-----Original Message----- From: ros-dev-bounces@reactos.com [mailto:ros-dev-bounces@reactos.com] On Behalf Of Karim Liman-Tinguiri Sent: 21. februar 2005 16:09 To: ros-dev@reactos.com Subject: [ros-dev] Implementing a help system
Hello,
Therefore I am wondering if there is a current project started to code one. If not, I plan to code an open-source version of the winhlp32.exe file located in the system folder able to open and show windows .hlp files. The goal is to have a winhlp32.exe that runs and behaves exactly like (or very close to) that of the Microsoft copyrighted winhlp32.exe. It should therefore be able to serve existing windows apps with a help server without any modification to the program. I've verified the dependencies of winhlp32.exe; all of them have already been implemented in ReactOS, so it should not be a big deal to code it from scratch. Despite the fact that the .hlp file format isn't officially documented, it has already been reverse engineered and its documentation can be found on the web (2). However, if there already is a help support project up and running, I intend to join it.
Winhelp is obviously needed for compatibility, but a MS Help clone would be better to use for ReactOS online documentation due to its flexibility. There is a GPL CHM library at: http://freshmeat.net/projects/chmlib/.
Besides, as soon as this is ready (why not before ?), I advise we convert all documentation on the reactos.com's library (and all further documentation) to the DocBook (SGML) format: it has the advantage of being easily converted on-the-fly to pdf, html, post-script and many others. A tool chain to convert it to .hlp will however have to be created (meanwhile we can use the standard tools for compiling .hlp files).
See http://svn.reactos.com/viewcvs/trunk/rosdocs/
Casper