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AGPatch_1_2.lha
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AGPatch.txt
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AGPatch 1.2 by Ben Hutchings
----------------------------
Legal: COPYRIGHT 1997 - FREEWARE - NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY
-----
Introduction
------------
AmigaGuides were a great idea but it's virtually impossible to create a
decent hypertext document in AmigaGuide form. There's not much that can
be done about this until some new standard emerges for Amiga hypertext,
but for the time being AGPatch attempts to fix some of the absurd
incompatibilities between different versions of amigaguide.datatype. It
only works with amigaguide.datatype v40.12, which as far as I know is
the last version publicly released. This is included in the OS 3.1
upgrade pack and on many magazine cover-CDs; you do not need 3.1 ROMs
to use it.
The Problems
------------
Problem 1:
AmigaGuide up to v39 let you include a literal "@" in a node by putting
"\@" in the source. Any number of literal backslashes could be included
before the "@" simply by adding an extra backslash; e.g. "\\\@" can be
included by putting "\\\\@" in the source. AmigaGuide v40 changes this:
backslash escapes any character (including newline), and always exactly
one. So "\/" becomes "/" whereas it shouldn't change at all, and "\\\@"
becomes "\@" whereas it should become "\\@". This wrecks many text
diagrams, including those in Commodore's own RKRM guides!
It's now impossible to display all guides as the author intended,
because there is no way of telling whether a guide has been designed for
AG v39 or v40. The best solution I could see was to make backslash only
escape "@" or another backslash, so that is what this patch does. This
interpretation should allow *virtually* every guide to be displayed as
intended.
Problem 2:
AmigaGuide before v39 allowed links to be highlighted in various ways,
including the default button-look. AmigaGuide v39/v40 removed this
option and makes every link look like a button; furthermore, it adds an
extra 2 pixels before and after every link for the button border, so
tables of links don't always line up any more.
This patch removes the extra space at the sides of links, and underlines
links rather than drawing buttons (because button frames may overlap
text otherwise). With this patch installed, link text is normally
rendered in black and underlined; but the currently selected link is
highlighted with a blue background and the link text turns white when
the link is selected with the mouse. This still doesn't seem quite
right to me, so if you can suggest a better way of rendering links
please do!
Problem 3:
AmigaGuide v39/v40 has searching and marking disabled, apparently
because these functions are buggy. I tried re-enabling the marking
function, but it didn't work properly. Searching doesn't appear to be
supported by the datatypes API, so I don't know how this could be
re-enabled.
There might be a solution to this, but I've no idea what it would be.
Usage
-----
AGPatch loads amigaguide.datatype into memory and patches its code. It
does *not* modify the original file.
AGPatch can only be run from the CLI. The command format is
AGPatch [NOESCAPEPATCH] [LINKPATCH]
The default behaviour is to patch only the backslash escape code
(Problem 1). Using the NOESCAPEPATCH switch disables this patch; using
the LINKPATCH enables the patch for link display (Problem 2).
AGPatch cannot be removed once it has been installed. This is partly
because it's rather tricky to do so, but also because I'm too lazy to do
it properly. ;-)
To see the effect of the patch, run it now and view some AmigaGuides.
If you're happy with it, copy AGPatch onto your hard disk and add it
into your s:user-startup script.
History
-------
version 1.0 (4.11.97)
First public release.
version 1.1 (17.7.97)
Added options to enable or disable the two patches, and improved
documentation.
version 1.2 (21.7.97)
Fixed a bug that crept into version 1.1, which caused programs
later in user-startup or startup-sequence to become unstable.
Contact addresses
-----------------
Ben Hutchings
43 Harrison Close
Reigate
Surrey RH2 7HS
ENGLAND
email: benjamin.hutchings@worcester.oxford.ac.uk
WWW: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~worc0223/amiga/freeware/
IRC: womble or wombleII, usually on Undernet #amigacafe