NSIS.docset

For those that use Zeal (or Dash on the OS X), I used the Markdown-formatted documentation to generate a NSIS docset

Watch a demo!

GitHub & Wiki

Have you thought about writing a script that parses our halibut documentation source files? Alternatively writing a halibut markdown output module.

i think the structure of the markdown documentation makes it easy and more encouraging for the community to improve the documentation. it's what the open source idea is all about. github on the other hand only adds to that. it's easy to fork and commit code, unlike the current semi-open svn. there are scripts to convert markdown to pretty much anything: html, pdf, ebook formats. not a fan of the closed .chm format either.

Halibut is a open source program and the documentation source is plain text with ASCII format markers like markdown. We use it to output CHM and HTML but it can also output to a couple of other formats.

That community version of the docs looks like some sort of hybrid between the Unicode fork and early 3.0 alpha? There is also a independent version on our wiki and 3 versions seems like overkill to me.

https://github.com/NSIS-Dev/Document...ference/!if.md for example is missing /fileexists and the example is using !ifdef and not !if.

Originally Posted by Anders View Post

We use it to output CHM and HTML but it can also output to a couple of other formats.

i've argued before that for a variety of reasons i'm not a fan of the current documentation system

That community version of the docs looks like some sort of hybrid between the Unicode fork and early 3.0 alpha? There is also a independent version on our wiki and 3 versions seems like overkill to me.

both the wiki and the markdown-formatted documentations were the result of long talks with kichik, the latter was created to test new forms of an comprehensive, fully interlinked, syntax-highlighted online documentation. yes, it would be desirable if there was just one official documentation, but for now my attempts are nothing more than thinking aloud.

https://github.com/NSIS-Dev/Document...ference/!if.md for example is missing /fileexists and the example is using !ifdef and not !if.

yes, and with github everyone who comes across such mistakes can easily improve the documentation.

anyway, all of this is missing the point since the nsis docset serves a whole different purpose.

A couple of months back a new version of the DocSet was released. Much has change, but see it for yourself:

Demo

I like the .chm because there is rich API available for working with this format.
You can search, navigate, open chapters, etc. directly in C++, C#, Delphi and some other languages. This is a big plus for me for .chm.

Is something similar available for this (new) format?

Originally Posted by T.Slappy View Post

I like the .chm because there is rich API available for working with this format.

Is dislike .chm for one reason: it's proprietary. There might be third-party tools that can interprete it, but the fact remains.

Is something similar available for this (new) format?

The docset is created using a simple Gulp task. It uses the Markdown documentation as its base. Support for Markdown is vast. You can use it to build whatever format you prefer, GitBooks, Ebooks, IDE helpers, PDF, HTML (e.g. Jekyll), or convert it into anything with PanDoc.

One thing that is still missing from the Markdown documentation are general guides and explanations for the concepts of NSIS. It's currently a command and plugin reference only.