Pooter v5.4

About Pooter

Pooter is cross-platform program ; it should be possible to run it on any java 17 or later enabled system. This version has been compiled with java 21; there are only minimal code changes from the last version, which you can still use with older java versions. Having said that it's been developed on a Devuan Linux system, receiving a little testing on a Windows10 system. At various earlier stages of it's development it's known to have run perfectly well on FreeBSD and Mac OS X. If you have problems, provided your system has a java runtime, I'll try and help out.

There are six modules, all with a Personal Information Management slant. Its plugin architecture means that it is easy to remove modules you don't wish to use; with a little more difficulty(!), new modules could be written to run in the "container" that Pooter provides. If the Notes module is installed, there are options to easily link to or transfer data to and from the other modules. A seventh module, Butler, enables exchange of data between Pooter and the web app butler and can also be used to keep data in sync between more than one machine. This module is available seperately, being of no use unless you also use its companion app butler. The butler app uses groovy code which no longer compiles with recent java versions. The current release has a binary version of butler.war which has been converted with the jakartaEE conversion process. If you want source code, get it from the version 5.4 release.

Pooter can be configured to cooperate with other programs, such as a browser, email client etc; in every case you are free to choose your favourite program. There is no "lock in". All data is stored in standard non-proprietary formats and can be accessed by other commonly available programs such as browsers, text editors and the derby ij tool. In some cases there are also options to export the data solely for use by other programs.

Downloads

Pooter is available from sourceforge as installPooter-5.4.jar. It is also available as Pooter-5.4.tar.gz as an alternative for unix like systems such as Linux, *BSD and Mac OSX. Updates to its modules may be released seperately as <module>.jar. Butler2.3.zip contains the butler server and Butler client.

Installing

Pooter is packed for distribution as an installer jar, so you must have a java runtime environment installed before you start. In a Linux terminal or windows cmd prompt run the command java -jar installPooter-5.4.jar. This should be done with admin/root privilleges, so that it can be installed in the default location for your system. The pooter-5.4.tar.gz archive is an alternative for unix like systems such as Linux; extract the archive in the root of your file system (/ *not* /root) and edit the top of the /usr/local/bin/pooter.sh file with the full path to the java executable.

#!/bin/sh
JAVA=/usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/bin/java

#_____________________functions_____________________________________________

Upgrades to the modules may be released alone. These are installed simply by extracting them from the zip archive (use winzip or a similar utility), copying them into Pooter's modules directory and restarting.

The Modules

During installation you have the choice to install only the modules you want, but I suggest installing them all and removing any you do not want post install. The modules are stored as jar files in the modules directory, so just delete from there, restart Pooter and they will be gone.

If you change your mind about which modules you want you can simply delete or add the module's jar file from or to the modules directory. This would be more problematical in the case of the Diary and PhotoAlbum modules as they need additional jar files to be available in the lib directory. Hopefully you installed at least one module as without this Pooter does pretty much nothing.

If there are no modules, or Pooter can't find them it will let you know. Remedy the first problem by adding a module jar file to the modules directory which will be a subdirectory of the installation directory C:\Program Files\Pooter\modules on Windows, /usr/local/Pooter/modules on Linux,

Using

This is free software, but it has been extensively tested and it is believed to be stable, usable and useful. If any problems are experienced I will try to help. However as you will see from the warranty notice in 'LICENSE' (file in doc directory), the last section of this document and the info reached from the programs Help\About Pooter menu item, it comes with no guarantee or warranty of any kind; you use it entirely at your own risk.

On Windows systems there will be a shortcut on the desktop. On Gnu\Linux systems run the pooter.sh script which will have been installed in /usr/local/bin.

YOUR DATA

As with any software, you should make regular backup copies of important data that you create. All the modules store your data in a single data directory or in its sub-directories. The status bar will tell you the location of this, its on the extreme right.

The left of the status bar tells you where the configuration files are stored; you may want to back these up as well. By default these two directories are the same, although you can configure Pooter to have the data in a different directory.

Preferences

The Configure Pooter tab is where Pooter wide, rather than module specific, configuration is done.

The Default Module box allows you to select which module Pooter should start with.

You may want to deselect Enable tool tips once you become familiar with Pooter.

The Modules Directory can be changed by using the change button to open a file chooser. You pobably do not need to alter this, although it is possible to move the modules so that on a multi user system, different users can have different modules available. A module directory change only takes effect after a restart

You can choose a new directory location where Pooter should look for and store its data or select a different one from the list if you have already set up more than one. You can also remove entries from this list. Note that Pooter does not create or delete directories, nor does it override directory permissions; it will revert to its default if you specify a directory that does not exist or that you do not have read/write access. Use of the sync button requires care, hence the I'm sure checkbox. All data in the highlighted directory will be deleted and replaced with a copy of data in the directory currently in use. This can be used as a back up method, provided the two directories are on different media.

More than one module can use a browser , so this is set here. Either type the command that will start a browser, or press change and locate it on your file system.

Remember screen size can be checked to make Pooter start with the same screen size as it had when it last closed.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

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.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program (License in the Pooter doc directory); if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA or look for it at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html.

mail_AT_dmatthews_DOT_org
David Matthews 372 Danie Theron St, Pretoria North, South Africa.

Pooter uses and bundles jDom (http://www.jdom.org/) and the JGoodies Looks (http://www.jgoodies.com/). The Diary module bundles a stripped down version of iText (http://www.lowagie.com/iText/) for the export to pdf feature and together with the PhotoAlbum module also uses Apache Commons Lang (https://commons.apache.org/), Apache Derby (https://db.apache.org/derby/) and Jericho HTML Parser (http://jericho.htmlparser.net) .

Pooter has taken most of its icons from the KDE project (http://www.kde.org/), which is GPL. Its window icon, which is free of copyright, is from http://www.authorama.com/diary-of-a-nobody-1.html.