ISO8601 Plugin

[Steve Fabian]

Charles:
1/ .DLL suggestion
A command (e.g. 8601HELP) which unconditionally starts MS' hh.exe for ISO8601.CHM, preferably at the selected topic. I have a batch file which allows me to invoke any 4nt/tcc help file with a selected topic. The actual command invoking help from 4nt/tcc is:
hh.exe %[hlp]%parm
where hh.exe is normally in %PATH already (by default it is in the WINDOWS home directory), the variable %HLP resolves to the full filespecification of the desired .CHM file, and %PARM is set to "::/topic.htm" (without quotation marks). The batch program translates leading at sign (@) of internal function names to f_ to match the tcmd.chm conventions.

2/ HELP suggestion
- Underline or otherwise indicate by font etc. links to other topic, e.g., input formats
- use local links from command or function parameter fields to their respective explanations
- may wish to expand "day number" categories with Unix / HTML day numbers
--
Steve

 

[Charles Dye]

1/ .DLL suggestion
A command (e.g. 8601HELP) which unconditionally starts MS' hh.exe for ISO8601.CHM, preferably at the selected topic. I have a batch file which allows me to invoke any 4nt/tcc help file with a selected topic. The actual command invoking help from 4nt/tcc is:
hh.exe %[hlp]%parm
where hh.exe is normally in %PATH already (by default it is in the WINDOWS home directory), the variable %HLP resolves to the full filespecification of the desired .CHM file, and %PARM is set to "::/topic.htm" (without quotation marks). The batch program translates leading at sign (@) of internal function names to f_ to match the tcmd.chm conventions.

The HELP command should do all of that for you automatically....

2/ HELP suggestion
- Underline or otherwise indicate by font etc. links to other topic, e.g., input formats

They are underlined, but only when you roll over them. Not obvious enough? That's just CSS, trivial to change.

- use local links from command or function parameter fields to their respective explanations

Not so trivial; the CHM is largely generated from the HTML file. The script which divvies up the HTML file converts all the internal links to external links, since the individual topics are separate pages in the CHM file. I'd have to think about that one.

- may wish to expand "day number" categories with Unix / HTML day numbers

I'm afraid I don't understand that one.

 

[Steve Fabian]

---- Original Message ----
From: Charles Dye
To: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, 2011. February 7. 16:06
Subject: RE: [Plugins-t-2585] Re: ISO8601 Plugin

| Quote:
| Originally Posted by Steve F�bi�n
|| 1/ .DLL suggestion
|| A command (e.g. 8601HELP) which unconditionally starts MS' hh.exe for
|| ISO8601.CHM, preferably at the selected topic.
||...
| The HELP command should do all of that for you automatically....

Yes and no. When I explicitly specify a known feature in your plugin (without misspelling), I get your help file; once there, I can navigate elsewhere. If it is not a perfect match, or if I just type HELP, I get the TCC help with no posibility of reverting to yours. I could create an explicit alias to go directly to your help the way I can use Hnn to invoke the 4nt/tcc help for version NN, but it would be more consistent with Frederic Romano's and Vince's plugins to have a special command internally to the plugin.

|
|
| Quote:
| 2/ HELP suggestion
| - Underline or otherwise indicate by font etc. links to other topic,
| e.g., input formats
|
| They are underlined, but only when you roll over them. Not obvious
| enough? That's just CSS, trivial to change.
|
|
| Quote:
| - use local links from command or function parameter fields to their
| respective explanations
|
| Not so trivial; the CHM is largely generated from the HTML file. The
| script which divvies up the HTML file converts all the internal links
| to external links, since the individual topics are separate pages in
| the CHM file. I'd have to think about that one.

I had implemented this feature in the 4DOS/4NT/TC32 help files six years ago, but I used an editing tool JP Software had purchased.
|
| Quote:
| - may wish to expand "day number" categories with Unix / HTML day
| numbers
|
| I'm afraid I don't understand that one.

Unix / POSIX (and imitating them HTML documents) store time as seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (ignoring the issue of leap seconds). That's exactly a decade earlier than the smallest MS-DOS filedate. Note that the 4DOS+ @DATE function does NOT use the MS-DOS filesystem's representation of filedates (7b year, 4b month, 5b day). It is a date representation unique to JP Software products! I'd call it "JPsoft day number". By analogy the Unix day number is just offset by 3652 days.

Sorry for the long delay in responding, I had not been well.
--
Steve

 

[Charles Dye]

I've uploaded a new build which implements most of this. (Do the underlined links make the page look too busy?)

 

[Steve Fabian]

This response relates to the webpage. In addition to the version numbers, you ought to have the file ages (content modification timestamps) displayed. This would make it easy to check what's not up to date on our systems.

However, FTP based download site would allow downloading anything newer than I already have automatically, using TCC command COPY/S/Z/UF. That would be even better.
--
Steve