Address Pad

Description
As the name suggests, Address Pad will help you manage addresses, phone numbers, email and homepage URLs of your friends without resorting to more complex (and cluttered) applications. Address Pad will fit nicely under your Apple menu along with the other desktop utilities provided with Mac OS. By default, Address Pad will also behave like a typical Apple menu application (e.g. opening a default document when launched and quitting when the last document window is closed).

Features
* Support for Mac OS 8.5 Themes
* Simple, intuitive interface
* Clickable Internet addresses
* Drag&Drop support to share information with other applications
* Disk based storage and visualization
* Printable list of all contact information and of envelopes for each entry

Requirements
Any Macintosh or Power Macintosh with Sytem 7 (or later). Mac OS 8.5 is strongly recommended. Some features (Drag & Drop, clickable URLs, etc...) will not be available on older versions of Mac OS unless the appropriate components are installed.

Conditions of Distribution
This software is available free to the public. Please do not modify the program without my permission and please notify me if you plan to distribute it.

Version History
* 1.1.0 - Improved printing of the list (individual entries are not cut between pages) and initial support for printing envelopes; the interface has been extended and improved; the application icon has changed; more errors are reported; a few bugs have been fixed; copying an entry to the clipboard now copies all available information.
* 1.0.9 - Previous version was compiled with debugging code on; fixed an update glitch when windows are resized.
* 1.0.8 - New features to cover user requests: quit the application automatically when no more documents are open; save changes to documents automatically (without user confirmation); table drawing font and size are now customizable (with dynamic feedback); interface has been slightly modified to have larger text size for the descriptions; removed annoying screen flashes when redrawing document windows (caused by a design flaw in the appearance-enabling classes of the underlying framework).
* 1.0.7 - Address Pad should now work correctly on systems where Navigation Services extension is not installed (this includes all versions of the OS prior to Mac OS 8.5); until this version Address Pad crashed before the Open/Save As dialogs were brought up.
* 1.0.6 - Fixed a bug which appeared when running Address Pad on 68K machines (the program would corrupt data when memory was low); improved Internet address parsing (feature equivalent to Internet Launcher); documentation has been updated with new contact information; small Finder icons have been improved for clarity.
* 1.0.5 - Fixed the bug (which did not affect all previous versions) where the program would refuse to run if Internet Config 2.0 is not installed. Address Pad will now report the error and continue working without the URL launching features enabled; fixed the bug related to opening multiple About boxes.
* 1.0.4 - One additional separator has been added in the address drawing options; Drag&Drop feature now supports exporting users as text clippings to the Finder or to other applications; documents can now be exported as tab-delimited text files; some parts of the code have been optimized and/or modified.
* 1.0.3 - Users can now be moved/copied between documents through the clipboard; it is now possible to customize the drawing order of mailing addresses (to support countries other than the U.S.) through the preferences window; a few bugs have been fixed; the number of entries in each document is now visible in the lower-left corner of the window; lowered the default memory partition assigned to Address Pad (re-increase the partition if you need to open many documents at the same time); tooltips under items are now delayed for one second before appearing.
* 1.0.2 - Basic printing support has been added; code migration to latest PowerPlant version is now complete.
* 1.0.1 - 68K machines are now supported; minor changes were made to the code; scrollbars under Mac OS 8.5 are now proportional.
* 1.0 - Handling of large documents has been improved; the interface is more-appearance savvy and should redraw faster than in previous version. The creator code for the application has been changed.
* PR1 - Initial public release.

Note for Developers
As opposed to my previous freeware projects, I developed Address Pad using Metrowerks PowerPlant. Although the code is scarcely commented, I wrote a few useful classes to handle disk based arrays (function names and parameters are identical to LArray), tooltips and the Appearance-savvy buttons you see in the main window. Source code to these classes is available from my homepage.

Author Information
I spend most of my spare time learning to write software for the Mac. You might have seen some of my freeware projects (ePress/eCard, Internet Launcher) or the only commercial package I worked on (the ichat Pager). I am originally from the province of Naples (Italy). I moved to Austin, TX a couple years ago and left that wonderful city a few months ago to come to Boston. I am now attending Boston University, whose tuition will make me a lot skinnier and less prone to give software away for free. If you wish to make a donation for this program (be the first!), offer me an interesting job or if you just want to send me a postcard, please use the following contact information:

Gabriele de Simone
45 Hemenway St, #2
Boston, MA 02115
U.S.A.

E-mail: zelig@bu.edu
Homepage: http://people.bu.edu/zelig

Please be patient when making suggestions because I will not always be able to accomodate every request immediately. If you desperately need to manifest your criticism, please remember to use the same fervor for products that are shareware or commercial.

Original file name: Address Pad Readme - converted on Thursday, 28 October 1999, 18:53