README

# Helphelp - generating online help

The helphelp tool takes a directory of files formatted using Markdown [1] and
converts it to a set of static HTML pages. It supports the usual Markdown syntax
and the extensions provided by Maruku [2].

The Mardown converted to HTML is inserted into templates provided by helphelp or
by the caller on the command line. The support a few additional features like
generation of a table of contents.

The structure of the source directory, its subdirectories, and the files in them
is reflected in the generated output. As a convention the tool expects file and
directory names to start with a three digit number. This number is used to
define the sequence of files in the structure of the online help. The numbers
don't show up in the output.

Source files are expected to have the suffix ".md".

Picture files which are referenced from the markdown are scaled and copied to
the output destination at the same location in the directory hierarchy as they
are in the sources.

There are another few non-Markdown features which are supported in the source
files by the helphelp tool. If you insert a "#dir_toc" at the beginning of a
line, it is replaced by a table of contents for the content of the subdirectory
the file is located.


[1]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
[2]: http://maruku.rubyforge.org/