═══ 1. Introduction ═══ Welcome to NewView! NewView is a replacement for the original OS/2 Help Viewer, View.exe. It improves upon many aspects of View, with a modern, easy to use interface, more options, and new features that View simply didn't have. For more advertising, see the readme.txt that comes with NewView. This helpfile is here to explain the tedious details of using the program. So lets go! ------- NewView is Copyright 2001 Aaron Lawrence. It is also licensed under the GNU Public License, which means you have the right to obtain the source code. If you have comments, compliments, suggestions or ... OK... bugs, you can talk to me: aaronl@consultant.com. Please be specific: you need to include: o NewView version number (Help - About) o What you were doing at the time o Status bar text, if any o What help file was being loaded, and where I can find/download it if posssible o What variety of OS/2 you're running. Also make sure you've read readme.txt for features that aren't supported - I obviously already know about those problems! However, votes in favour of implementing particular features are welcome, as they help to prioritise development. If you want to help with NewView development, you should be able to download the latest source code from http://hobbes.nmsu.edu or else, you can contact me. NewView is written with Speedsoft Sibyl (http://www.speedsoft-online.de), a Delphi clone for OS/2. ═══ 2. Installation ═══ Installing NewView NewView does not currently have an install program (this is just laziness on my behalf :). However the procedure is very simple. Simply put NewView.exe in a directory, preferably one that is in the path. It doesn't use any DLLs or OS/2 INI settings or Workplace Shell features. It creates a text INI file in it's own directory to save settings; it also creates text .NTE and .BMK files for Notes and Bookmarks, in the same directory as your help files (but only if you actually create any Notes or Bookmarks). Making NewView your default Help reader The easiest way to do this is: 1. Go to C:\os2 2. Copy View.exe to OldView.exe This makes a backup. Do NOT rename View.exe or OS/2 will detect the change and make help files use OldView.exe! 3. Copy NewView.exe to View.exe. The reason for doing this, rather than changing OS/2 File Associations (apart from the fact that it is quite difficult to change associations) is that many help file icons are installed as program objects, pointing to View.exe explicitly, with parameters for the file to load. What about online (application) help? Right now, NewView simply does not do this. I have had no particular insight into how I would do this either, since it is basically part of Presentation Manager (the OS/2 windowing system). ═══ 3. Using NewVIew ═══ Using NewView Broadly speaking, NewView does the same things as View does. To find topics, you can search, read the table of contents or use the alphabetical index. To simply read the help file like a paper book, use the "Previous" and "Next" buttons to work your way through all the topics. You can also use the help file like web pages, using "Back" and "Forward" buttons to go back to wherever you were before, or to retread you steps. Colours and some of the behaviour of NewView can be adjusted from the "Options" dialog (Tools - Options menu). You can also annotate or bookmark topics. Why doesn't my help file work properly? NewView is a work in progress. Some of the less used features of View are not yet implemented. This is either because I have not got around to it, or because they are simply not worth the time. Examples include image maps (hyperlinked graphics)*, metafiles, index synonyms, the entire application control API, and so on. Unfortunately, it seems that at least one developer has used every one of these features, so you may find an occasional file that doesn't load or doesn't work properly. Over time, more features may be added when they seem worthwhile, but there is no guarantee. Your votes count! Send them to aaronl@consultant.com. ------ * Hyperlinked graphics with a single link for the whole picture, will now work in NewView. ═══ 3.1. Loading files ═══ Loading Helpfiles To open a help file, you can: - Double-click a help icon that is already set up, or - Type "NewView filename" from the command line, or - Click the Open button from within NewView, or - Reload a recently viewed file from the "File" menu of NewView. Once the file is loaded, you should see the table of contents and the first topic. Like View, NewView can load multiple files at once, presenting them as if they were one book, and read environment variables for filenames. This makes it compatible with such things as the OS/2 Developers Toolkit documentation. For example NewView cpref loads the "Control Program Guide and Reference". CPREF is an environment variable set in config.sys, consisting of "CP1+CP2+CP3" which tells NewView (or View) to load the help files CP1, CP2 and CP3. Because there is no path supplied, the files are searched for in path specified by the BOOKSHELF variable.* The files are all loaded and effectively appended to each other, in the order specified on the command line. The reason for splitting help files like this escapes me, but the IPF help suggests that it was so you could fit each part on a single floppy. Being able to load multiple files like this can occasionally be helpful for other reasons. For example, 4OS/2 (a CMD.EXE replacement) uses it to add it's own help on top of the original CMD help. You can do it yourself with any files you like, perhaps because you use both together. You can also load multiple files with the GUI - use ctrl or shift to select multiple files. ═══ 3.2. Contents view ═══ Table of Contents Most help files have a table of contents that shows you the topics in the file, in a hierarchy or "tree". This is usually the first view you see when you open a file. You can expand or collapse branches on the tree by clicking the + or - buttons, or using the space bar. To view a topic from the contents, just click on it. You can also move through the contents by using the arrow keys. To move through *all* topics in the contents tree, in order, you can use Ctrl + Up and Ctrl + Down, or the "Previous" and "Next" buttons. This is one way to treat the file as a normal book, reading through each page. You can also review the whole table of contents by using "Expand All" in the "View" menu. This expands all the branches of the contents table so you can quickly look through it. However, it's usually easier to use Search or Index for this purpose. ═══ 3.3. Search ═══ About Search Searching is a quick way to find information, when you don't know where to start. Simply go to the Search tab, type some related words and click the Search button. You'll see a listing of all topics containing that word, or words like it, with the best matches at the top. You can also search "all" help files on your system using "Tools" - "Search all Help Files". This search works similarly to searching within a file, but it presents results categorised by what help file they were found in. Note: This search may not include all help files on your system. Only the paths defined by BOOKSHELF and HELP environment variables are searched. Of course, NewView could potentially search your whole hard drive, but that could be very slow and is usually not necessary. Your thoughts on this topic are welcome. Notes NewView offers generous matching capabilities, including partial word matches (starting, or containing). Technically, View can do similar things using wildcards (*) but most people don't know this, or if they do they don't remember it when doing a search ;-) There is one significant problem with the current search features: "words" that include numbers or symbols - such as "es4004" will not be found. This is because View breaks those up into pieces (numbers, alphabetic, symbols). I have a method to solve this, but haven't implemented it. It's also possible that occasionally words will be missed from searches. This is because I don't have full documentation on the search table in INF files, and there may be a few cases that I haven't worked out. I don't have any way to improve in this area. ═══ 3.4. Index ═══ About the Index The Index tab contains an alphabetical listing of topics or keywords in the help file. You can quickly search through it just by typing the first few characters of the word you want to look up. NewView jumps to the first match in the index automatically. Notes Help files may or may not include an "official" index. The index is manually created by the author, so (for original View) it's usefulness is strictly dependent on how much work the author put into it. There may not even be one. However, a useful index can be provided simply by listing the titles of each topic alphabetically, and this is what NewView does. It then merges the original index (if any) with the list of topic titles. If for some reason you don't like this, you can turn it off in "File" - "Options" - General tab. ═══ 3.5. Notes ═══ Adding and Using Notes NewView allows you to add notes (annotations) to your help files. To add a note, simply click where you want to make a note and click the "Note" button , then type your text and press enter. The text will be inserted in red into the help topic. To edit or delete a note, click on the red note text; you can then edit the note text, or click on delete to get rid of it. You can also review all the notes that you've made in the current help file(s) by going to the Notes tab; this allows you to add, edit and delete, and also jump to the topics containing your notes. Notes are saved in a file with the extension .nte, in the same directory as the help file they are for. Note - if a help file is changed (for example a program is upgraded) then notes will no longer appear in the correct place; however, you can still read them from the Notes tab. ═══ 3.6. Bookmarks ═══ Bookmarks NewView allows you to bookmark particular topics within the current help file. Simply click the bookmark button to add the current topic as a bookmark. To jump to a bookmark, go to the "Bookmarks" menu, and click on the bookmark you want to open. You can view or delete all your bookmarks by clicking on "Edit.." in the "Bookmarks" menu. This window can remain open while you read, so that you can quickly look through your bookmarks. Notes NewView will remember all the windows that are open, if there is more than one (most help files don't do this, but some do). Bookmarks are saved in a file with the extension .bmk, in the same directory as the help file they are for. ═══ 3.7. Environment Variables ═══ Environment Variables The official View behaviour uses the BOOKSHELF environment variable for finding "online books" (.INF files), and the HELP environment variable for "online help" (.HLP files). For those of us who, unlike IBM, don't see much distinction between the two and get annoyed at the seperation, NewView uses both paths in all cases, and (like later versions of View) loads either type of file. So, if you have some help files you want to be able to search (with NewView) then add the directory they are in to both the SET BOOKSHELF= and SET HELP= statements in CONFIG.SYS. (You don't need both for NewView, but this will make sure that original View can find the files).