275) Is there a help system or Motif hypertext system available?

[Last modified: Nov 96]

Answer:  There are many hypertext-like help systems.

Computer Generation Incorporated's  HView widget displays HTML 2.0 standard
text and images and HTML 3.0 tables. The widget was developed to provide an
imbedded on-line help facility. It offers a light weight, portable, and robust
browser for HTML documents without having to distribute a separate Web Browser
with your applications. A special feature allows links from HTML source files
into arbitrary text files.

        http://www.compgen.com/widgets/
        Computer Generation Incorporated
        Building G, 4th Floor
        5775 Peachtree Dunwoody Road
        Atlanta, Georgia 30342 USA
        +1 404 705 2800
        Fax: +1 404 705 2805

Other help systems include:

Libhelp:  http://www.informatik.uni-
stuttgart.de/ipvr/bv/personen/mache/libhelp/index.html

Libhelp is a comprehensive hypertext help system library for OSF/Motif(tm)
applications. It adds a help browser window to OSF/Motif(tm) applications
which can be accessed by a single interface function. It is suitable for menu
help and context sensitive help. Also it can run as a standalone application
(xmhelp).

Libhelp documents can be written in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and can
have hypertext links, different fonts, inlined images and a lot of more
elements known from www (world wide web) browsers. Libhelp implements its own
history, index, caching and search path schemes.

Libhelp is a derivative work of NCSA Mosaic(tm) and not the original NCSA
Mosaic(tm) distributed by the University of Illinois and is available for
academic and individual use only. It is NOT available for commercial use.

Thanks to Matthew M. Freedman (mattf@cac.washington.edu) for the libhelp
pointer.


HTML Widget from NCSA:

The NCSA Mosaic for X package contains an HTML widget which is freely
available and is the main vehicle for viewing HTML documents in the Mosaic
program. It has callbacks for anchor hits, selections, etc and many many
resources for customizing the viewing area of your hypertext documents.  See
"Where can I get the HTML widget" above.

GWHIS:

There is a product from Quadralay Corporation, called the Global-Wide Help &
Information Systems (GWHIS).

from a press release:  AUSTIN, TX (March 3, 1994) Quadralay Corporation today
announced its newest software development tool, Global Wide Help & Information
System (GWHIS).  GWHIS allows third party application developers to add online
documentation and context sensitive help to their applications like never
before.  This documentation may consist of plain text, rich format text,
hypertext, images, audio, and/or video animation and may easily be distributed
either locally or over a wide area network such as the Internet.

GWHIS consists of two primary components.  An application programming
interface (API), and a hypermedia viewer (based on technology licensed from
the NCSA Mosaic project).  Several ancillary conversion programs are also
available allowing end users to easily convert existing documentation into
GWHIS' native HTML format.

GWHIS is available on the following platforms: SPARC SunOS 4.1.x, SPARC
Solaris 2.x, INTEL SCO Open Desktop, INTEL Solaris 2.x, HP 9000/700, and the
RS/6000. Support for additional platforms (including MS Windows and Macintosh)
is under consideration.  Fully functional evaluation copies of this software
are available upon request or via anonymous ftp from ftp.quadralay.com.

Brian Combs Quadralay Corporation combs@quadralay.com


Bristol Technology have a hypertext system HyperHelp with the look-and-feel of
Motif.  HyperHelp 4.0 is available now and includes support for MIF, RTF (Word
6.0) and SGML.  (The OpenLook look-and-feel is no longer supported).

        Bristol Technology, Inc.
        241 Ethan Allen Highway
        Ridgefield, CT  06877
        (203) 438-6969 (phone)
        (203) 438-5013 (fax)
        info@bristol.com

Demos are available by anonymous ftp from ftp.bristol.com (192.246.192.2) in
/pub/Demos/HyperHelp.

There was a posting of a motif hypertext-widget to comp.sources.x (Author:
B.Raoult ( mab@ecmwf.int ) ).  It had the facility to read in helptext from a
file.

Francois Felix Ingrand (felix@idefix.laas.fr) wrote:  I have translated the
Info AW (originally written by Jordan Hubbard) to Motif. It is a Widget to
browse Info files (format used by GNU for their various documentations). I use
it as the help system of various tool I wrote. The corrected URL, thanks to
Hal DeVore (hdevore@erehwon.bmc.com), is:

        ftp://ftp.laas.fr/pub/ria/felix/prs/xinfo-motif.tar.gz


Form Scott Raney (raney@metacard.com) MetaCard is a commercial package that
can be used to implement hypertext help.  The text fields support multiple
typefaces, sizes, styles, colors, subscript/superscript, and hypertext links.
It has a Motif interface, and a template for calling it from an Xt/Motif
application is included.  You can FTP a save-disabled distribution from
ftp.metacard.com or from world.std.com.  For more info, email to
info@metacard.com.


The Motifation GbR also provides a hypertext-helpsystem named 'XpgHelp'.
(Motif look-and-feel / features like those known from MS Windows Help )
Information about XpgHelp and a free demo version can be obtained via:
http://www.uni-paderborn.de/fachbereich/AG/szwillus/xpghelp/index.html

XpgHelp is distributed by:

           Motifation GbR
           Geroldstrasse 38
           33098 Paderborn
           Germany
           +49 (0) 5251 25633 (phone)
           email: griebel@uni-paderborn.de


XpgHelp has nearly the same features like HyperHelp: (multiple fonts, graphics
in b&w and color, different styles, tabs, links, short links, notepad, ...)

The Interface Builder MOTIFATION uses XpgHelp as its hypertext helpsystem.