The CastanetTM Tuner
Quick Start
The Castanet tuner is the receiver component of the Castanet software
distribution system. A tuner is a small Java application that does two
main things:
- It subscribes to new channels, downloading and installing them on your
disk.
- It updates subscribed channels by pulling changes from the other principal
Castanet component, transmitters.
Launching the Tuner
Start the tuner as follows:
- Windows 95 and NT
- Choose Start:Programs:Castanet Tuner:Castanet Tuner
- Solaris
- prompt> installdir/castanet/tuner/bin/tuner
- MacOS
- Double-click Tuner in the Castanet Tuner folder.
Using the Tuner
The tuner's user interface has three menus and five tabbed pages; clicking
a tab opens a page. The most frequently used pages are Listing and Channels.
Use the Listing page to see the channels served by a transmitter.
- To see the channels of a new transmitter, enter its name in the text
field, then press Return/Enter.
- To see the channels of a previously visited transmitter, select it
from the drop-down list next to the text field, or scroll to it.
- To see a channel's description, click the + next to it.
- To subscribe to a channel and start it, double-click the channel. The
tuner icon to the right of the page tabs will indicate that it is receiving.
- To update the channel list, click Refresh.
- To see a transmitter's channel list in a Web Browser, select the transmitter,
then click Browse.
Use the Channels page to manipulate and monitor subscribed channels.
The channels are arranged by transmitter in a collapsible/expandable outline
format. The Status column distinguishes subscribed channels (approximate
size on disk or "running"), unsubscribed channels (hyphen), channels
that are being downloaded (a progress bar is displayed), and channels that
were not received successfully ("error").
- To see a transmitter's channels, click the + to its left.
- To hide a transmitter's channels, click the - to its left.
- To start a subscribed non-running channel, double-click it.
- To stop a running channel, double-click it (or click the channel's
Close box).
- To unsubscribe, select the channel, then choose Channel:Unsubscribe
(that is, choose Unsubscribe from the Channel menu).
- To remove an unsubscribed channel, select it, then choose Channel:Remove
or type Ctrl-R.
- To manually update a channel, select it, then choose Channel:Update
or type Ctrl-U.
- To learn more about a channel, select it, then choose Channel:Channel
Properties or type Ctrl-P.
- To see a message describing the problem with a channel marked "error",
select the channel.
- To direct the tuner to use or not use the network, choose Tuner:Enable
Network.
Other important tuner operations:
- To quit the tuner, choose Tuner:Quit.
- To save screen space yet leave the tuner running (and thus able to
update channels), click its Close button (Windows platforms) or its Iconify
button (Solaris platform).
- To abort a channel download or update, choose Tuner:Cancel Transfers
or type Ctrl-C.
- To download all of an incremental HTML channel (for example, before
disconnecting a portable computer from the network), select the channel,
then choose Channel:Download Remainder. (An incremental HTML channel is
downloaded page by page as you click on its links in a Web browser; the
percentage of the channel that has been downloaded is shown next to the
channel's Status. If you do nothing, the tuner will automatically download
the remainder in a short while.)
Copyright
© 1997 Marimba, Inc. All rights reserved.