Dunfield Help
From Just Solve the File Format Problem
The help files used by tools written by Dave Dunfield use a self-defined file format.
Specifications
Sources can be found in IMD.C. There is no file header. The topics are stored sequential. Each topic starts with a 16-bit little-endian integer, indicating the number of bytes of ASCII topic data to follow. The topics are addressed by zero-based index number.
The contents of the topic can contain the following special codes:
00 = new line, to be replaced by 0x0A 0E = start of link 0F = end of link, followed by a byte with the topic index number 09 = tab 12 = dos character, up/down arrow 18 = dos character, up arrow 19 = dos character, down arrow 1A = dos character, right arrow 1B = dos character, left arrow
Identification
The files do not have a easy to detect signature. A way to detect is to check the 16-bit size is >128 and <1024, and not beyond the end of the file. Then scan the topic data for valid special/ASCII codes. If more then lets say 2 valid topics have been read then assume it is a Dunfield HLP file.
Sample files
- IMD.HLP
- H8.HLP
- HORIZON.HLP
