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- Help on StrongHelp
- StrongHelp v 1.20
-
- This program is part of the
- !StrongED2 package, and is not
- to be distributed separately.
-
- * <How to Use =>Use> *
- * <How to Edit=>Edit> *
- * <Tech. Info =>tech> *
- * <RiscOS 3 =>RO3> *
- * <Credits > *
-
- Guttorm 'ArmStrong' Vik.Main Menu :
- You can get help on :
-
- #Indent 6
- <Assembly=>Assembly.$>
- <Basic =>Basic.$>
- <Filetypes=>Filetypes.$>
- <Machine =>Machine.$>
- <SWI =>SWI.$>
- <StrongHelp=>StrongHelp.$>
- <VDU =>VDU.$>
- #indent 5
- _
- (-)rmStrongHow to use StrongHelp
- * Click on the iconbar icon to open the main
- help-page.
-
- * Click on red words to go to new pages. If
- you use adjust, the old page will disappear.
-
- * Close page with adjust to open parent page.
- If you press shift, then old page will stay.
-
- * Press F1 in StrongED2 to search for a page
- for the word the caret is in.
-
- * You can copy from a page by pressing
- Shift-Menu, and dragging to your own text.
-
- * If you drop a file on StrongHelp's iconbar
- icon, it will try to find a description of
- this filetype. Note that very few filetypes
- are currently described.How to Edit
- New help-system:
- * Create empty directory in HelpData$Dir
- * Run StrongHelp
-
- Open Index:
- * Select help from menu, with Shift down.
-
- New help-page:
- * Drag textfile to index
-
- Change page:
- * Save to editor from index, or from page itself (shift-menu)
- * Drag back to page (shift down), or delete from index & drag there.
-
- * You can also select "Edit" from the index menu, or the savebox.
- This will send the text directly to any avalable text editor which
- supports the "External Edit" protocol. To send text back to
- StrongHelp, just do F3 + Return (or something..) in the editor..
-
- Note : If you alter any of the supplied help-systems, you'll have to
- do it all again when the next version comes along.
-
- If you want to create some help, then please *DON'T* just copy the
- text from Acorn's manuals. It's not legal..Page syntax
- First line is title. If this is empty, the page won't
- have a title-bar, and thus: no close-icon..
-
- Then comes the page text.
- Everything appears as written, except :
-
- \< x > x is displayed in red. When you click on it,
- StrongHelp tries to open a help page called x.
-
- \<x=>y> x is displayed in red. When you click on it,
- StrongHelp tries to open a help page called y.
-
- \<x=>y.z> x is displayed in red. When you click on it,
- StrongHelp tries to open a help page called z,
- from the helpsystem y.
-
- \<x=>*y> x is displayed in blue. When you click on it,
- StrongHelp tries to execute the command y.
-
- \\c '\\c' is replaced with 'c'. This is so that
- you can use '\<' in normal text,
- and '=' and '>' inside \<>
-
- #Table x y
- Lines between here, will be arranged into x lines and
- as many columns as necessary. Y is width of columns.
- #EndTable
-
- #Prefix str
- When a prefix string is set, \< x > is displayed as
- before, but when you click on it StrongHelp tries
- to open a helppage called str + x.
-
- #Indent x
- The following lines will be indented with x spaces.
-
- #Sprite x,y sprite1[,sprite2] [=>link]
- ( For the time beeing, this can only use the
- wimp sprites. )
-
- Take a look at some of the help-entries already present.File Formats
- There are two files:
-
- Index
- First word is number of entries (N)
- Then comes N 4-word entries, containing
- offset to name
- offset to help-page (in other file)
- lenght of help-page
- flags :
- bit 0 set if searchable
- bit 1 set if postfix *
- Finally comes N \\0-terminated names
-
- HelpData:
- Contains N help-pagesRiscOS 3
- When I first made this program, I redefined some
- characters to do simple graphics. These characters
- (‘’‹›“”„–—−Œœ†) that were unused under RO2, are now
- used by RO3.
- Because of this, there is an option to turn the
- redefine on/off. With redefine off, some of the
- help-entries look rather strange ( such as <this=>machine.$>.. )Technicals
- * <Page Syntax=>syntax> *
- * <File format=>format> *
- * <Commands =>comm> *Commands
- Commands are sent to StrongHelp using
- my own "<Dialogue>" protocol. This will
- be replaced with CC's "Intuition" at a
- later stage.
-
- Commands recognized:
-
- Help_Install pathname [-DieWithTask]
- If -DieWithTask switch is on,
- StrongHelp will delete the
- help-system when sender dies.
-
- Help_Word [helpsystem.]word
- If helpsystem is specified, any
- word from that will be checked.
- If not, all searchable words in
- all helpsystems will be checked.Dialogue
- Broadcast string with usermessage &43B00, or
- the *Message command. The latter requires the
- Dialogue module to be present.
-
- Note: The *Message command installs itself as
- a wimp-task to send the message, and then
- quits, so you can't use the -DieWithTask switchCredits
- Most of the help-data is written by
- me, but all the Sound swis, and a few
- others, are written by Eduard Pfarr.