[dmd-beta] dmd 2.063.2 beta 2 - windows help broken

[Vladimir Panteleev]

On Thursday, 13 June 2013 at 01:26:09 UTC, captaindet wrote:
> just checked and the windows help file d.chm is still broken. 
> weird scripting errors appear for every page/link. it is not 
> usable this way. (it also wants to connect to the internet, 
> which i don't like at all, but this could be a windows thing.)
>
> i love this help resource!
>
> [sorry for posting here, i couldn't figure out how to reply on 
> the beta channel. it does not seem to be a newsgroup and i 
> don't want to subscribe to a mailing list.]

Hi, I'm the maintainer of the CHM file and author of the CHM 
build tool (http://thecybershadow.net/d/docs/). Feel free to 
direct feedback regarding the CHM to me directly.

The CHM is built from the same HTML files that end up on the 
dlang.org website. (I would've used the same process that 
generate the documentation files under dmd2/html, but I don't 
think it's open-source or on github).

The website makes use of JavaScript, and loads jQuery from 
Google's CDN (https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/). 
Other scripts use jQuery to provide things like editable/runnable 
code snippets.

I strongly suspect that the firewall alerts you're seeing are due 
to attempts to load jQuery, and the JavaScript errors you're 
seeing are due to jQuery not being loaded (because you forbid the 
firewall requests).

I'm going to have a look to see how difficult it would be to 
remove jQuery and its dependents from the CHM. (Due to the way 
the CHM is built, the tool needs to edit generated HTML, and 
since the website is sometimes updated with various JavaScript 
tweaks and features, it's somewhat like trying to operate on a 
moving target.)

As a workaround, for now I would recommend allowing the firewall 
requests.