Notes on the HTML Conversion

These manuals were originally written and laid out using Adobe® FrameMaker® on UNIX™ machines. Since few people can read this format directly, a conversion into a more interchangable format was required before a public release could be made.

After considering several possible release formats it was decided that HTML was the best candidate because:

• It can be read by many applications on many platforms
• It can be updated without tying us to any particular software
• Cross references within the manuals can be maintained easily
• The structure of the manuals can be kept
• The manuals can be easily released on-line if required
• End users can submit updates and changes with relative ease

The conversion was acheived by exporting each chapter from FrameMaker® as HTML, then post-processing the files to try to retrieve some of the structure lost by the conversion.

Finally, we manually updated some of the worst remaining bits of the HTML to try to ensure the chapters render well across all browsers.

Points to note:

• Figures are in PNG format, each figure is linked to the DrawFile original, if available
• Some of source figures were unavailable, and these have been recreated. Mainly this will be evident in the character set diagrams.
• The available character entities (symbols such as † ½ © etc) vary greatly between browsers and between fonts. These entities have been replaced with equivalent images in places to ensure they are shown correctly.
• Effects used in the original PRM, such as tabbed lists and groupings indicated by brackets have been replaced with approximations.

While we have made every effort to ensure the conversion has gone as smoothly as possible, there will inevitably be some problems we have missed. For this we apologise.

If you do discover any problems with the PRMs, please mail a report to manuals@riscos.com.