*new*Prebinder V 1.0

*new*Introduction
The windows compression engine for TomeRaider files, called bind.exe, is the only way to make TomeRaider files. It is very easy to use, but the hard part is getting text into the correct format for conversion. This is where Prebinder comes in.

Prebinder is a dos application that takes unformatted text (as found in normal text files and etexts) and converts it into the correct tab seperated file as used by bind.exe. These Tab files are also ideal for importing into database packages like Access for more work on your data.

So, all you need is the text file, a text editor and Prebinder and you can begin converting to TomeRaider by using bind.exe. It is so simple!




*new*The Text File

Any text file can be converted into a TomeRaider file very easyily using the Prebinder. Imagine you have a etext of Dracular. You want it to be a TomeRaider file witch every entry containing one chapter (Incidently this is we recomend as the standard for etexts). All you need to do is put the term:


*new* just like this.

and you will seperate that Chapter into its own TomeRaider entry. The title of the Entry will be the line just after entering *neww*, in this case "just like this". The text of the TomeRaider entry will be the rest of the text up to the next *neww* or the end of the file. The resulting file will be a file of the same name but with the extention .tab rather than .txt. You will be able to load this file in any Text editor. 


*new* Prebinding
You may be thinking that I made two typos in the above paragraph by writing *neww* with two w`s. The reeason I didnt is that this file is ready for Prebinding and I didnt want to create new TomeRaider entries mid-paragraph. After reading this file you can prebind it yourself and see the results. Just have Prebinder.exe and this prebind.txt file in the same directory. Go to that directory and type:


prebind prebind.txt

Note: that the file name is case sensitive and both the Prebinder.exe and the input.txt file (i.e. the file you want to prebind) must be in the same directory. Note also in the above example the name prebind.txt should be replaced for whatver file name you want to prebind.


After a while (Longer for larger files) you will be told that your input file has been saved in the same directory but with the extention .tab. This is the tab seperated file that you will convert straight to a TomeRaider file using bind.exe.



*new*Compressing to TomeRaider


As with Prebinder.exe, bind.exe only works on files in the same directory so it is a very good idea to keep bind.exe in the same directory as prebinder.exe. If you do this then the ONLY thing you have to do is type 


bind input.tab


Thats it, the file input.tab will be cobnverted into the same filename with the extention .tr. This file can then be viewed in TomeRaider. So, to get this readme file onto we would have bind.exe in the same directory and type bind prebind.txt. Voilla!!! In the directory will be the file  prebind.tr. Try for yourself and load it into TomeRaider.


*new*Tips

(1) The file Tome.txt containst more technical information on using bind.exe. You only need to read this if you are creating complex data files and want to know about the TomeRaider tab format in more detail.

(2) We recomend using TextPad for all of your text editing needs. This can be downloaded from www.textpad.com. If you use it please register it.

(3) For large files you can import the tab files into Access for integrity checking and so on.

(4) Always open the tab file produced by Prebinder and check it for errors in formatting.



*new*Contact


The TomeRaider website is at www.tomeraider.co.uk.


We can be contacted at jzjones(a)ukonline.co.uk and skovax(at)ukonline.co.uk.


The reason that we typed (at) in the above addresses is that the AT symbol familiar to us all, and the tab character, are not available in TomeRaider files. This is something we will change in the next file format update....










