**** Help Magician Pro Small DEMO Read Me File *******
Thank you for your interest in Help Magician Pro!
You have a demo of one of the best help authoring tools on the market for creating Windows help files (WinHelp and HTML Help) and Internet Web pages from your help files.
Since this is a demo and we wanted to save space for a quicker download, we've disabled certain features in Help Magician such as spell checking, limited project management features, and limited the demo to 20 help topics and 7 HTML pages. The demo version also does not include the clipart library, nor the opening.wav and sp05.avi file for demo95 source, or some executables and the website demonstration.
Since we have not included the Microsoft HTML Help compiler (which is quite large), you will not be able to compile to HTML Help.
You can request our "Help Magician Pro Demo and Hypertext Tools CDROM", which is packed full of clipart, midi files, WinHelp Add-ons, and Help Magician Pro demo in its entirety.
When you are ready to purchase Help Magician Pro, view the purchase.hlp file for information on how to unlock the demo so you can get started right away.
We suggest that you run the Help Wizard from within Help Magician's Help Menu and let it give you an introduction to Help Magician.
With the CD version, we've included demo files that you can open and explore. They are in the \DEMO31 (for Windows 3.1 users), \DEMO95 (for Windows 95 users), and \WEBDEMO (to show a sample of a help file converted to a web site).
This file contains any last minute notes that didn't make it into the manual or the help file.
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Using 256-color Bitmaps in Windows 3.1
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You have two options for using 256 color bitmaps:
1) Help Magician Pro includes a DLL that allows WinHelp for Windows 3.1 to display 256 color bitmaps. The Help Magician Installation program installs this DLL to your indows directory. When you make a HLP file, you need to distribute the HMEW2.DLL file to your customers. You must make sure it gets installed in their Windows directory. Also, you must distribute all the 256-color .bmps with the .hlp file and install them in the same directory as the .hlp file. If you don't do any of the above, WinHelp will display the message "Unable to display picture" when showing a 256-color bitmap. You may distribute the HMEW2.DLL royalty-free. Windows 95 supports high color bitmaps without the need for this DLL or distributing the bitmap files.
2) Use the HC505.EXE help compiler in place of the HC31.EXE help compiler. It has a few quirks, so we recommend you completely check out your help file. This compile supports 256-color images directly without the need for HMEW2.DLL or including your .bmp files.
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Images and Memory
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There are three methods that can be used to represent images in the editor. We recommend the link-to-file option.
Display Image
Stores the image in memory and in the HLX file. This method uses the most memory and disk space but provides the fastest display of the image in the editor.
Display Filename
Stores the filename only in memory and in the HLX file. This method uses the least memory and disk space of all the display options.
Link to File
Stores only the image filename in memory and in the HLX but displays the image in the editor. This method is a compromise between the two methods described above.
After installation, the system defaults to Link to File. This can be changed at any time in the Environment Options form, available from the Options menu.
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Backup Source Files
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The Help Magician will keep previous versions of the source (.HLX) for your help system depending on the setting on the File Save tab in the Environment Options form. After installation the system defaults to two files but this can be changed at any time in the Environment Options form, available from the Options menu. The extensions for the backups are from .H01 to .H10.
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Special Font
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A special font has been installed on your system for use with the Help Magician's Macro Editor. In the font selection dialog, it will be listed as:
Help Macro 10
IMPORTANT: After installation, you will have to re-start Windows for this font to be available.
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Multimedia
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The Help Magician automates the use of audio (.WAV), midi (.MID), video (.AVI), and movie (.MMM) files in your help system using the standard WinHelp engine, supplied with Microsoft Windows 3.1. Windows 95 Help supports multimedia directly.
