offline - Re: WDK documentation

Calvin_Guan-2 · January 11, 2009, 5:30pm

Hello Martin,

Very interesting links. If I ever get something working, I’ll post back to the list.

Have a nice day!
Calvin

----- Original Message ----
From: Martin O’Brien
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 1:57:47 PM
Subject: Re:[ntdev] WDK documentation

Calvin:

I haven’t really read this thread, and I don’t think that either of this will be of direct help to you, but I’ve found both of them (particularly FAR) extremely helpful for straightening out HXS.

1. FAR: http://www.helpware.net

It does standard stuff like compile, decompiler. et. c., but it also allows you to change the HXS namespace information, which might be of interest to you.

2. http://www.codeplex.com/packagethis

This is pulls the most recent msdn information (including subsets) from the web and will create either an HxS or CHM for local use. I’ve used it, it’s nice when it works, but it crashes on anything large and it’s slow as dirt in all cases. I’m not sure how this might help you, but it just came to mind as quasi related.

I hope this helps in some way,

mm

Calvin Guan wrote:
> [quote]
> The “document explorer” data format is not HTML, it can’t be served by
> a web server as is, without some add-on that you would have to create
> or buy.
> [/quote]
>
> That confirms my fear. I think I will stick with the trivial solution. Pro’s solution would not work if the client is a non-windows system.
>
> OTOH, what are the compelling reasons for msft to create fancy “Document Exploder” data format? To be able to read simple doc, I have to install .net and another exploder. Seems to me a bit overkill.
>
> –
> Calvin Guan
> Broadcom Corp.
> Connecting Everything(r)
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Pavel A.
> To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
> Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 1:11:34 PM
> Subject: Re:[ntdev] WDK documentation
>
> Calvin Guan wrote:
> …
>> I could probably install them on a w2k3 server and mstsc to it from other machines but that doesn’t seem like very professional.
>>
>
> Why? this is professional enough, IMHO - except you have
> something cooler, like Citrix, Softgrid or ThinApp.
> The “document explorer” data format is not HTML, it can’t be served by a web server as is, without some add-on that you would have to create or buy. Also, as you wrote, the shared content is sensitive,
> so the solution doesn’t need to support lots of concurrent users anyway.
>
> Regards,
> --PA
>
> —
> NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
>
> For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit: http://www.osr.com/seminars
>
> To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
>
>
>
>

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit: http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

OSR_Community_User · January 11, 2009, 6:02pm

It is not at all clear what the purpose was. There are rumors that it would
make searching easier, or that you could create selective subsets, but this
is currently so badly screwed up in the MSDN that it is completely useless.
From the viewpoint of outsiders, EVERY change in the documentation mechanism
has uniformly resulted in a poorer user experience, although we are
continually assured these are “improvements”. Perhaps this is a meaning of
the word “improvement” of which I have been previously unaware…

Note that Vista no longer supports HTML help at all, so if you install an
old product that uses HTML help and ask for help, you get an annoying
messagebox that says it is no longer supported. This makes it hard to use
older products that have no updates but are perfectly serviceable otherwise.
joe

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Calvin Guan
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 4:36 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re: [ntdev] WDK documentation

That confirms my fear. I think I will stick with the trivial solution. Pro’s
solution would not work if the client is a non-windows system.

OTOH, what are the compelling reasons for msft to create fancy “Document
Exploder” data format? To be able to read simple doc, I have to install .net
and another exploder. Seems to me a bit overkill.

–
Calvin Guan
Broadcom Corp.
Connecting Everything(r)

----- Original Message ----
From: Pavel A.
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 1:11:34 PM
Subject: Re:[ntdev] WDK documentation

Calvin Guan wrote:
…
> I could probably install them on a w2k3 server and mstsc to it from other
machines but that doesn’t seem like very professional.
>

Why? this is professional enough, IMHO - except you have something cooler,
like Citrix, Softgrid or ThinApp.
The “document explorer” data format is not HTML, it can’t be served by a web
server as is, without some add-on that you would have to create or buy.
Also, as you wrote, the shared content is sensitive, so the solution doesn’t
need to support lots of concurrent users anyway.

Regards,
–PA

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

–
This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

Ken_Johnson · January 11, 2009, 6:22pm

I think that this is just a wee little bit overblown. Dexplore certainly has it’s warts, but I don’t find it to be the end of the world.

Every new thing has things that somebody doesn’t like, but I think that I’ll call that “EVERY change in the documentation mechanism has uniformly resulted in a poorer user experience” as being a bit more based in rant than fact. HTML help is (IMO) far superior to winhlp, for example, and HTML help is also (IMO) far superior than the old NT 3.x DDK help system (yep, have a box upon which that’s installed!). IMO, dexplore, even with its warts, is still better than winhlp/the old DDK doc system.

Btw, you actually mean winhlp, not HTML help, presumably, as HTML help certainly still works on Vista. They are completely different technologies. I don’t know offhand why winhlp support was removed (though you can go and grab it back with a program from download.microsoft.com if you look at the message box), but I haven’t really missed it too much myself. The only things I still use that use winhlp are an old Win16 game, and a port of wget to Win32 that has the annoying habit of popping up winhlp documentation every time you call it with --help (which I could have completely done without in the first place).

S

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Joseph M. Newcomer
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 6:01 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE: [ntdev] WDK documentation

It is not at all clear what the purpose was. There are rumors that it would
make searching easier, or that you could create selective subsets, but this
is currently so badly screwed up in the MSDN that it is completely useless.
From the viewpoint of outsiders, EVERY change in the documentation mechanism
has uniformly resulted in a poorer user experience, although we are
continually assured these are “improvements”. Perhaps this is a meaning of
the word “improvement” of which I have been previously unaware…

Note that Vista no longer supports HTML help at all, so if you install an
old product that uses HTML help and ask for help, you get an annoying
messagebox that says it is no longer supported. This makes it hard to use
older products that have no updates but are perfectly serviceable otherwise.
joe

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Calvin Guan
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 4:36 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re: [ntdev] WDK documentation

That confirms my fear. I think I will stick with the trivial solution. Pro’s
solution would not work if the client is a non-windows system.

OTOH, what are the compelling reasons for msft to create fancy “Document
Exploder” data format? To be able to read simple doc, I have to install .net
and another exploder. Seems to me a bit overkill.

–
Calvin Guan
Broadcom Corp.
Connecting Everything(r)

----- Original Message ----
From: Pavel A.
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 1:11:34 PM
Subject: Re:[ntdev] WDK documentation

Calvin Guan wrote:
…
> I could probably install them on a w2k3 server and mstsc to it from other
machines but that doesn’t seem like very professional.
>

Why? this is professional enough, IMHO - except you have something cooler,
like Citrix, Softgrid or ThinApp.
The “document explorer” data format is not HTML, it can’t be served by a web
server as is, without some add-on that you would have to create or buy.
Also, as you wrote, the shared content is sensitive, so the solution doesn’t
need to support lots of concurrent users anyway.

Regards,
–PA

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

–
This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

Doron_Holan · January 11, 2009, 6:51pm

IIRC winhlp went away b/c it was security nightmare and any fixes would have broken existing content

d

Sent from my phone with no t9, all spilling mistakes are not intentional.

-----Original Message-----
From: Skywing
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 3:23 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE: [ntdev] WDK documentation

I think that this is just a wee little bit overblown. Dexplore certainly has it’s warts, but I don’t find it to be the end of the world.

Every new thing has things that somebody doesn’t like, but I think that I’ll call that “EVERY change in the documentation mechanism has uniformly resulted in a poorer user experience” as being a bit more based in rant than fact. HTML help is (IMO) far superior to winhlp, for example, and HTML help is also (IMO) far superior than the old NT 3.x DDK help system (yep, have a box upon which that’s installed!). IMO, dexplore, even with its warts, is still better than winhlp/the old DDK doc system.

Btw, you actually mean winhlp, not HTML help, presumably, as HTML help certainly still works on Vista. They are completely different technologies. I don’t know offhand why winhlp support was removed (though you can go and grab it back with a program from download.microsoft.com if you look at the message box), but I haven’t really missed it too much myself. The only things I still use that use winhlp are an old Win16 game, and a port of wget to Win32 that has the annoying habit of popping up winhlp documentation every time you call it with --help (which I could have completely done without in the first place).

- S

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Joseph M. Newcomer
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 6:01 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE: [ntdev] WDK documentation

It is not at all clear what the purpose was. There are rumors that it would
make searching easier, or that you could create selective subsets, but this
is currently so badly screwed up in the MSDN that it is completely useless.
From the viewpoint of outsiders, EVERY change in the documentation mechanism
has uniformly resulted in a poorer user experience, although we are
continually assured these are “improvements”. Perhaps this is a meaning of
the word “improvement” of which I have been previously unaware…

Note that Vista no longer supports HTML help at all, so if you install an
old product that uses HTML help and ask for help, you get an annoying
messagebox that says it is no longer supported. This makes it hard to use
older products that have no updates but are perfectly serviceable otherwise.
joe

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Calvin Guan
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 4:36 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re: [ntdev] WDK documentation

[quote]
The “document explorer” data format is not HTML, it can’t be served by a web
server as is, without some add-on that you would have to create or buy.
[/quote]

That confirms my fear. I think I will stick with the trivial solution. Pro’s
solution would not work if the client is a non-windows system.

OTOH, what are the compelling reasons for msft to create fancy “Document
Exploder” data format? To be able to read simple doc, I have to install .net
and another exploder. Seems to me a bit overkill.

–
Calvin Guan
Broadcom Corp.
Connecting Everything(r)

----- Original Message ----
From: Pavel A.
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 1:11:34 PM
Subject: Re:[ntdev] WDK documentation

Calvin Guan wrote:
…
> I could probably install them on a w2k3 server and mstsc to it from other
machines but that doesn’t seem like very professional.
>

Why? this is professional enough, IMHO - except you have something cooler,
like Citrix, Softgrid or ThinApp.
The “document explorer” data format is not HTML, it can’t be served by a web
server as is, without some add-on that you would have to create or buy.
Also, as you wrote, the shared content is sensitive, so the solution doesn’t
need to support lots of concurrent users anyway.

Regards,
–PA

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

–
This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

OSR_Community_User · January 11, 2009, 10:48pm

Not very much overblown.

I used MSDN from the PDC pre-release, and you could select the subset you
wanted to look at, add personal annotations, and your annotations were not
lost on upgrades. Then they went to HTML help, which couldn’t maintain
personal annotations, and couldn’t subset to reasonable subsets with any
ease. Then the new WinHelp system, which didn’t allow annotations, couldn’t
be subsetted except by using undocumented knowledge and the subsetting
mechanism was exceptionally clumsy to use, to the current system that
doesn’t allow annotations, can’t be subsetted, and in fact in the case of
the MSDN, has an exceptionally poor index (many items seem to have been
dropped entirely from the index and have to be found by search alone). At
least in MSDN, I have seen a continuous degradation of the quality of the
user interface on each change. It is not a rant if it is factual and
supported by actual user experience. The DDK is also extremely poorly
indexed, which I have complained about, with specific examples, on numerous
occasions, but nothing has changed in at least a decade.
joe

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Skywing
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 6:21 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE: [ntdev] WDK documentation

I think that this is just a wee little bit overblown. Dexplore certainly
has it’s warts, but I don’t find it to be the end of the world.

Every new thing has things that somebody doesn’t like, but I think that I’ll
call that “EVERY change in the documentation mechanism has uniformly
resulted in a poorer user experience” as being a bit more based in rant than
fact. HTML help is (IMO) far superior to winhlp, for example, and HTML help
is also (IMO) far superior than the old NT 3.x DDK help system (yep, have a
box upon which that’s installed!). IMO, dexplore, even with its warts, is
still better than winhlp/the old DDK doc system.

Btw, you actually mean winhlp, not HTML help, presumably, as HTML help
certainly still works on Vista. They are completely different technologies.
I don’t know offhand why winhlp support was removed (though you can go and
grab it back with a program from download.microsoft.com if you look at the
message box), but I haven’t really missed it too much myself. The only
things I still use that use winhlp are an old Win16 game, and a port of wget
to Win32 that has the annoying habit of popping up winhlp documentation
every time you call it with --help (which I could have completely done
without in the first place).

S

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Joseph M. Newcomer
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 6:01 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE: [ntdev] WDK documentation

It is not at all clear what the purpose was. There are rumors that it would
make searching easier, or that you could create selective subsets, but this
is currently so badly screwed up in the MSDN that it is completely useless.
From the viewpoint of outsiders, EVERY change in the documentation mechanism
has uniformly resulted in a poorer user experience, although we are
continually assured these are “improvements”. Perhaps this is a meaning of
the word “improvement” of which I have been previously unaware…

Note that Vista no longer supports HTML help at all, so if you install an
old product that uses HTML help and ask for help, you get an annoying
messagebox that says it is no longer supported. This makes it hard to use
older products that have no updates but are perfectly serviceable otherwise.
joe

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Calvin Guan
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 4:36 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re: [ntdev] WDK documentation

That confirms my fear. I think I will stick with the trivial solution. Pro’s
solution would not work if the client is a non-windows system.

OTOH, what are the compelling reasons for msft to create fancy “Document
Exploder” data format? To be able to read simple doc, I have to install .net
and another exploder. Seems to me a bit overkill.

–
Calvin Guan
Broadcom Corp.
Connecting Everything(r)

----- Original Message ----
From: Pavel A.
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 1:11:34 PM
Subject: Re:[ntdev] WDK documentation

Calvin Guan wrote:
…
> I could probably install them on a w2k3 server and mstsc to it from
> other
machines but that doesn’t seem like very professional.
>

Why? this is professional enough, IMHO - except you have something cooler,
like Citrix, Softgrid or ThinApp.
The “document explorer” data format is not HTML, it can’t be served by a web
server as is, without some add-on that you would have to create or buy.
Also, as you wrote, the shared content is sensitive, so the solution doesn’t
need to support lots of concurrent users anyway.

Regards,
–PA

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

–
This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

–
This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

Richard_Brown · January 12, 2009, 5:35pm

Re: "The DDK is also extremely poorly indexed, which I have complained about, with specific examples, on numerous occasions, but nothing has changed in at least a decade. "

Here’s the history of the DDK/WDK index:

Prior to Vista, the index was entirely auto-generated, based on topic title. So the index included every ref page title plus every design guide (DG) title. While auto-insertion of ref page titles into an index is useful, auto-insertion of DG topic titles is in most cases not useful…but better than nothing.
During Vista timeframe, auto-insertion of DG topic titles was stopped. So, for awhile, the WDK index only contained ref page titles (function/struct/enum names). This probably made the index less useful than it had been.
For the post-Vista server release, the WDK team hired a professional indexer to re-index the design guide. The DG index is no longer auto-generated…every entry was created by a human. This index is far more extensive than any previous WDK index, with thousands of DG entries.
As we add new topics to the WDK, we continue to add new index entries.

OSR_Community_User · January 12, 2009, 8:44pm

The new help continues to go backwards in my opinion. I will highlight some of the things not yet mentioned:

Older help allowed wildcard (*) searches. This allowed me to find things when I only remembered a portion of the entire name. Now I have to open up a command prompt, navigate into the WDK, grep the header files for the partial name, cut and paste it into help, and finally perform the search. This is ludicrous.
Startup focus. When starting older help, the focus was on the index. I could start help, then start typing. When starting new help, the focus is in limbo, it’s nowhere. Now i have to reach over to the mouse, click the index edit box, then go back to the keyboard and start typing. This makes an unnecessary distraction.
Speed. Even though my computer is more powerful than ever, starting up help and searching seem to be getting slower than ever.

Calvin_Guan-2 · January 12, 2009, 9:40pm

Working for hw company, I have no problem with that. People are forced to buy more memory, faster CPU, fancier devices to run the newer OS that’s good for the hardware industry. If everyone is happy with bsd on P3 with 256MB RAM like I do, many hardware companies may go out of business-

Calvin

----- Original Message ----
From: “xxxxx@gmail.com”
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2009 5:44:30 PM
Subject: RE:[ntdev] offline - Re: WDK documentation

The new help continues to go backwards in my opinion. I will highlight some of the things not yet mentioned:

1.? Older help allowed wildcard (*) searches. This allowed me to find things when I only remembered a portion of the entire name. Now I have to open up a command prompt, navigate into the WDK, grep the header files for the partial name, cut and paste it into help, and finally perform the search. This is ludicrous.

2. Startup focus. When starting older help, the focus was on the index. I could start help, then start typing. When starting new help, the focus is in limbo, it’s nowhere. Now i have to reach over to the mouse, click the index edit box, then go back to the keyboard and start typing. This makes an unnecessary distraction.

3. Speed. Even though my computer is more powerful than ever, starting up help and searching seem to be getting slower than ever.

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

OSR_Community_User · January 13, 2009, 4:28am

I do recall someone from Microsoft stating they would release a CHM version
of the
WDK about 2-3 months ago. I have no idea what the status of that is, but it
should
be on its way soon.

P.S. Joe, HTML help is supported for Vista, you just have to download the
Vista
package. This should have been included in Vista install by default.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6EBCFAD9-D3F5-4365-
8070-334CD175D4BB&displaylang=en

Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Joseph M. Newcomer
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 5:01 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE: [ntdev] WDK documentation

It is not at all clear what the purpose was. There are rumors that it would
make searching easier, or that you could create selective subsets, but this
is currently so badly screwed up in the MSDN that it is completely useless.
From the viewpoint of outsiders, EVERY change in the documentation mechanism
has uniformly resulted in a poorer user experience, although we are
continually assured these are “improvements”. Perhaps this is a meaning of
the word “improvement” of which I have been previously unaware…

Note that Vista no longer supports HTML help at all, so if you install an
old product that uses HTML help and ask for help, you get an annoying
messagebox that says it is no longer supported. This makes it hard to use
older products that have no updates but are perfectly serviceable otherwise.
joe

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Calvin Guan
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 4:36 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re: [ntdev] WDK documentation

That confirms my fear. I think I will stick with the trivial solution. Pro’s
solution would not work if the client is a non-windows system.

OTOH, what are the compelling reasons for msft to create fancy “Document
Exploder” data format? To be able to read simple doc, I have to install .net
and another exploder. Seems to me a bit overkill.

–
Calvin Guan
Broadcom Corp.
Connecting Everything(r)

----- Original Message ----
From: Pavel A.
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 1:11:34 PM
Subject: Re:[ntdev] WDK documentation

Calvin Guan wrote:
…
> I could probably install them on a w2k3 server and mstsc to it from other
machines but that doesn’t seem like very professional.
>

Why? this is professional enough, IMHO - except you have something cooler,
like Citrix, Softgrid or ThinApp.
The “document explorer” data format is not HTML, it can’t be served by a web
server as is, without some add-on that you would have to create or buy.
Also, as you wrote, the shared content is sensitive, so the solution doesn’t
need to support lots of concurrent users anyway.

Regards,
–PA

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

–
This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com
Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.6/1888 - Release Date: 1/12/2009
7:04 AM

Ted_Hudek_MSFT · January 13, 2009, 4:36pm

Hi Matt,

Re: “I do recall someone from Microsoft stating they would release a CHM version
of the WDK about 2-3 months ago.”:

That was me, probably at DDC.

The current plan is to post a CHM version of the WDK documentation on WHDC by this Friday, January 16. Stay tuned to the WDK doc blog for an announcement when this happens.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/default.mspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/wdkdocs/

Thanks,
Ted

OSR_Community_User · January 15, 2009, 2:25am

Calvin:

One more reference that I think (perhaps?) might be more directly
related to your cause:

http://services.msdn.microsoft.com/ContentServices/ContentService.asmx

The first paragraph:

‘This is the documentation for the MSDN/TechNet Publishing System (MTPS)
Content Service. The MTPS Content Service is an XML web service that
provides access to the content stored in MTPS. This includes, for
example, the content available at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library.
Using the MTPS Content Service, developers can integrate documentation,
technical articles, whitepapers, images and the other content available
from the MTPS system into their own applications.’

Let me preface all of this with this disclaimer that I know almost
nothing about any of the technology involved, including the basic
underlying ‘internet’ stuff, like SOAP (no idea what that is). The
strangest part is that I stumbled up on this while looking in to
something independent of your questions, so I guess sometimes things
work out, assuming that it’s useful.

And I’ll throw in this observation/caveat/ This is the strangest
looking document that I’ve seen come out of Redmond. I found a link to
it on the webpage for packagethis, but in all seriousness, when I
followed the link, the first thing that cam in to my mind when I page
appeared was that I had been somehow be redirected to a poor man’s
imitation of Phrack, and that surely the document before my eye’s about
blueboxing or maybe how to use how to get free parking using a smart
card and $19.67 of parts from Radio Shack. Retrospectively, I don’t
know what that’s what it made me think of, but it damn sure doesn’t look
like a MSFT document, so maybe it’s not accurate, et. c.; I have no
idea. I mean’s it just kind bland, and it sets off all IE’s bullshit
security features, it’s got XML code sitting int the middle of the page,
as well at least two links that refer some sort of acronym as a
‘standard,’ and following the link produces pages of xml, so it looks
very haphazzard, if not Phrack like

This may be totally incorrect, but I believe it’s a ‘standard’ way to
encapsulate a url or the ever convenient uuid (among some others) in a
bunch of XML (maybe XHTML; that term appears as well, along with
statements that it’s not really a ‘standard’ of course), submit this as
query, and received something back, again encapsulated in a bunch of
XML/HTML that is supposed to be for locale and other things that
presuppose the existence of lot of stuff (like translations) in order to
matter.

So, I’m sure I have a lot of it wrong, especially since I haven’t read
most of it, but it certainly makes me wonder if this is root cause of
why even the local performance of MSDN is so abjectly horrendous,
especially when it come to search of course.

The other thing that has made me think about this is that as I finish
this e-mail, I’ve had packagethis running for almost six hours, during
which, according to the little box it displays, it has downloaded 11,573
documents that total ‘38 MiB’ highlights, and as it downloads or
whatever, it updates the UI, so I guess it’s effectively enumerating
every page in what you select (I don’t remember what I selected at this
point, but I it was definitely not more than the ‘Device Technologies’
section of the WDK. A CHM form of the WDK weighs in at around 50MB, as
I recall, so it’s hard to understand what it’s been doing for six hours,
other than passing meta-information about locale, et. c. back and forth.

Or maybe not; I don’t know, but I really want it to finish.

Any way, I hope that this helps (and know that I think about it, that
this was posted before).

mm

Martin O’Brien wrote:

Calvin:

I haven’t really read this thread, and I don’t think that either of this
will be of direct help to you, but I’ve found both of them (particularly
FAR) extremely helpful for straightening out HXS.

FAR: http://www.helpware.net

It does standard stuff like compile, decompiler. et. c., but it also
allows you to change the HXS namespace information, which might be of
interest to you.

http://www.codeplex.com/packagethis

This is pulls the most recent msdn information (including subsets) from
the web and will create either an HxS or CHM for local use. I’ve used
it, it’s nice when it works, but it crashes on anything large and it’s
slow as dirt in all cases. I’m not sure how this might help you, but it
just came to mind as quasi related.

I hope this helps in some way,

mm

Calvin Guan wrote:
> [quote]
> The “document explorer” data format is not HTML, it can’t be served by
> a web server as is, without some add-on that you would have to create
> or buy.
> [/quote]
>
> That confirms my fear. I think I will stick with the trivial solution.
> Pro’s solution would not work if the client is a non-windows system.
>
> OTOH, what are the compelling reasons for msft to create fancy
> “Document Exploder” data format? To be able to read simple doc, I have
> to install .net and another exploder. Seems to me a bit overkill.
>
> –
> Calvin Guan
> Broadcom Corp.
> Connecting Everything(r)
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Pavel A.
>> To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
>> Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 1:11:34 PM
>> Subject: Re:[ntdev] WDK documentation
>>
>> Calvin Guan wrote:
>> …
>>> I could probably install them on a w2k3 server and mstsc to it from
>>> other machines but that doesn’t seem like very professional.
>>>
>>
>> Why? this is professional enough, IMHO - except you have
>> something cooler, like Citrix, Softgrid or ThinApp.
>> The “document explorer” data format is not HTML, it can’t be served by
>> a web server as is, without some add-on that you would have to create
>> or buy. Also, as you wrote, the shared content is sensitive,
>> so the solution doesn’t need to support lots of concurrent users
>> anyway.
>>
>> Regards,
>> --PA
>>
>> —
>> NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
>>
>> For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
>> http://www.osr.com/seminars
>>
>> To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
>> http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
>>
>>
>>
>>
>