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 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 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:

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

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

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