[Lazarus] Help System with Chromium Embedded component

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On 2016-11-06 11:35, vfclists . via Lazarus wrote:
> I think using CEF is fine as there don't seem to be any other realistic
> options. That is the situation as it is.

No it's not! If you have a login for Lazarus Forum's, check out this
post with a fully functional application with context sensitive help.
That's an application (small), help contents and a help viewer - all
under 2MB in size.

http://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,30421.msg193651.html#msg193651


> known system. A Lazarus installation currently takes over 1 Gb, so what
> difference does another 300Mb make to it when it is something as critical
> as help?

If anybody things installing 300MB just to get some lousy help for a
small 1MB application is acceptable, then you need to seriously
re-evaluate your career as a software developer. Also, my clients don't
have Lazarus installed, so 300MB 3rd party files for a 1-10MB
application is a MAJOR issue!

For online distribution and online updates, size does matter.


> INF files and viewers may be fine, but besides Graeme who is
> willing to make the time and effort to learn it well enough to support
> Graeme to develop it further?

I'm more than willing to implement any new feature I deem worthy or
beneficial for a help system. IBM did a stellar job designing the INF
help system, and it was also used for eBooks - 10+ years ahead of the
likes of ePub, AZW etc.

I've said it a million times before, HTML is the worst markup for a help
system. It's just to verbose, and the HTML Viewers are too inconsistent
with features they support.

Read my previous posts on all the features that INF and DocView
supports. I'm not bothered about popularity contests, so if nobody else
uses INF, there loss. I can say that I've used it for years in my own
applications and 4 of my past clients use it in commercial software too.


> hope that by throwing enough people at these sub par systems the flaws will
> be worked out, or made "good enough".

I welcome your thoughts on why you think INF or DocView would be sub par?

ps:
Did you see the sub par user experience is these CHM files?

 http://geldenhuys.co.uk/~graemeg/temp/kchmviewer_vs_lhelp.png
 http://geldenhuys.co.uk/~graemeg/temp/kchmviewer_vs_lhelp_2.png




Regards,
  Graeme

-- 
fpGUI Toolkit - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal
http://fpgui.sourceforge.net/

My public PGP key:  http://tinyurl.com/graeme-pgp