About Newton Register
Newton Register lets you pay for a shareware program with a credit card via
electronic mail. Your payment will be sent to the Kagi Shareware clearing
house (or another, if you prefer) and forwarded, minus a percentage, to the
author. If you have PocketMoney (or any Newton application which supports the
Financial Package Posting Standard), the transaction may be automatically
entered into your records.
Requirements
Register supports but does not require the ScrollingDoPopup extension; if you
have the extension installed, you may try to register any program installed
on your Newton, not merely those programs pre-configured in RegisterÕs menu.
If you choose a program from beneath the ÒIn Your ExtrasÓ line, see the
caveat below.
The program you are registering gets a chance to react to your registration;
for example, if the program has expired, it might extend the expiration date.
Paying for a Program
To pay for a program, select it from the ÒProgramÓ pop-up menu, select the
price,* and enter your credit card information. Then select ÒMailÓ from the
envelope button; Register will look up your name and address and generate the
proper form. Double-check the form, then press the ÒMailÓ button.
*If youÕre unsure of the price, enter Ò<Ó followed by the most youÕre willing
to pay. A clearing house which supports this feature (none, as yet) will look
up the proper amount and bill it if itÕs less than or equal to the figure you
specified.
Security
Note that Register merely sets up a mail message; the responsibility for
actually executing it is yours. In particular, you may not want to risk
sending your credit card number via email. If demand warrants, in the future
Kagi Shareware may accept PGP encrypted credit card numbers. The ÒnormalÓ
encoding method should discourage casual sniffers, but is not as secure as
PGP. Other methods should be used only for registration companies other than
Kagi.
Credit Card Numbers
For security reasons, I donÕt let you store your credit card number. Sorry.
But if youÕve stored the number somewhere else, you can enter the entire
number (or NetCash certificate) into the first field.
Caveat
If you try to register one of the programs beneath the ÒIn Your ExtrasÓ line,
if the author has not given Kagi Shareware permission to collect payments,
Kagi will try to email you notification that your registration did not
succeed.
Authors interested in receiving checks from Kagi Shareware should send their
mailing address and developer signature to shareware@kagi.com. For use of
this program with shareware clearing houses other than Kagi Shareware, see
below, under ÒFor Programmers.Ó
Cash and Checks
Kagi Shareware can accept checks in US dollars, or cash in many major
currencies. But please donÕt send cash or checks until you have received a
registration number which must accompany your payment. To do this, select the
program you wish to pay for, and send an email message with the payment
method set to ÒQueryÓ. You will receive an email reply with further
instructions.
For Programmers
ProtoMoneyButton
If you want to add a registration button to your package, I provide sample
code to make this almost trivial, available on my home page. In the simplest
case, just make sure that the constants kAppSymbol and kSharewareFee are
defined, add the file MoneyButtonProto to your project, and drag out an
instance of a ProtoMoneyButton. This will put a Ò$Ó button on your packageÕs
status bar. When the user presses the button, Register will be opened with
your package and shareware fee selected.
SharewareFee slot
I suggest that programmers who donÕt want to use a protoMoneyButton at least
put a slot at the top level of their packages named SharewareFee, preferably
containing an integer number of US dollars.
Register will also report the value of a top level slot named Version or
VersionString.
The :IPaid() Method
After the user has successfully entered his credit card number and selected
your package, Register will try to call your top-level method entitled
Ò:IPaid(frame)Ó, if it exists. See the sample code for details; one possible
use is, if you have a nag dialog for unregistered users, to disable it for a
week or two, presumably until youÕve been notified of the userÕs
registration.
An Open Standard
The sample code shows how to do a great deal more customization. In
particular, you donÕt have to have your shareware payments sent to Kagi; you
can even use my sample code to call another registration package. The sample
code and the :ExternalRegister(RegFrame) protocol are free to be modified and
used for any reasonable purpose, specifically including use with competing
registration programs and shareware clearing houses. I intend this to be a
fully open standard.
Other Clearing Houses
A competing shareware clearing house can even supply its own encoding method
by using the EncodingType and EncodingFunction slots in the registration
frame. The ÒnormalÓ encoding scheme is proprietary to Kagi; I will supply the
decoding algorithm for the ÒminimalÓ encoding scheme to any clearing house of
whose good faith I am convinced. Note that the supplemental encoding function
in the sample code is for illustrative purposes only and may not deter a
skilled cryptanalyst.
Shareware Fee
Register itself is freely distributable but not free; itÕs shareware, but
with an unusual fee structure. If your users use it to register your software
with Kagi, you donÕt have to worry about the fee; my 1% royalty will be
collected by Kagi. For use with other shareware clearing houses (or if you
have the payment sent to you directly), the shareware fee for using Register
(not the sample code) is still 1%, payable by the recipient of the payment.
Where to getÉ
ScrollingDoPopup
Hardy MaciaÕs ScrollingDoPopup extension should be available on CompuServe,
America OnLine, eWorld, the University of Iowa Newton Archive , and on my home page at
Financial Package Posting Standard
The specifications for the Financial Package Posting Standard should be in
the above places or
My Stuff
The registration sample code should be at
The latest version of Register should be at
Kagi Shareware
1442-A Walnut Street #392
Berkeley, California, 94709-1405 USA
Email: shareware@kagi.com
FAX: +1 510 652 6589
DonÕt send checks or money to this address until you have received
confirmation that Kagi can accept payment for the program you are trying to
register, and a registration number, which must accompany your payment. Cash
received without a confirmation number may be donated to charity, and checks
may be shredded.
The Author
Please send any comments about this program to FlaSheridn@kagi.com.
Flash Sheridan
180A Hamilton Avenue #601
Palo Alto, California 94301-1682
Copyright and Acknowledgment
This program may be freely distributed, and is free to end users; ©1994 Flash
(K.J.) Sheridan. Programmers and shareware clearing houses should see above
for licensing details.
It was inspired by Peter N LewisÕs Register for the Macintosh, but problems
with the Newton version are not his fault. Thanks to Chris Owen for the
credit card checking code, and to Hardy Macia and Rob Bruce for the buttons.
Version 1.0