ActiPub: Hyperfiction Authoring Tools and Templates
Version 1999.10 for Win 95/98/NT
http://www.gocek.org/actipub/ , actipub@gocek.org
Shareware, $13.00 US, try it for free for up to 90 days.
See the file "purchase.txt" for payment instructions.

In this file:
INTRODUCTION
INSTALLATION
GETTING STARTED
LICENSING
SUPPORT
FUTURE PLANS
REVISION HISTORY

INTRODUCTION

Hyperfiction consists of stories, poems, and other creative writing,
presented in interlinked segments.  Each segment of a story is
connected to other segments, and the order in which the segments are
read is, in part, up to the reader.  A work of hyperfiction is
essentially a web site, and readers will usually experience a work
of hyperfiction through a standard web browser.

ActiPub provides almost 2000 interlinked web pages suitable for use
by hyperfiction authors.  Authors will seldom use all of these pages
in a normal work, and instructions are provided for selecting pages.
Authors concentrate mainly on entering their stories and poems, and
need to provide only minimal attention to the HTML links.  ActiPub
also provides a small verification program that identifies bad links
and orphaned files.  ActiPub also provides some discussion of the
theory of, and audiences for, hyperfiction.

INSTALLATION

You'll need a ZIP file extractor to un-zip the distribution file.
You'll need a text editor to use ActiPub.  Any simple plain text
editor will do, such as Notepad.  To view your hyperfiction, you'll
need any standard web browser.  The veripub.exe program will usually
be run from an MS-DOS Prompt window.

Create a new directory on your hard drive, floppy, or other writable
drive.  "C:\actipub" will work fine.  The total installation uses
less than a megabyte.  Open the "actipub.zip" file with any ZIP file
extractor, and extract the files in the ZIP file to the new
directory.  Several subdirectories will be created and loaded with
ActiPub files, and these are described in the documentation.  There
is no "setup.exe" executable.  ActiPub includes one small executable
program, but it is ready to run once extracted from the ZIP file.

The ActiPub ZIP file is smaller than a megabyte, and the total space
used by the contained files is also less than one megabyte.  The
documentation describes some strategies for long term usage, but in
general, the ZIP file can be deleted once the contained files are
extracted.  There are about 2000 files in the whole ActiPub
distribution, so the use of a floppy will be time consuming, even
though the files are small.

To un-install ActiPub, simply delete the files.  No changes to the
Windows registry are made, and no DLLs are used.

GETTING STARTED

See the file "purchase.txt" for shareware licensing information.
See the file "license.txt" for legalese.  See the file "doc.html"
for documentation.

"doc.html" should be opened in a web browser.  Most users should be
able to simply "double click" on the file icon in a file explorer
window or desktop.  If this doesn't work, try the browser's
File -> Open... menu command, and browse to the "doc.html" file.

Some files in the ActiPub distribution are PDF 4.0 files.  A free
reader for these files can be obtained from www.adobe.com.  Users of
older versions of the PDF reader might need to upgrade their readers
(for free) in order to read the ActiPub files. Critical information,
such as documentation, is provided in .txt or .htm formats.

LICENSING

The file "license.txt" provides detailed licensing, warranty, and
other information.  In general, if you keep ActiPub for more than 90
days, you have to pay for it.  If you use ActiPub to develop a work
of hyperfiction (or any other product), and then distribute your
work, you have to pay for ActiPub even if the 90 days isn't up.  You
may change the file names and copyright notices in ActiPub's .htm
files and you may distribute your works of hyperfiction without
paying any royalties nor additional fees to Gary Gocek, as long as
you've paid the basic, one-time licensing fee of $13.  You may
redistribute ActiPub as a whole with all of its supporting files.
You need not mention nor redistribute ActiPub when you are
distributing your own work that was developed with ActiPub.  Please
ask for permission before including ActiPub within another product
or work of hyperfiction.

"license.txt" is the final authority on such matters, and takes
precedence over this file.

SUPPORT

Live telephone support is not available at this time.  Send all
questions or comments to actipub@gocek.org.  Also, check the web site
for up-to-date information, www.gocek.org/actipub .

I cannot provide general support for HTML authoring, using Windows,
marketing your work, etc.  I'll do my best to get ActiPub working
for you.  The documentation refers to various resources on the world
wide web that can help with general questions on HTML, Windows, and
hyperfiction.

FUTURE PLANS

The immediate need is to improve veripub.exe, but then, I don't want
to write a generic link checker.  Also, the binary and trinary tree
structures are pretty linear, so I want to provide something a bit
more "interesting".

REVISION HISTORY

1999.10 - first release.

------------------
ActiPub v1999.10, copyright  1999 by Gary Gocek.