The guide of UDO
Introduction
UDO has been originally developed to make it easier for you to write software documentations or other kinds of text files that have to be available in more than one format.
UDO can be a great help if you want to make a single destination format, too. A beginner will have less problems when learning the UDO syntax instead of learning LaTeX or HTML. So if you want to make LaTeX or HTML files it should be easier to get to know how to make them using UDO instead of writing them on your own. When writing LaTeX or HTML files you have to keep attention not to use any of their special command characters. In comparison to that UDO will convert these special characters for you when converting the source file to LaTeX or HTML. But this is not the only thing UDO can do for you.
UDO is a multilingual program. You can make texts in different languages. UDO knows how "Table of contents", "Appendix", "Figure" or "Table" is called in the other supported languages. The date is also printed out in the right way depended of the selected language.
The syntax of UDO is easy to learn. To make some small documentations you just have to learn about ten to fifteen commands; as many as you have to learn when you try to learn LaTeX or HTML.
Having written an UDO source file, you can convert it into the following formats:
| Abbrevation | Format Name | Description | Platform(s) |
| amg | AmigaGuide | hypertext system, used for documentation of Amiga programs | Commodore Amiga |
| aqv | Apple QuickView | old hypertext format for MacOS | Apple |
| asc | ASCII | "plain" text | all |
| drc | David's Readme Compiler | DOS program for creating menu-driven ReadMe's as EXE-programs | MS-DOS |
| helptag | HP-Helptag-SGML | SGML-based hypertext helpsystem for commercial Unices (HP-UX, Sun Solaris, IBM AIX) | Unix |
| html | HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) | page description language – for websites, documentations and more | platform-independent |
| hh | HTMLHelp | HTML-related format, for creation of HTML-Help files under windows | Win32 |
| tex | LaTeX 2.09, LaTeX2e | typesetting system, especially for scientific publications | many platforms |
| ipf | OS/2 IPF | SGML-based text format for creating help files (INF, HLP) under OS/2 | OS/2 |
| linuxdoc | Linuxdoc-SGML | Linuxdoc-SGML (recently: SGMLtools) is – like UDO – a multiformat converter which converts its own format to LaTeX, Manualpage, RTF, HTML, Texinfo... | Unix/Linux |
| lyx | LyX | a LaTeX-related document processor | Unix/Linux |
| man | Manualpage | Unix-/Linux-help pages for commandline programs | Unix/Linux |
| nroff | NROFF | Unix-/Linux-help pages for commandline programs | Unix/Linux |
| pdflatex | PDFLaTeX | for producing PDF files from LaTeX | several |
| ps | PostScript | device-independent page description language, e.g. for printers; can also be used for producing PDF files (Ghostscript, Adobe Distiller) | several |
| pchelp | Pure-C-Help | help system for the Pure C compiler | Atari ST |
| rtf | RTF (Rich Text Format) | for exchanging text between different programs and platforms | several |
| c, pascal | Sourcecode (C and Pascal) | the UDO source file will be converted to sourcecode, meaning normal text becomes comment, the content of the sourcecode environment becomes C-/Pascal-sourcecode | several |
| stg | ST-Guide | a hypertext system | Atari ST |
| info | GNU Texinfo | for making online documentations, started with info 'command' | Linux, MiNTNet |
| v | Turbo-Vision-Help | creating online helpfiles for DOS programs written with Borland's Turbo Vision-Library | MS-DOS |
| udo | UDO | merges all UDO input files into one big file | all platforms with UDO-support |
| win, wh4 | Windows-Help, WinHelp4 | RTF-derived format for producing WinHelp files under Windows | Windows (Win16, Win32) |
In most cases UDO doesn't make files that are ready to use because have to run a further software to view, print or convert the document. E.g. you have to convert the Windows Help source file (saved by UDO) with the Microsoft Help Compiler HC.EXE into a Windows Help file. Or you have to import the RTF file into a text processor to print it.
UDO tries to help the author of a documentation as much as possible. Next to the conversion into the destination format UDO offers you the following features:
UDO is not the perfect program for all purposes. The conversion to ASCII-text, ST-Guide, HTML, LaTeX and Windows Help is nearly perfect. Some formats (like Linuxdoc-SGML and LyX) are quite young and haven't been tested enough. You will surely find some aspects that have to be changed in the future.
There are some points that UDO can't manage yet but will be found on the wishlist: an automatically generated index, list of figures and list of tables.
To make complex files like newspapers is impossible with UDO because it can't wrap text around images and it can't generate files with two or more text columns. These functions are part of desktop publishing and not of a software like UDO.
UDO doesn't support an automatic syllabification. You have to tell UDO explicitely where it is allowed to split up words.
UDO is just a "one way" converter which converts it's own format into the formats listed above. UDO can't convert them into its own format.