http://www.wam.umd.edu/~walrus/AORMTool.html (Amiga Plus Extra No. 5/97, 05/1997)

Amiga Online Reference Manual Tool

The AORM Tool is an offline version of David Tiberio's Amiga Online Reference Manual. AORMTool runs with Kickstart 2.04 or later (supporting nifty 3.x features if you have it), and lets you search for any combination of keywords in the database.

The Amiga Online Reference Manual database contains useful information on a wide variety of topics. Only some of these are:

What are viruses, what kinds are there, and what are some easy and effective ways to protect yourself from these criters?
How can you write protect your harddisk?
What can you do when your mouse starts acting weird?
What is TCP/IP and what will it do for your sexlife?
What is an A/B roll or an "anamorphic squeeze?"
What is oversampling? What is a spline?
What's a surface mounted chip? (If it's not surface mounted, does it float?)
What will a Time-base corrector do for you?
What does David Tiberio think of Madonna and Rob Lowe?
Can you use unused CPUs on your motherboard?
What are the different types of monitors available?

et cetera...

Successful Search

If the search resulted in too many matching records you can cancel the display of these records before the program spends much time and memory resources on the process of assembling the data and formatting it for output.

You can then refine your search and restart it.

AORMTool lets you turn off this precautionary prompt.

Viewing the Result

Using AmigaGuide, the program presents the information formatted to match your preferences: output can be laid out for optimum spread on your printer or to better match your display configuration.

Also, using the AmigaGuide output window, you can save the result to a file or the clipboard, or print it to any Preferences printer.

Alternately, AORMTool can be easily setup to start a copy of your favorite Web Browser and present the results of a search using HTML formatted text. Support for AWeb is already built-in and easily selected with a simple Tooltype change. Other browsers require an insignificant amount of additional effort.

Updating the Database using your Amiga's Connection to the Internet

If your Amiga is connected to the Internet, you can keep your Amiga Online Reference Manual up to date at all times with the simple press of a button!

If your database is already the most recent, the program will not bother downloading a new copy, thus saving you time and keeping network traffic to a minimum.

What else?

Let me give it to you in a few short sentences:

Completely font-sensitive interface, honoring your proportional screen font,
Online help using AmigaGuide with special support for recent Kickstart 3 AmigaGuide features and safeguards added to support older V34 AmigaGuide,
Highly configurable through Tooltypes,
Recognizes changes to your printer preferences as they occur; no exit-and-restart is required to recognize changes that affect output settings,
Internetwork support through bsdsocket.library which is provided by AmiTCP, Miami, and MultiLink. AS-225 socket.library support is under consideration.
Supports both SIMPLEREFRESH and SMARTREFRESH

Requirements

An Amiga computer with 68000 or faster CPU,
Kickstart 2.04 (V37) or later. Some features are much enhanced with Kickstart 3+ (V39+)
100-200K free RAM,
500K free diskspace (harddisk installation is optional; will run well (though searches are slower) from a floppy disk)
Optional network connection requires bsdsocket.library

How to get it?

AORMTool is a joint commercial venture by David Tiberio and Udo Schuermann. We encourage you to download a demo version from the link below. The demo has some noticable restrictions, however:

Presents you with annoying "This is a demo version" requesters that require you to wait for at least 5 seconds before you are able to continue,
Will only display the first and last records from a search (a highly specific search can, therefore, find anything in the database that the unrestricted program will find) -- this "forces" you to explore the advanced keyword combination searches and read the documentation to learn how :-)

Obtaining the DEMO version of AORMTool 1.0: Click this link to download... AORMToolDemo10.lha (190K)
Extracting the files in the archive will create an AORMTool subdirectory; there is no special installation that needs to be performed: just run the program AORMTool that you find in that directory!
Purchasing the full version: The program costs US$10.00, which is a bargain considering the countless hours of work that went into it, the wealth of data that is contained in the database, and the fact that you can obtain a newer database release at any time without ever having to pay another penny for the privilige!
Ordering information will appear here when available; in the meantime, please email me (you'll be notified when you can order the program) and enjoy the demo!

walrus@wam.umd.edu