Kate/KWrite/KatePart handbooks as downloadable HTML files?

[Richard Owlett]

On 12/4/24 5:45 AM, Duncan wrote:
> Richard Owlett posted on Tue, 3 Dec 2024 08:38:26 -0600 as excerpted:
> 
>> As a tri-focal wearing octogenarian I require HTML's ability to display
>> a readable font. I routinely have multiple tabs open and am working
>> without internet availability [low data cap also;].
>>
>> PDF documentation close to unusable.
>>
>> Are the HTML docs available for local viewing?
> 
> Yes, but it may or may not be easy and straightforward, depending...

My whole universe of discourse is "Yes *BUT*..." <GRIN>

> 
> There are, depending on how you count (some ways have multiple variants),
> at least three ways, which I present as five below, to have the HTML-
> format docs locally.
> 
> The easiest way if you're lucky, is that they're already installed as part
> of your existing installed package, and you just have to find them to
> point your browser at.  (But see the caveat in the next paragraph.)

My OS is Debian 12. I checked their usually complete repository first 
followed by by a general web search.
As there has been recent discussion on debian-user at lists.debian.org 
about documentation availability in atypical 
locations/formats/associations/etc , I posted my question there.

> 
> Caveat: Note that kde's native handbook format isn't (or wasn't, it might
> be for 6.x) quite standard HTML

As a former Netscape Navigator user SeaMonkey is my browser of choice.
It has no apparent problem with
    https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kate/kate/index.html .
Although apparently designed as a HTML2 compliant editor, SeaMonkey's 
Composer has no problem downloading and saving {without mangling} 
current pages. In fact I've just used it to locally save two of the 
half-dozen or so pages which I immediately need. Must be manually done 
one by one.


> and may require kde-specific browser tools
> to properly view.  With 5.x and earlier I believe this was more of a
> problem, but I /think/ 6.x versions are closer to standard HTML, as with
> 6.x the handbook viewer is qtwebengine based.  In any case, conversion to
> standard HTML is also possible, see the "build", and "download and save"
> options below.
> 
> Incrementally harder, depending on your OS and hardware platform, would be
> choosing another compatible package format and installing it.  For
> instance, on most Linux distros you'd normally install the distro native
> package, but can also choose the flatpack [ *SNIP* ]

https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=%22kde%20%22kate%22%20%22flatpack%22
gives link to 
https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/t9fye8/why_kate_is_endoflife_on_flathub/?rdt=48136 
saying Kate no longer available as flatpack.

> 
> Arguably the hardest way (for most) is to download the package sources
> (and install any necessary build-time dependencies, which you might have
> to build in turn if your distro-available versions aren't those required
> by the build) and "build" (convert to HTML from the shipped docbook
> format) and install the files (including the linked images), either as
> part of building the entire package or by invoking the appropriate
> commands to just process the documentation.  (With this option you can
> choose what you want to convert to.)
an
> 
> Somewhere between those two extremes are:
> 
> Downloading the files from the web and saving them locally, including both
> the text and associated images.  Some browsers have a save mechanism that
> allows doing this with a single save method that prepackages the separate
> original page text-file and linked image, css, etc, files into a single
> archive, with an associated viewing method that automatically unpacks and
> presents as a single page view all the separate files as if you were
> viewing them on the original page, while other browsers will only save the
> original page HTML file initially and you'll need to download and create
> an appropriate tree for all the associated images, etc, manually.
> (Obviously these are standard HTML and image files.)
> 
> The link for this, which (given you mentioned PDFs) you likely already
> have, is https://docs.kde.org

But that has no link to anything in docbook format. Do you have one?

Exploring docbook may prompt ideas in my original target project.

Thanks


> 
> Manually extracting the necessary files from a pre-built package,
> presumably of a package type (like flatpack) other than the one you
> normally use, and installing them to a local tree.  (The document format
> here depends on what the package ships.)
>