TkHTML3 help viewer
Kevin Walzer
of TkHTML3? One of the virtues of the old hv.tcl script that came with
TkHTML2 is that it is very simple, and easy to hack. HV3 is a
full-fledged browser and is overkill for my needs. If anyone has come up
with something more basic with TkHTML3 as the back end, I'd love to see it.
--
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com
drsc...@gmail.com
> Has anyone written a basic help viewer/HTML displayer that runs on top
> of TkHTML3? One of the virtues of the old hv.tcl script that came with
> TkHTML2 is that it is very simple, and easy to hack. HV3 is a
> full-fledged browser and is overkill for my needs. If anyone has come up
> with something more basic with TkHTML3 as the back end, I'd love to see it.
>
I assume this is so you can put the help files in the application
itself. Why not simply distribute the help files in a directory
alongside the application and just invoke Firefox on them? I find it
easier to read that way than the help files embedded in the
application's own code.
DrS
Will Duquette
My Notebook 3 application uses TkHTML 3...and, alas, I advise you not
to go there. The widget is a joy to use, and very powerful, but there
are some quirks in the rendering: I get odd inter-word spacing on
occasion. And Dan Kennedy, the developer, is now working full-time on
SQLite, according to Richard Hipp, and there are no plans for him to
resume work on it. Never say never, but at the moment it appears to
be defunct.
Kevin Walzer
>
> My Notebook 3 application uses TkHTML 3...and, alas, I advise you not
> to go there. The widget is a joy to use, and very powerful, but there
> are some quirks in the rendering: I get odd inter-word spacing on
> occasion. And Dan Kennedy, the developer, is now working full-time on
> SQLite, according to Richard Hipp, and there are no plans for him to
> resume work on it. Never say never, but at the moment it appears to
> be defunct.
Hmm, that's too bad.
I have a fully-working help viewer based on TkHTML2; guess I'll just
stick with that.
Kevin Walzer
>
>
> I assume this is so you can put the help files in the application
> itself. Why not simply distribute the help files in a directory
> alongside the application and just invoke Firefox on them? I find it
> easier to read that way than the help files embedded in the
> application's own code.
>
I think it offers a better user experience to integrate the help docs
into the application rather than launch a separate app to view them. YMMV.
Will Duquette
Yeah, it is. It's a great widget; I enjoyed working with it. For my
purposes it's 99% of the way there, but that last 1% is too visible to
be lived with, and I was unable to find a workaround.
Robert Heller
>
> On 11/24/09 5:24 PM, drsc...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> >
> > I assume this is so you can put the help files in the application
> > itself. Why not simply distribute the help files in a directory
> > alongside the application and just invoke Firefox on them? I find it
> > easier to read that way than the help files embedded in the
> > application's own code.
> >
>
> I think it offers a better user experience to integrate the help docs
> into the application rather than launch a separate app to view them. YMMV.
It is also more cross-platform. While MS-Windows maintains a system
level 'default' browser, there isn't anything like that for Linux/UNIX
(not everybody uses Gnome or KDE and GNome and KDE do slightly
different things in this reguard). Also, with the viewer embedded in
the application, the HTML files can also be embeded in the application
-- eg in the starkit/starpack -- this allows having *everything* in one
executable image and means you don't have to install anything anywhere
(or remember where you installed stuff later, etc.).
--
Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933
Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System
http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows
hel...@deepsoft.com -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/
Robert Heller
>
> Has anyone written a basic help viewer/HTML displayer that runs on top
> of TkHTML3? One of the virtues of the old hv.tcl script that came with
> TkHTML2 is that it is very simple, and easy to hack. HV3 is a
> full-fledged browser and is overkill for my needs. If anyone has come up
> with something more basic with TkHTML3 as the back end, I'd love to see it.
I have a very *simple* pure Tcl HTML Help viewer as part of the Model
Railroad System (see below for link). It is based on the HTML display
library by Stephen Uhler (and modified by Clif Flynt and myself). It
supports very simple CSS as well. Assumes the IMG extension is loaded to
handle images other than GIF. It is bundled as a SNIT widget adaptor
and assumes the HTML help pages were created with tex4ht from LaTeX (it
uses the TOC page in the sidebar and for help topic lookup). It also
includes simple text searching and a history stack.
Kevin Walzer
>
> I have a very *simple* pure Tcl HTML Help viewer as part of the Model
> Railroad System (see below for link). It is based on the HTML display
> library by Stephen Uhler (and modified by Clif Flynt and myself). It
> supports very simple CSS as well. Assumes the IMG extension is loaded to
> handle images other than GIF. It is bundled as a SNIT widget adaptor
> and assumes the HTML help pages were created with tex4ht from LaTeX (it
> uses the TOC page in the sidebar and for help topic lookup). It also
> includes simple text searching and a history stack.
>
>>
>
I've used more HTML renderers/help viewers over the years than I can
count, including one based on the HTML widget that you are referring to.
I have a blog entry about it here:
http://www.codebykevin.com/blosxom.cgi/2009/11/19#which-html
AndreasK
> Has anyone written a basic help viewer/HTML displayer that runs on top
> of TkHTML3? One of the virtues of the old hv.tcl script that came with
> TkHTML2 is that it is very simple, and easy to hack. HV3 is a
> full-fledged browser and is overkill for my needs. If anyone has come up
> with something more basic with TkHTML3 as the back end, I'd love to see it.
Yes, sort of. The ASHV (ActiveState Help Viewer) was based on tkhtml
3, and
actually a modification/extension of the hv3 script. Changes we did:
* GUI simplified and changed to make it look like a help viewer
instead of
a browser.
* Added ability to show pages from an sqlite database.
- This database had a table holding the TOC tree, and
- an fts3 table holding the help pages. The fts3 gave us
full-text searching of the stored help for free.
The sqlite database basically functions as our portable equivalent of
CHM.
Jeff is willing to offer the sources, assuming that someone will
actually
move forward with the code. We stopped working on this after we ran
into
crashes of TkHTML3 on various unix platforms which we were not able to
debug. And with development of v3 stopped ...