AmigaGuide is a

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typi ...

document file format A document file format is a text or binary file format for storing documents on a storage media, especially for use by computers. There currently exist a multitude of incompatible document file formats. Examples of XML-based open standards are D ...

designed for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

. Files are stored in

ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...

so it is possible to read and edit a file without the need for special software. Since Workbench 2.1 an Amiga Guide system for O.S. inline help files and reading manuals with hypertext formatting elements was launched in AmigaOS and based on a viewer called simply "AmigaGuide" and it has been included as standard feature on the Amiga system. Users with earlier versions of Workbench could view the files by downloading the program and library AmigaGuide 34 distributed with public domain collections of floppy disks (for example on

Fred Fish Fred Fish (November 4, 1952 – April 20, 2007) was a computer programmer notable for work on the GNU Debugger and his series of freeware Fish disks for the Amiga. The Fish Disks (term coined by Perry Kivolowitz at a Jersey Amiga User Gr ...

collection) or it could be downloaded directly from

Aminet Aminet is the world's largest archive of Amiga-related software and files. Aminet was originally hosted by several universities' FTP sites, and is now available on CD-ROM and on the web. According to Aminet, as of 3 September 2022, it has 83930 pac ...

software repository. Starting from AmigaOS 3.0 the AmigaGuide tool was replaced with more the complete and flexible MultiView.

AmigaGuide and MultiView

AmigaGuide is the default tool for viewing AmigaGuide files used with AmigaOS 2.1, and is also a basic text viewer for ASCII documents. It can handle multiple files thanks to cross-linking tables called XREF. MultiView is basically a void container and a natural GUI for the various datatypes that open MultiView as a default tool when any media file (including AmigaGuide files) are invoked by mouse clicking and recognized by the existing correspondent datatype.

AmigaGuide readers on various platforms

Although the AmigaGuide format is almost solely used for documenting Amiga programs, viewers are available for several other platforms: *

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

JAGUaR
*

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

- tp://k332.feld.cvut.cz/pub/local/lemming/AGView/AGview.arj AGView*

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

AGWViewerWinGuide (LHA archive)
*

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

AGReader
*

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

Grotag
A little free Open Source viewer of AmigaGuide files on Macintosh computers.

Syntax

An AmigaGuide document is a simple

-formatted document, so it can be edited by any normal

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be us ...

and viewed by any text reader software. AmigaGuide commands all begin with the '@' (pronounced 'at') symbol. To be recognized as an AmigaGuide document, the first line should include this text: @database Amigaguide.guide There are three categories of commands: Global, Node, and Attributes. Global commands are usually specified at the beginning of the document, before any nodes are defined, and apply to all the nodes in the document. Technically, they can be anywhere. Many commands can be used both globally and in nodes. Node commands are usable inside a node (after an '@NODE' and before an "@ENDNODE"), and affect only the node in which they are used. Attributes may be specified anywhere in a normal line. In addition to the '@' symbol, attributes always use a pair of braces ('') to enclose the attribute name and possibly additional arguments.

Main commands

The commands "INDEX", "HELP", "NEXT", "PREV", and "TOC" and the all-purpose hypertext link specify other nodes to jump to. They all support the naming of nodes within the current document, but they also all support a path along with that name which lets the node be located in any AmigaGuide document. They will be shown as simply embossed text squared buttons in the page of MultiView.

External links

To access a node in another document, it is simply required to put an AmigaDOS file path before the node name. From this point of view, AmigaGuide is a very simple hypertext language.

Multimedia

Since AmigaOS 3.0 or above, the user can jump to any file that is supported by Amiga datatypes – pictures, animation, anything. It uses the MultiView program to handle it through its internal support for the datatype Amiga standard. The user must still give a "node" name, even though the file is not an AmigaGuide file and has no "nodes" – so the syntax is: "main": "name_of_picture.iff/main".

References

External links

TAWS
online viewer using ''Parse AmigaGuide''.

AmigaGuide overview by the inventor.
AmigaGuide reference
AmigaGuide tags and commands explained, organised by introduction version; open source AmigaGuide to HTML converter, and security inspector
AmigaGuide manual
(in AmigaGuide format)
AmigaGuide V34 distribution archive
(Aminet download for AmigaOS)
How to create an AmigaGuide
(on EmuUnlimited site)

in Guida rapida all'AmigaDOS from Amiga Magazine Italia, 1996 (In Italian Language), contents of the site preserving online all issues of this magazine. {{Document markup languages Computer file formats AmigaOS Hypertext MorphOS