utils/HelpHTML/README

   1
   2 HelpHTML : Support scripts for generating external HTML help files
   3 ------------------------------------------------------------------
   4
   5 The scripts in this directory can be used to generate external HTML
   6 help files for use with wxHTMLHelpControllerBase derived help implemen-
   7 tations. Currently the only implementation using this is the
   8 wxExtHelpController class, using an external HTML browser. I hope to
   9 add a class using a wxWindows-built-in HTML viewer soon.
  10
  11 These viewers need a "wxhelp.map" file in the help directory which
  12 maps numeric help IDs to relative URLs, having entries like:
  13
  14 1000            overview.html;Overview
  15 1010            mainmanu.html;Main Menu
  16 ...
  17
  18 The numeric help ids are used to refer to the help in the application,
  19 the URL specifies the file to be displayed, relative to the help base
  20 directory (extended by the locale name if that directory exists) and the
  21 text behind the semicolon is used to display and search a list of all help
  22 topics.
  23
  24 html2wxhelp:
  25 ------------
  26 The html2wxhelp script in this directory allow you to automatically generate
  27 this file from a set of HTML pages. All you need is to append the numeric ID
  28 to the section header in the HTML file like this:
  29 <H1>Overview_1000_</H1>
  30
  31 html2wxhelp will scan all html files in the directory in which it is called
  32 and find these lines. It will create a wxhelp.map file and strip the help
  33 IDs from the HTML files. So you should have a backup of the files before
  34 running it, or a way to regenerate them.
  35
  36 striphelpids:
  37 -------------
  38
  39 Called with the name of a .tex file, it will strip the help IDs from the file,
  40 so the IDs do not show up in the printed documentation.
  41
  42
  43 How to use them:
  44 ----------------
  45
  46 I use LyX to generate the docs, export the text as LaTeX. I then use
  47 latex2html to generate the set of HTML pages and html2wxhelp to generate
  48 the map file from them. Then I run striphelpids on the .tex file before
  49 generating PostScript documentation from that.
  50 The whole process can easily be automated with a Makefile. For an example
  51 of how to do this, see the source of my mail program, available from
  52 http://www.phy.hw.ac.uk/~karsten/M/
  53
  54
  55 Karsten Ballueder       <Ballueder@usa.net>
  56
  57
  58