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comp.lang.ruby

Help files

Stuart Clarke

3/8/2009 8:17:00 PM

Hi forum,

I am looking to have some form of help file/technical documentation to
go alongside a GUI application. Basically on the click of a button (help
button) a file will be opened in its native viewer eg adobe reader for a
PDF file.

What is the best way to perform such a task in ruby, I am quite flexible
as to the format of the help file either a PDF or compiled html.

Many thanks
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....
3 Answers

Eric Hodel

3/8/2009 9:26:00 PM

0

On Mar 8, 2009, at 13:17, Stuart Clarke wrote:
> I am looking to have some form of help file/technical documentation to
> go alongside a GUI application. Basically on the click of a button
> (help
> button) a file will be opened in its native viewer eg adobe reader
> for a
> PDF file.
>
> What is the best way to perform such a task in ruby, I am quite
> flexible
> as to the format of the help file either a PDF or compiled html.

Don't most GUI frameworks have a built in API for displaying help
documentation?

Alex Fenton

3/9/2009 5:16:00 PM

0

Stuart Clarke wrote:
> Hi forum,
>
> I am looking to have some form of help file/technical documentation to
> go alongside a GUI application. Basically on the click of a button (help
> button) a file will be opened in its native viewer eg adobe reader for a
> PDF file.
>
> What is the best way to perform such a task in ruby, I am quite flexible
> as to the format of the help file either a PDF or compiled html.

It depends how sophisticated you want to get. If you simply want to
display a PDF with help on a button being clicked, then pretty much any
GUI should be able to do that. Call Ruby's system with 'start' [Windows]
'open' [OS X] or 'xdg-open' [Linux] and the name of the file, eg

system "open myhelp.pdf"

If you want a more sophisticated help browser - eg context-specific
links to sections from the GUI, searching, using the native Windows CHM
help browser, see something like:

http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/doc/#o...

Esp HelpController / HtmlHelpController. As Eric says, I'd expect the
other heavyweight GUI toolkits (GNOME2, Qt) to offer something similar,
though I couldn't find a reference to this for GNOME2.

alex

Stuart Clarke

3/9/2009 7:07:00 PM

0

Thanks Alex. Really useful. I have been messing around with Lauchy this
afternoon which may do the job, but I will check out your link.

Regards

Alex Fenton wrote:
> Stuart Clarke wrote:
>> Hi forum,
>>
>> I am looking to have some form of help file/technical documentation to
>> go alongside a GUI application. Basically on the click of a button (help
>> button) a file will be opened in its native viewer eg adobe reader for a
>> PDF file.
>>
>> What is the best way to perform such a task in ruby, I am quite flexible
>> as to the format of the help file either a PDF or compiled html.
>
> It depends how sophisticated you want to get. If you simply want to
> display a PDF with help on a button being clicked, then pretty much any
> GUI should be able to do that. Call Ruby's system with 'start' [Windows]
> 'open' [OS X] or 'xdg-open' [Linux] and the name of the file, eg
>
> system "open myhelp.pdf"
>
> If you want a more sophisticated help browser - eg context-specific
> links to sections from the GUI, searching, using the native Windows CHM
> help browser, see something like:
>
> http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/doc/#o...
>
> Esp HelpController / HtmlHelpController. As Eric says, I'd expect the
> other heavyweight GUI toolkits (GNOME2, Qt) to offer something similar,
> though I couldn't find a reference to this for GNOME2.
>
> alex

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