Welcome to the

word processor!

Quick course: getting used to TextShield 
•	To start using TextShield, choose “File | Open...” to open a file, or “File | New...” to create a new file. 
•	If you want help at any time, just press [F1] within a dialog to bring up TextShield Help. Also notice the hint on the left side of the status bar while moving over a certain item. You can bring up the entire help file by clicking “Help | Help contents” inside the menu. Finally, if you’re having troubles you can’t figure out, feel free to send an e-mail via “Help | Feedback” from the menu or to post a message on the TextShield Forum at http://www.textshield.com.
•	You can always open this file by clicking “Help | Welcome message” inside the menu.
•	As you can see, TextShield doesn’t have much buttons on the toolbars. Still, most operations are quickly accessible using hotkeys. See the “Hot Key” topic inside the help file for more details.
•	TextShield features two very special ways to make your text look more attractive: the Rainbow Colors feature (“Font/Paragraph | Rainbow colors...”) and the  feature (“Font/Paragraph |Insert 3D Text...”).
•	If you frequently edit and create web pages, the “Insert common HTML-tags bar” will come in handy. Choose “View | Insert common HTML-tags bar” to bring it up. You can also export any RTF-file to the HTML format using the build-in exporter, which you can bring up by clicking “File | Export | As HTML...” from the menu. (This exporter will not only put the text inside a HTML file, but will also preserve paragraph and character formatting.)
•	TextShield is MSWord compatible. Just try opening a .doc file and you’ll get asked to open the file using a converter from Microsoft. TextShield automatically saves changes made to this file in the MSWord format.
•	You can alter any settings by choosing “View | Options...” from the menu.
•	You can record commonly repeated tasks using the ’Record-bar’. You can bring this bar up by clicking “View | Special bars | Record-bar” from the menu. (See the help file for more information.)
•	The final major feature described in this file is “AutoPaste”. Just click “Tools | AutoPaste” from the menu, start your browser and copy some images of any website to the clipboard. These images will automatically be inserted inside the current file in TextShield.
 
New in build 644: New Task-Record feature; new font-coloring buttons; some file-index improvements; media player fixed; new Apply-AutoLineBreak-to-selection feature; curly quotes refinement.
 
Short description of TextShield: TextShield is a free, compact word processor with a wealth of features. Besides those features available with most ordinary word processors, TextShield has many advanced (but easy-to-use) features. TextShield can compress files automatically using the popular ZIP compression, making them as much AS 95% smaller. TextShield saves files in the universal RTF format, or in plain text. TextShield is both a word processor and a plain text editor. For maximum interchangeability, TextShield has a build-in HTML converter and can save files as Microsoft Word, and other formats, using Microsoft converters. TextShield supports advanced formatting features, like hyperlinks, underlining styles, Rainbow Colors and even 3D Text. TextShield is compact and can easily fit a single 1.44Mb floppy disk (try installing Word on a floppy...). Finally all these features would be worthless without a good help system; So TextShield has a 6000 word help file explaining everything that could be difficult for the beginning user.

Short history of TextShield: The first edition of TextShield was created in the spring of 1999, when I was thirteen years old. At first, it was not meant to ever be released. But while my knowledge of programming increased, TextShield became better and better. When the program was first released in September 2000, TextShield had three times been rewritten in three programming languages. TextShield Fusion is the most recent version, released three years after the first version which has never been released. Fusions main differences with the previous TextShield 2000 are its stability, redesign of the interface, the ability to use Microsoft converters, support of tab stops, true 3D Text, its compactness and the advanced help files. 
TextShield makes usage of Microsoft’s RichEdit to open and edit files. Because of that, internal text engine improvements can’t be made. That’s why I’m now working on my own, independent text engine. When finished, you will also be able to use columns, headers/footers, footnotes, tables and multiple views within TextShield.
 
Special thanks to Robert Dunn for creating the RichEdit wrapper component, Frank Shediac (http://www.ShediacAsia.com) for beta testing and Addictive Software for providing there spell checker free of charge.
 
TextShield is completely free. You won’t have to pay for this version in any form. However, developing and maintaining the TextShield program is quite expensive. If you like using TextShield and want to support future releases, you could visit the TextShield homepage in the future at http://www.textshield.com to make a donation. You can also help by translating TextShield to your own language. Mail me (Help | Feedback) for more details. Your help will be very much appreciated. 

Thanks for choosing TextShield!