Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Generating CHM HTML Help files from DocBook?

[Dan York <dyork@e-smith.com>]

On Wed, Aug 08, 2001 at 05:17:25PM +0200, Ali Saffari wrote:
> > 2. Linux? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I 
> > know, HTML Help is
> > for Windoze only.
> > 
>  
> HTML Help is produced to be read on Windoze, but it would still
> be quite neat, if you could create it on UNIX. Specially for us
> it would make things much easyer. Imagine your complete documentation
> ist maintained by few authors and everynight a new version of the docu
> is created along with the rest of your software. Would you do this on
> Windows? ;-)

Precisely!  I have a Makefile set up for my user guide so that when I 
simply type "make all" (on a Linux system), it:

  - validates the SGML
  - creates userguide.xml from userguide.sgml (changes the header)
  - generates a PDF version (SGML/DSSSL)
  - cd's into a 'html' directory and generates:
      - multiple HTML files for each chapter/section (XML/XSL)
      - a single HTML file (XML/XSL)
  - cd's into a 'htmlhelp' directory and generates the files (XML/XSL)
  - copies all files up to an intranet web server for viewing and
    proofing

Once the next version of our product goes live, the same Makefile will
also create tarballs and zipfiles of the HTML files and images and copy
all of that up to http://www.e-smith.org/docs/manual/ .

So it works out extremely well for me.  I update the content of my
'userguide.sgml' file and type "make all".... and go do something else.

In my ideal world, I also want to find something that magically creates
a .CHM file from all the HTML Help files.  As it is right now, I copy them
to a Windows box, run the Microsoft utility to create a Help file, and then
copy that file up to an intranet location.  I want to incorporate that
into my 'make all'.

So it is just me chasing that Holy Grail of single source and automation...

Dan

-- 
Dan York, Director of Training        dyork@e-smith.com
Ph: +1-613-751-4401  Mobile: +1-613-263-4312 Fax: +1-613-564-7739 
Mitel Network Corporation Network Server Solutions Group 
150 Metcalfe St., Suite 1500, Ottawa,ON K2P 1P1 Canada
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