
                    HTML Help System for FreeDOS
                    ============================
                    Version 1.0.5 / 1.0.6 / 1.0.7 / 1.0.8
                     1 July 2004  / 30 March 2009 / November 2020


See also the files COPYING, BUGS and HISTORY.

Contents
--------
0 What's New
1 Introduction
2 Copyrights
3 Usage
4 Contacts
5 Building HTML Help Viewer
6 How to include new HTML files
7 HTML Tags supported by the Viewer
8 Acknowledgements

0 What's New
------------
The replacement help content is here!
Included is:

- A new version of the help viewer: version 5.3.3
 
- the html file set, (hhstndrd 1.0.6), has
  various updates and fixes.

1 Introduction
--------------
This is the FreeDOS clone of the MS-DOS 6.22 help command.

Features include

   * uses html - a widely available format
   * support for compressed help (zip format)
   * easy-to-use user interface
   * search dialog box
   * International features, include UTF-8 encoding support,
     NLS string translation, and all Latin-1 character entities

2 Copyrights
------------
The HTML Help viewer is Copyright (c) Express Software 1998-2003,
protected under the Express Software Public License Agreement (see the
file COPYING).

The HTML Help content is a set of many files with various copyrights.
The license for most of them is the GNU Free Documentation License,
the licenses for all others are in the same spirit as the GNU FDL.
Type "HELP fdl" for more information


3 Usage
-------
To start the interactive help viewer (found in /bin) just type:

   HELP

and the contents page will be displayed. The standard set of html files
can be browsed from here. To search for help on a particular
topic, simply type:

   HELP [topic]

You can give a file name:

   HELP [filename]
   HELP /Lfilename

If the /L switch is generally faster; with /L help won't check whether
the filename is a topic first. To completely override the /help folder,
use the /O switch:

   HELP /O[x:][path][filename]

For more information on using help, type

   HELP help

or

   HELP /?


4 Contacts
----------
The FreeDOS website:
       http://www.freedos.org

FreeDOS technical discussion list (no user support):
       freedos-devel - AT - lists.sourceforge.net

The maintainer:
       Rob Platt (worldwiderob - AT -yahoo.co.uk)

The original developer of the viewer program:
      Joe Cosentino (onehardmarine - AT - attbi.com)

The actual maintainer of the help files:
      W. Spiegl (fritz.mueller - AT - mail.com)


5 Building the HTML Help viewer
-------------------------------
The htmlhelp.exe binary is included for those who do not wish to build the
software by themself.

It was built with "Open Watcom 1.9".

To build it by yourself, execute "wmake" in the SOURCE\HTMLHELP subdirectory.
A debug version with debug info included, stack and heap checking enabled,
may be built via "wmake DEBUG=1"


6 How to include new HTML files
-------------------------------
If you wish to contribute to the help files, write a translation etc,
please make contact by mailing the FreeDOS discussion list (address given
above).

There is a set of guidelines for authors in the html help content,
listed under the miscellaneous section of index.htm.


7 HTML Tags supported by the Viewer
-----------------------------------
You can get to the file:

   HELP\HHSTNDRD\AUTHORS\TAGS.HTM

from the Authors' Resources section in the hhstndrd file set.

8 Acknowledgements
------------------

The ZIP support uses some neat code created by Gilles Vollant (MINIZIP)
combined with the powerful ZLIB compression library.
See
    www.winimage.com/zLibDll/unzip.htm
    www.zlib.org

It also uses the kitten library written by the FreeDOS community.
