An AmigaGuide document is a simple ASCII-formatted document, so it can be edited by any normal text editor and viewed by any text reader software.
AmigaGuide commands all begin with the '@' (pronounced 'at') symbol. To be recognized as an AmigaGuide document, the first line should include this text:
@database Amigaguide.guide
There are three categories of commands: Global, Node, and Attributes. Global commands are usually specified at the beginning of the document, before any nodes are defined, and apply to all the nodes in the document. Technically, they can be anywhere. Many commands can be used both globally and in nodes.
Node commands are usable inside a node (after an '@NODE' and before an "@ENDNODE"), and affect only the node in which they are used.
Attributes may be specified anywhere in a normal line. In addition to the '@' symbol, attributes always use a pair of braces ('{' and '}') to enclose the attribute name and possibly additional arguments.
Main commands
The commands "INDEX", "HELP", "NEXT", "PREV", and "TOC" and the all-purpose hypertext link specify other nodes to jump to. They all support the naming of nodes within the current document, but they also all support a path along with that name which lets the node be located in any AmigaGuide document.
They will be shown as simply embossed text squared buttons in the page of MultiView.
External links
To access a node in another document, it is simply required to put an AmigaDOS file path before the node name. From this point of view, AmigaGuide is a very simple hypertext language.
Since AmigaOS 3.0 or above, the user can jump to any file that is supported by Amiga datatypes – pictures, animation, anything. It uses the MultiView program to handle it through its internal support for the datatype Amiga standard. The user must still give a "node" name, even though the file is not an AmigaGuide file and has no "nodes" – so the syntax is:
"main": "name_of_picture.iff/main".