Hi

Looking at the online documentation at:
http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/prog/prog.html

The html navigation seems to be broken. I remember a few months back someone also raised such a issue and was under the impression it was fixed. Is this a recurring problem or was the original issue never fixed?

Let me explain. Using the above website.
* I click on 1.1.1
* After the page loaded I click the [Next] link expecting to go to 1.1.2. Instead it goes to 1.1.3.
* Clicking [Next] again - expecting 1.1.4 it instead jumps to 1.1.5.

[Next] seems to always skip one page and go to two pages forward.

The [Prev] link seems to work ok.

Could somebody explain what or where all the other links are support to go to. The HTML navigation doesn't seem to be very explanatory.

[Next] and [Prev] seem obvious.

[Prev-tail], [tail], [up], [front], [tail] ---> I don't think they mean much to the average user. I can't figure them out myself.

Couldn't those links rather refer to Index, Chapter, Section and Prev/Next Page? Everybody understands those.

To explain the navigation confusion issue even more. The following link is for the beginning of Chapter 7.
http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/prog/progch7.html#x161-1580007

Clicking on [Tail] which I'm not really sure where it's going to take me, actually takes me to Chapter 6 Section 6.6. Looking at the Index, Chapter 7 doesn't follow section 6.6 so no idea what happened there?? Needless to say the navigation is pretty useless in it's current state.

....
6.6 Entry and exit code
6.6.1 Intel 80x86 standard routine prologue / epilogue 6.6.2 Motorola 680x0 standard routine prologue / epilogue 6.7 Parameter passing
6.7.1 Parameter alignment
6.8 Stack limitations
7 Linking issues
....

Michael, I'm not dissing your documentation efforts. :) The content is great. I just think the LaTeX to HTML conversion has some major issues? DocBook HTML navigation seems to be much simpler. Isn't there a LaTeX to DocBook to HTML path we could follow? Or use a different LaTeX to HTML converter?

Regards,
- Graeme -

[cut]

No idea.
It seems that the tex4ht conversion is not very good after all :/

In the beginning we used latex2html. The problem is that the documentation is simply too big. It takes days to convert (what do you expect from a perl program...) so we switched to tex4ht.

Personally, I would drop the HTML support completely and simply provide PDF for the manuals. I must spend far too much time on it. And unless someone takes over the conversion effort, this probably is what will happen.

Note that I do not propose to drop HTML support for the unit reference guides; The HTML support of fpdoc is not under question.

Michael.

Hi

It was me reporting it. However, I did not check or remember, whether it has been fixed since then.

Is this a recurring problem or was the original issue never fixed? Let me explain. Using the above website.

: Details of the problem explained deleted.

When I tried the make html locally, the result was perfect. So, I do not think there is a general problem and a different tool/way is needed.

Regards, - Graeme -

Regards - Michael Schindler aka mischi.

Hi

hm, as I said. When I tried it locally, the result was perfect. Maybe, it is simply a question of the tex4ht version. I am too busy these days, to look further into it, but in about 10 days time, I can have another look at it.

Michael Van Canneyt wrote

In the beginning we used latex2html. The problem is that the documentation is simply too big. It takes days to convert (what do you expect from a perl

That's no good in this day and age! :)

program...) so we switched to tex4ht.

I was just looking at this, for some of my documents. The default output is a bit ugly, but luckily by just changing a few settings in the .css file it already looks much better.

Personally, I would drop the HTML support completely and simply provide PDF for the manuals. I must spend far too much time on it. And unless someone takes over the conversion effort, this probably is what will happen.

I guess that wouldn't be so bad either. Since having the issue with the HTML versions, I downloaded the PDF ones. They look great, support hyper links and I can search the content. Doesn't Google support viewing PDF documents online? - for those that don't want to download them.

Note that I do not propose to drop HTML support for the unit reference guides; The HTML support of fpdoc is not under question.

I agree, the fpdoc HTML looks and works great! :-) I was just referring to the big manuals.

I'll try what Schindler suggested and generate the HTML locally with my copy of htlatex and see how it goes. Just to experiment.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Hi,

I had a first try to create the docs. However, all three (latex2html, tex4ht and hevea) failed. I am suspecting the fink installations. Unfortunately, I did not take notes, how I did it last time. Looks like a more tedious thing. I'll let you know about any progress.

Best wishes - Michael Schindler