LatinByrd III v5 -- 1997-12-18

Welcome to Version 5 of LatinByrd III. This is the first
official release version of LatinByrd III. Update from
previous versions (LB II through LB III Beta 4) is free to
registered users - please reuse your current license keys.

LatinByrd is an RTF to HTML converter. LatinByrd converts
RTF documents, RTFD documents, and plain ASCII documents
to web pages. LatinByrd converts single documents as well as
document trees. In addition, LatinByrd also converts TIFF
and EPS images to GIF, PNG, and JPEG graphics formats.
LatinByrd is localized to English, French, and German.

LatinByrd is a commercial product. Fully licensable demo.
FREE time-limited test keys available.


NEW IN LATINBYRD III v5 (compared to b4)

- Alternate text to display instead of images
  You can now specify an alternate text for each of your images.
  (When the display of images is turned off in the user's browser,
  these texts will be shown within the empty image borders.)
  To specify an alternate text for an image, insert a marker
  directly behind that image, and enter the desired text in
  Edit's Marker Inspector.

- Storing all images in the image subfolder
  In the 'Files & Folders' preferences, you can now specify
  that all of your documents' images shall be stored in the
  given subfolder, regardless of whether they're indeed shared
  by at least two documents or not. This option will keep the
  remainder of your document tree completely free of images.

Bug fixes

- Upto (and incl.) Beta4, LatinByrd III did not correctly restore
  the font size and font color for a paragraph's text which comes
  after a link.
  This has been fixed in LatinByrd III v5.
  
- Upto (and incl.) Beta4, LatinByrd III's 'Fonts & Characters'
  preferences did freeze the application when you entered a new
  font size and then tabbed to the next text field, instead of
  pressing <Enter>.
  This has been fixed in LatinByrd III v5.
  
- Upto (and incl.) LatinByrd III Beta4, link target paths
  (i.e. directory file names) which contain umlauts or accented
  characters have not been URLified correctly.
  This has been fixed in LatinByrd III v5.
  Note that for directory and file names intended to travel
  across the internet, use of umlauts or accented characters
  is strongly discouraged, anyway.


LATINBYRD FEATURES

Conversion of Documents and Document Trees

- Single RTF, RTFD, and ASCII documents are converted
  to single web pages.
- Document trees are converted to trees of web pages.
  You can port your NS 3.x on-line help to NS/OS 4.x !
- Various hands-free, semi-automatic, and manual image
  conversion strategies are available.
- Identical images are shared. If your document tree
  contains, say, 200 occurences of the very same image
  in 50 documents, then only one single copy of this
  image gets stored. Shared images are stored in a
  designated subfolder.
- Optional storage of all images (incl. unshared ones)
  in the designated image subfolder.
- 'ALT' text for images is supported.
- Embedded files and folders are stored as .tar/.Z/.gz
  archive files.
- Validation of link targets.
- Detection of damaged documents, missing or damaged
  images, missing or damaged embedded files/folders,
  invalid link target docs, invalid link target markers,
  duplicate marker definitions, and unreachable documents.
- Selectable text and background colors.
- Selectable background image.
- Adjustable mapping of font sizes.
- Language-specific special characters are automatically
  converted to HTML format.
- Characters from special-purpose fonts like Symbol or ITC
  Zapf Dingbats are automatically rendered as inline images.
- RTF ruler settings are simulated with invisible spacer
  images and invisible HTML3.2 tables.
- With LatinByrd's Table Inspector, you can create tables
  of any desired cell layout on your own. All HTML 3.2 table
  and cell attributes are supported, plus table and cell
  background colors and images.
- Bullet chars are optionally replaced with a custom
  bullet image.
- Optional alignment of the left margin for minimal
  enforced use of tables.
- Divider images are optionally replaced with <hr> tags.
- HTML code can be embedded directly into your document's text.
- HTML code preceding your document's text will automatically
  go to the <head> section. This way, you can set your web
  page's title to your liking.
- Link buttons can be replaced by underlining (i.e. anchoring)
  some neighboring text.
- Remaining link buttons are replaced with a custom link image.
- <URL> strings are automatically turned into links.
- ASCII files in "nroff" format - UNIX man pages, for instance -
  are recognized and converted accordingly.

Note: LatinByrd is optimized to convert documents which are
in NeXT's version of RTF. Converting RTF documents created
on other platforms may deliver poor results.

Conversion of Images

- TIFF and EPS images are converted to GIF, PNG and/or
  JPEG format.
- Sync-view of GIF/PNG and JPEG versions. On-the-fly
  changes of image options are rendered immediately.
- Images can be displayed in front of any background
  color or wallpaper.
- Images can be zoomed from 25% to 800%.
- Selectable gamma correction factors.
- Selectable maximum amount of output colors, from
  256 down to 2. (GIF, PNG)
- Netscape colormap optionally applied. (GIF)
- Floyd-Steinberg error distribution optionally applied.
  (GIF, PNG)
- Selectable threshold for pure transparency. (GIF)
- For GIF and JPEG images, partial transparency is
  resolved by pre-rendering the image over the selected
  background color. For PNG images, partial transparency
  is fully preserved by creating RGBA colormaps.
- Images can be stored in interlaced/progressive format
  (default for GIF, optional for PNG and JPEG).

Note: For LatinByrd to display the contents of GIF, PNG, and
JPEG files in its image wells, you need to have an image filter
application installed. ToyViewer.app is strongly recommended,
as it can handle the new PNG format as well as ProgressiveJPEG.
ToyViewer is freeware - get it now if you still don't have a copy.

Other

- Compiled for Motorola, Intel, HPPA, and sparc.
- Requires NEXTSTEP 3.2 or higher, or OPENSTEP 4.x for Mach.
- LatinByrd is localized to English, French, and German.
- In demo mode, every 8th character is X'd out, and images
  contain a tiny DEMO string.


PRICE

Commercial license:    US$ 119
Academic license:      US$  69
Image conversion only: US$  49 (sorry, no academic discount)

FREE time-limited test keys are available.

For information on how to purchase a license key for LatinByrd,
please contact Stefan Schneider Software at stefan@ping.at,
or visit us at http://members.ping.at/stefan/index.html


CONTACT

Stefan Schneider Software
DI Stefan Schneider
Lerchenfelder St. 85/6
A-1070 Vienna, Austria, Europe
+43-1-523-5834
stefan@ping.at
http://members.ping.at/stefan/


KONTAKTADRESSE

- wie oben -


POUR INFORMATION OU ACHAT, VEUILLEZ COMMUNIQUER AVEC :
                        
SCRIBEX COMMUNICATIONS - Localisation et Distribution
Montrİal, Qc - Canada
Tİlİphone : (514) 526-3996
Internet : info@scribex.com (NeXTMail - MIME - ASCII)
WEB: http://www.scribex.com