Hi, guys.

I am trying to do the lHelp more convenient. And after I have combined a chm indexes on start, I think about next step. What I see...
1. Exist a contradiction of behavior for contex searching through hh.exe (windows) an lHelp (this is for first start of help subsystem):
- When I press F1 for hh.exe enabled for context searching, then Lazarus send only one command - open chm file and seek TOC index position.
- When I press F1 for the lHelp enabled for context searching, then Lazarus send group of command as

got BeginUpdate
got BeginUpdate
got rturl, filename M:\lazarus\docs\chm\fcl.chm, url /index.html got rturl, filename M:\lazarus\docs\chm\fclres.chm, url /index.html got rturl, filename M:\lazarus\docs\chm\fpdoc.chm, url /index.html got rturl, filename M:\lazarus\docs\chm\ideintf.chm, url /index.html got rturl, filename M:\lazarus\docs\chm\lazutils.chm, url /index.html got rturl, filename M:\lazarus\docs\chm\lcl.chm, url /index.html got rturl, filename M:\lazarus\docs\chm\prog.chm, url /index.html got rturl, filename M:\lazarus\docs\chm\ref.chm, url /index.html got rturl, filename M:\lazarus\docs\chm\rtl.chm, url /index.html got rturl, filename M:\lazarus\docs\chm\toc.chm, url /index.html got rturl, filename M:\lazarus\docs\chm\user.chm, url /index.html got EndUpdate
got rturl, filename M:\lazarus\docs\chm\ref.chm, url /ref/refse92.html#keyword_function got EndUpdate
got rtmisc/mrShow

Lazarus sends commands for opening all chm files and the last command is for performing contex search. As result hh.exe always does it more faster then lHelp. I think behavior have to be same, only a perform of context seaching. On second request lHelp can open next file and index and so on.

2. I think that the lHelp (or user) should make a decision myself, open all indexes on first start or none (for contex search primarily). It should have own preferences for that. But the lHelp don`t have any information about searchpath where is chm files. I can add a new command for sending searchpath or add new option to Lazarus (open all indexes on first start - see paragraph 1).

3. lHelp got a start command with the option "--hide" at start. Then lHelp gets many commands on openning of indexes. I think that I have the right to show lHelp or splash screen on getting first command. Without this, the user gets a hanging program (1-3 sec) and does not understand what happens. This is for the case when I open all the indexes.

What is your opinion about it?

On Sun, 27 Dec 2020 17:15:23 +0300
Соболь Андрей Евгеньевич via lazarus

Hi, guys. I am trying to do the lHelp more convenient.

Great!

What package opens hh.exe in Lazarus?

Do you mean when user press F1 on an identifier, then lhelp can open only the target file directly and open the other files on idle?

2. I think that the lHelp (or user) should make a decision myself,

Do you mean "myself" or "by itself"?

A searchpath command sounds good.

Yes, this needs improvement and any help is welcome.

Mattias

You can read here about this
https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Installing_Help_in_the_IDE

Yes, but now I have strict commands to open files before. For to do such as you said I have to get one command to do search and to know where to get another files.

Yes, it is my mistake.

I think should be a preference in the lHelp to open all files on start or not. Then we can change which files to open on start.

Andrey

Mattias Gaertner wrote

What package opens hh.exe in Lazarus?

No special package needed. As I described in
https://wiki.freepascal.org/Installing_Help_in_the_IDE#Installing_CHM_help_.28Lazarus_1.0_and_later.29, hh.exe (the Windows help viewer) can be made to display the chm files instead of lhelp.

Op 12/28/2020 om 2:03 AM schreef Mattias Gaertner via lazarus:

Afaik most of the binary indexes (index, FTS) can be mergesorted together rather cheaply and then stored on disk. Using these rather than converting everything to text and then parse that again would make it very fast. This is what HH does.

Even faster is caching the result of the merge on disk (which HH also does, but only in case of "merged" chm files, which doesn't work with FPC generated CHM files yet), these are then stored as CHW.

But to invalidate the cache, it should be stored which CHMs were used to generate it. So that the cache can be invalided.

I'll look into the various fpdoc and chm stuff from tomorrow, when I get home again

I agree with you that need to do a storing on disk or to produce CHW. And I will do this later.
Creating a new chm package additions also requires a lot of time. But now I have not any documentation on chm format, I have found only dribs and drabs.
The situation is such that the documentation seems an existing, but it is very difficult to use for many reasons.
Actual version of lHelp has to work rightly and then I can do next version. First start 1.5-2 sec I think it is well for loading entire packet of chms and indexes.

Op 12/28/2020 om 4:03 PM schreef Andrey Sobol via lazarus:

It is wise to bring this up early, because it might require changes to the general Lazarus  help system, since lhelp needs to get a list of registered help files at once (so it can manage the combined index together) rather than individually.

This is also the reason the CHM package does not support it yet, because it

Creating a new chm package additions also requires a lot of time.

True, but sometimes new is simply needed to not program yourself into the corner

But now I  have not any documentation on chm format,  I have found only dribs and drabs.

Search for "CHMSPEC", but there as many holes as bits that are documented. Specially the process of folding the input data into the datastructure is badly described. Actually the most complete bit is the sources of the chm package and chmls/chmcmd.

As for the CHW bit, I would not try to make the saved index in CHW, just in some own format.   Increasing CHM compatibility is hard and difficult work. The main missing problem is that for some unknown reason, hh.exe doesn't FPC generated "merged" chms. Neither slave nor master chm.

chm indexes opens and reads in milliseconds. But filling Index TreeView in LHelp takes seconds of time. Place BeginUpdate / EndUpdate around TreeView filling, and delay will gone.

hh.exe can use external combined Index and Search for multiple chm's.

On Sun, Dec 27, 2020, 17:15 Соболь Андрей Евгеньевич via lazarus <

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Querying all registered help databases is easy:

lcl unit lazhelpintf
for i:=0 to HelpDatabases.Count-1 do
HelpDatabases[i]...

For example the IDE registers fpdoc help for RTL, FCL and LCL to open the lazarus-ccr web pages.

The chmhelppkg replaces them with its own and opens chm files instead. So, if you are only interested in chm files, see the chmhelppkg package.

If you are talking about creating a chm file from the fpdoc files of a package:
It would be nice if the chmhelppkg could add a button to the package editor to create or update a chm file.

[...]

Mattias

I know about it. But the main problem is that the Lhelp is another application. Need to transfer preference data (search pathes and registered database files info) to lHelp. Without this I can`t do nothing better. Now the lHelp recieves strict commands to open files.

I want to get a opinion from maintainers how is better to do that?

Of course the IDE can pass more flags and, or environment variables to lhelp.

Mattias