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

[Reinier Olislagers]

On 17-2-2012 21:36, Marco van de Voort wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 08:05:48PM +0100, Reinier Olislagers wrote:
>>>> 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.
> 
> fpdoc is a FPC package, and the RTL and FCL doc sets of FPC work with it
> too.
I understand.

> However, those are all documentation of sources. 
> 
> The latex manuals however are not XML. Editing latex is much more
> confortable, and allows high quality PDF using a lot of the latex features,
> not in the least the macro system.
I know and see the point in using latex for that. (Especially since we
have such nice reference documentation, with a maintainer of the
toolchain and all... )

Sorry, I should have written my previous post a bit better, indicating I
knew the reason for using latex as such.

> The extra requirements are certainly a pain, but changing this would just
> create a bigger pain.
> 
> Moreover, documentation building is not exactly that the average user does
> regularly (seeing that there are less than 10 patches for it per quarter),
> so it doesn't make sense to optimize it.
Agreed.

> I do think it should at least be possible to do this on Windows. From a
> philosophical perspective, FPC should not force a certain platform on people
> wanting to be developers.

;)

> My first latex-on-windows attempt was in '98, so be sure that I have been
> waiting quite some time :)
Installed miktex, but not a latex guru at all, so when the make bombs, I
have no idea where the error originated... my install, the makefiles on
Windows...

> latex is already doable.  fpdoc based docs already work, but not via the
> make system. (IIRC calling fpdoc via createprocessex does work, since the 
> API limit is much higher than the shell limit). 
> 
> The commandline problems can be avoided via the project system, and on a
> slightly longer term, maybe fpmake will allow to kill off the horrible
> makefile of fpdocs.
The project system being fppkg? Or fpdocmanager?

> But even then,
> tex4ht on Windows is still an unknown factor. But for now, one thing at a
> time :-)
Totally agreed.

Thanks,
Reinier