Topic awaiting preservation: uh, my question doesn't really fit any section...

*Sorry I realize this isn't in the correct section, but really i don't see one for this kind of thing*

Why don't we have a Development section for offline coding and programs? Like C++ and JAVA?

Anyway i'm needing to make some tutorals for offline use, but don't want to just enter the info into .txt files

I want to have the tutoral in like an .exe that when opened displays the tutoral and such, kinda like whats done with .pdf files but I don't need all the extra stuff and features that come with .pdf creation

So I was thinking JAVA but I don't want everyone to have to have java installed to view my tutorals, so where should I turn? I really would like cross platform compatibility if possible...

I know of many program creation softwares out there, but I'm not creating a software program so they don't need to install anything, even a simple window opened displaying text that they couldn't edit would be a good start, I want the data and formatting protected and not in an editable interface to the user like notpad would be for example.

I'm an online developer (eg: php, asp, java script) and rarely need to deal with offline coding, so I really just need a kick in the right direction

Feedback or suggestions would be most welcome

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[This message has been edited by Synthetic (edited 05-23-2003).]

Synthetic: Why not make them in HTML?

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Yeah I thought about that but would like a little more format and copyright protection, anyone that can read can just about edit html to say whatever they want thus could copy my tutorals edit the copyright and upload to their own server.

However if it was a compiled .exe or something it would be a little harder for the average user to alter the file, I may just consider some form of .pdf if no solution is found

Anyway thanks for the interest

Synthetic's Chess Player Page

Well an easy out of the box answer would be you could do this with a flash interface that can be exported as an executable. This and an autorun.inf file will do it quite easily off of a CD.

Doing this with Java or C++ is possible but seems like more work than you need.



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

I don't see why you wouldn't want to use PDF for this?

It has very rigid copyright controls, it's cross platform and you can put basic HTML functionality into it. What's not to like about a format like this for distrubting stand-alone offline documents like tutorials?

Well it's not so much not wanting to use .pdf for the sake of not using it, it's more never really have done it before

I looked far and wide today and didn't see much alternative to .pdf or flash, so while i'm here have any of you guys wrote some .pdf creation tutorials or have a particuar site to recomend? I'll head over to google and see what it has for me aswell

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