IntraDOS Help File


The topics in yellow below are covered in this help file. To view a topic, click on the topic with a mouse or Tab to it and press Enter.

Using the menu at the top
"Surfing" the Intranet
Customizing IntraDOS
Known Limitations
How to Register
Redistribution Limitations

The Readme.HTM file that comes with IntraDOS contains further information on launching the program and setting it up on a network.


How to use the IntraDOS menu

Menu entries at the top of the screen control the operation of IntraDOS. You can make selections on the menu by a mouse or the keyboard. Using the mouse, simply click on selections with the left mouse button as in typical MS-Windows programs.

Using the keyboard, you can press the Alt key to activate the menu. Menu entries will have one letter (the "accelerator key") that stands out in a different color. You can either press that key to activate a particular menu selection or use the left, right, up, and down arrow keys to move to a menu selection, which is then activated by pressing Enter.

Here is a list of keystrokes to make menu selections:

Get help: ..................................................... Alt+h
Get out of (exit) IntraDOS: ................................... Alt+x
Go back to the next earliest page you looked at: .............. Alt+b
Fo ahead to the next more recent page you looked at: .......... Alt+a
Go to your start-up "home" page: .............................. Alt+o
Take a look at the history of pages you've surfed: ............ Ctrl+h
Find (search for) particular text somewhere in the document: .. Ctrl+f
Look for more of the same text without retyping: .............. F3
Manually choose a file to open from a diolog box: ............. Ctrl+o


Surfing the Intranet

"Surfing" the intranet involves movement within the document on screen and using links to jump to other documents.

Movement on screen

You can scroll through the document on screen with the up, down, left, and right cursor keys and the PageUp and PageDown keys, as well as using the mouse to click on the ends of scrollbars. You can also use other keys as follows:
Home: .......... Moves to the left-hand side of the page
End: ........... Moves to the right-hand side of the page
Ctrl+Home: ..... Moves to the beginning (top) of the page
Ctrl+End: ...... Moves to the end (bottom) of the page

Additionally, you can search for particular text by pressing Ctrl+F, and to repeat the search without retyping the text you're looking for, you can press F3.

"Hypertext": Jumping to other documents by links

As with other browsers, you can move through the information system by activating links. In IntraDOS, the links appear in yellow. A link does not change color after you have activated a link.

Like popular Windows-based browsers, you may follow hypertext links by clicking on them with a mouse.

IntraDOS also allows you to follow a link without a mouse by means of the TAB key. To select a link, press TAB until the desired link is highlighted (or Shift+TAB to cycle through the links in the reverse direction). Then, you press ENTER to activate the link. If you scroll so that the active link is out of view, IntraDOS interprets a TAB as calling for the first link on the screen rather than the next link in order.

"Hypertext": Jumping to other documents by the menu

IntraDOS keeps the links you select in sequence. You can look at that sequence by pressing Ctrl+h, or activating the menu by alt+ View, History. You can then go to one of the links in the list by selecting it and pressing Enter.

More commonly, you can move backward in the sequence by clicking the Back menu item, and you can move forward in the sequence by clicking the Ahead item. The Home item takes you back to the start-up, or "home" page.

You can also manually select a document to view after pressing Ctrl+o or activating the menu by alt+ File, Open.


Customizing IntraDOS

Users can configure IntraDOS in several respects.

Colors

By using the File, Setup, Colors menu selection, users can experiment to find the color arrangements that work best for them. This menu will display a form showing all the current color selections. To change the background, normal, bold, italics, or heading colors, use the Change menu and select the item you wish to change. You will then have an array of choices, and as you make changes, the form's display will show you your current selections. You can exit this form without saving your changes, or you can save the changes by pressing the Save button (or typing Alt+s) and then exiting. If you save changes, those changes will appear on the main form immediately.

Startup File, Help File, and Temporary Files

You can change the default start-up file by the menu item under File, Setup, Startup File. You can also specify a different help file (or this one if it is not in the current directory) by File, Setup, Help File. Finally, you can designate the directory (location) of the temporary files that IntraDOS creates by the selection under File, Setup, Location of Temporary Files.

Speed - Stockpiling Files

To display a web (HTML) page properly, IntraDOS must interpret (parse) it, and this takes some time depending on the size of the file and the number and length of tables in the file. Parsing the same file over and over again can be avoided, and therefore system speed can be increased, by saving the file in a stockpile of pre-parsed files. If a file has been saved in this stockpile, it can be viewed almost instantaneously, even on slower machines. Stockpililng can be done for each file individually by the File, Stockpile Permanently menu item. Alternatively, you can setup IntraDOS to stockpile each file automatically or to force you to make a decision on each file under File, Setup.


Known Limitations:

This browser should be able to represent any moderately well-formulated ordinary page of HTML, but I cannot guarantee that all pages can be parsed or that, if parsed, all original data appears on them.

Here are some of the more important known limitations:

Not a Web Browser
You cannot use IntraDOS to access the internet, and it does not work with a modem. The HTML files must be available on the user's computer or network.

Look/Feel
IntraDOS does not support images (which are marked by è).

Extended or "special" characters are displayed based on the ASCII character set rather than the Windows set. Thus the image marker (above) appears as the Greek letter phi in IntraDOS, but as e-grave in Windows.

Colors are limited to 16 and cannot be changed by coding the HTML page. Thus links have one color (yellow) whether one has used them or not. The user can select a preferred color for the background, normal foreground, bold, italics, and H1 to H6 tags.

Only one font and font size are available. Emphasis can be accomplished only by codes such as <B>, <I>, <H1>, etc. Codes such as <Font size=+1> affect only the color of the text.

Frames are not supported. Network administrators should have IntraDOS users link to the most informative frame page.

Size of Files
IntraDOS will not handle a file that generates a screen length longer than 32,000 lines or wider than 32,000 characters. I have loaded pages with over 200 links and had no memory problems, but there is some ultimate limit on the number of links that a page can have.

Lists
Bullet-like characters in all lists are standardized by the program, not established by the HTML author.

Nesting of lists (<UL> and <OL>) is supported up to 9 levels and only so far as the left margin is less than 50% of the space available for text (i.e., fewer levels in tables). Attempts to make deeper levels of nesting will yield unpredictable results.

Due to formatting limitations, numeric ordered lists will start over at 1 after 99, and alphabetical ordered lists greater than 26 (a-z or A-Z) will repeat. For the same reason, Roman numerals are not supported in ordered lists.

Tables
Nesting of tables, i.e., one table within another, is not supported and will yield unpredictable results.

Tables wider than the screen are not supported, and will yield unpredictable results. Therefore, tables with many columns are also problematic, since space must be allowed for the cell walls and text in each. For example, a table of eight columns will leave about six letters per cell.
One less than ideal solution is the use <PRE> and </PRE> tags and place a preformatted table between them.

Tables narrower than the screen are expanded to fill the screen. Thus, text set to appear on either side of a table, but not within it, will appear elsewhere.

Tables with about 32,000 characters may cause unpredictable results. Tables whose cells exceed 16,000 characters may cause unpredicable results.
Solution: Break up your tables/cells into smaller tables/cells.

In tables with different numbers of cells per row, cells are filled with data from left to right. Thus some unusual configurations of tables are not supported.

Special formatting of tables, such as combining cells and cellpadding, is unsupported. Borders are either off (invisible) or on (single line around each cell).

Because of line width limitations, column widths are calculated without regard to command arguments such as <TD width=60%>.


REGISTRATION


This program is shareware. If you wish to use it beyond a 30 day trial period, please register your version.

The normal registration fee is $35 for a stand-alone computer, $15 per additional computer on a local network, with a maximum fee for an entire local area network of $80. Certain discounts also apply:

Register by sending a check or money order to:

Charles M. Cork, III
P. O. Box 6897
Macon, Georgia 31208-6897

Please include your name, your business's name (if applicable), your mailing address, and your e-mail address. By return e-mail or mail, you will get registration information.

Beyond the satisfaction of doing the right thing and making the registration request at the end of the program disappear, registration will entitle you to notifications of upgrades (free to registered users, unless the upgrade is really colossal) and to such support as I may be able to give via e-mail to ccork000@counsel.com.


Redistribution Limitations:

The unregistered version of IntraDOS may be freely distributed by any means so long as no files are altered, added or deleted.

A registered user of IntraDOS at the $80 level may freely distribute the program without alteration or deletion of files, except that the Home.HTM file may be altered and other files may be added. This will allow a registered user to provide an off-line reader of the user's HTML materials.