In our previous episode, Graeme Geldenhuys said: > So far we are looking at the TZipFile component, but with zlib for a > start (and 7zip later) compression. Help file will be similar to > OpenOffice or CHM help. A compressed file with HTML and image content > and some index and toc files.
CHM has all that, and working code is in the tree now, so why bother? The indexes and toc are several MB each too. (for CHM, they are XML, though you could cook something up binary that is tighter. OTOH it will also compress worse) > > It is not a comparison of archivers, but what to do with the helpsystem. And > > size is not the only parameter. (native compressor/decompressors are too, so > > that it can be used in installers that don't need external dlls/.so's that > > are potentially not installed or distro specific) > > I understand that, and that's a requirement for us as well. A > self-contained help viewer and help files with no external > dependencies. But if the help system is designed correctly, you can > abstract the compression algorithm and make it swappable. Well that is the fun of the CHM stuff. It does all that, but at the same time Windows, Gnome and KDE have viewers, and you can even extract them on cmdline linux (package chmlib comes with the appopriate cmdline tools). Moreover you can get heaps of authoring tools for it, and the fpdoc process is validated for it. And FPC comes with native encoders and decoders units without dependancies, which means even the textmode IDE uses it. Note that a good custom html viewer would be great for CHM too. Make sure you abstract where it gets its data. > So if some better algorithm comes out in the future, the help system is > ready for it. Probably with any own invention is that you are your own island again. Usually I'm the one argueing that, but a few percent compression is not worth the trouble for me. > The tiOPF project has done this already if you want sample code (and it > doesn't rely on the base tiOPF units - it's stand-alone), and that is what > I showed Darius when I spoke to him about the TZipFile component. If you have more data about what they have working that would be nice. _______________________________________________ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
