# Online help file for VideoteXt # # Copyright (c) 1994-97 by Martin Buck # # $Id: videotext.xvinfo.in,v 1.2 1999/10/04 23:00:37 mb Exp mb $ # # Use 50 cols./line! :search The search dialog allows you to search for strings or regular expressions (see grep(1)) in the current, all cached and all spooled pages. You can also define search requests that will be performed in the background whenever a new page is reveived. The list on the right hand side of the window shows the currently active search requests. The icon next to every request displays its status: * Sheet: Unread matches for this request * Checkmark+Sheet: All mathces have already been read * Disk: Request will be stored when changing stations or on exit. Stored (background) requests will be re-enabled next time you enter the same station. You can select whether or not to store the request in the list's menu (accessible with mouse button 3). Also, you can delete old requests there. This should be done if you don't need the results any longer, because (depending on the number of matches on different pages), the search-results might take up quite a lot of RAM. To display the results for a search request, double-click the request's list entry. This will display the first unread match for this request. To display a certain match, use the "Matches"-menu or the arrow-buttons. :history The history shows a list of pages you've visited since you switched to the current station. The order of the pages in the list is not necessarily chronological! The icons next to the page number display the page's status. The following is a list of possible icons together with their meanings: * Eyes: VideoteXt is searching for the page at the moment. * Sheet: Page was received but not yet read. * Eyes+Sheet: At lease one page was received but VideoteXt is still searching for it (e.g. for multi-pages). * Checkmark+Sheet: Page was already read. * Clock: Timeout occured while searching for the page; the page probably isn't in the videotext-cycle. By double-clicking the page numbers or with the buttons next to the list, you can navigate through the history. With the "Index pg"-button you can jump back to the station's index page (settable under Options|Station options). :toptext The TOP-Text window displays a table of contents for the current station if the station broadcasts TOP-Text and you have enbaled its reception under Options|Station options. The names of the pages consist of the block name before the slash and the group name after it. All pages in a group have the same name. The Overview-button shows a list of pages that have a description, the Hierarchy-button displays the same list in a two-level menu with all block-pages in level 1 and all group-pages in level 2. You can use the four buttons below the display of the current page's full name to step through all available pages of a station. The "Next/Prev. page" buttons automatically skip pages that are marked nonexistent and the "Next group/block" buttons jump to the beginning of the next group or block of pages, respectively. VideoteXt also uses the TOP-Text information to search for all pages of a station automatically (this can be enabled under Options|Station options). TOP-Text is required for this to work, because VideoteXt needs a list of all existing pages. :fastext The FASTEXT window provides links to related pages of the currently displayed page. Usually, these consist of links to next page of the current topic and index pages of other topics. The FASTEXT information will only be received if you haven't disabled it under Options|Station options. However, it doesn't provide as much useful information as TOP-Text, so VideoteXt's auto-search feature currently can't use it. :hotlist In the hotlist window you can define the pages that will be searched automatically whenever you switch to the station they were defined for. You may determine the order the pages are searched in by moving the list entries around with the "Move up" and "Move down" buttons. Make sure to put single pages before multi-pages, because they can be received much faster. The "Add"-buttons will insert a page after the highlighted entry. "Add current" inserts the currently displayed page, "Add page" prompts for the page number to insert. :hotlist_add Here you can add an arbitrary page to the hotlist for the current station. It will be inserted into the list after the highlighted entry. :select_station In the "Select station" window you can manually select the current station's name in case the autodetection doesn't work. You can also use this window to switch your tuner to another station (if your videotext-decoder has a tuner and VideoteXt supports it, that is). The stations for which a channel, a frequency or a program number is defined are marked with a TV icon next to their name. You can also define new stations by changing the name of station "Unknown". :station_name Here you can change the name of the currently tuned TV station. VideoteXt must be able to recognize all stations correctly or else some advanced features like TOP-Text or disk-spooling won't work. NOTE: The name you enter here must appear somewhere in the headline broadcast by the station while searching for a page and is case-sensitive. With "Read header" you can insert the current headline in the text-entry field. In that case, please remove everything but the station's name (e.g. the current page-number, date, time etc.) from the read header. Also, make sure to use the longest possible name to avoid ambiguities. :win_layout With "Window layout" you can select where the windows from the "Window"-menu will be positioned. For every menu-entry, there's a corresponding option that allows you to choose the position of a newly opened window relative to the main window. "Centered" opens the new window in the middle of the main window and should work with all window managers. The other four choices position the window at the respective border of the main window without any space in between. If one of these choices is selected, VideoteXt also moves the window whenever the main window gets moved. If you have problems with this auto-positioning, read the paragraph on broken window-managers below. With the "Visible on startup"-togglebutton, you can select which windows will be opened automatically when you run VideoteXt. "Show TOP-/FASTEXT when active" causes VideoteXt to open the TOP- and FASTEXT-window automatically as soon as it receives the corresponding videotext-extensions. "Sticky filechoosers" keeps all filechoosers open after you press the "Open" or "Save" button. This is consistent with the rest of the user interface and might be useful to save multiple pages, but it's different from most other program's behaviour, so you can disable it here. When "Group iconify" is selected, all windows from the "Windows"-menu will be (de)iconified automatically when the main window is (de)iconified. Configuration for broken window managers: For the automatic placement of windows to work, VideoteXt must be able to find out the size of the decoration you window manager puts around toplevel-windows. This should work with most ICCCM-compliant window managers, but there are some broken ones out there that cause problems. For those, you can tell VideoteXt the size and offset of you window manager's decoration manually in your ~/.vtxrc-file. Do do this, change the line "wm_decoration=auto" as follows: "wm_decoration=l,r,t,b". l,r,t,b should be replaced by the sizes (in pixles) of the window-manager's decoration on the left, right, top and bottom side of the popups (you can use xmag to find them out). If the windows still don't get positioned correctly, you can move them with "wm_offset=x,y" in x- and y-direction. Normally, either 0,0 or the sizes of the left and top decorations should be OK. :tv_options "TV options" allows you to select whether and how received videotext-pages are displayed on a TV screen. Displaying the pages on TV slows down VideoteXt, so make sure to turn this option off if you don't need it or if you interface doesn't support it (only very few interfaces actually support this mode). "Display pages on TV" allows you to enable and disable the TV display completely. If this option is activated, you can set the following options for TV display: "Always use interlace" displays the videotext-page always in interlaced mode. This is necessary for some TV sets that can't produce a stable picture otherwise. If you TV can live without it, make sure to turn it off, because using interlaced mode will increase flickering. With "Display mode" you can select how the videotext-page is inserted into the current TV station's picture. "Normal" always displays the page full screen without the stations's picture. Most interfaces only support this mode, so make sure to try it if your TV has synchronization problems or you don't see anything with other settings. "Transparent" always overlays the videotext page over the station's picture and uses a transparent background. "Insert" only overlays some parts of specially marked pages (such as subtitles) over the current broadcast and uses the normal mode for all other pages. :postscript_options The "Postscript options" windows allows you to select the layout and paper-size for exported PostScript files. The following layouts (videotext-pages per sheet) are available: 1x1, 2x1, 2x2, 3x2 (portrait) and 1x1, 1x2, 2x2, 2x3, 3x3 (landscape). Available paper-sizes are DIN A4 (21.0cm x 29.7cm), DIN A3 (42.0cm x 29.7cm), Letter (8.5" x 11") and Legal (8.5" x 14") :misc_options In the "Miscellaneous options" window you can change several global options (i.e. they are used regardless of the current station). If you activate "Auto-reset on station-change", VideoteXt always tries to recognize the current station by looking at its header-line. If a new station is recognized, VideoteXt performs a reset (see File|Reset). This auto-recognition doesn't work with all stations, so if you have problems, disable (and report!) it. With "Continue searching for queued pages..." set, VideoteXt automatically activates the "Continue"-button if you select a new foreground-page which was already in the search-queue at that time. If you then select another page while the "Continue"-button is activated, the search for the last forground-page will be continued in the background until all subpages were found. "Continue searching for all pages..." has the same function, but it activates "Continue" for all pages, not only for those that were in the search-queue. Pages selected by pressing a TOP- or FASTEXT button won't be searched in the background automatically, regardless of these settings. If "Sorted search order for TOP-Text pages" is selected, TOP-pages with higher priority (such as block- and group-pages) will be searched before all other TOP-pages. Otherwise, they will be searched in their numeric order. This option makes the reception of TOP-pages slower, but it makes sure that the most important pages are received first. With "Don't open device...", you can use VideoteXt as an offline-viewer for spooled videotext-pages. In that case, the videotext-device will never be opened, only pages from the public or private spool-directory will be displayed. You can switch between the different stations in the spool-directory with the "Select station" dialog. In the "Printing commands"-entries, you can select the filenames that will be used when pressing the "Use default printer"-button in the export-filechooser. Depending on the selected export-format, the corresponding command will be inserted the filechooser's filename-line (the bitmap-command is used for all graphics-formats like GIF, PNG and PPM). To execute commands instead of writing the output to files, use the pipe symbol ("|") as the first character and append the command that should get the output piped into its standard input. With "Private spooldir" you can select the base-directory of a private spool-directory that is used as a disk-cache in addition to the public directory /var/spool/vtx. To use this directory, you have to create subdirectories with the names of all stations that should be cached under it. If you leave this entry empty, only the public spool-directory will be used. :station_options In the "Station options" window you can change misceallaneous settings of the current station. With "Page-timeout" you can determine how long a page will be searched for in the background until the search is cancelled. If at least one subpage of the given page has been found, this value will be doubled for all subsequent subpages. "TOP-Text interleave" sets the interleave-factor for TOP-searches. This factor determines how many pages will be skipped until the search for the next page is started (this is necessary because the transmission of a page from the videotext-chip is slower than the broadcast of most stations). If VideoteXt receives only a few pages per cycle, you should increase this value; if there are delays of several seconds between received pages, you should decrease it. The default of 20 should be suitable for most stations and a machine with moderate load. If a stations broadcasts the pages in reverse (e.g. arte), you should use a negative value. "Don't search for TOP-Text" disables TOP-text completely (include TOP-text background search and page descriptions), "Don't search for FASTEXT" disables reception of FASTEXT data (including the FASTEXT-buttons). You should disable TOP- or FASTEXT if the selected station doesn't use them, because unnecessary searches for TOP-/FASTEXT will make VideoteXt slower. With "Auto-search pages" you can select which page-classes will be searched for automatically as soon as VideoteXt knows about them (only implemented for TOP-text at the moment). With "Page-lookahead" you can select how many of the pages following the current foreground-page will be searched for automatically in the background. In the "Index page" field you can enter the number of the page that will be searched when you press the "Index page" button in the hotlist-window or when a station-change has been recognized. :tuning_info In the "Tuning info" window you can set the channel, frequency or program of the currently selected TV station if your decoder has an on-board tuner. These will be set when you switch to a new station in the "Select station" window. If your interface has no on-board tuner, you should leave the channel field empty and set both other values to 0. If your tuner can be set to an aribtrary frequency, you can use either the channel or the frequency field and set the program entry to 0. Normally, you should use the pulldown-menu to select one of the available channels (the TV system must be set correctly under Options|Misc options for this to work). Only if the available channels don't match the desired station exactly, you should use the frequency field. You can't enter a value in both fields: if you use the channel-field, set the frequency to 0, if you use the frequency-field, leave the channel-field empty. If your tuner can only be set to a fixed set of programs each of which has to be tuned manually (like in the good old days when TV sets only had 8 different program buttons), you should set the program field to the desired value, leave the channel field emtpy and set the frequency to 0. :spool_options In the "Spool options" window you can control how VideoteXt handles the (private) disk-cache for the current station. You can select whether VideoteXt reads or writes from/to your private spool-directory (settable under "Misc. options"). With "Include/Exclude pages" you can select which pages will be read from the spool directory (regardless of this setting, all newly received pages will be written when you change stations or exit VideoteXt). If you leave "Include pages" blank, all but the pages in "Exclude pages" will be read. If you leave "Exclude pages" blank, only the pages from "Include pages" will be used. If you fill in both entries, only the pages in "Include pages" minus the ones in "Exclude pages" will be read. Valid entries consist of 3-digt page numbers (or ranges using "-") seperated by commas. Example: 100,200,300-399 You can also select how old the pages in the disk cache may be at most to be used by VideoteXt. Pages older than the selected time won't be read, but VideoteXt will never remove expired pages itself. :copy_settings "Copy settings" allows you to copy one or more station-specific options to one or more selected stations. The selected options of the current station will be written to the destination stations. All the other settings of the destination stations won't be changed. :pgdisp This text field shows information about the currently displayed page. The first entry is the page- and subpage-number, the second one shows the total number of subpages for the page (if this information is known) and the last value is the number of subages that are already in the cache. :pgentry In the page-entry fields you can tell VideoteXt to search for a new page. You can either enter a page (and possibly subpage) number or you can use the buttons to change the current page step by step. To search for a page in the foreground (i.e. in VideoteXt's main window), enter the page number and press (or click the search button). To search for a page in the background, press + or click the "Search bg" button. Background searches will be inserted into the page history and marked as soon as a page is found. You can either select a certain subpage number to display or enter subpage 0 or press the "Roll"-button to display the subpage that was broadcast most recently. The "Continue"-button allows you to continue the last foreground search in the background when you start a new foreground search. VideoteXt sometimes automatically enables this if you start a foreground search for a page, depending on the settings in Options|Misc. options, but you can always override the default by clicking the "Continue"-button. The permitted page-range for the page-entry fields is 100-8FF for the page-number and 0-7F for the subpage-number, but in most cases you probably don't want to use hexadecimal numbers. Hexadecimal numbers are skipped automatically if you use the increment and decrement buttons. Also, VideoteXt skips nonexistent subpages with those buttons, provided that VideoteXt knows the number of subpages of the current page (currently, this requires TOPTEXT). :reveal The reveal-button allows you to uncover hidden parts of a videotext-page. This is sometimes used to hide the answers of riddles. :main_checkmarks The stop-checkmark disables further updates of the currently displayed page. VideoteXt will continue to receive updates for the current page, but they won't be displayed until you remove the checkmark. The reveal-checkmark allows you to uncover hidden parts of a videotext-page. This is sometimes used to hide the answers of riddles. :mainwin This is VideoteXt's main window. It displays the current videotext page, gives you access to VideoteXt's menus and displays the status of the videotext interface. The page-status display and the search-buttons on the right side of the window have their own context-sensitive help which is available by moving the pointer over them and pressing the key. You can click on three-digit-numbers on the displayed videotext page to jump directly to these pages. If you use mouse button 1, the page will be searched in the foreground and with mouse button 3, a background search will be initiated. If you resize the main window, VideoteXt will automatically select a font for the videotext page that fits the new window size. Because there is only a limited number of font sizes available, there will ususally be much unused space, so it might be a better idea to use the font-selection menu instead of resizing the window directly. The status row at the bottom of the window displays information about the state of the videotext interface. Most interfaces are able to search for more than one page at a time, so the numbers on the left side of the status row will tell you which pages are being searched for in the different search-circuits. On the right side of the status row, VideoteXt displays the name of the currently recognized station. You should check this from time to time, because if VideoteXt recognizes a wrong station, some advanced features (like TOPTEXT or spooling of received pages) won't work. You can also explicitly switch to a certain station with Windows|Select station. There are hotkeys for most actions in the main window. Usually they're pressed together with Meta/Alt, but most of them (except for hexadecimal digits and 'x') can also be used without: Increase page number Decrease page number Increase subpage number Derease subpage number Increase page number, skip unavail. Decrease page number, skip unavail. Go to next page in history Go to previous page in history Go to index page Go to next TOP block page Go to next TOP group page Roll subpages Continue search in background Reveal hidden parts of page Stop display Reset VideoteXt Exit VideoteXt # # FIXME: Explain (and implement :-) selections #