[Lazarus] Lazarus trunk help options: CHM Help browser does not show up

[Reinier Olislagers]

On 17-2-2012 17:18, Marco van de Voort wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 03:37:49PM +0100, Reinier Olislagers wrote:
>>> If you want to create the RTL and FCL docs during installation, you can
>>> use according project files. These files are e.g. created by the
>>> FPDocManager.
>> That's news...must have not been paying attention.
>> What are these project files called? Can I get them when installing FPC
>> only (i.e. without Lazarus)
> 
> In theory
> 
> make chm DOCS="rtl fcl" should do it, but it currently hits windows
> commandline limits. (see below to get an idea) Dodi is right that the
> bulk of the definition of filenames and paths should move out of the
> makefile and into a project file. Michael is working on this, but still
> WIP.
> 
> Prog/ref/user etc stuff require latex and tex4ht. But then it fails (under
> windows) on some shell script in the makefile (easily worked around
> using cygwin, but not for the unwashed masses). I don't think this will ever
> be common round, since tex4ht is funky. 
> 
> In short: I would simply download the CHMs, and forget about auto-generation
> for now. The sources are not always in a compilable state, and not branch
> (trunk vs 2.6.x) and OS independent either

Thanks. That's the direction I'm pursuing right now.

>>> In the case of the FPC documentation some paths have to be
>>> fixed, so that the other builds can e.g. find the content files. Since
>>> the FPC descriptions do not change very often, you can distribute the
>>> project files together with your installer.
> (IMHO this should not be needed. A system that relies on random hardcoded
> paths in a particular setup is flawed)

Agreed, but will let other people fight it out ;)

>>> Since you have to download the docs sources in either case, you also can
>>> use the supplied MakeFile, of course.
>> ... unless I'm overlooking something again, that requires latex to
>> export to chm files??
>> (eg make chm IIRC)
> 
> And tex4ht
ACK.

> 
>> Chances of it being available on Windows, OSX, are not much higher than
>> on Linux. Requiring it just to build documentation seems... excessive.
> 
> I don't see why.

I mentioned that because the Lazarus people seemed to manage with their
lcl_build_docs (IIRC), which uses fpdoc to generate CHM files from XML
source - either by using my Tex installation on Windows, or not
requireing latex.

>>> Full offline documentation also should include the REF etc. files, which
>>> cannot be created like the LCL docs. So it might be easier to download
>>> the readily available help files, instead of creating these during the
>>> installation.
>> .... that's the solution I'm going for right now... ;)
> 
> The 2.6.0 CHMs are available from FPC ftp (dist/<release>/docs/doc-chm.zip). So that leaves only the lazarus
> LCLs.
Thans, got that.
LCL docs I can generate (see above).


> There are irregular snapshots on my homepage:
> 
> http://www.stack.nl/~marcov/doc-chm.zip
> 
> these do contain lcl stuff.
En nog een keer bedankt, Marco,

regards,
Reinier