Running LinksWare

The easiest way to introduce you to the features of LinksWare is to describe them as they appear in the menu bar. There are powerful features available in LinksWare and the brief time it takes to read through this short manual will make them clear and easy to remember. In keeping with that, here are the Command key shortcuts for the menu items:

Cmd O (oh, not zero) = Open

Cmd Q = Quit the program

Cmd A = Add a link

Cmd L = show the Links

Cmd E = toggle between  Expanded / context modes

Cmd R = Remove a link

the File menu

Open

LinksWare comes up with the standard desktop interface, enhanced by Claris’ XTND file translators. Simply choose “Open” from the file menu and open a document . With LinksWare, there is no “first” document you’re required to open: you may begin anywhere. 

If you are unsure of what a file contains, use this Open command to view the file before establishing a link to it. Otherwise, you’ll have to redo the link if it is incorrect. With the wide range of translators available, you may find LinksWare ideal for viewing various types of files.

Close 

This command simply closes the current document window, just as if you had clicked in the “go-away” box in the upper left corner of the window. 

Save As...

(NOTE: You may wish to read this after you are more familiar with the rest of the program’s features.)

You will have noticed there is no “Save” item under the file menu. That is because we specifically designed LinksWare NOT to alter your existing documents: it makes absolutely no changes to them.  We had several heated discussions about the “Save As...” feature, and chose to leave it in, assuming that Mac owners are of higher than average intelligence. Here’s what it does.

Briefly, “Save As...” will save the current text document in a format proprietary to LinksWare. This in turn will load considerably faster than is possible otherwise, particularly if a complex and long document requires XTND translation. The danger of course, is accidentally saving it over your original document- precisely what we hoped to avoid. To help prevent this, we append “.LW” to the end of the file name in the “Save As...” dialog box.

The intended use for this is with the “Show Links” command (under the Links menu) particularly in showing every occurrence of a linked word in the full body of the text. By performing time-consuming operations such as this only once, and then doing a “Save As...”, a read-only document can be created that a)loads very rapidly, and b) has the “hot” words pre-stylized for rapid identification. Note that this document is read-only, and only by LinksWare. This feature is used when putting together a final set for use by others, such as an instruction manual, a book, or an educational sequence.

Version 1.3.6 now has a Save As...feature which yeilds files considerably smaller than previous versions. Previous files were three times the size of the original: the new version is the size of the original + 3200 characters. 

Page Setup and Print

The Page Setup and Print menu items perform as they do in virtually all Mac applications.  See the Macintosh owner’s guide for further information.

Quit

This item also performs as expected: it quits the program.

the Edit Menu

Under the Edit menu you’ll notice that only copy and show clipboard are enabled. That is because LinksWare is designed NOT to alter your original documents: obviously cut and paste would do so. You may copy a selection to the clipboard and view the clipboard. Due to the nature of adding and replacing links, the undo command is not implemented. Use Cmd R for removing a link (instead of undo) and Cmd A to add a link. (If you want to replace a link with another, simply choose Cmd A, and LinksWare will ask you if you really want to replace the existing link.) There is no real need for an Undo command. It remains in the menu for the convenience of desk accessories that may need it.