newton in and out of Guest mode. Inspired after an evening of explaining my Newton to my parents, it's a little floating button you can drag down next to the recognizer buttons in the notepad, and use it when you need to.Ą For former users of Guester: Why 1.2 and 1.3 in less than a week? Because, euphemistically speaking, I got my act together. After being asked if the source could be distributed, I cleaned it up (no biggie), and went to bed. Two days later, I had one of the revelations most Newton programmers coming from UNIX have -- AddDeferredAction is LIGHTWEIGHT!!! (Wow. If you care, this should be exciting. If you already knew this, forgive me... I was thinking of AddDeferredAction like fork() in UNIX, and was afraid to use it for...) Anyway, I realized that it would look better if I used AddDeferredAction() to fire off the preferences munger, so things would look better. My apologies for those who just installed 1.1 or 1.2... but this one looks nicer (I think.)Ą How do I use Guester? First of all, install the package using your favorite Macintosh or PC connection kit. After installation, you should see the Guester icon (it looks like a Newton and pen floating over a jester's hat) in the Extras drawer. Ą Starting Guester Tap the Guester icon in the Extras Drawer. You'll see a little "G" in a button with a fuzzy border around it near the close box in the lower right hand corner of your screen. The "G" will have a line through it if the Newton's NOT in Guest mode (i.e., it's set to learn from your writing.) Ą Switching In and Out of Guest Mode Tap the "G" on the Guester panel. If there is a line through the G, the Newton will be placed in Guest mode, and the line will disappear. If there wasn't a line, one will be drawn, and the Newton will leave Guest mode and begin training again. Ą Moving Guester Around If you'd like to move the Guester panel around, touch the pen tip to the grey edge of the Guester panel and drag it around. Ą Quitting Guester Tap the Guester Icon in the extras drawer again. That's all there is to it!Ą Contacting the author about Guester If you'd like to reach the author about Guester, please email rtp@netcom.com with Guester in the subject line, or surface mail at Raw Thought Produkt Attention: Ray Rischpater PO Box 2088 Cupertino, CA 95015-2088 Fax: 408-255-4627If you're contacting RTP about a software trouble, please be sure to include the following information: Ą Your Newton type/model number (Sharp, MP110, Apple Classic, whatever) Ą What happened (including error numbers and so forth) Ą The names of any other software you had running on your Newton at the time of failure.Ą Possible Limitations of Guester Ą Because the button is so small, your pen alignment may cause you grief if it's not well-aligned. If this seems to be the problem, re-align your pen (Extras Drawer-Preferences-Pen Alignment). Ą Guester twiddles feilds in the System soup -- if Apple chooses to change their recognizer and changes the name of this field, Guester will stop working without warning. Thus, Guester may not work on future Newtons without some code changes. Ą Guester does *not* update itself if you click on the "Configure for guest user" button under "Handwriting Style" preferences while Guester is open; neither does this box change state if you're looking at it when you click on Guester. A recent discussion with Neil Rhodes informed me that this cannot be fixed; the preferences roll neither has a soupNotify slot, nor calls BroadcastSoupChange(). This makes my knowing about changes rather difficult...Ą Source Code Notes Version 1.2 has been released with the source code for the PIE Developer's CD Magazine. If you haven't looked at PIE developers, you should, if you're into that kind of thing. Once the smoke clears from that release, and I get done tweaking, I'll probably put the source to 1.x out; but since they asked me if I'd let them distribute it, they should get first dibs. :)Ą Warranty, License, and other details ĄĘLicense Guester is freeware, but not public domain. All rights for duplication remain the property of Raw Thought Produkt. Guester may be freely exchanged and distributed electronically provided that no fee is charged for its exchange, save on-line time such as charged by Compuserve or America OnLine. Specifically, no firm or individual may include Guester in any form of media for publication without prior written permission from RTP (which will probably be granted -- contact us!). So -- take a copy, upload it to the nearest BBS, give it to your friends, and yell hex code from the mountaintops!All we ask is that if you like it and have the time, please drop us a postcard with your suggestions (the address is below.) If you're short $0.29, drop us e-mail... that works too. Guester is copyright 1994 by Raw Thought Produkt. Ą Warranty This documentation and Newton software is provided as-is and is subject to change without notice. Raw Thought Produkt, its owners, and the author(s) of Guester makes no warranty (expressed or implied) of any kind with regard to this software and documentation, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. Raw Thought Produkt, its owners, and the author(s) of Guester shall not be liable for incidential or consequential damages in connection with the performance or usage of this documentation or the Guester software. (Whew! What a way to say, "You get what you pay for. If it breaks, don't bother calling us.")Ą Source code license This souce code is released under the same terms as the above. Ą Licenses approved by Raw Thought Produkt: As of 28 June, the following parties have been authorized to release Guester: Creative Digital Systems (ver 1.2) for the PIE Developer's Magazine.Ą Who the Heck is Raw Thought Produkt? Darn good question. Raw Thought Produkt is a partnership wholly owned by two Newton fanatics in Cupertino (Well, one of them actually lives in Felton, but that's beside the point, because the business is in Cupertino.), joined by a very loose consortium of other Newtonites or Newton-wannabes interested in providing Newton products. Our goal is to provide small, quality vertical-application software for the Newton, Macintosh, and any other platform we get interested in for bargain-basement prices (in the case of Guester, free.). Current projects being developed or completed include: Ą A scorekeeper for Scrabble Ą A connection kit for UNIX boxes, allowing you to synchronize your Newton with your UNIX account or desktop workstation Ą A controller for a multiple-channel microwave synthesizer designed by Microwave Oscillator Corporation. We can be reached via email at rtp@netcom.com, or by surface mail at: Raw Thought Produkt PO Box 2088 Cupertino, CA 95015-2088 Fax: 408-255-4627Ą Change History Ą Version 1.3 July 1, 1994 -- Added DeferredAction() to the buttonClickScript, so it doesn't look so darned slow. Also made my soup query a real one, so it goes a little faster. Ą Version 1.2 June 28, 1994 -- Source Code release for PIE Developers Magazine. Added a lot of documentation. Removed a couple scripts which didn't do anything.No new functionality, bug fixes, enhancements, or anything else. Ą Version 1.1 June 4, 1994 -- bug fix release. Didn't necessarily save the User Handwriting Preferences properly. Thanks to a pointer from Todd Courtois, this has been fixed. Ą Version 1.0 May 30, 1994 -- initial release by Ray Rischpater Doesn't use its soupChanged method (doesn't register to get notification when somebody else changes the System soup. This may be changed in a future release.