usenet@cps3xx.UUCP (Usenet file owner) (08/09/89)
In article <438@xdos.UUCP> doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt) writes: >In article <2025.AA2025@geo-works> bryan@geo-works.UUCP (Bryan Ford) writes: >>So, is anybody up for writing something like this? I've been wanting to >>for a while, but never found the time. > >Welcome to the club. In all seriousness, this is (IMHO) the major reason >why things don't get done. Even all those obvious things that should have >been done long ago. And also why people keep suggesting the same good Ok, hows about adding a list to the montly Intro post of things that need doing? Something that I think the Amiga desperately needs is online help. Just so happens that I have been working on such a thing. The program works best with specially formatted files. The file gets formatted to fit into the width of the window it is being displayed in. Text can be normal,bold,italic,underline,color. Fonts are supported, and can be specifed in the file (one font per file please). It almost works with proportional fonts ( it will soon ). You can define references associated with parts of the text. When the user clicks on the reference, then another window with another file pops up. Windows can be iconified. There is alos an index feature for words that don't have an explicit reference defined. It does all this reliably (hard to crash even the flakey parts), and is quite small. Im using lattice 3.1, and it compiles to less than 20k, and uses about 30k when running with one window open. It even handles out-of-memory well. It has to, Iv'e been developing it with 512k memory. So far so good. Now all I have to do is type in help files on AmigaDOS and the Amiga in general. Yuck. Anybody wanna help me out? **Is anybody interested in this, or have I been wasting my time?** REAL NAME: Joe Porkka jap@frith.cl.msu.edu
lel@wuphys.UUCP (Lyle E. Levine) (08/11/89)
In article <4104@cps3xx.UUCP> porkka@frith.UUCP (Joe Porkka) writes:
-Something that I think the Amiga desperately needs is online help.
-
-Just so happens that I have been working on such a thing.
-The program works best with specially formatted files. The file
-gets formatted to fit into the width of the window it is being displayed
-in. Text can be normal,bold,italic,underline,color. Fonts are supported,
-and can be specifed in the file (one font per file please). It
-almost works with proportional fonts ( it will soon ). You can
-define references associated with parts of the text. When the
-user clicks on the reference, then another window with another
-file pops up. Windows can be iconified. There is alos an index feature
-for words that don't have an explicit reference defined.
-
-So far so good. Now all I have to do is type in help files
-on AmigaDOS and the Amiga in general. Yuck. Anybody wanna help
-me out?
-
-**Is anybody interested in this, or have I been wasting my time?**
-REAL NAME: Joe Porkka jap@frith.cl.msu.edu
This sounds nice but for me, I just wrote a short shell script called
"man" and put it in my s: directory. When I type "man command", it
runs my favorite text viewing program on a help file of the same name
in my docs: directory. I put all the ARP1.3 manual pages here and
every time I add a utility that came with a doc file, I add it also.
Typing "man" with no arguments just displays my docs:man file which
lists all the available on-line doc files. It works just like
man on UNIX. Of course you can't do all this without a hard disk
(I have about 130 doc files on line).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IBM - Inconsequential Bit Manipulator
Lyle Levine lel@wuphys.wustl.edu
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