On Sun, 14 May 2006 00:56:04 +0200
"Graeme Geldenhuys" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 13/05/06, Mattias Gaertner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > If you mean Delphi's HelpIntfs.pas: It merely contains 6 interfaces with
> > 25 methods. It can only show a TOC and help for ID/Keyword/Topic.
>
> Which is pretty much all you want from any help system.
I expect more.
> That's what 99% of all help files under Windows offer.
>
> > No different mime types,
>
> I don't know all the internals of Delphi and Kylix, but I would guess
> the IDE uses the same Help Interface defined in HelpIntf unit and they
> managed it. Kylix can figure out which help system to launch... Kylix
> comes with a help viewer for Man Pages and HyperHelp. Depending on
> what keyword is highlighted in the editor, pressing F1 launches the
> correct helpsystem.
I don't know how Delphi internally maps identifiers to keywords. For example
identifiers like 'Align' depends on the context. You can search for Align in
all help databases and present the user all possibilities.
Or you can do a find declaration, see that Align of TButton of
lcl/buttons.pp is meant and only show the two Align items of the LCL:
TButton.Align and TControl.Align.
That's why you need the possibility to define contexts.
Of course for simple projects with a few help pages you can use whatever you
want. Here we need some easy functions with some good defaults.
> > no help for messages, source codes,
>
> Again, how does Delphi and Kylix manage to do this, or does this mean
> they use a different help interface for the IDE compared to the
> HelpIntfs unit shipped in VCL/CLX?
I don't know.
> > no configuration data.
>
> This might sound dumb, but what would you want to configure? All that
> the user cares about is being able to press F1 and see a help viewer
> appear with the appropriate content.
If the help consists of html pages and the help viewer simply starts a
browser, then you might setup which browser and the command line parameters.
Or the language, or where to save te bookmarks.
> > Have a look at ideintf/helphtml.pas.
> > It defines a HTML database class and a HTML viewer class.
>
> I will continue working through that example thanks...
>
> > I'm currently looking, what to move into the LCL and for what to put
> > into pascal interfaces.
We want to release 0.9.16 this weekend, so I will probably do that not
before next week.
Mattias
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