Re: [Boa Constr] Search function on BOA help?

[Riaan B. <riaan@e.co.za>]

Hi Christian,

Christian Tismer wrote:
> Dear Riaan,
> 
> I am using Boa sucessfully and happily since over a year now,
> and I love to see it thrive.

Nice to hear!

> There is one slightly annoying thing, and it made me
> ask dumb questions on the wxPython list, escalating into
> some bad email exchanges which I could have avoided
> if the Boa help system had a search function, and even better
> it also might support the clipboard.

It does have a search function (the third tab on the notebook
of the help window) What is wrong with this?

The wxHtmlWindow will support selection and copy/paste in
wxPython 2.5. Unfortunately Boa won't be 2.5 compatible
for some time yet.

> I know it was my fault, and I could have used other help sources
> in HTML or PDF, but I was under pressure.

Well you shouldn't have to use other sources, unless you really
needed to copy/past a lot of code from the help.

> Now, my question is if there is somebody going to add simple
> search support for Boa help? While there *are* other sources
> for help, it think it would make sense for Boa, to try to be
> the one and only environment.
 >
> The problem why I ask: I needed to find a function that
> moves the mouse pointer. I didn't thinkof such an exotic
> name like "WarpPointer()", and I didn't expect that it was
> a method of wxWindow. The help did find wxWindow, but
> I didn't find the function, since there is no search,
> wxWindow is huge, and WarpPointer is at the very end.
> 
> Admittedly, this is my fault. Maybe I'm getting old.
> But Robin just told me:
> """
> IIRC boa is just using the wxHtmlHelpController, which is generic wx
> code, so a search could probably be added to it without too much
> trouble.  I don't think anybody is already planning on doing it though.
> """

I don't get it. Do you mean that from clicking on the Search results
you want to have the work selected in the HTML window?

> What do you think? Is this difficult?

In wxPython 2.4, selection in the wxHTMLWindow control is not an option.

> Do you want me to take care about this, or
> would it be much easier for a more experienced
> Boa developer?

The help system is pretty much independent of Boa (it can be run
stand-alone) so you don't need "Boa experience" for it.

I've already extended the help system by adding support for PyDoc
as another page in the notebook. If you have good ideas on better
searching a similar approach may be your mest option.

Changes to wxHtmlHelpController itself (not just extending the
frame at run-time) should be done in C++ to the wxWindows codebase.

> clip-Boa-rd - ly y'rs -- chris
> 

PS. I used to have a feature that added another button to the toolbar
that converted the entire current html page to text and put that
on the clipboard, but it stopped working since 2.3.3 because of
some toolbar change. I basically never used the feature so
I didn't fix it, just made it conditional on the version number.
The issue is finding out if the tool is already on the toolbar,
so as not to add it a second time.

See the code in Help.py +- line 404

Cheers,
Riaan.