htmlhelp compiler: what changed
Revision 0 to 1. Removed lines have a minus sign; added lines have a plus sign.
Title: htmlhelp compiler
| Old | New | Line | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | + | ## Contents | |
| 2 | + | ||
| 3 | + | * 1 Overview | |
| 4 | + | * 2 History | |
| 5 | + | * 3 Missing features | |
| 6 | + | * 4 Performance | |
| 7 | + | * 5 Download | |
| 8 | + | ||
| 9 | + | ## Overview | |
| 10 | + | ||
| 11 | + | The htmlhelp compiler chmcmd is a GPL licensed htmlhelp1 (CHM) helpfile compiler. | |
| 12 | + | ||
| 13 | + | The help file compiler's main program only performs command line handling. All other functionality (including .hhp loading functionality and HTML scanning) is done by FPC's [[chm]] package, which is licensed under a more permissive license (LGPL with static linking exception) | |
| 14 | + | ||
| 15 | + | Two formats are supported: | |
| 16 | + | ||
| 17 | + | * HTML help .hhp help projects (similar to those from the old Microsoft HTML Help workshop) | |
| 18 | + | * a superset that stores all information (including context data) in one .XML. | |
| 19 | + | ||
| 20 | + | ## History | |
| 21 | + | ||
| 22 | + | While the primary target of the [[chm]] package is the documentation tool [[FPDoc Editor|fpdoc]], a small commandline utility chmcmd was added for testing purposes. This utility simply created a TCHMProject instance, would load the .xml, and called the "writechm" method. The XML format had to list all files to be included (including .css and image files). | |
| 23 | + | ||
| 24 | + | In 2010, basic .hhp support was added, and the project was expanded to scan input files for extra files. | |
| 25 | + | ||
| 26 | + | ## Missing features | |
| 27 | + | ||
| 28 | + | See [[chm]] | |
| 29 | + | ||
| 30 | + | ## Performance | |
| 31 | + | ||
| 32 | + | The performance probably won't be great. Mostly because the program is written in a portable manner. | |
| 33 | + | ||
| 34 | + | The chm package has some support for doing the compression using multiple cores, but this has not been enabled by default for two reasons: | |
| 35 | + | ||
| 36 | + | 1. on Linux/FreeBSD this pulls in libpthread and libc which makes the binary distribution dependent (on FreeBSD and Linux, basic FPC binaries are fully static and use syscalls) | |
| 37 | + | 2. the savings are not that great (think 25% faster on a dual core) | |
| 38 | + | ||
| 39 | + | A Win32 binary is currently about 420k (uncompressed, but stripped). | |
| 40 | + | ||
| 41 | + | ## Download | |
| 42 | + | ||
| 43 | + | The HTML compiler is not available as a separate download, but is included in most FPC releases and snapshots. | |
| 44 | + | ||
| 45 | + | --- | |
| 46 | + | *From the Free Pascal wiki, page "chmcmd", as the Internet Archive kept it on 2025-05-14. Copyright stays with the author who wrote it, according to the old wiki's [[Licensing]] page. If you have concerns about this material, [message the admin](/wiki-contact).* |