If you like Pineapple News and continue to use it for a period of more than one month, you really should register it. I have spent a truly unimaginable number of hours getting it to work as well as it does.
To encourage this practice, some functionality is disabled until the program is paid for. When you buy a registration key, it will be good for all current versions of the program up to 1.x. When and if I get around to version 2.0 or later, there may be a small upgrade fee.
Some shareware programs are time-limited in some way. For example, a shareware app might allow you access to all its features for 15 days, then severely limit what you can do with it after that, until you pay for a registration. Personally I don’t like being subjected to clock-watching, and it seems like the author of such a program is just begging his users to go looking for wherever the program has stashed its install date, so the offending file can be removed and the trial period extended indefinitely. Pineapple News is not time-limited, except that it expires every now and then, which is explained below.
Technical support As a registered user, you are entitled to technical support via e-mail from the author. You can send any questions you might have to me, and I’ll do my best to help you solve them.
URL execution The program highlights URLs in the message view with distinctive colors. When you register, you can click on a URL to launch it in an appropriate viewer program (such as a web browser), or copy the URL to the clipboard. More information can be found in this help topic: Highlighted URLs.
Binary attachment support The program can decode yenc, uuencode, and MIME attachments in any configuration, i.e., a message that contains a single attachment, a message that contains several attachments, or an attachment spread across two or more messages. The program does not yet support adding attachments to messages you post. Read more about it here: Attachments.
Killfiling Using this feature, you can dump offensive posters into the “bozo bin,” never to be heard from again. Help topic: The Killfile.
The upgrade clock stops One way I’ve been making people “pay” for the program up to now is that every version expires a few weeks after its release, ensuring that everyone is up to date with the latest bug fixes, and that any feedback or experience that a user might have is more relevant to me. Once registered, the program no longer expires. You are still free to upgrade if you wish, but you don’t have to.
Peace of mind Paying somebody for something you get a lot of good out of is the right thing. I pay for software I use, you should too.
There is a page at my web site that details how you may purchase a registration key. You can go to that page here: Pineapple News Registration. The practical upshot of this exercise should be that you give me some money, and I give you a registration key. You cannot continue the registration process until you have your key.
At this point, you should have received an e-mail that contains your name, exactly as it should be spelled for the purposes of registration, and your registration key. From the program’s application menu, select “Preferences ...,” and go to the tab labeled “Registration.” Enter your name and registration key. This will only work if you enter the information exactly as it appears in the e-mail, so be careful. I suggest you copy the registration key to the clipboard and paste it into the proper field by pressing ⌘V.
Press the “Register” button. If all goes well, the program will inform you that it is now registered. The data is saved in the program’s prefs file, so you won’t have to enter it again.
Do not share your registration key with anybody else. That would be stealing.
From now on, your registered name will be added as a header to each and every post you make to USENET. Anybody who wishes to look will be able to see that you are one of the people that helps make software development possible for the Macintosh platform.