annaben

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I saw several threads here on how to extract html from a chm file, but I need to do the exact opposite - to create a .chm file from html (I even have the index .hhp file) on linux (and then later to view it...).
I would like advice on free software I can download to achieve this, or code packages, or anything.

I need to do this because html format does not show index and does not have convenient search (any suggestions other than chm are welcome!).

Thanks!

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Anna

unSpawn

Hello there and welcome to LQ. Hope you like it here.

create a .chm file from html
AFAIK there is one CHM compiler for GNU/Linux: DocBook Toolchain Manager. If it don't work for you and you can not resolve issues with the developers or maintainers then maybe you can run a freeware CHM compiler under WINE if you can't shake your Winhelp format addiction.


I need to do this because html format does not show index and does not have convenient search
What I remember from building CHM files from HTML is that you would have to *make* an index: it's not something that happened automagically. And AFAIK search functionality is a part of the application, not of an individual .chm file. The search database must be built afterwards, similar to how "makewhatis" for example works. If your only concern is search functionality there's lots of desktop search products, see for example http://www.antezeta.com/desktop-search.html or search Freshmeat and Sourceforge.

annaben

UnSpawn - thanks for the fast reply, but I am still unable to achieve what I need :-(.

I think that in this case I did exactly what I hate when the users of my tool do - ask for a specific thing without describing a scenario. Explaining the real problem might often give ideas for a better solution.

I am a programmer in a team of ten. We have a program that is quite large (it was written by approx. 10 people/year for the last ~15 years. Did not count the code lines, but it is ALOT).
The code is very large and complex, and we decided to start using doxygen (well, at least for find/grep in the code to be done more easily, and in the next step - doxygen friendly documentation!). This will enable new people (I am only about half a year in the project) to get acquainted with the code faster.

Doxygen has several output formats. where html is the most basic. After creating html, I convereted it to .chm (on windows), and saw that the file is much smaller in size than the html (~25%!), and the search (index on the right side) is great. I use it a lot.

I would like to create a weekly build of the project that will compile the doxygen, and create the .chm, but since all our code is in Linux/Unix environment, the best would be to stay there, and run everything automatically from the linux environment.

This is why I am looking for the .chm convertor in Linux.

The above suggested tools for chm conversion did not appear to do what I need in this case (one of them - the first is not active at all).

I would be happy for a tool/format to achieve the chm advantages I have:
* Single file
* Reduced size (to 1/4 of the original html size!)
* easy index search

Thanks again!

unSpawn

I would be happy for a tool/format to achieve the chm advantages I have
Ah. Formal requirements ;-p


* Single file
Could be any format.

What you want, what you really really want in conjunction with "single file" is
* a format that's not proprietary and platform-agnostic to boot,
* can be edited/compiled/read on different platforms.
First ones come to mind are OOo's .sxw and Adobe's PDF.


* Reduced size (to 1/4 of the original html size!)
OOo does zip-compress it's documents and PDF can too AFAIK with zxpdf.


* easy index search
I don't know how if there's .sxw tools, but I do know there's tools for making PDF indices which maybe could be fed back into the PDF? In any case searching a PDF's and .sxw docs works and I'm sure that up to a certain size it would be managable. They do not cache info AFAIK.