HINT: The Viewer

Programs to view HINT files

News

The HINT file format version 2.0 features a complete redesign of the short (binary) format used for viewing. As a consequence, an updated viewer is required. While it should be forward compatible with newer versions, it is not backward compatible with older versions.

Documentation

The hint viewer software consists of a backend, written in C and several frontends. The backend is reusable and depends heavily on the HINT file format version, the frontends are specific for an operating system. Currently five frontends are (see below) available: for Linux, Windows, Android, iOS and MacOS. The Android HintView is joint work with Prof. Gudrun Socher.

Currently the most simple viewer is the viewer for Linux. Its user interface consists just of a few key strokes and mouse movements as described in the man page. All the viewers use the same backend. The code for rendering pages is written in OpenGL and available in two slightly different version, one for OpenGL and one for OpenEGL. If you want to investigate the sources or want to implement your own viewer, the Linux viewer is a good starting point.

A book (cover on the left) is in preparation. Documented sources will become available with the printed documentation (or on request from the author).

Sources

Sources for hintview are now on github: github.com/ruckertm/HINT

Until the MacOS sources will be on github as well, here is a big tgz file with all my XCode files for the fearless programmer, who does not want to wait for a cleaner version: HintView_MacOS.tgz

Binaries

Binaries using the old HINT file format version 1.4 can be found here: HINT version 1.4 but the version 1.4 is deprecated.

• Windows: the Version 2.0.0 viewer supports HINT Format Version 2.0.

  For easy inatallation use this setup file: setup_HintView_2_0_0.exe.

  For manual installation just download the executable hintview.exe. You may want to put it to directory on your search path and associate the viewer executable with .hnt files.

• Android: The HINT viewer for Android is available from the Play Store: HintView

  There are temporary problems with the Play Store. But here is a APK for download: hintview-2-0-app-release.apk

• Linux: For Linux there is a precompiled binary hintview. As it is with precompiled binaries, they might work on your system or not.

  As long as hintview is not available through the standard package sources, you can find the Debian packages here. They were created for Debian 11 and Debian 12, but may also run on derived distributions such as Ubuntu.

  Using the sources from the repository mentioned above, it should be sufficient to install the required libraries (libdl, libglew, libglfw3 libfreetype, libX11, libXrandr, libXinerama, libXi, libXcursor, libGL, libz, libpthread, libm, libc), change to the Linux/ subdirectory and run make or possibly WITH_GTK=number make where number is either 2 or 3.

• MacOS: Due to restrictions at my institution, currently I can not offer a viewer in the Apple Store (which is however the long term goal). Thanks to Richard Koch, you can download a package for MacOS from his home page at https://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/. Alternatively you can download a complete Xcode project from the source repository mentioned above.

  There is a short video, demonstrating some of the program features. It was made for Jonathan Fine's TeX Hour on Thursday, September 29, 2022.

• iOS: Due to restrictions at my institution, currently I can not offer a viewer in the Apple Store (which is however the long term goal). Instead, you can download a complete Xcode project from the source repository mentioned above.

Example Files

Examples using the old HINT file format version 1.4 can be found here: HINT version 1.4.

The following files use the HINT file format version 2.0 and were produced using hitex.

• png.hnt png.tex A.png Text with a png image.

• jpg.hnt jpg.tex A.jpg Text with a jpg image.

• image.hnt image.tex Loewe.jpg Head.jpg Images that shrink and stretch like glue

• leaders.hnt leaders.tex Leaders as in a table of content

• ligature.hnt ligature.tex Ligatures for testing hyphenation and page breaking

• math.hnt math.tex Some math

• mfpreface.hnt mfpreface.tex The preface of the METAFONT book

• sample2e.hnt sample2e.tex The basic LaTeX Example file

• ueb2.hnt ueb2.tex A typical example of weekly exercises in a course on programming

• insertions.hnt insertions.tex Demonstrating floating insertions like footnotes and illustrations.

• calibration.hnt calibration.tex Shows vertical and horizontal rulers that should be exactly 10cm long if displayed at a zoom factor of 100%.

• vtop.hnt vtop.tex Illustrates the vertical alignment of variable size boxes.

• format.hnt The book: HINT: The File Format

• ctex.hnt The TeX program as translated from WEB to cweb.

Errata and Improvements

• To be continued ...

Data Protection Declaration

The Data Protection Declaration for the HintView application can be found here.

Support

• These programs are still under continuous development. So don't ask for support.
• If you want to help, send me immediately an email to ruckert (at) cs.hm.edu.
• If you own a company and want to use HINT files and HINT viewers as part of your products, send me an email to ruckert (at) cs.hm.edu.

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