Introducing STOS Buddy.

[Stethane]

STOS Buddy is a program which is designed to tell you everything there is to know about STOS in one convenient package. You can download version 1, which includes the full source code, from the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ybdzk6zuacv9u ... e.zip?dl=0

STOS Buddy Features:

A collection of various STOS basic program listings and related media, with the ability to add new ones with relative ease. Currently there are 97 individual STOS programs added.

Full syntax highlighting for STOS listings, including all STOS commands and 15 of the most popular extensions.

Tool-tip descriptions of each of those commands when you hover your mouse cursor over them.

A massive help file, which includes the following:
Full STOS manual, tutorials and related articles.
Full documentation for 31 STOS extensions. Including the FIRST EVER (as far as I know) fully converted STOS 3D Manual.
Almost 750 STOSSER Diskzine articles from all issues 1 to 29. Everything but the most irrelevant articles(contacts, ads etc.) were included.
42 articles from the Much STOS Gigazine disks 1 and 2.
33 articles from the STESTOSTerone Diskmag disks 1 to 4.
All the diskzine articles had their formatting fixed and were spell-checked as much as possible. This took a LONG time.

Also, when the mouse cursor is hovered over a STOS or extension command, pressing the F1 key will take you right to the section of the documentation that deals with that command, be it in the STOS manual or the relevant extension documentation.

Other features:

You can export fully syntax-highlighted program listings as an HTML file, but note that the HTML file will be quite large as it has to include all of the colour formatting information.

You can view a full list of all STOS commands and extension commands the program recognises, along with their descriptions. Look in the Help menu.

STOS Buddy was written in Visual Basic.net. All source code is included.

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IMPORTANT NOTE:
STOS Buddy V1 is not a completely finished product. There are likely to be some bugs and/or errors. It contains a LOT of information and you may spot silly mistakes, e.g. with STOS command descriptions.. It would be helpful if you could let me know if you see anything wrong.
Also, there's a whole lot more STOS programs out there that need to be added to STOS Buddy. I'll add more as time goes by. You can also add your own.

You need to have the .net framework v2 to run the program, which pretty much comes with all modern Windows PCs these days.

Have fun.

[exxos]

Fantastic bit of work there

A lot of the games and source are already on the STOS site. They seem to be pretty much the same ones as you have in there already.

Extracting the info out of the zines is a cool idea. I was half thinking of doing that myself, but thought it would be a lot of work. Though seems you have done it, though if its just the chm file, it lists the zines, but does not actually list any content ?

Assume it will be ok to add STOS buddy in the STOS site ? A separate download for the zine articles would be a advantage I think also.

[Stethane]

The disk-zine articles are definitely there within the .chm file. Each magazine issue is like a folder, just open it up and the articles are in there.
e.g. Disk-Mags->STOSSER Diskmag Articles->Disk 1->[The articles]

And yes, you can absolutely put it on your site.

[exxos]

It looks like the windows7 viewer does not work. But a 3rd party one views the files

[Stethane]

It looks like the windows7 viewer does not work.

Not sure why that is. The Windows 7 computers I've tried seemed to work ok. Maybe I need to add an amendment to the documentation if it's a common problem.

[exxos]

It looks like the windows7 viewer does not work.

Not sure why that is. The Windows 7 computers I've tried seemed to work ok. Maybe I need to add an amendment to the documentation if it's a common problem.

Same happens on my girlfriends pc, win7 64bit. Will add the stuff on the site tomorrow and put a link to the free viewer just in case

[Stethane]

The issue with the CHM files not opening might be due to a Windows security measure.
See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1143 ... s-canceled

Basically you would have to right click on the CHM file, click on "properties" then click "Unblock".
If this helps anyone, let me know.

[Stethane]

In the next update to STOS Buddy which will be released... eventually, I intend it to have the following features:

The ability to play .YM music files so you don't need to have music stored as MP3s or WAVs any more. (This feature is already done.)

Finish adding all of the STOS programs that I can find.

[exxos]

Cool nice work