Help viewer and help content

[CandCPlusPlus]

Basically, Microsoft has open sourced the win32 documentation but it's somewhat of a mess. A big project to fix it.

In doing some experimentation over the years, I discovered that in several spots the Win32 documentation is flat out wrong or out of date. For example, Rich Edit 3.0 (riched20.dll) and Rich Edit 4.1 and newer (msftedit.dll) support at least several features for a long time that the documentation says it does not support (especially related to tabstops). One could even somehow put notes in the documentation about stuff like this.

I also discovered a bug in Rich Edit 3.0 that has never been fixed. If you enable justified text, numbered bullets will eventually display improperly, distorted or not at all in Rich Edit 3.0 (riched20.dll). The bug doesn't exist in Rich Edit 4.1 and newer. Long standing unfixed bugs. lol O.O

[CandCPlusPlus]

The next thing to check did PanDoc or FARHTML rename all of the .md references to .html in each and every newly converted .html file?  If they are still .md even if the syntax is correct for a link it is the wrong extension.

That reminds me, I didn't even mention the last step I took. I used notepad++ to replace all instances of ".md" in all of the files with ".html" to fix broken links.

[TimoVJL]

This talk about help systems should be Pelles C unrelated, as poide.exe have Add-In interface for it.

some examples for searching help with keyword using different shelp sources.
https://forum.pellesc.de/index.php?topic=7250.msg27566#msg27566
https://forum.pellesc.de/index.php?topic=5162.msg19862#msg19862
https://forum.pellesc.de/index.php?topic=5320.msg20437#msg20437
https://forum.pellesc.de/index.php?topic=4442.msg16521#msg16521

There might be more of them.

[John Z]

Point taken, thanks.  It did get off track and into the weeds of help files. 
I'll post my updated Pelles C developed toc.yml converter to .hhc and .hhk for others.
Further discussion can be handled by e-mail or other means.


John Z

P.S. I will finish Controls.chm eventually and post probably in SourceForge.

[TimoVJL]

A new topic for Win32 help systems is good idea, like under Pelles C - General discussion.

[CandCPlusPlus]

A new topic for Win32 help systems is good idea, like under Pelles C - General discussion.

I already have somewhat of a discussion related to help content in my main suggestion thread and I created this thread because of that. It would be good to just move this whole entire "Help viewer and help content" thread to Pelles C general discussion. Maybe leave discussion of the help system that's more related to Pelles C in my main suggestions thread? Would one of the mods please move this "Help viewer and help content" thread. I renamed it too.

[CandCPlusPlus]

Point taken, thanks.  It did get off track and into the weeds of help files. 
I'll post my updated Pelles C developed toc.yml converter to .hhc and .hhk for others.
Further discussion can be handled by e-mail or other means.


John Z

P.S. I will finish Controls.chm eventually and post probably in SourceForge.

I'm almost thinking one could create a github or sourceforge site for all of this. Convert all (or just the folders I suggested) of the documents to html, fix the table of contents and people could, steadily over time, fix all of the broken links. Leave the source as html so that it can bit steadily fixed by everyone including the original poster. HTML is a little more flexible than markdown as lots of old and new software supports it and there are even some WYSIWYG HTML editors out there.

[John Z]

I'm coming around to the conclusion that this is a bit premature.  The GitHub .md files are so incomplete, just the Controls section has more than 5000 links back to Micro$oft web sites.  Probably half to 2/3 might be duplicates of course for example NMHDR must have 15 same links itself - every time mentioned somewhere. 

Anyway I'm still putting in the man hours 'fixing' Controls after that we'll see.

Of course this depends on the desired end result. Maybe the links are not that important.  In that case I think the methodology
to convert from .md to .html to .mhsc is fairly well defined and tested and straight forward.  TimoVJL's viewer system then would be 'good to go', it does not I believe, acknowledge/display links anyway.

John Z

[TimoVJL]

There is also other viewer version for .mshc :
https://forum.pellesc.de/index.php?topic=7259.msg27602#msg27602

[CandCPlusPlus]

Even with broken links the documentation could still be useful. However, it would be better to have working links.

I wonder if one could create a tool to automate the process of replacing the links. Actually, you could somehow create a GUI tool that lists all of the links in the documentation, find out (possibly manually) what each link goes to on Microsoft's web site, replace all instances of that link with the actual article in the offline documentation and check it off of a "to do" list.

I imagine you could even automate the process slightly more by having the tool find the documentation on the Microsoft web site and searching for similar or identical articles in the offline documentation.

Building and fixing all of the offline documentation is a worthwhile project, IMO, because Microsoft rarely, if ever, changes the Windows (Win32) API nowadays. The newest and only additions I can think of are for touch screens, high DPI and high DPI screen/monitor related. Your Controls CHM will be useful and accurate for quite a long time and the same will be true of the CHM files for any of the other folders in the documentation. All the breaking changes happen in .NET Core nowadays.

[John Z]

Actually, you could somehow create a GUI tool that lists all of the links in the documentation, find out (possibly manually) what each link goes to on Microsoft's web site, replace all instances of that link with the actual article in the offline documentation and check it off of a "to do" list.

The issue, at least for me, is the https links are for documentation that has not been ported into the GitHub repository.  If it has not been ported into the repository there is no assurance that it is covered by the MIT license.  So if one were to just grab it off the Microsoft web site and use/publish it elsewhere that could be a big liability.

I imagine you could even automate the process slightly more by having the tool find the documentation on the Microsoft web site and searching for similar or identical articles in the offline documentation.

  Sounds like a good 'first' C project for you. 

Building and fixing all of the offline documentation is a worthwhile project, IMO, because Microsoft rarely, if ever, changes the Windows (Win32) API nowadays.

Probably this weekend Controls.chm and Controls.cab will be available on SourceForge.  I've completed the conversions.  I just need to start a new project on SourceForge.  I don't have a GitHUb account.  The files are too large to post in this forum.
I'll update here when it is ready.

John Z

Update: Go here -> https://sourceforge.net/projects/windows-controls-api-docs/

[CandCPlusPlus]

The issue, at least for me, is the https links are for documentation that has not been ported into the GitHub repository.  If it has not been ported into the repository there is no assurance that it is covered by the MIT license.  So if one were to just grab it off the Microsoft web site and use/publish it elsewhere that could be a big liability.

True. I wouldn't recommend pulling content directly from Microsoft's docs.microsoft.com web site as the MIT license may not apply there. I was suggesting comparing the content in the links with the content at https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/win32 and https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/sdk-api .

I did noticed too that https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/sdk-api has some content that is missing from https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/win32 .

[John Z]

Now available:

Download offline Controls help file at:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/windows-controls-api-docs/

Default download is Controls.chm but under 'files' Controls.cab can be downloaded as well.

John Z

Well not a lot of downloads for the new .chm or mshc file.  15 for .chm and 0 (Zero) for the .cab (mshc version).
It does take a while to build up steam but first 10 days are not showing high demand.....

[John Z]

I was thinking of adding the GDI and GDI+ documentation, however it is not worth the time and effort, at least for now. Checking the links in these topics shows about 70-75% of the references are just links back to Micro$oft web sites.  This is not good for off-line documentation. 

The Controls.chm has been downloaded only about 18 times in a month, and Controls.cab maybe once.

So I'm not going to pursue this anymore.

John Z

[MrBcx]

I like and use Chm files but they are certainly not the only option.

At the risk of overstating the obvious, Microsoft has had a DOWNLOAD PDF option
on their MS App Development Pages for quite some time.  The pdf's that it creates
are hyperlinked, searchable, and contain any images that are a part of the topic
that one is looking at. 

Typically the DOWNLOAD PDF shows on whatever page you're browsing.
For example GDI+ --- See attached screen shot.

DOWNLOAD PDF generates a file named "document.pdf", so it is up to
you to rename the files as you download them.

Below is the list of pdf's that I downloaded in late 2021 / early 2022.

There is much more that can be downloaded but these are what I started with.

Code: [Select]


12/29/2021  09:11 PM         4,443,316 Automation.pdf
12/29/2021  08:57 PM        13,709,892 Component Object Model (COM).pdf
12/29/2021  08:56 PM           163,840 Compression API.pdf
12/29/2021  09:02 PM         2,310,297 Data Exchange.pdf
12/29/2021  08:47 PM         2,613,216 Developing Desktop Win32 apps.pdf
12/29/2021  09:12 PM         2,486,178 Dialog Boxes.pdf
12/29/2021  08:44 PM        10,854,150 Direct2D.pdf
12/29/2021  08:45 PM         7,546,970 Direct3D 12 Graphics.pdf
12/29/2021  08:41 PM        12,246,477 GDI+.pdf
12/29/2021  09:14 PM           963,048 High DPI.pdf
12/29/2021  08:36 PM         7,638,660 Internationalization for Windows Applications.pdf
12/29/2021  08:21 PM         5,465,497 Menus and Other Resources.pdf
01/23/2022  06:10 PM        12,976,800 Microsoft CRT Reference(2022).pdf
12/29/2021  08:54 PM         3,714,989 Network Management.pdf
12/29/2021  08:34 PM        29,558,942 The Windows Shell.pdf
12/29/2021  08:35 PM         9,979,310 Windows Accessibility Features.pdf
12/29/2021  08:20 PM         4,970,943 Windows and Messages.pdf
12/29/2021  09:05 PM        16,559,253 Windows Controls.pdf
12/29/2021  08:40 PM         7,916,056 Windows GDI.pdf
12/29/2021  08:50 PM            80,934 Windows HTTP Services (WinHTTP).pdf
12/29/2021  08:51 PM         3,258,426 Windows Internet.pdf
12/29/2021  09:18 PM         7,308,203 Windows Multimedia.pdf
12/29/2021  09:16 PM         5,957,451 Windows Runtime C++ reference.pdf
03/13/2022  08:13 AM        14,862,043 Windows Shell.pdf
12/29/2021  08:53 PM        11,162,005 Windows Sockets 2.pdf
12/29/2021  08:18 PM           146,367 Windowsx.h.pdf