Use Hv3 to view ActiveTcl docs

Hv3, the Tcl/Tk web browser, now uses fts3, the new full-text-search extension for SQLite by Scott Hess, for searching the bookmarks database. To make this more effective, it allows the entire text of the webpage to be saved in the database along with the bookmark.

As well as saving bookmarks from the web, it can recursively import directories full of HTML files. Then you can do full text searches on the imported files. I use this trick to make it more convenient to use the bundle of html docs distributed as part of ActiveTcl. This page describes how you can do the same.

Step 1: Obtain software:

You need to obtain two packages, the Hv3 web browser and the ActiveTcl documentation bundle. Executable (starpack) versions of Hv3 for Windows and Linux x86 are available here:

  http://tkhtml.tcl.tk/hv3.html

Right now, the latest ActiveTcl documentation is available from this site (right down the bottom - 3.38 MB):

  http://www.activestate.com/Products/activetcl/beta_download.plex

Step 2: Untar docs, start Hv3

Untar the documentation and start up Hv3. You must pass a "-statefile" option to Hv3 (otherwise it uses an in-memory database as a 'statefile', meaning that all changes will be discarded when Hv3 exits). i.e.

  $ ./hv3-linux-nightly-07_1004 -statefile ~/hv3_statefile.db

http://tkhtml.tcl.tk/tcldocs1.gif

Step 3: Import documentation

Import documentation into an Hv3 'statefile' (Hv3 stores bookmarks, cookies, options and other stuff in an SQLite database that I call a 'statefile').

Do this by clicking "Import Data...", then "Import Document Tree". Then select the directory where you untarred the documentation bundle.

The import might take a while (about 3 minutes on my 1.4GHz laptop). A dialog box displays the progress.

http://tkhtml.tcl.tk/tcldocs3.gif

Step 4: Search Documentation Tree

Type some fts3 compatible search into the search box and marvel at the search results:

http://tkhtml.tcl.tk/tcldocs4.gif

Clicking the top link in the preceding screenshot takes us here:

http://tkhtml.tcl.tk/tcldocs5.gif

The documentation tree entry currently being viewed is colored bold in the left-hand panel.


Category Internet