[Lazarus] New Help System & Viewer - sneak preview

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

2009/10/4 Marco van de Voort <marcov at stack.nl>:
>
> As far as I can see, the only issue is HTML. And that is then only your
> opinion.

HTML as a help format is my issue yes. I don't believe perfectly good
help contents must be in a format that a developer can screw up beyond
recognition. HTML is so non-standard in the REAL world, though a push
for standards adhering browsers is having an effect - but a small one.
My other issue is that having too much formating capability in a help
system is stupid. What is the goal about help systems - get the help
content across. I have seen to many CHM help files that look
horrendous because the developers writing the help is or color blind,
has no designing skills etc.. Also the help content is inconsistent.
Some places plain HTML tags are used, then in other places CSS is
use... But wait, now the HTML rendering component needs to support
HTML (all versions) and CSS (all versions). Where do you draw the line
on what should be supported by the renderer? Not even the latest Web
Browsers support all HTML and CSS features.

IPF tags are similar in principal to LaTeX. Simple tags that are easy
to remember and that only describes the content - not so much the
layout and formatting. The renderer does the bulk of the "pretty"
formatting. Hence the reason LaTeX articles have a nice consistent
look (though the BuildFAQ is the exception). And that is exactly why
most INF documents also have a consistent look, and get the important
point across - the help content.

Anyway, I'm not interested in a help format war. You do what you do,
and I do what I do.

-- 
Regards,
  - Graeme -


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