[Python-Dev] Searching Python docs (Was: Python sidebar for Mozilla/Netscape) (original) (raw)

Neil Hodgson nhodgson@bigpond.net.au
Sat, 6 Apr 2002 17:44:56 +1000

Tim:

Careful, there -- like all things Microsoft, there's HTML Help, and then there's HTML Help.

And then there's the new Document Explorer which uses the new .HxS file format. Microsoft changes documentation format and viewer apps every couple of years or so to inflict a mixture of pain and wonder on us serfs. The .NET documentation comes in the new format and I have read of the problems (and hence avoided them myself) from people who have downloaded the latest platform SDK which has documentation in the new format and so will not load in the old viewer within MSVC 6.

Irritations include that the set of control buttons aren't the same as in your browser, vary across .chm files, and there's often no obvious way for the user to change font size (wrt the pythlp.chm above, a persistent user may figure out that they can close the file, change their font size in IE, then reopen the .chm file). Amazingly, there's no help available to the user about HTML Help, and in particular there's not a clue about the power hiding in the search facility (which may include blazing fast wildcards, boolean expressions, and proximity search, depending how on clueless the .chm author was).

Most of this is fixed in Document Explorer although there are fiddly incompatibilities that annoy me.

Neil