Help File in HTML?

[c4s]

I'm not sure where to put this question. So I'll just leave it here:

Where exactly is the help in plain HTML located locally? Is it installed somewhere? If not, this is a feature request because I would really like to have it. (Even putting a simple zip file into the install/help directory would be enough I guess.)

[helpy]

PureBasic Help is delivered in CHM format (Compiled HTML Help)
==> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHM_(Dateiformat)

You could unpack the CHM with 7zip.

[Shield]

Just simply mirroring PB's online help should do the trick.

[c4s]

PureBasic Help is delivered in CHM format (Compiled HTML Help)

On Linux/Mac it's not, right?!

Just simply mirroring PB's online help should do the trick.

You mean like manually parsing the links and downloading each page? Hmmm...


Thanks for the suggestions but I was rather hoping for an official HTML help package on all OS. Well, time to add a feature request I guess: HTML Help Package/Zip on All OS

[Shield]

You mean like manually parsing the links and downloading each page? Hmmm...

We're coders, we don't do anything manually.

If you have wget, this should do the trick:

Code: Select all

wget -p -k -np http://www.purebasic.com/documentation/index.html

I'm not advocating to do this, even though the load on the servers is absolutely negligibly.
Maybe Fred/Freak/Andre can make this available for download.

[Keya]

PureBasic Help is delivered in CHM format (Compiled HTML Help)

On Linux/Mac it's not, right?!

I was wondering today about this (which helpfile format is best to use for our apps).

My googling suggests CHM is still very Windows-only, and even on Windows we know it has various problems with not displaying content etc - an issue a helpfile should never have. ("Dear Support, how do i do this?" "Please refer to page 3 in the helpfile" "But it doesn't show any content!")

But my googling also suggests that there still isn't a single format to use! So it seems there's really only two options: PDF, or a folder of html files (or .txt if that's more your style!)

I checked how PB does it:
On Windows it's CHM.
On Linux it's a CHM-like format in visual appearance (but definitely not CHM), but i couldnt figure out what it is - it starts with "2zlp" as the first four magic bytes, followed by a couple of tiny fragments of plaintext then the rest is compressed, but 7zip wasn't able to open it - strange as it can open just about any public archive format.
On Mac it's not a file but a \help\ subfolder full of html files, in subdirectories the same as they'd appear in the helpfile, eg \Array\ etc
(c4s hopefully that answers your Q )

PDF should be fine - everyone's got a PDF reader or can easily access one, though i still don't like that 3rd party reliability just to be able to read a helpfile and inevitably it would force some people to download a PDF viewer just to access help.

So at the moment i'm leaning towards a \help\ directory full of htm files like PB on Mac. It'll also make it easy to keep a copy of the help on my website too and reduce having to do/write about some things twice

[c4s]

Hey Keya, thanks for your investigation. Currently I'm manually unpacking the provided CHM with "hh -decompile output PureBasic.chm" and then creating a ZIP of the output folder. It's tedious and annoying but for me it does the job until we get the HTML on all OS's...

[collectordave]

Hi All

I gave up on .chm files for my apps as windows flags these as a security risk even when Microsoft tools are used to make them. I think for our apps the webgadget and HTML is the way to go.

I have started to produce help files in HTML and am looking to write a tool to help.

So far I have a small module to call up a window with a webgadget and display particular web pages from a help folder link and everything seems to work ok

Manually producing these files is a pain so I will start on the tool ASAP. There are some tools out there that will do this but they cost money.

Regards

CD

[deeproot]

So far I have a small module to call up a window with a webgadget and display particular web pages from a help folder link and everything seems to work ok

That's essentially the way I've done my Help for Mac and Linux. My module shows a help window that's a near clone of the Windows Help and works in the same way as the PureBasic Help with XML files to provide the Contents and Index. If I get time to tidy up my horribly scruffy code, I'll post it on the forum.

I make all the files manually and actually I didn't find it too bad, even with a reasonably big Help at well over 100 pages. A long time ago, for a different purpose, I used a couple of commercial Help generating products and to be honest I did not find much advantage over the manual method! Takes a fair bit of time however it's done and at least doing it manually keeps things simple!

I gave up on .chm files for my apps as windows flags these as a security risk even when Microsoft tools are used to make them.

I don't really see the problem using .chm if it's created yourself and used local on the PC (not over the network). I still use .chm for Windows and no issues have been reported. I create the chm with Microsoft HTML Help Workshop and the source HTML files are the same as used for Mac and Linux, so there's no duplication.

[collectordave]

.chm not just used local on my pc my apps are downloaded by users which report to me that microsofr reports them as a security risk and I can do without emails about security risks.

[deeproot]

.chm not just used local on my pc my apps are downloaded by users which report to me that microsofr reports them as a security risk and I can do without emails about security risks.

That's interesting and also a bit worrying!!

My .chm help files are also bundled in with my applications and downloaded by customers. Haven't yet had any messages - but maybe just been lucky so far? Most of my customers are on Windows. Not seen any issues myself but only run Win7. I know about problems opening from a network drive, but can't find much other solid information. Fortunately my home-grown HTML viewer also works for Windows so I can switch if I start getting hassle!