Do note that chm help is not available (by default) on all windows versions out there. MS tries to discourage its usage, e.g. would require a separate download/installation. chm is labeled unsafe (and it actually is).
@marcov:
Indeed i might have confused some things with the .hlp format. However, there is more to it.
Some versions of windows did not came with internet explorer, afaik it is a requirement for proper html help support. Also afaik, starting from win7, there are some slight incompatibilities (e.g. features torn out for security reasons). Nothing that can't be fixed with a download though.
Embedded windows version might have more issues then html alone, but that is a pretty specific platform that would probably not be relevant enough to justify my remark.
I made the comment so that TS is able to take into consideration that his help file might not be shown without issues on each and every machine when falling back to windows html help viewer. Perhaps not relevant for some homebrew usage but might perhaps be if there is a larger user-base.
Please feel free to correct as i was indeed mixing things with .hlp format.
Actually that is mostly XPsp2 that does that. With MSIE under attack, some features that were impossible to support (like running activeX binaries inside help) were disabled. Some more minor features were added in the versions after that. But those were not exactly straightforward usage,I stand corrected. Thank you.
and lhelp.exe doesn't even have a chance of supporting that, so I don't really understand why it is relevant.Because html workshop allows you to. But you are corrrect: TS did indicate wanting to use a _simple_ help file only.
Afaik CHM is still the recommended help system (if you can actually find a place that recommends a helpsystem, since making normal apps is considered something of a bygone era). Even on stackoverflow people programming in C# are still asking CHM related questions.afaik CHM is indeed the recommended help system for windows platforms. The remark you made there was part of the reason for us to phase out support for Windows, and for me personally to drop it all together ages ago.
Afaik all those features don't work with lhelp anyway, and it is a lot more stable. The old MSIE, crippled in quirk modes as it is, still is a full scale browser and magnitudes more versatile than the ipro htmlview widget of lhelp.See my first remark. I don't fully understand the type of comparison you made between lhelp and native html help.
I think you should rephrase with concrete issues. You seem to be discouraging windows native CHM in very broad statements, but it is not clear if the alternative (lhelp) supports it at allI am not discouraging CHM help in any way. If you've read that in my words then either i did a very lousy job (most likely) or you read more into my words then there is.
Why don't you provide a patch?
I contacted to mantainer, Andrew Haines.He has not been active lately. A patch for Lazarus sources would be the right way to go. Use "git format-patch" to create it.
Please refrain from excessive reformatting. While there is a small benefit visually, it usually complicates sifting through version system history more than it is worth.
Please refrain from excessive reformatting. While there is a small benefit visually, it usually complicates sifting through version system history more than it is worth.
That's not so easy, nice formatting and naming greatly helps to detect and avoid many bugs.
Also, it helps maintain code, decrease time, needed to read code and get it designation. Difficulties encountered only once, when merging to SVN. And then code will be read by users countless times.
What "safe programming practices"?
I personnaly follows CERT Coding Standards and Embarcadero Object Pascal Style Guide. And there is no rules, that restrict changes in SVN because it difficults changes history studing.
I did some fixes and improvements to LHelp - https://github.com/serbod/lazhelp
Internal HTML pages representation depends on IPro package and also need some fixing.
The images embedded in the chmdemo which I posted above are displayed by the lhelp version which comes with Lazarus. lhelp (or to be more precise: the TIpHtmlPanel), however, has lots of trouble positioning them correctly, and it also ignores a lot of the css instructions.
Does the Windows chm viewer display the images? Did you add the png files to the help project?
- the links to chapters are ok but the links to sections do not workReturning to your original question: Could you post the complete Microsoft HelpWorkshop project, i.e. hhp file plus all files needed to build the chm? Pack everything into a common zip which you can upload here. All my tests show that lhelp is able to display embedded images.
- the png images included in the html files do not show up
Returning to your original question: Could you post the complete Microsoft HelpWorkshop project, i.e. hhp file plus all files needed to build the chm? Pack everything into a common zip which you can upload here. All my tests show that lhelp is able to display embedded images.
<meta content="text/html; charset=windows-1252" http-equiv="content-type">You are mixing up html and css syntax here. Not sure if this is generally allowed, but IpHtmlPanel does not seem to like it. The correct line would be: <meta content="text/html" charset="windows-1252" http-equiv="content-type">BTW: better to use UTF8 encoding. <p>Les données nécessaires au <a href="description.html#calculs">calcul</a> sont: </p>
Links within html files are not workingYou mean something like this: If I click on the link "options" in the second paragraph on the page which opens when the node "Specifications" > "Descriptions" in the left Contents tree is clicked, the correct page is opened but the page does not scroll down to show the linked paragraph "Options"?
Links within html files are not workingYou mean something like this: If I click on the link "options" in the second paragraph on the page which opens when the node "Specifications" > "Descriptions" in the left Contents tree is clicked, the correct page is opened but the page does not scroll down to show the linked paragraph "Options"?
I could imagine that this is a bug in the IpHTMLPanel.
Unfortunately, I don't have the time at the moment to look at this issue in detail. Please write a report to the bugtracker that it is not forgotten. Attach this demo project to the report, as well as the source files creating the chm files.
Who is author of chmmaker?Take a pick (https://svn.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/trunk/tools/chmmaker/?root=lazarus) out of one of the many contributors ?