[Lazarus] Lazarus IDE help and Application help formats

[Mattias Gärtner]

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.


Mattias