Help for Tom's eTextReader Version 1.8.2, May 2003 ===================================================== Copyright 1999-2003 Thomas Fellner, Vienna, Austria. Mail: http://www.fellnersoft.at/eTR.htm Tom's eTextReader is a free reader for text files, e.g. Etexts from Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.net). See Readme.txt for the version history. Note: If you have any suggestions for the help file or for eTextReader, please feel free to send me an email. Contents: INTRODUCTION MENU OTHER FEATURES FILE SPECIFIC OPTIONS GENERAL OPTIONS OTHER OPTIONS INTRODUCTION =============== Tom's eTextReader displays text in a two-page book-like style. You can change colors, font style and size, page margins, set bookmarks, create a table of contents, and more ... The settings are stored in eTextReader.ini, most of them individually for each file, e.g. the bookmarks and the current page number. Page formatting and numbering, as well as line wrapping, can be done automatically. Page numbers are displayed above the text. Single line breaks may be removed automatically, in order to re-connect the lines of paragraphs. You can search the text for substrings or edit it with an internal editor. The reader opens plain text files and imports RTF and HTML files, also from zip archives. Set a bookmark by clicking on 'BM' with the left mouse button; the bookmarks will be set to the left page number. (Right clicking on 'BM' shows the recent files list.) Moving the mouse over 'Menu' shows the commands, while 'Help' displays some basic information. The Menu is also shown upon clicking the right mouse button over the text pages, and hidden by another right click. Note: For the complete set of options you will have to expand the menu (by clicking on the '>' button). Dragging a text file onto the program symbol, e.g. on your desktop or in Quickstart, would open that file in the eTextReader. A new instance of the reader is started for each file that you drop. The instances share the same ini-file. However, drag and drop onto the program window hasn't been implemented (yet). MENU ======= There are keyboard shortcuts for all menu items, in most cases Ctrl key + first letter. Open (Ctrl+O) ---------------- The open dialog provides filters for text (*.txt), HTML (*.htm,*.html), and Rich text (*.rtf) files, zip archives (*.zip), and eTextReader (*.etr) files. Note: There is no proprietary eTextReader file format, but you can use the *.etr extension to distinguish between books and other plain text files. You will be asked for confirmation, if the current text has been changed and not saved. RTF and HTML import: The contents of such files are converted to simple text. Notes on HTML: If a document contains the tag, only the body text is imported. For tables, the fields in each row are separated by TABs (so small tables with numbers or short text should be readable at least). Text between emphasis tags (like B,STRONG,I,EM,DFN,VAR,CITE) is converted to capitals. The contents of zip archives containing more than one file are shown in a list. Click on the file that you want to open, or select it with the arrow keys and press Return. Press Esc or close the list window to abort. The file name is shown in square brackets in the title bar, together with the archive's name. Note: Currently, another zip file within the archive would be treated like a text file, so you would only see chaotic characters. Bookmarks, font, etc. are only remembered for single-file archives (e.g. zipped text files from Project Gutenberg), since these values are stored for each physical file, and there would be ambiguity with multi-file archives. In order to keep the settings, the extracted text has to be saved as a new file. Recent (Ctrl+R) ------------------ A list of recently opened files is displayed. Click on an entry to open that file again, or delete an entry from the list. The file names including the complete paths are also displayed in two lines below the list. To keep the length of the list entries short, the base directory is removed from the file path. The base directory is set when you open the first file after installing eTextReader. Clicking on 'Set to current' sets the base directory according to the current file path. Ctrl+Shift+R opens the most recent file (the first file on the list). Show/Hide TOC (Ctrl+H) ------------------------- Click on 'Show TOC'/'Hide TOC' (alternately displayed) or press Ctrl+H to show/hide the table of contents. Right clicking on either of the '<<' or '>>' symbols also shows the TOC. Read more in the "Table of contents" chapter below ('OTHER FEATURES'). Navigation: Click on the '<<' or '>>' symbols or press Ctrl+-> or Ctrl+<- (Ctrl + Arrow key right/left) to jump to the next/previous TOC section (chapter). If the TOC is visible, then click on any TOC entry to jump to the indicated page. Fit lines (Ctrl+L) --------------------- Click here to fit (wrap) lines according to the current page width. This is only necessary when the 'Automatically fit lines' option is turned off. Find (Ctrl+F) ---------------- If you select this function, a small dialog will be displayed over the Menu/Help buttons. You can enter the text in the center, then click on 'Find' or simply hit the Return key to start searching. Stop searching by pressing the Space key (or Esc, which will also close the dialog). Close the Find dialog by clicking on 'Done' or pressing Esc. (this will bring back the normal Menu/Help buttons). The Find function always matches substrings, though you can find entire words if you enter leading and/or trailing spaces. Long text strings, e.g. phrases or paragraphs, will be found even if they span several lines or pages. To this end, consecutive lines with no blank space inbetween are treated like they were separated by a single space. Note: If the text contains a word which is longer than a line, such as a long URL, this 'word' will be broken. Here the Find function must fail, since the two parts of the URL appear to be two separate words. If you want to avoid this, you can try to decrease the font size and/or increase the page width, in order to make the URL fit in one line. While searching, the title of the program window shows the page numbers. So far, the find function only works in forward direction (starting at the position of the text cursor on the page or after selected text). Upon reaching the last page you will be asked if you'd like to search again from the beginning. Clicking on 'Show Options'/'Hide Options' shows/hides the option(s) for the find function. Currently there is only one option (case sensitive search). If you press Shift+Return instead of Return or click on 'In Files', the 'Find text in files' tool is shown (see 'OTHER FEATURES', below). Edit (Ctrl+E) ---------------- A simple internal editor is provided which shows the text with the same line breaks as in the file, even if 'Remove single line breaks' is checked. Copy (Ctrl+C) ---------------- The selected text is copied to the clipboard. Save as (Ctrl+S) ------------------- The save dialog provides filters for text (*.txt), zip-compressed (*.zip), and eTextReader (*.etr) files. There is no proprietary eTextReader file format, but you can use the *.etr extension to distinguish between books and other text files. If the 'Remove single line breaks' option is active, the text can be saved either with or without single line breaks. You will be asked for confirmation before overwriting an existing file. Text color (Ctrl+T) ---------------------- Select the text color. The selection is saved in the eTextReader.ini. Among the predefined custom colors there is a black field which may be used as default text color. Background color (Ctrl+B) ---------------------------- Select the background color. The selection is saved in the eTextReader.ini. Among the predefined custom colors there are two lightly colored fields. Exit (Ctrl+X) ---------------- Exit the program. You will be asked for confirmation, if the text has been changed and not saved. OTHER FEATURES ================= Additional information about the table of contents and those features that are not represented in the menu. Table of contents (TOC) -------------------------- Click on the menu item 'Show TOC'/'Hide TOC' (alternately displayed) or press Ctrl+H to show/hide the table of contents. Right clicking on either of the '<<' or '>>' symbols also shows the TOC. Click on 'Create now' above the table of contents to create the TOC manually, or activate the automatic option (see 'FILE SPECIFIC OPTIONS'). Press Space to abort TOC creation. The entries found so far will remain in the list. How the TOC is created: The first section is always the beginning of the file. The rest of the table of contents (TOC) is created by searching for blank lines: A certain number of blank lines (see 'FILE SPECIFIC OPTIONS') is considered to precede a new text section (e.g. a chapter, a poem ...). The first few lines of each section are stored and you can see them in a preview below the TOC, when you move the mouse over the TOC entries. Fine tuning TOC creation: You can open the menu/options panel by right clicking over the TOC, change the TOC settings (e.g. the number of preceding blank lines), and click on 'Create TOC' again to see the effect. Checking the 'Left' checkbox makes the TOC stay on the left side. Note: Whenever the size of the pages change, the TOC will have to be created again, which might take some time. Of course, this also happens when you uncheck the 'Left' checkbox or hide the TOC, while it is on the left side. When you unhide the TOC, it will always be shown in the center, even if it has been on the left side before (this avoids the delay of re-creating the TOC). All TOC settings are stored individually for each file. Navigation: Click on the '<<' or '>>' symbols or press Ctrl+-> or Ctrl+<- (Ctrl + Arrow key right/left) to jump to the next/previous TOC section (chapter). If the TOC is visible, then click on any TOC entry to jump to the indicated page. You can try the TOC feature with this help file (Help.txt), which has 3 blank lines (=default setting) before each section header. To scroll the TOC, move the mouse to the areas above or below the list. When scrolling stops, move the mouse horizontally to continue scrolling. Find in files (Ctrl+Shift+F) ------------------------------- In the normal "Find" dialog, press Shift+Return instead of Return or click on 'In Files' to open the 'Find text in files' tool, where you can search text (optionally case sensitive) in all files of a selected directory (optionally including subdirectories). You can also start "Find In Files" directly with Ctrl+Shift+F, even before opening a file. The result of the search is a list of files containing the specified text. Open one of these files by double clicking on the list entry, and e.g. start the normal text search again to find all occurrences within this file. You can go back to 'Find text in files' with Ctrl+Shift+F. Page history --------------- The left page numbers are stored in a history list, like in a web browser. Go back and forth using Alt + Left/Right arrow keys, or show/hide the whole list by right clicking on the left page number. You can also select a page from the history list. FILE SPECIFIC OPTIONS ======================== These settings are saved in eTextReader.ini, individually for each file. You can edit the eTextReader.ini file (carefully!) with any common text editor. For example, you could delete the settings for files that you don't read anymore. If changing one of these options affects the size of the text or the pages, then page formatting (line wrapping) needs to be corrected. Usually this is done automatically (if the option 'Automatically fit lines' is checked), but you can also fit the lines manually or whenever the menu is closed after the required changes are done. Font name (Ctrl+N, Ctrl+Shift+N) ----------------------------------- Basically, any font installed on your system can be selected from the list that eTextReader presents. However, unusable fonts like Wingdings or other symbol fonts are excluded from this list (see more on this in the "General Options" section). Default Font: If you change the font style BEFORE opening a file, this style will be stored as the default for all new files. Font size (+,-) ------------------ Font size can be changed between 6 and 20 pt. Default Font: If you change the font size BEFORE opening a file, this size will be stored as the default for all new files. Remove single line breaks ---------------------------- If this option is checked, all single line breaks are removed when the file is opened. You can then save the text without the single line breaks and turn this option off for faster file opening. Not before indentation ------------------------- Indented lines (leading space or TAB) are not connected to the preceding lines, thereby keeping e.g. specially formatted poetry lines intact. Not after punctuation marks ------------------------------ If there are only single line breaks in a text (i.e. no blank lines between paragraphs), then removing line breaks would connect all paragraphs. With this option, line breaks are not removed if there is a punctuation mark at the end of the line. The list of punctuation marks can be edited (for all files) in eTextReader.ini (see "General Options"). Automatically create table of contents ----------------------------------------- After opening the file or whenever the pages are reformatted, the table of contents is (re-)created. Default is off. Identify TOC sections by N preceding blank lines --------------------------------------------------- When creating the TOC, any space of N blank lines (N between 1 and 9) is considered to precede a new chapter. Default is 3. Section header size ---------------------- This is the number of lines (between 1 and 9) considered to form a section header. It is also the number of lines for preview. If two headers are closer than that, the second will be ignored. Default is 5. I added this option because I saw files with section headers like this: CHAPTER X Title Subtitle To treat all these lines as one single header, you need to define how long the header is, otherwise you might get three entries in the TOC list (CHAPTER X, Title, Subtitle). Count blank lines -------------------- If checked, blank lines are counted as header lines (see above: Section header size). Default is on. GENERAL OPTIONS ================== These settings are saved in eTextReader.ini; they are applied to all files. Options marked with (eTextReader.ini) can only be set by editing the eTextReader.ini, not from inside the program (at least for now). Automatically fit lines -------------------------- If checked (=default), changing any options that affect the size of the text or of the pages, will cause page formatting (line wrapping, i.e. fitting the lines to the current page width) to be (re-)done automatically. Fit when leaving menu after changes -------------------------------------- As an alternative to the previous automatic option, the reader can fit the lines whenever the menu is closed after the required changes are done, thus avoiding multiple fitting. Disable control by mouse movement ------------------------------------ By default, moving the mouse over 'Menu' or 'Help' opens these dialogs, and moving the mouse outside closes them again. The recent files list and the TOC are also closed by moving the mouse outside. If you check this option, control by mouse movement is turned off, so you will have to click for opening or closing. Enable keyboard shortcuts ---------------------------- Self explaining ... Book style ------------- Turns the book style display on or off. Auto-open last file ---------------------- The most recent file will be opened automatically when the program starts, if this option is checked. Font antialiasing (Font smoothing) ------------------------------------- This option turns font antialiasing on/off. Note that this is a system-wide setting; its previous state will be restored when eTextReader is closed. Quick page ------------- If this option is checked, typing a number will call the "Jump to page" dialog. Quick find ------------- If this option is checked, typing letters (a-z) will start the "Find" dialog. Margins ---------- The 'Margins' checkbox turns page margins on or off. Change to ------------ Set new margins (up to 99 pixels) at the four up/down controls (top, left, right, bottom) and click on 'Change to' to apply the new settings. Check 'Margins' if necessary. OTHER OPTIONS ================ Options that are not (yet) represented on the options panel. Default Font settings ------------------------ If you change the font style and/or the font size BEFORE opening a file, this will be the default for all new files. Excluded and Included Paths (eTextReader.ini) ------------------------------------------------ If you like to use eTextReader with other files than your etexts, and/or if you don't want to clutter up the ini-file with settings for files you only open once in a while, maybe from removable media, then this option might be perfect for you: The eTextReader.ini file contains lists of "Excluded Paths" and "Included Paths". While, of course, any file can still be opened - the file specific settings (bookmarks, font, etc.) will only be remembered for files from included paths. By default (if the lists are empty), all paths are included. If "Excluded Paths" are defined, the respective files will leave no 'traces' in the ini-file, i.e. no file specific options are stored and the file doesn't show up in the recent files list. The asterisk ('*') may be used as a wildcard to exclude all paths. Included paths override excluded paths. More specifically, the file path is compared with the excluded and included paths, in the given order. If the beginning of the file path is identical with at least one of the exclude/include list entries, this is considered a match (i.e. subdirectories and paths starting with the same character string will also be excluded/included!). Note: Actually, the comparison makes no difference between path and file names, so you can even specify a complete file name, or a path name and the first few characters of a file name. The example below defines all drives and directories as excluded, except those starting with "C:\My eTexts". Note that the '=' after each path is required: Example: [Excluded Paths] *= [Included Paths] C:\My eTexts= You will have to re-start eTextReader for the changes to take effect. If you exclude all paths, as in this example, I would recommend that you include the eTextReader program directory, in order to be able to customize the display of the Help.txt file. Excluded Fonts (eTextReader.ini) ----------------------------------- eTextReader keeps an internal list of 'excluded' fonts (unusable for text display, such as Wingdings, see complete list below), which are ignored and don't appear in the font list. If you have any suggestions for additional fonts to be included in the list, please email me. NOTE: Some of the fonts supplied with Windows XP (Mangal, Shruti, etc.) do not contain all Basic Latin characters. In this case, Windows uses a replacement font (with slightly different size) for displaying the text, while eTextReader still calculates the page breaks from the real height of the selected font, resulting in either too little or too much lines per page. Therefore, these XP fonts have been added to the internal exclusion list. In addition to this internal list, you can edit the "Excluded Fonts" list in eTextReader.ini. You will have to re-start the program for the changes to take effect. Note that the '=' after each font name is required: Example: [Excluded Fonts] Times New Roman= Comic Sans MS= The next time eTextReader is started, the above fonts will not be listed. Internal list of excluded fonts: Botanical Lotus Postal Barcode LotusWP Box LotusWP Icon LotusWP Int A LotusWP Int B LotusWP Type Map Symbols Marlett Math A Math B Math C Modern Monotype Sorts MS Outlook MT Extra OpenSymbol Roman RumbaKDB RumbaDL Script StarBats StarMath Symbol Terminal Webdings Wingdings Wingdings 2 Wingdings 3 New additions: Estrangelo Edessa Gautami Latha Mangal Mv Boli Raavi Shruti Tunga WST_Czec WST_Engl WST_Fren WST_Germ WST_Ital WST_Span WST_Swed Punctuation Marks (eTextReader.ini) -------------------------------------- The list of punctuation marks can be edited in eTextReader.ini. Colon and semi-colon have been added by default (as compared to previous versions up to 1.8).