NewView

NewView is a program for viewing OS/2 or eComStation help files, which replaces IBM's original View program. NewView offers improvements such as a nicer user interface and more options.

NewView is now integrated completely into eComStation 1.2.

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Important Note: I am no longer working on NewView. Ronald Brill (RBRi at compuserve dot com) has taken over maintenance.

Major enhancements

• New user interface (split window)
• Select and copy direct from window
• Easy to use global (all files) search
• Remembers size & position
• Most recently used files list
• Smooth scrolling display
• Current topic always highlighted in contents
• Can go forward as well as back in history
• Options for fonts, colours and more
• Annotate help files
• Bookmarks
• Fully resizeable
• Automatic web, ftp and email links (uses default WPS browser)
• Drop files to open
• Open additional files
• Automatic language selection
• Automatic index creation
• Enhanced file dialog with help file titles

NewView is pretty much feature complete. Some relatively obscure features of the old View program are not implemented. Probably the worst downside is that keyboard navigation is incomplete.

License and Support

NewView is released under the Gnu Public License; you can obtain the source code from me or from Hobbes if you desire. Please note that it is written using Speedsoft Sibyl, a Delphi-like environment, i.e. Object Pascal. The unfortunate thing about this is that Sibyl is not really supported or sold any more, like many OS/2 programs.

Since I'm no longer working on NewView, I don't expect donations, but if you wanted to say thanks, it would still be appreciated :)

Acknowledgements

Thanks to those who donated money during NewView's development, it was much appreciated. Donations totalled US$586.

Donors: Henk Pol, Moby Disk, Frederick Giroux, Jerauld Prather, Keith Oswald, Daniel Caroll, Sten Solberg, Jason Stefanovich, Alexander Newman, Andy Willis, Richard Tennis, Gregg Young, John F Moore, Bill Richardson, Jan Magne Landsvik, Daniela Engert, Kris Steenhaut, Pieter Kruger Jr, Timur Tabi, Peter Gegenheimer, Gordon Snider, Doug Fitzpatrick, Simon Wright, Aidan Grey, Julian Thomas, Philip Mann, Robert S Stan, Lionel Abrahams, Howard Harris, Teijo Kaakinen, Lon Hoker, Mark Henigan.

Many other people have contributed in non-monetary ways - see readme.txt in the NewView distribution for a full list. But special mention to:

• Aaron Reed at IBM for his hands-on help getting the new Help Manager working.
• Nicky Morrow for lots of constructive suggestions about user interface, standards and encouragement.
• Cristiano Guadagnino for the inspiration to start this project in the first place.
• Michael Kaply at IBM for some helpful info, plus his Mozilla work.
• Carl Hauser for starting to document the binary IPF file format. We got there in the end Carl ;)

Last but not least the hundreds of people who have sent thanks, bugs and other feedback. It's been an experience!