Information Presentation Facility

Last updated

Information Presentation Facility (IPF) is a system for presenting online help and hypertext on IBM OS/2 systems. IPF also refers to the markup language that is used to create IPF content. The IPF language has its origins in BookMaster and Generalized Markup Language developed by IBM. The IPF language is very similar to the well-known HTML language, version 3.0, with a range of additional possibilities. Therefore, a trained user may use virtually any word processor when creating IPF documents. The IPF language consists of 45 basic commands.

Contents

IPF files are compiled using the IPF Compiler (IPFC) into viewable INF or HLP files. IPF HLP files are distinct from the WinHelp HLP files that are prevalent in Windows.

OS/2 contains a built in viewer, and there are other viewers available for other platforms.

Example 1 - IBM

Here is a sample of IPF markup from IBM's Information Presentation Facility Programming Guide.

     .* This is a comment line      :userdoc.      :title.Endangered Mammals      :h1 res=001. The Manatee       :p.      The manatee has a broad flat tail and two flipper      like forelegs.  There are no back legs.      The manatee's large upper lip is split in two and      can be used like fingers to place food into the      mouth.  Bristly hair protrudes from its lips,      and almost buried in its hide are small eyes, with      which it can barely see.       :euserdoc. 

Example 2 - PM123 User's Manual

:lm margin=2.:font facename=Helv size=24x10. :p.:hp8.Welcome to PM123 !:ehp8. :font facename=Helv size=16x8. :p.:p. Hello and welcome to the wonderful world of digital music on OS/2. First we must congratulate you for choosing the best MPEG-audio player available for OS/2! PM123 has been in development since beginning of 1997 and has become the most advanced player on OS/2. Some of you may have used the earlier betas of PM123 and for your convenience, here are the new features in this release: .br :ul compact. :li. New skin options, allowing PM123 to be modified to just about anything.  :li. Graphical :hp2.equalizer:ehp2., including pre-amplification and band mute. :li. Support for plugins, a :hp2.spectrum analyzer:ehp2. and :hp2.oscilloscope:ehp2. plugin. :li. :hp2.Playlist Manager:ehp2. for users, allowing easier managing of playlists. :li. Better HTTP streaming support: support for URLs in playlist, and M3Us for playlists. :li. Recursive directory adding. :li. Commandline and remote control of PM123. :li. General improvements in all parts of the player. :eul. .br .br :p. 

Status of IPF

IPF is still used as part of OS/2's latest incarnation, ArcaOS. It is otherwise rarely used, although there are several tools that can read or write IPF files.

Help Viewers

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Markup language</span> Modern system for annotating a document

A markuplanguage is a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document or to enrich its content to facilitate automated processing.

gedit Linux text editor

gedit is a text editor designed for the GNOME desktop environment. It was GNOME's default text editor and part of the GNOME Core Applications until GNOME version 42 in March 2022, which changed the default text editor to GNOME Text Editor. Designed as a general-purpose text editor, gedit emphasizes simplicity and ease of use, with a clean and simple GUI, according to the philosophy of the GNOME project. It includes tools for editing source code and structured text such as markup languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doxygen</span> Free software for generating software documentation from source code

Doxygen is a documentation generator and static analysis tool for software source trees. When used as a documentation generator, Doxygen extracts information from specially-formatted comments within the code. When used for analysis, Doxygen uses its parse tree to generate diagrams and charts of the code structure. Doxygen can cross reference documentation and code, so that the reader of a document can easily refer to the actual code.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graphviz</span> Software package for graph visualization

Graphviz is a package of open-source tools initiated by AT&T Labs Research for drawing graphs specified in DOT language scripts having the file name extension "gv". It also provides libraries for software applications to use the tools. Graphviz is free software licensed under the Eclipse Public License.

RPG is a high-level programming language for business applications, introduced in 1959 for the IBM 1401. It is most well known as the primary programming language of IBM's midrange computer product line, including the IBM i operating system. RPG has traditionally featured a number of distinctive concepts, such as the program cycle, and the column-oriented syntax. The most recent version is RPG IV, which includes a number of modernization features, including free-form syntax.

reStructuredText is a file format for textual data used primarily in the Python programming language community for technical documentation.

Online help is topic-oriented, procedural or reference information delivered through computer software. It is a form of user assistance. The purpose of most online help is to assist in using a software application, web application or operating system. However, it can also present information on a broad range of subjects. Online help linked to the application's state is called Context-sensitive help.

Generalized Markup Language (GML) is a set of macros that implement intent-based (procedural) markup tags for the IBM text formatter, SCRIPT. SCRIPT/VS is the main component of IBM's Document Composition Facility (DCF). A starter set of tags in GML is provided with the DCF product.

Textile is a lightweight markup language that uses a text formatting syntax to convert plain text into structured HTML markup. Textile is used for writing articles, forum posts, readme documentation, and any other type of written content published online.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Markdown</span> Plain text markup language

Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber created Markdown in 2004 as a markup language that is easy to read in its source code form. Markdown is widely used for blogging and instant messaging, and also used elsewhere in online forums, collaborative software, documentation pages, and readme files.

This is an overview of software support for the OpenDocument format, an open document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents.

OpenOffice.org XML is an open XML-based file format developed as an open community effort by Sun Microsystems in 2000–2002. The open-source software application suite OpenOffice.org 1.x and StarOffice 6 and 7 used the format as their native and default file format for saving files. The OpenOffice.org XML format is no longer widely used, but it is still supported in recent versions of OpenOffice.org-descended software.

JSDoc is a markup language used to annotate JavaScript source code files. Using comments containing JSDoc, programmers can add documentation describing the application programming interface of the code they're creating. This is then processed, by various tools, to produce documentation in accessible formats like HTML and Rich Text Format. The JSDoc specification is released under CC BY-SA 3.0, while its companion documentation generator and parser library is free software under the Apache License 2.0.

The following is a comparison of e-book formats used to create and publish e-books.

fpGUI Graphical user interface toolkit in Object Pascal

fpGUI, the Free Pascal GUI toolkit, is a cross-platform graphical user interface toolkit developed by Graeme Geldenhuys. fpGUI is open source and free software, licensed under a Modified LGPL license. The toolkit has been implemented using the Free Pascal compiler, meaning it is written in the Object Pascal language.

help (command) Command in various command line shells

In computing, help is a command in various command line shells such as COMMAND.COM, cmd.exe, Bash, qshell, 4DOS/4NT, Windows PowerShell, Singularity shell, Python, MATLAB and GNU Octave. It provides online information about available commands and the shell environment.

Microsoft Help Viewer (HV) is the offline help system developed by Microsoft that ships with versions of Microsoft Windows including and subsequent to Windows 8, as well as Visual Studio 2010 and its associated MSDN Library.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ZeroBrane Studio</span> Open-source IDE for the Lua programming language

ZeroBrane Studio is a lightweight open-source Lua IDE with code completion, syntax highlighting, code analyzer, live coding, and debugging support for Lua 5.1, Lua 5.2, Lua 5.3, Lua 5.4, LuaJIT, and other Lua engines. ZeroBrane Studio is a cross-platform application written in Lua that runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS (10.9+) operating systems. It uses the wxWidgets toolkit and the Scintilla component for file editing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CudaText</span> Open source text editor

CudaText, from Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian čuda, is a free open source cross-platform native GUI text and source code editor. CudaText supersedes its predecessor SynWrite, no longer under development.