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From: rhys@cs.uq.oz.au (Rhys Weatherley)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: BC++ and Help Compiler - SPOILER!
Message-ID: <944@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>
Date: 23 Apr 91 01:41:17 GMT
References: <zmmgl0h@rpi.edu> <1991Apr18.160951.6613@ccad.uiowa.edu> <46mgvbm@rpi.edu> <1991Apr22.191500.13692@netcom.COM>
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In <1991Apr22.191500.13692@netcom.COM> wolf@netcom.COM (Buckskin Tech.) writes:

>3: wait 'til someone comes up with a simple RTF generator (anyone? anyone?)

I'm "sort of" working on something like this at the moment (I have neither the
money nor the inclination to buy a RTF-able wordprocessor).  My idea is to
provide another file format (not another one :-) which is more human readable
and human editable using standard ASCII editors, plus a translator to compile
my format into RTF.  I'm going to be working flat-tack on it this week and I
hope to have something (albeit restricted to a small subset of the help
system's capabilities) fairly soon.

Basically my file format is a little like TeX (don't worry if you don't know
what that is) and the commands in it are supposed to reflect the structure of
a help system rather than some bizzare super-portable wordprocessor format
like RTF (whoever heard of using footnotes for specifying keywords and
things!).  Hopefully you'll be able to type in things like (this is just an
example) the following:

	\topic{File Menu Commands}{filemenu}
	\keyword{File}
	\browse{mainmenu:003}

	The following commands appear on the file menu:

	\xref{New}{filemenunew}

	\xref{Open}{filemenuopen}

	\topic{Edit Menu Commands}{editmenu}
	\keyword{Edit}
	\browse{mainmenu:002}

	The following commands appear on the edit menu:

	\xref{Cut}{editmenucut}

	\xref{Paste}{editmenupaste}

	\topic{Open a file}{filemenuopen}
	\keyword{Open}
	\browse{filemenu:010}

	....

Using my system will entail another step in building a help system, that of
compiling my format into RTF, but I think this is a small price to pay to
get something that is more manageable and a great deal cheaper.

Comments, ideas, etc can be sent to me at the e-mail address below.

Rhys.

+=====================+==================================+
||  Rhys Weatherley   |  The University of Queensland,  ||
||  rhys@cs.uq.oz.au  |  Australia.  G'day!!            ||
+=====================+==================================+