jonabbey@cs.utexas.edu (Jonathan David Abbey) (04/26/91)
HT - An Amiga Hypertext program is in the amiga/utilities hierarchy on ab20,
I think.
HT is a really nice little program, and I really lust to use it for keeping
track of a whole bunch of stuff that I may have to deal with. It has wonderful
AREXX support (although, not having AREXX myself, it's somewhat hard to
say this with any authority.. 8-), great multitasking layout,... it's very
nice.
Unfortunately, it has a couple of bugs, a number of misfeatures, and a lot
of things missing which could make this program truly wonderful.
The author of the program provides no means of contact whatsoever,
unfortunately. The only identification is in the program, and that is:
Dominic Giampolo
(c) 1990 Homeboy Software
I sort of suspect that this might have been brought up to ab20 from someone
besides the author.. public bulletin board perhaps? In any case, if any
one knows how to get in touch with the author, please relay these comments if
it would not be too much trouble.
Okay, let's get this started of right:
_BUGS_
1. The program puts your Amiga into fireworks mode if you are so foolish as
to specify a proportional font for your document. I believe it does the
same with monospaced fonts thinner than topaz 8.
2. If your line is too long and wraps around such that a formatting code is
at or near (?) the end of the line, the program loses proper track of
it's position for word wrap and repeats words on the next line. To add
insult to injury, if it is in a style mode at wrap point, that style
will continue on to the wrapped line. It may then proceed to re-read the
style toggle, turning it off for the text you wanted it on for, and
eventually leaving the rest of your document underlined or some such.
_(that's not a bug, that's a) MISFEATURES_
1. If you have spaces between \underline toggles, the spaces are underlined
on screen. This is maddening when you want to have a line of headers,
as surrounding each column header with \underline makes impossible to align
your headers. More on this later.
2. There is no 80 column mode, unless you can take your amiga into overscan
with morerows or some such. This is a large pain, as I would like to
enter a meeting agenda into HT as is, but if it is more than 73ish
columns, it wraps. As the agenda has columns, this is a real problem.
This one alone makes HT almost unusable for what I would like to use it
for.
3. When you print the text of your document, it puts a line of ----'s at the
end. This is, I think, to allow you to distinguish between documents
in a file or some such. Unfortunately, I can't use HT to print out said
agenda without getting the line of dashes at the bottom.
4. HT does on-screen formatting for whatever font and window size you have,
but when you print, it uses the on-screen formatting, rather than
printing out at the printer's default text line size.
5. In HTConfig, you can't save to s: and to the local directory, because
the configuration program exits once you save the configuration to either.
It would be nice to select both as a toggle, or for it not to exit without
the user hitting the exit configuration gadget.
6. If you resize the window, the text is not re-arranged for the new
window configuration.
7. Emacs compatible movement keys (up-line/down-line) are available, but
bizarrely changed. (p, n rather than ^p,^n). No vi keys. (Whine, whine)
BIG GOOD THING: PgUp/PgDn support on keypad.
8. The color-coded link option doesn't seem to work. (i.e., the links are
the same color as the rest of the document.)
_RELATIVELY EASY TO ADD FEATURES THAT I'D REALLY LIKE TO SEE 8-)_
1. A full-screen, honest, simple 80 column display. No window borders, no
proportional gadget. Text the way God intended it. Put a row of icons
at the top or bottom for page up/down, text search, screen front/back.
It could even have a shaded color scheme, perhaps with a 8 or 16 color 640
by 200 mode. Interlace custom screen option.
Second best option: horizontal scroll bar.
2. An iconify button. HT is something I'd like to be able to leave running
at all times, but it currently requires you to have a window open, except
when it is RESIDENT as an AREXX client.
3. Some way of specifiying that a text link will leave you in the same window,
rather than each text link always opening a new window. This would be
a nice user menu option, particularly if coupled with a way of going
back to the file you linked from.
4. HT has a menu item that allows you to edit the plain text of the document,
but if you want to edit the hypertext codes you have to go out for another
editor. A menu with edit hypertext / save hypertext would be nice.
5. Being able to specify color changes in the text.
6. An option to place text flush with the right side of the window.
7. The correction of the aforementioned bugs and misfeatures.
_HARD THINGS TO IMPLEMENT THAT WOULD MAKE THIS PROGRAM WORTH PAYING FOR_
"Julia, this category is for those things that this program really should
have, but which the judges felt would be too difficult to implement without
seriously changing the program's basics."
"Right, Richard. These are the things that could make this program a
truly wonderful, useful tool in our judges lustful, biased view. However,
they do realize that these are not trivial things."
"In fact, Julia, the judges have mentioned that these mods would make the
program well worth a $15-$20 shareware donation, if the author should provide
any means of getting in contact with him."
"And the winners are..."
1. It would be nice to have some sort of link map built up as you go. At
the least, a file stack to keep track of where you have linked from would
be very nice if link to same window is implemented.
2. Spawn a child process to handle the printing of a document.
3. The big one. Change the file format. Currently, it uses back-slash
keywords in text to mark links and style changes, as well as centering,
indentation and the like. While easy to use and aesthetically pleasing,
these keywords make it extremely difficult to get good control over the
placement of your text. Agreed that it is nice to be able to edit your
documents in any editor, but having the files in a straight text format
is not *that* big a win, as you can do little more than read it with those
'\' codes in the text. The ideal would be for the file format to be
a modified FORM FTXT, with a chunk to indicate links in the file. You
could bring old-style HT files into HT and write it out as FORM FTXT.
You could bring either FTXT or straight text into HT and add links to it.
If you like, the text or FTXT could contain the '\' codes for links, but
HT would remove them from the text, and place them in the (HYPT?) chunk.
This would give HT an easy path to clipboard capability (the notes feature
is nice, but not a substitute for clipboard support), the glamor of IFF
support, and the creation of a registered chunk that other
programs could use. Import WordPerfect, ProWrite files.
This above all else (except 80 col. support) would make this worth using.
4. Implicit in 3, I guess -- full text editing within HT, including link
editing (when in edit mode, double click on link.. up pops a requestor,
asking you what type of link it is. Click on text. Up pops a list of
known link destinations, along with a file requester button).
(Ok, THIS above all else, (except 80 col. support, and including 3.))
5. Integration of the HTconfig program with HT.
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Again, if you know the author, please relay this to him. I am willing to
put in some programming time to help him with this if he should be so inclined.
I am definitely willing to send him money for something that has some of
these things fixed/added (not even including the really hard stuff.)
Anyone interested in discussing FORM HTXT? 8-)
--
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Jonathan David Abbey \"Fortune presents gifts not according to the
the university of texas at austin \ book" - Dead Can Dance "I've got to
computer science/math?/psychology? \ jonabbey@cs.utexas.edu stay Awake..."