\help HT.help
\title Text Formatting Commands
\fgcolor 3
\bgcolor 1
\center
\underline  TEXT FORMATTING COMMANDS  \underline

\format
     When using \it HT \it to create your own documents, you should
understand a few things about how to format your text, and how to get it to
stand out nicely.

\center
The available topics are:

\freeformat
\indent 25
\link { TextCommands UNDERLINE } Underlining text. \endlink
\link { TextCommands ITALICS } Making Italic Text. \endlink
\link { TextCommands BOLD } Bold Text. \endlink
\link { TextCommands INDENT } Indenting text. \endlink
\link { TextCommands CENTER } Centering text. \endlink
\link { TextCommands FORMAT } Formatting text. \endlink
\link { TextCommands FREEFORMAT } Turning formatting off. \endlink

\format
\center
\underline How HT views and works with text files \underline

    The first thing you should know about HT, is that it is designed to
work \it with \it text files you \bol already \bold have.  The idea is that
you shouldn't have to do anything special to use HT.  If you like, there
are a wealth of options to aid in displaying your document, but you are not
forced to use them.  Without doing a thing, you should be able to load
almost any text file into HT.  The exception to this would be a text file
which contains '\\' characters.  These files will still load, but HT will
complain about unknown '\\' commands and may even produce strange text
which has various text styles turned on (accidently).  For most files this
is not a problem.

    If you wish, HT will do some formatting for you.  All you have to do is
place a \bold \\FORMAT \BOLD command at the beginning of your text file.
This instructs HT to format the text so that each line will be as full as
possible for the window width.	The \BOLD '\\FORMAT'\BOLD command tends to
be very useful when you have lots of other embedded commands and you don't
like trying to guess where line breaks will fall.  HT fills up lines on a
per paragraph basis.  That is to say, it won't keep pulling all of your
text together into one giant filled column.  HT considers a paragraph to be
any text up to a blank line.  For example, this paragraph has a blank line
following it, and that signifies to stop filling this paragraph.

    Of course you may want to be able to switch between formatted text and
untouched text.  For this there is the \BOLD \\FreeFormat \BOLD command.
This command will turn off any formatting that was taking place.  The
\\Format and \\Freeformat commands toggle between each other.  \\Format
turns formatting \bold on \bold and \\Freeformat turns formatting \bold
off.\bold   The \\Format command will stay in effect until a \\Freeformat
command is encountered, and similarily for \\Freeformat.

    When writing your document, there really isn't much you have to keep in
mind, except where you would like things to be \link { TextCommands \CENTER
} centered,\endlink  \link { TextCommands \BOLD } bolded,\endlink  \link {
TextCommands \UNDER } underlined,\endlink  or \link { TextCommands \INDENT
} indented.\endlink

    The HT \\ commands are very straightforward.  The initial backslash
is simply there to signify to HT that a command keyword is coming.  The
specific keyword depends on what you would like HT to do.  For example, if
you would like to \bold bold \bold some text, you would type the following
into your document:

\center
"The Amiga is \\bold Great.\\bold"

When displayed by \it HT, \it the word Great would appear in bold text.
Like this:

\center
"The Amiga is \bold Great.\bold"


     The '\\' commands for style changes are pretty simple.  Where you
would like a style change, you embed a '\\' command.  You put in one '\\'
command to turn the effect on, and a second '\\' command to turn the effect
off.  All HT keywords specify exactly it is you are doing.

     As another quick example, suppose you wanted some text to be
italicized for emphasis.  All you have to do is type this:

\center
Creating \\italic interactive information \\italic is pretty nifty!

Which of course gets displayed like this:

\center
Creating \italic interactive information \italic is pretty nifty!


     You can nest styles changes and a style change can be inside of a
link - but be careful as some combinations may render the text nearly
unreadable.  Oh, one other thing.  Text styles can continue across multiple
lines (just in case you were wondering about that ;-), all you have to do
is to make sure and end it somewhere.


\center
\ital Using ARexx and your favorite editor \ital

     Since you normally create documents with a text editor, and a large
number of text editors support ARexx, I have provided several sets of
macros to work with more popular text editors.	These macros save you the
tedium of typing most of these commands.

     Using these ARexx macros with the text editor DME for example, you can
simply type alt-b to automatically insert the \\bold keyword.  While that
is relatively nice, the real power comes when you wish to define a link.
You would simply press alt-s (for start link) at the position where you
would like the link to start, keep typing or moving till you  are where you
want the link to end and press alt-l.  Via the magic of ARexx, you will be
presented with a "Link" requestor, which you can point and click in and
instantly have your link defined and inserted.	In addition to that, there
is a menu from which you can choose these same functions \bold and \bold
you can test your current document in HT (saving it automagically) by
choosing a menu option.

     The interface to other text editors varies depending on the degree of
flexibility provided.  Each has its own advantages.  Chances are, the text
editor you use is covered.  There are macros provided for two editors, one
commercial - TxEd+, the other \ital FREE \ital - DME.  All you have to do
to use these macros is to copy the necessary files for your editor into
your REXX: directory, and fire up your text editor.  There may be an extra
step depending on the specific editor, so it is best to look at the
appropriate readme files for each editor.  \link { /dme/Readme } Click here
if you use Dme.\endlink   \link { /txed/Readme } Click here if you use
TxEd+.\Endlink



\underline Other Quickie things to know about text styles.\underline

    When using \it italics \it is usually best to leave a space after the
word/phrase you want italicized, as if not, part of the last letter will
get chopped off.  This is due to the way the Amiga renders text.



\UNDERLINE Final Notes \UNDERLINE

That pretty much covers a good overview of the formatting commands.  The
file \Link { TextCommands } TextCommands\endlink  has \BOLD much \BOLD more
detailed information about the individual commands and example usage.

