Re: [chmspec-devel] Introduction

[Marco van de Voort]

On 9-6-2010 3:48, Paul Wise wrote:
> This list was pretty much dead on arrival, you are the first apart from
> myself to start a new thread on this list.

Well, timezone problems made the IRC channel (where I sometimes login as 
Oliebol) a bit difficult.

> It seems CHM support just
> isn't useful for many people using free software distributions.

Most of them are *NIX derived (POSIX emulation based), and the open 
source platforms are not terribly good in defining (and more 
importantly, sticking to) binary formats.

FPC only uses a posix like abstraction for *nix, due to the dos/windows 
origin (Turbo Pascal, Delphi to a lesser extend). Moreover we can't 
workaround shifting formats by a autoconf and recompile since we can't 
handle C headers in all their gore.

> Very happy about the Free Pascal CHM writer, thanks for working on it.

Primary person to thank is Andrew, he wrote it.

Anyway there are still some open points. My list is:

- alinks
- reading workshop .hpp(?)/.h etc projects into the main class.
- merge support, master/slave etc.
- fixing remaining "small" gaps (support for windows and other more 
win-specific options)

alinks and merge support are directly of interest to FPC, the rest is 
more to be able to offer at least a provisional multiplatform hpp compiler.

However I'm currently mostly busy with the preparations for the FPC 
2.4.2 version, so I'm a bit short on time for this.

Btw, Andreww, somebody announced a minimal Lazarus (GUI) app on the 
lazarus maillist that allows to pack a set of htmls to chm.