Programs to view HINT files
News
The HINT file format version 2.2 features the addition of primitives to implement color. As a consequence, an updated viewer is required. While it should be forward compatible with newer versions, it is not allways backward compatible with older versions.
Documentation
The hint viewer software consists of a backend, written in C, several frontends, and a renderer using OpenGL/OpenEGL. The backend is reusable and depends heavily on the HINT file format version, the frontends are specific for an operating system. The renderer is reused with slight modifications on all operating systems. Currently six frontends are (see below) available: for Linux, Windows, Android, iOS, MacOS and a minimal frontend. The Android HintView is joint work with Prof. Gudrun Socher.The minimal frontend is a viewer tested under Linux. Its user interface consists just of a commandline, keyboard shortcuts, and mouse movements as described in the man page. If you want to experiment with the sources or want to implement your own viewer, the minimal 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
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. Similar, binaries for version 2.0 can be found here: HINT version 2.0- Windows: the Version 2.1.1 viewer supports HINT Format Version 2.1.
For easy inatallation use this setup file: setup_HintView_2_1_1.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
Alternatively here is an APK for download: hintview-2-1-1-app-release.apk
- Linux:
A Debian installation package is available since Debian trixie.
(See also
github.com/debian-tex/hintview.)
The package may also run on derived distributions such as Ubuntu.
Using the sources from the repository, it should be sufficient to install GTK-3 and 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.
- MacOS and iOS: The HINT viewer for MacOS and iOS is available from
Apples App Store: hintview.
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.
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.