NewtRTFM 1.0
Erica Sadun
erica@cc.gatech.edu

THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN PDA DEVELOPERS (FORMERLY PIE DEVELOPERS)
MAGAZINE. COPYRIGHT (C) 1994 BY CREATIVE DIGITAL SYSTEMS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
CONTACT CREATIVE DIGITAL SYSTEMS AT CDS@NETCOM.COM FOR MORE INFORMATION. 

Rating		4 1/2 (on a five-PIE scale)
Pros 		Great interface, simple but effective; 
			very useful reference.
Cons 		Content could use some editing
Price		$90

			Creative Digital Systems
			293 Corbett Avenue
			San Francisco, CA 94114
			415.621.4252
			415.621.4922 (fax)
			cds@netcom.com

Recently, when my husband and I attended a Braves game here in Atlanta, the
Braves pulled ahead of the Marlins and the crowd began to chant. You know the
chant  youve probably heard it during the World Series or the Playoffs.
Tens of thousands of arms start chopping and the eerie moan fills the
stadium. 
	My husband, caught up in the moment, began to chop as well. Confused,
however, he missed the underlying idea and began to chant Death to the
Imperialist Satan. Dying of embarassment (and trying not to kill myself with
hysterical laughter), I pummeled him to the ground and explained that while
he got the algorithm right, he had totally missed the correct protocol. 
	On the Newton as well, incorrect calls may land you in trouble.
NewtonScript is an interpreted language. You cant count on the Newton
Toolkit to catch your usage mistakes. Your arguments are not checked for
correct order or type. The only way to be sure, really sure, that you are
calling a function with the correct protocol, is to check a reference.
Usually, this means looking in the NTK manuals. As I am sure you have found,
however, the manuals are not especially instructive. This is where Sandeep
Shah and K2 Consultants stepped in and created NewtRTFM, an on-line
Newton-based reference system which allows you to look up protocols, see
examples and make notes from your own experience. 

Whats RTFM Stand For?
The name RTFM comes from the popular acronym indicating that one should Read
The F****ng Manual. The acronyms attitude is forceful: programmers should
be self-reliant. Most vital programming information can be found in the
documentation if you know where to look. NewtRTFM makes it very clear where
to look. This Newton application simplifies and streamlines function protocol
look up. Its elegant and beautiful.
	An alphabet lines the bottom of the NewtRTFM screen (see Figure 1). Each
letter brings up a popup menu of functions and constants. Tap on an entry and
the manual pops to the appropriate entry. Too many functions and constants
for the screen size? The popup lists allow you to scroll forwards and
backwards. Very nice. I knew that P was a crowded letter: all the
prototypes, print functions and so forth. I was pleased by the ease of
navigation and the speed of bringing up my selection.
	Once you make your topic selection, four tabs on the righthand side of
the screen allow you to check general information about the subject, examine
its arguments, look at an example or make permanent notes. For example,
declareSelf brings up the info page shown in Figure 1. 
	In addition to the declareSelf information contained on the info page,
the args page states that SymName is used as a name of the slot to be
created in this view. The slot will contain a pointer to the same view.
DeclareSelf:'base is repeated as the example. Sure, the grammar and spelling
can use some proofing, but all the information you need is ready to be used.

A Phenomenol Interface
The cleverness of the interface is phenomenal. There are arrow keys on both
sides of the current subject that allow you to move forwards and backwards a
page at a time through the manual. Tap on the current subject and you are
presented with the popup list for the whole alphabetical chapter. Smart
scrollers (the built-in ones between your extras and undo buttons) beep when
there is nothing to scroll.
	Three small buttons, labelled i, e and o allow you to pull up the
Inspector, the Extras drawer or an Extras popup list. The buttons are placed
at the looseleaf holes on the left of the screen and in no way interfere
with the flow of layout in fact they complement it.
	Other features abound. Your browsing history is kept under a go-back
button labeled with an up-arrow. You can skip back to previous pages. Some of
the examples show actually running code. Tap the NewtRTFM icon and it
iconifies, letting you test your program without hogging screen space. The
icon is small and draggable. Want to limit your exploration to certain
topics? A button, initially marked All lets you select between topics such
as Comms, Debug and Soup.
	A Goto button lets you search on keywords a very nice dialog puts up
the system keyboard for quick access. As you type in the keyword, NewtRTFM
passively completes your words, letting you skip quickly to long subjects. I
typed p and saw PackageUnavailable. Next I typed r to preamble. An
o brought up protoActionButton. A tap on the Okay button brought me to
the correct manual page. Super nice.

The Big Picture
I could keep going on about all the elegant details included in NewtRTFM for
far longer than this, but Id like to focus on the main points. First,
NewtRTFM is simply and incredibly useful. It is a great reference to keep
next to your Mac as your program. I found myself going back again, and again,
and again. And the more I went back, the better documented my own notes
section became.
	Second, NewtRTFM is the single best designed Newton application that I
have used to date. You will be stunned at how such a simple interface is so
effective on such a limited screen with the restrictions of pen input. More
than any other Newton application, NewtRTFM provides excellent usability. The
balance of learnability and achievable power is stunning.
	Be warned, NewtRTFM takes up a lot of space on your Newton. You will need
a nice large memory card but every byte is worth it. NewtRTFM is highly
recommended.
	Oh yes, the Braves won. 
