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3.3 release candidate 17 (v126.62) (July 12, 2011)

  • The LDAP password may now be taken from the system keychain instead of the user's login keychain.
  • Added an option to prevent direct from modifying the LDAP password (via the new user defaults key LDAPPasswordUseSystemKeychain).
  • direct is now a code signed application. If direct has once been granted access to a keychain item (e.g. to the LDAP password stored in the system keychain), the keychain will grant access to updated direct versions as well, as long as they are identically signed. So access will not need to be granted anew for each new direct version.

  • Fixed bug where direct in some cases completely stopped to do LDAP searches after the LDAP server had closed the connection. LDAP searches now time out after 30 seconds. This timeout value may be changed via the new user defaults key LDAPSearchTimeoutDuration.
  • Reduced LDAP load by no longer searching for empty strings in a corner case where inbound calls were not detected as such.
  • Prevented the LDAP connection problem alert panel from being opened multiple consecutive times.

  • Contacts read from Address Book that have an organisation but no name are no longer displayed as "organisation name (organisation name)".
  • Contacts read from Address Book that have an organisation but no name are now included in the dock menu.
  • Contacts without a phone number are no longer included in the dock menu.
  • Now uses custom phone number labels of Address Book contacts in dock menu and in the dial window's display of the last called phone number.
  • Excluded fax numbers from being added to the dock menu entries.

  • Prevented a crash after wake from sleep in a rare race condition.

  • Fixed a bug that caused ghost window contents of multiple connections to overwrite each other.

  • Fixed a number of other minor bugs.
  • Added a number of minor debugging features.

3.3 release candidate 12 (v126.58) (April 5, 2011)

  • Implemented new central configuration scheme (see description in help pages). The previous, less advanced system is no longer supported.
  • Added option to deactivate the built-in software update, e.g. to be used in managed environments (via the user defaults key DisableSoftwareUpdates).
  • Updated direct help pages.
  • Updated internal structure of direct help pages, extracting the resources shared by multiple languages, so that they now are only stored once.
  • Added a number of minor debugging features.

3.3 release candidate 4 (v126.50) (November 30, 2010)

  • Added a potential bugfix for communication with TeamCall Express 2.0 for Mitel phone systems.
  • Fixed a localization issue in Tiptel plugin.
  • Updated Growl framework.
  • Fixed various minor stability issues.

3.3 beta 42 (v126.47) (April 7, 2010)

  • Added Sparkle.framework to the list of acknowledged third party software packages.
  • Repackaged the application so that future software updates will no longer require an administrator password.

3.3 beta 41 (v126.46) (April 4, 2010)

  • The ghost window for incoming calls no longer displays the connection name when just a single connection is configured.
  • Connection preferences: the names of inactive connections are now displayed in gray color.
  • Fixed our company address in the english language help file.

3.3 beta 40 (v126.45) (April 4, 2010)

  • Added automatic software update mechanism.
  • Updated direct help pages for multi-user configuration.
  • Renamed direct's dialing service to Call Number Using direct.
  • Moved Send Feedback... menu item from direct menu to Help menu.

3.3 beta 39 (v126.44) (March 8, 2010)

  • Fixed an application crasher that occurred in rare situations (mostly under Mac OS X 10.6) after TeamCall unexpectedly closed the connection to direct.
  • Tiptel dialing speed has been increased and now once again approaches the speed of direct 3.2. To still be able to support older Tiptel phones, a new advanced connection setting ('slow dialing') has been introduced.
  • Connection selection keyboard shortcuts now start at Command-1 (instead of Command-0) and are now limited up to Command-9 (additional connections will no longer have a selection keyboard shortcut).

3.3 beta 38 (v126.43) (December 15, 2009)

  • Added setting to enable searching for contacts in recent Active Directory servers.

3.3 beta 37 (v126.42) (December 15, 2009)

  • Fixed a second bug introduced in 3.3 b34: setting the address book group for display in the dock menu now also works again.
  • Modified the color of deactivated connection preferences text field headers to make them more readable under Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6.
  • Fixed a bug in LDAP search that could cause the application to crash after the connection to the LDAP server was lost.

3.3 beta 36 (v126.41) (November 30, 2009)

  • Fixed bug introduced in 3.3 b34: the dock menu now once again contains the contacts from the selected address book group.
  • Fixed an AppleScript type mismatch warning.
  • Added debug facilities to investigate a race condition in AppleScript handling.

3.3 beta 35 (v126.40) (October 20, 2009)

  • Added support for LDAP servers using non-standard ports. To configure, specify the port number in the LDAP configuration server field, separated from the LDAP server name/address by a colon, e.g. ldap.ilink.de:12345.
  • Fixed a bug where authorization in TeamCall connection settings did not immediately become effective in the user interface when using Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.
  • Updated help pages to include information about services under Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

3.3 beta 34 (v126.39) (October 19, 2009)

  • The TeamCall plugin now requires authorization before the GUI controls of the settings of TeamCall connections are enabled.
  • Added support for phone systems that require phone numbers to be specified in international format without a leading plus character or that expect phone numbers in requests to be specified in this format.

3.3 beta 33 (v126.38) (October 9, 2009)

  • Fixed long standing bug that under certain circumstances caused the names of contacts in the Local Users list to be printed in the wrong character encoding. This only affected contact names with non-ASCII characters.
  • Fixed a bug in the Tiptel plugin that caused the crashers reported by some users under Mac OS X 10.6.

3.3 beta 32 (v126.37) (October 2, 2009)

  • Fixed a bug in AppleScript settings introduced in direct 3.3 b24 that led to the wrong script being used.
  • Added workaround to allow new calls on connections that are marked as being busy (activate via user defaults key AllowSecondCallOnActiveConnection). This setting is intended to be used in the rare case where the connection is being marked as busy by the CTI server, even though it actually isn't.
  • Added debug facilities in an attempt to catch a bug that occasionally causes direct with a Tiptel phone to crash under Mac OS X 10.6.

3.3 beta 31 (v126.36) (August 31, 2009)

  • This is the first public beta of direct 3.3 after a long series of custom versions made for our larger customers.

  • direct 3.3 is the first release to support Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6).

  • direct 3.3 no longer supports OS releases prior to Mac OS X Tiger (10.4).
    Please use direct 3.2.4 if you need a version that runs under Mac OS X Panther (10.3.9).

  • Contact search
      Address Book
    • Address Book searches are now performed in the background. This leads to smoother operation. Also, direct no longer hangs when the Address Book does not respond.
    • Improved quality of Address Book search results.
    • Now also searches for birthnames.

      LDAP
    • Improved search speed for slow LDAP servers (as well as for LDAP servers that return very large result lists).
    • Fixed potential crashers in LDAP search.
    • Added support for LDAP protocol version v3, using either v2 or v3 depending on the setting of the LDAP server.
    • Added support for searching contacts in Microsoft Active Directory, using the various new hidden configuration options.
    • Made LDAP search and result attributes configurable using hidden user defaults settings.
    • Made LDAP string encoding configurable using hidden user defaults setting LDAPStringEncoding.
    • Switched LDAP search to a new algorithm that performs much better in most cases. Added hidden user defaults setting for reverting to the previous algorithm or for supporting customer-specific LDAP search query construction.

  • Telephony
    • Added ability to dial the hash character (#).
    • Fixed a bug with the 'always include area code' setting that prevented direct from working in France (#155).
    • direct is now a helper application for tel:, call:, and callto: URLs.
    • Added support for settings without a local dial prefix (so far, only external calls are supported in such a configuration).
    • Added support for settings where the number to be monitored by the telephony server differs from the direct dial extension number of the telephone.
    • Phone numbers starting with * or # will now always be interpreted as being in dialable format.
    • Added support for cases where the telephony server or telephone signals phone numbers in a non-standard format (using new user defaults key expectedNumberSignallingFormat).
    • Fixed a bug where internal numbers where not always recognized as such, which led to the wrong number being dialed in some cases.
    • Added support for connection specific setting of the maximum digit length up to which numbers will be interpreted as being internal extensions (using the same user defaults key LocalNumberLengthLimit that was and remains to be valid as a gobal default that - if set - pertains to all connections).
    • Added support for phone systems that signal the caller's number in international format, but without a leading plus character.

  • Connection Plugins
    • Updated the non-TeamCall connection plugins to the bugfixed versions with correct ILPluginCapabilities keys (TeamCall plugin had the correct keys all along). Bugs caused by the wrong keys include the inability to set some connection settings in certain connection plugins, e.g. in the Tiptel plugin.

      TeamCall
    • Added support for setting the format of phone numbers to be used in dial requests (using the new defaults key kILExpectedNumberRequestFormatKey).
    • Added advanced preferences switch to activate sending own extension number to CTI server in international format instead of extension format (using the new user defaults key useInternationalFormatForExtensionNumber).

      Tiptel
    • Prevented multiple erroneous exceptions, some of which could cause the Tiptel plugin to fail to connect to the telephone.
    • Fixed number conversion bug that caused the Tiptel plugin to attempt to dial an empty string instead of the actual phone number.
    • Added workaround to prevent dialing problems with some Tiptel telephones. This may slightly slow down the dialing speed.
    • Added support for hanging up calls on Tiptel phones.

  • AppleScript
    • Added iChat integration for adding phone state information to iChat status.
    • Added HangUp AppleScript command.
    • Changed handling of MakeCall to AppleScript command so that this no longer activates the application.
    • Improved error logging for AppleScript execution.
    • Brushed up sample scripts.

  • Settings
    • Added new hidden special tab in connection preferences, allowing to manually add, remove, and change arbitrary connection settings (except for the standard connection settings). To enable this tab, set the user defaults value for EnableSpecialConnectionSettings to YES.
    • Fixed bug where under some circumstances not all settings were saved when closing the preferences window after having switched preferences sections.
    • Modified settings are now no longer verified or saved when application is being shut down while preferences panel is open.
    • Enabled optional central configuration. This is documented in the system administration documentation within the Extras folder on the direct disk image.
    • All disabled connection setting fields are now hidden instead of just being deactivated.
    • Improved handling of connection preferences when no connection is selected to now reliably deactivate all connection preferences GUI elements (some elements used to remain activated in this case).
    • The connection preferences Server tab will now be removed for those connections that do not need it.

  • Made major improvements of Bonjour reliability, including fixes of several potential crash bugs, one of which could even have been triggered remotely.
  • Experimentally changed call hang up hotkey from Esc to Alt-Esc, and made it application global in the process, i.e. it now should work regardless of what you're currently doing in direct. We may return to using Esc in the final release.
  • Improved display of incoming calls without or with unknown numbers.
  • Improved display of entries in dock menu.
  • Improved handling of location changes and of intermediate network disconnections (e.g. on portable computers).
  • Improved Growl support.
  • Added integration examples to the disk image.
  • As well as many additional small improvements and bug fixes, including fixes for various application crashers.


3.2.4 (v113.12) (September 18, 2006)

  • Fixed a condition where a Tiptel telephone wouldn't dial.

3.2.3 (v113.10) (July 26, 2006)

  • Added some missing german localizations.
  • Fixed some event firing issues with Tiptel phones.
  • Fixed a condition where only the first call per application launch was signalled.

3.2.2 (v113.7) (July 11, 2006)

  • Reimplemented AppleScript functionality to support both compiled and plain text scripts, and in order to make AppleScript support yet more reliable.
  • Made sure that the call handling preferences script popup only shows valid script files.

3.2.1 (v113.3) (July 5, 2006)

  • Fixed a condition where AppleScript scripts were not triggered.

3.2 (v113.2) (July 3, 2006)

  • General
    • Added demo license mode: direct now also runs without a license (albeit in a somewhat limited form).
    • Added Growl support.
    • Enhanced ghost window, including the capability to display information about simultaneous calls coming in via different connections.
    • Minor enhancements to Bonjour reliability.
    • Fixed possible crash when loading AppleScript files.
    • Minor enhancements to AppleScript reliability.
    • Fixed bug where dock menu quick dial list could not be turned off.
  • TeamCall® plugin
    • TeamCall plugin now also supports TeamCall® Express. This vastly increases the number of supported phone systems.
  • Tiptel plugin
    • Fixed a bug where incoming calls on Tiptel phones where indicated twice.
  • As well as a few additional small improvements and bug fixes.


3.1.2 (v100.2) (April 27, 2006)

  • Extended demo license (TeamCall and Tiptel) until July 3, 2006.

3.1.1 (v100.1) (March 24, 2006)

  • Extended demo license (TeamCall and Tiptel) until April 25, 2006.

3.1 (v100) (February 5, 2006)

  • General
    • First universal binary version of direct and all plugins (PowerPC and Intel).
    • Fixed bug where ghost window was shown for outgoing calls.
    • Added dial preferences option to always dial the area code.
    • Minor bug fixes in german language help files.
  • Bonjour
    • Fixed wrong display of Bonjour call state after a call transfer.
    • Fixed a possible cause for some Bonjour display problems.
    • Improved performance by caching local user pictures.
    • Fixed a bug where Bonjour users were not shown.
    • Fixed a condition where call transfer would lead to a flickering Bonjour status display.
    • Made network data transmission non-blocking.
    • Better handling of sleep mode in Bonjour status.
    • Eliminated memory leaks.
    • Fixed two application crashers.
    • Fixed a bug where call states were not shown.
  • Plugins
    • Plugins will no longer be loaded twice.


3.0.2 (v92) (November 28, 2005)

  • Bonjour
    • Fixed potential app crasher in Bonjour status update.
  • Tiptel plugin
    • Added device popup in 'Advanced' section of Tiptel plugin preferences.
    • Workaround for app crasher in Tiptel plugin.

3.0.1 (v88) (November 1, 2005)

  • Minor bug fixes in english language help files.

3.0 (v86) (October 31, 2005)

  • General
    • direct now requires at least Mac OS X 10.3.
    • direct is no longer licensed via TeamCall® Server. It now requires its own license.
  • Support for phone switches and telephones
    • The most important new feature of direct 3 is the modular plugin architecture to connect to telephones and phone switches of various vendors.
    • In addition to the TeamCall plugin, there is a new Tiptel plugin supporting Tiptel telephones.
  • Bonjour
    • Major improvements in stability and accuracy of the display of the status of the local direct users.
  • AppleScript
    • When a call ends, the new cleared handler is called.
  • As well as many more small improvements and bug fixes.


2.1 (v71) (July 17, 2005)

  • General
    • Various minor useability enhancements, including:
      • If direct is reactivated using command-tab, list of found contacts pops up again if it was already open before user switched to another application.
      • Using service menu entry makes direct frontmost application.
      • Changing selected number updates number text field in lower right of main window.
      • New call is immediately selected in called contacts list.
      • Organisation is displayed in name field after contact selection.
      • Dial window remains key window when local users window is opened during application startup.
    • Moved persistent call history and adaptive search results database from preferences to separate files.
  • Incoming calls
    • Call popup window includes photo of caller, taken from Bonjour, the local address book, or from local or networked image folders.
  • Dialing
    • *-character is no longer stripped from number before dialing.
  • Searching
    • LDAP searches are now performed in the background. This leads to smoother operation. Also, direct no longer hangs when the LDAP server does not respond.
    • Added support for LDAP authentication.
  • Call history
    • New menu item to show/hide call history.
    • Duplicate entries are removed from called contact list.
    • Contact information can be copied from called contact list.
    • The height of the expanded call history can now be set via user defaults (for the present this must be done using the shell, as there is not yet a setting in the preferences window):
      defaults write de.ilink.direct CalledContactListDisplayLineCount 15
  • Dock menu
    • The default name for address book group shown in dock menu is now 'direct'.
  • Stability
    • A number of bugs have been fixed, some of which might have caused direct to crash.


2.0 (v58) (June 3, 2004)

  • General
    • direct no longer supports the Mac OS X 10.1 address book and now requires at least Mac OS X 10.2.
  • User interface
    • Windows have a brushed metal texture.
    • Separate icons for the different phone number types.
  • Searching
    • Search results now contain just one line per contact. Multiple numbers of a contact are no longer displayed in separate lines, but instead in a single line using phone number icons.
    • New search engine: the search adapts to your habits, the people you call most frequently are automatically preferred. The adaptive search not only works for contacts, but also between the different numbers of a contact. The preferred number is automatically pre selected.
    • The search now also finds Mac OS X address book entries with user defined phone number types.
  • Dialing
    • Calls can be ended with the escape key.
    • The call history is persistent (i.e. its entries are still available after the next program start).
  • Dock menu
    • The dock menu works again (now under Mac OS X 10.2 and 10.3).
  • Rendezvous (now called: Bonjour)
    • Display of a list of all direct users in the local network (with photo and name).
    • Optional broadcast of your phone state to the other direct users.
    • Pick-up of calls that are ringing at the phone of other direct users.


1.1 (v37) (October 12, 2003)

  • Incoming calls
    • Added handling of incoming calls.
    • direct searches the Mac OS X address book and an LDAP server for the name of the caller.
    • The name or phone number of the caller is displayed in a semi-transparent window.
  • AppleScript
    • Added AppleScript suite: direct can now be accessed via AppleScript.
    • Added automatic triggering of AppleScript programs by telephone events: direct can access other applications.


1.0.1 (v26) (June 28, 2002)

  • Fixed some typos in the english language help and readme file.
  • Fixed wrong URLs in help index pages.

1.0 (v25) (June 26, 2002)

  • First public release for Mac OS X.
  • Uses ilink TeamCall® Server for dialing.
  • Access to the user's Mac OS X system address book, supporting both Mac OS X 10.1 and the Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar Developer Preview.
  • Access to a central LDAP directory server for phone number lookup.
  • Service to dial phone numbers from arbitrary applications.
  • User definable quick dial list in the dock menu.
  • Smaller and more intuitive GUI.


0.1 to 0.95 (1992-1995)

  • Software for Nextstep/Openstep in combination with mix®, the telephone, voice mail, fax, and modem combination system for Next Computer and Openstep PCs.
  • Access to the Nextstep system address book, incl. GUI to view and edit the addresses.
  • Dialing of phone numbers using a attached mix®.
  • Service to dial phone numbers from arbitrary applications.


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