Overview

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When I first got my Newton, I downloaded all my telephone contacts to the Names application.  And it slowed down intolerably.  I pared the list down to a mere 300 or so names and put the rest on the Newton in other ways, most recently as Paperbacks.  And life wen on.



Then I discovered a hack that lets you make the Names application open other files.  So now I can have more than one telephone file on the Newton--like my old Sharp organizer that had three separate telephone files.



MultiNames lets you perform the same magic.  There are two parts.  MultiNames itself is a autopart that changes the effect of tapping on the Names button.  If there are other  contact files installed, a list of all contact files pops up, and selecting one opens it in the Names application.

"Names Utility" lets you create or remove the other contact files and provides some options for filling them.



Version 1.1 adds NCK support: you can now see and edit the extra names files in NCK.



MultiNames

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MultiNames itself is simple.  Install it and forget it.  If you want to remove it, do so.  (You should reset the Newton afterwards).



If you don't install MultiNames, nothing useful will happen.  (Names Utility only does the specific things you tell it to do.



Names Utility

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This has seven buttons.  Two are very simple.  "Create" makes a new, empty contact file.  You are prompted to give it a name.  If you want, and if MultiNames is installed, you can now fill it in on the Newton just like a Names file.  (Initially it has no entries.  If you open it in "Overview" mode, it will say so, but it may not be obvious how to make a new card.  The solution is to tap the "overview" button again to see a normal card display.)  Remove pops up a list of the contacts files; selecting one deletes it.  There is no warning.



New Soups are created with NCK support unless the "No NCK" checkbox is checked.  NCK support occupies about 6K of internal soup (not heap) memory for each new soup.  You can use the import template feature of NCK 2.0 to fill the new soup.  You will, however, have to make a new template for each soup, even if all the templates are basically the same.



Rebuild will try to find all "names" types soups and build the list.  It will also add NCK support for older files (unless "No NCK" is checked).  Rebuild may find extraneous files. The Forget button forgets the files: they are not deleted, they are just not treated as Names files.



The two import buttons help to fill the new files.  ImportFolder will transfer all Names entries in a selected folder to a selected contact file.  You will first see a list of folder names and then a list of contact file names.  The names are MOVED to the new folder: they disappear from the original Names files.



The other button, "Import from Paperback" is both easier and harder.  It will let you select any paperback on your Newton.  If the text is in the right format and the right contact file exists, it will copy the entries into the contact file whose name is the first line of the text.  The format is basically the same of Steve Weyer's "slurpee" uses:  each entry is separated by a carriage return, the items in a card are separated by tabs and appear as follows (items not in brackets must appear as shown):

person,[honorific],[firstname],[lastname],[title],[company],[phone1],[phone2],[phone3],[phone4],[email],[address1],[address2],[city],[region],[country],[postal code],[birthday],1,[either the word "name" or the word "company"].  If you have slurpee names file, just change the name of the soup in the first line and remove the frame definition in the second line, and the word "BYE" in the last line.   If you have a Macintosh, the accompanying upload Macintosh application "Parse TDF" will do all this for you on many files.



MISSING

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At present MultiNames has some weaknesses:  a global find will not search the alternate contacts files; assist will not look at these file



THE STANDARD WARNINGS

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Until you are sure that you know what you are doing, be sure to have backups. If you want to turn multinames off, remove the autopart "MultiNames" by selecting it from the appropriate "remove packages" popup. Do not use a standard soup remover to remove Names files: You may leave parts behind.  For the record, Multinames uses a soup called "CardFiles:SlM" which contains the names that the popup shows.  NCK support adds a separate entry in the Directory soup for each Names file.  



LEGAL STUFF

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MutliNames is c. 1995 by me, S. Millman (StephenM35@aol.com, StephenM10@eworld.com) , but it is freeware.