Note: most of the information in this file can also be found in Chatter's on line help.
Contents
About Chatter
Network impact statement
Quality Assurance
Using Chatter
Connecting to other Chatter users
Connection information
Features
Sneaky Features
Menus
The File Menu
Edit and Font Menus
The Options Menu
Preferences
About Chatter Listener
Icons
Future Features
About Chatter:
Chatter is a program that allows more or less real time text message communication with other computers that are running Chatter and are connected to an AppleTalk network. It can support up to 4 connections at once, and does not require program linking to be turned on.
At the userﾕs request, it can install an extension, Chatter Listener, in the System Folder so that the user can be notified of connection requests when Chatter isnﾕt running.
Network impact statement:
Chatter is very network friendly. It only sends broadcasts when searching for other Chatter users. Packets are sent when the user hits return, presses send, or selects a new icon during a conversation. The icon data it transmits is only about 2 kilobytes ( this translates to be about 5 or 6 AppleTalk packets, which is fairly trivial. )
Quality Assurance:
It has been tested on Macintoshes ranging from a Mac Classic to a PowerMac 9500/120, and ran fine on AppleTalk, EtherTalk, and FDDITalk networks. It has been tested on both local and wide area networks ( wide here means from the East Coast of the United States to England ). Chatter works with or without Open Transport, but does require System 7 or later.
Chatter is essentially free. It may be uploaded to BBSes, copied and passed around as much as you like, but with the following three restrictions:
1) Keep the ReadMe, Version History and Dangercon files with Chatter.
2) Any person or organization that plans to redistribute it commercially ( say, on disks of shareware ) must obtain my permission before doing so.
3) If you like it, send me a postcard or an email message telling me how youﾕre using it. Programmers love to get feedback about their code ( yes, even negative feedback ) because it tells them that someone out has looked at what theyﾕve written. If you really like it send me a disk with something on it (fonts, source code, other shareware, pictures, etc. ) Iﾕd like to hear from you if you have suggestions or bug reports. If you do have a bug report, please include your system software version, extensions/control panels being used, hardware configuration, and how to create the bug.
Send bug reports, feature requests, comments and fan mail ;^) to:
Alex Doyle
Caffeine Productions
68 Sutton Road
Newbury, NH, USA, 03255
Internet: doyle@ctron.com (Note: this email address is not guaranteed to be up to date, but try anyway :) )
Using Chatter
Most of the following is ( if I designed Chatter correctly ) obvious, but the less-than-obvious features of Chatter are documented in here too so youﾕll find out some neat stuff. Note that any underlined text indicates the title of a button or menu item or some text you'll see in Chatter, and bold text indicates a topic in the help documentation.
Connecting to other Chatter users.
1) Select the network zone by using the Zone popup menu. This menu will be disabled and say ﾔNoneﾕ if you are on a network with no zones.
2) Select a Chatter user to connect to by selecting from the Users popup menu. If there are no Chatter users in the network zone you have selected, the Users menu will display found: 0 and will be disabled. Otherwise it will display the number of Chatter users that were found in that zone and the menu will be active. Once you select a user, the Connect button will become active and the found: menu selection will gray out.
3) To look for more users in the current zone, press the Search button. This makes Chatter update its list of zones and its list of users in the current zone. Use this if you can't find a user you believe should be on the network. If they do not appear after a few presses, try increasing the search time ( see the Search subsection in the Preferences section for how to do this ). If subsequent searching fails, that user is probably not on the network.
4) Once you have selected a user to talk to, press the Connect button. The mouse cursor will change, and the Connection Status (see below ) will be Opening. When you have an open connection the Zone and Users menus will gray out with the name and zone of the Chatter user you connected to, the mouse cursor will be an arrow again, the Connection Status will be Open, and a message will be displayed in the top text box that says: ﾒConnection established with <username> in zone <zone name> at <time>ﾓ. The Search button will now say Disconnect, and the Send, Hold and Idle buttons will be active.
5) You can now send messages by typing text in the lower text box. When you press the Send button or the return key, everything you've typed since the last time you sent a message will be sent. When the Send button pops back up, then all data has been sent. Unless you are sending large amounts of text, you shouldnﾕt notice any delay while data is being sent.
The other user's messages will appear in the top box.
6) The Idle button will tell you the amount of time the other userﾕs Macintosh has been idle. This is particularly handy if the person you are connected to hasnﾕt sent anything in a while. By examining the idle time you can determine if theyﾕve been called away, or if theyﾕre just typing a lengthy reply. If the idle time has been longer than 3 minutes, it replies with ﾒOver 3 minutesﾓ.
If you hold down the Option key, Idle becomes Query. In addition to the idle time, option-clicking on the Query button will give you the remote computerﾕs owner and machine names, the name they are using for Chatter (see the Options Menu for how to set this ), and the time it took for the reply to your request. The latter is reported in seconds and 60ths of seconds, since replies will come back pretty quickly unless the network is slow or the remote Macintosh is really busy.
7) If someone interrupts you while you are typing, you can use the Hold button hide what you are typing, and to send a preset message to the other user. See the Hold section under the Preferences section for more info.
8) To terminate the connection, press the Disconnect button. The Query and Send buttons will become inactive, Disconnect will become Search, and the Zone and User pop up menus will become active after Chatter is done searching for any new users in the current zone. You will also receive the message ﾒConnection closed at <time> --End of Line--ﾓ in the top text box.
Connection information:
This section details information about the state of your Chatter connection. In the lower left corner of the window, the following text is printed: Connection Status: Closed. The Closed will change to Opening and then Open when you connect to another user.
If the Show All Connection Info checkbox in the General Preferences dialog box is checked, you will see the following:
Connection Status. This is appended by one of the following:
Open. A two way connection has been established and data can be sent.
Closed. Nobody has been connected to, and there is no point in sending data.
Opening. Chatter is in the process of connecting to another user.
Closing. Chatter is in the process of disconnecting from another user.
Local Socket. The network net, node and socket number that this Chatter connection is using on this Macintosh.
Remote Socket: Net, node, socket.
Net. The numerical value of the Appletalk zone your other party is in.
Node. The numerical value of the remote user's Macintosh network identity.
Socket. The network software socket that Chatter has connected to on the
remote Macintosh. There can be up to 256 network sockets in 1 Macintosh.
Features:
･Cut and paste are supported. Text can be cut or copied out of either text box, but can only be pasted into the lower text box, as there is no point in being able to paste text into the other userﾕs messages.
･The opening of a connection can be canceled by pressing command-period.
･You can send icons to the person you are conversing with by selecting them from the icon popup menu in the lower right hand corner. To select an icon file that is different from the one currently being used, use Use Icon File... under the File menu. For more information on icon files, see the Icons help topic.
Sneaky Features:
You can search for other Chatter users, other AppleTalk entities or guests logged into your Mac in one or all zones.
･ Holding down the option key will cause Chatter to search all zones. This works in conjunction with the command and control keys as described below. When the option key is held down the Search button will become Search All. When Search All is pressed, all network zones will be searched for other Chatter users. The names of zones and Chatter users found in those zones will appear in the top text box.
To cancel any search, press and hold the command and period keys until you see a dialog box that says ﾒAction canceled by user ﾒ.
The next two features have absolutely nothing to do with communicating with other Chatter users. They started as quick hacks to get network information, but because I thought somebody else might find them useful, they made it into the final release.
･ If the Command key is held down while Search is pressed, all AppleTalk entities in the current zone will be displayed in the top text box. It will list up to 400 entities. If anybody has more than that, let me know and I can increase it in the next release.
To see all entities in all zones, hold down both the command and option keys. The Search button will then read All Ents. Note that this might exceed the amount of text that Chatter will hold in a window (16K) , so the beginning of it may not be around by the time you reach the end.
Question: Why does the text of the Search button change for all sneaky features except this one ?
Answer: I got irritated watching it flip every time I executed a command key combination, and figured that most users would find it annoying too.
･ If the Control key is held down, Search will become Guests. When Guests is pressed, Chatter will search for other network users that are logged into your machine from the current zone. For each login, all names registered on the network from that machine are printed. So if they have file sharing on, that registers itself with the network, and the Macintosh name will be shown. If they are running Chatter, their Chatter name will also be shown. These names tend to be grouped together and I hope this will help you identify what the machine is and who owns it. To search all zones for guest logins, hold down the control and option keys when clicking Search. The Search button will then read All Guests.
Note: Youﾕll need File Sharing Extension 7.6.1 or later for guest lookup to work.
Question: I get a message that says "The following addresses were logged in but could not be found:". What gives ?
Answer: You are probably on a network with multiple zones and only searched one zone. If you do a Control-Option click of the Search button ( which will be All Guests once the control and option keys are down ) , Chatter will check all zones for the logins.
Question: I already tried that. What gives ?
Answer: Ah, then your network is probably screwed up. No, I'm not trying to avoid blame here. What is probably happening is that there are Macs out there that can see your Mac, but you can't see them. This can happen if AppleTalk broadcasts aren't being passed in both directions. I was fortunate (?) enough to have this situation to test Chatter in.
Warning !
Do not terminate Chatter except by using the Quit command, or by sending it a quit event. Most users won't have a reason or the ability to terminate it any other way. But if you, say, shoot it down with MacsBug, it won't be able to remove itself from the network interface gracefully, as it does when Quit is used . Thus the operating system will think Chatter's network connections are still valid and will write any data for Chatter to a random location in memory. This will crash your Mac. If you do shoot down Chatter, don't run it again until you save everything and restart.
Menus
The File Menu
Use Icon File will let you select a new file of icons for Chatter to use. The change will become apparent the next time you select an icon.
Default Icon File will let you select the icon file that should be opened when Chatter starts up.
Save As Text will let you save the contents of the frontmost Chatter window as a SimpleText file.
Quit is pretty self explanatory.
Edit and Font Menus
These are pretty much the same as any other Mac edit and Font Menus.
The Options Menu
New Window: produces another Chatter window with it's own independent connection. You can carry on conversations with up to 4 people by creating new Chatter windows and connecting to different users.
Answer Messages:
Chatter can also function as an answering machine. If you select Answer Messages , answering mode will be turned on.
All of the buttons will be grayed out, and the popup menus will be Answering and Mode. The message ﾒAnswering mode ONﾓ will appear in the top text box.. Any existing Chatter connections will be closed, though if this is the case, you will be asked if you want to continue.
Now any user that connects to you will automatically be sent your Answering Mode message ( see Set Message... below for how to set it ). Any messages they leave can be read out of the top text box. Note that if more than one user attempts to leave a message at the same time, there will be more than one Chatter window with messages in it.
To turn off Answering Mode, just select Answering Mode from the Options menu again and uncheck it. Note that this will also close any existing connections.
Preferences...:
This selection brings up the Preferences dialog box. The first time you run Chatter, a set of default settings are provided. See the Preferences section for more information.
Preferences:
The following buttons have the same behavior regardless of the topic that is currently selected:
The Cancel button will discard all changes that you made since opening the Preferences window.
The Save button will save all changes that you have made.
The Use Defaults button will set the default preferences for the currently selected topic.
The Preferences popup menu allows you to select from several topics, described below:
General:
Your Chatter Network Name:
This is the name Chatter will use when presenting itself to other Chatter users on the network. If the name is not unique, Chatter will inform you and use the name of your Macintosh. If you change your network name, you must quit and restart Chatter for the changes to take effect.
When Chatter launches:
These settings will let you configure how Chatter is launched when the Chatter Listener receives an incoming connection request.
Keep it in the background.
Chatter will start running in the background. ( You'll probably notice some slowdown in the frontmost application as Chatter launches. )
Bring it to the front.
Chatter will become the frontmost application, pushing whatever was the frontmost application to the background.
Default to Answering Machine mode on launch.
When checkmarked, Chatter will always come up in Answering Machine mode. Handy if you want to screen your calls...
Window:
This topic relates to displaying things in the Chatter windows.
Set Preferred Font:
Pressing this button selects the current font and point size to be saved as the defaults that Chatter will use. They are actually saved when you press the Save button, so you can still Cancel if you change your mind.
Save Window Size:
Pressing this button selects the Chatter window behind the Preferences window to have the dimensions for all future windows. If no Chatter window exists, you'll just get an error and nothing will be changed. The window dimensions are actually saved when you press the Save button, so you can still Cancel if you change your mind.
Show All Connection Info:
If this box is checked, the source and destination AppleTalk sockets are displayed at the bottom of the window, in addition to the state of the connection. If it is not checked, only the connection state ( Open, Closed, Opening, etc. is displayed ).
Search:
Search for other Chatter users:
This is the number of seconds Chatter will spend searching for other Chatter users. On fast networks, this value can be 1 second. It can be set higher for slower networks.
Hold:
The message that gets sent when the Hold button is pressed can be stored here. It cannot be longer than 255 characters.
Shrink Windows During Hold:
This will collapse the window so that only a Resume button is showing. This is handy if you donﾕt want people reading over your shoulder.
Listener:
Donﾕt launch Chatter Listener:
If checkmarked, the Chatter Listener will not be launched when Chatter quits. See Chatter Listener for more information.
Install Listener:
This will install the Chatter Listener in your extensions folder. See Chatter Listener for more information.
Answering Mode:
The message that is sent to connecting users when Chatter is in Answering Mode is stored here.
Attention:
These settings determine how visible Chatter will be when it requires your attention.
Blinking an icon in the menu bar:
Chatter will put a blinking icon in the menu bar when it wants to tell you something.
Beeping:
When this is not checked, Chatter will only beep if an error of some sort has occurred. When it is checked, you can use the following two settings to determine what will make Chatter beep.
Always.
Chatter beeps when a new connection is created, or if itﾕs in the background and new data has been received.
Only on new connections. Chatter will beep only when a new connection has been established.
About Chatter Listener
Chatter Listener is a faceless background application that monitors incoming Chatter connection requests. From a userﾕs standpoint, its behavior is exactly the same as an Extensionﾕs
To use it, select Preferences... under the Options menu. Then select Listener from the popup menu, and press the Install listener button. Chatter will then install Chatter Listener in your extensions folder. It will be run when your Macintosh starts up, and when Chatter quits , provided that Donﾕt launch Chatter Listener is unchecked in the Preferences dialog box . If Donﾕt launch Chatter Listener is checked, the Listener will never run.
The Chatter Listener tells the network that this Macintosh will respond to Chatter requests, and waits around for a request to come in. When this happens, it reads the Chatter Preferences file to find Chatter, launches Chatter and quits. If Chatter cannot be launched, it returns an error to the user that attempted to connect. When you quit Chatter, Chatter relaunches the Listener.
Thus you donﾕt have to keep Chatter running all the time for it to be useful.
Question: Why is there no icon at boot time for the Chatter Listener ?
Answer: As the Chatter Listener is a faceless background app, it loads after all the Extensions and Control Panels. Thus if it drew an icon, it would be drawn on the desktop. I've checked with Apple to see if there was any standard way to let a user know that a background app was being run, but they didn't have one yet. Thus the Chatter Listener is a bit sneakier than I'd like it to be.
A few caveats:
Rather than scan the whole hard drive for a copy of Chatter to launch, Chatter Listener gets the location out of the Chatter Preferences file. Every time Chatter is run, it records itﾕs whereabouts in the Chatter Preferences file so that it can be found immediately. Chatter Listener then looks for a program named Chatter at the specified location. If the Chatter program is named anything _but_ Chatter ( like: chatter, Chatter copy, Chatter with a space after it, Chatter with four 'M's and a silent 'q', etc. ) the Listener will become confused. Chatter Listener must also be named Chatter Listener for Chatter to find it. Iﾕm working on making this more robust. If you have multiple copies of Chatter around, the copy that gets launched is the last one run, since it was the last to update itﾕs location.
Question: why doesn't the Chatter Listener automatically install itself when Chatter is first run ?
Answer #1: Because, as a user, I hate programs that do anything without my permission. Creating stuff the program needs in the preferences folder is okay because, as a Macintosh user, I know that almost all programs do that. As a programmer, I know that it's an Apple approved way to store program info. However, a program that would force my system to run something as unobvious as Chatter Listener would go straight into the trash.
Answer #2: It also keeps the network from getting cluttered with users who run Chatter, decide they don't have a use for it ( though I don't know why :) ) and toss it into the trash. Since the Chatter Listener would have installed itself without their knowledge, they probably wouldn't think to remove it. Thus you'd have a bunch of people that showed up on the network, but couldn't be connected to.
Icons
Chatter allows you to send icons during a conversation. I felt this adds a little more depth to conversing over a network. A popup menu of 30 icons is in the lower right hand corner of each window. These icons are read from the Chatter Icons file in the Chatter Preferences folder in your System Folder. The reason these icons are external is that I figured you might want to add your own icons, or might want to be able to access different sets of icons. ( I know I would !).
Creating an icon file:
Probably the easiest way to do this is just to make a copy of the Chatter Icons file and rename it something else. You'll be able to edit it with a resource editor like ResEdit. Chatter will create a new Chatter Icons file when it canﾕt find the old one.
When editing the resource file, keep the following in mind:
1) Chatter is hard coded to look for resource IDs between 600 and 629. Icons with resource IDs outside this range won't be displayed. This is something Iﾕll try to make more flexible in the future, if there is a demand for it.
2) The resource types have to be ﾔicl8ﾕ, ﾔicl4ﾕ, and ﾔICN#ﾕ, as Chatter uses them to draw the icon in 256 colors, 16 colors, and black & white, respectively. If the file just consists of ﾔicl8ﾕ resources, anybody using a 16 color or black and white monitor will see nothing.
3) I recomend solid masks for the icons, as this makes them hilight better when they are selected from the popup menu.
Once you have created another icon file, you can use:
Use Icon File...
under the File menu to use it.
Thatﾕs it. Have fun.
Future Features:
I've gotten a few requests for adding conferencing features and code that would make Chatter work over the internet. I think some really neat stuff could be done in those departments, and may be done in the future. However, between my "real job" and a few other programming projects I'm trying to complete on the side, I'm tapped for time ( as anybody who takes a look at the time between the release of 2.01 and this version of Chatter can tell :) ). Maybe someday though...
