IntraDOS Help File


The topics in yellow below are covered in this help file. To view a topic, click on the topic with a mouse or Tab to it and press Enter.

Using the menu at the top
"Surfing" the Intranet
Options for Launching IntraDOS
Setting up IntraDOS on a Network
Known Limitations
How to Register
Redistribution Limitations


How to use the IntraDOS menu

Menu entries at the top of the screen control the operation of IntraDOS. You can make selections on the menu by a mouse or the keyboard. Using the mouse, simply click on selections with the left mouse button as in typical MS-Windows programs.

Using the keyboard, you can press the Alt key to activate the menu. Menu entries will have one letter (the "accelerator key") that stands out in a different color. You can either press that key to activate a particular menu selection or use the left, right, up, and down arrow keys to move to a menu selection, which is then activated by pressing Enter.

Here is a list of keystrokes to make menu selections:

Get help: ..................................................... Alt+h
Get out of (exit) IntraDOS: ................................... Alt+x
Go back to the next earliest page you looked at: .............. Alt+b
Fo ahead to the next more recent page you looked at: .......... Alt+a
Go to your start-up "home" page: .............................. Alt+o
Take a look at the history of pages you've surfed: ............ Ctrl+h
Find (search for) particular text somewhere in the document: .. Ctrl+f
Look for more of the same text without retyping: .............. F3
Manually choose a file to open from a diolog box: ............. Ctrl+o


Surfing the Intranet

"Surfing" the intranet involves movement within the document on screen and using links to jump to other documents.

Movement on screen

You can scroll through the document on screen with the up, down, left, and right cursor keys and the PageUp and PageDown keys, as well as using the mouse to click on the ends of scrollbars. You can also use other keys as follows:
Home: .......... Moves to the left-hand side of the page
End: ........... Moves to the right-hand side of the page
Ctrl+Home: ..... Moves to the beginning (top) of the page
Ctrl+End: ...... Moves to the end (bottom) of the page

Additionally, you can search for particular text by pressing Ctrl+F, and to repeat the search without retyping the text you're looking for, you can press F3.

"Hypertext": Jumping to other documents by links

As with other browsers, you can move through the information system by activating links. In IntraDOS, the links appear in yellow. A link does not change color after you have activated a link.

Like popular Windows-based browsers, you may follow hypertext links by clicking on them with a mouse.

IntraDOS also allows you to follow a link without a mouse by means of the TAB key. To select a link, press TAB until the desired link is highlighted (or Shift+TAB to cycle through the links in the reverse direction). Then, you press ENTER to activate the link. If you scroll so that the active link is out of view, IntraDOS interprets a TAB as calling for the first link on the screen rather than the next link in order.

"Hypertext": Jumping to other documents by the menu

IntraDOS keeps the links you select in sequence. You can look at that sequence by pressing Ctrl+h, or activating the menu by alt+ View, History. You can then go to one of the links in the list by selecting it and pressing Enter.

More commonly, you can move backward in the sequence by clicking the Back menu item, and you can move forward in the sequence by clicking the Ahead item. The Home item takes you back to the start-up, or "home" page.

You can also manually select a document to view after pressing Ctrl+o or activating the menu by alt+ File, Open.


Launching the program:

If you start IntraDOS by adding to the command line a particular file, IntraDOS will use that file as the start-up file. If you do not add a start-up file to the command line, IntraDOS will look for the file "HOME.HTM" in the current directory. If it finds HOME.HTM, it will open it as the start-up file; otherwise, it will display a dialog box for you to identify the correct start-up file.

Thus, you can launch IntraDOS by a batch file with lines such as the following:

Batch file lines Comments
Set USER=ABC Where "ABC" is the user's unique initials
  • Probably unnecessary and undesirable if the network software has already done it.
  • x: Change to the public drive, if necessary.
    cd\public\html Change to the starting directory, if necessary.
  • Not necessary if "begfile.htm" in the next line includes the full path.
  • intrados [[path]begfile.htm] Launch IntraDOS with begfile.htm as the start-up file.
  • If IntraDOS is not in the starting directory, it needs to be in the user's MS-DOS path.
  • If begfile.htm is not in the current directory, the full path needs to be specified.
  • If the file "begfile.htm" is omitted on the command line, IntraDOS will open Home.HTM, if it exists in the current directory, or ask the user to specify a file.

  • Recommended preliminaries on a network:

    1. Place your startup HTML file in a public directory. This directory will store the list of pre-parsed files and the pre-parsed files themselves. For example, create the public directory x:\public\html. The startup file might be x:\public\html\home.htm. The list file x:\public\html\IntraDOS.lst will be generated. Parsed files of the form x:\public\html\idpf.1 (2,3,4, etc.)

      Because IntraDOS places temporary files in this directory, users need to have read, write, create, and delete rights in this directory. If the network administrator wishes to give read-only access to certain files, those should be placed in a separate directory where users have limited rights.

      Place the program file IntraDOS.EXE in a directory on your network server accessible to those with DOS machines who will use it. It need not be in the same public directory in which the startup HTML file is located.

    2. If not already done, each user should have his/her environmental variable USER set to three letters (initials). To avoid conflicts, the initials should be unique. Most machines on a network have this variable set at the time of logging in to the network.

    3. Prepare one or more appropriate start-up files (home pages) for network users. Since this program allows the network administrator to call any file as a start-up file, he/she can set the browser to start with different files that may be appropriate to different contexts in the office setting.

    4. Pre-parse long (if not all) HTML files on a fast machine (usually the network administrator's machine).


    Known Limitations:

    This browser should be able to represent any moderately well-formulated ordinary page of HTML, but I cannot guarantee that all pages can be parsed or that, if parsed, all original data appears on them.

    Here are some of the more important known limitations:

    Not a Web Browser
    You cannot use IntraDOS to access the internet, and it does not work with a modem. The HTML files must be available on the user's computer or network.

    Look/Feel
    IntraDOS does not support images (which are marked by è).

    Colors are limited to 16 and cannot be changed by coding the HTML page. Thus links have one color (yellow) whether one has used them or not. Bold is always white, and italics are always purple.

    Only one font and font size are available. Emphasis can be accomplished only by codes such as <B>, <I>, <H1>, etc. Codes such as <Font +1> will do nothing.

    Frames are not supported. Network administrators should have IntraDOS users link to the most informative frame page.

    Size of Files
    IntraDOS will not handle a file that generates a screen length longer than 32,000 lines or wider than 32,000 characters. I have loaded pages with over 200 links and had no memory problems, but there is some ultimate limit on the number of links that a page can have.

    Lists
    Bullet-like characters in all lists are standardized by the program, not established by the HTML author.

    Nesting of lists (<UL> and <OL>) is supported up to 3 levels. Deeper levels of nesting will yield unpredictable results.

    Due to formatting limitations, numeric ordered lists may be appear disordered if there are more than 99 list items, and alphabetical ordered lists greater than 26 (a-z or A-Z) will repeat.

    For the same reason, Roman numerals are not supported in ordered lists.

    Tables
    Nesting of tables, i.e., one table within another, is not supported and will yield unpredictable results.

    Tables wider than the screen are not supported, and will yield unpredictable results. Therefore, tables with many columns are also problematic, since space must be allowed for the cell walls and text in each.
    One less than ideal solution is the use <PRE> and </PRE> tags and place a preformatted table between them.

    Tables narrower than the screen are expanded to fill the screen. Thus, text set to appear on either side of a table, but not within it, will appear elsewhere.

    Tables with about 32,000 characters may cause unpredictable results. Tables whose cells exceed 16,000 characters may cause unpredicable results.
    Solution: Break up your tables/cells into smaller tables/cells.

    In tables with different numbers of cells per row, cells are filled with data from left to right. Thus some unusual configurations of tables are not supported.

    Special formatting of tables, such as combining cells and cellpadding, is unsupported. Borders are either off (invisible) or on (single line around each cell).

    Because of line width limitations, column widths are calculated without regard to command arguments such as <TD width=60%>.


    REGISTRATION


    This program is shareware. If you wish to use it beyond a 30 day trial period, please register your version.

    The normal registration fee is $35 for a stand-alone computer, $15 per additional computer on a local network, with a maximum fee for an entire local area network of $80. Certain discounts also apply:

    Register by sending a check or money order to:

    Charles M. Cork, III
    P. O. Box 6897
    Macon, Georgia 31208-6897

    Please include your name, your business's name (if applicable), your mailing address, and your e-mail address. By return e-mail or mail, you will get registration information.

    Beyond the satisfaction of doing the right thing and making the registration request at the end of the program disappear, registration will entitle you to notifications of upgrades (free to registered users, unless the upgrade is really colossal) and to such support as I may be able to give via e-mail to ccork000@counsel.com.


    Redistribution Limitations:

    The unregistered version of IntraDOS may be freely distributed by any means so long as no files are altered, added or deleted.

    A registered user of IntraDOS at the $80 level may freely distribute the program without alteration or deletion of files, except that the Home.HTM file may be altered and other files may be added. This will allow a registered user to provide an off-line reader of the user's HTML materials.