The Top Tool:
The multiple reading (pun?) on
top is very much intended. Its the first tool on
the Tools menu and its the boss tool. Most of the other
tools on the menu and many scattered tools or toolettes on other
menus want a path\filename or url from you. The Pathfinder
tool is an open dialog re-built to be a browse tool that will let
you find the path to a file and, then, by clicking Open, put that
path and file onto the Clipboard for dropping into any input box or
text.
EWriter, remember, is a duplex etextwriter or ewriter with multiple wysiwygs. Tools/Browsers furnish the wysiwyg views. Use Pathfinder to track down your browserS and drop them into Browsers. Many other input boxes will ask for files with paths and, then, also use browser selections. So this is a good box to fill first. In any case, though, Pathfinder should get a workout in making your fat ewriter.ini. Its truly a top tool.
Building a Help system:
Prior to 0.Ca, I hardwired in
ewriter.hlp, a WinHelp file, and eManual, an htm frameset file with
a number of .htm files to go in the main viewer frame. The hard-wire
worked for eManual, because all the htm files were simply dumped
into the directory a user created for eWriter. Nothing needed doing
beyond unzipping ewriter.zip, using eWriter and fattening up the
ewriter.ini file.
With 0.Ca, there were two collections of .htm files with frameset ebooks to organize them. One is eManual with it's concept papers. The second is eWriters eHelp. This was an online draft of what I intended to put into an MS HTMLHelp chm file to be shown in a MS HTMLHelp reader. However, for users with Windows 95, I might have had to distribute (and help setup) some libraries from Internet Explorer and the wrapper, hh.exe, that uses those libraries. So, my ehelp.htm will remain a perpetual draft. The name HTMLHelp (or HTML Help) is a pointer to yesteryears paradigm, anyway. One more e- word. But, it's not HTML Help, but help with all the text and etext writing tools. It's e-help because its in htm files.
With 0.Cd, eManual (a collaction of concept papers) is dropped. As it stands, the top of the Help menu will look like this:
How to get eWriter ready
eWriters eHelp reference
An early WinHelp reference
Special Operations
Known Problems
Ewriter.zip will contain fewer files than in 0.C, but one of these will be a zip file, ehelp.zip. Preparing the help system begins with creating a sub-directory in eWriters directory named ehelp. Unzip ehelp.zip in its directory.
You can put it anywhere you want, or you can use the eHelp that is online, even if it changes its url. I am not using hard-wiring. I use an input box into which you can put a pathname or url to be handed to the browser.
I usually put in a default to show up before
you put in what you want and save settings on close. In this
instance, I will not supply a default. If you put in one of the
entries below, or another, and save settings on close, this will
become your default.
c:\ewriter\ehelp\ehelp.htm
http://home.earthlink.net/~acorioso/ehelp.htm
eReference Shelf:
This is located on the Help
menu. Its file is ew_ref.htm in the eWriter directory. Click
on it so you will have it in a browser to look at. Then, bring the
file into eWriter. Even if you are tip-toeing in html writing, you
can begin to experiment with putting references you will use on your
reference shelf. Categories, buttons (internal links), listings.
They are all modeled. This wont fatten your ini file, but
itll add to the comfortable chair feeling.
Direct Open files:
On the File menu, you can put
in five files that youd like to have immediately at hand. When
you bring in one of these files it does not go on the Recently
Opened list to drive other files off the bottom. These are files you
frequently want but apart from the project of the moment.
Boilerplates:
All that batch typing on
the menus and one place in which you can begin putting your personal
stamp on it. You must have a few lines you know you will type many
times to use to start a set of (eight) one line (of any length)
boilerplates. Even if only the parts of a signature block (though
blocks are better in super-boilerplates), you can put these into
boilerplates and start a set. When you have a set of even random
ones, you can export it, get a bplates.set file going, and, then,
over time, work up a collection of good tight sets. The current set
is kept in ewriter.ini, so this helps with the fattening.
Helpful sites and files:
Back to the Help menu and three
lists kept in ewriter.ini:
Helpful Websites Links
Helpful WinHelp Files
Helpful HTMLHelp files
To be continued...