Re: ANN: HelpViewer 0.3 (fwd)

[Nicolas Roard]

On 2003-04-16 05:33:16 +0000 Willem Rein Oudshoorn <woudshoo@xs4all.nl> wrote:

> > > - When you click in a browser column, the item is highlighed GOOD,
> > >     but also the column is scrolled such that the highlighted item is  the last 
> > > visible item.  I would not expect any scrolling.
> >
> > Well, it's needed as you have sections ...
>
> I don't understand this.  What has the scrolling in the browser to do with
> sections.

Well, if the browser scroll, that's because the item have subsections;
it's the normal browser's behavior. I have perhaps misunderstood your
problem; what do you want to say by "last visible item" ? the browser
scroll only if there is no "free" column on its right, and it scroll only by
one column.
That's the normal browser's behavior. It works like that here with 
HelpViewer.help.

> > > - Clicking in the browser does not screem to scroll the textview.
> > > I expect that the item I select is at least visible but nothing
> > > happens.
> >
> > Yes, that's not a bug ... I didn't "backported" this feature with the new 
> > version.
>
> I hope it comes back one day.  I like using HelpViewer to browse the class
> documentation and there jumping to the right definition is a big plus.

Of course :-) obviously it's something needed. It's just that I didn't have it 
ready
for this release, but I expect to have it for the next release ...

> Yes, I made a typo:
>
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~woudshoo/GNUstep/autogsdoc.html

Ok ... there is now a 404 when I try to get Base and Gui help files :-)
anyway I downloaded autogsdoc and generated some .xlp ...
The problem with thoses xlp files is that, they are xlp files and not a .help
bundle; and many sections aren't well closed. They use also the "part" tag,
but I think that using the "chapter" tag instead would be better.
Having multiples files (xlp) instead of one big xlp files with everything
inside is better; autogsdoc only miss the creation of a .help bundle,
that is, a directory with a main.xlp inside. In main.xlp, simply define a
document tag, and inside put all the chapters needed :
<document>
<header>
<title>
        -gui documentation
</title>
</header>
<chapter src="NSHelpManager.xlp" name="NSHelpManager"/>
<!-- put here all the links to other "xlp" -->
</document>

If I take the example of NSHelpManager, the NSHelpManager.xlp file should contains the inside of a chapter, 
that is, no <document> tag or a <chapter name="NSHelpManager"> tag -- the "src" 
attribute above act as an #include .

See HelpViewer.help for a full example ...

> > > It would help if you could find the time to document the xlp format.
> >
> > Yes. The format isn't very complicate (see the examples, mainly
> > Helpviewer.help), but an exact and up to date documentation won't
> > hurt ...
>
> All in good time.  I think that the examples do not show
> all the posibilities.

Well, HelpViewer.help does (not the others, yes).

--
Nicolas Roard