The Internet Configuration System was designed to make your life easier by reducing the number of times which you need to enter your Internet preferences into the various preferences dialogs of all your Internet applications.
For example, currently you need to enter your Email address into many common Macintosh Internet applications, for example Eudora, NewsWatcher and Anarchie. The goal of the system was to get each of these applications to get this information from one common place and to give you a tool to edit these common preferences.
It is important to realise that applications will have to be modified to take advantage of the Internet Configuration System. It will take some time for all applications to be revised and until then you will have to enter your preferences in those applications in the traditional manner.
Getting Started
System Requirements
The Internet Configuration system requires at least System 6 and works best under System 7 or later. It does not require MacTCP and it makes sense to install it even if you╒re not directly connected to the Internet.
Quick Start
Run the Internet Config application. If it asks you whether you want to install the Internet Config Extension, say yes. Click on each button in the Main dialog in turn, enter appropriate preferences. [If you don╒t understand an item turn on Balloon Help or look it up in the reference section at the end of this document.] Save and quit.
It is important to realise that you don╒t have to set every preference. For example, if you don╒t use WAIS then there╒s no need to set your WAIS Gateway preference.
Parts of the System
At the user level, the system contains 3 important parts:
o Internet Config application
o Internet Config Extension
o the Internet Preferences preferences file
The most important is the Internet Config application. When you run this application it creates and installs the Internet Config Extension and creates a default Internet Preferences file.
For the programmer there is a separate distribution that contains all the files needed to make an Internet Config aware program.
Internet Configuration Application Reference
The Internet Configuration application works much like any other Macintosh application. The basic document for the application is a Internet Preferences preference file.
Unlike most Macintosh application, when you launch the ICApp it does not create a new untitled document. Instead it opens the Internet Preferences file in your preferences folder (creating it if it isn╒t there). This is useful because, unless you╒re doing something strange, you need never use the standard document features (New, Open, Save, etc). Instead all you need to do is launch the application, modify your preferences and then quit with saving.
Menus
The following commands are available on the menu:
About Internet Config╔
This opens the about box. Do not bother looking for magical Easter Eggs; we were much too busy to mess with this sort of thing.
The following commands are available on the File menu:
New
Open╔
Open Internet Preferences
Close
Save
Save as╔
Quit
These commands work as you would expect in a normal Macintosh application, with one exception. The application can only have one preferences file open at any point in time so when you open a new preferences file, by Open or New, the previous one is automatically closed. The Open Internet Preferences command opens the default set of Internet Preferences (in your Preferences folder), which is useful if you accidentally close the window.
The Edit menu is used for editing text.
The Window menu allows you to open or bring to front any of the configuration dialogs.
The help menu (or the right hand side of the menu bar) lets you turn on Balloon Help. The application has full Balloon Help support.
Dialogs
The Main dialog is opened whenever you open a preferences file. It has 8 buttons (with cutesy colour icons) that let you open other dialogs
The Personal dialog lets you edit all sorts of preferences related to your person. These include:
o Real Name ╤ your real name, as used by news and mail
o Organization ╤ the company etc that you work for, as used by news
o Quote String ╤ the string used to preceed quoted text, as used by news and mail
o Signature ╤ a short piece of pithy text added to the end of your mail messages and news posting, as used by news and mail
o Plan ╤ as used by finger servers
The Email dialog lets you edit preferences related to Email. These include:
o Email Address ╤ address to which you want replies to your mail sent
o Mail Account ╤ account from which you wish you mail to be fetched
o Mail Password ╤ password for the above
o Mail Host ╤ host to which to forward mail (normally the same machine as the one that has your mail account)
o Mail Headers ╤ any extra headers you want inserted in your outgoing mail
The News dialog lets you edit preferences related to News. These include:
o News Username ╤ most systems let you read news without one
o News Password ╤ most systems let ou read news without one
o NNTP Host ╤ machine from which to fetch news
o News Headers ╤ any extra headers you want inserted in your news postings
The File Transfer dialog lets you edit preferences related to the transfer of files (except file types, which have their own dialog). These include:
o Archie Server ╤ your preferred Archie server
o Info-Mac Server ╤ your preferred Info-Mac mirror
o UMich Server ╤ your preferred UMich mirror
o Download Folder ╤ the place where you want new files to appear
Archie is a protocol for searching archive sites looking for files. There are a number of Archie servers around the world. In theory these should all be the same but sometimes it╒s useful to use one in preference to another.
Info-Mac and UMich are two big archives of Macintosh software. They are often very busy and won╒t let you on. To get around this you can get files from other machines that mirror these archives. Some software will use the preferences here to automatically route requests to your preferred mirror.
The Other Services dialog is a collection of preferences that didn╒t fit in anywhere else. These include:
o Ph Host ╤ your preferred Ph server (a standard machine name)
o Finger Host ╤ your default finger server
o Whois Host ╤ your default whois server
o Telnet Host ╤ the default machine for telnet connections
o FTP Host ╤ the default machine for FTP connections
o Gopher Host ╤ your ╘root╒ gopher server (a standard machine name)
o WWW Home Page ╤ your WWW home page (a URL)
o WAIS Gateway ╤ your WAIS gateway (a standard machine name)
o LDAP ╤ Stuff related to X.500, see your X.500 docs for more details
The Fonts dialog lets you set your preferred Screen and Printer font.
The File Types dialog lets you view and edit the table that is used to set the Macintosh file type and creator of incoming files based on their extension. If you don╒t understand this dialog then please don╒t worry. We╒ve done our best to set up appropriate defaults.
The Helpers dialog lets you view and edit the table that is used to determine which application to run when a specific URL is accessed. For example, NewsWatcher uses this table when you option click on a URL to determine which application to run to process the URL.
System 6 Notes
All of the Internet Configuration documentation assumes that you are running under System 7. Under System 6 some things are slightly different from what is stated in the documentation. The most important thing is the placement of the files. Under System 6 the Internet Config Extension and the Internet Preferences file are always placed in the System Folder. Also some non-critical parts of the system may not work under System 6.
The entire Internet Configuration system has been tested under System 6 and should work happily. Having said that, you are warned that the system has had a lot more testing under System 7 than System 6 and there may be System 6 specific problems still lurking. If you find any, please report them to us.
Credits
The official support address for Internet Config is <internet-config@share.com>. If you find a bug in IC then please forward details to that address. If you want to discuss IC in general then I suggest you host that discussion on the comp.sys.mac.comm newsgroup.
The Internet Configuration System was written by Quinn ╥The Eskimo!╙ and Peter N Lewis over a period of too many late nights and weekends. Certain important chunks of code were contributed by Marcus Jager. We would like to thank all of those on the Internet Config mailing list and all of the developers who we hope will adopt the system.
Internet Config uses the PopupCDEF by Ari Halberstadt. This code is Copyright 1994 Ari Halberstadt and is not placed in the public domain. The rest of the Internet Config system is public domain and can be redistributed without restriction.
