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                            Quill-View Documentation


         Introduction

         Quill-View  was written because I got tired of firing  up QL2K
         every  time  I  needed  to  read a Quill document. Writing the
         code  was  more  complicated  than  anticipated, and there are
         still  a  few  things  that needs to be done. However  it does
         formats  all  documents  that  i use properly now. I hope that
         you  find  it  useful.  If  you do, drop me a mail and tell me
         that you like it!

         Quill-View currently runs on the following OS's:

         - Windows XP and Vista
         - QL/QDOS
         - Debian 4
         - Ubuntu 8
         - Fedora 3 through 9 (and Red Hat of course)
         - OS X

         The  distributed  binaries  are  likely  to  run on most other
         distributions  as the code only uses stdlib. If you're unsure,
         just try and you'll find out!

         Distribution

         The  distribution is contained in a zip file, and contains the
         following files:

         quill_view_doc          This document   (Quill).
         quill_view_html         "               (html).
         quill_view_txt          "               (text).

         quill-view-fc3          Binary for Fedora 3-9.
         quill-view-fc3-static   See comment below.
         quill-view-debian4      Binary for Debian 4.
         quill-view-ubuntu8      Binary for Ubuntu 8.
         quill-view.exe          Binary for Windows XP/Vista.
         quill_view_zip          Zip file containing QDOS binary.
                                 Unzip in QDOS to get correct header 
                                 information for the executable.
          
         If  everything  else fails, try to  run quill-view-fc3-static.
         This  file has static linked stdlib which, at least in theory,
         should  make it very compatible over most Intel distributions.
         However,  the  executable  is  large and not really an optimal
         solution. I put it in as a last resort...

         Installation

         There  is  no installation necessary. Just grab the applicable
         binary  from the distribution  and put it wherever you want it
         to  be, preferably in your path if you're running Linux. There
         are no environment variables or anything else to worry about.

         Windows XP/Vista

         This  port  behaves  different  from the others. There are two
         ways to use Quill-View under Windows:

         1)  Place  quill-view.exe  on  your  desktop and just Drag and
         Drop  a  Quill  document on the program icon. The file will be
         translated  and  your  default  browser  started  to  show the
         document.  If  you hold down the Alt-Key while dropping you'll
         get  a  text   file instead, shown in notepad.exe (or whatever
         editor  you  have  associated with *.txt files). Regardless of
         which  editor  you have, make sure that you have a fixed-width
         font  selected,  or  things  will look bad. Text files created
         are  in  UTF-8  format to enable special QDOS characters to be
         displayed  properly, like arrows and international characters.
         Notepad,  Wordpad  and  most  standard  editors  today support
         UTF-8,  but  if  you  have something more exotic you might see
         some  strange  characters  in  the  text.  If  you have placed
         quill-view.exe  on  the  desktop  and drop a Quill document on
         the icon, the translated file will be stored in
          
              C:\Documents And Settings\<user-name>\quill-view.txt 
         or
              C:\Documents And Settings\<user-name>\quill-view.html

         Note  that  each  time  you  drag and drop a file you'll over-
         write  the  previous file. In other words, if you want to keep
         a  text/html  copy of the document you'll have to save it with
         another name. 

         2)  The  second  option  is  to  batch  convert files from the
         command line. The format is 

              quill-view.exe -t|-m infile outfile

         where  -t  translates  to text and -m to html. You must supply
         both infile (the Quill document) and outfile.

         Linux (also valid for OS X)

         The  Linux  port  works  as  you'd  expect. You can either use
         quill-view  as  a  filter  for  piping (using stdin-stdout) or
         give  source  and  target  filenames  on the command line. The
         format is:

              quill-view [-t|-m] [source-file [target-file]]

         where  -t  gives  UTF-8  text  and -m gives HTML. If no format
         specifier  is  given,  -t  is  assumed.  If you enter only the
         source-file,  output goes to the console (stdout), and is thus
         a nice way to view files quickly. Another convenient use is

              quill-view my_doc | less
         or   
              cat my_doc | quill-view | less

         which  gives  you  a  text version that you can browse through
         with less (my all time Linux favorit).

         Most  modern  Linux  distributions  support UTF-8. I've tested
         quill-view  on gnome-terminal and xterm on a few distributions
         and they all shows the special characters correct. 

         QL/QDOS

         This  port  is  working just like the Linux versions, with one
         notable  exception;  the  text  output  format  is  QDOS-ANSI,
         rather  that  UTF-8.  Also  important to understand is that it
         was  compiled  with  c68  and  thus has the same QDOS 'command
         line quirks' like other programs compiled with c68.  

         Known issues in version 1.0

         - Center,  Decimal  and  Right tabs not implemented (not to be
           confused with justification which is fully implemented).
         - 'Roman'  and  'Character'  page number not implemented. Page
           number is always shown using decimal digits.
         - Page number always start from 1, 'Start page no' ignored.  
         - Soft-hyphen does not work.
         - 'Gaps between lines' not implemented.
         - Virtually  zero  error  checking. Corrupted Quill files will
           most likely cause a crash-dump.

         If you find any problems, please drop me a mail!

         Credits

         Thanks  to  Jimmy  M.  for creating the excellent Windows icon
         and  reminding  me  that the french language uses many strange
         characters (hence the UTF-8 implementation). 

         Thanks to Ralf R. for finding formating errors.



                                   *----*----*


                                  Mikael Ström 
                            Manila, October 13 2008 
                                [email protected]




____________________________________________________________________
File: quill_view_doc
Translated by Quill-View 0.6 Beta (compiled Mar 31 2015)