Updating online manual

Started by Crimson Wizard, Mon 09/04/2018 10:45:28

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Crimson Wizard

Alright, since my post in the other thread was kind of hidden by discussing changes to wiki, I will repost the issue separately.

So, after AGA gave me permissions (or maybe I had them before, idk), I tried to upload new manual content to the website, but some issues were found, so I had to revert.

1. Pages on website use styles from external css file. While pages generated in repository have embedded css, and they are different (background, font, etc).
2. Pages on website have some additional script for toolbar display.
3. Website manual has additional html pages for contents, index etc. Manual in repository does not generate html pages for these. This means that even if I upload new topic pages, the contents tree will remain 3.2.1, and links won't match.

Would it be possible to find out who have created this online manual, and how?


For the reference:
Existing manual (corresponding to AGS 3.2.1): http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/manual/
Archive containing both versions of html pages for comparison: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v958t0938w76cyk/AGS--manualpages.zip?dl=0

morganw

From the headers on the Javascript files, it looks like the older manual was generated by a program called chm2web.


Crimson Wizard

Quote from: morganw on Mon 09/04/2018 22:16:56
From the headers on the Javascript files, it looks like the older manual was generated by a program called chm2web.

Oh, thank you, I did not guess to look into these.
So, I found this chm2web, probably: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Authoring-tools/Help-e-book-creators/chmweb.shtml
It's a trial 2-weeks version, and program itself seem to be pretty old (last update is from 2009).
Perhaps worth trying just in sake of upgrading to 3.4.1 once.

Crimson Wizard

#4
Alright.

1) First of all, I was not able to download from the site mentioned above, because download links are dead.
I found working download here though, and it seems to be virus free (scanned with my AV):
https://download.cnet.com/Chm2web/3000-10247_4-10118798.html

2) The program crashes on my Windows 7, I tried compatibility modes with no luck. So ended running on Windows XP virtual machine.

3) The program optionally uses a project file with extension "chm2web", but it is not present along with the manual pages, maybe there is still one somewhere on file server?

So I started new one with the default settings. You need to feed it ags-help.chm file.
There are lots of options to configure, like CSS settings, and something else, but I decided to not touch anything.

Except there is one option that may be essential, it is called "Do not convert the links to lower case".
Apparently it was not enabled last time the manual created, which broke some links
Coincidentaly, this is what Khris mentioned only few days ago in relation to another topic: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=56072.msg636586584#msg636586584

So in the end, it produced what seems to be a fine online documentation.
I uploaded it in separate folder for the time being:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/manual/manual_3.4.1/

There are several visual styles for selection actually, some of them look more conservative. This is a matter of personal preference, but I do not quite like the light-bluish palette of the currently used theme because it is strikes too bright into my eyes.
I made one using "default" template only to give an example.

AGA

Looks fine to me.  Of course someone could take the effort to make it match the style of the main site, but honestly it doesn't seem worth it.

selmiak

#6
cool beans CW! Now just link it from some imporant places.


for the css...


<table style="text-shadow:  0px 0px 3px #5ca3e5, 0px 0px 7px #d1e8fa;" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#deedff">

helps for the headline. the buttons could need some css style too ;)
edit: the textshadow would better fit only on the headline, otherwise the buttons get the textshadow too, but the table bg color fits...

Crimson Wizard

I could build it in same style as the current manual is. I made in different only to show an example.

Crimson Wizard

Alright, I replaced the manual in proper folder, with same visual theme as it was before.
Some manual links posted on forum could break after this... hopefully not a lot.
BTW, there is a backup of 3.2.1 manual in http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/manual_old/

tzachs

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Tue 22/05/2018 23:22:07
So in the end, it produced what seems to be a fine online documentation.
I uploaded it in separate folder for the time being:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/manual/manual_3.4.1/

This link seems to be broken now (I'm getting a 404).

Edit: ah, nvm, it's now in http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/manual/ if I understood correctly.

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