Re: AW: automake help

[sfeam <sf...@us...>]

On Tuesday, 23 May 2017 10:05:16 AM Bastian Märkisch wrote:
> wxWidgets can use a help format (htb), which is actually similar to what is
> used for chm files on Windows.
> The idea was to use that as online help on non-Windows platforms eventually.
> In fact, Dan Sebald worked on that:
> https://sourceforge.net/p/gnuplot/patches/707/
> (but as is this patch breaks the original use on Windows)

Thanks for reminding me about that patch.  
[adding Dan Sebald to the cc list]
That patch did not work for me for either wxt or qt when I looked at it in 2015.
I have not gone back to it since then.

Regardless of the potential to share creation of html documentation
among multiple platforms in the future, right now I am trying to sort out
how to prepare a distribution tarballs without dragging in extra files.

I don't want to break the build on windows, so please comment on the
following options.

1) Edit docs/Makefile.am to remove the target 
noinst_PROGRAMS = ... doc2wxhtml

2) Leave doc2wxhtml as a target but explicitly list a subset of files in subdirectory
docs/windows that should be packaged rather than including the entire subdirectory.
In this case what exactly are the needed files?

3) Fix the automake rules that are leaving a *.o file in the windows subdirectory.


(1) works but breaks "make htb"
(2) would work but I don't know which files to list
(3) I have not even a vague idea how to do this!


As a separate but less pressing issue it would be nice to fix the make rules
for "make htb".   Right now it fails because there is no subdirectory docs/wxhelp.
But even if I create that subdirectory the *.html files produced are broken because
some files are placed in .../windows and others in .../wxhelp yet the href= links
assume all files are in the same place.  I'll add this to the tracker for patch 707

	thanks for any insight

		Ethan


> 
> So in short, doc2html works as intended on Windows (all sections), but as of
> now the doc2wxhtml variant is not in use.
> 
> The Makefile code changed, but the original commit was (Changelog.3):
> 
> 2011-03-07  Bastian Maerkisch  <bma...@we...>
> 
> 	* docs/Makefile.in: add new target 'htb' to create help file
> 	compatible with wxWidgets help viewer
> 
> 
> > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> > Von: sfeam [mailto:sf...@us...]
> > Gesendet: Dienstag, 23. Mai 2017 06:23
> > An: gnu...@li...
> > Cc: Allin Cottrell <cot...@wf...>
> > Betreff: Re: automake help
> > 
> > On Monday, 22 May 2017 08:06:18 PM Allin Cottrell wrote:
> > > On Mon, 22 May 2017, Ethan A Merritt wrote:
> > >
> > > > Current cvs for 5.1 and 5.2 has an odd automake glitch that I do not
> > > > understand.
> > > >
> > > > "make" run on linux creates a file
> > > >    docs/windows/doc2wxhtml-doc2html.o
> > > > that surely isn't needed.
> > > >
> > > > "make dist" includes that file in the generated tarball.
> > > > Other *.o files are discarded when packing up the files for
> > > > distribution.  Why not this one?
> > > > Why does it even exist in the first place?
> > >
> > > In docs/Makefile.am, the EXTRA_DIST variable includes "windows". Not
> > > sure, but I guess that would drag in anything that gets created in the
> > > windows directory?
> > 
> > Correct.
> > 
> > > (Unless one builds out of tree, which is generally a good idea
> > > anyway.)
> > 
> > The same thing happens for an out of tree build.
> > 
> > > In docs/Makefile.in we have references to this thing
> > > windows/doc2wxhtml-doc2html.o. That's the only object file to be
> > > written into the docs/windows directory, all the others just go into
> > > docs. That itself seems like an anomaly.
> > 
> > I agree.
> > 
> > > "Not needed": well, it's "needed" to build the program doc2wxhtml,
> > > which is apparently not being marked as platform-specific. Is that
> > > wanted in connection with the wxt terminal at all?
> > 
> > Not that I can see.  The program source windows/doc2html.c contains the
> > comment
> > /*
> >  * doc2html.c  -- program to convert Gnuplot .DOC format to MS Windows
> >  * HTML help (.html) format.
> > 
> > So I think it is only needed for windows. By the way, when I run the
> program it
> > only processes Part I of the documentation.  Parts 2-5 are ignored.
> > So the program may have bugs separate from this build problem.
> > 
> > 	Ethan
> > 
> > 
> > > Allin Cottrell
> > 
>