On Fri, 12 Oct 2001 10:47:31 +0300, Peter Popov <pet### [at] vipbg> wrote:

>On Fri, 12 Oct 2001 00:58:33 -0400, Glen Berry <7no### [at] ezwvcom>
>wrote:
>
>>That sounds like "generic" POV-Ray help, with little or no
>>windows-specific information. It would be nice if all the
>>Windows-specific features were covered in a format other than
>>Microsoft's html-help system. Perhaps that's expecting too much?
>
>Well, Microsoft made it that way. They dropped support for their old
>.hlp format ages ago, and their HTML help format requires IE4.0 and
>everything that comes with its installation. Chris Cason really had no
>other choice.

Chris had no other choice? Microsoft made it that way? 

That's nonesense!

While Microsoft may be trying to migrate the windows help format to
HTML-help, that doesn't mean that there are no alternatives. Even with
HTML-help installed, the older style help files are still readable.
Chris could have stayed with the older help format, like many, if not
most commercial developers seem to be doing.

I've installed some big-name, recent, commercial programs that didn't
rely on the HTML help format. Apparently Microsoft didn't make those
developers use HTML help, and leave them with "no choice." If
companies like Borland, Lotus, and Symantec can get along without
HTML-help, then so could we.

Have you looked at an install disc for IE4? There are over 64 Megs of
*compressed* files on the disc! As we all know, much of this is
actually changes to the operating system, instead of being merely a
web browser installation. I aboslutely do NOT want to have to install
a 64 Meg operating system overhaul, and then actually install the
HTML-help system as an additional component, just to view ONE help
file for just ONE program on my system! Especially when the
installation of all this garbage makes my system unstable and prone to
frequent crashes!

For what it's worth, I would prefer help files written in plain HTML,
over the Microsoft "enhanced" html-help system. An Adobe Acrobat
document would also be better than Microsoft's html-help. In fact, a
word processor document would have been better. At least I don't
actually have to install Word for Windows, in order to open one of its
documents. Last but not least, I would rather have one, large, plain,
ascii, tezt file - instead of html help. 

You can't honestly say that Chris has no choice in this matter. He has
several choices. It's the end users of POV-Ray for Windows version
3.5, that will have no choice. They will have no choice, but to find a
way to live with Chris' choice of Microsoft's html-help.


Later,
Glen

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