User Manual: PommelScan
Note: This help file was created for advanced users of Pinnacle Software products who need to create their own help files.
The PommelScan program searches one or more directories for files with a particular wildcard pattern. It displays a menu of the files it found, which can then be viewed.
Normally, the files will use Pinnacle Software's Pommel markup language, but an ordinary text file also works — provided you leave a blank space between paragraphs.
Command-line Parameters
PommelScan recognizes the following command-line parameters.
—————— —————————————— ——————————————————————— ——————————————————————
Switch Example Explanation Default
—————— —————————————— ——————————————————————— ——————————————————————
/D /D"C:\MyFiles" Directories to search PommelScan's directory
/W /W"ABC-*.txt" Wildcard mask Help-*.txt
/P /P- Pommel mode off On
/? /? Displays this help file None
—————— —————————————— ——————————————————————— ——————————————————————
Directories listed in the /D parameter must be separated by semicolons. For example:
/D"c:\My Files;c:Inventory;d:Test"
As shown above, if the parameter following a switch contains spaces, it must be enclosed in quotes.
If you turn Pommel mode off (/P-), PommelScan can be used as an ordinary text-file browser. Normally, though, Pommel mode is on, which means that PommelScan will display files with word-wrap enabled, and will process Pommel markup tags.
The Pommel™ Markup Language
"Pommel" stands for "Parse-O-Matic Markup-Enhanced Language". It is primarily designed to be used in-house by Pinnacle Software for the rapid creation of help files for custom applications.
You may wish to use some features of Pommel in Help files you create for Pinnacle Software products (such as Advanced Scripting in TextHarvest).
The most basic form of Pommel is a simple text file with blank lines between paragraphs. If you do not wish to learn about markup tags, this is really all you need to know about Pommel.
Pommel Tags
Pommel is similar to HTML. It recognizes many of the same symbols. However, if you have coded in HTML before, there are a few differences to bear in mind:
— Blank lines are treated as such; they are not ignored
— Markup tags cannot be used across line-breaks
— Heading tags (e.g. H1) must be closed (e.g. /H1)
— There is a maximum of one anchor tag per displayed line
— Tag attributes must be in "quotes"
— Files will be displayed in a fixed-pitch font
Here are the tags that Pommel recognizes:
——— ————————————————————————————————————————-
Tag Description
——— ————————————————————————————————————————-
A Anchor (explained below)
B Bold
I Italic
FS Font scale (explained below)
H Heading (H1 to H4)
HL Highlight (different text color)
U Underline
——— ————————————————————————————————————————-
Tags must be explicitly closed (example: /H1), with the exception of the anchor tag with the name attribute.
Pommel recognizes several standard HTML symbols, such as ampersand-copy-semicolon. Here are the symbols Pommel knows:
—————— —————————————— —————— —————————————— —————— ——————————————
Symbol Description Symbol Description Symbol Description
—————— —————————————— —————— —————————————— —————— ——————————————
#153 Trademark gt Greater-than nbsp No-break space
amp Ampersand lt Less-than
copy Copyright mdash M-dash
—————— —————————————— —————— —————————————— —————— ——————————————
To see a plain-text version of the file you are reading now, click here.
The Anchor Tag
Pommel's anchor (A) tag recognizes the following HRefs:
————————— ———————————————————————————————————————————
HRef Type Explanation
————————— ———————————————————————————————————————————
http:// Same as in HTML
https:// Same as in HTML
mailto: Same as in HTML
pommel:// Browse a file in Pommel mode
file:// Browse a file in plain-text mode
exec: Windows shell to the file name that follows
————————— ———————————————————————————————————————————
The pommel:// and file:// features have a maximum nesting level of one. That is to say, a Pommel file can open up another Pommel file in a new window, but if that window attempts to open another file, it will replace itself.
Both the pommel:// and file:// attributes look for the vertical bar (a.k.a. pipe) character after the file name. If it is found, the text following it is used as the title of the new window, in lieu of the file name. Click here to see this in action.
The Font Scale Tag
This tag accepts an X attribute to indicate the size of the following text relative to the standard size. For example, X="0.5" indicates half-sized text.
This text is 90% normal size (X="0.9")
This text is 120% normal size (X="1.2")
To return to normal text, use the /FS tag.
Miscellaneous Tips
While viewing a Pommel file via PommelScan's file viewer, you can press F5 to refresh the display. After refresh, the file viewer attempts to reposition itself at the spot where your cursor was last located. This feature lets you develop a Pommel file in a text editor and view the results immediately after saving.
When PommelScan is searching for files, it examines the first 100 lines of each one to see if it can find an H1 tag. If it finds one, it uses the heading as the title in the list of topics.
Legal Notices
PommelScan™ and Pommel™ are trademarks of Pinnacle Software.
PommelScan is Copyright © 2004 by Pinnacle Software. You may not distribute copies of PommelScan without explicit permission from Pinnacle Software. Please write to us if you would like to adapt PommelScan to your own distributed application.
The entire product (comprising software, documentation and supporting provisions) is presented as-is; we make no claim about (and disavow liability for) its suitability, accuracy, reliability, performance etc. If you should encounter a problem with the product, please write to us to find out if a solution is available.