uad1031@dircon.uucp (Julian Templeman) (01/10/91)
Catching up with news after Christmas, I find that.... John R. Burgoyne <burgoyne@eng.umd.edu> writes: > Has anyone successfully created other than trivial .RTF > files using something other than one of the Word family > of word processors? tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu (Tom Haapanen) writes: > >Indeed, the RTF format is ASCII, but there it's RIDICULOUS to think of >writing real help documents (100-200K) in RTF by hand! Right now, I think >WfW is the best bet. Having spent loadsamoney on the SDK, and various other bits (like C 6. 0), we (ie. the boss) rather objected to shelling out a lot more for a word-processor that we wouldn't use for anything else but help files. My approach was to write a small troff-like text processor which reads ASCII files and produces an RTF file which HC will happily use. As well as the help-specific items (context strings, keywords etc), enough formatting commands are included to enable me to produce reasonable- looking help screens. So far it supports everything except build tags (including bitmap placement), and is proving quite a useful tool for medium-size help systems. In fact, it turns out that Word will also accept the RTF files produced, which was a surprise to me - it seems that most of the junk at the start of an RTF file is optional. Thus, if we do get a copy of WfW later, I can port the files over. Even though this was just a quick hack (1.5 days) to get my help files written for our first exploratory Windows port, having tried a borrowed copy of Word, I'm finding this approach much more comprehensible, and worth developing. julian -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Julian Templeman Baker Jardine & Associates Tel: +44-81-371-5644 London SW6 4TJ, England Fax: +44-81-371-5182 ...ukc!dircon!uad1031
jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK) (01/16/91)
In article <1991PMWed.09.8666@dircon.uucp> uad1031@dircon.uucp (Julian Templeman) writes: | |Catching up with news after Christmas, I find that.... | |John R. Burgoyne <burgoyne@eng.umd.edu> writes: |> Has anyone successfully created other than trivial .RTF |> files using something other than one of the Word family |> of word processors? | |tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu (Tom Haapanen) writes: |> |>Indeed, the RTF format is ASCII, but there it's RIDICULOUS to think of |>writing real help documents (100-200K) in RTF by hand! Right now, I |think |>WfW is the best bet. After suggesting MSWorks as one option, I realized there is an even cheaper way for people to get their feet wet making small RTF documents: namely get a copy of TryWord -- the "working model" of WfW. The major restriction of the working model seems to be to restrict document sizes as typed in or printed to 7K characters [the RTF expansions can be bigger] This limits one to a typical 3-4 page document. Other than that, the working model seems to be quite close in functionality and appearance to "the real thing." $10 from MS $30 included with the "Learn Word for Windows Now" text. Disclaimer: obviously, this offer is made by MS in the hopes that one will decide to spend the money to get the unrestricted "full" version of WfW. In posting this suggestion, I am also hoping most people will come to this decision.
tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu (Tom Haapanen) (01/17/91)
>| John R. Burgoyne <burgoyne@eng.umd.edu> writes: >|> Has anyone successfully created other than trivial .RTF files using >|> something other than one of the Word family of word processors? > tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu (Tom Haapanen) writes: >| Indeed, the RTF format is ASCII, but there it's RIDICULOUS to think of >| writing real help documents (100-200K) in RTF by hand! Right now, I >| think WfW is the best bet. Jim ADCOCK <jimad@microsoft.UUCP> writes: > After suggesting MSWorks as one option, I realized there is an even > cheaper way for people to get their feet wet making small RTF documents: > namely get a copy of TryWord -- the "working model" of WfW. [...] > $10 from MS And yet another option: Ami Professional is now available for $129 with the disk or manual page from Word, WordPerfect, MultiMate or few other word prcessors. (I never thought I'd suggest a Lotus product on the net...) It supports RTF, and I briefly entertained the idea of getting a copy myself, but non-MDI apps are really annoying! :) I'll stick with WfW... [ \tom haapanen --- university of waterloo --- tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu ] [ "i don't even know what street canada is on" -- al capone ]