Compiling Chinese DocBook into HTML Help

["Claus Rasmussen" <claus@webclaus.com>]

Hi folks,

A manual I wrote in DocBook XML 4.2 has been translated into a bunch of
languages, including Chinese. Creating the right output is no problem, and
compiling an HTML Help file that displays Chinese is also working nicely.

My big problem is the search and index functionality in the HTML Help binary
- I simply can not get this to work. I feel I've tried everything. Every
possible combination of htmlhelp.encoding and chunker.output.encoding, using
big5, gb2312, iso-2022-cn and what not, processing on win and unix platforms
with saxon and xsltproc. I've trashed my customization layer and processed
with the plain, out of the box stylesheets from the xsl distribution and
still no luck.

No matter what I try, I can not make the search and index work - the search
never returns any results and the index looks like cr## (encoding messed
up). I've spent days beating up my keyboard and talking to Google and I'm
not really closer to understanding what's going on.

I'm desperate man, standing on a cliff, mumbling to myself... can anyone
outline a working approach to get Chinese to play well with HTML Help?

Best,
Claus

PS: Why couldn't Microsoft just make HTML Help support utf-8? HTML Help 2,
you say? Well, the way that format is anti supported I believe it'll never
catch on before it's superseded by something else.


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