Monster Media 1994 #1/monster.zip/monster/UTILS1/HT02.ZIP/HT.DOC

Text File | 1994-02-07 | 6KB | 127 lines

\\HT___A_Hypertext_Viewer

This is a documentation file for HT.EXE, a hypertext viewer. If you would
like to see this documentation as hypertext, type

    ht ht.doc

and press Enter. To get help while in HT, use the F1 key. You can see an
index of all the topics by pressing F2.

Most of the text on the screen appears in gray. You can move up and down
thru the text with the up and down arrows, the Page Up and Page Down keys,
and the Home and End keys. Keywords appear in green. The selected keyword
appears in bright green. You can use the left and right arrow keys can be
used to select different keywords. When you press the Enter key, you'll go
to the topic with that keyword as a title.

This documentation includes information on \hypertext_files, \keywords, the
\help_screen, and \memory_limitations. HT is \shareware. Possible
\applications are also discussed.

\\Hypertext_Files

Hypertext files can be prepared with any standard text editor. Titles of
topics should appear alone on a line, immediately preceded by two
backslashes. The backslashes should be the first two characters on the line,
and there should be no spaces, tabs, or other characters separating the
backslashes from the title. Titles must be valid \keywords.

References to other topics are keywords immediately preceded by single
backslashes. These may appear anywhere in the text.

If you don't specify a filename on the command line, HT will prompt you for
one. If you don't supply a filename extension, HT will assume the extension
is HT (e.g. foobar.ht).

Any text preceding the first title in the file will be treated as a comment
and will not be visible from the viewer.

This file is an example of how a hypertext file should be set up.

\\Keywords

Keywords appear at the top of the page in gray, as the title of the
currently displayed topic. Keywords referring to other topics are shown in
green. Keywords can be up to 78 characters long. The following characters
cannot appear in keywords: spaces, tabs, carriage returns, linefeeds,
periods, commas, exclamation points, question marks, colons, semicolons,
single quotes ('), or backslashes.

Keywords are case-insensitive. References like \memory_limitations,
\HELP_SCREEN, and \HyPeRtExT_FiLeS are all equally valid.

\\Memory_Limitations

I have used HT with files larger than 360K. That's a lot of hypertext.
Mileage may vary, depending on the available memory in your computer and
what TSRs you're running.

If your file contains N characters, HT will attempt to allocate 1.1 * N +
5000 bytes of memory. The extra is to make room for the \help_screen and
index. The help screen is around 600 bytes. The memory used by the index
depends on the lengths of the titles.

In almost all cases, if HT can't allocate enough memory for your file, it
will tell you what's happening, and gracefully exit. HT will crash
ungraciously if the index overruns the allocated memory. This can happen if
your file is really huge (about 400K, I think) and more than ten percent of
your file is titles. You could do this by making a file with a huge number
of single-line topics. So don't do that.

As far as I'm aware, that's the only condition that will cause HT to crash.
When that happens, the computer announces that it has a "Memory Allocation
Error" and you need to reboot.

\\Help_Screen

The help screen looks like this:

Navigating in text - Up arrow, Down arrow, Page up,
         Page down, Home, End

Selecting Topics - Left arrow, Right arrow, Enter key
            Previous Topic - Backspace key

Text Search - F3 to begin a search, F4 for next occurence

Search across Topics - F5 to begin a search, F6 for next occurence
         Searches for occurences in other topics also

Index of all topics (not alphabetized) - F2

This help screen - F1

To quit hypertext and return to DOS - 'Q' or Escape key

Now press Backspace to return to the previous topic, F2 for
            the index, or 'Q' or Escape to quit

\\Applications

What is hypertext good for? It accomodates people's needs and interests.
Hypertext repair manuals can offer varying levels of detail, depending on
how curious the reader is, or how much repair help he or she needs.
Likewise, technical books in hypertext can offer levels of detail to suit
the reader's needs and curiosity. Topics that the user finds uninteresting
can be skipped without losing the overall consistency of the document,
because the document's consistency is established by a dense network of
ideas, instead of a linear flow of ideas. (Obviously this largely depends on
the hypertext-writing skills of the author.)

Hypertext fiction offers some interesting possibilities. Some hypertext
fictional works simply offer alternative endings, as you might imagine for a
murder mystery. A more interesting literary use would be to view the same
story from the points of view of different characters, or with different
kinds of background knowledge (like Joyce's "Ulysses"). A hypertext science
fiction story might offer the hard science version for some readers, and the
more character-development-oriented emotive version for others.

\\Shareware

HT is shareware. If you enjoy it and find it useful, you are encouraged to
register your copy by sending a check for fifteen dollars to Will Ware, 26
Beacon St. #34B, Burlington MA 01803. People who register will receive
copies of any upgrades, and will sleep a little better at night.