On Jul 03, 2009; 11:44pm, Dr Skip wrote:

> I'll try to take a look at this, but I suspect it will be view a page - save
> the page - give the page a name, etc, go to next page and do the same, etc.
>
> I may never be heard from again.... :-O 

I pointed out the HTMLHelp compiler precisely because of this; there is a
command-line interface for HTMLHelp that the Sandcastle tool uses in its
scripts.  Basically Sandcastle takes one or more XML files of comments,
transforms them via XSLT into HTML documents (one document per page - which
is one per class/method/property, etc. - a fair few in a large project) and
then invokes the HTMLHelp tool to compile them altogether into a single CHM
that can be viewed in the Windows Help Viewer (that dodgy util that pops up
when you hit F1 in an application).  Very useful for documenting .NET APIs.

AFAIK, there are two HTMLHelp versions - 1.4 (I think) is phased out in Vista,
where it's the new fangled 2.0 (again, I think).  Sandcastle can be downloaded
from:

http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e82ea71d-da89-42ee-a715-696e3a4873b2&displaylang=en

But you won't want Sandcastle; scroll down the page and there's the list of
links to the required/optional software.  It looks like they've changed the
name to HTML Help Workshop, although I reckon it's the MS Help Compiler that
you're after.

I'll insert a disclaimer in case I'm leading you on a wild goose chase :)
I've only ever used this in the context of running Sandcastle, which calls
this tool in its scripts; therefore the (rather large ?) assumption is that
you should also be able to call this tool from within a simple script - even
a batch script - that will glue your HTML bits and pieces together.  But
reading your other messages, it may not be what you're after - if you're
looking for a PDF of all the pages then this tool won't do.  Although
obviously once you have generated a CHM there are other manipulations you can
do to it.

In regards to your comments about stripping out headers and the like, it may
be worthwhile looking into XSLT; but that will only work if the HTML files are
reasonably well-formed and pretty uniform (otherwise you'll end up writing as
many XSLTs as there are file variations - we'd never see you again if you
ended up doing that either :)  And if you've never used XSLTs before, then as
fantastic as they are, they're likely to turn you into a basket case as well
(another 'write-only' language) !

Without too many specifics and a fair amount of assumptions, I'd reckon an
initial stab at a batch script would be something like:

	wget your HTML files
	for %%f in ( *.html ) do xslt transform
	call htmlhelp to generate chm from transformed xslt

But it may be more work than you're after - if you can find an off-the-shelf
tool that does the job for a couple of quid then it would save you a great
deal of time and effort.  Unfortunately I do not know what they would call
such a tool !

Regards,

Pete Restall
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