Tools for AuthorIt!

Free Tools for AuthorIt

This topic really has nothing to do with Netwiz or MonTel.  But if you are looking for a good single source authoring tool have a look at http://www.author-it.com. Other than as a customer I have no connection with AuthorIt, so I guess this is a as big an endorsement as I would ever give. Which makes it a pretty big one!

This web site except for a couple of hand crafted items, has been exclusively developed with a New Zealand software program called AuthorIt!, which because of its single source capacity is also used to generate the help files for MonTel. AuthorIt! produces output that resembles most obviously MonTel application notes, but this web page http://www.netwiz.com.au/tools_for_authorit.html shows what can be done by modifying or adding templates to the HTML output, and using the free tool FSetTop.

I am a big fan of AuthorIt, and their support is first class.  The two biggest issues for me with AuthorIT V4 were the lack of an included UK English style spelling list and that it is hard to provide users with a link to specific topic when generating plain HTML output.

There is a solution to the lack of a UK English style spelling list. I have another solution which involves a bit more work - basically converting the Open Office dictionaries for your locale into a word list and taking it from there.

For the link problem, there are a number of strategies. Most involve server side scripts. The weakness of server side scripts is that they rarely show the table of contents open in the correct (or any) position.

This solution uses a small fast and compact 'c' program to generate a frame set for each topic, which shows the table of contents open at the correct place. Moreover, each topic's frame set can be distributed with the rest of the HTML output, so you can view them from any location with out requiring a server to generate the framesets on the fly. As an example by clicking on this link, you can be taken directly into the MonTel application notes to see a partial list of PABX systems supported by MonTel: http://www.netwiz.com.au/appnotes/i1872.htm. And while this example is on the web, it could equally be in a local folder on your computer.

This page is called Tools for AuthorIt! but in fact since the all the functionality of several tools has been rolled into one program is a little bit of a misnomer now. The Program is FSeTop.exe.

Frame Set Topics (FSeTop) is a command line program, that is, a program designed to be run from the command prompt or DOS box, usually as part of a batch file.

Not only can Fsetop generate frame sets, but it can also generate bread crumb navigation bars, and compress the HTML text file to make downloads just that little bit faster by stripping out redundant spaces, tabs, line feeds and carriage returns. This page has a bread crumb navigation bar shown in dark yellow(ish) colour above the title Tools for AuthorIt!.

My thanks to Reinhard from betasystems who helped debug version 1 of FSeTop to the point where most of the changes above were fairly easy to implement.

• How FSetTop works
• Download FSeTop
• FSetTop Command line switches

See Also MonTel and other software downloads Downloads for MonTel customer sites Time Zone Utility - TZUtil Telephone Extension List

In this section Frame Sets for topics (FSetop) Fsetop Download FseTop Commands Netwiz FSetTop and Strpcr32 Licence Agreement UK English style spelling list