Clifford Heath
7/31/2006 6:56:00 AM
In Debian Linux, there's a group of "libchm" packages that
offer an API and tools to unpack Windows Compiled Help Module
files. A lot of EBooks are delivered this way, including the
Ruby Book, and it's always bugged me that I have no Linux
option for reading them (I know the Ruby book is available as
HTML, but it isn't as easy to use as the Windows help viewer).
Anyhow, I unpacked an EBook using "extract_chmLib", and found
the .hhc file which contains the table of contents. It's just
an HTML file with a set of nested <UL> lists, and each <LI>
contains an <object>. The objects have parameters for Name
and "Local", and I translated them to <a href=Local>Name</a>,
and got a working table of contents. Add a little bit of framery,
and I have a working EBook, sweet.
Ok, my question. Would anyone be interested in a Ruby or Apache
module that provides a normal HTML interface to a CHM file?
Because it looks pretty feasible, and I don't think it's been
done.
Clifford Heath.