July 06, 1998

Technical documentation on the structure of the TreePad file format.

This document describes the treePad file format 0.9 for TreePad versions 2.6 and earlier. Future file formats might be incompatible, but ther will always be an option to import older file formats.

The basic file format is text/ascii.
Inside the ascii file, the start of a TreePad file should be the line:
<hj-Treepad version 0.9>

every node looks like:

  <node>
  the first line is the node title
  the second line is a level indicator, 0 meaning at tree level 0, 1 
  meaning one level up, etc.
  the following lines are the article text, until you encounter:
  <end node> 5P9i0s8y19Z

example for one node:

  <node>
  mail from the President
  4
  Dear sir,

  I would like to invite you into the Oval Office
  to help me run the country.
  Sincerely,

  B. Clinton,
  the White House
  Washington
  <end node> 5P9i0s8y19Z
  

The indicator 5P9i0s8y19Z is simply to make sure that when someone types
<end node> in the article, the program will not get confused into thinking
the node has ended there (in the middle of the article). 
The chance that someone types <end node> 5P9i0s8y19Z into the article area
is very much smaller. Not a very beautiful implementation, but it's effective.

The order in which the nodes are listed in the TreePad file is determined
by the order in which they would appear in a fully expanded tree,
beginning at the top, and ending at the bottom.

E.g. a sequence of levels
(the numbers are indicating the node levels):

1 - 2 - 3 - 3 - 3 - 2

will be corresponding to the tree structure
(the numbers are indicating the node levels):

1 ___2
|    |___3
|    |___3
|    |___3
|
|____2


Warning: if you store this text in TreePad, do not include any 
"<end node> 5P9i0s8y19Z" as appearing in this text !!!!!


Future TreePad file formats

Since the current 0.9 file format does not support node marking, 
node timestamps, encryption, etc., a different file format will 
become necessary. This file format will also be fully public.
TreePad will always support importing of older TreePad file
formats.


Henk Hagedoorn
Freebyte Software Engineering
Amsterdam,
the Netherlands
http://www.freebyte.com
software@freebyte.com
hjh@usa.net