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CHM (Developers)

posted by Steve Homepage E-mail, US, 28.08.2008, 16:35

> > There is also *.html.gz format. It's in the HTML spec, should be
> supported by compliant (all current?) browsers.
> (Are you sure? Afaik HTTP2 allows for GZ compression, but .gz on HTML
> sounds like an Unix extension, not something a standard would describe,
> since .gz is meaning less on a standard windows install. Do you have a
> reference?)
Such files are found on Unix servers, and get used in the usual two ways: They can be read online like any other .HTML file, or downloaded. A compliant browser decompresses for reading. Opera does it for sure, using zlib.

> Well, the crucial part is the combination of archive functionality with
> compression, and an preexisting viewer (This because the slack space of
> tens of thousands of little html files is as important as the
> compression).
By preexisting viewer, do you mean one that the user already has? Or one that you don't have to write, but that you can just throw into the download package? Either way, I don't see any problem, when you put it in those terms. HTML files can be separately gzipped, or tarred first in the normal way. Images can remain as separate files from the original HTML. Viewer should be no problem - doesn't everybody have a browser?

The slack space problem goes away if raw HTML files are tarred before gzipping (or bzipping). An untar/decompressor can be in the download package with little cost in total size (like, *.tar.gz or *.tar.bz2, plus 7zip.exe inside a *.zip download file) - parallel to the old common practice of including a *.zip + unzipper on diskettes.

My point is, there are purely mechanical solutions that do not require programming other than revising scripts for packing files and uploading to servers.

> Also .chm has the ability to embed internal files, which are important for
> additional tables for e.g. context sensitive help etc.
Perhaps .ps or .pdf, with batch files to run Ghostscript or other free reader?

> All browsers will be internal anyway, since starting up and fully
> instrumenting the many commonly used browsers is next to impossible.
Yes, browsers are annoying, with so many variations and degrees of compliance with the HTML specs. But I see that as another reason to go with .ps or .pdf, and perhaps supply a reader on the FP servers.

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