[Doxygen-develop] JavaScript version of search.php for local file access

[Roger S. <ro...@pi...>]

Hi. I'm using Doxygen to write documents for several commercial SDKs 
which will be delivered as Zip files, and which need a search feature. 
Asking users to upload our files to an HTTP server so that they can run 
search.php is not ideal.

I think it would be possible to reimplement search.php using JavaScript 
for running locally in a browser. This would then need to be configured 
as an option in Doxygen to change what appears on each page, and what is 
copied to the output directory. I haven't edited the source of Doxygen 
before, so I have two questions.

1. Does this JavaScript sound like a good and novel solution? Surely 
people have faced the problem of searching local Doxygen files before?

2. Is there any advice around to guide me in editing the Doxygen code, 
so that it gets back into the main releases safely? ie schedule, patch 
files, coding style? I haven't started yet (but I have contributed to 
mscgen).

I would imagine using XMLHttpRequest to open search.idx and with partial 
HTTP GET commands. If this was used from a remote server, it would work, 
but would be slower.

Regards,
Roger