Subject: Re: Help files

From: Jan Wielemaker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 17:37:53 +0200

> In the editor I use (Visual SlickEdit), it is possible to set up keyword help,
> such that typing the appropriate key when the cursor is on a language-specific
> keyword pops up the help for that keyword.  It is set up to use Windows Help
> files, but I can work around that to use HTML or PDF files---if these are
> indexed.  Unfortunately, neither the HTML nor the PDF haltversion of the
> Swi-Prolog manual seems to have an index (the INDEX.HTML file is empty, and
> there is no .PDX file).  Does anyone have an index file for either of these?

Currently the PDF file is generated using the shareware (and for linux
free) tool pstill to convert from PostScript to PDF.  The current
version thereoff has no provisions for indexing and cross-referencing.
Not sure whether using pdftex could fix this.

There should be a file Index.html containing the index as you can find
it from the html web-page.  Possibly there is a case conflict, as
there uis also an index.html ...

> BTW, I think I can set my editor up to run the Prolog help/1 predicate on the
> keyword (i.e. I run the command line "PLWIN.EXE -g help(recorda).").  That's
> part way there, but there are of course no hyperlinks in the results returned by
> help/1.  I guess there aren't hyperlinks in the PDF file, either, so the HTML
> solution would be preferable.

Note that you can also use DDE for this.

Note that you can also use DDE.  Finally, you may try to install the
XPCE toolkit, which rebinds the SWI-Prolog help system to a simple
hypertext tool based on the MANUAL and helpidx.pl files from the
library.

I am planning to move the documentation to SGML to simplify maintenance
and provide better support for various formats.

	Regards --- Jan