IPF Editor is Perez Computing's attempt to ease the burden of producing professional looking on-line documentation and help files. Anyone who has ever written software help or attempted to create on-line "books" for any reason already knows the myriad of settings, tags and codes necessary to get things looking very sharp. IPF Editor (IPFE), takes a lot of the hard work out of this process by providing users with an interface with all the many options only a mouse click or two away.

Installation

Interface

IPFE features a semi-WPS aware interface that includes good use of Drag-n-Drop. For example, in the main editing window users can drag text around for copying or moving (in a very DragText-like way). Dragging and dropping panel names from the panel list to the editing window creates hyperlinks to the specified panels. Dragging panels within the panel list (GIF, 2.3k) rearranges them. Even file opening is Drag-n-Drop enabled; for those that dislike the File menu, it is possible to drag file objects from WPS folders directly into the main IPFE window to open them. Common OS/2 procedures like Alt-left click and right-clicking menu items behave as expected.

Unfortunately, the interface does not go all the way. For example, it is not possible to drag a panel from the panel list to the shredder to quickly delete it.

While IPFE makes good use of Drag-n-Drop, it still relies heavily on a menu oriented interface. In fact, the program is so feature rich, that many of its options are available only as menu items. Almost as important as the use of menus in IPFE is the use of the extensive toolbars. The main toolbar (GIF, 12k) is a resizable scrolling button bar with most of the commonly used features of the program on it. The toolbars in the program also feature either "fly-over" or statusbar descriptions of the buttons' functions.

IPFE is not a WYSIWYG editor; IPF tags are inserted into the panels of the main editing window as you select them by menu item or toolbar button. This means that you can partially see what the code you are creating looks like as you work (and therefore you know if it is getting messy). However, this also means you don't see how the document will look until you compile and check it.

Features

IPFE is basically a text editor, but a very specialized and very powerful text editor. The IPF tag language, as I mentioned, is very complex in its abilities and it takes a very accomplished tool to offer all possible options to a document's author. As I said above, IPFE does this by a combination of menus, pop-up menus (GIF, 6.7k) and settings dialogs, and toolbars.

Any style of on-line documentation or help file for OS/2 can be created with IPFE. You can insert graphics (bitmaps or meta files), sound, videos or links to start executable files. Hypertext links can be used to link panels within documents or even between documents. Hyperlinks can be defined within pictures. All the advanced features of the IPF markup language are also supported. In short, I was unable to find any ability of the IPF language not handled by IPFE. And just in case new features are added to the IPF language by IBM, IPFE has the ability to insert tags that are not previously known to the program.

You'll be glad to know that IPFE also includes a spell checker that ignores IPF tags. This saves a great deal of time for people who need to verify the spelling of large on-line documents or help files; the only other option would be to load the IPF files output by IPFE into a word processor and check them (which would mean being stopped on every tag item that the word processor's dictionary didn't recognize).

Since the program is not a WYSIWYG editor, you may want to occasionally compile your documents as you create them. This is accomplished through a link to an external IPF Compiler (IPFC) (GIF, 4.7k). The results of compilation (GIF, 7.6k) are shown within one of IPFE's information windows. Any IPFC such as those distributed with Visual Age C++, Borland C++ or the Developers' Connection Toolkit will suffice. Setting up to use the appropriate IPFC is child's play. Once this is done, compilation of the document you are working on is just a button click away.

After you compile your source document, you can also launch OS/2's VIEW.EXE utility to check your work directly from the program. There is also a quick "preview panel" feature available from a pop-up menu in the panel list if you want to have a look at just one panel.

Users can import documents from various formats, including WordPerfect, DeScribe Tagged ASCII files, RTF files and HTML. It is also possible to export your IPF documents to HTML format and the results are pretty good. IPFE attempts to keep the same structure as the on-line version of the file and translates links where appropriate. This feature seems to work much better than the corresponding one in Hyperwise from IBM (a competing product). If you are planning on exporting your help files to HTML for publication on the WWW or your company intranet, IPFE is worth investigating.

The Manual

Tech Support

The similarities to most shareware end there however. Perez Computing backs their software with tech support by BBS, FAX and telephone. Users who do experience problems (I had absolutely no glitches under either Warp 3 or Warp 4) may be pleased to speak with one of the actual developers instead of a "telephone jockey" (although this, of course, may not always be the case).

Drawbacks

The Drag-n-Drop interface only goes half way. The menu-driven approach may be confusing for novices with so many options available. This is not necessarily a shortcoming of IPFE; it's more a function of the flexibility of the IPF language and the fact that IPFE does not go half way in its ability to exploit all the features of IPF.

The program would be even more useful if it came with an IPF Compiler. Hyperwise, IPFE's only real competition, allows users to compile their documents without purchasing an additional IPFC. This is probably not a real issue however since most people will be drawn to IPFE because of its power and will most likely already have access to an IPF Compiler.

Finally, while the documentation (both print and on-line) is extensive and helpful, there are occasional inaccuracies or mistakes that may be confusing to beginners. Some labels of settings dialogs in the program are also inaccurately placed. For example, in the "Panel Settings" dialog, the "Rules Attributes" and the "Titlebar Attributes" labels are switched.

Conclusions

IPF Editor v2.12

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