[lazarus] Help files

[Denis Leger]

Le Tuesday 18 December 2001 23:04, Michal Bukovjan a écrit :

> I would like to advise you not to try to create a new help formats,
> especially in the situation when a number of those currently exist,
> HTML is, or may be, in fact quite simple (after all, it was created to
> do exactly what you say above!), and renderers do exist for this format,
> which is defined by the W3 consortium. There have been a lot of efforts
> to handle all aspects of modern systems! Just think aboout:
>
> - human readable format of sources
> - convertibility to other formats
> - industry standard
> - standardized hypertext markup notation
> - multiple languages and charset encodings
> - existing indexing and search engines
> - XML compatible (XHTML DTDs)
> - separation of content and format via CSS (great thing!)
> - multiplatformness
> - plethora of tools for authoring, editing, serving, cleaning,
> formatting, ...

But one thing is bad : html help need a lot of files (one for each help 
page), it's a waste of memory on hard drives...

But you're right, this is THE standard, on every platform, and it's the 
most important point.


> Why not just take gtkhtml libs and use that? It does not support latest
> what-not in HTML (for that, one would use slower, although *MUCH* more
> sophisticated Mozilla/Gecko engine), but the gtkhtml engine is *FAST*
>
> I have written some .HLP files before, and I write a lot of HTML today,
> and believe me, HLP is such a nuissance 

Yes, i did it too, and i have the same feeling.

> Just my two cents. Please think twice before starting.

Too late, i started writing something, but it's not important. After all, 
i could use my own help system in my own programs ;-)


-- 
Denis Léger