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htmlhelp compiler: what changed

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11## Contents
22
33 * 1 Overview
44 * 2 History
55 * 3 Missing features
66 * 4 Performance
77 * 5 Download
88
99## Overview
1010
1111The htmlhelp compiler chmcmd is a GPL licensed htmlhelp1 (CHM) helpfile compiler.
1212
1313The 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)
1414
1515Two formats are supported:
1616
1717 * HTML help .hhp help projects (similar to those from the old Microsoft HTML Help workshop)
1818 * a superset that stores all information (including context data) in one .XML.
1919
2020## History
2121
2222While 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).
2323
2424In 2010, basic .hhp support was added, and the project was expanded to scan input files for extra files.
2525
2626## Missing features
2727
2828See [[chm]]
2929
3030## Performance
3131
3232The performance probably won't be great. Mostly because the program is written in a portable manner.
3333
3434The chm package has some support for doing the compression using multiple cores, but this has not been enabled by default for two reasons:
3535
3636 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)
3737 2. the savings are not that great (think 25% faster on a dual core)
3838
3939A Win32 binary is currently about 420k (uncompressed, but stripped).
4040
4141## Download
4242
4343The HTML compiler is not available as a separate download, but is included in most FPC releases and snapshots.
4444
4545---
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).*
46+*From the Free Pascal wiki, page "chmcmd", as the Internet Archive kept it on 2025-05-14, last changed on 2015-10-24. 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).*

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