HINTVIEW(1)

📦
version 2.3.0 · 3 versions
, in ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

✨ hintview — displaying HINT files ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the hintview(1) general commands manual page 💖 this one's all about a lil program that shows off HINT files, and yes we're gonna go through every single flag together, no skipping, no skimming, periodt.

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

hintview [options] [file]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So hintview displays a binary HINT file, which usually comes with the .hnt extension 🎀.

The binary HINT file format was literally designed for on-screen reading of documents. And here's the cute part: when you use hintview to display a HINT file, the content dynamically adapts to whatever display area you've got going on 🌈. It's giving adaptable. It's giving responsive before responsive was a thing.

If you want the complete info on the HINT file format, plus the programs that view HINT files, it's all at https://hint.userweb.mwn.de ✨

💅 OPTIONS 💅

This version of hintview understands the following command line options, and yes we're listing all of them:

  • -a — Start in autoreload mode 🔄. While you're in autoreload mode, the viewer checks the modification time of the displayed HINT file each time the cursor enters the window. If that modification time has changed, the file gets reloaded. The viewer then attempts to position the new file at about the same position as the old file — but heads up, that attempt might fail if large scale changes have been made to the file 😭.

See also the Ctrl-A and the Ctrl-R key.

  • -h — Open the document on the "home" page 🏠. The home page is a location specified by the document author as a good starting point for reading the document. Slay, author.

See also the Ctrl-H key.

  • --help — Print help message and exit. Simple. Iconic.
  • -d — Start the viewer in "dark" mode 🌙. In this mode the viewer displays the document using a dark background and light foreground color, to reduce eye strain in a surrounding with dim lighting. Your 3am reading session is safe with her.

See also the Ctrl-D key.

  • --version — Print version information and exit.
  • -z — Zoom to 100% 🔍. The HINT viewer can display a document using a given zoom factor, making characters appear larger or smaller, either to improve readability or to increase the amount of text that can be displayed in a given window. This option resets the zoom factor so that a 10pt font will appear on screen at the same size as it would appear in a printed book 📖.

See also the Ctrl-Z key.

🎀 KEYSTROKES 🎀

Hintview recognizes the following keystrokes when typed in its window ⌨️.

  • Ctrl-A — Toggle autoreload mode. See also the -a option and the Ctrl-R key.
  • Ctrl-O — Open the File dialog.
  • Ctrl-D — Toggle between dark and light mode. See also the -d option.
  • Ctrl-T — Show a clickable table of content.
  • Ctrl-Q — Quit. Terminate the program. Bye bestie 👋
  • Ctrl-R — Reload the content. The file is reloaded and the viewer attempts to position the new file at about the same position as the old file. This attempt might fail if large scale changes have been made to the file 😭. See also the Ctrl-A key and the -a option.
  • Ctrl-F — Open the Find dialog.
  • Ctrl-G — Find the next occurrence.
  • Ctrl-Z — Zoom to 100%. See also the -z option.
  • Home, Ctrl-H — Move to the "home" page 🏠. The home page is a location specified by the document author as a good starting point for reading the document.
  • Page-Down — Move to the next page.
  • Page-Up — Move to the previous page.
  • NUM + — Increase the gamma correction by 0.1.
  • NUM - — Decrease the gamma correction by 0.1.

🐭 MOUSE ACTIONS 🐭

The following actions are executed using the left mouse button 🖱️.

  • Click — If the mouse is positioned on a link, move to the link target. Links are displayed in blue color.
  • Drag — Dragging from the top-left to the bottom-right increases the zoom factor. Dragging in the opposite direction decreases the zoom factor. See also the Ctrl-Z key and the -z option.
  • Scroll wheel (EXPERIMENTAL) — Using the scroll wheel is a fast way of paging forward and backward.
⚠️ heads up bestie: the scroll wheel thing is marked EXPERIMENTAL in the original, so we're keeping that label, no cap.

🧚 NOTES 🧚

This is a program to render HINT files using GTK-3. Other programs to display HINT files are available on the HINT project home page at https://hint.userweb.mwn.de/, where you find viewers for the Windows and Android operating systems 💻📱.

Currently the best way to produce HINT files is the use of hitex, or hilatex, versions of TeX that produce HINT files as output. The HINT file format is described in HINT: The file format, which is available as a book or in electronic form from the HINT project home page 📚. The HINT file format is independent of TeX and allows the implementation of generators for all kind of word-processors. The hintview program however uses parts of Donald E. Knuth's implementation of TeX — notably its line breaking routine — to produce good quality rendering of documents 👑.

🌈 AVAILABILITY 🌈

hintview is tested on the Linux platform but should compile on a large variety of machine architectures and operating systems ✨. hitex and hilatex are part of the TeX Live distribution.

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

hitex(1), histretch(1), hishrink(1).

💜 AUTHORS 💜

Martin Ruckert

and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this was Version 3.0.0, dated 15 October 2025 — iykyk, go read some HINT files, you're gonna eat 💅✨

📦 where this page comes from