Note that this section is really only relevant to the person responsible for installing and maintaining HIPR on your system.
The HIPR system is intended to be immediately usable by a wide variety of people using a wide variety of different computer systems and image processing software. Given this fact, it is almost inevitable that there will be things that you don't like about it! Perhaps the images are in the wrong format, or perhaps you would like to add some extra information to the worksheets for students to read. Perhaps you would even like to add an extra worksheet yourself, explaining some unusual operator which is particularly relevant to your situation. HIPR allows you to do all of this --- if you're prepared to put in a little work.
Note that the facilities described here for altering HIPR to further suit your needs are provided `as is'. We are not able to offer technical support to anyone having difficulties making any of the modifications we discuss. While we have tried to make the task as simple and robust as possible, the large number of different architectures on which HIPR can be used make it impossible to describe every situation. As a result you make any such changes entirely at your own risk. For your own protection we recommend that you maintain a backup copy of the original HIPR installation which you can turn back to should any attempted modification go wrong.
The hypermedia version consists of a collection of HTML files (HyperText Markup Language) and associated GIF and image files, that can be displayed using a graphical HTML browser such as Netscape.
HIPR is initially written in a specialist intermediate language known as HIPRscript. The HIPRscript files are then automatically translated into both HTML
The HIPRscript source files are contained in the src sub-directory. The programs to perform the conversion are contained in the progs directory and are written in a language called Perl.
The completely professional way to make major changes to HIPR is therefore to first edit the HIPRscript files and then to run the conversion program. This ensures that both hypermedia
version contain up-to-date material. It also helps enforce a certain consistency of style.
However, running the HIPRscript conversion programs requires that a number of additional utilities be installed on your system (as detailed in the relevant section of the Installation Guide), and these may prove to be difficult or time-consuming to set up, particularly on non-UNIX machines. Fortunately, many changes can be made without resorting to the full machinery of HIPRscript. The following sections describe a number of common ways in which you might want to change the HIPR system, and how you should go about doing it in the easiest way possible. If, having read these sections, you decide that you want to delve even further into the deeper mysteries of HIPRscript, then the HIPRscript Reference Manual should contain all you need.
Changing the Default Image Format
Adding Local Information
Editing LaTeX and HTML Files Directly
©2003 R. Fisher, S. Perkins,
A. Walker and E. Wolfart.
