[fpc-pascal] OS/2 INF help support

Graeme Geldenhuys graemeg at opensoft.homeip.net
Tue Sep 8 12:01:10 CEST 2009


Hi,

I know that the FP IDE (text mode) has support for reading OS/2 INF help
files. This is pretty cool and it works with just about any INF file I
threw at it. :-)

I read my old VisualAge for C++ for OS/2 docs and it says that to
generate a INF you need to create the help markup (similar to HTML
apparently) in the IFP file and then compile it with the IBM IPFC help
compiler.

Does anybody know if there is an open-source IPFC help compiler? One
implemented in Object Pascal maybe?

I'm been doing some reading on various help file format - to be used in
my applications and possible Lazarus IDE. From my OS/2 2.1 and OS/2 Warp
days I remember the INF help was very impressive. Searching was
lightning quick even on old hardware and INF files a few megabytes in
size.  Apparently this is due to the very efficient INF help format.

Anyway, I want to try and implement a GUI version of the INF Help Viewer
code available in the FP IDE. But ultimately, I would like to compile my
own help as well, under Linux and Windows. Would this be possible?

Regards,
  - Graeme -

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




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