README for winhelpcgi
---------------------

"winhelpcgi.cgi" is a simple tool to allow reading
of Help files from Microsoft Windows under Linux without
using any emulation software.


Viewable File types
-------------------

The types of files provided are:
*.HLP - Windows Help files from Windows 3.x, Windows 9x and Windows NT
        Those are compiled by hc30,hc31 or hcw
*.M14
*.M13 - Media View Library files, compiled my mvcc (?)
*.MVP - Media Viewer 2.0 files, compiled by mvcc (?)


Getting the most recent Version
-------------------------------

Please look for updates at the herdsoft web server:

   http://www.herdsoft.com/ 


Handling
--------

"winhelpcgi.cgi" is a CGI-Program used in conjunction with a 
web server such as apache. Surely your distribution contains
a preconfigured apache package.

You need to copy winhelpcgi.cgi and any HLP files you'd like to
read into a CGI-Enabled directory on your web Server.

In Debian 3.0 the directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin is preconfigured
to contain cgi programs.

To add another directory to your apache configuration you might
add the following lines to your access.conf (for example
/etc/apache/access.conf):

   # Directives for winhelpcgi
   Alias /winhelpcgi /var/winhelpcgi
   <Directory /var/winhelpcgi>
      AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
      AllowOverride All
      Options ExecCGI
   </Directory>

And copy winhelpcgi.cgi and the HLP-Files into /var/winhelpcgi.
Afterwards you should be able to read the help file by accessing
http://localhost/winhelpcgi/winhelpcgi.cgi


Security
--------

Starting with Version 0.99 there are no known issues forbidding the
use of "winhelpcgi.cgi" in a web server environment serving the
public internet.

However the Help files offered for reading by winhelpcgi should
be trustworty. You should not accept .hlp files from non-trustworthy
sources.

Reading insecure .hlp files using winhelpcgi is not as dangerous as
reading them on windows, especially if you are using an unusual
processor such as an alpha or sparc machine, but it is not secure.
So don't offer an "upload your help file here" service...


Licensing
---------

"winhelpcgi" is licensed under the Gnu Public License Version 2.

If you need it licensed differently so as to avoid to expose your
source code, contact us for prices.


Ports
-----

"winhelpcgi" has by now successfully been compiled for the following
environments:

- Linux on intel CPUs (i386 line), AMD...
- Linux on PowerPC CPUs
- Linux on Alpha CPUs
- i386-pc-solaris2: Solaris 8 on Intel CPUs
- Solaris 8 on Sparc CPUs
- AIX on powerpc CPUs
  Need gcc compiler or a very recent IBM C compiler for struct alignment
  issues
- Novell NetWare 6 using Apache 2 using gcc targeting NetWare
- MacOS X

However some of those ports have been tested with older Versions of winhelpcgi.

At this time I compiled this release (1.0rc1) on:
- Linux (Intel and PowerPC)
- MacOS X


libwmf
------

Windows Help files can contain images in .BMP (Windows Bitmap) and
.WMF (Windows Metafile) format.

The conversion of .WMF type images to the PNG format used by the
web browser required the "libwmf" package to be installed.

You may download it from:

   http://download.sourceforge.net/wvware/

"libwmf" itself requires libgd, freetype, zlib and libpng.

The configure script will automatically detect if libwmf is installed
on your machine and will omit WMF support if it isn't.



Additional Information
----------------------

Additional informations on how to use this software for special
purposes are to be found on http://www.herdsoft.com/.


Donating
--------

Winhelpcgi is free Software. 

Please consider to voluntarily donating us some money,
for example using a paypal transfer to "info@herdsoft.com",
any small amount will be appreciated. For amounts from 5 EURO
on we can send an invoice.
