Date: Fri, 12 Mar 93 17:22:23 +0100
From: martin@bert.math.rwth-aachen.de (  Martin Schoenert)

I havn't ever used OS/2's IPF. Also Hypertext is such a buzzword. Could
somebody enligthen me about IPF's features?

I can, of course :-).

An IPF document is created from an ASCII file that contains certain
tags. This is done using a compiler, IPFC. The compiler is part of the
OS/2 2.0 Developer's Toolkit, i.e., not generally available for free.
The resulting .INF file can be read with OS/2's builtin VIEW command.

The finished document has the following features: It is displayed in a
window with scrollbars and buttons, i.e., can be operated conveniently
with a mouse. The document is hierarchically structured (in the case
of the GAP manual in two levels), and there is a contents window that
shows you this tree. Inside a section, text can be displayed in
several fonts (I used that for the GAP docs), and graphics.

A section can contain hypertext links, i.e., words or phrases that are
displayed in a different colour. Clicking on them with the mouse takes
you directly to the referenced section. The references "..." in the
GAP manual were of course idial candidates for conversion to such
links.

An index window is available too. This window contains an alphabetical
index made up from user specified keywords. For the GAP manual, I used
the \index entries contained in the \TeX manual. Again, clicking on an
index entry directly takes you to the referenced section.

A search function lets you search for any phrase either in the index
or in the full text of all secions. You get a list of all search hits
and can pick the desired secion(s) from that list.

IPF has quite a few more features, but I don't want to bore you too
much.

I must point out that my INF version of the GAP documentation still
has quite a few unconverted \TeX commands in it. In particular, I made
no attempt at converting the math formulas, so they look as ugly as
they do in the regular GAP online documentation.

Hope this was of general interest.

Harald

P.S.: I will be on vacation for three weeks starting tomorrow, and
won't be able to participate in this discussion during this time.

--
Harald Boegeholz |Home:       hwb@texnix.stgt.sub.org (read daily)
                 |University: hwb@machnix.mathematik.uni-stuttgart.de
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