Create CHM Files from MSDN

[GregL]

This program is really handy. It will build .CHM (or .HXS) files from MSDN topics. I built one for MASM 7.1 and MASM 8.0, very nice. I had done this by hand in the past, it was a lot of work. For the MASM information look under: Visual Studio .NET (or 2005) - Visual C++ - Reference - Microsoft Macro Assembler Reference.

Package This

[ramguru]

Damn slow that program...hopefully I get results before I die .. thanks for the link
EDIT > after working ~2 hours (downloaded ~8000 files | ~80Mb) the f***ing program crashed, and they say .NET code is more reliable than ASM

[Tedd]

...and they say .NET code is more reliable than ASM

It is - it crashes more reliably!! :lol

[GregL]

It worked fine for me. It is slow loading up, but it only took a little over a minute to download and build the MASM Reference.

[ramguru]

I tried one more time....but the program made links that refers to web, not local files, that sucks man...

[lingo]

Why don't you try this:
ABC Amber HxS Converter
http://www.processtext.com/abchxs.html

[GregL]

I tried one more time....but the program made links that refers to web, not local files, that sucks man...

It's not doing that for me. I disabled my Internet connection and the CHM files worked fine.

[Ehtyar]

And to think i thought the redmondians were listening to us for once......fantastic work guys :rolleyes: Thanks for the link lingo, will try it out and report back :)

Ehtyar.

[edit]
I suppose it would work fine for a single HxS file, but batch conversion is only available if you pay.
[/edit]

[Tedd]

I've had a play with it and it does work as long as you play nicely.
You have to right-click on a node and select to download all of its children, otherwise you only get that one page. Links to other pages in the 'set' do work, but links for pages you didn't download are not automatically downloaded and so direct to the msdn page online.
It hasn't crashed on me yet, but I've been careful enough to only grab subsubsections (still a few thousand pages); I think trying to download a large section is likely to cause a crash by some overflow. And yeah, it does take a few seconds to appear, but that's due to not showing the window until it has downloaded the section index from the web server.
I've already downloaded most of the 'useful' sections, which covers the majority of the windows api (or at least those parts we mostly use). To save everyone from messing around with it (and installing .net, hh workshop, etc) and also to save the web server from a deluge of requests and bandwidth usage, does anyone want to host these chm files? Currently it's totalling at just under 20MB in 20 files, with probably another 10-15 to go (but I'm also downloading some of the more obscure sections.) I do intend to reorganise the contents to a more usable arrangement (splitting them into plain html files is easy enough) but that's a bit of a "when I get around to it."

[PBrennick]

Tedd,
You can put them on my site if you like. Also, remember Ghirai...

Paul

[Ehtyar]

Please yes, I was feeling lazy yesterday and gave it a go on the entire Windows and COM development section.....10 hours, 200 megabytes, and over 21,000 files later it had about a quarter of Administration and Management...Ooops. Any useful sections uploaded to the web would be very much appreciated by me.

Ehtyar.

[u]

Uhm guys, Microsoft can send you for free MSDN on DVDs (they cover all costs). Or at least that is the case for me. I had MSDN from VS6,  then I got another version with VS.net(trial..., but the docs stay), later a friend arranged for MS-Germany to send me VS2k5 beta2... I'm not sure how the arrangements were made - it can't have been any hard.
Currently I mostly use the MSDN from vs6 (boots immediately) and MSDN2k5 (that I later got with a licensed VS2k5)
MSDN2k5 boots... for a minute (due to low RAM...), but has powerful search in both offline and online materials! The latter means that when you search for an API, you get both links to the reference, and links to later-found precautions/usage.

[GregL]

Ultrano,

MSDN 6.0 was OK, there was no .NET stuff :lol. MSDN 2003 and MSDN 2005 are huge and slow pigs, not to mention you have to sift through all the .NET stuff to find what you are looking for. The online MSDN is the same situation. If I am looking for something specific, like a MASM directive, a Windows API function, or a C Run-Time function, I find it much quicker and less hassle to use a specific CHM file. For instance, I made a CHM with just the MASM information, another with just the C Run-Time information, and another with just the Windows API information. I put links to the CHM files in the help menus of my IDEs and editors and it is really fast and handy. I have several versions of MSDN, but I prefer using these small specific CHM files.