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:userdoc.
.*--------------------------------------------------
.*
.* This IPF file was created with Rtf2Ipf v1.0b
.*
.*--------------------------------------------------
:title.RTF2IPF Reference
:h1.RTF2IPF Overview
:p.
:font facename=default.This section describes some background information
that may be useful when determining if RTF2IPF is the right utility for
you&per.
:p.
:h2.Purpose of RTF2IPF
:p.
:font facename=default.This utility has been created as the result of my
desire to maintain both printed and on-line documentation for an internally
developed utility at work from a single document&per. The general goal
of the RTF2IPF&per.EXE program is to take a word processing document saved
as Rich Text Format and re-tag the file with the IPFC compiler tags to
allow the creation of an OS&slash.2 &per.INF file&per. RTF2IPF is currently
a command line DOS program &lpar.sorry but I run DOS&slash.Windows at home
where this was developed&rpar. that should be able to integrate well to
a development make file&per.
:p.
:font facename=default.Although this utility is being distributed as &apos.Freeware&apos.
I would like to know what you think of it&per. After trying it please
send me a note to my CIS ID &lpar.74101,413&rpar. and let me know what
you think&per. I hope my efforts will be useful for you too&per.
:p.
:h2.What you need to use RTF2IPF
:p.
:font facename=default.All you need to use RTF2IPF is a word processor
capable of saving its document &lpar.styles included&rpar. in Rich Text
Format &lpar.RTF&rpar.&per. All of my testing has been with Ami Pro v2&per.0
for Windows and Ami Pro v3&per.0 for OS&slash.2&per. The document you
are receiving was created using Ami Pro v2&per.0 for Windows&per. Any
word processor that can save it&apos.s documents in RTF format should work&per.
If you use a different word processor and develop a style sheet that you
find useful please send it to me &lpar.see the section Obtaining support
for how to reach me&rpar. and I will include it in the next version to
be uploaded&per. To compile your on-line document you will need the OS&slash.2
IPFC help compiler&per.
:p.
:h2.Disclaimers
:p.
:font facename=default.RTF2IPF is really still a work in process&per.
As you read through here you will see several places where I mention that
a feature is planned or where I will even solicit your ideas about how
a feature should be implemented&per. As a result of this utility still
evolving, the current version uploaded here still has some debug code compiled
in&per. As such it is possible that you may run into an assertion or other
bugs&per. Although I believe everything to be correct I cannot guarantee
it&per. If you do have a problem or a suggestion, please contact me and
I will see what I can do to fix it&per.
:p.
:h1.Creating The Documentation in your Word Processor
:p.
:font facename=default.This section describes how to prepare you documentation
in your favorite word processor&per.
:p.
:h2.Styles
:p.
:font facename=default.RTF2IPF is dependent upon your word processor correctly
identifying style information in the RTF file when you save your document&per.
The styles are used to identify how the text in your document should be
tagged for the IPFC compiler&per. The most important use of styles is
to identify which &apos.paragraphs&apos. in your document are intended
to be used as headings in the &per.INF file&per. Since the IPFC compiler
requires that you make an orderly progression through the heading levels
it is imperative that you are very diligent in setting up a style sheet
that mimics the progression of styles that the IPFC compiler will accept&per.
You must always keep in mind how the styles will affect your on-line document&per.
:p.
:font facename=default.For example, this document was created using the
Ami Pro style sheet supplied with RTF2IPF&per. Some of the styles present
in the document and their uses are as follows&colon.
:p.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Heading 1
:p.
:ehp2.:font facename=default.The top level headings in the document&per.
The &apos.paragraph&apos. Creating The Documentation in your Word Processor
is a Heading 1 style&per. That style always gets tagged with the IPFC
tags &apos.&colon.h1&per.&apos.
:p.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Heading 2
:p.
:ehp2.:font facename=default.This is the second level heading in the document&per.
The &apos.paragraph&apos. Styles is marked as a Heading 2 style&per.
That style always gets tagged with the IPFC tags &apos.&colon.h2&per.&apos.
:p.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Subhead
:p.
:ehp2.:font facename=default.The Subhead style is used how a style is traditionally
used in a word processing document&per. It is simply used to re-use common
formatting attributes, in this case bold text and a larger point size&per.
The Subhead style was used for the Heading 1, Heading 2, and Subhead headings
within the Styles heading&per.
:p.
:h2.Text attributes
:p.
:font facename=default.Where possible, RTF2IPF tries to emulate common
text formatting characteristics within the constraints of IPFC&per. Currently,
the only attribute supported is :hp2.Bold:ehp2.&per. In the near future I hope
to have it supporting italics, underline, as well as all of the combinations
of these attributes&per. Please try not to use different colors for your
text as my current thoughts are to use the RTF color tags in defining hyper-links
to other topics &lpar.although this is still the subject of some debate&rpar.&per.
:p.
:h2.Paragraph formatting
:p.
:font facename=default.The current version of RTF2IPF does not provide
any paragraph formatting beyond the standard word wrap capabilities provided
by IPFC&per. Although IPFC does allow for some formatting it is beyond
the scope of the current version of RTF2IPF&per.
:p.
:h2.Tables
:p.
:font facename=default.Tables are currently unsupported by RTF2IPF but
are currently very high on the list for planned enhancements &lpar.I need
them too&xclm.&rpar.&per. The &apos.results are unpredictable&apos. for
what will happen if you give RTF2IPF a table to process&per.
:p.
:h1.RTF2IPF Project Files
:p.
:font facename=default.This section describes the RTF2IPF project files&per.
:p.
:h2.Overview
:p.
:font facename=default.The RTF2IPF project files contain information for
RTF2IPF to use when converting the RTF tagged file to an IPF tagged file&per.
The file is an ASCII text file that take the format of&colon.
:p.
:xmp.
Keyword&eq.Value
Keyword&eq.Value
:exmp.
:font facename=default.By convention the RTF2IPF project files have an
&per.IPJ extension&per.
:p.
:h2.Keywords
:p.
:font facename=default.Each of the valid keywords are described in their
own section below&per. Although the keywords are shown in mixed case they
are processed in a case insensitive manner&per.
:p.
:h3.ExampleStyle
:p.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Purpose
:p.
:ehp2.:font facename=default.The ExampleStyle keyword is used to define
the style to be interpreted as example tagged information&per. The ExampleStyle
keyword is required if you need the &apos.&colon.xmp&per.&apos. tag to
be created in the &per.IPF file&per.
:p.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Syntax
:p.
:ehp2.:xmp.
ExampleStyle&eq.<stylename>.
:exmp.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Parameters
:p.
:ehp2.:font facename=default.:hp2.stylename:ehp2. - The name of the style to
be tagged as &apos.&colon.xmp&per.&apos. in the IPF file&per.
:p.
:h3.HeadingNStyle
:p.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Purpose
:p.
:ehp2.:font facename=default.The HeadingNStyle keyword is used to define
the style to be interpreted as heading level N&per. Currently N can take
the value of 1 - 9&per. At least the Heading1Style keyword is required&per.
:p.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Syntax
:p.
:ehp2.:xmp.
HeadingNStyle&eq.<stylename>.
:exmp.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Parameters
:p.
:ehp2.:font facename=default.:hp2.stylename:ehp2. - The name of the style to
use for the heading level N in the &per.IPF file&per.
:p.
:h3.IpfFile
:p.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Purpose
:p.
:ehp2.:font facename=default.The IpfFile keyword is used to define the
IPF output file to be created&per. This keyword is required&per.
:p.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Syntax
:p.
:ehp2.:xmp.
IpfFile&eq.<filename>.
:exmp.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Parameters
:p.
:ehp2.:font facename=default.:hp2.filename:ehp2. - The name of the file to be
created containing the IPF tagged source for the help file&per. The file
name follows standard naming rules that allow the name to be a fully qualified
or relative path name&per.
:p.
:h3.IpfTitle
:p.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Purpose
:p.
:ehp2.:font facename=default.The IpfTitle keyword is used to define the
title for the &per.INF file to be created&per. This keyword is required&per.
:p.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Syntax
:p.
:ehp2.:xmp.
IpfTitle&eq.<title>.
:exmp.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Parameters
:p.
:ehp2.:font facename=default.:hp2.title:ehp2. - The title for the &per.INF file
to be created&per.
:p.
:h3.RtfFile
:p.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Purpose
:p.
:ehp2.:font facename=default.The RtfFile keyword is used to define the
RTF input file&per. This keyword is required&per.
:p.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Syntax
:p.
:ehp2.:xmp.
RtfFile&eq.<filename>.
:exmp.
:font facename=default.:hp2.Parameters
:p.
:ehp2.:font facename=default.:hp2.filename:ehp2. - The name of the file containing
the RTF source for the help file&per. The file name follows standard naming
rules that allow the name to be a fully qualified or relative path name&per.
:p.
:h2.Example &per.IPJ file
:p.
:font facename=default.The following is the &per.IPF file used to create
this document&per.
:p.
:xmp.
RtfFile&eq.rtf2ipf&per.rtf
IpfFile&eq.rtf2ipf&per.ipf
IpfTitle&eq.RTF2IPF Reference
Heading1Style&eq.Heading 1
Heading2Style&eq.Heading 2
Heading3Style&eq.Heading 3
ExampleStyle&eq.example
:exmp.
:font facename=default.
:p.
:h1.Running RTF2IPF
:p.
:font facename=default.Running RTF2IPF is very simple&per. The program
is invoked from the DOS &lpar.or OS&slash.2&rpar. command line as follows&colon.
:p.
:xmp.
RTF2IPF <project file>.
:exmp.
:font facename=default.There are no options just a project file on the
command line&per. RTF2IPF will print a banner line and print a progress
&apos.&per.&apos. at approximately every 500 characters added to the &per.IPF
file until complete&per.
:p.
:h1.Obtaining support
:p.
:font facename=default.If you have a suggestion or problem please send
a description along with the &per.IPJ and &per.RTF files and the date on
the RTF2IPF&per.EXE file to&colon.
:p.
:font facename=default.Mark Ault
:p.
:font facename=default.74101,413 &lpar.Comp-U-Serve&rpar.
:p.
:h1.Planned Enhancements
:p.
:font facename=default.This section contains a list of possible enhancement
I am currently considering for RTF2IPF&per. They are listed in no particular
order&per. If you have some favorites or additional ideas please let me
know and I will see what I can do&per. Currently they are being prioritized
base on how badly I need the feature and how long it would take to implement&per.
:p.
:h2.Character formatting
:p.
:font facename=default.As mentioned earlier, one of the first enhancements
on tap for this utility is the ability to use text properties other than
normal and bold&per. Italics and underline will be added along with the
various combinations&per.
:p.
:h2.Tables
:p.
:font facename=default.Currently this utility is un-tested with tables&per.
Table support is planned for the next version I will post&per.
:p.
:h2.Margins
:p.
:font facename=default.One of the things that can make a help files contents
more attractive is to control the margins&per. These will most likely
be controlled through style modifiers in the &per.IPJ files&per.
:p.
:h2.Lists
:p.
:font facename=default.The IPFC compilers supports several flavors of lists&per.
The intention is to support at least the basic list type such as ordered
lists, simple lists, and unordered lists&per. Once again, the various
list types will be indicated through the use of styles&per.
:p.
:h2.Hyper-links
:p.
:font facename=default.The ability to create hyper-links from one of the
&per.INF panels to another panel in the same document&per. Currently I
am planning on using a color or footnote tag to identify where the hyper-links
occur &lpar.although this is still the subject of some debate&rpar.&per.
If you have any suggestions of a different way to tag it in the word processor
please let me know&per.
:p.
:h2.Multiple RTF input files
:p.
:font facename=default.As some documents get larger it can be convenient
to break them into several smaller documents&per. When this is done it
requires you to combine the documents as one and save the one RTF file
for Rtf2Ipf to process&per. It would be more convenient to use several
RTF files for each of the pieces of the original document&per.
:p.
:h2.Re-work the &per.IPJ project files
:p.
:font facename=default.Possible enhancements include adding comments, an
include directive, getting file names from the command line instead, and
getting the title from the document information section of the RTF file&per.
:p.
:h2.Add a user interface shell
:p.
:font facename=default.At the very least the shell would be useful for
creating the &per.IPJ files&per. However, the ultimate goal of the shell
would be to act as an integrated &apos.workbench&apos. for all of the tools
you would use to create your on-line documentation&per. From the workbench
you would start you word processor to create the initial source for the
on-line book, run RTF2IPF and view the output, run the IPFC compiler to
create the &per.HLP or &per.INF file, and even start VIEW&per.EXE to view
the newly created &per.INF file&per. Obviously this is the most ambitious
of the enhancements listed here and the time to design&slash.create this
tool will dictate when&slash.if it appears&per. Doing this may be mutually
exclusive with the previous &apos.Re-work the &per.IPF project files&apos.
enhancement&per.
:p.
:h2.Create panel resource ID&apos.s and &numsign.defines
:p.
:font facename=default.The resource ID is required for creating a &per.HLP
file that is accessed from a Presentation Manager application&per. This
is another of the features that I will be needing within the next few months
so look for it to be available relatively quickly &lpar.I&apos.m hoping
by Sep&slash.Oct 1994 but make no promises&xclm.&rpar.&per.
:p.
:h2.Window help file support
:p.
:font facename=default.As I learn more about the MS Window help compiler
I will be adding support for maintaining a MS Window help file in the same
way you can use RTF2IPF to maintain an OS&slash.2 help file&per.
:p.
:h2.
:p.
:euserdoc.