| [ < ] | [ > ] | [ << ] | [ Up ] | [ >> ] | [Top] | [Contents] | [Index] | [ ? ] |
There are a wide variety of possible browsers to use for displaying the online HTML help available with IDLWAVE (starting with version 5.0). Since IDLWAVE runs on a many different system types, a single browser configuration is not possible, but choices abound.
On many systems, the default browser configured in
browse-url-browser-function, and hence inherited by default by
idlwave-help-browser-function, is Netscape. Unfortunately, the
HTML manuals decompiled from the original RSI source contain
formatting structures which Netscape 4.x does not handle well, though
they are still readable. A much better choice is Mozilla, or one of
the Mozilla-derived browsers such as
Galeon (Linux),
Camino (MacOSX), or
Firebird (all
platforms). Newer versions of Emacs provide a browser-function choice
browse-url-gnome-moz which uses the Gnome-configured browser.
Note that the HTML files decompiled from RSI Microsoft Help sources contain specific references to the `Symbol' font, which by default is not permitted in normal encodings (it's technically illegal). Though it only impacts a few symbols, you can trick Mozilla-based browsers into recognizing `Symbol' by following the directions here. With this fix in place, HTML help pages look almost identical to their PDF equivalents, and can be bookmarked, browsed as history, searched, etc.
Individual platform recommendations:
KEYHH program to
permit IDL help to be targetted to a single window. To use HTMLHelp,
specify idlwave-help-use-hh as 'hh or 'keyhh.
One bonus: since IDL is shipped with the `idl.chm' help file, you
don't need to download the HTML help package. See section 4.3.1 Help with HTML Documentation.
w3m browser
and its associated
emacs-w3m emacs mode
provide in-buffer browsing with image display, and excellent speed and
formatting. Both the Emacs mode and the browser itself must be
downloaded separately. To use this browser, include
(setq idlwave-help-browser-function 'w3m-browse-url) |
in your `.emacs'. Setting a few other nice w3m options
cuts down on screen clutter:
(setq w3m-use-tab nil
w3m-use-header-line nil
w3m-use-toolbar nil)
|
If you use a dedicated frame for help, you might want to add the following, to get consistent behavior with the q key:
;; Close my help window when w3m closes.
(defadvice w3m-close-window (after idlwave-close activate)
(if (boundp 'idlwave-help-frame)
(idlwave-help-quit)))
|
Note that you can open the file in an external browser from within
w3m using M.
| [ << ] | [ >> ] | [Top] | [Contents] | [Index] | [ ? ] |
This document was generated by XEmacs shared group account on December, 19 2009
using texi2html 1.65.