[Lazarus] Building help files: the nitty-gritty

[Reinier Olislagers]

On 13-7-2012 10:54, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> 
>>>> unpack. The .txt file says copy the files to docs/html which I'm
>>>> assuming is wrong, so I end up with .chm (etc.) files in
>>>> /usr/local/share/lazarus-trunk/docs/chm and the Lazarus IDE picks
>>>> them up automatically.
>>>
>>> Yes, the paths are a little bit confusing.
>>
>> I've been working through this several times with the intention of
>> putting Lazarus docs build (from source) plus FPC docs copy (from
>> binaries) into my usual build/installation scripts, but am finding
>> that the FPC (RTL etc.) stuff is only picked up intermittently. Is
>> there a cache to be cleared somewhere or something comparable?
No idea...

Ludo's and my tool fpcup put the binary FPC docs chms and compile the
Lazarus chms in the old location (lazarus\docs\html) which seems to work
fine...
As (IIRC) Mattias explains elsewhere, using the CHM directory for chm
files is a relatively new addition to Lazarus and the html location is
also searched for compatibility's sake; our fpcup was running before
that ;) (We might look into changing that for consistency.)

There is of course the settings on where to find the chm files in
Lazarus tools/options/help options, CHM Help Viewer, HelpFilesPath.
I suppose if you don't set this, Lazarus will look in html and chm;
don't know if it also searches in chm and help you set this to a
different location.

> I see from the .txt file that RTL etc. help is supposed to not work in
> the Lazarus IDE at present. But it doesn't not work all the time, on a
> couple of occasions it's been fine but I can't pin down the conditions.
You mean this text file:
lazarus\docs\html\readmechm.txt
Can't seem to find that, only this:
"Note that Lazarus does not load ref.* at this moment, so (CHM) help
on keywords does not work yet."

BTW: perhaps that readme needs an update? It mentions various viewers
for chm files which is nice to know if you want to have alternatives,
but doesn't seem to mention lhelp at all - which should be available on
all Lazarus platforms and be the default chm viewer for Lazarus anyway,
right?