GUItenMark is a program of a
type known as a "graphical front-end". It provides a simplified
method of accessing the GutenMark
command-line program and (20080601 or later) the GutenSplit command-line
program. In other words, the GutenMark
and GutenSplit programs still
do all of
the work of converting your etext to HTML (or LaTeX), but you no longer
have to bother about learning how to use them, or to bother dealing
with
the command-line if it's not your thing.
Learning to Use GUItenMark, in One Minute or Less
To me, GUItenMark seems
completely self-explanatory, and you probably don't even need any
instructions at all. But as the proud parent I may be kidding
myself. So here's a little extra prattle on the subject:
The installer creates a desktop icon or Start-menu option which
refers to GUItenMark as the
"Project Gutenberg Prettifier", or in Mac OS X as "GUItenMark".
Run the program.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is a thousand
words worth of explanation (click the picture to enlarge it):
A Few of the Finer Points of GUItenMark
The explanation above—if you can dignify it with that term—probably
covers 99% of what most people want to do most of the time, namely to
convert etext to HTML using decent conversion options.
Nevertheless, GUItenMark can
do more than that: It can actually control every useful option
provided by GutenMark and GutenSplit, and
throws in a few other flourishes besides.
I won't bother to explain any of the items under the heading "Settings" in GUItenMark, since these are just
command-line options of the GutenMark
and GutenSplit programs.
You can find out more about any of them by placing the
mouse cursor over them and reading the hint that pops up. If you
need still more information, you can look at
the GutenMark usage page
or the GutenSplit usage instructions.
GUItenMark remembers the
options you've selected, and automatically uses the same options when
you run the program again. For example, suppose you checked the
box labeled "ALL-CAPS ok?"; this box would still be checked if you
exited the program and then re-ran it again sometime later. If
you don't like the settings, you can use the button labeled "Default
settings" to get back to the settings as they were at installation
time. Conversely, if you found a set of settings you really like,
you can use the "Save settings" button to save them with a specific
name, and you can use "Restore settings" to retrieve them later.
When you use the "Add files" button to select etexts for
conversion, the filenames are placed in the window labeled "Input
Files". As you convert them, they are removed one-by-one from
"Input Files" and placed in the window labeled "Output Files".
The output files themselves are in the folder you've chosen as the
"Output Folder".
As a convenience, you can double-click any filename in the "Input
Files" window or the "Output Files" window to display that file in the
default browser. The "Output Files" windows contains only the
names of the files you've converted in the current section, but as a
convenience you can use the "Populate" button to put the names of all
of the files from the output folder into the "Output Files"
window. Conversely, you can use the "Clear files" button to clear
the "Input Files" or "Output Files" windows; this clears only the
window, and doesn't delete any files!
