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In the simplest case, running Halibut is very simple. You provide a set of input files on its command line, and it produces a set of output files.
$ halibut intro.but getting-started.but reference.but index.but
This will generate a large set of output files:
output.txt
will be a plain text version of the input document.output.hlp
and output.cnt
will be a Windows Help version of the same thing. (Most of the text is in output.hlp
; output.cnt
contains additional contents data used by the Windows help topic selector. If you lose the latter, the former should still be usable, but it will look less modern.)
Note that Halibut does not require any external software such as a Help compiler. It directly generates Windows Help files, and therefore it doesn't need to be run on Windows to do so: it can generate them even when run from an automated script on a Unix machine.
output.1
will be a Unix man
page.*.html
will contain an HTML version of the document. If you have configured Halibut to generate more than one HTML file (the default), then the file Contents.html
will be the topmost one that users should be directed to initially. If you have configured Halibut to generate a single file, it will be called Manual.html
.Halibut supports command-line options in case you don't want to use all of Halibut's output formats, or you want to configure the names of your output files, or you want to supply additional configuration on the command line. The supported options are listed here.
Firstly, there are options which indicate which of the output formats you want Halibut to generate:
--text
[=
filename]--text=myfile.txt
), in which case Halibut will change the name of the output file as well.--html
[=
filename]--html=myfile.html
), in which case Halibut will change the name of the output file as well. Specifying a file name here will also cause the HTML to be output in only one file, instead of the usual behaviour of producing multiple files with links between them. If you want to produce multiple files and configure their names, you will need to use the more complete file name configuration directives given in section 4.2.1 (although you may want to do so on the command line, using the -C
option).--xhtml
[=
filename]--html
.--winhelp
[=
filename]--winhelp=myfile.hlp
), in which case Halibut will change the name of the output file as well.
Your output file name should end with .hlp
; if it doesn't, Halibut will append it. Halibut will also generate a contents file (ending in .cnt
) alongside the file name you specify.
--whlp
[=
filename]--winhelp
.--hlp
[=
filename]--winhelp
.--man
[=
filename]--man=myfile.5
), in which case Halibut will change the name of the output file as well.If you do not specify any of the above options, Halibut will simply produce all of its output formats.
Also, there is an option which allows you to specify an arbitrary \cfg
configuration directive (see section 3.6):
-C
config-directive:
value[:
value...]-C
is expected to be a colon-separated list of strings. (If you need a literal colon, you can escape it with a backslash: \:
. If you need a literal backslash, you can do the same: \\
.) These strings are used as the parts of a \cfg
directive. So, for example, the option-Ctext-section-align:2:leftplus
will translate into the configuration directive
\cfg{text-section-align}{2}{leftplus}
The options which set the output file names actually work by implicitly generating these configuration directives. When you specify --text=myfile.txt
, for example, Halibut treats it identically to --text -Ctext-filename:myfile.txt
. The Windows Help and man page formats work similarly. HTML is slightly different, since it also arranges for single-file output if you pass a filename to --html
; so --html=myfile.html
is equivalent to --html -Cxhtml-single-filename:myfile.html -Cxhtml-leaf-level:0
. (See chapter 4 for explanations of all these configuration directives.)
In addition to these, there are also a few other options:
--help
--winhelp
!)--version
--licence
--license
--licence
.--precise
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