This rumor/announcement may be of interest to people on this list.
David Andrews
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 10:45:59 -0800
From: Jon Noring <noring@netcom.com>
To: ebook-list@aros.net
Subject: [FORWARD] Major announcement on WinHelp
I saw the following article posted to comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.winhelp,
a Usenet newsgroup . If this is a true predictor of the future at Microsoft,
we'll be seeing them switch over from the RTF basis of WinHelp/Viewer to an
HTML basis.
One reason I'm forwarding this to EBOOK-List is because I wrote a post a
couple of weeks ago discussing the advantages of compiling HTML files to make
them run faster when read on ones own machine after downloading (and NOT read
over the network, big difference!) as well as providing a robust full text
search capability and much better resource utilization.
The article below mentions Microsoft developing such a compiler, though their
stated reason is for context-sensitive help for software. However, I'm sure
Microsoft will make sure the compiled format will also be robust, fast,
resource efficient, and will provide a means for rapid full text search via
indexing or other advanced techniques, thus providing for an interesting
portable e-book format, using HTML to format the project files. They will
have to provide a built-in viewer for Windows, which is a big advantage. It
remains to be seen whether the Web browsers such as Netscape, can read these
compiled HTML files if a suitable module is provided.
Comments?
Jon Noring
OmniMedia
****************************************************************************
In article <00001b24+00000fc7@msn.com> knowware@msn.com (Mary Deaton) wrote:
At about 1:15 pm Pacific Time today, Ralph Walden, development lead for the
Windows Help group at Microsoft, told a seminar at the WinHelp 96 conference
in Seattle that by the time the next version of the Windows operating system
is released (Windows '97 in early 1997), Help will no longer be done using
the current WinHelp compiler or viewer and that Help content will be prepared
not with RTF, but with HTML.
Walden said that details are still being discussed at Microsoft, but the
intent was to produce a browser-independent structure. He could not provide
details on how context-sensitive Help, such as What's This topics in dialog
boxes, would be implemented in this new scheme. The new scheme will assume
HTML3 standards, but Microsoft will supply some proprietary functionality to
accommodate the context-sensitive environment.
Walden was unable to supply any other details.
Addendum:
After dropping that bombshell, Ralph later told individuals that the first
task will be developing a compiled binary in order to do context-sensitive
Help. That is scheduled for an August release. Following that, we will
begin to see the actual HTML come together in order to know what features we
will have. Most conference attendees I spoke with thought this was the right
move for Microsoft to make in order to reduce the now confusing number of
content development tools coming out of Redmond. Most authoring tool
vendors, after the first moments of shock, were happy: they know have to
support only one standard, HTML, rather than both HTML and RTF. Several, of
course, already allow you to output HTML from their tools (HyperSuite from
Hyperact comes to mind) and others have RTF to HTML conversion utilities
(Blue Sky, for example).
*****************************************************************************
end of forwarded post
--
OmniMedia Electronic Books | URL: http://www.awa.com/library/omnimedia
9671 S. 1600 West St. | Anonymous FTP:
South Jordan, UT 84095 | ftp.awa.com /pub/softlock/pc/products/OmniMedia
801-253-4037 | E-mail: omnimedia@netcom.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for using EBOOK-List, Discussion on Electronic Books
Post Message: ebook-list@aros.net
Get Commands: majordomo@aros.net "help"
Administrator: noring@netcom.com
Unsubscribe: majordomo@aros.net "unsubscribe ebook-list"
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Dec 02 2012 - 01:30:03 PST