[Lazarus] Help on FCL?

[Mattias Gaertner]

On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:48:22 +0000
Mark Morgan Lloyd <markMLl.lazarus at telemetry.co.uk> wrote:

> Mattias Gaertner wrote:
> 
> >> I usually build Lazarus from source, downloading from svn. Nowhere there 
> >> does it say anything about docs-chm, or it certainly said nothing when I 
> >> started working like that four or five years ago.
> >>
> >> So I go to http://www.freepascal.org/ and there's online documentation, 
> >> or PDFs etc. Nothing to integrate with Lazarus.
> > 
> > True. "Integration" is not the goal of this kind of documentation.
> 
> But I'm tempted to say that it should be the goal of the IDE.

It's hard to integrate something that is not part of the Lazarus
sources, contains several different structures (keywords, identifiers,
messages, directives, topics and chapters, tools) and comes in various
versions. Each structure needs an index, then an offline format, then a
viewer and a solution to the various versions.
As long as creating the offline format costs so much time, you can not
do that on the fly. IMO that problem must be solved. Otherwise only
binary packages and indexed online pages can provide instant help.
Hopefully the chm and docview developers will eventually provide a
solution to create the content on the fly or at least on
demand.


> In fact now that I think about it...
> 
> >> So I go to http://lazarus.freepascal.org/. There's no online 
> >> documentation. 
> > 
> > It's called "Wiki".
> 
> One suggestion if I may. The target URL of the IDE's "Help -> Online 
> Help" menu entry doesn't have to be the same as that put up on the 
> website. It might be useful if the target page were to display a choice:
> 
> *  Stable online documentation for the version of FPC/Lazarus detected.

What is a "Stable online documentation"?

 
> *  Suggestions as to how one of the available viewers can be set up to 
> use these files locally.

Yes. I'm waiting for some notes.

 
> *  A pointer to somewhere- a (not necessarily the) wiki- where 
> documentation is currently being edited so that a user can see if there 
> has been recent clarification of something that's giving him problems.

That heavily depends on the type and area of docs. A list of pointers
is needed.

Mattias