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H2 v0.52 (Win32 version)
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At the moment there is no shareware version - when there is, the registered version will 
be NAG-free and have more functions, and the unregistered version will NAG... when I 
finally get around to sorting the shareware stuff out!

Anyway - for the moment, they're all unregistered versions and there's no way to register
them - but at least there are no NAGS!

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What is H2?
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H2 is a follow-on project from Hyper, which was released in December of 1999.

Put simply, it is a media cataloging and launching application. It builds up a database
of all media files that you have on your system and allows you to produce a catalog of them and
a frontend which takes the form of HTML pages produced using a changeable template.

From the front end you are able to 'launch' any of the media files and have them play - a single
front end to all of your files.

For Media Files read:

- Emulator ROMS
- Music files
- Video files

H2 has the ability to pull these media files from Archives - so if you have lots of media files
on your disc - you can store them in archives to save valuable bytes.

Something else worth noting is that H2 can be fairly easily modified to include any type of file
required - so if there's something you would like included - let us know.

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Why do I want H2?
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Well... here's what H2 will buy you:

1) A consistent front-end to ALL of the media files on your machine (Game ROMS, MP3s, Video files, Rich Text documents
   ...anything!).
2) The ability to store those media files inside archives (ZIP archives for example) without the application that processes
   them needing to know anything about the archive - thus saving space.
3) Ability thanks to AutoIt (http://www.hiddensoft.com/AutoIt) to control GUI applications.
4) The front-end can be produced via templates, so the look of the frontend can be massively tailored.
5) Zero configuration - well, it's been designed with as little configuration as possible.
6) Easily extensible, tell us a filetype or an application to handle a filetype and we'll add it!

There's more, but it's late! Give it a try - you'll see why!

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How do I unpack this archive?
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Unpack the ZIP file into a directory called 'H2' (or whatever) - make sure you maintain the directory
structure (usually the -d option, or tick the box in WinZip).

You should end up with the following directory structure (assuming you unpack to D:\H2 - but it's up to
you!)

D:\H2     -> .exe files, this is also where your database and catalog files will normally end up.
D:\H2\DOC -> Documentation (including this README.txt!)
D:\H2\DAT -> Media recognition files get placed here, these are available as seperate downloads on
             www.warmtoe.com - termed DATPacks. If you get a new DATPack, this is where it should go!
	     
If you had an earlier version of H2 then unpack this one to the same place. Files that need to be replaced
will be, others shall be used from the older version.

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How do I use H2?
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There is 1 program involved in building the media database, 3 in building the front end and 2 involved in
launching the media files.

H2B.exe    - Database Builder (and Catalog creator).
H2F.exe    - Front End Producer.
H2FDLP.exe - H2F Download handler (for browser support)
H2CTRL.exe - A Control panel for Win32 to launch H2F with searches etc...
H2L.exe    - Launch the Media.
H2LDLP.exe - H2L Download handler (for browser support)

Put simply, once you've followed the following steps:

1) Run H2B.exe once to produce the database (and again whenever you add new files onto the machine).
2a) Run H2F.exe whenever you want to use the frontend.
2b) Or launch H2F.exe by running H2CTRL.exe and clicking Go...

BUT FOLLOW THE STEPS!!!!!

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H2B.exe
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In order to build a database of all recognised media files on your machine you simply need to
run H2B.exe giving it the directory to interrogate for files, a specific file / subset of files
or the keyword 'ALL' to let it find all of them on your machine.

eg: H2B D:\SNES\ROMS
    H2B D:\RAINE\ROMS\GUNLOCK.zip
    H2B D:\RAINE\ROMS\GUN*.zip
    H2B ALL
    
Note that using the ALL option means that no thought is required - but it can take some minutes to
interrogate the entire hard drive - to convince yourself that it is doing something specify the
-P option which gives progress status.

eg: H2B -P ALL

When complete, you should discover a file in the same directory as H2B.exe called 'H2.H2D' - this
is the H2 Database file that has been created.

Whenever you add new files onto the machine, H2B needs to be run to update the database with those
new files. You don't have to use 'ALL' - just run H2B with the directory where you added new files
existing files will be updated in the database too, but that's no problem - in fact it can be useful
if, for example, all games are listed as 'MAME' games but you want to change only one or two to
be 'RAINE' games, you can rerun H2B with the -M option on those files you want to be classed as
RAINE games.

To create an HTML listing (catalog) of the files in the H2 Database, use the -C option on the H2B
command line. Note that this will not work unless you already have an H2 Database created - see
above.

eg: H2B -C

You will then get a file called 'H2.htm' - Load it up into a web browser - it's a big list of all
the recognised files on your machine.

You can combine both of these functions into one command line

eg: H2B -C D:\SNES\ROMS

This will build the database and a catalog. Once you have the database, you can rebuild the catalog
simply using the -C option on it's own.

For a list of the Currently supported file and archive types see 'SUPPORT.txt' in the DATPack you
are using.

If, your catalog contains entries where the title has a suffix of '(D)' after it, this is a derived
title - that is, it wasn't found in any recognition files. This is fine, and will work (you won't get
the (D) in your front-end output) - but it means that the name may be slightly wrong.

I plan to update the recognition files with these derived names - if you see any of these then run
H2B.exe, this time specifying the -D option.

eg: H2B -D

This will run through the existing database, and produce files in a subdirectory 'FIX' with names 'XXXX.H2D' 

Please visit www.warmtoe.com and send a note to us for inclusion in the next release of that recognition file. 
Of course, I will credit anyone who helps me with this!!!!

You can remove files from the database that are no longer on the machine using the -R option

eg: H2B -R

One other option available from H2B (and from all) is the ability to get some diagnostic information
out in the event of a failure. This is achieved using the -T option with a trace level.

eg: H2B -T 10 -C
    H2B -T 10 D:\SNES\ROMS

So that H2 can spot ARCADE romsets it needs a simple method of finding them, at the moment it uses
a VERY simple method - namely, it looks for either the word 'ARCADE', 'ROMSET' or 'A4' (long story!)
in the full path of the filename it's analysing. 
In practice, what this means is that you should put any arcade romsets in a subdirectory
like ARCADE.

eg: D:\ARCADE\MAME\ROMS

This will improve in future releases if I can think of a way to do it!!!!!!
    
If you have problems, make sure you gather this as I may well ask you to send it to me.

While I'm thinking about it, you can specify the -M option to have H2B choose other emulators
before MAME - MAME now emulates much of what some older emulators did - so by default, MAME
is chosen as the emulator above others - but, if you want to keep using the other emulators
then use the -M switch when you build the database.

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H2F.exe
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To produce a frontend you need to do 2 things:

1) Use H2B.exe to build a database of recognised files on your machine, see above.
2) Run H2F.exe

H2F.exe produces the basic front end - at the moment, template support to put more elaborate web pages
together has not been implemented. H2F takes a few basic parameters, but you can produce a frontend
with 'H2F.exe'

parameters:

-I            : Uses Internet Explorer in preference to Netscape
-N            : Uses Netscape instead of Internet Explorer as the browser. If you have netscape installed I would
                suggest this as netscape's DDE server appears to be much quicker than IE's - especially with IE 5.5
-o<directory> : Uses the directory specified as the output directory. I included this because I wanted to use a ram
                disk for the output directory, I have a RAM disk configured as my F drive, so I use:
-m<String>    : Match title of a media file - filters out only those titles.
		
H2F.exe -N -oF:\OUT

By default H2F writes it's output files to <H2 INSTALL DIR>\OUT

In order for the browser to create new pages based on the .H2F files output by H2F.exe, a download handler
called H2FDLP.exe must be associated with the .H2F file type. This is done automatically when H2F.exe is run
but if there is a problem, refer to FILEASSOC.txt to see the manual steps.

Match filtering
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Limited at present to 30 characters - but that ought to be enough for most things, it's not a
fuzzy match - it's exact matching at the moment. Basically, this will make the starting point
a list of files with that string in their title.

eg; H2F.exe -N -oF:\OUT -mT"Street Fighter"

Will show you all the Street Fighter roms etc you have on your machine, regardless of platform.

The syntax is -mX<String> where X is:

T for matching Titles
A for matching Authors / Artists
C for matching Collections / Albums
M for matching Media type name (eg mame, mp3, genesis etc)

and the fuzzy variants

t for matching Titles
a for matching authors
c for matching albums
m for matching media type names

if X is M or m and <String> is one of the special strings then the more generic media type will
be sought:

MUSIC for music files
GAMES for games

This list will probably be extended

All of this nasty stuff can now be achieved with H2CTRL...

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H2CTRL.exe
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OK... So what's this? A front-end to the front-end? Well, yes - that's just what it is - it's a top-level
control panel to launch H2F in the various ways that it can be launched and to allow for searches etc.

Basically, this is now the quickest and easiest way to show the front-end, use H2B to build the list
and then H2CTRL to show you what you've got!

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H2L.exe
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H2L is the launching application - H2L.exe is included but is rarely used, H2LDLP.exe, a download
handler is used from the browser. So, in order for the launching to work .H2L files need to be associated
with H2LDLP.exe - this is set up automatically when H2F.exe is first run but in case it doesn't work
you should refer to FILEASSOC.txt for a manual method.

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More Information
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This product is not guaranteed in any way - please refer to the License.txt file for more info.

Having problems? Want something else supported? Visit the website, www.warmtoe.com and send an e-mail

You can get more information from our web site: http://www.warmtoe.com
