Finger 1.0b4
Copyright 1996 Eric Kidd <eric.kidd@pobox.com>

http://www.pobox.com/~emk/sw/be/
ftp://www.dartmouth.edu/people/emk/ftp/be/

DESCRIPTION

Fingers users and displays the results on screen.

NOTES

Try searching the database table FingerableUser. It remembers everyone
you finger and can be searched on a number of fields. Try sorting
on "Last Fingered" or "Count", and remember that you can click a
column heading to change the sort key or toggle between ascending
and descending order. You can also drag records to the Finger
application icon, but you can't double-click them.

Play with some of the other features, too. Edit the names of
FingerableUser records, save custom queries and use the
"Finger Other Accounts" menu item. Right-click on the text in
a plan window to pop up the shortcuts menu.

Finger may be invoked from a shell, although it will still display
output in windows. Try:

	Finger user@host [user@host ...] &

If you need a a finger client which writes to stdout, there appears
to be one in <ftp://ftp.be.com/pub/contrib/net/>. I have no immediate
plans to support stdio.

This makes a pretty good application to include in a BeBox demo.

FUTURE PLANS

I'm using this application as the test application for the Internet
Config URL openning routines. Programs will ask IC to display a URL,
and IC will find the appropriate viewer and send it an event.

Write me at <eric.kidd@pobox.com> for more information if you'd
like your application to work as an IC URL viewer.

KNOWN BUGS (OLD)

	* Some features of BTextView are disabled because they don't work
	* Can't start new finger if no windows are visible
	* Need to improve user/host prompt keyboard navigation
	* Don't check for all possible errors (especially operator new)
	* Minimal command-line support

KNOWN BUGS (NEW FOR DR8)	
	
	* SetSizeLimits() no longer includes window border sizes,
	  but Zoom() still thinks the maximum size is padded,
	  causing Zoom to *shrink* a window already at the
	  the maximum size by 8 pixels horizontally and 27 vertically
	* Because of above, maximum plan size has been padded
	* BTextControl and BTextView text selection *really* broken 

TO DO

	* Go back and recheck all the DR7 bugs, removing workarounds
	* Test on Internet instead of my LAN
	* Use exceptions instead of current error-handling hack 

REVISION HISTORY

	1.0b4	Worked around screen freezing bug in 1.0b3
			Isolated network code from display code
			Many minor bug fixes
			Simple command-line support for bootscripts, testing
			Fixed bugs in CGrowBuffer, hacked around a problem
	1.0b3	RELEASED AS "Finger.screenfreeze.tar.gz"
			Recompiled for DR8
			Tweaked plan window layout for DR8
			Added support for variable-height menu bars
			Reformatted prompt window for larger BTextControls
	1.0b2	Finger now uses C++ classes to represent sockets
			Support for loopback interface
			Correctly sets type/creator of database records
	1.0b1	Default button in finger prompt window
			No longer reenter non-reentrant parts of TCP/IP stack =(
			Honor name-editing of FingerableUser records
			Display edited names of FingerableUser records
			Auto-size windows to fit plans
			Menu bar and right-button menu
			Support copying and saving of plan text
			Finger again, finger host
			Finger all accounts belonging to a user
			Set B_WILL_ACCEPT_FRONT_CLICKS for plan windows
	1.0b0	Initial release

SOURCES

In order to build Finger, you'll need my library routines. They're
available from either the web site or the FTP site listed at the
top of this document.

CREDITS

Thanks to Neil Miller for helping with the icon design. Finger was
inspired by the Macintosh application of the same name by Peter Lewis.