[Lazarus] Extending FCL documentation

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On 8 February 2012 10:43, Mattias Gaertner  wrote:
>
>> This is simply
>>    done because NO HELP SYSTEM IS IN PLACE. Yet another duck-tape solution.
>
> How does DocView provide hint windows?


There are two options I could think of.

Most IDEs have a built-in help viewer, or sometimes an option to use
an external help viewer.For the first option, there is normally a
panel somewhere inside the IDE windows that display help. This could
be done for Lazarus IDE too (in the long term) - compiling Docview or
LHelp into the IDE. In the short term, an external help viewer like
DocView or LHelp or whatever other help viewer could easily be
controlled by the IDE using IPC, Pipes etc.


>>  * Wiki sites are NOT a solution for Context Sensitive Help.
>
> That's your opinion.

Read this mailing list. It seems to be the opinion of many others too.


> Almost true. Some debian packages install help files.

IDE dialog window help?


> About version: many developers wants only the newest documentation
> version while using older *and* newer Lazarus.

I use Lazarus 0.9.30.x simply because it is stable, and I work in a
production environment. Currently those dialogs, menus etc are vastly
different to Lazarus Trunk. The Wiki only caters for Lazarus Trunk. So
the wiki help for my IDE dialog windows in v0.9.30.x is useless - or
rather hard to find anything related.


> The fpcdocs are separated from the fpc version too.

Sure, but there are downloadable help files for any previously
released FPC version. They don't just cater for FPC Trunk.


> is done in real time. Of course a full text search with ranking needs
> some more processing,

That's already implemented in DocView too, including various search
term syntax (AND, OR etc). As for the speed of search, it's actually
hard to measure in DocView, because search results are near instantly
found. We are talking of <10ms searching across multiple help files.
This is why I chose to go with the INF help format - it is super
efficient.


> Who implements a f*cken decision?

DocView and LHelp are already implemented! Though LHelp is a very
rudimentary help viewer, so it would require lots more work. Porting
DocView to the LCL widgetset is a breeze, because the UI and INF
processing is clearly separated in code.


-- 
Regards,
  - Graeme -


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