CHM files?

Ruby
1

In Debian Linux, there’s a group of “libchm” packages that
offer an API and tools to unpack Windows Compiled Help Module
files. A lot of EBooks are delivered this way, including the
Ruby Book, and it’s always bugged me that I have no Linux
option for reading them (I know the Ruby book is available as
HTML, but it isn’t as easy to use as the Windows help viewer).

Anyhow, I unpacked an EBook using “extract_chmLib”, and found
the .hhc file which contains the table of contents. It’s just
an HTML file with a set of nested

    lists, and each

  • contains an . The objects have parameters for Name
    and “Local”, and I translated them to Name,
    and got a working table of contents. Add a little bit of framery,
    and I have a working EBook, sweet.

    Ok, my question. Would anyone be interested in a Ruby or Apache
    module that provides a normal HTML interface to a CHM file?
    Because it looks pretty feasible, and I don’t think it’s been
    done.

    Clifford H…

2

On 7/31/06, Clifford H. [email protected] wrote:

Ok, my question. Would anyone be interested in a Ruby or Apache
module that provides a normal HTML interface to a CHM file?
Because it looks pretty feasible, and I don’t think it’s been
done.

I’m not sure about debian, but ubuntu has libchm-bin package which
comes with chm_http application. It does exactly what you want and no
apache is required.

3

Kent S. wrote:

I’m not sure about debian, but ubuntu has libchm-bin package which
comes with chm_http application. It does exactly what you want and no
apache is required.

Ahh, I thought it should have been done. Debian has it too, I just
hadn’t found it. Excellent start… needs a bit (ok, a lot) of work
though. Then all it needs is an Apache module for it and I’ll be
laughing :-).

4

On 7/31/06, Clifford H. [email protected] wrote:

Ok, my question. Would anyone be interested in a Ruby or Apache
module that provides a normal HTML interface to a CHM file?
Because it looks pretty feasible, and I don’t think it’s been
done.

Have you looked at mod_chm download | SourceForge.net ?

5

On 31/07/06, Clifford H. [email protected] wrote:

In Debian Linux, there’s a group of “libchm” packages that
offer an API and tools to unpack Windows Compiled Help Module
files. A lot of EBooks are delivered this way, including the
Ruby Book, and it’s always bugged me that I have no Linux
option for reading them (I know the Ruby book is available as
HTML, but it isn’t as easy to use as the Windows help viewer).

You could use xchm, which is very much like the Windows viewer:

(Note for OS X users: xchm works on OS X, but chmox is better:
http://chmox.sourceforge.net/)

Paul.