[fpc-pascal] helpsystem, some numbers

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 3:27 PM, Marco van de Voort <marcov at stack.nl> wrote:
>>
>> rtl with 7zip = 762KB
>> fc with 7zip = 117KB
>
> But that is not a help system. It is a solid archive. If I have to depack
> first it lasts a minute and contains 150MB on disk (first column)

I archived the RTL and FCL help generated by fpdoc (lots and lots of
HTML files). The RTL HTML help files were also 38MB in size before I
archived it.  All that is missing from that would be a index file
(maybe) and a TOC file.


> Great, I can't wait till you submit a patch that turns it into a helpsystem.

We are starting on a custom help system in Q2 next year - if nothing
decent exists yet. We need something cross-platform and that can work
with fpGUI but will be designed to work for LCL based apps as well.
I'm already working on a HTML viewer component for fpGUI - seeing that
I can't figure out how to embed Mozilla Firefox in a Free Pascal based
application.

So far we are looking at the TZipFile component, but with zlib for a
start (and 7zip later) compression. Help file will be similar to
OpenOffice or CHM help. A compressed file with HTML and image content
and some index and toc files.


> It is not a comparison of archivers, but what to do with the helpsystem. And
> size is not the only parameter. (native compressor/decompressors are too, so
> that it can be used in installers that don't need external dlls/.so's that
> are potentially not installed or distro specific)

I understand that, and that's a requirement for us as well. A
self-contained help viewer and help files with no external
dependencies. But if the help system is designed correctly, you can
abstract the compression algorithm and make it swappable. So if some
better algorithm comes out in the future, the help system is ready for
it. The tiOPF project has done this already if you want sample code
(and it doesn't rely on the base tiOPF units - it's stand-alone), and
that is what I showed Darius when I spoke to him about the TZipFile
component.


Regards,
  - Graeme -


_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/