Control PPP is a control strip module for all you road warriors. It lets you connect or disconnect MacPPP and open the MacTCP and Config PPP control panels to change your dial up number etc. It also indicates whether MacPPP is open or not by a mere glance at its icon, in case you have an internal modem.
No, it doesn’t tell you how to configure MacTCP and MacPPP for the peculiarities of your individual modem Internet provider, and please don’t mail me with such questions. My life is too short, I only know about one modem and provider, and I'd hate to ruin the cottage industry :-)
How to Install it
Simply drop Control PPP into your Control Strip Modules folder (or Desktop Strip Modules folder if you’re using Desktop Strip, but please read the limitations below), which is within your System Folder, and restart your Mac. If MacPPP isn’t installed on your Mac, Control PPP will silently refuse to load.
Requirements
Control PPP needs the Control Strip or Desktop Strip control panel, and MacPPP. It therefore needs System 7.0 or better. Anyway, it'll crash if you somehow manage to load it under System 6, I promise!
It was developed and tested with version 2.0.1 of MacPPP and System 7.1, 7.5 and 7.5.1.
How to Use it
Use the bottom item in the menu to connect or disconnect Mac PPP as appropriate. The other two items open the MacTCP and Config PPP control panels. Simple, huh? There's balloon help too.
It shows this icon when MacPPP is down:
and this one when MacPPP is up:
Er, that’s it.
(Not quite. I’m unhappy with the icons, particularly the connected one, but I want to keep to the width of a small icon and be consistent with the MacTCP icon families. Suggestions are welcome, especially binary ones.)
General Tip
If you’re using Apple’s Control Strip, you can reorder the modules by dragging them around with the option key down.
Known Limitations with Desktop Strip
Desktop Strip has a problem with dialog boxes, as mentioned in its “read me” file. If you are using Desktop Strip rather than Control Strip, any dialog box that MacPPP produces in the course of making its first successful connection won’t accept mouse or keyboard actions. Once you have successfully connected, things seem to be fine.
This means that there is a risk that you will be unable to regain control of your Mac if you use Desktop Strip and the first successful connection fails in such a way that you need to click a button in a MacPPP dialog to exit (eg your modem was switched off or failed to negotiate a connection). Config PPP is sometimes very slow to disconnect the first session for similar reasons. If this worries you, do not use Control PPP with Desktop Strip; use Apple’s Control Strip, which does not suffer from this problem. Or, if you have QuicKeys or KeyQuencer, try my MacPPP QuicKeys or PPPquencer instead.
Apple’s Control Strip can be patched to work with desktop Macs with a patcher available at your nearest info-mac mirror. Last time I looked, the latest version was:
/info-mac/gui/control-strip-patcher-20.hqx
These problems do not occur with Apple’s Control Strip; it seems Apple use some deep magic to avoid it, as the AppleTalk Switch module exhibits similar behaviour. I have talked with the author of Desktop Strip about this; however I’m currently forced to the conclusion that there is no fix for Desktop Strip short of rewriting MacPPP not to put up dialogs, unless Apple will reveal their magic to us mortals so that Desktop Strip can be similarly enchanted.
I may be completely wrong; technical suggestions are welcome.
Other Limitations
Control PPP uses the Finder to open the control panels. If you have quit the Finder, Control PPP will just beep at you if you try to open a control panel. It looks for the control panels at startup time by creator signature (rather than by name) and stores aliases to them, so it will still work if you rename them. However, it only looks in the Control Panels folder, so it won’t work if you’ve put one of the control panels elsewhere and restarted.
There is a bug in MacPPP 2.0.1. The bug only affects people who are in the habit of switching MacTCP from Ethernet/LocalTalk to PPP and back again, ie mostly PowerBook Duo users.
MacPPP installs, among other things, a function that allows other programs to use a mechanism called “Gestalt” to find out whether MacPPP is connected or not. These programs include Control PPP, the usual “Config PPP” control panel, Mark Aldritt's “MacTCP Control” Scripting extension, and my “MacPPP QuicKeys” extension and “PPPquencer” KeyQuencer extension.
If you start up with MacTCP using Ethernet/LocalTalk, switch to PPP, and then switch back, MacTCP disposes of its copy of the MacPPP code, including the gestalt function, and any of the programs mentioned above is likely to crash or hang.
Credits
Control PPP is based on my MacPPP QuicKeys, available from your nearest Info-Mac mirror. Thanks to NW Choe at the University of Chicago for the idea of doing a Control Strip module, to Metrowerks for the best compiler yet seen on the Mac, and to the Icicle Works for compile-crash-debug cycle music.
But no-one seems to want to send postcards. I'd really like at least one postcard for all the hard work. C’mon.
Suggestions and bug reports are welcome. If you want to send money, please donate it to a medical research charity instead.
Portions of Control PPP are derived from the MacPPP source code and are therefore copyright 1993 by the Regents of the University of Michigan and the Merit Network, Inc. Usage of this source code is restricted to non-profit, non-commercial purposes. The MacPPP program and source code is available at: ftp://merit.edu/pub/ppp/mac/
Control PPP is distributed as is in the hope it may be useful. I believe it to be safe, subject to the limitations described in this document, but you are warned that I accept no responsibility for any loss or damage caused by its use. So if it trashes your hard disk and you lose $1,000,000 worth of unbacked-up data, that’s your problem.
All trademarks acknowleged.
Richard Buckle hereby disclaims all warranties relating to this software, whether express or implied, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Richard Buckle will not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential, indirect or similar damages due to loss of data or any other reason, even if Richard Buckle or an agent of his has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In no event shall Richard Buckle be liable for any damages, regardless of the form of the claim. The person using the software bears all risk as to the quality and performance of the software.
US Government:
Government End Users: If you are acquiring this software on behalf of any unit or agency of the United States Government, the following provisions apply. The Government agrees: (i) if this software is supplied to the Department of Defense (DoD), the software is classified as "Commercial Computer Software" and the Government is acquiring only "restricted rights" in the software, its documentation and fonts as that term is defined in Clause 252.227-7013(c)(1) of the DFARS; and (ii) if the software is supplied to any unit or agency of the United States Government other than DoD, the Government's rights in the software, its documentation and fonts will be as defined in Clause 52.227-19(c)(2) of the FAR or, in the case of NASA, in Clause 18-52.227-86(d) of the NASA Supplement to the FAR.
Version History
1.0.1 Revised to ensure that the icon gets updated in the background.
1.0 Initial public release. Limited compatibility with Desktop Strip as mentioned above.
