Release notes for Minuet 1.0 Beta_18
Included below:
* Legal and Licensing issues
* Overview of Minuet
* Installing Minuet
* New Features
* Frequently Asked Questions about Minuet
* In case of trouble
* Known bugs
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Legal and Licensing stuff:
- Minuet -
Minnesota
INternet User's
Essential Tool
Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995 - University of Minnesota
Minuet was developed and is maintained by the
University of Minnesota. For University of Minnesota
faculty, staff, and students, Minuet is available
without fee. Although commercial distribution is
restricted, you may freely give Minuet to your
friends. Minuet is distributed as shareware. If
after trying the program for 15 days, you decide to
continue using it, you must register your copy by
sending $50 to:
Distributed Computing Services
attn: minuet shareware
190 Shepherd Labs
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Site licences are also available. Contact
software@boombox.micro.umn.edu for further info.
Your shareware fee will help support continued Minuet
development and bug fixes, and if you include your
e-mail address with the fee we will notify you as new
versions of Minuet are released.
Developed by:
George Gonzalez,
Kim Pearson,
Earl Schleske
Phil Kachelmyer,
Steven Collins.
Acronym and musical transcription by:
Nancy Gonzalez.
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Overview:
Minuet is an integrated package of TCP/IP network tools for the IBM
PC and compatibles.
It is aimed at all network users that wish to do email and other
Internet services with a minimum of fuss and bother.
Minuet includes:
* Electronic Mail
* NetNews
* Telnet
* World Wide Web
* Gopher
* FTP
* Address book (Finger)
* and more...
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General overview
*******************
E-MAIL
Minuet's e-mail is derived from the U of Minn "POPMail" package.
Minuet e-mail, like POPMail is an easy-to-use SMTP (internet) mail client.
User's of POPMail should be able to use Minuet mail with little
or no trouble.
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World Wide Web
Minuet has a World Wide Web brower built-in. With it you can view
any Web document. It even displays graphics on EGA or newer video
displays.
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Gopher
Minuet includes a general-purpose Gopher client.
Gopher is a distributed information service developed at the U of Minn.
With the Gopher window in Minuet, you can browse through a great deal of
information put up on Gopher servers worldwide.
For instance, with a few simple clicks, you can:
* Access a library of song lyrics.
* Browse the library catalog at Long Beach's library.
* Peruse MIT's student conduct code.
* View the list of databases at a tech institute in Israel.
************
NetNews
Minuet's "news" window lets you access UseNet newsgroups.
It has a simple point and click interface that lets you easily:
* Choose from a list of newsgroups you are interested in.
* Fetch a number of news messages
* View the messages.
* Compose followups or new news messages.
Using Minuet's news requires very little extra learning as it uses the same
user interface as Minuet mail. News messages are treated just like mail messages.
All the operations one can perform on Minuet mail can also be done on news messages.
This erases some of the artificial boundaries between e-mail and netnews.
*******
FTP
Minuet includes a simple FTP client. Again, a point and click interface makes
it easy for anyone to send or receive files. Minuet's FTP client overcomes
many of the typical hangups with using FTP:
* Automatically displays the available files in a tree-like format.
* Automatically determines the transfer mode for most files.
* Automatically determins what are directories and files.
* Displays file sizes.
* Built-in text browser for "README" files and the like.
Minuet's FTP client is not a FTP "server"-- it does not listen for
FTP requests from other systems. Use NCSA FTP if you need this feature.
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How to get and install Minuet (by using FTP)
To install Minuet, you first must get MINUARC.EXE.
MINUARC.EXE is a self-extracting collection of the files that make
up Minuet.
To get and install Minuet:
(1) Make a directory on your hard disk.
A good name might be "MINUET": mkdir c:\minuet
(2) Go to that directory: cd c:\minuet
(3) Run FTP, connect to our server: ftp minuet.micro.umn.edu
(4) Go to the proper directory: cd /pub/minuet/latest
(5) Put FTP in BINARY mode: binary
(6) Get MINUARC.EXE: get minuarc.exe
(7) Quit FTP: quit
(8) Run the self-extractor: minuarc
(9) Verify all the files are here: dir /w
MINUET EXE MINUET DOC
MINUARC EXE MINUET HLP
CUSTOM TXT
(10) (Optional) delete the self-extractor: del minuarc.exe
(11) Add this directory to your PATH,
usually in AUTOEXEC.BAT: PATH = XXX;YYY;C:\MINUET
(12) You are now ready to run Minuet: minuet
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Want to run Minuet over a phone line?
Just add the U of M SLIP package. Available by anonymous FTP from
minuet.micro.umn.edu in /pub/slip. Follow the directions in the
file SLIP.DOC there.
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New features in beta 18:
Minuet 1.0 Beta 18 is a considerable jump from previous versions.
There have been many invisible internal changes, plus many visible changes.
Major visible changes:
* World Wide Web browser
* URL's
* Graphics
* Multi-Tasking
Documentation is still quite scanty. Below is a quick overview.
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World Wide Web Browser
Minuet now has a pretty good WWW browser. It displays HTML doccuments in the
standard way. If you have an EGA or better Video display, Minuet can
display graphic images, such a inline GIF and JPEG images.
Graphics works best on a VGA or Super-VGA VESA display, running on a fast
386 or better CPU.
If you have an older PC, Minuet's WWW browser may be a bit too slow
for extensive use. You can still use it in text mode and browse through
everything but graphic images.
--------------------------------
URL's
Minuet now understands URL's (Uniform Resource Locators).
You can click on a URL and ask Minuet to open that document.
Minuet calls on its Internet tools to fetch WWW documents,
FTP files,. Telnet sessions, Gopher sessions, and mail.
You dont need any external programs or viewers for any of these URL's--
Minuet can handle them all.
Minuet also keeps a log of recently accessed URL's so you can easily
revisit favorite URL's.
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Graphics
You can now configure Minuet to run in a wide variety of display modes.
There is a new Setup//Monitors... dislog box that lets you choose from
a wide variety of display modes.
The modes you can ue may be limited by your particular video adapter
or monitor. But Minuet lets you use virtually any mode that can possibly
run on your PC.
You can choose between text modes of 24 lines by 80 characters,
or 42 lines by 132 characters.
You can choose graphics modes with 16, 256, or 65,536 colors.
These can be in resolutions of 640x480 up to 1600x1280.
GIF and JPEG images look bet at 256 or more colors. The higher resolutions
also let you see more of the document at a time. However the higher the
resolution or number of colors, the slower the display will update.
You'll need a VESA compatible video card, or an older card with a VESA
driver added to make use of the higher video modes.
---------------------------------
Multi-Tasking
Previous versions of Minuet did a limited amount of Multi-tasking.
For example, you could have Telnet and/or FTP running in the background
while you browsed thorugh mail. But that was about the extent of it.
In this version, every part of Minuet is Multi-Tasking. For example,
you can be fetching news, fetching mail, sending mail, and using WWW
all at the same time. There are no more modes where you have to wait
for Mail fetching or sending to finish.
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Internationalization
All the text in Minuet is now editable. Most users in English speaking
countries can use the built-in English text suite. Users in other
cultures may wish to translate the text into other languages.
Note that this is not an easy task as there are over 1800 text
messages to translate. See the EXTRAS\MINUET.MSG file for further
instructions on this.
------------------------
Custom colors
All the colors in Minuet are now editable. The normal suite of colors
is quite adequate for most purposes. See the EXTRAS\MINUET.DEF file
for further info.
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Miscellaneous new features:
You can now open up multiple Telnet sessions.
IP Finder shows ALL IP addresses associated with a name.
News reader has "Fetch ALL newsgroups" and "View this newsgroup" cmds.
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Frequently Asked Questions about Minuet:
You can get the latest copy of this by following this URL:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/minuet-faq.
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In case of trouble:
First, please try the following things:
Ask your local E-mail system administrator or service provider.
They often know the answer to common local problems.
Then look at the list of known bugs below. Please dont report
known bugs unless they cause you someserious problem.
If you still have a reportable problem, feel free to
send your questions or comments to either of:
minuet@boombox.micro.umn.edu
URL: mailto://minuet@boombox.micro.umn.edu
If your problem seems to be related to dial-up SLIP access, you
are better off sending it to
slip@boombox.micro.umn.edu
URL: mailto://slip@boombox.micro.umn.edu
If your question is about licensing Minuet, please send your request to
software@boombox.micro.umn.edu
URL: software@boombox.micro.umn.edu
if you are reporting a technical problem, please include:
The version number of Minuet that you are using.
What network software you have loaded.
What operating system you are using.
(Including a listing of your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS
files is very, very helpful)
Thank you.
-- The Minuet team.
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Known bugs:
Minuet 1.0 Beta_18 is not perfect!
It is good enough for everyday use, but has a few glitches.
It is being shipped with a few glitches because we expect most
users would rather have it today with a few glitches than wait
a few months for a less glitchy version. Most of the problems are
mainly harmless, just cosmetic oddities. Here's a list of known
problems:
Serious:
* Can hang if running low on memory.
* Sometimes Ctrl-Break can cause erratic behavior.
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Annoying:
* Some WWW hot spots are not too obvious.
* WWW "Forms" do not work at all.
* WWW clickable maps do not work at all.
* WWW redirection is not automatically handled.
* There is no "HotList", other than the WWW log.
* The URL FTP "type=a" options are ignored.
* The http ".txt" documents are not displayed properly.
* The extended WWW "table" formats are not handled at all.
* Some of the highest 16-color graphics mode are not supported.
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Cosmetic:
* Sometimes clicking on a WWW hot spot causes the screen to scroll
a few lines.
* A few JPEG images get funny vertical lines in areas that are
supposed to be pure white.
* GIF images do not scroll the rightmost few dots.
* The mouse pointer leaves a small blotch when a GIF image pops up.
* Graphics tend to show though other overlying windows.
* If you switch monitor modes, graphic windows dont get updated
to the new colors.
* The HTML "font" commands are not handled to well. Only that standard
font and a larger bold font are available.
----------------------- end of MINUET.DOC -------------------------------
