InfView, an info files viewer
Author: Salvador E. Tropea, set@users.sf.net
Description: InfView, an info files viewer, good replacement for info
Keywords: InfView, info, texinfo, viewer, SETEdit, setedit, rhide, editor, linux, DOS, console, tui, djgpp, library, download, SET, Salvador, Eduardo, Tropea

# InfView |

I provide a menu because some sections are large and perhaps you are not interested in reading all:

- Introduction
- Features
- License
- Download
- Contributing
- Readme first

InfView is an easy to use info viwer. The command line have the most relevant options provided by info and the user interface is much more intuitive. It makes InfView a good replacement for the info-stantalone program. The main objetive of InfView is to give to the user a friendly and easy to learn tool to browse the documentation found in info format. This format is used by the FSF for all the major tools and of course is used by djgpp.

The old info program was designed as a flexible UNIX tool so it have some features you won't find in InfView, as an example: InfView doesn't have options to write a documentation chapter to the standard output so you can capture it and display in other program. InfView was designed as an interactive tool instead.

InfView uses overlapping windows (real windows, not "screens"), fully supports mouse, have pull-down menues and pop-up windows, etc. As the name says the emphasis is in the visual component.

Unless graphical implementations the program is relative small and quite fast (263Kb installation for the first release, I know about one Win32 implementation that needs over 5Mb and eats more than 5Mb of memory thanks to the run time of some visual script language from Redmond that I won't name here).

I started to develop InfView in 1996 to add help to RHIDE. It was a big step for RHIDE. My next contribution was a text editor. Currently the editor is also distributed as an standalone program and of course have InfView as help system. I created a standalone InfView because many users asked for it. The advantages of an standalone program are:

- Smaller memory requirements.
- Specialized command line.
- Specialized menues.
- Specialized features (example: InfView windows are tileable).

The main features of InfView are:

- Free cursor movement with the keyboard arrows, page-up, etc.
- Mouse support.
- Highlighted cross references.
- Hide of the `*Note' and other confusing things of the info format.
- Previous, Next and Up node support.
- History support.
- Incremental search just typing the first letters of the cross reference.
- The same for the whole nodes list.
- Support for compressed info files.
- Search in the current node, the whole file or all the files.
- Bookmarks.
- History of the last 40 nodes visited.
- Dialog to browse the files on disk.
- info like command line for people already acustomed to info.
- Many overlapping windows containing different info files can be opened at the same time. Only limited by available memory.
- and more

LICENSE
InfView is distributed under the GPL license. It basically means the code is free and you don't need to pay for it and you are free to change it, but any derived work will become GPL too. Most of the software available for Linux is distributed under these terms. This license protects my rights over the code (I hold the copyright) and protects the users ensuring they are free to use the code. If you plan to use parts or the whole code of InfView be sure you read the GPL license carefully. Note that GPL implies a disclaimer of guaranty, so if you must use it in an enterprise where you need to be able to sue software's authors in case of direct or indirect problems created by it just forget about InfView. By the way, I don't know about even one big company (Microsoft included) that doesn't included a disclaim of guaranty in your license. Even when you don't need to pay for InfView I accept any kind of help ;-). The best way to help me is contributing in one of the ways I mention here.

DOWNLOAD Important: check http://sourceforge.net/projects/setedit/ for the last news and beta releases.
DOS v0.2.8 | Linux v0.2.8
--- | ---
Binaries | Sources | Debian Woody | Sources
The sources are the same as the sources for the editor so the links points to the editor's page. Get the last snap shot available. To compile InfView you'll also need the Turbo Vision library.

CONTRIBUTING
There are a lot of ways you can contribute, here are some of them: Giving useful bug reports, it means providing a good description of the bug and how to reproduce it. Writing examples of use or mini-howtos. I'll be glad to include them with InfView. Helping with the web pages. Helping with the distribution, e.g. if you have an internet host or you can help with the announcements and uploads. Packaging InfView. Porting the code to other platforms. Currently Dim Zegebart is helping with the Alpha/Linux platform. Helping with the internationalization. Even when my language is spanish InfView have documentation and messages only in english, it means I don't even have time to keep upto date the support for my own language. Making additions to the code. Sending a post card from your city or some of the things I collect (train tickets, cigarette envelopes and boxes, stamps, old money and coins) you'll help to keep my interest in the project. Of course I'll accept money from you or any hardware, but I know that's very hard for most people, specially because I'm in Argentina.

Copyright © 1999-2003 by Salvador E. Tropea, e-mail: set@users.sf.net.

Last update: Tue Apr 01 17:49:57 (GMT) 2003