[Lazarus] Help on FCL?

[michael.vancanneyt at wisa.be]

On Fri, 20 Jan 2012, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:

>> 
>> Is this a limitation of the fpdoc chm writer?
>
> It's a limitation of fpdoc in general. It can generate documentation only for 
> single *packages* (--package=xyz). This does not matter much when building 
> HTML help, residing in a bunch of related HTML files, but it matters with 
> every linear (monolithic) document, be CHM, PDF etc.

This is not a limitation; It is a feature: your documentation package name
can be anything you want. If you equal "fpdoc package" to  "lazarus package", 
then this is a restriction that you personally enforce, not something that
fpdoc enforces.

A fpdoc package creates documentation for a single logical fpdoc package.
What you put in this package is your business.

The FCL consists of many "fpmake packages" : fcl-base, fcl-db, fcl-xml.
The documentation package is called FCL, and hence the documentation 
for these various "fpmake packages" can be produced in a single .chm file.

So if you were to call your documentation package lazarus-lcl, you can put
in it anything you want, and still have a single CHM file.

What you may need to do, IMHO, is associate a fpdoc package name to a lazarus
package. This way, several logical lazarus packages can be combined in a single
logical fpdoc package. When showing documentation, the help system should
use the fpdoc package name instead of the lazarus package name to determine
the name of the CHM file.

This is still only 1-on-N, but that's still better than the 1-on-1 if you equal 
"fpdoc package" to "lazarus package".

Michael.