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Date:Mon Aug 7 10:17:10 2003 
Subject:Re: poplog interactive mode - PS [jpop] 
From:davidy 
Volume-ID:1030807.05 

> PS, anyone know what the control codes in REF files mean? Is there a 
> document that describes them? They will be converted to htmlo on the fly 
> for the eventaual version that includes a doc-browser and need to know 
> what to do with the char-codes. Also, How are they indexed? I have 
> looked at some HELP and TEACH files and the system seems to magically 
> know where they link to...

If it's useful at all, I have code that does a reasonable job of
converting REF, HELP etc. files to HTML, including the control codes
for bold, italic etc. You can find it at

    http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/davidy/poplog

- the links are under "Extensions to Ved to speed up editing HTML". If
you have the library you can go into a REF file and type "<ENTER> html
prep" and it will make a first pass at putting it into HTML. You could
adapt the code by stripping out the interactive parts. Unfortunately it
doesn't put in links.

I haven't found where the file representation of Ved's special
characters is documented, though there is relevant information in REF *
VEDPROCS/3.1. However, it shouldn't matter, as you can just read the
files with vedfile_line_repeater, which reads the codes into dstrings.
No need to write your own procedure to do what the system already does.
The internal representation (in dstrings) is very well documented, in
REF * STRINGS/8.

DOC, HELP, TEACH and REF files are linked in different ways. The basic
system is that a search for a document name is done in directories
specified in veddoclist, vedhelplist, vedteachlist and vedreflist. This
is activated when you do <ESC>H. On top of this some files allow you to
follow a link using the mouse - I think this is done using the "hidden
data" mechanism described in REF * STRINGS/10 and REF * ITEMISE/4.7 but
I don't know how it works in detail.

David