• What is Tell-Me? (a short but interesting introduction)
• Proposes for installation and usage (should be read)
• How to use Tell-Me (contains one or two useful details)
• A few technical details (interesting after some time)
• Shareware info (you will undoubtetly read this!)
• Version history (and current known bugs, usually none?!)
WHAT IS TELL-ME?
Tell-Me is a note-block application intended to replace Apple's standard Notepad DA. Its purpose is to supply a possibilty to drop short notes quickly and easily. Since it is an application and not a desk accessory, Multi-Finder or System 7 is required (well, it would run under Finder, but would not make any sense there). Anyway, Tell-Me is written with the features of System 7 in mind.
Some of Tell-Me's features are:
• Tell-Me supports the microphone supplied with newer Macs, allowing you to simply speak your notes to your Mac (hence the name Tell-Me)
• Tell-Me supports Apple Events, which in particular allows an automatic save of your notes on shutdown.
• The entire program state is saved automatically on quitting and restored on restart, so you needn't re-arrange Tell-Me again and again. Instead you just use it.
• Tell-Me is small and not overloaded with features. This makes it easy to use, quick to launch and allows it to lay around in background continuously. (The documentation could be kept small, too ;-) )
PROPOSES FOR INSTALLATION AND USAGE
Ideally, Tell-Me should run continuously. So you just launch it and let it lay around in background. Whenever you want to drop a line, you bring it to the foreground, create a new note, write (or speak) whatever you want and leave the note lay around on the desktop.
Tell-Me supports this way of usage: It runs already with only 56k of application size and does whatever is necessary to be as cooperative as possible. You needn't bother about saving your work, because Tell-Me writes all your notes into one file and does all of the saving automatically on quitting, on being sent into the background or on closing the window. Under System 7 Tell-Me automatically saves and quits on shutdown. If you want to be on the save side, you also may save your data manually.
The ideal installation of Tell-Me for System 7 is to drop an alias of the application into the Startup items folder. Tell-Me then launches on startup and quits on shutdown. In the meantime, it doesn't do any harm, doesn't use up much memory and provides you with an easy way of writing or speaking notes. In case you absolutely have to quit Tell-Me, you should drop a second alias into the Apple menu items folder, allowing you to re-launch it quickly.
If you use System 6, you may install it as the startup application and additionally use some launching utility such as apollo (which I think is one of the best).
HOW TO USE TELL-ME
Anything you can do is documented in the menus. So a quick browse through the menu bar will reveal most of Tell-Me's features. Anyway, here is a detailed look at the menus: (the things that are not so obvious are marked with a •)
- ABOUT TELL-ME...: what you would expect
- NEW: Creates a new, empty and uniquely named note window
- OPEN: No menu item of its own. Instead you find attached a hierarchical submenu containing all available notes. Open a particular note by selecting it in the submenu
- CLOSE: Closes the window and saves the contents to the notes-file
- DELETE NOTE...: Deletes the current note i. e. the one in the currently active window
- SAVE STATE: Saves the current setting of Tell-Me.
• Usually this is done automatically on quitting or being sent into the background, but you may like to have the possibility of saving your notes manually.
- QUIT: Quits the program (oh, really?) after saving the current settings. Quitting is also initiated automatically on shutdown (at least under System 7 using the Finder shutdown).
- UNDO, CUT, COPY, PASTE, CLEAR: All the usual, although undo is not yet implemented (sorry!, see also shareware info below)
-SELECT ALL: Selects the entire text in the current window.
- FONT, SIZE, STYLE: Determine the appearance of the (entire) text in the current note window.
• If no note window is opened, then it sets Tell-Me´s default text appearance
- CHANGE TITLE...: Allows you to rename the note window. The title is also used to determine a particular note, therefore there must not be any two notes with the same title.
• You may also rename a note by command-clicking into the title bar of the window.
• The following characters mustn't be used in the title: - ; ^ ! < / (
- DICTATE... (Macs with microphone only): Brings up a standard record dialog which allows (in particular) speech to be sampled. Tell-Me uses the sampling quality with least memory usage (i. e. the poorest quality). Only one dictation is allowed per note window. Clicking the microphone icon in a note window does the same.
- HEAR DICTATION: Plays back a spoken note. This is possible on all Macs, provided you use some notes file containing a dictation. However there may be memory limitations, particularly under System 6. You may also click onto the loudspeaker symbol in the window.
- DELETE DICTATION...: Deletes the dictation of the current note.
A FEW TECHNICAL DETAILS
• What's in the Notes-File?
Simply anything but the application. In particular, all dictations, all text and also the settings are stored here. This file is created automatically if it is missing. Therefore you get a 'clean' copy of Tell-Me by trashing the notes-file or moving it to some other location.
• How about the memory usage of Tell-Me?
Tell-Me requires at least 56k of memory to run properly. It may be worth a try to give Tell-Me less memory, if you need the last few kBytes. Have a look at the Finder's About box to find out how much memory Tell-Me currently uses and set the memory partition to about 4k more. But there may be unexpected effects on doing this!
Tell-Me will need more memory if you want to write long notes or keep lots of notes lay around at the same time (or abuse Tell-Me as a comfortable text clipboard), since the text is stored in the application's local memory.
Tell-Me will warn you if memory is getting low. In this case you should quit, increase the memory partition and restart. Remember: Since Tell-Me saves the entire state, you will restart where you left.
• Doesn't the sampling need lots of application memory?
Tell-Me will indeed need more memory if you run System 6 and wish to use voice notes. The more memory there is, the longer dictations are possible. Tell-Me will NOT require more memory if you run System 7 and wish to use voice notes: Tell-Me uses temporary memory for sampling, i.e. memory that is not used by any application yet. However, if all your memory IS already used up by other applications, sampling will be limited to just a few seconds (unless you specify more memory for Tell-Me).
And for System 7 again: Playing back the dictations is done directly from disk if necessary, so no (almost) extra memory is required for this, as well.
Unfortunately I currently find problems with virtual memory and sound recording. Therefore if virtual memory is installed, Tell-Me by now samples its dictations into the application´s memory, which means that the length of the recording is limited by its memory partition. This should not pose too great problems since with virtual memory installed you can set the system memory size to any value. Anyway I will continue to work on this problem.
• Can I use several note files at once?
Yes, you may keep several different note files in different locations on your hard discs. Double clicking on one of them will open Tell-Me and make it use this file. If you use System 7 and double-click on one note file while Tell-Me is already in use (and hence one note file is already opened) you will be asked whether to close the current note file and open the new one or to cancel. Of course, if you use System 7, you may use the drag-n-drop feature of the Finder.
It is NOT possible to keep several note files opened at once. This would collide with the basic philosophy of Tell-Me to keep things as simple as possible and will certainly not be implemented in any future version of Tell-Me. Tell-Me will never, never get a file selector dialog. Please note: The only way to create multiple note files is to copy or move the file that resides with the Tell-Me application.
SHAREWARE INFO
Tell-Me is shareware, not public domain. You may test Tell-Me for a limited time, but if you decide to keep it, you must send 5$ (in any major currency) to me (adress below). You see, 5$ is not much money. What I want is just the confirmation that you use the program and like it enough to take into account the work of sending a letter with 5$ to me. Anyway, it's not the 5$ that stop you from sending the money, it's only the work of doing so, isn't it?
In case I find that resonance on Tell-Me is good enough, I will certainly continue work on the program and add features such as iconifying windows, window tiling, color, styled text or whatever YOU may wish to have implemented into Tell-Me. So, send money, suggestions and bug reports to:
By the way: You not only support a starving Macintosh programmer, but also a young family: I had started work on Tell-Me while waiting for my first child to be born, who finally arrived on February 5th, 1992.
"Tell-Me is baby-ware"
P.S.: If you don't speak German, you probably won't wish to try pronouncing my name. Refer to the note-file supplied with Tell-Me!
VERSION HISTORY
1.0 of March 5, 92
• first release
1.0.1 of March 25, 92 (released April, 16, 92)
• fixed an incompatibility between virtual memory and sound recording
• fixed bug that avoided long sounds to be deleted
• fixed an incompatibility to older system versions (6.0.5)
• implemented support for multiple notes files
• fixed bug that sometimes avoided the notes file to be updated when Tell-Me was sent to the background
• Notes-File is now locked while Tell-Me is in background
• seems to have implemented incompatibility to Quadras? (hints and reports welcome!)
