added images for topic overviews

[wxWidgets.git] / docs / doxygen / overviews / html.h

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Name:        html.h
// Purpose:     topic overview
// Author:      wxWidgets team
// RCS-ID:      $Id$
// Licence:     wxWindows license
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

/*!

 @page overview_html wxHTML overview

 The wxHTML library provides classes for parsing and displaying HTML.
 It is not intended to be a high-end HTML browser. If you are looking for
 something like that try http://www.mozilla.org.

 wxHTML can be used as a generic rich text viewer - for example to display
 a nice About Box (like those of GNOME apps) or to display the result of
 database searching. There is a #wxFileSystem class which allows you to use 
 your own virtual file systems.

 wxHtmlWindow supports tag handlers. This means that you can easily
 extend wxHtml library with new, unsupported tags. Not only that,
 you can even use your own application-specific tags!

 See @c src/html/m_*.cpp files for details.

 There is a generic wxHtmlParser class, independent of wxHtmlWindow.

 @li @ref overview_html_quickstart
 @li @ref overview_html_printing
 @li @ref overview_html_helpformats
 @li @ref overview_html_filters
 @li @ref overview_html_cells
 @li @ref overview_html_handlers
 @li @ref overview_html_supptags


 <hr>


 @section overview_html_quickstart wxHTML quick start

 @subsection overview_html_quickstart_disphtml Displaying HTML

 First of all, you must include @c wx/wxhtml.h.

 Class #wxHtmlWindow (derived from wxScrolledWindow) is used to display HTML documents.

 It has two important methods: wxHtmlWindow::LoadPage and wxHtmlWindow::SetPage.
 LoadPage loads and displays HTML file while SetPage displays directly the
 passed @b string. See the example:

 @code
     mywin - LoadPage("test.htm");
     mywin - SetPage("htmlbody"
                      "h1Error/h1"
                      "Some error occurred :-H)"
                      "/body/hmtl");
 @endcode

 @subsection overview_html_quickstart_disphelp Displaying Help
 
 See #wxHtmlHelpController.

 @subsection overview_html_quickstart_settingup Setting up wxHtmlWindow

 Because wxHtmlWindow is derived from wxScrolledWindow and not from
 wxFrame, it doesn't have visible frame. But the user usually wants to see
 the title of HTML page displayed somewhere and the frame's titlebar is
 the ideal place for it.

 wxHtmlWindow provides 2 methods in order to handle this:
 wxHtmlWindow::SetRelatedFrame and wxHtmlWindow::SetRelatedStatusBar.
 See the example:

 @code
     html = new wxHtmlWindow(this);
     html - SetRelatedFrame(this, "HTML : %%s");
     html - SetRelatedStatusBar(0);
 @endcode

 The first command associates the HTML object with its parent frame
 (this points to wxFrame object there) and sets the format of the title.
 Page title "Hello, world!" will be displayed as "HTML : Hello, world!"
 in this example.

 The second command sets which frame's status bar should be used to display
 browser's messages (such as "Loading..." or "Done" or hypertext links).

 @subsection overview_html_quickstart_custom Customizing wxHtmlWindow

 You can customize wxHtmlWindow by setting font size, font face and
 borders (space between border of window and displayed HTML). Related functions:

  @li wxHtmlWindow::SetFonts
  @li wxHtmlWindow::SetBorders
  @li wxHtmlWindow::ReadCustomization
  @li wxHtmlWindow::WriteCustomization

 The last two functions are used to store user customization info wxConfig stuff
 (for example in the registry under Windows, or in a dotfile under Unix).



 @section overview_html_printing HTML Printing

 The wxHTML library provides printing facilities with several levels of complexity.
 The easiest way to print an HTML document is to use @ref htmleasyprinting_overview. 

 It lets you print HTML documents with only one command and you don't have to worry
 about deriving from the wxPrintout class at all. It is only a simple wrapper around the
 #wxHtmlPrintout, normal wxWidgets printout class.

 And finally there is the low level class #wxHtmlDCRenderer which you can use to
 render HTML into a rectangular area on any DC. 

 It supports rendering into multiple rectangles with the same
 width. (The most common use of this is placing one rectangle on each page or 
 printing into two columns.)


 @section overview_html_helpformats Help Files Format

 wxHTML library uses a reduced version of MS HTML Workshop format.
 Tex2RTF can produce these files when generating HTML, if you set 
 @b htmlWorkshopFiles to @true in your tex2rtf.ini file.
 (See #wxHtmlHelpController for help controller description.)

 A @b book consists of three files: the header file, the contents file 
 and the index file.

 You can make a regular zip archive of these files, plus the HTML and any 
 image files, for wxHTML (or helpview) to read; and the @c .zip file can 
 optionally be renamed to @c .htb.

 @subsection overview_html_helpformats_hhp Header file (.hhp)

 The header file must contain these lines (and may contain additional lines 
 which are ignored):

 @code
 Contents file=filename.hhc
 Index file=filename.hhk
 Title=title of your book
 Default topic=default page to be displayed.htm
 @endcode

 All filenames (including the Default topic) are relative to the
 location of the @c .hhp file.

 @note For localization, in addition the @c .hhp file may contain the line
       @code
        Charset=rfc_charset
       @endcode
       which specifies what charset (e.g. "iso8859_1") was used in contents
       and index files. Please note that this line is incompatible with
       MS HTML Help Workshop and it would either silently remove it or complain
       with some error. See also @ref overview_nonenglish.

 @subsection overview_html_helpformats_hhc Contents file (.hhc)

 Contents file has HTML syntax and it can be parsed by regular HTML parser.
 It contains exactly one list (@c &lt;ul&gt;....@c &lt;/ul&gt; statement):

 @code
 <ul>

   <li><object type="text/sitemap">
            <param name="Name" value="@topic name@">
            <param name="ID" value=@numeric_id@>
            <param name="Local" value="@filename.htm@">
        </object>
   <li><object type="text/sitemap">
            <param name="Name" value="@topic name@">
            <param name="ID" value=@numeric_id@>
            <param name="Local" value="@filename.htm@">
        </object>
   ...
 </ul>
 @endcode

 You can modify value attributes of param tags.
 The <em>topic name</em> is name of chapter/topic as is displayed in
 contents, <em>filename.htm</em> is the HTML page name (relative to the @c .hhp file)
 and <em>numeric_id</em> is optional - it is used only when you use wxHtmlHelpController::Display(int).

 Items in the list may be nested - one @c &lt;li&gt; statement may contain a @c &lt;ul&gt; sub-statement:

 @code
 <ul>

  <li><object type="text/sitemap">
         <param name="Name" value="Top node">
         <param name="Local" value="top.htm">
      </object>
      <ul>
         <li><object type="text/sitemap">
               <param name="Name" value="subnode in topnode">
               <param name="Local" value="subnode1.htm">
             </object>
      ...
      </ul>

  <li><object type="text/sitemap">
         <param name="Name" value="Another Top">
         <param name="Local" value="top2.htm">
      </object>
  ...

 </ul>
 @endcode

 @subsection overview_html_helpformats_hhk Index file (.hhk)
 
 Index files have same format as contents file except that ID params are ignored 
 and sublists are @b not allowed.


 @section overview_html_filters Input Filters

 The wxHTML library provides a mechanism for reading and displaying
 files of many different file formats.

 wxHtmlWindow::LoadPage can load not only HTML files but any known file. 
 To make a file type known to wxHtmlWindow you must create a #wxHtmlFilter filter and
 register it using wxHtmlWindow::AddFilter.


 @section overview_html_cells Cells and Containers

 This article describes mechanism used by #wxHtmlWinParser and
 #wxHtmlWindow to parse and display HTML documents.

 @subsection overview_html_cells_cells Cells

 You can divide any text (or HTML) into small fragments. Let's call these
 fragments @b cells. Cell is for example one word, horizontal line, image
 or any other part of document. Each cell has width and height (except special
 "magic" cells with zero dimensions - e.g. colour changers or font changers).
 See #wxHtmlCell.

 @subsection overview_html_cells_containers Containers

 Container is kind of cell that may contain sub-cells. Its size depends
 on number and sizes of its sub-cells (and also depends on width of window).
 See #wxHtmlContainerCell, wxHtmlCell::Layout.
 This image shows the cells and containers: @image html contbox.bmp

 @subsection overview_html_cells_conttaghandler Using Containers in Tag Handler

 #wxHtmlWinParser provides a user-friendly way of managing containers. 
 It is based on the idea of opening and closing containers.

 Use #OpenContainer to open new a container @e within an already opened container.
 This new container is a @e sub-container of the old one. (If you want to create a 
 new container with the same depth level you can call @c CloseContainer(); OpenContainer();.)

 Use #CloseContainer to close the container. This doesn't create a new container 
 with same depth level but it returns "control" to the parent container.
 See explanation: @image html cont.bmp

 There clearly must be same number of calls to OpenContainer as to
 CloseContainer.

 @subsubsection overview_html_cells_conttaghandler_example Example

 This code creates a new paragraph (container at same depth level)
 with "Hello, world!":

 @code
 m_WParser -> CloseContainer();
 c = m_WParser -> OpenContainer();

 m_WParser -> AddText("Hello, ");
 m_WParser -> AddText("world!");

 m_WParser -> CloseContainer();
 m_WParser -> OpenContainer();
 @endcode

 and here is image of the situation: @image html hello.bmp

 You can see that there was an opened container before the code was executed.
 We closed it, created our own container, then closed our container and opened
 new container.

 The result was that we had @e same depth level after executing.
 This is general rule that should be followed by tag handlers:
 leave depth level of containers unmodified (in other words, number of
 OpenContainer and CloseContainer calls should be same within #HandleTag's body).

 Notice that it would be usually better to use wxHtmlContainerCell::InsertCell instead
 of adding text to the parser directly.


 @section overview_html_handlers Tag Handlers

 The wxHTML library provides architecture of pluggable @e tag handlers.
 Tag handler is class that understands particular HTML tag (or tags) and is
 able to interpret it.

 #wxHtmlWinParser has a static table of @b modules.
 Each module contains one or more tag handlers. Each time a new wxHtmlWinParser
 object is constructed all modules are scanned and handlers are added
 to wxHtmlParser's list of available handlers (note: wxHtmlParser's list
 is non-static).

 @subsection overview_html_handlers_howworks How it works

 Common tag handler's #HandleTag method works in four steps:

 @li Save state of parent parser into local variables
 @li Change parser state according to tag's params
 @li Parse text between the tag and paired ending tag (if present)
 @li Restore original parser state

 See #wxHtmlWinParser for methods for modifying parser's state. 
 In general you can do things like opening/closing containers, changing colors, fonts etc.

 @subsection overview_html_handlers_custom Providing own tag handlers

 You should create a new .cpp file and place the following lines into it:

 @code
 #include <mod_templ.h>
 #include <forcelink.h>
 FORCE_LINK_ME(yourmodulefilenamewithoutcpp)
 @endcode

 Then you must define handlers and one module.

 @subsection overview_html_handlers_tag Tag handlers

 The handler is derived from #wxHtmlWinTagHandler (or directly from #wxHtmlTagHandler).

 You can use set of macros to define the handler (see src/html/m_*.cpp files
 for details). Handler definition must start with @b TAG_HANDLER_BEGIN macro
 and end with @b TAG_HANDLER_END macro.

 I strongly recommend to have a look at @e include/wxhtml/mod_templ.h file. 
 Otherwise you won't understand the structure of macros.

 See macros reference:
 @li @b TAG_HANDLER_BEGIN(@e name, @e tags):
     Starts handler definition. @e name is handler identifier (in fact
     part of class name), @e tags is string containing list of tags
     supported by this handler (in uppercase). This macro derives new class from
     wxHtmlWinTagHandler and implements it is #GetSupportedTags method.
     Example: TAG_HANDLER_BEGIN(FONTS, "B,I,U,T")

 @li @b TAG_HANDLER_VARS:
     This macro starts block of variables definitions. (Variables are identical
     to class attributes.) Example:
    
     @code
     TAG_HANDLER_BEGIN(VARS_ONLY, "CRAZYTAG")
        TAG_HANDLER_VARS
            int my_int_var;
            wxString something_else;
     TAG_HANDLER_END(VARS_ONLY)
     @endcode
    
     This macro is used only in rare cases.

 @li @b TAG_HANDLER_CONSTR(@e name):
     This macro supplies object constructor. @e name is same name as the one
     from TAG_HANDLER_BEGIN macro. Body of constructor follow after
     this macro (you must use { and } ). Example:
    
     @code
     TAG_HANDLER_BEGIN(VARS2, "CRAZYTAG")
        TAG_HANDLER_VARS
            int my_int_var;
        TAG_HANDLER_CONSTR(vars2)
            { // !!!!!!
              my_int_var = 666;
            } // !!!!!!
     TAG_HANDLER_END(VARS2)
     @endcode
    
     Never used in wxHTML :-)

 @li @b TAG_HANDLER_PROC(@e varib):
     This is very important macro. It defines #HandleTag
     method. @e varib is name of parameter passed to the method, usually
     @e tag. Body of method follows after this macro.
     Note than you must use { and }  !
     Example:
    
     @code
     TAG_HANDLER_BEGIN(TITLE, "TITLE")
        TAG_HANDLER_PROC(tag)
            {
              printf("TITLE found...\n");
            }
     TAG_HANDLER_END(TITLE)
     @endcode

 @li @b TAG_HANDLER_END(@e name):
     Ends definition of tag handler @e name.

 @subsection overview_html_handlers_modules Tags Modules

 You can use set of 3 macros TAGS_MODULE_BEGIN, TAGS_MODULE_ADD and
 TAGS_MODULE_END to inherit new module from
 #wxHtmlTagsModule and to create instance of it.

 See macros reference:

 @li @b TAGS_MODULE_BEGIN(@e modname):
     Begins module definition. @e modname is part of class name and must be unique.
 @li @b TAGS_MODULE_ADD(@e name):
     Adds the handler to this module. @e name is the identifier from TAG_HANDLER_BEGIN.
 @li @b TAGS_MODULE_END(@e modname):
     Ends the definition of module.
     Example:
    
     @code
     TAGS_MODULE_BEGIN(Examples)
        TAGS_MODULE_ADD(VARS_ONLY)
        TAGS_MODULE_ADD(VARS2)
        TAGS_MODULE_ADD(TITLE)
     TAGS_MODULE_END(Examples)
     @endcode


 @section overview_html_supptags Tags supported by wxHTML

 wxHTML is not full implementation of HTML standard. Instead, it supports most
 common tags so that it is possible to display @e simple HTML documents with it.
 (For example it works fine with pages created in Netscape Composer or generated by tex2rtf).

 Following tables list all tags known to wxHTML, together with supported parameters.

 A tag has general form of @c tagname param_1 param_2 ... param_n where param_i is
 either @c paramname="paramvalue" or @c paramname=paramvalue - these two are equivalent. 
 Unless stated otherwise, wxHTML is case-insensitive.

 @subsection overview_html_supptags_commonvalues Table of common parameter values

 We will use these substitutions in tags descriptions:

 @code
 [alignment]     CENTER
                 LEFT
                 RIGHT
                 JUSTIFY

 [v_alignment]   TOP
                 BOTTOM
                 CENTER

 [color]         HTML 4.0-compliant colour specification

 [fontsize]      -2
                 -1
                 +0
                 +1
                 +2
                 +3
                 +4
                  1
                  2
                  3
                  4
                  5
                  6
                  7

 [pixels]        integer value that represents dimension in pixels

 [percent]       i%
                 where i is integer

 [url]           an URL

 [string]        text string

 [coords]        c(1),c(2),c(3),...,c(n)
                 where c(i) is integer
 @endcode


 @subsection overview_html_supptags_list List of supported tags

 @code
 A               NAME=[string]
                 HREF=[url]
                 TARGET=[target window spec]
 ADDRESS
 AREA            SHAPE=POLY
                 SHAPE=CIRCLE
                 SHAPE=RECT
                 COORDS=[coords]
                 HREF=[url]
 B
 BIG
 BLOCKQUOTE
 BODY            TEXT=[color]
                 LINK=[color]
                 BGCOLOR=[color]
 BR              ALIGN=[alignment]
 CENTER
 CITE
 CODE
 DD
 DIV             ALIGN=[alignment]
 DL
 DT
 EM
 FONT            COLOR=[color]
                 SIZE=[fontsize]
                 FACE=[comma-separated list of facenames]
 HR              ALIGN=[alignment]
                 SIZE=[pixels]
                 WIDTH=[percent|pixels]
                 NOSHADE
 H1
 H2
 H3
 H4
 H5
 H6
 I
 IMG             SRC=[url]
                 WIDTH=[pixels]
                 HEIGHT=[pixels]
                 ALIGN=TEXTTOP
                 ALIGN=CENTER
                 ALIGN=ABSCENTER
                 ALIGN=BOTTOM
                 USEMAP=[url]
 KBD
 LI
 MAP             NAME=[string]
 META            HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type"
                 CONTENT=[string]
 OL
 P               ALIGN=[alignment]
 PRE
 SAMP
 SMALL
 STRIKE
 STRONG
 SUB
 SUP
 TABLE           ALIGN=[alignment]
                 WIDTH=[percent|pixels]
                 BORDER=[pixels]
                 VALIGN=[v_alignment]
                 BGCOLOR=[color]
                 CELLSPACING=[pixels]
                 CELLPADDING=[pixels]
 TD              ALIGN=[alignment]
                 VALIGN=[v_alignment]
                 BGCOLOR=[color]
                 WIDTH=[percent|pixels]
                 COLSPAN=[pixels]
                 ROWSPAN=[pixels]
                 NOWRAP
 TH              ALIGN=[alignment]
                 VALIGN=[v_alignment]
                 BGCOLOR=[color]
                 WIDTH=[percent|pixels]
                 COLSPAN=[pixels]
                 ROWSPAN=[pixels]
 TITLE
 TR              ALIGN=[alignment]
                 VALIGN=[v_alignment]
                 BGCOLOR=[color]
 TT
 U
 UL
 @endcode

*/