From hin-tak.leung at cimr.cam.ac.uk  Wed Oct 26 18:43:49 2005
From: hin-tak.leung at cimr.cam.ac.uk (Hin-Tak Leung)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 17:43:49 +0100
Subject: [Rd] Microsoft help files
In-Reply-To: <39B6DDB9048D0F4DAD42CB26AAFF0AFAFED51D@usctmx1106.merck.com>
References: <39B6DDB9048D0F4DAD42CB26AAFF0AFAFED51D@usctmx1106.merck.com>
Message-ID: <435FB245.80208@cimr.cam.ac.uk>

Liaw, Andy wrote:
>> From: Hin-Tak Leung
>> 
>> Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>> 
>>> I wonder if the software here:
>>> 
>>> http://morte.jedrea.com/~jedwin/projects/chmlib/
>>> 
>>> or at any of the links on that page might allow elimination of
>>> the need for separately downloading the Microsoft Help compiler
>>> -- which is just one more task that one must perform to get up
>>> and running to build your own R packages on Windows.
>> 
>> Actually, why does one need to depend on the Microsoft Help 
>> compiler? The windows build of GNU makeinfo can generate MS *.hlp
>> file directly. That's more "native" MS windows than CHM files.
> 
> 
> Personally my order of preference is
> 
> CHM > plain text > HLP
> 
> Isn't it true that even MS is moving away from HLP?

WINHLP comes with a built-in search-and-index functionalty, and rather
more user-friendly than CHM or plain text. I am talking about
indexing and searching sizeable documents with internal organizations
and structures. Even pdf is better the plain text. You want the 
R-reference manual as a text file?

I am against additional dependency (particularly at build-time, unless 
you bundle it), especially on software that has just been written
and may not be around/maintained in a few months' time
(one can at least say the microsoft CHM compiler will be around!).
Since much of R's documentation is already quite texinfo/makeinfo 
friendly, it is just an extra couple of line in the makefile to
generate hlp file, ditto for rtf and ditto for pdf.

HT



[Rd] Microsoft help files
Hin-Tak Leung