Quick Start Guide for ThoutReader™
v 1.9
Copyright 2005, OSoft, Inc.
The ThoutReader™ is an open source (GPL 2.0) cross-platform multi-document help system (written in Java) that organizes new and existing content. Users can browse, search, bookmark, highlight, and annotate a library of their favorite reference documentation and personal code, as well as reference books - from one program, in one format, at the same time - even off-line.
TIP: To get the most out of the ThoutReader™ please read this Quick Start Guide.
OSoft's vision is to train, educate, and help the open source community by providing a standardized platform through which open source documentation and training content will be delivered. This will speed development time by putting all of your important references at your fingertips. Once you learn how to take full advantage of the ThoutReader™, you'll find it hard to go without it.
OSoft.com is a "community" where developers congregate to contribute information as well as sell training content. We provide the conduit for publishers, authors, and developers, through the ThoutReader™, to post their content on OSoft.com and generate royalties from units sold.
Here's what you can expect from the ThoutReader™:
End Users
Thout (pronounced "th-out") was the ancient Egyptian God of Knowledge symbolized by the Ibis. OSoft's Thout logo depicts an ibis with chaos and confusion of binary information on one side and logic, order, and knowledge on the other.
TRIVIA: The binary code to the right of the ibis spells K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E.
ThoutReader™ is OSI Certified Open Source Software, licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 2, June 1991, ensuring broad adoption and future development of the project. We welcome your suggestions on how to improve the product. Please post your comments/suggestions to our user forum at www.osoft.com/forum.
For licensing and version information, click Help on the Menu bar as shown below.
The ThoutReader™ and ThoutCreator™ are open source projects. As such, we welcome volunteer assistance. The following people contributed to the development of the ThoutReader™:
Gary Varnell - Project Leader
Maxim Berdyugin
Rick Blair
Mark Carey
Peter Cooner
David Hadley
Alexander Semejonov
Andrew Singleton
If you would like to contribute your talent and skills to the further development of the ThoutReader™ open source project, please contact Gary Varnell gvarnell@osoft.com.
Key benefits of submitting work to OSoft.com:
Contact us at author@osoft.com
The ThoutReader™ comes with several "skins" that change the "look and feel" of the user interface. To change the skin, select View...Change Look and Feel... from the Menu bar and make your selection.
By default, anti-aliasing is turned "on". This reduces the unwanted jaggies between the font and the background color as shown below.
Turning anti-aliasing "off" may speed up the rendering of content on older/slower machines. To adjust anti-aliasing, select View...AntiAliasing from the Menu bar. Click once to turn off (no visible check mark). Click again to turn on (check mark).
Moving the vertical bar between the Navigation Frame and Content Frame allows you to expand or contract the viewing areas.
To hide the Navigation Frame completely, press the F4 key or select View...Show/Hide Left Menu.
To hide tabs that are not needed or used, select View...Tabs...and uncheck the tabs you no longer wish to see.
Source code may be viewed for any package. To view source, select View...View Source from the Menu bar and the source code will replace the rendered output in the Content Frame.
The toolbar provides the most commonly used functions in a visual, one-click interface. At this time it can not be customized. The toolbar was designed to "detach" from its location for the convenience of the user. Click on the doted vertical line (as shown below) or on an empty spot in the tool bar and drag it to the desired location on your screen. To return it, close the toolbar by selecting the red X.
There are numerous ways to navigate to the Next Page | Previous Page in the ThoutReader™, depending on your preference.
History buttons in the ThoutReader™ act much like they do in a web browser. They allow you to go back to a previously viewed page or forward to where you were.
The history buttons shown below are indicated by Backward on the left clock and Forward on the right clock on the toolbar.
Alternatively, you can select Navigation... History Back | History Forward from the menu bar.
While the majority of this Guide addresses menu and toolbar commands, the ThoutReader™ offers a rich feature set of keyboard commands as well. They are consistent (as much as possible) throughout the program and are summarized in the sections below.
All of the keyboard commands in the left Navigation Pane tabs work the same except as noted.
Home Key - moves the cursor to the first entry.
End Key - moves the cursor to the last entry.
Page Up Key - moves up one visible "block".
Page Down Key - moves down to the next viewable "block".
Up Arrow - moves up one entry.
Down Arrow - moves down one entry.
Left Arrow - collapses entry (such as a folder). Whre there
is none, it moves to the parent folder.
Right Arrow - expands entry. Where there is none, it moves
down one entry.
Single Click - opens the entry for viewing in the Content
Frame - Search, Notes, Highlights only.
Double Click - opens the entry for viewing in the Content Frame
- Library and Bookmark only. You may also single click and press enter.
The Content Frame is where you will most likely be spending most of your time. Keyboard commands are simple and intuitive.
Ctrl-Home - moves the cursor to the top of the viewable page.
Ctrl-End - moves the cursor to the bottom of the viewable page.
Page Up Key - moves up one visible "block".
Page Down Key - moves down to the next viewable "block".
Up Arrow - moves the page up (hold down for fast mode or tap
for slow mode)
Down Arrow - moves the page down (hold down for fast mode or
tap for slow mode)
A package is defined as a collection of content that has been prepared for viewing with the ThoutReader™. For example, this Quick Start Guide is a package, as is any referenceware, book, magazine, newspaper, or other content that can be viewed by the ThoutReader™.
Packages that can be read by the ThoutReader™ can be downloaded several ways:
Downloading and installing packages is currently a two-step process. You must download the package to your computer (desktop) and then install it from within the reader. In future versions, this will be accomplished in one step from within the reader.
Many packages at www.OSoft.com are free. These include all of the available open source application documentation. Top selling reference books and author contributed content are available for a reasonable price.
All packages, both commercial and free, may be re-downloaded from your OSoft user account at www.osoft.com. This is particularly useful if the original download was interrupted or if you choose to install your content on more than one computer owned and used by you. To do this:
IMPORTANT: In order to be visible by the ThoutReader™, packages must be installed from within the ThoutReader™. There are two ways to accomplish this:
TIP: You may install multiple files at the same time by holding down the Ctrl key and selecting the file names.
NOTE: For commercial content,
it is important that you install the Reader Registration Key BEFORE you add
the encrypted content.
Removing a package from the ThoutReader™ does not delete the package from your computer; it only removes it from the ThoutReader™ library. To remove a package from the ThoutReader™ library:
NOTE: If you remove a package, it can be reinstalled later.
The ThoutReader™ has the ability to read encrypted commercial packages. The encryption is based on the user, not the hardware the package is installed on. This means that you can install your content on any number of platforms/computers you own and use without restriction. Simply re-download the content and install your Reader Registration Key into your other machines. Encryption is entirely contained within the package itself and is designed to be minimally invasive. You only need to install the registration key once per machine. After that, you can download additional commercial content from that provider without any further action. There are no ongoing log-ins, passwords, or other requirements.
NOTE: The ThoutReader™ key is only required if you purchase commercial, encrypted content. No action is required for the download and use of free content.
NOTE: If you receive the following error message, it means that the Reader Registration Key is not installed for that package.
To add your ThoutReader™ key, do the following:
NOTE: You can store multiple Reader Registration Keys into the ThoutReader™. For example, each publisher that distributes content directly will generate their own User Registration Key. You need only install each key one time.
The ThoutReader™ comes with one pre-installed package, this Quick Start Guide. By default, the Quick Start Guide will automatically be displayed in the Content Frame the first time you open the ThoutReader™. The ThoutReader™ browse view will display your last viewed package the next time you load the ThoutReader™.
To View an index of all installed packages, click the Library Tab. Double Click any installed package to load into the Browse Tab - view in the Content Frame.
The Library Tab displays all of the installed packages in the OSoft Thout Reader/Content directory. You can organize your library by creating folders, then drag and drop packages into desired folders.
TIP: There are numerous ways to organize your library. Using folders, you can sort your packages by subject, source, or even type of content.
All of your content is shown in the Library Root Folder.
To create a folder/sub-folder, select the root you want the folder to be displayed
in and right click anywhere in the Library Tab...select Add
Folder
Drag and drop selected contents into the desired folder.
TIP: Organizing your library will speed searches by allowing you to quickly designate which file folder(s) of content to search in Advanced Search. For example: Place all of your Linux documentation in a folder called Linux. When you conduct a search, you can specify All Content or just the content in the Linux folder. See Search Tab for details.
Select a package in the Library...right-click...and select Package Properties. This will display specific information about the package including name, style sheet used, copyright, author, and other pertinent information.
The Library Tab displays all of the installed packages in the OSoft Thout Reader/Content directory. Click on any package name and the index for that package will automatically display in the Browse Tab Navigation window.
All of your content is depicted in the Library Root Folder. You can organize your library by creating additional sub-folders; then drag and drop packages into desired folders.
To create a new sub-folder, Right Click on the desired Parent folder and click Add Folder. Name the folder and press Enter.
You can move packages around in your library. Simply drag and drop package names from one location to another. We recommend you put "vertical content" in a common folder. For example: Content of a similar subject or source in the same folder. This will make finding and searching your content easier.
Folders must be empty to be deleted. right click the empty folder and select Remove Folder.
To rename a folder, select the desired folder, right click and select Rename Folder. Type in new name and hit enter.
The Browse Tab displays the index of the selected package from the Library.
When you select a topic from the index, the content will be displayed in the
Content Frame.
Click on the desired topic you wish to see and it will be displayed in the Content Frame. Click the left or right arrows on your keyboard to expand or collapse categories.
To navigate within the Browse Tab, click on the desired topic or use the keyboard
commands:
To see a list of keyboard commands, Right-Click anywhere in the Browse Navigation
Frame.
Copy and paste functionality is dependent on the package and the restrictions the authors/publishers place on it. All free/open source content has no restrictions and can be copied and pasted. ALL code, regardless of the type of package, can be copied and pasted. This is invaluable for long or complicated sample code.
To copy non-encrypted content, select desired content with your mouse (it will turn light blue):
OSoft has made it easy to copy "clean" versions of code. To the upper left of each code block you will notice a small "copy icon". When you click on the icon, an OSoft ThoutReader Code Window opens up with the content identified by the copy icon. This content may be copied/pasted/printed as needed using any text editor or word processing program.
Printing current in the View Pane is supported in ThoutReader™ v.1.8 and higher.
Code - all code can be copied, pasted, and printed.
Non encrypted packages - the entire package can be copied and pasted or printed.
Encrypted packages - The ability to copy/paste/print is determined by the author/publisher.
There are two ways to print the contents of the Content Frame. You may select
File...Print Page
The second (and easier) method is to simply click the print icon on the toolbar.
The power of the ThoutReader™ is evident in its awesome search capability.
The normal search only searches the current (open) package. To conduct a normal search:
NOTE: We recommend you start by selecting TOC. This will search the Table of Contents for your term and speed up the search time. All Text searches the entire document for ANY INSTANCE of that word. It is much slower and could generate thousands of hits, depending on the search term and size of document.
The ThoutReader™ now provides for a Quick Search. While viewing your document in the Content Frame, right click and select Quick Search TOC (table of contents) or Quick Search All Text.
TIP: Double-click a word or select a phrase in the View Pane... right click and select one of the Quick Search options, and the search box will automatically fill in with that word or phrase.
NOTE:
The Advance Search offers more options and can broaden your search to specific packages or all packages. To conduct an advanced search:
Open the advanced search by doing one of the following:
Select one or more of the following advanced options you wish to use in your search:
Search Text
Enter the search term.
Content
Select the documentation you wish to search. You will notice that the selections in the Advanced Search mode are formatted identically to your Library Tab. By default, the current package is selected. Your other choices are:
How to Search Section
What to Search Section
Notes - The ThoutReader allows you to search Notes Titles, All Note Text, or
Ignore note search.
Package - Table of Contents (default), All Note Text, or Ignore package search
(when you only want to search notes)
Enter the search term and click Search or Enter
on your keyboard.
To view, select the results in the Navigation Frame and it will render in the Content
Frame. Matches will be highlighted in green.
HINT: This is where organizing your files in the library comes in handy. For example, if you create a folder in your library called PHP and place all of your PHP content in that folder, you can select that folder in Advanced Search and it will search only the contents of that folder.
Search results will be rendered in the Navigation Window. When you click on
a topic in Navigation Window, your search terms will be displayed in the Content
Window, highlighted in green.
Manage your search results by right-clicking on any search result in the Navigation Window and follow the menu instructions to move from one term to the next. Or, just use your mouse.
Once a page is displayed, you can search it for specific words, phrases, or other matches by pressing Ctrl-F on your keyboard. This opens up the display as shown below:
Enter your search term and it will be displayed in green in the View Pane. To go to the next | previous instance, select the left or right arrows. Close this feature by selecting the X.
Bookmarks are global and are recorded in the Bookmark Tab for all installed packages. This easy reference allows you to quickly move to important reference locations in any installed package.
Once you have content in the Content Window that you wish to bookmark for later retrieval, you may either:
Choose a name for the Bookmark and select enter. Your bookmarked section can be retrieved from any open package.
The ThoutReader™ allows you to create file folders to organize your bookmarks (similar to creating folders in the Library Tab).
You can organize your bookmarks by creating additional sub-folders; then drag and drop bookmarks into the desired folders.
To create a new sub-folder, right click on the desired parent folder and select Add Folder or [Alt + a], name the folder and press Enter.
You can move bookmarks around by dragging and dropping bookmarks from one location to another. We recommend you put "vertical content" in a common folder. For example: Create a folder called Linux. Place your Linux documentation packages, "How To" packages, and your favorite Linux book packages in the Linux folder. This will make finding and searching your content easier.
Folders must be empty to be deleted. There are two ways to delete a folder:
To rename a folder, select the desired folder, right click and click Rename or [Alt + r].
Right click on any Bookmark in the Navigation Window and follow menu instructions to move, delete, or rename bookmarks.
To delete a bookmark:
There are two ways to select highlighted text. Once you left click and select the text you wish to highlight, you may either:
Click the Highlights Tab to view the list of highlights for that package. The first 40 characters of the highlighted text are shown in the Highlights Tab. A single click on the highlighted list in the Highlight Tab will take you to the appropriate place in the document.
Highlighting can be used intermittently or "turned on" for continual highlighting. For single highlighting, select your text and press the Highlight icon on the toolbar. To leave highlighting turned on, press the highlight icon once to turn on (marker will display a green background) and again to turn off. With the marker turned on, all text you select in the Content Frame will automatically be highlighted.
The easiest and most effective way to delete highlighted text is to select the entry in the Highlights Tab...right click...Delete. You may delete multiple highlights by holding down the Ctrl or Shift keys while making your selections.
Viewing of notes only applies only to the currently opened package. There are two types of notes - Private and Public. The Notes function is turned on/off through Notes on the Menu bar.
Private notes allow you to add personal notes, tips, and ideas to the existing content. It's your space. You can edit existing notes or add multiple notes to each section. Private notes and related icons are yellow in color.
To view Private notes select Notes...Private Notes from the Menu
bar
To hide Private notes select Notes...Private Notes from the Menu bar
to remove the check mark.
To add a note, you have to turn the feature "on". To do this, select Notes ...Private Notes from the Menu bar
Once the Notes feature has been turned on, a yellow + icon will appear in each section of the package. When you select the icon, a pop-up box appears for your note information as seen below:
Complete note and press OK.
To edit a note, select the yellow edit icon from within the note.
You can also right click on the note in the Notes Tab...Select Edit Note.
When viewing the note, select the delete icon from inside the note.
Alternatively, click on the Notes Tab...Select the note you wish to delete...Right
click on the note...Select Delete Note
The entire private note list for an open package may be viewed from the Notes Tab. Select Private Notes from the drop-down box as shown below:
Exporting notes allows you to share your notes with others. You may export notes from the current package or all of your notes. The notes are saved as an .xml file. When you export, you may specify the name and location of the file, however, the .xml suffix must remain. To export notes, select Notes...Export...choose Current Package or All Packages. Follow the prompts for naming and file location.
When you import notes, all of the annotations will show up within the View Pane and in the Notes Tab. To import notes, select Notes...Import Private Notes, and select the .xml file you wish to install.
Public notes promote active community participants to become formal contributors to the package. Often, public contributions are more "valuable" than the original content as they provide insight from real-world users. Public notes and related icons are blue in color.
To view public notes select Notes...Public Notes from the Menu bar
To hide public notes select Notes...Public Notes from the Menu bar to
remove the check mark.
Public notes may be downloaded for the current package or for all packages. Make your selection from Notes menu as shown below:
To add a public note, you have to turn the feature "on". To do this,
Select Notes ...Public Notes from the Menu bar.
NOTE: You must be connected to
the internet to add a public note to OSoft's web server.
When you turn public notes on, a blue + icon will appear in each section of the package. Selecting the icon will open your default browser and take you to OSoft's website.
This unique feature of the ThoutReader™ allows you to convert any public note into a personal note. Perhaps you only wish to view only the best public notes or responses from the author(s) as part of your notes. To accomplish this, click the public-->private note icon as shown below:
Notice that the public (blue) note is duplicated as a private (yellow) note. By turning public notes off and private notes on, you have access to a repository of great private notes from leading experts.
Only the author of a public note can edit or delete it. This must be done from
their OSoft user account at www.osoft.com. Users can edit a public note created
by others by turning the public note private.
NOTE: OSoft reserves the right
to edit or remove any public note deemed objectionable as defined by our posting
guidelines.
Whenever OSoft updates a package that you have previously downloaded, you will be notified by e-mail and the new version will automatically be placed in the download section of your individual user log-in at www.OSoft.com. This will allow you to download the updated package at your convenience. It is important that you keep your user information current.
NOTE: If you replace an older version package with a newer version, your appended notes from the older version can still be read in the newer version.
To upgrade the ThoutReader™, Select Help...Update from the Menu bar. OSoft's current version of the ThoutReader™ will be compared with your version and you will be given an option to update if you are out of sync. You should check for updates often as OSoft releases one or more new versions a month. We recommend you remove your current version of the ThoutReader™ before installing the newer version.
The best source for answers to your questions is the General Support section of OSoft's User Forum. You may also find OSoft's Customer Support section helpful. If all else fails, please contact us at support@osoft.com.