Warning| Jera Design : PumpHouse | Last Update: 23-January-2004 |
PumpHouse is a graphical client for The Well written in Java.
WarningAs of this writing, PumpHouse is still under development. The version now available should be considered roughly "beta" quality. It's highly unlikely to cause you any problems, but proceed with caution.
To run, you will need one of the following:
To install PumpHouse, click the "Install PumpHouse" button.
PumpHouse will install and run automatically.
PumpHouse now supports SSH tunnelling via your existing SSH client. See the SSH Page for details.
If you have a shell account, you'll need to follow these special instructions to log in successfully.
Most problems logging in are caused customizations you've made to Picospan in your .cfonce or .cfrc files. Someday PumpHouse may be able to deal with some customizations. Until then, you'll have to disable some or all of your customizations in order to use PumpHouse successfully. If you have to disable a feature in your .cfonce or .cfrc files, please email me the relevant portion of the file, so I can see what was causing the problem.
Note: PumpHouse normally uses your system's native look-and-feel, so the exact appearance of the windows shown below will vary based on what system you are using.
To run PumpHouse, either click on the link above, or use the Java Web Start launcher. The second time you run PumpHouse, you'll be given the option to create a shortcut to it.
When you launch PumpHouse, a login dialog appears.
Enter your Well login name and password, then click "OK". The console will show some output associated with the login process. You can safely ignore it.
Once you are logged in, the "Conferences" pane becomes active. On the left side of the window, you can see a list of conferences from your ".cflist" file. Conference names shown in bold have new responses. Conference names shown in italic have brand new topics. Use return to go to the next conference with new topics/responses, and to go to the next topic. Use the space bar to scroll the responses to a topic.
By default, PumpHouse only shows you topics and responses with new messages (like a "b n" or "s n" command in Picospan). To see more topics, click on the "Active", "Forgotten", "Retired" or "All" buttons above the topic list. Any selection except "New" will show all responses to any topic you select.
To see a conference not on your .cflist file, enter it in the "Go" text box in the lower left of the window.
In the example below, I entered "meta" in the "Go" box to go to the "metawell" conference. Then I clicked on topic 277.
(Conference "nosuchconf" is highlighted in red because it doesn't exist. Any conference on your conflist that doesn't exist, or you are not a member of will show up in red. Move the mouse over the conference name to see a brief description of the problem.)
To add a response to a topic, scroll down to the end of the responses, and click the "Respond" button there. A response window appears. Enter your response, and then click "Post" to post it, or "Pass" to cancel your response (closing the window also cancels responding).
Click on the "People" tab to bring the "People" pane to the front. On the left side of the window is a list of everyone currently logged onto the well (blurred in the image below for privacy). This list updates once a minute. To send a "send" to somebody enter their Well login in the "Send To:" text field (or double-click on their name in the user list), enter the message in the larger text area below, and click the "Send" button.
Any sends that other people send to you will appear in the "Received Sends"
text area that takes up the rest of the window. Event if the "People"
pane isn't frontmost, you can still tell you when you get a send -- PumpHouse
will beep and place a 
icon in
the "People" tab.
To disconnect from The Well, click the PumpHouse window's close box. PumpHouse will automatically log you out and exit. (If it doesn't, click the "Quit Immediately" button on the dialog that appears. That will immediately break your connection to The Well and exit the program.)
The current release of PumpHouse provides enough functionality for you to be able to visit conferences, and read and reply to topics. However PumpHouse is currently missing the following functionality:
Much of this functionality will be added in future releases.
Right now I'm interested in the following things:
Please let me know at jbrewer@jera.com. Or post a response to topic 277 in the Metawell conference on The Well.
Thanks!