Chris Collins

Tools · retro

AmigaGuide viewer

Read Amiga .guide hypertext in the browser — nodes, links, bold, italic and pens, @wordwrap and @smartwrap, macros — with the Contents, Index, Help, Retrace and Browse buttons, straight from a file, an ADF disk image, or an LHA, LZX, DMS or Zip archive.

Added

Works with

How to use it

The page opens on a sample guide that tours the format. To read your own, drop a file on the page or click to choose one. Nothing is uploaded.

  • A .guide file opens directly.

  • An .adf or .adz disk image, or an .lha, .lzh, .lzx, .dms or .zip archive, is searched for guides: each one gets a button, and the first is opened. A DMS archive is unpacked to its disk image first. Links to other guides (Other.guide/node) work when that file is in the same disk or archive.

  • The ADF and archive tools can hand a guide straight to this viewer.

Click a link button to follow it. The buttons work as in MultiView and AmigaGuide:

  • Contents goes to the node’s @toc (or the main node), Index to the @index node, Help to the @help node or the viewer’s own help, Retrace back along the path you took, and Browse < / Browse > through the nodes in file order, or along @prev / @next.

  • Keys, with the text focused: ← and → browse, Backspace retraces, C contents, I index, H help, Home the main node.

  • Links that would run a command (system, rx, rxs, beep, quit) are shown with a dashed border and do nothing. A link to a node that does not exist is struck through.

  • Workbench colours shows the text the way it looked on a Workbench 2.0+ screen (grey background, black text, white "shine" pen); Page colours follows the site’s light or dark theme. Source shows the raw text of the current node.

⛶ Full screen (or F) gives the guide the whole screen — the browser’s full screen where it is allowed, otherwise a full-window layer (iPhone); the text rewraps as the window changes. Escape leaves.

Format notes

  • A guide is one plain-text file (Latin-1) starting with @database. Commands at the start of a line: global ones (@database, @$VER:, @author, @(c), @index, @help, @width, @font, @wordwrap, @smartwrap, @macro, @remark) before the first node, and node ones inside it.

  • A node runs from @node name "title" to @endnode. @title, @toc, @prev, @next, @index, @help, @keywords, @wordwrap and @smartwrap set the node’s properties. Node names are not case sensitive; the node called Main is shown first.

  • Inline commands are @{…}: a link is @{"label" link node [line]} (or file/node); an action is @{"label" system command}, rx, rxs. Attributes stay on until switched off: @{b} / @{ub}, @{i} / @{ui}, @{u} / @{uu}, @{plain}, @{fg pen} and @{bg pen} with the pens text, shine, shadow, fill, filltext, background, highlight. @{jcenter}, @{jright}, @{jleft}, @{par}, @{line}, @{tab}, @{code} / @{body} and @{amigaguide} are honoured too. \@ and \\ escape.

  • Wrapping: without a command, lines are shown exactly as written in a fixed-width font. With @wordwrap each line is a paragraph wrapped to the window; with @smartwrap (V40) lines are joined into paragraphs and a blank line starts a new one.

  • @macro name "text with $1 $2" (V40) defines an inline command used as @{name args}.

Source: the AmigaGuide documentation in the AmigaOS 3.1 NDK (commands for V34, V39 and V40 of amigaguide.library and amigaguide.datatype).

Limits

  • @embed, @{lindent}, @{pari}, @{settabs}, fonts and @onopen / @onclose scripts are not interpreted (embedded files are shown as a placeholder); tabs are eight spaces.

  • Pictures and other datatypes linked as nodes (link picture.iff/main) are not shown.

  • A guide opened from a single file cannot follow links into other files — open the disk or archive that holds them instead.

Linking to an example

Share link copies a link to the node of the sample guide you are reading; your own guides stay on your computer and are never put into links.

Parameter Meaning

node

A node of the sample guide: Main, Nodes, Links, Attributes, Wrapping, Buttons, Macros, Index

Runs entirely in your browser; nothing you type leaves this page.