Welcome to the CIS Retriever Demo. This release note has some last minute information about the operation of CIS Retriever that is not in the User Manual. Being a demo version, a few functions have been disabled such as the ability to keep and send messages. You are able to log on to CompuServe, browse the CIS Retriever areas, keep the first message of a forum section, and create new messages. There are two manuals accompanying this demo. They built into Common Ground viewers; one for Mac and one for Windows. You can view the manual on your computer and print them out. If you have questions please see the Black Labs section in the Newton Vendor Forum (GO BLACKLABS) or email us at 76702,2076.
Newton Require dial tone Preference
The Newton has a Require dial tone check box under its modem preferences. CIS Retriever supports this preference. This preference should normally be left selected unless the phone system you are connecting your modem to doesn’t produce a dial tone. (This occurs outside the United States only) With this preference unselected, CIS Retriever will dial and attempt to connect without waiting for a dial tone.
Newton Text Recognizer Button
CIS Retriever does not look at the state of the Newton Text Recognizer Button. It recognizes text in editable messages regardless of the state of the button. This was done because many people keep the recognizer off most of the time for writing quick Notes.
Multiple Mail Addresses
Although really a feature of Compuserve and not CIS Retriever, it should be mentioned that a mail message can be sent up to 10 addressees by separating their addresses with a ";". The addresses can be on different systems, i.e., some addresses can be Compuserve addresses while others can be Internet addresses. With the Names lookup supported by CIS Retriever, you can put these multiple addresses as the Email address under a single name if you often send mail to the same group of people.
Functionality Changes from the User's Manual
File--The File function of CIS Retriever is not working at this time and a dialogue box to that effect is presented if you attempt to file a message in Newton Notes. This will be quickly fixed for the next release of CIS Retriever.
Size--The current version of CIS Retriever swelled from the intended 100K to about 112K (This is the compressed space occupied by the application on the Newton). Before the next release, an effort will be made to reduce the size back to 100K. The product is still usable on the original MessagePad and MessagePad 100 without a storage card but the amount of space for keeping messages is small. If you use either of these Newtons, you will probably want to eventually get a storage card to keep messages on. The storage card Move operations described in Appendix A of the manual make it convenient to move messages back and forth between a storage card and your Newton.
Mail Xchange Button--Although not described in the User's Manual, the next version of CIS Retriever will implement a single mail exchange button that will login to Compuserve, get all your New mail, send all your unsent mail and then disconnect.
Keeping Subject Threads--The manual indicates that only one subject thread can be selected at a time. This is incorrect. Multiple subject threads can be selected at one time and the Keep Button tapped to save them. As mentioned in the manual, each thread is saved as one message.
Copy Note--When creating or editing messages, a Copy Note function has been added to the Action button pop-up list of commands. This function works exactly the same as the Append Note function except that before appending the text from the Note, it looks for lines in the Note that begin with either To: or Subj:. If it finds a line of either type, it uses the contents of that line to change either the To: field or the Subj: field of the message being edited. It then appends the rest of the Note text to the body of the message being edited exactly as the Append Note function. The To: or Subj: fields can be anywhere in the Note text but must be at the beginning of a line. If multiple To: or Subj: fields are found, only the first one of each is used.
Copy Note is useful for two things:
1) Messages with To: and Subj: fields can be created in the Notes area of the Newton and then transferred to a new unsent message.
2) A list of favorite message subjects can be maintained in the Newton Notes area by having notes with only the text Subj: followed by a subject.
Number of Items Kept--The total number of items kept on both your Newton and a storage card, if one is inserted, now appears to the left of the remaining soup space. This number as well as the remaining soup space is automatically updated as you add and remove messages. Remember that by tapping on this area of the screen, you can change the default store from within CIS Retriever if a storage card is inserted.
Enhancements to wait/send script controls--The User's Manual describes three send and two wait controls in Appendix B on CIS Access Profiles. These controls are all implemented as described with one enhancement. The send delay control no longer has to be at the beginning of the send line and in fact can be repeated at multiple places in the send line. This give much more versatility to what can be done in a single line in complicated scripts. For example:
<1><CR><LF><2>@<5>CIS<CR>
waits 1 second, sends a carriage return line feed, waits 2 seconds, sends an @,waits 5 seconds and then sends CIS<CR>.
Modem data bits, stop bits, parity control--An enhancement has been made to the Phone# line of the Access Profile to allow setting of modem data bits, stop bits and parity. The control consists of a "<" followed by three characters followed by a ">" anywhere in the phone number line (although at the beginning or end are the logical places). The first of the three characters must be a 7 or 8 and controls the number of data bits per character. The second of the three numbers must be a 1 or 2 and controls the number of stop bits and the third character must be an "N", "E" or "D" for no, even or odd parity respectively. For example <71E> is seven data bits, one stop bit and even parity. Some areas of SprintNet seem to require the 71E configuration. If no control is present on the Phone# line, the default of 81N is used.
Updated scripts--The access profiles in Appendix B of the user manual have been updated to make them more reliable. The updated access profiles appear on the Newton the first time you launch CIS Retriever but are repeated here in case you decide to delete them.
SprintNet Access
Send 0 <1>@<1><CR>
Wait 1 Terminal=
Send 1 D1<CR>
Wait 2 @
Send 2 c 202202<CR>
Note that some areas of SprintNet seem to require
<71E>-data bits, stop bits, parity. Try setting this in
the Phone# line if you can't connect with the default 81N.
