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

Welcome to Help to Text, a program that converts Windows .HLP files into text files that can be edited using any editor or Word Processor. This program is not crippled in any way. It is fully functional and has no time limits or restrictions of any kind. All we ask is that if you like the program and find it useful, then fill out the order form in the "Order Form" Help screen.

There are three major reasons why this program can be useful to most Windows users.

1. The current trend in Windows software is to give minimal paper documentation when selling a product. Most of the effort is put into online help, much of which is inside a .HLP file. Help to Text will convert these .HLP files into text files. You can then edit the text file to your liking and print it. This process gives you your own copy of the program's documentation.

2. Many times I've found a Help file's keyword search to be useless. The keywords the programmer felt were important, were not the keywords I want 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. Using Help to Text to create a text file, you can search the text file for ANY word or phrase you want. A MUCH more useful tool than the Help Keyword Search.

3. Should you decide you want to print out a help screen exactly as it appears on your screen, you can do that by selecting the the Print Topic menu item. However if you want to print out all, or a range of help screens, the Windows Help processor won't let you do that, 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 1.0

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:___________________________________

Comments, Questions, and Suggestions:


Using Help to Text

Click the mouse on the button or field you need help for:


Help file selection

To select the help file (.HLP) you want to convert or print, press this button. A dialog box will be displayed and you can choose any help file in any directory.

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


Text 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 output

When selecting text 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 printing the help screens, the helps are not converted. They are printed exactly as they appear on your screen. The other option is  Text Output.The converted help file will be written to the Text File you selected.


Start range

Help screens appear sequentially inside a help file. A range of helps can be converted or printed by specifying a Start range and an End range. If the Start range is left blank, it is the same as starting at the first help screen. If the End range is left blank, it's the same as ending at the last help screen.

To determine what number each help screen is, convert the help file to a text file. Each help screen will be separated in the text file by a header similar to "....... Topic 0 ........"  (help screens are called Topics inside a help file). Find the Topic numbers for the help screens you want to print or convert, and use them for the Start and End ranges


End range

Help screens appear sequentially inside a help file. A range of helps can be converted or printed by specifying a Start range and an End range. If the Start range is left blank, it is the same as starting at the first help screen. If the End range is left blank, it's the same as ending at the last help screen.

To determine what number each help screen is, convert the help file to a text file. Each help screen will be separated in the text file by a header similar to "....... Topic 0 ........"  (help screens are called Topics inside a help file). Find the Topic numbers for the help screens you want to print or convert, and use them for the Start and End ranges


Status

The status field is used to display various status and help information. You'll notice that whenever your cursor is moved over a field or button on the screen, a help description is displayed in the status field.

Progress information is also displayed here. When the conversion is being performed, the current help screen number is shown.

The right section of the status line contains the name of the Viewer you selected to display the output text files.


Start

This button starts the conversion or printing process. Press it after you've selected your help file to convert. If you're not printing, but going to a text file. select the text file before pressing Start. Also if you want to convert or print a range of help topics, enter the Start and End range numbers before pressing this button.


Cancel

This button ends Help to Text. Press it when you have no more converting or printing to do.


Stop

Some help files are very large and can take a long time to convert or print. While the help file is being processed, you may decide that you want to stop it and continue later. Pressing the Stop button will end the conversion or printing. If you were going to a text file, the file contains the helps that were converted. To continue at a later date, look in the file for the last topic converted and use that number as the Start range to pick up where you left off.


View text

After a text file is created you will want to look at it. Pressing the View text button will open your viewer and read in the file. The Viewer can be any editor, or Word Processor.


Configure viewer

Configure viewer lets you select the program to use for viewing or editing your converted help files. After a help file has been converted to a text file, the first thing you're going to want to do is look at the file by pressing the button View text. The program you selected to use as a viewer will be executed and will display the file created by Help to Text.

The default viewer for Help to Text is the Windows program NOTEPAD.EXE. NOTEPAD has very limited capabilities since it can only read files that are less than 64K long. Large .HLP files convert to text files MUCH larger than that, and NOTEPAD won't be able to read them.

When you press the Configure viewer button, select the program you want to use as a viewer.


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. Press the button Help file. Select the file HLPTXT.HLP from the list box and press OK.

2. Press the button Text file. Type in the name HLPTXT.TXT and press OK.

3. Press the button Start.

4. When the message tells you the conversion process has completed, press the button View text.

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


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 via E-mail to alexc@cris.com or by

regular mail to the address above.