[Lazarus] New Help System & Viewer - sneak preview

[Marco van de Voort]

On Mon, Oct 05, 2009 at 08:56:02AM +0200, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
> 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.

I see the html in chm as a backend. One generates it usually.

> 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.

Then you would need a format that stores the logical structure, more like
LaTeX macro system, not a layouting one based on fixed set of tags.

> 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.. 

Choosing a different help format doesn't absolve you from stupid people. No
matter what you make it will be abused.

> 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.

This is a good point that I asked myself too. And the answer is simple: what
we generate must be more or less accepted.
 
> 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.

_IF_ you only build one viewer. If you build multiple, and you don't have
singular control of the format where people start extending, you end up in
exactly the same situation.

HTML is complicated because it is used so much, not because the original
designers wanted it to be complicated.

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

IMHO you are right in some of your points. But IMHO they are simply not
worth the duplicate effort, and reviving an helpformat that isn't even on
lifesupport anymore. If all this happened 5 years ago, before the CHM libs
appeared, I'd have joined you.

For what it is worth: The CHM-only decision in the textmode IDE had been
taken before you started with .INF