FINAL BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

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Hendrik
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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Hendrik »

fjrohlf wrote:.... I was also wondering about the logfile display at the bottom of the window. Is there an option to make that go away?
Just switch off the "Debug" function.
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Hendrik
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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Hendrik »

Strange... After "compiling" my e-book and firing it up, the e-book wants to open this url: "Open external window: https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/po ... cesecure=1"
This started when using beta 13. With beta 12 no problems.
Did I broke something??
(I've replaced the token with "xxxx..."
Ales Medved
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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Ales Medved »

Hi.

I can't get any pictures in e-book.

They surely are in the HTML folder that I use for source.

H&M version 5.6.0 Build 1350 (Premium skin 1.50)

Regards,

Aleš
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Greg Smith
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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Greg Smith »

How will this new format be linked programmatically to your application?

In our applications, we link into the help file from just about everywhere so the user always has context sensitive help. We also have scripts of various types and we let the user get help on the text where the cursor lies, so we need not just context numbers but the ability to lookup text in the help.

On annoyance in the current CHM keyword lookup is that there is no way to tookup sub-index keys. This used to work in the original .hlp file system ("main index:sub index" would let you open sub index entry, but there appears to be no way to do this in CHM); it would be really neat to get this back.

Will this be a way to get a help system that stands a chance of being portable (programmatically controlled) across operating systems?
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Martin Wynne
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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Greg Smith wrote:How will this new format be linked programmatically to your application? In our applications, we link into the help file from just about everywhere so the user always has context sensitive help.
Hi Greg,

From the eWriter chm Help file* (look under For Developers):
-------------------------------------
Context calls syntax
You can make calls to pages in the eBook using a very simple syntax, using your programming language's function for executing external programs (ShellExecute and similar functions):

my_ebook.exe "index.html"

my_ebook.exe "this_page.html#anchor"

my_ebook.exe "subfolder/anotherpage.html"

Always include the page parameters in quotes, otherwise you will get Windows errors caused by some of the characters that need to be used.

URL parameters and JavaScript
If your HTML pages include scripts that can evaluate URL parameters you can also include parameters to be parsed by your script, like this:

my_ebook.exe "index.html?mysetting=xyz"

my_ebook.exe "topic_file.html?setting1=abc&setting2=xyz#anchor"

The HTML location object is fully supported for interpreting URLs you pass to your pages like this. This means you can extract the query portion of the script with document.location.search, the hash portion (anchor) with document.location.hash and so on.

-----------------------------------

Working fine in my tests so far.

*For some reason I keep getting problems extracting this file from the downloaded zip file. Every time I start eWriter I am prompted to extract it again.

regards,

Martin.
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Tim Green
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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Mike,
Suggestion: an (optional?) automatic "next page" capability - just like a printed book :)
- and how about (optional?) page numbers too?
As it is now, eWriter doesn't add anything to your website, i.e. it doesn't add things like Next/Previous etc. What you put into it will be packaged exactly as it is, with no additions. The viewer just acts as a container, so the website you put in it has to have its own comprehensible layout and logic for being accessed as an eBook. WebHelp is obviously the best candidate for that, because it already contains everything necessary. 8)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Tim Green
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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Jim,
fjrohlf wrote:The beta seems to work fine on my help files. Will there be a way for software to directly load a specific page in the ebook?
That's already supported. Have you considered reading the help? 8)
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Ales,
Ales Medved wrote:I can't get any pictures in e-book.
They surely are in the HTML folder that I use for source.
H&M version 5.6.0 Build 1350 (Premium skin 1.50)
You probably didn't download the current beta of eWriter. I just checked it with a HM5 project with a PP skin and the images are working fine. Check out the first message in this thread from Alex to get the current download link.

Note also that both your copy of Help & Manual 5 and your Premium Pack are out of date. You can download HM5 Build 1560 from the link down at the BOTTOM of this page:

http://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads.html

You can usually download the current Premium Pack installer for HM5 using the link you received when you purchased the PP. If you have an old link that no longer works or you no longer have the link please contact me at support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) and I'll mail you the current one.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Mike Linacre
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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Mike Linacre »

Tim writes: "As it is now, eWriter doesn't add anything to your website, i.e. it doesn't add things like Next/Previous etc. What you put into it will be packaged exactly as it is, with no additions."

Fine, then how about a short-cut key that displays the next page in the eBook, so that there is an easy way to click through all the eBook pages. I want to do this in order to check that they are all correct. Doing this with a PDF often reveals formatting problems that are not evident in webhelp or .chm.
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Martin Wynne
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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Ales Medved wrote:I can't get any pictures in e-book. They surely are in the HTML folder that I use for source.
Hi Aleš,

You have used a space in the file name:

Code: Select all

fsgen2_prijava 01b.png
             ^^^
Spaces in file or folder names are an absolute no-no in internet files and will sooner or later cause you grief.

regards,

Martin.
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Greg Smith
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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Greg Smith »

Re: programmatic control
@Martin: Thanks for the suggestion, but...
I am not talking about Javascript. Our application has a private script language with keywords and functions etc. Users can place a cursor anywhere on a page and ask for help. We find where their cursor is, isolate the text at that point and then programmatically ask the CHM file to look up that word in the index. It feels somewhat retrograde to need to know which help file any relevant text might be in; some words might be in several pages...

I have no experience of the current eBook usage having originally used the ancient .HLP system and now using for many years the CHM system.
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Tim Green
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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Mike,
Mike Linacre wrote:Fine, then how about a short-cut key that displays the next page in the eBook, so that there is an easy way to click through all the eBook pages. I want to do this in order to check that they are all correct. Doing this with a PDF often reveals formatting problems that are not evident in webhelp or .chm.
If you are packaging a normal website there normally is no "next page". It is just a collection of HTML pages, and they can't tell a program like eWriter anything about what comes "next". That is available in WebHelp because the logic for it is inserted by Help & Manual, or by any other help authoring tool (HAT) that creates it: The Next/Previous logic needs to be predefined, you need to know which page is "next".
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Mike Linacre
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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Mike Linacre »

Thanks, Tim, but the webpages must be in some order inside the eBook file. The desired short-cut key would take us to the next webpage in the eBook's internal structure. Surely this feature would be useful to you when validating the correctness of an eBook. It would also insure that there are no inaccessible (orphan) webpages inside an eBook, and also that no errant webpages have been included. It would be very embarrassing to discover, after publishing an eBook to the world, that a confidential webpage has been accidentally included.

BTW, Tim, you may discover that the developers have already implemented this "sequential page access" feature for use when debugging eBook glitches.
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Tim Green
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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Mike,
Thanks, Tim, but the webpages must be in some order inside the eBook file.
Of course, that's true.
The desired short-cut key would take us to the next webpage in the eBook's internal structure.
OK, and what page is that? How do you decide which page is "next"? Where is that defined in a random collection of HTML files? In a Help & Manual project that is defined, and how it is defined is defined. But that does not apply at all outside of Help & Manual, and there is no "standard" way of doing that.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Tim Frost
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Re: BETA: New HTML-to-EXE eBook compiler for download

Unread post by Tim Frost »

It matters not a jot which page is next. The shortcut key requested ensures that you can see all the pages without trying to follow a logical structure and perhaps missing some. I would quite like to have that feature too, purely to check that all wanted pages are reasonably formatted and that no unwanted page is included. The feature should preferably not, of course, be known to other than authors.
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