From: Michael Kelly <mkelly2002NOSPAM@...>
Date: 2002-03-04T06:57:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Windows gurus: generating .chm files from RDoc?

On Sun, 03 Mar 2002 05:41:28 GMT, Dave Thomas
<Dave@PragmaticProgrammer.com> wrote:

>
>Given that I can generate .html, how much extra effort would it be to
>generate Windows HTMLHelp files? And would folks think it was worth
>it?
>

I haven't generated any of the contents, project or index
files via script but from looking at them none appear to
use a binary format so it should be fairly easy to do.  The
main consideration, I think, is if the docs are large enough
that a word search capability is desirable.  The html compiler
automates that part.  I think most of the effort would be to
create the table of contents and index entries.  The Table
of Contents file seems to be plain vanilla html.

Another cool thing you could do is create a style
sheet for your generated HtmlHelp.  I've used
a freeware tool that reads COM Automation
servers and ActiveX Controls and spits out
HtmlHelp with a style similar to the VB docs
and it has a nice look.  You could create your
own distinctive "signature" for your docs that
way.

I'd encourage you to give it a shot esp. since
once you have your table of contents with
links to the html files the generation of
word search is trivial.  The compiler kit
even has a list of words to exclude from
the word search that you can customize.

Sorry I can't give more specifics but I've
used the HtmlHelp IDE to compile my
own hand-made help stuff but I haven't
attempted automating any of that myself.


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