From: PHYLLIS.ERCK-POOLE@OFFICE.WANG.COM ("Phyllis Erck-Poole")
Subject: re:  Authoring on PC---
Organization: Mail to News Gateway at Wang Labs
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 21:05:35 GMT

Subject:  Re:  Authoring on a PC

Reply-To:  phyllis.erck-poole@office.wang.com

Keywords:  hypertext text-retrieval authoring

Tom McGinn writes:
< My father has produced a terrific text that when printed, produces
< a "scrambled text".  This is a book that allows the reader to make
< decisions while reading the text and "branch" to other pages within
< the book.

Sounds like the "choose your own adventure" books my kids used to read.

< Clearly this document cries out for some type of Hypertext program.

It sure does.  I have been working on a similar project and have been
using a text-retrieval tool, Folio Views.  I am very pleased with it for
a number of reasons.  In addition to meeting all of the limitations of
my user-base which are similar to your requirements, their indexing is
optimized and compressed so that the runtime version of the data can
actually end up smaller than the original data.  It was fairly easy to
learn, but I have a programming background.  I also have AskSam but
haven't even cracked the cover yet, since Folio is working for my
current project.

< The text is entirely in WordPerfect, and ideally the desired
< program would take the text as is and allow him to author the
< links.

Some of the text-retrieval applications will brag about indexing the the
data in it's "native" form, thus eliminating the need to convert it.
Folio requires the conversion, but provide conversion filters for most
Word Processing formats, including WordPerfect.  I've used the one for
Word for Windows, and had a few problems in attempting to retain some of
the more sophisticated "formatting" information (namely hanging indents
and tables).

You have to add the hypertext links yourself.  The links can go to any
other place in the same file, or to another file, or even call any
external program.

< Further, if the program were also capable of including images,
< audio, and digital video (ala QuickTime) this would be a big plus.

I don't know QuickTime, but the Folio has an image viewer which displays
PCX files as well as playing audio files.

< Of course other ideal attributes would be that the runtime produced
< could be run across a wide variety of PC platforms, from an XT up
< to a 486 (maybe even a Mac?).

Folio is DOS-based ONLY, as of today, but will supposedly run on an XT
(as long as it has at least 640K RAM).  I haven't tried this
personnally.  One flavor of the runtime comes with Novell networks
because that is how they distribute their documentation.

<  I aware of ToolBook, but from my limited experience, using it
< would be a lot of work based upon the nature of the program.  Are
< there others that concentrate on hypertext?

I haven't used ToolBook, but have used Smartext (by Lotus) a little, it
is very simple to learn but since it is a Windows product (ONLY),  you
can forget about runnning that on an XT.  The version I used, 1.0 seemed
pretty immature (i.e. flakey).  Does Toolbook deliver on a DOS platform?

< Please reply directly to me as I don't get a chance to peruse these
< net groups often.

Ok, but I'm also going to post this in case others have an interest.
Could you please post a summary of any/all responses?

Folio Views is sold by Folio Corporation, Provo Utah (801)375-3700,
Folio Corporation was recently bought by Mead Data Central.

Disclaimer:  I don't work for Folio and my opinions are my own.

Good luck on the book,

Phyllis Erck-Poole
phyllis.erck-poole@office.wang.com