======================== README.txt ========================
Online Documentation Library for PC (ODL-PC) Beta V1.0 for
Compaq OpenVMS Alpha, September, 2000 (AXPDOCSEP00)

This ODL-PC release is a beta version for evaluation purposes
only. Refer to the license agreement in the installation for
further details.

Requirements: 486 PC or higher, 24Mb or more of memory, approx. 2Mb
hard disk space (1.2Gb hard disk space if "Copy ODL" is used),
a CD-ROM reader, Windows 95 or higher or Windows NT 4.0 or higher
(NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 preferred for full text scrolling capability
and thread support, see below for details), Adobe Acrobat reader software.

The ODL-PC can be installed by double-clicking on the "Setup.exe" file
in this directory from Windows Explorer, or entering "F:\setup.exe"
from the "Start/Run" menu, where "F:" is the CD drive that this CD-ROM
disk is mounted on. The ODL-PC can be uninstalled by running setup
a second time, or through the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs.

NOTE: It is recommended that you have a recent backup of
your registry and Windows Emergency Repair Diskette (RDISK/S) prior
to installing and running the ODL-PC. This is beta version software which
does modify and access the system registry.

IMPORTANT: When installing from Windows 2000, you MUST run the
installation AND the BNU itself from an account that has administrator
privileges. Otherwise, the BNU will not be able to access the registry
settings it needs, and will fail to start up.

The setup will prompt for the location of the directories in
which to access books from. If you have one CD-ROM drive on your
system, just take the default settings. If you have two or more CD-ROM
drives, load both ODL-PC CD-ROM disks into drives before running the setup,
and take defaults. (The installation will sense the drive location for
the second CD-ROM disk). When running the BNU after the installation,
if the drive for an ODL-PC disk is changed or remapped during
the session, or the installation values are invalid, the BNU will
sense the new location(s) of mounted ODL-PC disks (if they are CD-ROM
drives) and prompt you to change the setting to them or override with
new values (as in the case of accessing them from a hard disk). When
changing CD-ROM disks in a CD-ROM drive, please allow time for the
drive to spin up before hitting "OK" on the dialog. If you enter "OK"
too soon, you may have to hit "OK" one or more additional times until
the drive spins up.

The ODL-PC consists of the Bookshelf Navigation Utility for PC (BNU-PC)
Bookreader-PC, the "Copy ODL" program, and the book and bookshelf
content files for the release. Book content files are in Bookreader,
HTML, and Adobe Acrobat PDF formats.

Copy ODL:

This program is accessed from the "Start/Programs/Compaq ODL" folder on
your desktop. It copies the contents of both CD-ROMs to a single directory
point on a hard disk, which offers the following advantages:
 1) Swapping of CD-ROMs while running the BNU to access books on one-
    CD-ROM-drive systems, and the subsequent use of the CD-ROM drive
    while running the BNU is eliminated.
 2) Searching ODL content is no longer restricted to a per CD-ROM basis,
    as an AltaVista search index for the entire library is utilized.
    The alternative on a two CD-ROM distribution requires performing
    two seperate content searches in order to search the entire library.
 3) Overall performance on opening books and searching is improved.

As stated in the requirements, "Copy ODL" requires approximately 1.2Gb
of available space on a single hard disk. In addition to copying both
CD-ROM disks, Copy ODL sets the registry settings that the BNU uses to
access the ODL to the hard disk area copied to.

BNU:

After installing, the ODL-PC is accessed by selecting the "BNU" shortcut from
the "Start/Programs/Compaq ODL" folder on your desktop. BNU displays the
bookshelf hierarchy for the ODL using the Windows tree control. Double-click,
single click the +/- icons, or use the cursor keys to expand and collapse
the bookshelves. When a book is double-clicked or enter is hit on a selected
book within BNU, the appropriate viewer is launched.

Bookreader-PC uses a similar tree control to display the Table of Contents
(TOC) for a Bookreader book in the left hand view of a splitter window. Single
click on the right or left hand view of the splitter window or hit the tab key
to toggle focus between the TOC view and the text (book content) view.
Standard scrolling functions are available in both views, including
page-up, page-down, cursor up/down for single line scrolling, etc.

Unfortunately, there is currently no User Guide or Help for BNU-PC or
Bookreader-PC. Please experiment with the menu options to try out
various features such as Search, Find, Bookmarks, Navigation lists, and
tree display options.

Search:

BNU utilizes two forms of search:
1) Search on book titles only.
2) AltaVista content search.

AltaVista search is based on the AltaVista Search for CD-ROM toolkit.
Currently, there is only support for searching one CD at a time.
Thus, to search the entire library, two searches must be performed.
The possibility of including a separate program in future releases which
would copy both CDs to a hard drive and enable entire library searches
is currently being evaluated.

Note that in the AltaVista results list, there are two links displayed for
each search hit. Click on the first link for Bookreader hits to display
the book in a separate window. Clicking on the second link attempts to
bring up Bookreader in the browser window, which is not supported in
Windows (single view apps only, no splitter window apps within Active X
document container windows).

Once the book containing the search hit is opened, Bookreader and the
other viewers all support a content "find" function to position to the
search hit(s).

Print:
Print is currently not supported from Bookreader-PC.

Known problems/limitations:

The altavista search executable "avsrun.exe" has been crashing
after launching the selected search hit from the results list.
The result does come up, so just click OK on the Application
Error dialog.

On Windows 95 and Windows 98: There are known problems in
Bookreader-PC managing multiple threads used to bring up popup graphic and/or
topic windows accessed from clicking a hotspot (green rectangle with
retangle cursor) in the text view. Bringing up several topics without
shutting down old ones has been known to lock up the process and possibly
the entire system.

Popup windows come up minimized in Windows 95 and Windows 98.
Click on the task bar window icons to view them.

On all platforms: popup graphics display for the vast majority,
however some formats are not yet supported and do not display.
We are interested to hear about specific book/hotspot instances
if they are encountered.

Scrolling in Windows 95 and Windows 98: device coordinates here are limited
to 16 bits. Scrolling on these platforms in Bookreader-PC is periodic within
a range for large books. Entire books can be viewed and navigated using the
TOC, but long scrolling within the text view is limited. All other positioning
related functionality (hotspots, navigation lists, bookmarks, etc) works.

Thumb scrolling on all platforms: is also limited to 16 bits (Windows
messages). Thus, on the larger books, thumb scrolling generally works but
can have a "rubber band" type of effect if the drag is too far and/or fast.

Table formatting and alignment: is and always will be somewhat problematic.

Highlighting in the Bookreader-PC "find" function: has known bugs where
the font color change to red does not turn off when it should, or the search
hit does not highlight in some cases.


Feedback:

We appreciate your taking the time to evaluate the ODL-PC and welcome
your comments and feedback. Please send mail to:

    ODLCDROM@Compaq.com

Please also participate in the Software Product Library survey found
at http://www.openvms.compaq.com/openvms/odlsurvey.html