Re: Is PDF the only help option in 5.6? [message #33985 is a reply to message #33984] |
Tue, 11 February 2003 11:52   |
JD Smith
Messages: 850 Registered: December 1999
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Senior Member |
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On Tue, 11 Feb 2003 10:57:29 -0700, Wayne Landsman wrote:
> Eric Williams wrote:
>
>> I really dislike using Acrobat Reader to browse help in IDL now. Is
>> there an option to get the old hyperlinked help back(last version
>> before this I used was 5.3)?
>
> I never used the PDF help until I was forced to in V5.6, but now I must
> admit that I like it better. One of the nice features for me is
> being able to type
> ?procedure_name
> at the iDL prompt, to quickly view the documentation, e.g.
>
> IDL> ?congrid
> IDL> ?replicate
>
> (This would sort of work in the old IDL help, but it would open a new
> window each
> time, and wouldn't take you directly to the documentation.)
>
> Tastes differ but there are lot of options the user can set in their
> PDF preferences.
>
> --Wayne Landsman
>
> P.S. Though I don't miss the old help format, I still would like an
> HTML version of the documentation (which stopped appearing after V5.1),
> since this is the only type of online help available for user
> procedures.
Well, I might as well let the cat out of the bag, since it will escape
sooner or later. I'm working on a radical new documentation system for
IDLWAVE which makes use of an HTML version of IDL's help. Where did I get
said version? Well, the new help format for Windows is Microsoft
HTMLHelp. While this isn't exactly HTML, it can easily be decompiled into
pretty decent HTML using the (free) Microsoft HTML Help Workshop. This
produces around 20MB of html+images in >2000 files.
Look for it "real soon now".
JD
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