Thinner 3.02
by Mike Foley
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Contents
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  1. What is Thinner?
  2. Do I need to pay for Thinner?
  3. How do I uninstall Thinner?
  4. How may Thinner be distributed?
  5. Features
  6. FAQ



********************
1. What is Thinner?
********************

Thinner is a text editing program, designed primarily for web and
e-mail documents.
It can convert web or e-mail documents to plain text, format text
suitable for e-mail or other formats, and more.



*********************************
2. Do I need to pay for Thinner?
*********************************

Nope.
Thinner is Freeware. However, if you really feel like you need to
contribute something, you can always see the About box for donating
food to a starving UCSD student.



*******************************
3. How do I uninstall Thinner?
*******************************

Simply go to the Control Panel, and select "Add/Remove Programs".
Then select Thinner, and press the Add/Remove button. 



***********************************
4. How may Thinner be distributed?
***********************************

Thinner may be freely distributed, as long as the program and ReadMe
files have not been changed. Also, I'd appreciate an e-mail to keep
track of where it's going.



************
5. Features
************

Line Length: Designed if you want to write a formatted e-mail, or any
document that needs to have a maximum length. For instance, after
writing this ReadMe, I gave it a line length of 70.

Remove: Gives you an option of removing any or all of the following:
  * Any string 
  * Any ASCII value - See "What are ASCII values?" in the FAQ.
  * Extra spaces - Removes multiple spaces, and spaces at the
    beginning or end of lines.
  * Tabs
  * Carriage returns and linefeeds - Carriage returns and linefeeds
    form together to make a line break, but I put them separately in
    here for convenience.

Replace: Replace a string with any other string. Also supports ASCII
values.

Change Case: Changes selected text to:
  * Sentence case.
  * lowercase
  * UPPERCASE
  * Title Case
  * aTlErNaTiNg CaSe

Web Page:
  * Format - Formats text that has been copied from a web page.
Removes all the extra spaces and tags that appear in web documents.
  * Format with paragraphs - Same as Format, but inserts paragraphs
where you choose. To use, merely insert a particular string (I use
"\") wherever you want the paragraph break to be. It then proceeds to
format the text, keeping the paragraphs separated. 
  * Remove Tags - Removes all tags from selected HTML code.

E-mail:
  * Format - Formats text that has been copied from an e-mail,
removing all the forwarding characters (">"), and extra spaces.
  * Format with paragraphs - Works in the same way as the web page
format with paragraphs; insert a particular string anywhere in the
text, and the format will preserve your paragraphs.

ASCII Table: Displays an ASCII table. Able to switch from common to
extended.



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6. FAQ
*******

Q) When I try to start the program, it says that I need a DLL, OCX,
or other system file. Where do I get it?
A) There are places to download the files on the internet, but the
easiest way would be to download the full version of Thinner, which
comes with all the necessary system files. You can download from
Thinner's homepage, which is at:
http://ieng9.ucsd.edu/~m1foley/thinner.html
  If you install that and you're still having problems, then e-mail
me and I'll be glad to help you.

Q) What's an ASCII value?
A) ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information
Interchange, and every letter has a corresponding ASCII value, which
range from 0 to 255. See the ASCII table I included in the program for
each letter's value. For example, if you wanted to remove the letter
"a", you could select Edit|Remove, and enter the ASCII value 97
instead.

Q) What are the extended ASCII values?
A) The ASCII values from 0-127 are universally accepted, but the
values from 128-255 ("extended" values) are still not standardized.
For instance, IBM has developed an extended table that uses a lot of
characters for line drawing. The table I included in Thinner contains
the version that Windows uses, which is primarily symbols and foreign
letters.

Q) Why can't I type tabs into the text?
A) You must use Control-tab to insert a tab. If you push tab, Windows
assumes you want to switch the focus to another control.

Q) Why can't I make my words bold, italic, etc., or change the font?
A) Thinner was designed to edit plain text only. I'll leave it up to
other applications to make all the cosmetic changes. If you want to
change the appearance of the text, then save it to a file and edit it
with a text editor such as Microsoft Word.

Q) If I change the font size, will it save the file like that?
A) No, the font size feature is only for ease of viewing. It saves in
plain text format with no sizes, fonts, or styles included.

Q) How was Thinner 3.0 written?
A) Thinner 3.0 was programmed in Visual Basic 6.0, which every
programmer knows is the most hardcore of languages.

Q) How can I contact the author?
A) You can e-mail Mike Foley at: m1foley@ucsd.edu (yes, that's a "one"
in there), or you can go to his webpage at:
http://ieng9.ucsd.edu/~m1foley/
  Please let me know if you have any suggestions on improving the
program, I'd love to hear them!


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Thanks for trying out Thinner. For ease of use, I recommend you create
a shortcut for Thinner and place it on the desktop, for easy
drag-and-drop.

