HelpViewer Application
The HelpViewer is a standalone application to display html files which might be organized in a directory structure.
The program is written in tcl/tk and is based on the Tkhtml 3.0 library.
When starting the application, a dialog pops up, where you can drag&drop
your
preferred directory using the file explorer:
Features:
Once a directory is specified, the program traverses down the tree to search for all available html files.
Special handling of index.html + content.html files.
If a index/content.html file is available, this file is shown directly in the html viewer window.
In the context sensitive menu, the Home (
) function basically does the same.
A Search function is implemented.
When executing a search query a index file is created and all available html files are queried and all occurrences of the search string as well as the file references are shown in 2 separate list-boxes.
Finally the help viewer window offers a search capability which works within each individual html file.
The program is used by me merely as a test bench for the html3widget, but has the potential to be used as a general help system for any other tcl/tk application too.
In other words: as the source code is freely available, it can be easily modified and embedded into an existing tcl/tk project.
Building from source:
Hint: If you are not a Tcl/Tk programmer or developer,
don’t read any further ( )…
Assuming Tcl/Tk is already installed on your machine (maybe Tcl/Tk provided by ActiveState):
- Download the helpviewer’s source,
- take a look at the Makefile.tcl included in the source,
- download sdx.kit as well as the required tcl/tk kit-enabled binary (or build from source),
- create a sibling directory (tclkit) and copy the required kit-enabled binary as well as sdx.kit into this directory (again see Makefile.tcl of what’s required here…),
- check out if the provided dll’s/dylib’s are the one your operating system requires and if not get it downloaded as well (teacup subcommand of an ActiveState installation maybe)
- you are ready to run the Makefile.tcl to build the executable from source
Supported Platforms
The application was developed and tested on Windows.
There is also a binary available in the download area for OSX.
The program was modified to run as well on undroidwish:
For the moment the building process to create a native package for Android is still an open issue.

Change History:
Version 3.0.3
- Support for middle mouse button added, which allows to scroll a page
- minor bug-fixes and small improvements in various supplement packages
Version 3.0.2
History file started.
tkdnd is now optional
Thanks to Christian Werner for his input to support undroidwish/Androidwish as well.
select file or directory dialog changed,
- Now the dialog has a fall-back solution in case there is no D&D available.
- The dialog also supports a “most recent files” list (last 10 entries are kept).
bug fix in the forward/backward navigation functionality
settings are now stored in between sessions:
(window size, font size, most recent files list)
status line added on top
clean procedure added to make sure
there isn’t too much waist left in %TEMP% (for the moment only tested under windows)
various minor changes and improvements.

Download - Application
HelpViewer Software:
File name: | Size / byte: | |
---|---|---|
HelpViewer3.0.3.OSX_app.zip | 8256608 | |
HelpViewer3.0.3_source.rar | 4432020 | |
HelpViewer3.0.3_windows_exe.zip | 8159925 | |
TclTK_HTMLDocumentaion_pack.zip | 8721976 |
In the TclTK_HTMLDocumentaion_pack.zip the following Tcl/Tk related documentation (html format) is included:
└───TclTK_HTMLDocumentaion_pack
├───scintilla_doc
├───BWidget1.9.10
├───gridplus
├───scintilla_tk
├───tablelist5.15
├───tcl8.6.6
├───tcllib
├───treectrl2.4.1
├───snack
├───tkcon
└───tkhtml3.0
- There is also an article in the tcl/tk wiki: wiki.tcl.tk/48536,
- and as well for the html3widget: wiki.tcl.tk/48458.
Download - Helpviewer package
The core functionality of the helpviewer is implemented as it’s own mega-widget and can be downloaded separately from here:
File name: | Size / byte: | |
---|---|---|
helpviewer3.3.6.zip | 1089395 |
