It's a control panel which plays cool sounds when you press the mouse button or a key on your keyboard (special sounds for tab, return and space key if you choose). It also counts the number of mouse and key clicks/strokes you’ve made.
What is it useful for?
It makes your life with the Mac somewhat more funny...
It's a control panel, can it cause conflicts?
In this version, Clicker doesn't patch any routines. Instead, it uses a jGNE Filter to catch events before they get forwarded to applications. It can conflict with other extensions, but it shouldn't. Even with my long INIT row, it doesn't crash.
Are there any side effects?
Yes, one. Maybe it becomes boring to hear the sounds. But if that happens, use your own sounds.
What Mac do I need in order to use it?
Any Macintosh, but I recommend that you use a 68040 or a PowerPC-Processor. Absolute minimum: 68030 Processor. You need at least System 7.0. I didn't test it with System 7, but it should work. Besides, many people use 7.5 today, and you should do that too if you don't already.
Is it PPC optimized?
Not yet, but that doesn't matter. That little bit of code runs very fast on a PowerMac.
How can I install it?
Just drop the "Clicker 4.6" Control Panel into your Control Panels folder and reboot your Macintosh.
How much RAM does it take?
Not much. Around 32 KB for the sounds, globals and RAM-resident code. This isn't a memory-intensive extension.
The sounds are played very slow. When I'm through with typing, the Mac is still generating sounds. The sounds are not played synchronous with my keyboard types.
Just one reason: your Mac is too slow. Clicker plays the sounds asynchronously, but maybe on some old Macs it's too slow anyway. Three tips to make it faster:
1. Throw away all system extensions you don't need (or deactivate those you won't need often).
2. Buy more RAM. I recommend that you have at least 8 MB real RAM installed.
3. Buy a faster Mac.
What's up when an error icon is being displayed?
There are only three reasons for Clicker to display an error icon:
1. It cannot find a sound resource
2. There's not enough memory to load a sound
3. Clicker fails while registering its Gestalt selector
What can I do in this case?
1. Get a new(er) copy of Clicker.
2. If that didn't work, deactivate all system extensions and control panels except Clicker. If it works then, another system extension conflicts with Clicker.
3. Make sure you have at least 4 MB real RAM installed.
How can I customize Clicker?
You can customize Clicker by double clicking on it and then selecting the options you want. Also click on the picture at the top of the window (displays an about box)! You can choose on which events Clicker should play sounds. Note that if you have the "Sound on Key Down" option activated, but, for example, leaved the "Sound on Return" option unchecked, Clicker will play the normal key sound when you press the return key (instead of the special one). You can also choose another sound for the various actions by clicking on one of the small loud speakers to the left of the checkboxes. Choose a System 7-Sound-File and Clicker will munch the sound into itself. WARNING: the old sound in Clicker for that event will be deleted! So I recommend you always keep a backup of Clicker to replace it if you’ve imported a bad sound. Now, in Clicker 4.6, no restart is required anymore after importing sounds, they should become active immediately.
There is now also a feature to play beeps when you type with the caps lock accidentally on. Just activate the "Caps lock beep" option in the control panel, and the next time you type with the caps lock key down, the Mac will beep on each keystroke. BTW: v4.7 on which I'm working will store the custom sounds in the preferences file so you can revert to the original sound whenever you want to.
What's up with the Clicker Control Strip?
I think the name tells it: it's a control strip extension which allows you to toggle Clicker on and off. If you have "Control Strip" installed, just drop it into your Control Strip Extensions Folder and reboot. When you click on the small icon in the strip, a pop-up menu appears. Here you can enable or disable the various actions (without the Control Panel!!) and turn Clicker on and off.
Oooh, great, what does it cost?
Not much. Just $10. You have 30 days to try it out. Thereafter, Clicker stops working and will give you an alert every time you start up your Macintosh. Use the included program "Register" to register Clicker. You can buy as many single-user licenses (each costs $10) as you want. You can also pay $150 to register for a site license. Site licenses cover a single organisation for up to 100 miles (160 km) in radius. Or you can, for $500, register a world-wide license which covers everyone in a single organisation. You can pay with nearly everything: cash in nearly all currencies, check, money order, invoice, VISA, MasterCard, American Express and First Virtual. You will pay to Kagi, a service which handles payments for me. These are Kagi's addresses:
Kagi
1442-A Walnut Street #392-XX
Berkeley, California 94709-1405
USA
E-Mail: sales@kagi.com
Fax: +1 510 652-6589
You will get a code back from them via E-Mail. If you don't have E-Mail, check "Postcard Receipt" in the Register program, and you'll get the code on a postcard mailed to you. Payments sent via E-Mail are processed within 3 to 4 days. You'll receive an E-Mail with your personal code when it is processed. Payments sent via fax take up to 10 days. Note that the name you enter in Register also later appears in the Clicker control panel (and, of course, also in the Clicker control strip) YES! And the code will only work with that name. After you’ve got the code, open the Clicker Control Panel, click "Register", enter your name and the code and click OK. If the code is good, Clicker will be registered and you will always see your name instead of "Not registered". Not bad, huh?
Note to users of earlier versions (4.0 and less) of Clicker:
Unfortunately, your old preferences won't get copied. Because Clicker 4.5 and up use data structures different from Clicker 3.x and 4.0x, Clicker generates a file called “Clicker Prefs”. The old file was called “Clicker 4.0 Prefs”, you can delete it. I swear, I'll never change the structure of the globals again, so this is the last time your prefs get lost! (I've repaid users of Clicker 4.2 already for their previous troubles – Clicker 4.5 and later automatically copy the preferences from the old Clicker 4.2 and extend it with the volume set to the default value) If you've had Clicker 3.x, you MUST delete your old preferences file, because it has the same name! If you have a registration code for an older version of Clicker, don’t wonder if it didn't work. I've changed the key calculation algorithm and the parameters to it, so your old code doesn't work. I've also removed the Key LED feature. I think it isn't funny, and some people even wrote that they hate it (really!). NEVER use the old version of Clicker Control Strip with Clicker 4.5! It'll crash your Mac! You need at least v1.3.1. Don't use v1.2 which comes with Clicker 4.0, or v1.3 which I've sent to all the registered users. I recommend you replace the old Clicker Control Strip when installing Clicker 4.6, and then when you restart, your Mac will have all the new versions. NEVER use Clicker FKEY again with Clicker 4.5 and up! It will crash your Mac, too because the new Clicker uses other globals than Clicker 3.x and 4.0x. With the Control Strip, you have a much more powerful way to access it.
Thanks to Peter N Lewis <peter@mail.peter.com.au>, Jim Walker <JWWalker@aol.com> and François Pottier <pottier@dmi.ens.fr> for "ShowInitIcon" which helps me displaying the startup icon while loading. Thanks to Jim Stout for his HSlider CDEF. And thanks to the folks at Kagi for their great Shareware service.
Please don't send me Snail-Mails regarding Clicker. I won't answer them because it's too expensive. If you have a question to Clicker, write E-Mail. If you don't have E-Mail, you aren't lucky...
Tested on:
Performa 630 (with and without activated PPC-Upgrade-Card)
Mac IIcx
-- Sorry for my bad english. I'm from Switzerland, if this is an excuse for you.
Version History:
1.0 - "The hidden grandfather" -First version (never released). Used synchronous sounds. Did'nt came over the borders of my Hard Disk.
1.3 - "Asynchronous PPC-Machine" - Now asynchronous with SoundHelper. Was available on Info-Mac. First released version. Only for PowerMacs.
1.5 - "No more freezes" - Now without SoundHelper (which results in a 68K Version of this, when I used SoundHelper, the Mac freezed at startup when executing the 68K code. Wonder why.) I’ve allocated the sound channel myself in this version. That is'nt hard.
2.0 - "The Control Panel" - Built as a control panel (thanks to Jason Larson for giving me the "push" to do it!). I had the idea in the first version, but after viewing some examples, I was confused with it and made an extension. But now, after 5 hours of late night hacking (it's 22:05 now), I got it. Cool!
2.01 - "Stop flickering" - Whenever an update event was generated, the control panel manager redrawed the dialog and then sent me an update event. And I redrawed too. That resulted in flickering. I removed the code to respond to update events, so the problem is fixed now. Also shows a version number in the lower right corner.
2.5 - "Sound machine" - Fixed some problems. Has now special Sounds for Space, Return and Tab-Keys. Settings are saved in a Preferences File (instead in Clicker's Resources).
3.0 - "BIG MAN" - Better user interface, new features. It can make the LEDs on your Keyboard shine and has a sound for the delete key. Also required a registration code, which anybody was able to get by sending me an E-Mail.
3.5 - "Bug inventor" - Removed all the Registration-Code-SHIT and corrected a few bugs... (Note from later: I noticed that I actually added more bugs than I've removed... Clicker 3.5 was a totally buggy thing).
4.0 - "Uncrashable Shareware-Machine" - Changed the Registration key algorithm, now Shareware, removed Key LED Feature (see above), totally rewritten, uses jGNE Filter instead of trap patch, stores globals in a pointer rather than wasting stack space, settings are stored as bits in one byte instead of using 7 bytes. New logo (made with Adobe Illustrator, KPT Vector Effects and Adobe Photoshop). Supposed to correct LOTS of bugs. Put new features into Clicker Control Strip. Lets you use your own sounds.
4.2 - "SINCE when??" - Implemented a Since-Counter for Mouse and Key Clicks, uses checksum when saving prefs to disk, so it can make sure all is good. The Clicker Control Strip also got a small change to support the new globals.
4.5 - "Not so loud!" - As per the suggestion of Frederik Paul, Clicker now has a slider to adjust the volume of (and only of) Clicker's sounds. Corrected some errors in the ReadMe-file... Now I'm a little bit better at English. I've also invented code names for all the versions of Clicker.
4.5.1 - "No restart" - No restart is required anymore to put in a custom sound. Updated registration information for peoples without E-Mail. Cool about box. Corrected many spelling mistakes in this ReadMe (I'm getting better at English - thanks to Stephen King).
4.6 - "Caps beeper" - New feature which plays beeps when you type with the caps lock key down (requested by an user). Changed the design a bit.
Legal Stuff:
You can surely understand that I can't make any warranties pertaining an error-free function of this program. In no event shall Manuel Kasper be liable for any consequential, indirect or similar damages, including but not limited to any lost profits or lost data arising out of the use or inability to use this control panel. You use this program on your own risk.
