RE: [docbook-apps] Web-based help from Docbook

["David Cramer \(Tech Pubs\)" <dcramer@motive.com>]

Yes, that is all correct. If you wanted to add a search pane to
applethelp, it would be possible using an applet or javascript-based
client side search thingy and integrate the search's indexing step into
your build scripts (google for 'search engine applet' or 'javascript
search engine'). When I looked, however, I never found a free or
affordable search piece that was internationalized (they all fall down
on Asian languages).

Here are some options to consider:

1. Use the html help xsls to generate the raw materials for a chm, then
open the .hhp file in RoboHelp and generate Web Help (or perhaps Flash
help...haven't tried that tho). Pros: Works for any language that
Robohelp supports. Cons: Requires RoboHelp, an overpriced, Windows-only
application, that has not command line interface, so the final Web help
generation step is always a manual, human-at-the-gui thing.

2. Use an Eclipse infocenter, as you suggest below in your aside. The
Eclipse help system/infocenter is beautiful in so many ways. I
absolutetly love it, but there's one deal-killer that keeps us from
using it as the help system for our webapps. We do use it to deliver all
our docs to our services group in an internal infocenter (searchable
html with pdfs and chms available for downloading...even made a zipped
up version of the whole infocenter that they can run locally since
they're often working on planes and are offline). Pros: It's the perfect
help system...the toc is SO flexible; wrt search, feed it utf-8 and
everything 'just works' (tho I do have scripts to blow away the search
system's index and force it to reindex if I change existing content).
Cons: Requires its own process to be running on the server. When I
talked to developers about using eclipse help as our help infrastructure
for webapps, the thing that made it hard/unappealing was that it's
another server to set up, monitor, manage, restart if it dies etc. They
would have been fine with dropping in another .war file, but managing
another server was a deal killer. If you figure that one out, please let
me know. 

3. Make the world a better place by figuring out a way to solve the
search part in an open source and internationalized way...then it would
be easy to make a kit that gives you a toc/index pane and search pane.
The toc/index part is easy and can be done any number of ways. 

David

> >> applethelp.xsl creates Web-based help that does not include a full 
> >> text
> search function
> That's my understanding too. As yet I've not found any method 
> of supplying a Search facility without resorting to either 
> building one manually or using a 3rd party interface such as 
> Acrobat, HTML Help or Eclipse. I've had success in the past 
> creating a FTS using proprietory tools that provide 
> javascript interfaces in the browser.
> 
> >>I did not find the applethelp format to be suitable but 
> only because 
> >>it
> does not include a search function.
> I'm surprised not to have found any open source tools for 
> creating a FTS. 
> With such a tool as an extra step and some XSL customisations 
> to add the interface, we would be cooking with gas...
> 
> <aside>Actually , thinking about it further, if you have 
> access rights to setup the Eclipse InfoCenter system on your 
> web server, you could configure that to work in a browser 
> with TOC, Index and Search... it's a very nice tool.</aside>
> 
> Mart
> 
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