Getting Started with AmiTwitter

[ Operating Systems | Installation Requirements | Installation | Getting Started | Usage | Features | To Do | Troubleshooting | License | Thanks | Donations | Authors ]

Last Update to 'read-me-first.html': 5 Jan 2014

AmiTwitter is obsolete due to changes to Twitter (namely shutting off cURL/basic auth access) as of 1 Sep 2010...

AmiTwitter Ver. 0.29 Public Beta Release 4 for OS 4.1 is available for immediate download! Sorry for the delay!

AmiTwitter is a small program for MorphOS and AmigaOS which allows you to interact in many ways with the Twitter and TwitPic networks. It has many features and, in fact, it has more features than almost all open source Twitter clients that are currently available for other operating systems and in other programming languages. Continue reading below to see how AmiTwitter may be useful to you! Be sure to check out the upcoming review of AmiTwitter in Amiga Future!

If you find it useful, please consider making a small contribution (asking only $5! What a deal!) by clicking here or consider joining the SourceForge project if you have MUI/gcc coding skills to help improve it's overall functionality and/or portability. I do not have as much free time now to devote to this project and my coding skills are limited, since I only do this as a hobby, therefore new features and updates will most likely depend on people like you contributing to the project and helping/motivating me to improve it!

This is beta software. Use it entirely at your own risk. It has been found to be stable on the Operating Systems listed below, however, I assume no liability for loss of data and/or damage to your machine. You have been warned. Additionally, It still has many limitations and should not be considered a "final" product, as it is still beta.

Ver. 0.29 Public Beta Release 4 (24 Apr 2010)

Added TwitPic image upload support. The TwitPic website does not require another account, it interfaces directly with your Twitter account. TwitPic is capable of uploading only .gif, .jpg, and .png images. Moved AmiTwitter logo to 'About' page and added Tweet to main interface by popular demand. Fixed a few style guide issues: Renamed 'File' menu item to 'Project', got rid of Control-C and Control-V shortcuts. Program now displays the AmitTwitter logo icon when iconified instead of the default MUI tool. Updated Tweet output display, again by popular demand, removing extra information. Added HTMLtext.mcc and HTMLtext.mcp to archives since many users lack these. Lot's of code cleanup. Thanks again to Cyborg for the OS 4.1 compile, see below for how to donate to him.


Screen Grab of the new TwitPic interface

Latest files are available here for Morphos, AmigaOS 3.x and AmigaOS 4.1: https://sourceforge.net/projects/amitwitter/files/

Older version history is available here
Older Screen Grabs: OS 3.x, OS 4.1 and MorphOS

Operating System Requirements

AmiTwitter currently runs on the following Operating Systems:

It has been successfully tested on: AmigaOS 3.1/030, 3.9/060, 3.9 (WinUAE, AmiKit); MorphOS 2.4, AmigaOS 4.1

Installation Requirements

You must have the following installed:

Other Requirements:

AmigaOS 3.x Version Only:

Installation

Assuming you've met the requirements listed above, just place the entire 'AmiTwitter' directory wherever you'd like on your hard drive. Place the enclosed libiconv.ixlibary in your system 'Libs' directory and the HTMLtext.mcc and HTMLtext.mcp in your MUI libs directory (if you don't already have these files installed...)

Getting Started

To use AmiTwitter you must first have an active Twitter account and enter your User Name/Password in the Tools -> Settings dialog and click Save:


AmiTwitter Settings Screen Grab

Once you have saved your settings you can begin using AmiTwitter. Be sure to check the 'bubble help' if you are unsure of what a part of the program does. Also, I recommend configuring HTMLtext.mcc to use .ttf fonts (on AmigaOS 3.x you must have freetype2.library installed, properly configured) for a better output display. You can also configure 'TheBar' settings to suit your taste under the 'MUI Prefs' menu item.

Usage

The main interface (see below) consists of a Tweet dialog where you can input your message and click enter to send a Tweet, assuming you have an established Twitter account and have entered and saved your username and password in the Settings dialog as described above. Directly below the Tweet dialog you will find the main interface buttons (scroll over each to view the 'bubble help') and a window for various dialog messages and the main data output.


Screen Grab with .png button images and International Character Support

Features

Here are some of the many features that AmiTwitter has:

Known Limitations/To Do

Feel free to jump in and help tackle these issues...

Troubleshooting

Please see the FAQs menu item for a list of possible answers first. AmiTwitter can be started from the commandline for a more verbose program and error output. Run SnoopDos/Snoopium to ensure you are not missing any required components. Also, extensive 'bubble help' is available throughout the program...

One of the most common issues is that you get the "Attempting to get the latest..." message which seems to 'hang' and do nothing (see grab below). The most likely reason is that you don't have anything in that currently selected item. Just click on any other menu item or button and the program will resume as normal. This occurs because there is nothing on the Twitter server to retrieve for that particular item. Be patient when this message is displayed because downloading depends on the current speed of the Twitter network.


Another common problem is that an ugly background is displayed where your user name and the character countdown is displayed in the BetterString object. This is somewhat a limitation of the MUI class used, but can easily be corrected by changing the background for the BetterString gadget under AmiTwitter's MUI Settings. Notice in the screen grab above that they are not a different color when inactive compared to the screen grab below?


Another problem is that when you upload a picture via TwitPic it hangs forever and then either displays that it was uploaded or displays an error. The most common reason is that there is not a correct filepath entered (or you clicked without entering any path at all!), however, this will occur also when you try to upload anything other than a valid .jpg, .gif or .png image, as the TwitPic network will try to upload it, but will eventually reject it! In other words, the program has not crashed, it's trying to complete your invalid request!

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

This is beta software. Use it entirely at your own risk. I assume no liability for loss of data and/or damage to your machine. You have been warned.

Thanks/About

Special thanks to:
- Cyborg, ShInKurO, JahC for contributing to the code
- Sprocki for his testing and very helpful suggestions!
- All the other betatesters
- Dirk Holtwick for the HTMLtext sources
- Catalog translators: Sprocki, L'Ours, Korni, Felix, Luc, Amigo1, Samuli, Samo79, Andreas
- Mason for the button images; Patrick Yung for the new program icons
- All the lib ports, MUI/.mcc, icon authors that made this possible:


About Window Screen Grab with .png button images and text

Donations

So far: Roschmyr, JSiegel (...Your name could be here too!)

- AmiTwitter Donation for IKE
- Cyborg's OS 4.1 version send to paypal: cyborg AT stackswap DOT net

Authors/Credits

AmiTwitter is © 2009-10 IKE

Send email/feedback to: ikepgh AT ezcyberspace DOT com

Thanks for your interest!
AmiTwitter Open Source Team

Look at some of my other projects and ports @
http://www.ezcyberspace.com/programming.shtml

AmiTwitter is based on the following program:

http://www.cuspy.org/xtwitter/
xTwitter is © 2008 Tsukasa Hamano

[ Operating Systems | Installation Requirements | Installation | Getting Started | Usage | Features | To Do | Troubleshooting | License | Thanks | Donations | Authors ]