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)
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! If neither of the binaries work
on your system, mail me (mike@sesamgames.com) and I'll port
it (given that I can download that distribution).
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
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!
Copyright and Use
Copyright 2008 Mikael Strom.
This software may be freely used for any private or
commercial use long as it's not sold.
This software may be freely distributed with the
restrictions that
a) no fee is charged and,
b) all files in the distribution is distributed.
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
mike@sesamgames.com
_____________________________________________________________________________
File: C:\Program Files\Jadiam.org\QL2K\WIN2_\quill_view_doc
Translated by Quill-View 0.5 Beta (compiled Oct 13 2008)
Copyright 2008 Mikael Strom