RFC Browser

Products

RFC Browser Family has following editions:

Edition	Version	Download	Price	Buy
Standard	3.0		$49.95
Lite	3.0		$29.95
Free	3.0		Free for non-commercial use only

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Introduction

Browse Colorful, Visual, Scalable Hyper-RFCs!

Large RFC required to read? Lots of RFCs required to read? RFC Browser is the tool you need.

RFC Browser is a viewer tailored to RFC browsing. It is the a powerful utility to view RFCs that renders RFCs into HyperRFCs: intra-RFC and inter-RFC hyperlinking, Colorful, Visual, Scalable.

Hyper: Most of original RFCs are written in plain text format. Fortunately, RFC Browser provides an alternative way to view RFCs - rendering them into HyperRFCs! In RFC Browser, the RFC Index File and the RFCs look like html files, they own both intra-RFC and inter-RFC  hyperlinks: RFC titles and RFC numbers in Index File, entries in table of Contents, urls of author's contact info (email or/and homepage) and references and so on. So RFCs are converted to the format of Hypertext.

Colorful: Users can assign different fonts to RFC Title, Subtitles, Table of Contents, Headers/Footers and Default Text.

Visual: Furthermore, RFC Browser provides tree views to facilitate browsing: tree view of RFC Indexing, tree view of RFC structure and tree view of pages.

Scalable: If users choose to hide Footers, Headers and blank lines after Footers and before Headers, the length of RFC will become shorter obviously! Small size of fonts also result in less printing paper.

Powerful: If RFCs are your everyday readings, RFC Browser is the optimal explorer to assist you, as you need IE, Netscape, etc to browse web files.

More SreenShots...

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Features

Features of Standard Edition:

1. Powerful parser that analyzes RFC Index File and most RFCs. It retrieves kinds of elements from RFCs in text format: relations among RFCs, table of Contents, references, author urls, Footers/Headers, pagination, etc.
2. Rich and friendly user interface: 3 views (Index View for RFC Index File, Structure View and Page View for RFCs), intra-RFC and inter-RFC hyperlink, color rendering of fonts, scalable RFC length (hide or show Footers/Headers/blank lines, font size), print and print preview. User can launch application by command line and can also drag and drop files into it.
3. Index View illustrates information of all RFCs. Users can find and view the infomation of specific RFC, explore the relative RFCs, open the RFC in the Browser by one click!
4. Structure View provides a navigating tree of RFC including information of table of Contents (RFC Browser will build one if it doesn't exist!) and references. Readers can discover  the outline of RFC and go to any section to get the detail freely.
5. Page View can help you browse the RFC page by page or turn to the page you want anytime.
6. Hypertext-like browsing: RFC Browser renders RFC Title, Subtitles, table of Contents, Headers/Footers and Default Text using different fonts. Users can go to the content by clicking on RFC index, the entry of Table of Contents, author urls and references as browsing a html file. Go Back and Go Forward function help you browse several sections repeatedly.
7. Scalable: You can hide Footers/Headers and blank lines near them to compact the RFC length, and show new page separators to keep the page breaking information. In addiction, You can adjust the font size to meet your requirement. 
8. Download tools can update RFC index file, download single RFC or RFC collection via Internet.
9. Favorite RFCs function helps quickly open the RFCs that you often read.
10. Bookmarks function keeps a list of positions you want to turn to frequently.

 In contrast to Standard Edition, Lite Edition

1. does NOT support intra-RFC hyperlink, so
   • does NOT support Index View, and
   • has NO index update tool.
2. does NOT support analysis of References section.
3. has NO Favorite RFCs.
4. has NO Bookmarks.
5. does NOT support drag and drop.

 In contrast to Lite Edition, FREE Edition

1. is free for None-Commercial use only.
2. could load RFCs with file size < 64k bytes only.
3. is SDI application, so that it can open only 1 RFC at the same time.
4. does NOT support printing and print preview. 
5. supports NO options.
6. has NO download tools.

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FAQs

Q: What are Colorful, Visual, Scalable Hyper-RFCs?

A: RFC Browser analyzes the RFC you open and display a tree view of structure or page-indexing as navigator. It also analyzes RFC Index File (rfc-index.txt) and provides RFC-indexing to help users find and view the specific RFC. Both type of files are shown as hypertexts. Furthermore, flexible operations reformat RFC into a more compact perspective or printing without destroying the original structure and page-indexing.

Q: What is RFC Index File, and what is RFC collection?

A: RFC Index File, namly rfc-index.txt, is a file contains citations for all RFCs in numeric order. RFC collection is a zipped package of almost all RFCs. They can be downloaded on many web or FTP sites, e.g., ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/. RFC Browser built-in download tools keep your RFCs in up-to-day status.

Q: I don't like some of the text colors, how to change it?

A: You can change the format options, including fonts of RFC Title, Subtitles, table of Contents, Headers/Footers and Default Text. Click Tools menu, and then Options, click Format tab of the Options dialog, select the Category you want to change color and press button Select. You'd better select the values instead of filling in.

Q: Why unable to save the options?

A: Trial Version does NOT save options, and Free Edition has no options. Please buy Lite or Standard Edition if you find RFC Browser is useful.

Q: I modified an option and saved, but the change didn't take effect, why? 

A: The change will take effect on the next action, i.e. next launch or next RFC open depending on what the option is.

Q: I disabled Tip of the Day before, where to activate it again?

A: Menu Help -> Tip of the Day.

Q: When I open rfcxxxx.txt using RFC Browser, the leaves of the tree in Structure View are all wrong, why?

A: There are some RFCs, expecially old ones, which are not written in regular format. RFC Browser may NOT work correctly in these case. Fortunately, RFC Browser works well with most RFCs since 1990 and what we read most were issued after that year. If you find any well-formed RFCs could not be handled by RFC Browser, please contact us by email: bugreport@RFCBrowser.com.

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