Compiling the Offline Help Manual

Sam_Zen · July 01, 2009, 02:43:04

Good point. I do this a lot to reduce filesize. Some screenshots easily stay well with 16 colors.

A nice tool to check this is RIOT

Nahkranoth · July 01, 2009, 06:56:36

There's PNGOUT tool, it can significantly reduce the size of png images with no quality loss

residentgrey · July 01, 2009, 14:28:45

Greyscale PNGs or JPEGs? They may offer lower sizes as well, and less colors to deal with.

I would suggest just outputting the html, or word doc, handing it off to someone else for the pdf and chm creation. I just got that chm workshop tool, and have pdf printers on my computer. Others must have them as well.

If the word doc doesn't require actual Word to run I can load it as well.

Saga Musix · July 01, 2009, 16:57:58

Quote from: "Nahkranoth"There's PNGOUT tool, it can significantly reduce the size of png images with no quality loss

hell yes. PNGOUT for the win. Don't reduce colors with modplug screenshots, DON'T use jpeg or gif - use png together with pngout.

Relabsoluness · July 01, 2009, 20:28:53

Quote from: "bvanoudtshoorn"Why? LaTeX is a beautiful piece of software. At Uni, I wrote all of my honours year assignments in CS using it.

What would be the aspects where LaTeX beats, say, HTML documentation in the context of OpenMPT documentation? Things like ease of writing mathematical text isn't very relevant now, while for example ease of using images is. And in any case people most involved in the work likely have no experience on using LaTeX and are perhaps even less interested to use time to learn it, and that takes a bit more than learning a couple of simple commands.

Quote from: "Jojo"I don't think that you can call PDFs "dynamically" (with jumping to the correct chapter etc) from an external app like modplug.

Good point; having a dynamic help in OMPT might come topical at some point.

bvanoudtshoorn · July 01, 2009, 23:28:01

Quote from: "Relabsoluness"
Quote from: "bvanoudtshoorn"Why? LaTeX is a beautiful piece of software. At Uni, I wrote all of my honours year assignments in CS using it.
What would be the aspects where LaTeX beats, say, HTML documentation in the context of OpenMPT documentation? Things like ease of writing mathematical text isn't very relevant now, while for example ease of using images is. And in any case people most involved in the work likely have no experience on using LaTeX and are perhaps even less interested to use time to learn it, and that takes a bit more than learning a couple of simple commands.

Well, if someone gives me HTML or Word source, I'm happy to convert it to LaTeX.

The advantages of LaTeX are manifold.

Advantages over Word/OO.o:
1. Simple diagram referencing
2. Simple index / TOC creation
3. Editable by *anyone* with *any* computer
4. Clean and simple pdf links

Advantages over CHM/HTML:
1. Simple diagram referencing
2. Simple index / TOC creation
3. Output that is equally beautiful on-screen or in print (you can even specify different output settings and produce multiple documents from a single source file -- this way, we could, for example, have a screen-optimised version, a US Letter version, an A4 version, and a quick-reference version that only prints certain sections.)

Harbinger · July 03, 2009, 20:58:19

The weekend is here, so i'm now online again. I see there's been a hearty debate without me.

I'm about 25% done (there's a LOT to cover!), and i'm using OpenOffice (which i despise :x ), but i keep telling myself "it's only temporary...."

I think the best course of action just may be that i should simply submit the file as is (or email to those who request), and let those who can convert it, do so and submit their work. This way anybody can get a version they prefer -- .chm HELP file, .pdf (which i can do, that's easy), or LaTeX, or whatever format. This would be in keeping with the open spirit of today's MPT, and give the user even MORE flexibility.

I would then submit a request to the devs to provide the user with an option to declare a path to the help file of their choice either offline or online (in the same way the VST paths are customized). My dream is to one day click on the help icon, and get an old-fashioned Help manual that i can keep in the background.

Saga Musix · July 03, 2009, 21:04:34

I dunno, but if you haven't used the fugly Office 2007 before, OOo isn't really much different to MS Office...

Sam_Zen · July 03, 2009, 22:50:21

Nice suggestions, Harbinger.

Harbinger · August 22, 2009, 05:29:51

UPDATE....

60%-70% done with the "beginner's section". (The highly technical Reference section will be later.)

Am now working on the Pattern page -- the last major section. Lots of details.

I've decided to format it for PDF reading, because i need all the images in specific locations on the page to help with visuals.

maleek · August 22, 2009, 15:05:19

Nice to hear Harbringer! Looking forward to see the help-file when it gets published.