Copyright: Copyright © 1995  Alex Freiman


  Contents

Copyright © 1995 by Alex Freiman

Introduction

Quick start

Using Help to Text

Registration

License agreement

Order form


License Agreement

Thank you for trying Help to Text.  Continued use of this program automatically constitutes acceptance of this disclaimer of warranty:  Help to Text is supplied as is.  The author disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability and of fitness for any purpose. The author assumes no liability for damages, direct or consequential, which may result from the use of Help to Text.

Help to Text is a "shareware program" and is provided at no charge to the user for evaluation. Feel free to share it with your friends, but please do not give it away altered or as part of another system.  The essence of "user-supported" software is to provide personal computer users with quality software without high prices, and yet to provide incentive for programmers to continue to develop new products.  If you find this program useful and find that you are continuing to use Help to Text after a reasonable trial period, you must make a registration payment of $15 to Alex Freiman. The $15 registration fee will license one copy for use on any one computer at any one time. You must treat this software just like a book.  An example is that this software may be used by any number of people and may be freely moved from one computer location to another, so long as there is no possibility of it being used at one location while it's being used at another. Just as a book cannot be read by two different persons at the same time.

You are encouraged to pass a copy of Help to Text along to your friends for evaluation.  Please encourage them to register their copy if they find that they can use it.  All registered users will receive free technical support for the product.

Send questions, comments, and suggestions to the following address:

Alex Freiman

162 Cedar Dr

New Britain, Pa

18901

alexc@cris.com

See also Registration


Introduction

Help to Text is a program to convert Windows .HLP files into editable ASCII text files.  It is fully functional and has no time limits or restrictions of any kind.  All I ask is that, if you like the program and find it useful, you fill out the order form in the "Order Form" Help screen and send it in.

There are three main reasons why this program is helpful to Windows users.

1.  The current trend in Windows software is to give minimal paper documentation with a product.  Documentation is mostly put into online help in a .HLP file.  Help to Text will convert these .HLP files into text files.  You can then edit and print them, and you will have your own reference copy of the program's documentation.

2.  Many times I've found a Help file's keyword search useless.  The keywords the programmer felt were important weren't the keywords I wanted to look for.  Or I know that the word I'm looking for is on one of the help screens but I

can't remember which one.  A  text file can be searched for ANY word or phrase - MUCH more useful than a Help Keyword Search.

3.  Should you decide you want to print a help screen exactly as it appears on your monitor, you can select the Print Topic item in the File menu.  If you want, however, to print out all the help screens (or a selected range of them), the Windows Help processor won't let you do it; Help to Text will.

We're confident you will find many more ways to make Help to Text useful for you. We have already begun enhancing the software for the next release, and all registered users will be informed of the new release as soon as it comes out.

Enjoy


Order form

Order Form - Help to Text Version 1.1

To register, send a check or money order with this form to:

Alex Freiman

162 Cedar Dr

New Britain, Pa 18901

To print this registration form, click on Print Topic in the File menu. Payments must be in US dollars drawn on a US bank.

Help to Text

quantity:	____ @ $_______ (1 copy $15.00 see registration  for more)

subtotal:	_____

shipping	$4.00	to avoid shipping, send to my email adrs below (check here) ___

Pennsylvania residents

add 6.0% sales tax:	_____

Total Payment	_____

Name:	________________________________________

Company:	________________________________________

Address:	________________________________________

City, State, Zip	________________________________________

Country:	________________________________________

Day Phone:	________________________________________

Work Phone:	________________________________________

Electronic Mail Address:___________________________________

Where did you find HLPTXT? ________________________________

Comments, Questions, and Suggestions:


Using Help to Text

On the screen display depicted below, click the button or field you need help on:


Help file selection

To select the .HLP file you want to convert or print, press this button. A dialog box will appear and you can choose any help file in any directory.  If you are converting the output to text, you need also to select a text file name. If you are sending output to a printer, it is not necessary to select a file name.


Output file selection

When converting a help file to a text file, you need to specify the name of the output text file. Pressing this button will bring up a dialog box that will let you select the text file name and directory path.

If you are printing the helps, it is not necessary to select a text file.


Text file output

When selecting text file output, the converted help file will be written to the Text File you selected. The other option is to print the help file.


Printer output

When you print the help screens, they appear exactly as on your screen.


Start range

Help screens appear sequentially in a .HLP file.  A range of screens can be converted or printed by specifying a Start and an End number.  If the Start number is left blank, input starts at the first help screen. If the End number is left blank, input ends at the last help screen.

To determine what number each help screen is, convert the help file to a text file . The screens will be separated in the text file by a header like "....... Topic 0 ........"   Find the Topic numbers for the help screens you want to print or convert, and use them for the Start and End numbers.


End range

Help screens appear sequentially in a .HLP file.  A range of screens can be converted or printed by specifying a Start and an End number.  If the Start number is left blank, input starts at the first help screen. If the End number is left blank, input ends at the last help screen.

To determine what number each help screen is, convert the help file to a text file . The screens will be separated in the text file by a header like "....... Topic 0 ........"   Find the Topic numbers for the help screens you want to print or convert, and use them for the Start and End numbers.


Status

The status line displays help or progress information. Whenever the cursor moves over a field or button, a function description is shown on the status line.  Progress information also shows up here.  When conversion is being performed, the current help screen number is shown.  The right hand field of the status line shows the name of the Viewer you selected to display or edit the output text files.


Start

This button starts processing the .HLP file. Press it after you've selected a help file to convert.  If you're sending output to a text file, you have to name it before pushing start.  If you are selecting a range of topics to process, you also have to select Start and End  numbers before pressing this button.


Exit

This button closes the Help to Text program. Press it when you're done.


Stop output now

Some help files are large and take a long time to process. During the operation, you may decide to stop and continue later. Click Stop Output Now  to end the operation. If you're outputting to a text file, the file will contain the topics converted thus far.  To continue at a later date, look in the file for the last topic converted, and use that number as the Start to pick up where you left off.


View output file

After you have created a text file, you may want to view it. Pressing the View output file button will open your viewer and display the file. The Viewer can be any editor or Word Processor that handles ASCII files.


Select viewer

The default editor/viewer is NOTEPAD.EXE, which has limited capabilities; it can read only files less than 64K long, and it has few editing functions.  Large .HLP files will be converted to text files too large for NOTEPAD to read.  Select viewer lets you select a more capable editor, like WRITE.EXE.


Quick start

Here's the basics on using Help to Text. We are going to show the steps to convert HLPTXT.HLP into HLPTXT.TXT

1.  Run Help to Text

2.  In the File Selection box, click the Help File button. Select the file HLPTXT.HLP from the list box and press OK.

3.  Click the Output File button. Type HLPTXT.TXT and press OK.

4.  Click the Start button.

5.  When the message box says the conversion process is complete, click the View output file button.

6.  Windows will load NOTEPAD.EXE and show your new file.

That's it.  The conversion is done, and HLPTXT.TXT contains the text ready for editing or printing.


Topic

Topics are the individual help screens within a help file.


Registration

REGISTRATION FEES

1     computer	each	$ 15

2     computers 	each:	$ 12

3     computers	each:	$ 10

4+   computers	each:    $   8

Pennsylvania State customers, please add sales tax.

To register, send a check or money order:

Alex Freiman

162 Cedar Dr.

New Britain, Pa 	18901

Registered users of Help to Text can receive technical support by E-mail to alexc@cris.com or by regular mail to the address above.


Remove topic headings

This option prevents sequential topic numbers from being inserted into the help file for each topic. Topic headings are used to visibly separate help topics from each other , and can be used to identify topics when printing a range of topics.


Insert page ejects

Selecting this option will insert a page eject between topics in the output text file.


Drag and Drop

Help files can be converted to text using the Windows drag and drop function. Run Help to Text then minimize the window to an icon. From File Manager drag any .HLP file into the minimized icon and then drop it. The help file will be converted to a text file with the same name as the help file and with a .TXT extension.

For example; if you drag MYHELP.HLP into HLPTXT the resultant file will be named MYHELP.TXT.