The following text is a rough guide to the file format of a Norton Guide database. The information has been pieced together from other sources and from my investigations while writing Norton Guide readers. It isn't fully complete but it should be enough to get anyone started.

If you are able to fill in any of the blanks please feel free to drop me a line with any information you've got.

Introduction

A Norton Guide database consists of a header followed by a series of encrypted records. There are three record types, each of which have an associated ID:

Record Type	ID
Short Entry	0
Long Entry	1
Menu	2

Encryption

Short, long and menu entries are all encrypted. The encryption is a simple XOR 26 scheme. Example C code to decrypt is:

unsigned char ng_decrypt( unsigned char b )
{
    return( (unsigned char) ( b ^ 0x1A ) );
}

Compression

The text of short, long and menu entries uses a simple form of run-length encoding for spaces. If, when reading text, you encounter a byte value of 255 you should read the next byte and take that as a count of spaces.

The Header

Field	Size	Notes
Magic value	short	0x474E == Norton Guide database. 0x4845 == Expert Help database.
Unknown	short
Unknown	short
Menu Count	short	Count of the number of main menus.
Title	char[ 40 ]	The text is NUL terminated if the length is less than 40 bytes.
Credit Line 1	char[ 66 ]	The text is NUL terminated if the length is less than 66 bytes.
Credit Line 2	char[ 66 ]	The text is NUL terminated if the length is less than 66 bytes.
Credit Line 3	char[ 66 ]	The text is NUL terminated if the length is less than 66 bytes.
Credit Line 4	char[ 66 ]	The text is NUL terminated if the length is less than 66 bytes.
Credit Line 5	char[ 66 ]	The text is NUL terminated if the length is less than 66 bytes.

The Short Entry

Field	Size	Notes
ID	short	Value is always 0.
Length	short	Length of the record in bytes.
Count	short	Count of lines in the entry.
Unknown	short
Parent Line	short	The number of the line in the parent entry that points here.
Parent	long	File offset of the parent entry.
Menu	short	Number of the menu that points to this entry.
Prompt	short	Number of the menu prompt that points to this entry.
Unknown	char[ 8 ]
Pointers	long[ Count ]	This is an array of file offsets, each offset points to the entry that each line jumps to.
Lines		Count lines of NUL terminated text.

The Long Entry

Field	Size	Notes
ID	short	Value is always 1.
Length	short	Length of the record in bytes.
Count	short	Count of lines in the entry.
See Also Flag	short	Flag to indicate if there are any see also entries
Parent Line	short	The number of the line in the parent entry that points here.
Parent	long	File offset of the parent entry.
Menu	short	Number of the menu that points to this entry.
Prompt	short	Number of the menu prompt that points to this entry.
Previous	long	File offset of the previous entry
Next	long	File offset of the next entry
Lines		Count lines of NUL terminated text.
If See Also Flag != 0
See Also Count	short	Count of see also entries
Pointers	long[ See Also Count ]	This is an array of file offsets, each offset points to the associated see also.
See Alsos		See Also Count lines of NUL terminated text.

The Menu Entry

Field	Size	Notes
ID	short	Value is always 2.
Length	short	Length of the record in bytes.
Count	short	Count of lines in the entry.
Unknown	char[ 20 ]
Pointers	long[ Count ]	This is an array of file offsets, each offset points to the entry that each prompt jumps to.
Unknown	char[ 8 * Count ]
Title		Menu title, NUL terminated string, maximum of 40 characters (although I have found guides with longer titles).
Prompts		Menu prompts. Count * NUL terminated strings, maximum of 50 characters each (although I have found guides with longer prompts).