Please read this message before installing List-It on your Newton.
There have been some stories and rumours going around concerning List-It (actually, mostly about it’s predecessor, Shopper). Some were true, some not. This text’s purpose is to quickly explain what you can expect in terms of problems and what to do if you encounter them.
First of all, let us mention that List-It is shareware written by people working in a small company. Although we try to get rid of all the bugs we find before sending an application out in the real world, our beta testing facilities are fairly limited. We believe that this application is stable and shouldn’t cause any major (or permanent) problems, but we might have missed something.
GENERAL PROBLEMS
Some people have mentioned having trouble with their Newton after installing List-It (actually, Shopper) on their Newton. They mentioned some strange behaviour and having to reset more often. Although these reports were rare, there were more than one. We have not yet been able to reproduce the problems mentioned above. If you ever have ANY trouble which you believe is caused by List-It, please write us and let us know what’s happening. Also, please note that hitting the RESET button at the back of your unit might help things a lot.
The only reproducible bug we found so far depends solely on where you install the application. What happens is that if you install List-It in internal RAM and you sometimes do backups on a RAM card, you’ll get an error message when your Newton tries to backup List-It. If you have a RAM card and do backups, we recommend that you install List-It on the card instead of in internal RAM. If you don’t do backups with your RAM card, you may install List-It where ever you wish.
REAPPEARING OR GHOST SOUP
The reason for the existence of the now renowned “ghost soup” is that when you backup your Newton using the Connection Kit(tm), the lists your entered with List-It (or even with applications other than ours that also keep data permanently) are also backed-up. If you ever decide you don’t want to use List-It and remove it, and the lists you created, well, the soup (the database holding your lists) might suddenly come back.
Why? Because the Connection Kit(tm) reinstalls them. Actually, it only reinstalls the container which used to hold the lists, not the lists themselves. So what to do? Well, you can leave it there and wait for some future solution (it barely takes up any memory). The ideal solution is to re-erase the soup (maybe by reinstalling List-It and re-deleting the soup) and then do a new synchronisation from scratch The easiest way to do this is simply by changing the name of the folder with your name on it. This will still leave you a copy to work with in case something goes wrong. And since a new synchronisation file will be created there’s no way the soup can be copied back in. But be careful to make at least one backup of your old files before doing this, just in case. We also recommend that you reread parts of the Connection Kit(tm) manual before doing this, just to be sure you understand all the implications.
GENERAL WARNINGS
Here’s what to do If you’ve installed List-It and decide not to keep it. Before removing it you must go into the Options dialog and tap on the REMOVE LISTS button. This is the only safe way of removing information installed by List-It. If you do not use this button before removing List-It, certain information will still be found on you device.
Well, that’s mostly it for our warnings. For more information, we strongly recommend that you read the READ ME file which is, in fact, the instruction manual. Let us repeat that most of the comments we receive are very positive and that very few bugs are actually ever found by users. But if you do have a problem, please write to us. You can reach us by writing to:
America Online: ThierryD
AppleLink: MACAPA
CompuServe: 70545,1075
Internet: macapa@cam.org
P.S.: If you like List-It, please send in your shareware fee. We spent a lot of time writing List-It and hope to write other good and affordable applications!
