Finger is a Macintosh implementation of the Un*x Finger protocol that allows you to finger anyone in the world. Finger is AppleScriptable and Recordable.
Ñ Using Finger
You must have MacTCP installed in order to use either of these applications.
To use Finger, first launch Finger and choose Finger╔ from the File menu. Enter the machine name and (optionally) the user name of the person you wish to finger (Note: If you have used unix, you may prefer to type user@machine into either field (and if you do prefer to do this, go ahead, cuz it will work :-)). You can choose to query either a Finger server or a Whois Server by clicking the Whois checkbox. Then Click the Finger button. Finger will add any successful addresses to the Finger hierarchical menu. You can save this menu by choosing Save Finger Menu from the File menu.
You can also control Finger using AppleScript. Finger supports the full standard URL suite (indeed it is the first application to do so). Here are some examples:
set err to geturl "finger://user@host"
set err to geturl "finger://host/user"
set err to geturl "whois://host/host"
set err to geturl "whois://host/host" to (file "harddisk:whois")
set res to fetchurl "finger://host@host"
So you can ask Finger to display the results, store them in a file or return them to your script for further processing. Finger also supports it╒s own custom suite that lets you do:
set err to finger "host@host"
set err to whois "host@host"
but these only allow you to direct Finger to display the results. If you want more control, use the standard suite.
Finger also creates and uses AURL documents (the same kind of documents that Fetch and Anarchie use - these documents are not interchangeable, but they provide a standard way for other applications to make use of Finger). You can save Finger AURL documents by choosing Finger╔ and then filling in the fields and clickign the Save button. Double clicking these documents in the Finder will finger the person you specified.
Ñ How It Works
When you choose Finger from the File menu, it will ask you for a machine and user name. It will then attempt to find the machine, open port 79 (or 43 for the Whois Server, both port numbers specified in STR# 300), and send the username to it. Then it will display whatever information the remote machine returns, up to 30k bytes.
Finger translates the incoming and outgoing characters between the Mac's 8-bit characters and the standard network ISO-8859-1 character set.
Ñ Limitations
Finger probably requires the 128k ROM and System version 6.0 or higher and MacTCP v1.1 or later. If Finger runs low on memory it will disable the Finger╔ menu item. If this happens give it more memory! I haven╒t tried this under System 6, it may no longer work there.
Ñ Small Print
This program is Shareware, which means if you use it, you should send me US$10. You can pay in US$ cash, checks, VISA, MasterCard, American Express or NetCash. Use the Register program (included with the package) to fill out the registration form and send it to the specified address via Email, Snail-mail, or FAX.
Site Licensing:
World-wide license: US$1000
Universities or companies site license: US$250
Curtin University and the University of Western Australia are exempt.
Single-user license: US$10.
If you purchase a site license, contact me for information on how to make this program automatically set the ╥I Paid╙ flag in the Preferences dialog (for those who are interested, I leave the ╥I Paid╙ checkbox off on my machine to ensure that the About box is not too annoying and it doesn╒t trouble me, so live with it)
You may distribute this program any way you wish as long as you don't charge for it (reasonable download costs such as Compu$erve are ok I guess (although who would call Compu$erve╒s download costs reasonable?)). It would probably be a good idea to keep this documentation file with the program, but I╒m hardly likely to check up on you now am I! I don╒t guarantee any support, but I always answer my Email. If I don╒t answer Email its because your message didn╒t get to me, or my reply bounced, so try again and include a valid Internet address if you can.
You MAY NOT DISTRIBUTE this program on any disk costing more than $5 without my explicit permission.
Ñ Warranty
This program should do what I╒ve described in this document. If it doesn╒t, you can simply stop using it. If you pay me, and within a year find that it doesn╒t do what I describe here, then you can notify me and I will refund your money and cancel your license.
Ñ Fine Print
Peter Lewis hereby disclaims all warranties relating to this software, whether express or implied, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Peter Lewis will not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential, indirect or similar damages due to loss of data or any other reason, even if Peter Lewis or an agent of his has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In no event shall Peter Lewis be liable for any damages, regardless of the form of the claim. The person using the software bears all risk as to the quality and performance of the software.
US Governement:
Government End Users: If you are acquiring the Software and fonts
on behalf of any unit or agency of the United States Government, the
following provisions apply. The Government agrees:
(i) if the Software and fonts are supplied to the Department of
Defense (DoD), the Software and fonts are classified as "Commercial
Computer Software" and the Government is acquiring only "restricted rights"
in the Software, its documentation and fonts as that term is defined in
Clause 252.227-7013(c)(1) of the DFARS; and
(ii) if the Software and fonts are supplied to any unit or agency
of the United States Government other than DoD, the Government's rights in
the Software, its documentation and fonts will be as defined in Clause
52.227-19(c)(2) of the FAR or, in the case of NASA, in Clause
18-52.227-86(d) of the NASA Supplement to the FAR.
Ñ Version History
Still to think about doing -
page up/down keys
Another observation - the scroll bars in the finger results window don't de-active?
Might be kinda nice to have a pop-up that could hold frequently used
machine names next to the machine name field. For instance, I often want to
Checkbox for "save address in finger menu" in Finger Input
Save window positions.
Restrict Finger output window to 80 column resizing.
Windows menu.
Saving finger output window.
v1.5.0d1
~AppleScript/recording support
~Saving/Opening AURL documents
~Removed fingerd support (use Daemon instead)
v1.3.7
~Fixed the mess I made of Fingerd
~A couple other bug fixes
~Updated the Email address
v1.3.6
~Fixed incompatibility with AppleScript
~A couple bug fixes
v1.3.5
~Changed %LOG to put a time stamp in as well.
~Colourized icons - Thanks to Don Nash for the icons.
~Fixed it so that the strings which are returned by tokens are translated 7->8
~Fixed %LOOKUP to not uppercase the line.
v1.3.3
~Added Option-Quit to quit the daemon.
~Change "Finger" to "Whois" when you click the Whois check box
v1.3.1
~Crash with error 25 when Finger text is selected
~Should be more difficult to crash with out of memory, though still not impossible.
~Bug with edit menu selections.
~Crash with dragging non-fron windows
~Added in support for the file Translate 7<->8 for foreign character sets.
v1.3.0
~Have setable default for the Finger window.
~Find a more intuitive way of saving the Finger-> menu.
~Add a pref to Finger to auto-open the Finger╔ dialog on startup - Tom McDougal
~Reverse user/machine name?
~Allow chained fingering (eg root@foo.edu@bar.edu), at least in the client.
v1.2.1 Release 3 Dec/91
NOTE: The Finger 1.2.1 release incorrectly included Fingerd 1.1.5. :-(
~Solved a bug to do with QUIT apple events, that caused Fingerd to crash on shutdown.
v1.1.5 Release 2 Dec/91
~Print cancel button produced an error message - Albert Smith
~Avoid crashing in MonoFinder systems - JQ Johnson
~Changed from striping incoming <lf>s, to striping <cr>s, and converting <lf> to <cr>
~Support Whois query in Finger - JQ Johnson
~Handle multiple daemon connections under MacTCP 1.1. The max is specified in STR#=129. By default the maximum for Finger is 2 daemons, and for Fingerd is 1.
~Support quit apple event in daemon - Stuart Cheshire.
~Extend %FILES to return file ? for missing file, and @ for blank user - S. Cheshire
~Enable the Edit menu, seeing as how it works anyway
~Find the correct Prefs folder on all systems - Bien amicalement
~Put port into rsrc fork so it can be easily changed to a whois server - JQ Johnson
~Handle 7<->8 bit conversions - Ari Ahonen
~Allow recursive expansion of tokens under tokens like %FILES - Stuart Cheshire.
More importantly, recursive expansion of <cr> to <cr><lf>! - Ari Ahonen.
~Handle out of memory a bit more gracefully (like only one OoM dialog) - Brian Kendig.
v1.0.6g Interim non-release
~Fix crash related to low end macs with little memory (stack space problem)
v1.0.6 Release 1 Nov/91
-Some sort of edit feature to insert the current time chars - Dave White
Scrapped due to change from international chars to tokens.
v1.0.4 Beta Release 3
~Make Finger's tokens extensible!
~Use tokens instead of silly characters.
~Window opens only after all finger info is read, and a busy cursor is displayed
~Zoom the window after reading the plan - Robert Beckett
v1.0.2 Beta Release 2
~Problems with 6.0.5 and Finger - Rob Trevor
~Crashes on a SE with System 6.0.4, MacTCP 1.0.2 when you unset the plan check box
~ - Ian Hoyle
~Running Finger/Daemon with Fingerd gives sys error 'Fingerd' error type 11
~ - Chris Price
~1) It would be nice to have a print command to get a hard copy of the
response from a finger query - Greg Webb
~A "Dial" menu - Rodney Vickers
~2) I think you should change the cursor to a watch while the query is being
made. At present, the cursor disappears - Greg Webb
[I ShowCursor to make it reappear. It isn't a watch because Finger isn't locked up]
~3) Minor point. Under Help, the text says 'Use the Finger menu...' I think
that should read 'Use the Finger command...' or 'Use the Finger command
from the File menu...' - Greg Webb
~Use other than chicago font in about/help/etc - Danny Thomas
~Dim the OK button until a reasonably valid machine name is in the dialog box
- Danny Thomas
~Dim the check box out until the plan is selected. - Danny Thomas
~Remember the plan on different volumes (I think I've fixed this) - Quinn
v1.0.0 Beta Release 1
~Bug in TEActivate (Finger @rocky, then finger @twinpeaks, then click OK -> bus err)
~Increase the 10k mem restriction if the about, help, prefs windows are not open,
or finger windows are open. - Grow Zone should fix most mem problems.
~Fingering yourself doesn't work. It really shouldn't crash the machine.
~You should be able to copy out of the Finger windows.
~Scroll bars.
Ñ Acknowledgements
Thanks go to Quinn&Todd for initial beta testing, and to Rhys for help debugging TCP (fun fun fun!), and generally to DRJQ, the UCC, Curtin, Steve, c.s.m.p, ditmela.oz.au (& Harold), (ftp.)apple.com, Stephen, and anyone who uses Finger/Fingerd! Special thanks go to those brave souls who risked life and Mac beta testing an unknown program: Oliver, Ian, Paul, Dave, Adrian, Phil, Robin, Rodney, Allan (again!), Chris, Adam, Robert, Rob, Phill, Greg, Alf, Danny and Michael! Many thanks to JQ Johnson, Stuart Cheshire, Bien amicalement, Ari Ahonen & Brian Kendig who suggested many of the improvements to version 1.0.6.
