[Lazarus] Website connectivity

Michael Van Canneyt michael at freepascal.org
Mon Aug 17 17:43:49 CEST 2009



On Mon, 17 Aug 2009, Mattias Gärtner wrote:

> Zitat von Michael Van Canneyt <michael at freepascal.org>:
>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 17 Aug 2009, Mattias Gärtner wrote:
>>
>>> Zitat von Graeme Geldenhuys <graemeg at opensoft.homeip.net>:
>>>
>>>> Mattias Gärtner wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Almost any text format fits these requirements. You should be more
>>> specific.
>>>>> For example the documentation needs
>>>>> * a toc
>>>>> * possibility to combine docs to modules
>>>>> * links to docs in the same module
>>>>> * links to docs in other modules
>>>>> * external links
>>>>
>>>> These are all supported by AsciiDoc.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> * keywords to refer from outside
>>>>
>>>> This can be created by us - using a documentation generator or 
>>>> something. Similar to what fpdoc does for CHM help.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> * viewers for all platforms:
>>>>
>>>> This is easy. Default help can be HTML format. Lazarus already 
>>>> includes an HTMl viewer component as used by 'lhelp'. I'm sure 
>>>> there are many more available.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> ** a good search engine
>>>>> ** allow to load/view several modules at the same time
>>>>> ** remote control in both directions
>>>>
>>>> I don't understand these? What do they have to do with documentation?
>>>
>>> It's not sufficient to only have help files. The important piece is 
>>> to find and present the help. Just take a look at the mails. We 
>>> have thousands of help pages and still people say we have no usable 
>>> help.
>>>
>>>
>>>> If you publish your docs online, a search engine will be able to index
>>> them.
>>>
>>> And if you view them offline?
>>> And: An index is not enough.
>>>
>>> When someone needs help at a certain place, then a F1 should open 
>>> the help for that - context sensitive help. For example when a user 
>>> is in the compiler options dialog, a F1 should tell the help viewer 
>>> to open the help for the 'compiler options dialog'.
>>> That's what I mean with support for "keywords" and "remote control".
>>> The online help currently shows the help for the LCL and the FCL.
>>
>> FPDoc has support for keywords in the sense that you can refer to a topic
>> with the name of the keyword.
>>
>> For the HTML help (user/programmer/ref manual) I implemented the support 
> for
>> keywords at your request ?
>
> Hehe. Yes, Michael, fpdoc has all that already. The next step was to 
> create good fpdoc editors. I think the current editors have matured 
> enough to create fpdoc content easily.
> The next step is to browse the content offline and to provide a good 
> search. For example via lhelp.

Yes. 
it would also be good somehow to merge back some of the wiki content,
so it could be used offline. I assume this task could be automated.

Michael.


More information about the Lazarus mailing list