Using Manual Maker

Preparing the SimpleText files

SimpleText files can contain various fonts, styles, colors, and pictures.  You should use the standard fonts provided by Apple.

There are at least four ways to insert a picture in a SimpleText file:

1.  Use my “Text Editor Patches” to modify SimpleText so that you will be able to paste in pictures.

2.  Prepare the document in some real word processor, then use the freeware TeachText/SimpleText XTND to save it as a SimpleText file.

3.  Prepare the document in the freeware text editor Style Eyes, which lets you insert pictures by pasting, and then save as a SimpleText file.

4.  (The original computer geek method.)  Mark the location of the top of the picture by typing an option-space character.  This character is invisible, but is not the same as an ordinary space.  Leave enough blank lines for the picture.  Then use ResEdit or Resorcerer to insert the picture as a PICT resource in the resource fork of the SimpleText file.  The resource ID of the first picture should be 1000, with later pictures having consecutive ID numbers.

What goes in the folder

Manual Maker has no user interface whatsoever.  Or perhaps I should say that it uses the Finder as its interface.  It decides what to do based on what is in the folder with it.  The folder containing Manual Maker should contain:

1. One or more SimpleText documents to be used as chapters.  They can be editable (type 'TEXT') or read-only (type 'ttro'), and either type can contain embedded pictures.  Please note that the chapter files MUST be SimpleText files, not just any text files.  This is my lazy way of ensuring that they are not too big and have the required style resources.

2. A Manual Reader.  You could use the almost-empty manual provided in this package, or a previous version of the manual you are building, or a copy of this manual.  Its text and pictures will be replaced with the chapters you provide.  If you want to use a different icon, just use the Finder to give it a custom icon.  If you are using very large pictures (say, full-screen snapshots in Thousands of Colors), you may need to increase Manual Reader’s memory partition so that it will be able to load the pictures into memory.  If you want to change the initial size of the window, you will have to use ResEdit or Resorcerer to edit the WIND resource.

Any files in the folder that are not SimpleText files or applications will be ignored by Manual Maker.

The order of the chapters

The chapters are inserted in the manual in an order based on their positions in the folder, in icon view.  The order is the same as the order in which you read English: top to bottom, and left to right within each line.  (For instance, note that in the picture above, “Using Manual Maker” comes before “Distribution and Licensing”.)  You should probably turn on “Snap to grid” in the Views control panel to remove the guesswork about vertical positions.

Sections menus

A chapter may or may not have a menu of sections.  If you want a menu of sections, mark each section title by typing a tab character at the end of the title.  Do not use any tab characters that are not section markers.

If you wish, the first section marker can be empty.  That is, a tab character all by itself on a line.  In the Sections menu, this will be represented by the word “Top”.

Saved chapter type

Normally, when you save a chapter of a manual as a SimpleText file, it will be saved as the read-only type of SimpleText file.  But there are some types of chapters, such as registration forms, that you might want saved in editable form.  Indicate such chapters by selecting their icons and applying the first label color in the Labels menu.  Apple calls this label “Essential”, but you may have changed the name.

Running Manual Maker

When you launch Manual Maker, the normal result is that it spins a beachball cursor for a few seconds and then quits.  But there are a few situations that make it display a warning dialog:  When it can’t find any chapters, when it can’t find a Manual Reader, when the Manual Reader is locked, when a chapter file is too big to be a real SimpleText file, and when it encounters an error when processing a chapter.  In the latter case, the error message contains a standard MacOS error code.  Here are interpretations of two of the more likely error codes:

-39:  The chapter file lacked a resource fork.  This could happen, I suppose, if you made it with TeachText rather than SimpleText.

-192:  The chapter file had a resource fork but lacked a style resource.  Perhaps you tried to cheat by writing the text with some other text editor, and then changing the creator code to that of SimpleText.