The Info-Mac Archive is maintained by Gordon Watts,Liam Breck, Adam C. Engst, Demitri Muna and Mike O’Bryan on the sumex-aim.stanford.edu server. The archive is a general repository of shareware and freeware software for Macintosh® and MacOS® compatible machines. The archive is primarily maintained on the Stanford University computer and is currently mirrored at 50 public and private sites around the world.
The Info-Mac Digest is a summary of new software which has been submitted to the archive as well as questions and replies to topics related to the Macintosh. These digests are compiled on a regular basis with many publications each week due to the volunteer efforts of the administrators mentioned above. They are normally distributed via email by subscription to a listserver. Currently, the listserver resides at Rice University but I believe that will be changing soon.
Preparing Digests For Conversion
Files saved as TEXT
This program has been tested with files saved from Eudora, Claris Em@iler and Netscape‚Ñ¢ Mail. With Eudora you must make sure that 'Guess Paragraphs' checkbox is not checked. With Claris Em@iler you must make sure that the filename must not have any leading spaces in it.
Claris Em@ailer
Info-Mac digests which have been filed to a personal folder may be processed directly. You can also specify the "Deleted Mail" folder as the post-process folder so that processed files will be dealt with like any normal deleted mail messages. If you prefer you may simply specify the post-process folder to be an archive folder if you want to keep the original digest files.
Info-Mac To HTML Converter
This application will convert Info-Mac digests received by email from the list server into HTML files for viewing in web browsers like Netscape Navigator‚Ñ¢ 2.0. Having the digests in HTML format provides the following facilities ..
• An index of all your digests in one window, TOC in another and contents in another.
• Ability to jump directly to an article from a table of contents
• Ability to jump from article to article
• Ability to access URL’s directly as they are converted automatically to hyperlinks
• Direct FTP access to software archived via alternative mirrors
Using Drag&Drop
Converting a number of Info-Mac digests is as simple as selecting the files and/or folders to be converted in the finder and dragging them over to the Info-Mac To HTML icon. The application will be started automatically and process the files according to the preferences set in the preferences file ( see also Help on Preferences ). A status dialog box will be displayed, allowing the user to monitor the progress. If needed, the application can be put into the background by clicking onto any visible part of a window belonging to another application. When the application has finished processing all the files selected the next action will depend on the state of the application before the files were dragged onto it. If the application wasn’t running it will automatically terminate but if it were running (the icon would be displayed in the finder in its grayed form), it would be left in its normal idle state.
The converted files will be left in the destination folder as specified in the preferences. If no destination folder had been specified, the converted files will be left in the same folder as the original digests.
If a post-process folder is specified, the original digest files will be moved to the specified folder but will not be modified.
The file name of the converted files will be made up of the original file name of the digest with a suffix of ‘.html’. The type of the file will be set to a Netscape™ document type which will allow it to automatically launch the Netscape Navigator™ browser when it is double-clicked.
Converting a File Using the Menu Option
Using the File menu and selecting the "Process One File" option, a standard file dialog will be displayed for you to select a file to be converted. The conversion process will be the same as above with the application having been already started.
Converting a Folder Using the Menu Option
If a source folder has been specified in the preferences, its contents may be processed by selecting the "Process Source Folder" option from the File menu. The conversion process will be the same as above with the application having been already started.
Pausing and Stopping Conversion.
The status screen that is displayed during the conversion process has a control section which looks much like the controls to be found on cassette tape recorders or compact disc players. These can be used to pause a conversion or abort the conversion of a batch of files. If the stop button is clicked, the current file will be processed before the application quits.
