Ink Spot 1.27

Usenet wherever you are

Ink Spot allows you to take full advantage of the Newton's portability and Internet connectivity. Instead of being tied to your workstation for net news, you can download it and read on the train, waiting in line, or while someone else uses your workstation. Features include:

Use as little storage as possible by compressing downloads or discarding headers.
Find messages containing a word or phrase in the subject or body of an article.
Download as many or as few messages as you want. There is no pre-set limit on the number of messages you can download, or the size of individual messages.
Download full headers or discard headers to save space.
Save messages to the notepad and delete messages as you read them.
Reply off line and upload replies when you next connect. Unfinished replies can be edited later to preserve the calm, rational tone of your favorite news groups.
Filter messages by sender or subject.
Ink Spot is completely customizable. Set your news groups, fonts, signature, view settings and other cool stuff.
Usable in both landscape and portrait mode.

Ink Spot is $25 shareware. The unregistered version will only allow users to download news 25 times before expiring.

NOTE: If you're looking for "InkSpot" (the hotline client for Macintosh), please visit i n k s p o t t i n g

Looking for documentation? Look no further; our documentation is now on-line!

Having trouble? Try consulting our troubleshooting page.

You may have some questions about downloading and installing. We have the answers.

Macbinary

Mac binhex

PC zipped

PC UUencode

The following are known bugs in the current version, which should be fixed in our next release.

No known bugs.

1.27: (Released 2/18/2000)

Fixed -48807 error when marking articles read or unread.

1.26: (Released 2/16/2000)

Handles unexpected server responses more gracefully by skipping to the next group.
Added the ability to hide the signature when posting (which doesn't show it in the editor).
Better error detection when there is no email transport currently installed (which gives you a chance to un-freeze the package before you lose the email you've composed).
Transaction log is now more verbose in error conditions.
Added a "kill now" button to the killfile preferences pane, which applies the killfile to the already-downloaded articles.
The "global" killfile is now automatically used for new groups.

1.24: (Released 12/8/1999)

Now scans storage for articles from groups that are not in the group list, and automatically adds those groups to the list.
Setting the auto-delete option to "when closing" caused Ink Spot to delete articles when the view was rotated. This is because the standard Newton way of rotating the view closes all applications, rotates, then re-opens the applications. This has been worked around.
The preference for which store to put new articles on used to be based on the position of that store's name in the list. So ejecting and re-inserting cards, which changes the order of the list, messed up the pref. It's now based on the stores' unique IDs.
If the news server reported an artcle number greater than the Newton's maximum integer (2^29 - 1), Ink Spot had problems storing the article. This has been fixed.
If ISO decoding was set to "when read", Ink Spot used to pop up a window for each article saying that the article was being decoded. It now only does this for large articles.
The default posting view is now the "easy" post view, instead of the "full" view.

1.22: (Released 10/20/1999)

Intermittent error picked up by BugTrap when deleting threads should be gone.
Fixed handling of some bogus responses from news servers running new versions of INN.

1.20: (Released 5/25/1999)

If the "take over power switch" option is set for the article view, and an article fills more than one screen, the view now pages before going to the next article.
All of the "take over power switch" prefs now only do so when Ink Spot is the current application.
You can now create new posts directly from the post queue.
The storage of new posts now obeys a new pref on the new "Storage Options" prefs pane.
The new "easy" post view now properly inserts a "Re:" at the beginning of the subject.
Using a large font on the group view no longer causes last digit to be truncated.
Adding a new group now makes the group immediately visible.
Fixed an occasionally occurring bug when the signature is blank.
Some even more minor bug fixes!

1.18: (Released 11/13/1998)

changed NEXTs to STATs and STATs to NEXTs where appropriate in the downloading code, finalizing changes from the 1.17 interim release.
Added auto-reconnection when "the connection was unexpectedly terminated."
- from the Connection Info section of the prefs, set Reconnect Attempts to 0, 1, 5, 10, or 9999, or enter your own.
- if connection unexpectedly terminated (and in no other case), Ink Spot will attempt to reconnect that number of times, then give the usual error message if it happens again.
Added an "easy" post view:
- from the Posting View section of the prefs, choose Easy Post View (as opposed to Full Post View)
- to just send an article as email, set newsgroups line to <none> and choose recipient from the picker list in the lower-left corner.
- to just post, set newsgroups line appropriately and choose no recipients.
- if "Reply To Article" is chosen from the article view, the email address of the author of the post is listed as the first choice in the "Mail To" popup.
- any extra headers specified in Advanced: Headers will be used, and no headers (other than subject and newsgroups) can be changed unless the Full Post View is used.

1.17: (Released 9/2/1998)

Interim release, fixes hanging problem with certain esoteric news servers.

1.16: (Released 7/8/1998)

Tapping the header portion of the article view now pops up a window containing the headers for the article.
Removed the Show Headers option from the i-menu in the article view, which used to toggle the Show Headers preference, and added a Show Headers option to the routing menu, which pops up the new headers window.
Added buttons to the article view to delete the current article and the current thread. (Shrank the next and previous article and thread buttons a bit to make room.)
Deleting the current thread while on the article view now moves to the next thread, instead of going back to the thread view.
Deleting the last, but not only, article in a thread while on the article view no longer causes a bogus "Your store is corrupt" warning to be generated.
Added a preference to the Posting View prefs to allow text to be inserted in a reply at either the beginning or the end of the quoted text.
Added a "Find Next" button to the Find slip, so that the search can begin with the next article, rather than the current one.
The error generated when using Mark Articles Read (or Unread) immediately upon entering Ink Spot no longer occurs.
Quitting Ink Spot while the prefs view is open no longer generates an error.
If you have new (i.e. never read) articles in a thread, and you mark articles read while on the thread view, the head of the thread is now correctly displayed in the "read" font.
Moving from the article view to the thread view used to leave a few pixels floating near the top of the list. These are now gone.
The text in the About box is now centered, and the (c) and (tm) have been replaced with actual copyright and trademark characters.

1.14: (Released 5/15/1998)

Downloading articles with blank bodies no longer causes Ink Spot to hang.
Cleaned up some problems with the timed deletion feature.
Deleting the last article in a group from the article view no longer causes an error -48205.
The Check All button is now always displayed on the group view on startup.
Closing the Prefs view, or changing to another section, while the Advanced: ISO Encoding section is up no longer causes an error.
Ink Spot is now better about remembering where it was when you cancel downloading.

1.12: (Released 3/11/1998)

Thread list redrawing sped up as much as humanly possible (or so we think) by rewriting the function in C. This also shaved 21k off of the final package size.
Found a workaround for cancelled articles on some news servers. Users that saw long ranges of "Article xx has been cancelled, skipping" shouldn't see that any longer.
Added "Decode ISO always" which will run on download and as read. This means that there are no severe consequences to cancelling the decoding after downloading.
Displays NNTP article number while downloading.
New navigation keyboard support for NOS 2.1: up and down arrows move up and down, left arrow does the same as the overview button, right arrow or return enter a group or read a message, and space will open or close a thread. More keyboard enhancements are on the way.
More default buttons in dialog boxes for keyboard users. If you come across a dialog that doesn't have a default button, let us know.
Rewritten mail handling: more mailers work correctly (a side effect: your owner card mail configuration is now used when replying via email; the email address in Ink Spot is only used for posts).
Added "Forward via email" to the article view.
Auto-deletion features: articles (either read or all) may be deleted upon close, before download, or at a scheduled time.

1.10r3: (Released 1/30/1998)

Many thanks to Peter Brunner for his help finding the international MP2100 bug!

Fixed startup error on non-US messagepads.
When resetting the article downloading prefs to defaults, the automatic download alarm is now removed properly.

1.10r2: (Released 1/29/1998)

Text-to-speech users no longer need both Macintalk packages installed to start up.
Killfiles are no longer copied from the old (1.08r2 and previous) version because of a bug that we were unable to reproduce.

1.10: (Released 1/28/1998)

Increased the number of trial downloads from 10 to 25.
Added individual killfiles for each group.
Added a "reverse killfile" ability, which only downloads articles containing the specified authors or subjects.
Added support for Macintalk for Newton, Apple's text-to-speech extension. Ink Spot should automatically detect if you have Macintalk installed, and enable your Newton to speak individual articles, including the subject and author. This is considered a beta feature, since Macintalk has not yet been publicly released.
Added the ability to take over the power switch, so that flicking the switch makes Ink Spot go to the next unread article. Added prefs to the article, thread, and group views for this. If you have Macintalk, using the power switch in this way should make Ink Spot automatically begin speaking the article.
Added a nice scroll bar to the article view (and a pref to turn it off), which allows you to position the article at any point. You can position the scroll bar on the right or left side of the screen.
Added a pref to turn off all confirmation messages. This includes the "really delete?" messages, as well as confirmation of marking articles read and unread.
Added the ability to specify an arbitrary number of articles to download, as well as an arbitrary maximum size.
If all articles are deleted from the thread view, now goes back to the group view.
The "percentage full" gauge in the Article Downloading prefs now updates the percentage indicator as you drag.
Ink Spot now deals more generically with email handling programs.
Added a pref for doing ISO encoding when posting.
The article titles shown in the thread view are now ISO decoded (or not) in accordance with the ISO decoding prefs.
If you copy a ROT13'd message to the Notepad, the resulting note is now ROT13'd.
Fixed problems in the posting view when two posts are created in the same minute.
Fixed a minor problem when starting up.
If you mark all articles in a group read, the thread titles are no longer displayed in the "new" font.
Fixed some problems when resetting the advanced settings prefs to their defaults.
Added '--' to the beginning of the default signature.
Fixed some minor typos.

1.08r2: (Released 12/26/1997)

We've gotten reports of "multiple icons" appearing in the "storage" section of the extras drawer. This addresses this problem, although we haven't been able to reproduce it ourselves.

1.08: (Released 12/24/1997)

Many thanks to Dr. Martin Latterich for his tireless efforts debugging this version.

ISO 8859 decoding is now performed for both downloading and posting of articles. The decoding can either be done immediately after download, or article-by-article.
There is an intermittent bug in some news servers which causes the server to position its "current article" pointer incorrectly. A workaround for this has been implemented.
Reworked the preferences slip. Added the ability to reset preferences to their default values.
Added a "Server Debugging" section to the advanced prefs, so users can help us debug problems with their servers.
If the last article downloaded has expired from the news server, no longer skips the first article actually on the news server.
If there are no groups checked for download, and no posts queued for posting, no longer tries to connect.
Positions the carat in the Subject line when creating a new post.
Correctly threads articles with a Subject line beginning "Re:Re:".
Current article "dot" on thread view repositions to first thread when read articles are deleted.
Added 14 point as a font size option, since 12 point incorrectly reports its size.
Dotted line in article view no longer obscures text, except for 12 point fonts, as noted above. Also added a pref to turn off the dotted line.
Added "for Newton" to default signature.
Can now scroll one-third, one-half, or full screen in the article view.
Removed the "smooth scroll" option, now always scrolls smoothly.
Added ability to file the soup containing the articles externally.
No longer returns an error when reading an article with no body.
No longer returns an error when double-tapping the close box in the thread view.
Fixed a group list bug which didn't carry group counts with the names when re-ordered.
"Show Headers" is now only shown in the i-menu if there are headers to show.
Now handles card insert/remove events.

1.06: (Released 12/05/1997)

Article text was still cut off in some situations.
Umlauts (and other 8-bit characters) are now posted correctly. They're still not downloaded correctly, which means they'll look incorrect when you re-download your posted article; other people will see them correctly, however. We're still working on the download piece.
Deleting an article while reading that article would skip over the next thread. Not any more...
The silk-screen Find button now calls our find dialog (instead of doing nothing).
Newly downloaded articles have their own configurable font, allowing one to distinguish them. (Only unread articles fall in to this category; once an article is read, it shows in the 'read' font. In other words, if you set the 'new' font the same as the 'unread' font, you won't see this feature at all.)
The most recently read article is denoted by a dot (or a black triangle, if it's in a thread that is closed) on the thread view.
A line is drawn on the article view indicating where the text scrolls to. (In a future version, this may be disableable.)
Replying to a long article now correctly positions the reply text so the insertion point is displayed in the window when it opens.

1.04r2: (Released 11/13/1997)

Changed from 'a', 'b' release notation to 'r1', 'r2' notation to avoid confusion between these releases and alpha/beta release software.
Fixed bug that wouldn't allow users to discard posts being edited.

1.04: (Released 11/12/1997)

Changes to the signature are now saved.
Added a "strip carriage returns" preference, and the ability to change it from the article view.
Changing the font on the article view no longer blanks out the display.
Fixed the "Caught up in" message when marking server read.
Attribution string now built correctly.
Scrolling very far down post view no longer generates error.
Now only copies shown headers to the notepad.
Articles are no longer truncated when using big fonts, or when there are long lines in the post.
Entering a thread goes to the first unread article, rather than the first article.
Cleaned up some Newton user interface inconsistencies.
Thread names now use full screen width.
Now adds "Re: " to subject in replies properly.
Auto downloading now only downloads checked groups.
Now handles groups with very long names.
Now warns before discarding posts when closing post view.
Deleting an article while in a thread works properly.
Silk-screened Find button no longer generates an error.
More descriptive error messages while connecting.
Turning off compression for downloading now generates a warning that you may run out of heap.

1.02b: Maintenance release of 1.02a (10/16/1997).

1.02a: Maintenance release of 1.02 (10/16/1997).

1.02: (Released 10/15/1997)

We've fixed the crashing problems when deleting or freezing Ink Spot. Note: because of these problems with version 1.0, you'll need to delete it and restart your Newton before installing version 1.02.
Faster Download speed. If you turn off the "compress articles" option in the article downloading preferences, you'll see a significant speed increase.
Ink Spot can now store articles in stores other than "default" or "internal". Look for more options under "store to use" in the advanced options preferences.