$HEADER Roadmap "A roadmap to InfoMinder V1.0"

$SECTION 1 "Introduction"
$ATTR $JUSTIFY=WF $LEFT=40 $RIGHT=580
Welcome to InfoMinder, we hope that you are happy with this product and
find that it is of use to you in your computer encounters.

This represents the first release of the InfoMinder product, we at Terrapin 
Software and Byte by Byte Corporation are committed to supporting and enhancing 
the InfoMinder system. We will keep registered users abreast of new improvements
and enhancements to the base product, as well as providing technical 
support and aid to all registered users. (To register just mail in your
registration card.)

The technical support number is currently (415)964-1860. We are
in the process of setting up a support service, so please bear with us
during the interim period. Many of the questions that you may have are
covered in the documentation and/or the example code, so please be familiar
with it before you call. You are entitled to three free hours of support 
on the phone, additional support will be billable (rate $40.00 hour).

Please read the following sections for additional information on new
information. Thank you again for joining in the InfoMinder revolution.








 Jim Becker					Scott Peterson
 President					President
 Terrapin Software				Byte by Byte Corporation

$SECTION 1 "Contents of the release disk"
All the information that you can peruse in the InfoMinder hierarchy is
available in the precompiled format on the development disk. All of it
is in the directory "IM_Source", with the exception of the example file
that forms an ancient version of the online documentation; this is in
the "infosrc" directory. Please do NOT assume that the information content
of this file reflects the current state of the products, you should use
the published documentation as a reference.

In the "c" directory are three programs, IMaker - the information compiler,
IMbuild - the document index creator, and Zapauto. The first two are 
documented in the user manual. The Zapauto program is used to convert
the C-Amiga "auto-doc" files into the IMaker input format. Source code
is included in the "C_Source" directory. Also in the C_Source directory is 
the procedural interface code that you need to talk to InfoMinder.

The "info" directory is where all the InfoMinder format information is
stored. It is subdivided into a few different directories and files
within the directories. InfoMinder has been configured (using Tool Types)
to load this information, please use it for access.


$SECTION 1 "If you are developing information..."

If you wish to develop information files for public domain use, we would
be interested in getting a copy of your information. At some point we 
hope to be able to publish all the public domain information on a compact
disk (CD). If you are developing information files for commercial use, you
MUST register with Byte by Byte before your product shipment. There is 
a nomimal licensing fee of $100.00 per year for commercial developers.

If you are developing context sensitive help information please contact
the support number if you need additional aid. We were unable to include
a production quality example of procedural interface usage at the release
time of the initial product.

$SECTION 1 "Running on WorkBench V1.1 vs. V1.2"

We strongly suggest that you run InfoMinder on the V1.2 release of the
operating system software. If you run on V1.2 there is a 30 to 40 percent
speed increase in the product. Also, some additional enhancements are
available to the user. The only disadvantage to V1.2 is that the printer
support is not totally correct.

If you run on V1.1 you will be waiting a lot more than you have to. There
is a bug in random access to a file that takes InfoMinder speed down the
proverbial tubes. Also, there is a FATAL SYSTEM DEADLOCK situation that
happens at random when accessing the menus. The symptom is that the release
of a selected menu item causes the menu to disappear but the menu banner
to stay highlighted - the pointer and the system are dead.	

If you run on V1.1 you will notice that the display and outline windows
are "deselected" when you switch between them. You MUST click on something
within the body of the window before you use the menus or functions keys.
If you do not do this, your actions are sent to the other window (not what
you want or expect).

$SECTION 1 "New additions not in the original documentation"

A couple of directives were added after the documentation went to the
printers, they are in the programs that you have and are working well.
They are as follows:


	\$PIC_FULL	<IFF_filename>

		Put up the specified IFF format file, encompassing the
		entire screen. This replaces the InfoMinder screen. 
		The left mouse key returns to the normal screen; the
		right mouse key cancels.

		The IFF file can be any resolution or number of colors
		and can either be a brush or a full screen image.
		

	\$COMMENT <anything>

		The line is treated as a comment and ignored.

	\$DELAY   <time>

		Display of information pauses for <time> tenths of 
		seconds before more information is processed. This
		is a feature related to things in the next release of
		InfoMinder that are not yet available, it will probably
		only be useful for narrative related information.


$SECTION 1 "Errata in the existant documentation and bugs"
Use of proportional fonts requires some massaging by the information creator,
you may need to experiment to see what will fit within the boundaries of the
screen.

Occasionally the system blitter (the graphics processor) "misses" and 
clears part of the selection buttons. The action of the system is not
affected, just the visual display. The buttons will come back after they
have been selected again. Also, setting the PENB to a non-zero value then
outputting text sometimes causes a line or two under the buttons the next
time the screen is cleared. I believe that these two problems come from the
same system bug; InfoMinder has no control over these problems.

If you use the \$PIC_FULL directive to put up a full screen IFF image
then leave  your system idle for "a while" the system may stop reading
user input after you click to remove the screen image. This bug exists
on both 1.1 and 1.2 versions of the system. The amount of time seems to
be somewhat over fifteen minutes, but this is just a guess.

The INVERSE mode (\$MODE=I) in textual display does not currently do 
anything, the problem is being investigated.

The \$JUSTIFY operator is limited to the absolute operation, "=", incremental
changes don't make sense. 

The "SAVEWINDOW=outline" Tool Type setting is the default, and cannot be 
changed.

Bookmarks for plain text files that are saved in an environment file 
are not accurate when you reload the saved environment, they reset to the
start of the file. 

$SECTION 1 "Hidden features in the documentation"

Missing in the documentation is a description of the various text styles
used in the menus to delineate between different information types. They
are as follows:

	Bold 		is an InfoMinder format document

	Italic		is a plain text file

	Plain		is a InfoMinder format section

	Color/underline is a directory or section containing additional
			subsections or other directories and/or files.

One of the most important features of the InfoMinder program is the 
modification of the Tool Types in the icon information context. This is
documented in the last few pages of the documentation, you are suggested 
to read it. The Tool Type directives are case-insensitive.

$SECTION 1 "Memory usage and tuning"

A number of parameters can be specified by the user depending on the amount
of memory that is available on his/her specific Amiga. These paramaters
are available using the Tool Types defined in the documentation. The 
following things allocate additional static memory:

	COLORS=<number>

		This specifies that you desire additional "bitplanes",
		allowing the default number of colors that are shown
		in IFF brush images to be increased from four to either
		eight or sixteen.

	SAVEWINDOW=display

		The "display" window is where the normal output goes.
		The product is being shipped with this option specified,
		using a little extra memory. If you disable this option
		the program will use less memory at the expense of losing
		the screen image if you bring up anything that obscures
		the display screen, such as the HELP screen or outline
		processing.


The Stack size of the Infominder image is set to ten thousand, which
is the size it was developed on. If you wish to lower this it is at 
your own risk.

InfoMinder automatically removes open files from memory when the free memory
threshhold dips below 35K of free memory. You can also manually do this
using the function key F7.

$SECTION 1 "Context sensitive help information"

One of the very important aspects of InfoMinder is the procedural 
interface to it, affording application programmers context-sensitive 
help information within their program(s). This feature of the system is fully 
functional, but there was not a production quality example to provide with
this diskette. We will try to get examples together as soon as possible,
please contact us if you need assistance in this endeavour.

If you are using this system you should try to cooperate with the
end user's InfoMinder information hierarchy, which is unknown. The
destination customers' hierarchy can be anything, so a standard 
for the context sensitive information pathname is needed. If the 
context sensitive filename that you generate is "IM:<filename>.hbin"
this will tend to clutter the root of the customers' hierarchy. I 
propose that we agree on a specific directory, "IM:csensitive/", 
that is used as the storage area for context sensitive information.

For those of you that want to take this a little further, I propose
something a little more sophisticated. You can default the directory
of the filename to "IM:csensitive/", if there is no overriding specification,
but allow the user to change it by setting a Tool Type in your programs'
icon information. For example, I can have a Tool Type named
"IM_HELPDIR=" that specifies the parameter "IM:csensitive/utilities/" as
the parameter for it. The user could then customize their environment
as neccessary. It is important to adopt standards early for the good of
all (without the IFF standard InfoMinder would not have graphics!!).