R devel - Feb 2002 - htmlhelp() question

I wonder if anyone who has worked on the win32 version of
R could help me with a HtmlHelp question?

When you're building a win32 program using mingw (in my
case, cross-compiling under GNU/Linux), what import
library do you use to link against the HtmlHelp()
function?  I have got a copy of MS's htmlhelp.lib, but
mingw doesn't seem to like this format; it wants an
archive in .a format.  Since I know R uses htmlhelp
under win32, and I gather it's built using mingw, I
wonder if anyone has managed to create an htmlhelp.a
or hhctrl.a import library.

Thanks.

Allin Cottrell
Wake Forest University

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On Tue, 5 Feb 2002, Liaw, Andy wrote:
> I thought it was documented that htmlhelp can not be built with
> cross compilers.
Hmm, I begin to wonder.  Brian Ripley offered me a reference to the
MkChmDll script in the R sources.  This looked promising: it builds a
libhhctrl.a import library by a sort of "fakery", echoing the
appropriate function name into a .def file and then compiling an .a
lib with dlltool, with only this .def as input. I tried this, and my
program (which calls HtmlHelp()) linked just fine using libhhctrl.a.
But I'm afraid it wouldn't run.  At runtime, Windows (win98, to be
specific) says:

<myprog> linked to missing export HHCTRL.OCX:HtmlHelpA@16

and aborts at startup.

The machine I tested on has hhctrl.ocx in windows/system OK.

Looking back at the R sources it seems that libhhctrl.a is somehow
tied up with Rchtml.dll, in the source for which it is stated,

"Can be built with VC++6 ..."

So at this point I wonder if Andy is right: is there really any way to
import the HtmlHelp() function without using a Microsoft compiler?

It seems as if there ought to be a way, but it might involve having
access to the source code for HHCTRL.OCX, whatever sort of beast that
may be.

Or am I (I hope) missing something?

Allin Cottrell.

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