=head1 NAME 

B<Pod2WinHlp> - generate Windows Help and/or HTML Help from pod.

=head1 SYNOPSIS

  pod2rtf perl.pod > perl.rtf
  hcw perl_eg.hpj

=head1 DESCRIPTION

Pod2WinHlp includes a script pod2rtf (also installed as pod2rtf.bat 
on Windows) that generates .rtf (topic) files from from one or more 
files containg POD documentation.  With appropriate bits of the 
MS Windows Help Workshop(tm) those files may be turned into
Windows help file(s) of type .hlp.

=head1 PRE REQUISITES

=head2 Perl modules

Pod::Rtf uses Brad Appleton's Pod::Parser and Pod::PlainText to 
parse the input pod files.  Pod::Parser ships with perl 5.005_03, 
5.6.0 and later versions and is also available from CPAN.

For HTML conversion you'll need a separate pod2html program and 
you can try either the one that comes with perl or Nick Ing-Simmons' 
Pod::HTML package from CPAN. 

=head2 Help Compiler(s)

In order to generate the final rtf && hpj -> hlp transformation you'll
need to have hcw.exe a.k.a. the "Help Workshop" that ships with 
Visual Studio wares such as MS Visual C++.  On Windows NT 4 That might 
be in something like: C:\Program Files\DevStudio\VC\bin\hcw.exe, in other 
words a place that may not lie along your %PATH%.  On Windows 3.11 the
compiler was called hc31.exe, though this package was not tested with 
that compiler (and some quirks of how hcw handles rtf were 
accommodated by this translator). 

=head2 Help viewer(s)

With WinHelp the operating system includes the WinHelp viewer, and 
every Windows user already has the WinHelp viewer installed.

=head2 HTML Help Workshop compilers

Be sure you have added hhc.exe and hha.dll to your path variable 
statement. 

=head2 HTML Help viewer(s)

With HTML Help, the HTML Help viewer and its components are not 
included in Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, or any earlier releases 
of Windows. (HTML Help is included with Microsoft Internet 
Explorer 4.0 and later releases.)  I am not sure how this plays
out with Windows 2000 or Millenium Edition.

The HTML Help (hh.exe) program runs whenever an end user opens a 
stand-alone compiled HTML help file. The program calls hhctrl.ocx and 
is used to open and run .chm files. 

The HTML Help Run Time Components (hhrun.exe) must be redistributed 
with HTML Help.  If you know your end user already has an installation 
of HTML Help, the HTML Help Update (hhupd.exe) should be redistributed.

=head1 COMPILING HELP

There is a sample .hpj file called perl_eg.hpj included in the kit.
To compile help convert perlpod to perl.rtf in a directory with 
perl_eg.hpj then type:

      hcw perl_eg.hpj

at the command line.  If any warnings crop up they should pertain only
to unresolved cross-references (hyperlinking is not well handled yet).
You can use F<perl_eg.hpj> as a template for writing your own custom .hpj
files if you would prefer.

Hopefully automatice generation of .hpj files will come with a later
version of this kit.  Note that it could be modelled on the index.html
generator for PodtoHTML, or the perltoc document, e.g.

=head1 SEE ALSO

L<perlpod>, for information on the pod format. 

The Help that comes with Help Workshop and the HTML Help Workshop.

There do not appear to be many good references on RTF these days,
though for RTF as used in .hlp files try Keith E. Bugg 
B<Building Windows Help Files> R&D Books, Lawrence Kansas, (c) 1995.  
This latter book might be ISBN 0-87930-439-1, but it might not.

=head1 SEE ALSO

Pod::Rtf and pod2rtf do not currently handle hyperlinking very well.
As part of sniffing pods in a file tree and indexing, Pod2WinHlp should
eventually generate .hpj (project) and perhaps .cnt (table of contents), 
files automatically.

Alternatively, Pod2WinHlp may generate .html (topic), 
.hhc (table of contents), .hhk (index), and .hhp (project) files 
from one or more files containg POD documentation.  With appropriate bits
of the MS HTML Help Workshop(tm) those files may be turned into
Windows HTML help file(s) of type .chm.  (Especially since the whole
.rtf -> .hlp type of help seems to be deprecated by Microsoft these days.)

=head1 AUTHOR and LICENSE

Copyright (c) 1999-2000 Peter Prymmer.  All rights reserved.
This package is free software you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

=head1 Acknowledgements

Thanks to Nick Ing-Simmons for PodToHTML upon which much of this
is based.   Thanks to Brad Appleton for Pod::Parser.  Thanks to 
Tom Christiansen for pod2text.

=cut

