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Over 1000 Windows 95 Programs (Microforum) (Disc 1).iso
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readme.txt
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1997-04-11
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6KB
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158 lines
Hi! Thanks for downloading Winph.
First, the legal stuff. Niether I, Mark Notarus, nor the University of
Illinois Board of Trustees make any warrantee about the suitability,
stability, or functionality of this program. Therefore, we are not at
all responsible for any damages, consequential or incidental, and by
running this program, you are agreeing not to hold either of the above
responsible for any problems whatsoever.
This program is released as freeware. Feel free to use it. If you
distribute the program, you must distribute it as this archive.
What:
Winph is a Windows Sockets CCSO PH (phone book) client, which provides
the ability to look up entries in a CCSO PH server. It is a 32bit program,
and runs nicely under windows 95 and windows NT. If you want to use it under
Windows 3.x or Win for Workgroups, you will need to install win32s. Win32s can
be downloaded from ftp://pub/www/ncsa/Mosaic/Windows/Win31x/Win32s/ .
Winph also requires a Windows Sockets V1.1 implementation. This includes
Trumpet Winsock, any Microsoft TCP/IP implementation, and FTP Software's
Onnet/PCTCP products. I haven't tested anything else, yet.
The WINPH15.EXE file is pretty big, 500k or so. It's like this because
I decided to roll all the runtime libraries into the file, rather than require
a bunch of external DLL files and stuff. If you have WINPH15.EXE, and a working
winsock stack, you can PH people.
Installing:
There's almost no installation required-- put it in a directory, and run it.
How:
To use, double click the WinPh icon in your start menu or program manager.
The default server is the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign's PH
server. Enter the name of the person you want to look up. Wild cards are ok,
but some servers put time limits on the lookup, so the more you spell out,
the better the chance of success. An example lookup is to set your server to
UIUC (the default), and enter "john smith" as your query. You should get a
number of entries for different John Smiths.
If you want to PH someone using a different server, pull down the File menu,
and select Preferences. Click on the Get Server List button to download
the latest server list from the UIUC server. Then, choose your server from
the pull down list. This server list is cached in the INI file, and read in
when you open the preferences dialog, so you might experience a slight pause
while WINPH loads this list. An alternative is to just type in the IP Address
of a PH server in the top text box in the window ("Enter Server Name").
FQDN or actual dotted IP address is fine here.
Unfortunately, I haven't found a guaranteed way to pull a server list from
all PH servers, so, the only server you can get a server list from, right now,
is UIUC. Sorry about that.
You can change the font used in the output window, and the input window. If you
uncheck the box labeled "Apply changes to both windows", then font changes
apply to only the output window by default.
If you select the "Changes apply only to this session" box, then changes
only apply to this session. If not, they're saved to the config file
so that they are your defaults the next time.
If the config file (c:\<windows dir>\winph.ini) has the key "neversave"
in the section "WinPh" set to any value, then this check box is always on,
and also is disabled. This allows the program to run in a lab enviornment
and let the users make changes while leaving the defaults correct for
the next user.
Also, you can change the default timeout in the ini file. This timeout
controls how long WINPH waits for a reply from the remote server. The default is
20 seconds. If you're on a slow link, you might want to add the line
"timeout=60" (60 seconds) in the ini file, under the section WINPH.
Error Handling:
Errors are handled pretty gracefully, I think. If you get a "server not found"
message, it means that WINPH can't find your server's IP address. This is usually
caused by a typo, or because your DNS can't find the name
"Can't connect to host" means that WINPH can't reach the remote host.
"Timeout" means one of two things: A, the host didn't send any data back in
20 seconds (or whatever you set your timeout to), or B, you exceeded your
CPU limit on a ph query that included wildcards.
Oh, and when you get the current server list, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign will show up twice. It's not a bug (well, my bug,
anyway!), but UofI's PH server lists itself twice.
Contacting the Author:
Please mail bug reports, comments, or suggestions to notarus@uiuc.edu. It
would be a good idea to put WinPh in the subject somewhere. If you're mailing
a bug report, please include the following information:
1. What version of windows you are using, and of the program. (About box)
2. What TCP/IP stack you are using.
3. If it's an error you get while atttempting to connect to a server,
include the server name.
4. If it's an error you only get while ph'ing a particular person (or set
of..) include the PH command, too.
5. Last, please don't forget to describe the error! :)
Thanks for using this. I hope it's useful to you!
Mark Notarus
notarus@uiuc.edu
Known Problems:
None, as of yet.
Version history:
1.5: Oct 31, 1996
Totally rewritten in C, and talks directly to Winsock. Appears to have
licked the font problem. Lots of new features.
WINPH now caches the server list on your hard drive, so you don't need
to download it often.
You can now easily enter the address of a server that's not in the
list.
You can change the font of both the input and output windows.
WINPH indicates which server it's talking to in the title bar.
FAST! 10-12x faster. C++ rules over Visual Basic speedwise.
1.0.7: July 26, 1996
Fixed typo that prevented you from actually changing servers.
1.0.6: July 12, 1996
Fixed problem with 16bit font objects. For real, this time, i hope.
1.0.5: Fixed font bug, which prevented some people (and me!) from selecting
certain fonts (Lucida Console, fe)
Fixed problem with displaying data recieved from very slow servers.
Optimized a few internal things.
Fixed size of the 16 bit distribution.
1.0.4: Released to the world
1.0: First release. Test release at UofI campus.