ET - technical definition

(1) See energy technology.

(2) (Computer Desktop Encyclopedia Toolkit) The Encyclopedia Toolkit lets you add your own definitions into this database. Optionally available for multiuser licenses of our Windows client/server version, the Toolkit also lets you replace or extend one of our definitions or delete our definition entirely.

Terms are not added interactively one at a time. You create files of definitions that the Toolkit merges into the CDE database. It then generates a new database for distribution to your server.


THE PROCESS
1. Create a word processing document with your entries using our coding system.

2. Save the document as an ASCII text file.

3. Run the Toolkit (et.exe)

4. Copy the updated files.


SAMPLE DEFINITIONS
Following are four transactions, one each for adding, deleting, replacing and extending a definition.

   +
   new term
   The codes are simple.  To add a term, put a plus
   sign on a line by itself, the term name on the
   next line, then the text.  You can have up to
   64K of text in each entry.  If this transaction
   were used, all the text in this paragraph would
   be entered under the term "new term."


   -
   AFIPS
   The minus sign deletes an existing definition.
   Text in this paragraph can be used for comments.


   =
   BASIC in ROM
   This transaction replaces this text with the
   existing text for "BASIC in ROM."


   &
   AS/400
   This text is appended to AS/400.  You might
   want to elaborate on the equipment you have.
   A message is also inserted by the Toolkit that
   indicates this is a user-extended entry.

FORMATTING & PICTURES
You can use standard HTML codes for bold, italics, subscript and superscript: <b> </b> <i> </i>  .

Paragraph Headers Are Always Centered

To display a centered paragraph header like the one above, use an <h> code like this:

   <h>Paragraph Headers Are Always Centered

You can also add pictures. CDE currently supports Windows Bitmaps (BMPs), Windows Metafiles (WMFs) and JPEGs (JPGs). The following example shows how you would code a picture file.

   <picture>BOSSES.BMP
   <title><b>Our Fearless Leaders</b>
   <caption>This is a picture of our bosses.  We
   just can't understand why we have so many of
   them.

THE VIRTUAL HYPERTEXT BONUS
Every term you add to the Encyclopedia is automatically hypertexted to all of our terms... and to all of yours. That means if you use a technical word in describing something, the definition of that word can be retrieved instantly if either we or you have already defined it.

The bonus is that there's nothing to do to make this happen. No codes to put in. No figuring out what should or should not be hypertexted. It is entirely automatic and one of the unique features of CDE.


ENCYCLOPEDIA TOOLKIT
All you tell the Toolkit is which .TXT files to process. It does the rest by sorting them, merging the entries into and reindexing the database. An activity log is created for review. Whenever you get the next release of the Encyclopedia from us, select ESTABLISH NEW DATABASE from the File Menu and run it again.