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TCHARGE(1.3)                                         TCHARGE(1.3)
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NAME
       tcharge - telephone / modem charge watch for X window sys-
       tem

SYNOPSIS
       tcharge [ options ]

DESCRIPTION
       Tcharge is a tool to watch the time a telephone connection
       is  up and the money to pay for it. It works both for `per
       unit billing' and for `per second billing'.
       On Invocation tcharge pops up a window containing an  ana-
       log  clock  and  an additional text field. The clock indi-
       cates the time elapsed since the  start  of  the  program,
       while  the text part of the window gives information about
       the phone units and/or the charge spent so far.
       Alternatively, tcharge can work without any visual  output
       at  all,  quiet  writing  computed charges to files in the
       background.

       Tcharge may either work in the daemon mode or in a  normal
       mode.
       Daemon mode: If option -watch-file <watch_file> is choosen
       the charge counting starts when watch_file is created  and
       stops when watch_file is deleted. For PPP take the name of
       the PID-file of the pppd daemon. (So you do  not  have  to
       terminate tcharge while an entire X session.)
       (For ISDN use option `-isdn' instead)
       There  is  also  a non-X-Window mode available by choosing
       the commandline option -noX. Then the only output goes  to
       a logfile or to syslog.
       Normal  mode:  Charge  computing  starts  immediately when
       tcharge comes up. For that tcharge is  preferably  started
       directly  after  or  before  starting  a  modem connection
       (automatically) and must be killed immediately after  dis-
       connect. (See options -file on how to kill and -before and
       -after for correction of delays.)

       Tcharge can warn you some seconds before a new unit begins
       with  a  little  alarm  like flashing the window or with a
       bell.
       When compiled with `-DREMINDER' tcharge can warn at  regu-
       lar  intervals  of having spent a certain amount of money,
       units or minutes by popping up a message window.

       Tcharge catches signals SIGHUP, SIGINT,  SIGQUIT,  SIGPIPE
       and  SIGTERM  to print a connection statistic to a file or
       to syslog before  exiting  (see  option  `-file')  and  to
       remove the tcharge PID-file before exiting.

       When  compiled with `-DPRINT_CHARGE_STRUCTURE' an extended
       help option -help-charge is available which prints a  nice
       table  of the charge structure as given in the header file
       `charge.h' Very useful  to  check  the  correct  charging,
       especially when testing new TC definitions!

       Most  of  the  source  concerning X is derived from rclock
       written by Rob Nation. Since  Tcharge  is  a  derivate  of
       rclock it also conserves memory by not using the X toolkit
       or any widget set.

SUPPORTED COUNTRIES
       The phone companies of the following  countries  are  sup-
       ported so far:
       Germany,  France, Japan, Portugal, Slovenia, Hungary, Bel-
       gium, Swiss, Italy, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, Dan-
       mark and the UK.

       If you want tcharge to take into account e.g. some special
       discount schemes or your provider charges, this is  possi-
       ble  to  realize  - and very easy for you even without any
       programming knowledge.

SUPPORT
       There  is  also a mailing list for tcharge. It is open, so
       everyone can directly post to the list. Yet  everyone  who
       wants  to  susbscribe to the list is welcome. To subscribe
       to the list send an e-mail with no subject  and  with  the
       body

               subscribe your@email.address
       to
               tcharge-request@hix.physik.uni-bremen.de

       To unsubscribe send an e-mail with the body

               unsubscribe your@email.address

       to  the same address. If you want to send some mail to the
       list, send it to

               tcharge@hix.physik.uni-bremen.de

       For more information about this list's listserver  send  a
       mail  with  the  body `help' to `majordomo@hix.physik.uni-
       bremen.de'.  The  list  is  intended  for  discussion   of
       tcharge,  bug  reports, help requests and announcements of
       new releases,  fixes,  etc.  (only  the  mails  about  new
       releases    will   also   be   send   to   the   newsgroup
       comp.os.linux.announce).

CHARGE MODULES
       You are encouraged to test  the  charge  definition  files
       that tcharge provides and to help improving them.
       The  charges  that  a  modem produces are of course highly
       dependent on your telephone company (TC).  Though  tcharge
       supports a lot of TCs (thanks to pppcosts!) there is still
       a lot to do since in most cases there is something missing
       e.g.  a complete list of public holidays, support for more
       than the local area zone... And of course the charge defi-
       nitions  are  not  correct  forever; check if they need an
       update!  I hope things will still get better:  Nearly  all
       TC-dependent  information is kept in single `charge files'
       that are easy to edit (and to create) also for  "non-hack-
       ers". (Actually you don't have to know anything about pro-
       gramming!).
       Included in the source is a perl script mktc that helps  a
       lot to configure tcharge for another TC (see README.TC).

BUGS
       All known bugs are eliminated...

AUTHOR
       Volker B"orchers <boercher@physik.uni-bremen.de>

       Most  X  stuff is taken from rclock (version 1.81) written
       by: Rob Nation (nation@rocket.sanders.lockheed.com)

       The idea for the "daemon mode", the ISDN-support  as  well
       as  the support for most of supported countries is derived
       from  `pppcosts',  (pppcosts  by   Tillmann   Steinbrecher
       <tst@bigfoot.com>, see
       http://people.darmstadt.netsurf.de/tst/pppcosts.htm)

       Thanks   to  Sascha  Ziemann  (szi@aibon.ping.de),  George
       Antani(pitura@geocities.com),        Oliver         Gading
       (o.gading@sbu.ac.uk),       Frank       Kalberg      (sky-
       walker@devnull.owl.de),   Michael.Schneider@vitrashop.com;
       special  thanks  to  Heiko Brey (cthuga@sl.netzservice.de)
       for our correspondence on the -noX option  and  a  special
       console option (never realized...). Thanks to Michael Ren-
       ner (renner@sunwan.mpik-tueb.mpg.de) - he found a bad  bug
       in tcharge and was the "major beta tester" of version 1.3.
       Very much thanks  to  Markus  Gutschke  (gutschk@uni-muen-
       ster.de), author of `isdnbutton' for his help on the ISDN-
       support.
