From: "Bernard Delmée" <bdelmee@...>
Date: 2001-08-18T08:38:26+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:19961] TIP: invoking help from the scite editor on win32

Right, suppose you're a Win32 user (there goes half the crowd...)
Then you probably already know about the HTML Help version of
the pragmatic programmers' book "Programming Ruby". It is bundled
with the latest ruby distributions Andy has prepared, or can be
grabbed at http://www.bdelmee.easynet.be/ruby/index.html

There is an easy way to look it up from within the very capable
Scite editor, which has ruby color highlighting since version 1.38
http://www.scintilla.org/SciTEDownload.html

Once you've installed scite, edit its $SCITE_HOME/ruby.properties
file, and add the following three lines:

--------><--------
if PLAT_WIN
    command.help.*.rb=$(CurrentWord)!c:\ruby\ProgrammingRuby.chm
    command.help.subsystem.*.rb=4
--------><--------

Of course this assumes you've wisely let the ruby installation
happen under 'C:\Ruby'.
From then on, hitting the <F1> key from a scite buffer with a ruby
file loaded will invoke the help viewer with an index entry selected
that begins with the word currently highlighted. You then need to
hit the <Display> button or double-click the index entry.

This is not context sensitive; if you have hilighted a call to
the 'close' method, the above method would present you with the
'close (dir)' entry whereas you may actually be interested in
'close (network)'. But scite does not know whether the object on
which the method is invoked represents a directory, a socket
or a wombat! Still I thought I'd share the trick.
And oh, I suggest you leave the help file open, so you wont
need to launch the help viewer for each word lookup.

HTH,

Bernard.