Programs to view HINT files
News
The version 1.3 has a redesigned format for images. It uses and requires version 1.3 of the HINT file format.Since version 1.1 it supports page templates and besides pk fonts also TrueType, OpenType, and PostScript Type 1 fonts.
Documentation
The hint viewer software consists of a backend, written in C and several frontends. The backend is reusable, the frontends are specific for an operating system. Currently three frontends are available: for Linux, for Windows and for Android. 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 and very similar OpenGL code for the rendering. If you want to investigate the sources or want to implement your own viewer, the Linux viewer is a good starting point.
A book is in preparation. Documented sources will become available with the printed documentation.
Binaries and Sources
- Windows: hintview.exe the Version 1.3
viewer for HINT Format Version 1.4.
There is no special installation required, just copy the executable to a directory on your search path. You may want to associate the viewer with .hnt files.
- Android: The HINT viewer for Android is available from the
Play Store:
HintView
- Linux: For Linux there is a precompiled binary
hintview.
- Source: The source distribution hintview.tgz
should run/compile fine on Linux and macOS if the required libraries and headers
(Linux: libdl, libglew, libglfw3 libfreetype, libX11, libXrandr, libXinerama, libXi,
libXcursor, libGL, libz, libpthread, libm, libc) are installed.
The documentation is available as a man page: hintview.1
- MacOS: Due to restrictions at my institutions, 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
which you can unpack, compile, and run on your computer:
HintView_MacOS.tgz.
This short video, demonstrating some of the
program, was made for Jonathan Fine's
TeX Hour on Thursday, September 29, 2022.
- iOS: Due to restrictions at my institutions, 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 which you can unpack, compile, and run on your computer: HintView_iOS.tgz.
Example Files
The following files use the HINT file format version 1.4 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
- 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 ...