README file for X-Merge (DayMoon Software) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TABLE OF CONTENTS What is Freeware? Installing X-Merge The User's Manual Technical Support Distributing Limited Warranty and Disclaimer ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What is Freeware? Freeware is software that is given away for free. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Installing X-Merge X-Merge has been compressed using WinZip32 version 6.2 for Windows 95 and Windows NT. You can obtain a copy of this shareware at http://www.winzip.com. Once you have it decompressed, copy xmerge.exe to a directory in your path. This way you can execute it from any directory. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The User's Manual Summary: -------- X-Merge is a utility that lets you create new files based on a template, and a source file. For example, let's say every time you make a web page, you always have a picture at the top. With X-Merge, you can have all your pages always have this picture. Even better, if you change the picture in the future, you update one file (the template) rather than every web page. Then, you run X-Merge to update all your web pages in one step. Terminology: ------------ X-Merge requires one or more "Template" pages, and one or more "Insert" pages. You can think of Template pages in the same way applications like Microsoft Word uses templates. These make up the backbone of other documents. Insert documents are like the data you enter into Word. Most people make many insert documents to be used with one template. One neat feature of X-Merge is you can have multiple template files for multiple insert files. With this feature and a web page, you could have multiple views for the same data. When the data changes, you recompile, and all the views are automatically updated with the new data. When the template changes, you recompile, and are assured that the data is the same in every location. How to use: ----------- With X-Merge, you need a template file. This file contains the blueprints on how you want your destination file to look. It also specifies the destination location on where you want the destination files to go. Here's an example web page: <>\\SomeNetworkPath<> <> You can tell the difference between X-Merge commands and HTML commands by the number of brackets. When you see information in a <<...>> tag, then you are looking at an X-Merge command. When you see single brackets <...>, you are looking at an HTML command. Note, X-Merge can be used with any text file, and is NOT restricted to HTML pages. That is why it is called X-Merge and not HTMLMerge (X, in this case, is for Generic). The first line contains <>, which is a reserved keyword. The data between these brackets \\SomeNetworkPath corresponds to where the destination 'compiled' files will go. \\SomeNetworkPath can also be a local drive like "C:\Hello There" or a relative path like ..\HiThere. <> is the closing tag for the output file, and lets X-Merge know that you are done telling it about the destination path. <