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StrongHelp is the authoritative hypertext manual reader for RISC OS. Everyone should know what it is, but if you don't, download it. You will need it sooner or later!

StrongHelp was originally written by Guttorm Vik. Since he left the Acorn scene two years ago it has been maintained by Jérôme Mathvet, and now the pleasure is all mine.

 
   Download StrongHelp

The current version of StrongHelp is 2.85. It is available for download here:

  14-Mar-2004 StrongHelp 2.85 (108k zip)
Recent changes:
  • Fixed a pointer issue which caused *Copy to corrupt files under certain circumstances on 32 bit systems
  • Hacked around a problem referencing the !Menu page from manuals
  • Fixed an abort caused by *StrongCreate with a large initial size
  • Uses a new algorithm for calculating title bar widths
  • Sets tmp$Manual and tmp$ManualRoot for every page opened for use in preprocessing
  • Rescans a amnual's !Configure file every time it's double-clicked - useful for manual authors
  • Improvements contributed by Sprow:
    • Reclaims fonts on a mode change
    • Adjusted position of pop-up menu in Search box
    • Made Infor window mode style guide compliant
  • Fixed an incorrect sprite area reference causing crashes.
  • Corrected Resources locations to improve support for ResFind.

If you've never used StrongHelp before, you'll also need !Manuals (2k zip)
 
Older versions, which may still be useful to some people, are also available:
  26-Mar-2003 StrongHelp 2.82 (106k zip)
  13-Sep-2002 StrongHelp 2.80 (107k zip)
  13-Sep-2002 StrongHelp 2.80 (107k zip)
  28-Jun-2001 StrongHelp 2.75 (104k zip)
  22-Jun-2001 StrongHelp 2.74 (104k zip)
 
   Accessories
Here are some essential accessories for using with StrongHelp:
The current release of StrongHelp comes bundled with the following two:
 
   Conversions
These programs convert StrongHelp manuals into other formats, and vice versa.
  • SHtoHTML v1.26, converts StrongHelp manuals into HTML pages. Written by Justin Fletcher and me.
  • HTML2SH converts HTML pages into StrongHelp manuals, written by Alex Waugh.
 
   Manuals
These are some manuals that you can read using StrongHelp. Each manual has a short description, the author's name and file size. The date shown is the last time the manual on this server was updated by the author.
Sort by Name     Sort by Date
Name Version Author Size Date Description
Assembly 3.04 Guttorm Vik, Jasper the apricot and Sprow 19k 30-Nov-2007 ARM assembly language explained. Also shows how to call assembler from BASIC. Now includes ARM v4 and some v5 instructions.
OS 3.33 many 321k 27-Nov-2007 Documents the Core SWIs provided by RISC OS
Wimp 1.24 many 79k 27-Nov-2007 Documents the SWIs provided by, and related to, the Window Manager
Lua5 4.00 Gavin Wraith 25k May 2006 Introduction and manual for the Lua 5 programming language, and details of its RISC OS port
CSS1 1.17 Chris Terran 52k 15-Feb-2006 Reference and tutorial for CSS 1.
VCache 1.08 7th software 29k 15-Feb-2006 Reference manual for the VCache module, which abstracts access to large files and memory blocks
Toolbox 1.30 Neil Bingham and others 142k 31-Jan-2006 Describes the Toolbox interface, detailing both the SWIs and the C veneers
InetSWIs 1.06 many 21k 7-Jan-2006 Documents other internet related SWIs
Lua51 3.20 Gavin Wraith 25k Oct 2005 Documentation of RiscLua 3.2, implementing Lua5.1
Weave 1.61 Gavin Wraith 13k 10-Jun-2005 An introduction to writing Web pages using Weave
InetDrafts 0.03 Justin Fletcher 731k 19-Dec-2004 A summary and quick reference of the Internet Draft documents
RFCs 2.02 Justin Fletcher 630k 19-Dec-2004 An index of RFCs with descriptions
MIMETypes 0.02 Justin Fletcher 246k 20-Oct-2004 A quick reference of the registered MIME media types
VDU 2.03 many 40k 17-Oct-2003 Lists the VDU control codes and their meaning in RISC OS
MiscSWIs 1.08 many 122k 29-Aug-2003 Documents just about every other SWI under the sun
JSAPI 1.50 Justin Fletcher 51k 01-Jun-2003 StrongHelp conversion of the JavaScript API documentation
StarCmds 0.05 Jérôme Mathvet 39k 26-Mar-2003 Lists all the *-commands you're likely to see
ZapRedraw 0.42b Zap developers 17k 23-Mar-2002 Describes the ZapRedraw API
PIC 1.00 Christian Ludlam 7k 24-Aug-2001 Describes Michrochip's 14 bit PIC instruction set, and some hardware features of the 16F84.
UnixLib 3.80 Justin Fletcher 228k 06-Jul-2001 Collection of manuals for UnixLib 3.8 generated from the comments in the headers by MakeCHelp
Basil 1.23 Steve Drain 5k 26-Jun-2001 Manual for Basil 1.23, a BASIC library manager.
RFSFiles 0.94 Steve Drain 7k 26-Jun-2001 Describes RFSFiles, an application to manage files in ResourceFS
FloatingPt 1.00 Giles Taylor 5k 22-Jun-2001 Details the ARM floating point instructions and their use
SH-Refman 1.10 Guttorm Vik, updated by Christian Ludlam 16k 22-Jun-2001 Reference manual for creating StrongHelp pages
SH-Style 1.10 Justin Fletcher 7k 22-Jun-2001 Style guide for StrongHelp manual authors. Very good advice and a must-read for manual authors
DBasic 1.10 Mike Brasch 86k 21-Jun-2001 A very nice version of the BASIC manual, written entirely in German
WimpKeys 1.10 Michael Martin 16k 18-Jun-2001 Lists the keycodes generated by the wimp
StringUtil 0.90 Steve Drain 2k 3-Jun-2001 StrongHelp manual for the StringUtils module published in Acorn User in January 1995
Lua4 1.50 Gavin Wraith 21k June 2001 Introduction and manual for the Lua 4 programming language, and details of its RISC OS port
SpellMod 0.96 Steve Drain 9k 20-Mar-2001 Documentation for Computer Concepts' ImpressionSpell module gathered by experiment.
FileTypes 2.03 many 50k 26-Aug-2000 Lists and details all the known filetype allocations
AVR 1.00 Christian Ludlam 9k 26-Jun-2000 Documents the instruction set for Atmel's AVR processors
MIDI 0.01 Liam Gretton 19k 6-Jan-1999 Documents the MIDI API and SWIs.
FTP 1.00 Justin Fletcher 14k 14-Dec-1998 Invaluable if you're writing an FTP client
InetSocket 1.06 many 28k 20-Jul-1998 Documents the Socket SWIs provided by the Internet module
Grammar 1.00 Peter Naulls 5k 01-May-1998 Help with some common grammatical mistakes in English
Acronyms 0.02 Jérôme Mathvet 5k 20-Dec-1997 Describes some common internet acronyms
Computers 1.00 Jérôme Mathvet 44k 20-Dec-1997 Defines a large number of computer related jargon words
POVRay3 3.00 Jérôme Mathvet 80k April 97 Describes the interface to POVRay 3
C-Version5 0.06 Neil Bingham 40k 14-Mar-1997 Describes Acorn's C/C++ version 5 suite
MAlloc 1.00 Matthew Godbolt 3k 27-Feb-1997 Describes the API of the MAlloc module
Sockets 1.00 David Croft 9k 12-Jul-1996 Describes the SWI interface to BSD socket libraries
JPEG 1.00 David Thomas 3k 10-Jun-1996 Documentation for JPEG (Sprite Extend) & CompressJPEG SWIs, superseded by the OS manual
BlockDrivers 0.01 David Thomas 7k 02-Jun-1996 Describes the Serial BlockDriver interface.
CDFS 1.00 David Thomas 4k 02-Jun-1996 Describes CDFS and CDFSDriver SWIs, superseded by the OS manual
LZW 1.02 David Thomas 1k 02-Jun-1996 Documents the LZW & LZWD modules, superseded by the MiscSWIs manual
Modem 1.00 David Thomas 5k 02-Jun-1996 Details the AT command set, wiring diagrams and other Serial port related information
QTM 1.02 David Thomas 6k 02-Jun-1996 Describes the SWI interface for the QTM (Queue The Music) module, superseded by the MiscSWIs manual
SparkFS 1.02 David Thomas 2k 02-Jun-1996 Documents SparkFS SWIs, superseded by the MiscSWIs manual
WimpExt 1.03 David Thomas 39k 02-Jun-1996 Describes DoggySoft's WimpExt module
StarComds1 1.00 Stuart Halliday 1k 27-Mar-1996 Extra information of some of the Star commands. Has now been merged with the main StarCommands manual.
SharedCLib 1.00 Unknown 950 bytes 15-Aug-1995 Terse documentation on the SharedCLibrary module
C 2.00 Gareth Boden 225k 1995 Documents general C language syntax, as well as some common ANSI and RISC OS libraries
HTML 1.00 Gareth Boden 12k 1995 Introduction to HTML, as well as a tag reference section
BASIC 2.00 Guttorm Vik, Neil Walker 23k - Documents all of BBC BASIC's functions and keywords
Cpp 1.00? J B Blaukopf 9k - Documents C++ language syntax and gives a breif introduction to some of the libraries
FileTypes 1.00 Richard Goodwin 17k - Lists the filetype allocations. Obsoleted by the more up to date and styleguidy version 2.00.
Machine 1.00 Guttorm Vik 4k - Shows the memory map for Acorn (pre RISC PC) hardware
NetLib 1.00 Tony Houghton 51k - Stronghelp conversion of the documentaton for the NetLib C library
Perl 1.00 Michael Attenborough 198k - StrongHelp conversion of Perl's POD
StrongHTML 1.00 Guttorm Vik 16k - Simple HTML reference manual
WimpExt1 1.00 Simon Hatliff 25k - Also documents DoggySoft's WimpExt module, but also provides some extra hint on how to use it
 
   Source
Here you can download the source for the current version of StrongHelp, as well as several other utilities. Source for older versions of StrongHelp is available, though not easily through the web interface.
StrongHelp 2.85 source (168k zip)
StrongLib, 32 bit verson of the library required for building the source (45k zip)
Source for the !Pre filters, to be used as a base for any other filters (4k zip)
 
  Page design and content (c) 2001-2004 Christian Ludlam   chris@recoil.org