Currently, I am in my 4th year of study as a double major in Computer Science and Music at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. I am also enrolled in its Co-operative Education program, and alternate school and work semesters every 4 months. Hopefully this program is a testament to the excellent education I'm getting at U of W.
Other hobbies include classical music (I play violin), squash, volleyball, and, well, alternative music. Some things I like to think influenced my love of computers are: OOP (Smalltalk-80 is the grooviest thing, man), Creative Computing, Dr. Dobbs, Byte, and cool computer graphics. One of these days, I'll have to go into details about these.
I first got hooked on Usenet (and haven't been able to quit yet) when I started using my dad's UNIX account at work to read news when I was 17. Since, then I have been relying on U of W to provide me with news. I hope that this software serves a useful purpose to all those who need it, since not all of us with limited budgets can afford some of the other more expensive packages. I sincerely (not just monetarily :=) ) hope that ToadNews makes a significant impact on Usenet readership, since Usenet provides us with so much useful information. (hey, I REALLY did learn alot from Usenet -- whether it was how to program, or what was on Star Trek last week)
This program was developed and tested on my trusty Macintosh SE/30, probably the best machine Apple ever made. Now, if I could only get a Quadra...
ToadNews is my first TCL application -- although I have been using various object-oriented programming platforms since I was in high school. TCL is a great for introduction for beginners to application frameworks, although a little shabby on documentation and overall power. Hopefully Symantec will address these concerns in the future.
Thanks for reading this, and I hope ToadNews finds a home on your computer. Later…
- John
PS: When I graduate in Aug. '94, I'll be looking for a job -- please remember my name! :=) (I know, I know, it was a shameless plug) If it pleases you, you might also want to know that I have worked and developed software for several industry leaders such as WATCOM, Bell-Northern Research, and Microsoft.
Credits Go Out To…
• Peter & Lucy (known to me as Mom & Dad), for everything, including all that cheese.
• Dave Platt, for revamping and co-ordination of the UUPC for the Mac project.
• Roy Wood, for writing "rnMac" and making sure that people had something to read news with.
• Christopher Wysocki, for his CPEditText TextEdit replacement, which ToadNews uses for the log window.
• Paul Thompson, for his initial version of this documentation.
• Adam C. Engst, for allowing me to put betas of the program on ftp.halcyon.com and all the free PR.
• Ramin Kamal, for the neato, whiz-bang program icons.
• The fool-hardy beta-testers who helped me find and iron out the bugs.
