• choose maX.500 Help… from the Help menu (from the  menu under System 6)
• click on the Help icon (found in the bottom-left corner of the command palette)
• choose About maX.500… from the  menu and click on the Help… button
• press ⌘-? or the help key. Note that the help key is only available on an extended keyboard.
To close this help window, choose Close Window from the File menu, press ‚åò-W, or click in the window's close box. Note that maX.500 version 2.0.1 does not provide Balloon help.
Along the left side of this window, there is a scrollable list of topics. To the right of the topic list is the help text itself (which is what you are reading right now). Clicking on a topic causes the text to scroll to show that topic.
The text is divided into three sections which are marked by bullets (•) in the topic list:
• Introduction: what you are reading now
• Tutorials: step-by-step instructions on how to do many useful things
• Reference: a reference to terms, windows, dialog boxes, and menus used in maX.500
You can scroll through all the text in a section, or use the topic list to jump around. Choose Print… from the File menu to print the text of the section you are viewing.
If you need further assistance with maX.500 and you are affiliated with The University of Michigan, please contact the ITD consultants by either:
• calling 764-HELP or
• sending electronic mail to: online.consulting@umich.edu
Bugs in maX.500 should be reported via electronic mail to: max500-bugs@umich.edu
General comments and questions about maX.500 should be sent via electronic mail to: X500@umich.edu
 
A Brief Overview of X.500 and maX.500
maX.500 is an X.500 Directory User Agent, or client program for Macintosh users who want to access the X.500 Online Directory. X.500 is an international standard for providing online Directory Services; the easiest way to think about X.500 is as a worldwide distributed electronic telephone book. Briefly, maX.500 allows you to find, view, and (if you have permission) modify information about people, organizations, groups of people, and other objects stored in the X.500 Online Directory.
If you are University of Michigan faculty, permanent staff, or a registered student you should already be listed in the U-M portion of the X.500 Directory. Your entry in the directory contains some information obtained from the Personnel and/or Registrar Office databases, and it is updated about once a month. If you have a uniqname and Kerberos password, you can make changes to your entry and add additional information such as an electronic mail address, fax phone number, and more. Note that changes you make to your X.500 entry are not yet sent back to Personnel or the Registrar, so if you change information they hold (such as your postal address), you need to notify them as well.
 
What’s new in maX.500 2.0.1?
Version 2.0.1 of maX.500 was released on March 1st, 1994. The improvements over version 2.0 (June 8th, 1993) are briefly described below. Most of the changes in this release were made to make maX.500 easier to use. The next major release of maX.500 will include a new browse window that will allow viewing of individual entries, which is a feature many have requested. If you have suggestions for other new features, please send them via electronic mail to x500@umich.edu
Significant changes in version 2.0.1:
- An “Exact Match Only” checkbox has been added to the “Find” and “Find & Add” windows. This box can be used to prevent maX.500 from automatically trying approximate or substring searches for you.
- The dialog box displayed when more than one entry is matched has been replaced with a new entry list window. Entry lists may be kept on your screen so you can select more than one of the matched entries for display.
- The online Help is now available on the command palette (in place of Preferences, which can still be found on the File menu).
- Dots and underscores that you type between words are automatically changed to blanks when searching for or creating new entries. This only applies to searches done from the simpler “Fewer Choices” Find Window.
- You can now enter a comma or blank separated list in the “LDAP server” Preferences field. maX.500 will attempt to contact each server in turn when establishing the server connection.
- Lists of attribute values (e.g. “X.500 Members” or “E-Mail Members”) are now sorted before displaying them when this is appropriate. This makes maintenance of large groups much easier.
- maX.500 now properly displays and writes back non-ASCII characters to the X.500 Directory using the T.61 character set. This includes many of the characters with diacritical marks used in non-English speaking countries.
- A “Discard Authentication” command was added to the Directory menu. Note that it does not delete your Kerberos tickets – it merely discards your authentication to the X.500 Directory.
- Additional helpful warnings have been added to let you know if you need the Authentication Manager control panel or if you are trying to create a group whose name may conflict with a uniqname.
- A “List Subscribers” button was added to the Group display window to allow you to easily find all current subscribers to a group.
- “Find Groups Added To” and “List Owned Groups” buttons were added to UM Person Groups display window.
- Added Cmd+Shift-<X> keyboard shortcut to set the Find window popup menu. For example, holding down the Command and Shift keys and pressing the letter G will set the Find window to search for groups.
- Added Cmd+Shift-<X> keyboard shortcut to press buttons in the entry display windows. For example, if you are viewing a person, holding down the Command and Shift keys and pressing the letter V will activate the “View Photo” button if it is available.
- If there is more than one owner of a group, you are now asked to choose which one you want to authenticate as (in version 2.0, the first owner was always used).
- Version 3.0 of the U-M LDAP library is now used, which means that your LDAP server must be at least as new as 3.0.
- Various improvements were made to the display templates, including support for the display of North American Directory Forum entries.
- Kerberos tickets are now expired when you try to authenticate as a different user than the last time you authenticated.
-maX.500 will re-open connections more reliably when using MacPPP.
- The placement of newly opened windows has been improved.
- Some error messages have been clarified.
- Several bugs were fixed:
occasional crashes when “Use Multiple Windows” Preference is off have been eliminated
occasional use of incorrect search filters has been eliminated
scrolling problems in entry display windows have been fixed
empty “maX.500 News” or “Version out of date” windows are no longer displayed
occasional crash when closing “child” (e.g. photo) entry display windows has been eliminated
 
Release History
1-Mar-1994 maX.500 2.0.1
minor update – improved usability and support for groups; new entry list window
8-Jun-1993 maX.500 2.0
major update – display of many kinds of entries; LDAP protocol replaces DIXIE
9-Oct-1991 maX.500 1.1
minor update – network performance and interface improvements
21-Jun-1991 maX.500 1.0
first widely available “public” release – name changed to “maX.500”
15-Feb-1991 X.500 Access 1.0b0
initial beta release – used DIXIE protocol to access the directory
