Escale

Escale is a Newton Connection Utility for MacOS X featuring AddressBook synchronization, Package installation and use of Mac Keyboard to echo letters on the Newton. It can connect to a Newton via the serial line, AppleTalk and TCP/IP with RendezVous. Escale comes with the full source code of the Desktop Connection Library (DCL).

What is new in this release:

• Escale
• groups/companies synchronization is disabled until a good solution is defined
• the AppleWorks old documentation has been deleted
• the Escale User's Guide now uses more PDF features thanks to hyperref, for example URL can be clicked directly or the document tree appears on the left.
• the backup and restore menu items have been linked and deactivated
• the buttons and menu items are now properly deactivated when no Newton is connected
• the preferences to choose the serial port now works
• birthdays are now properly synchronized (and the change dates are also properly compared)
• the e-mail addresses are properly imported (exportation is not implemented)

• DCL
• there were leaks in the management of the Newton objects, they have been fixed
• the references to NewtonScript objects are now much better handled, thus saving memory and CPU
• there were bugs caused by a misuse of these references, they were fixed as well
• the NewtonScript strings can be catenated just like on the Newton (e.g. myResult = myStringRef & myOtherStringRef)
• the NewtonScript binaries of class 'name are now handled as strings as they should (why did they not use a subclass of string as they do elsewhere?). Anyway, this fixes a bug with synchronization that would make Escale not synchronize any Newton name or just a few of them.
• the keys in a Newton frame are now sorted when the 20 pairs threshold is met
• the comparator of NewtonScript symbols now works properly
• LoadPkgLink has been reintegrated (untested, but should work)
• wrote code to normalize e-mail addresses based on Built-in and KitFr classes (later I will ask the Newton to normalize them and therefore take into account any e-mail system configured in the Newton)
• I wrote some pages of the DCL Programmer's Reference (not much)
• the MacOS 7 code to handle files has been updated and completed
• the crash when installing a package from the Newton has been fixed
• the crash in SyncOneEntry has been fixed

• Other/Meta
• there are new tests for NewtonScript object manipulation
• many aesthetic changes were performed
• the doxygen test now succeeds (so every test succeeds)
• applied Sandro Mazzucato's patch: added end of line to the end of files to satisfy gcc 3.2 on RedHat
• added macros for 4 characters constants so gcc 3.2 on RedHat should be happy (no feedback yet)
• various stability changes have been made
• the projects have been moved to _Build_ and cleaned/merged/whatever.
• the DCL is now built as a MacOS X framework (PB project only)
• the CW project can build localized versions of Escale
• old Windows interface files have been removed (you can still get them from the CVS server, but they were very obsolete anyway)
• many things got broken since 1.0 and were fixed like the way link engines are handled (this literaly prevented any operation in recent builds)
• the ADSP test code has been added to the CVS repository
• the Unicode normalization file has been removed from the CVS repository (this helps making the disk image smaller)

• and probably other things I forgot.

Requirements:

• MacOS X 10.2 or higher
• NewtonOS 2.0 or higher
• Compiling requires CodeWarrior 8.3 or latest Apple Development Tools