idlwave: HTML Help Browser Tips
Appendix B HTML Help Browser Tips
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There are a wide variety of possible browsers to use for displaying the
online HTML help available with IDLWAVE (starting with version 5.0).
Since IDL v6.2, a single cross-platform HTML help browser, the _IDL
Assistant_ is distributed with IDL. If this help browser is available,
it is the preferred choice, and the default. The variable
‘idlwave-help-use-assistant’, enabled by default, controls whether this
help browser is used. If you use the IDL Assistant, the tips here are
not relevant.
Since IDLWAVE runs on many different system types, a single browser
configuration is not possible, but choices abound. The default
‘idlwave-help-browser-function’ inherits the browser configured in
‘browse-url-browser-function’.
Note that the HTML files decompiled from the help sources contain
specific references to the ‘Symbol’ font, which by default is not
permitted in normal encodings (it’s invalid, technically). Though it
only impacts a few symbols, you can trick Mozilla-based browsers into
recognizing ‘Symbol’ by following the directions here
(http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/Xfonts.html). With this fix in
place, HTML help pages look almost identical to their PDF equivalents
(yet can be bookmarked, browsed as history, searched, etc.).
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