jchmlib is a Java library for reading CHM (Microsoft Compiled HTML Help) files.
Several CHM utilities are provided,
including a web server (ChmWeb) for reading CHM files in web browsers.
Features:
- The
jchmlibis written in Java only, rather than wrapping existing C/C++ library. It is easier to get it working on different platforms. - Better search support:
- full-text-search (FTS) is supported if there is built-in FTS index in CHM file.
- otherwise, FTS index can be generated and searched on. * enumeration-based search by searching through the pages in CHM file can also be used without FTS index.
- Phrase search is supported.
- Better support for non-English languages, like Chinese, Japanese, Korean.
* It will detect CHM file encoding, and can try to fix encoding when it is wrongly set in CHM file.
- It can show table of contents (topics tree) correctly for non-English files.
- It can also search using non-English search words in non-English files.
- The
ChmWebis a web server for serving CHM files, so that you can read CHM files in your favorite web browser.- The sidebar of the web UI shows table of contents, files tree (for listing files/directories in the CHM archive), and search box.
- It uses javascript so that switching between tabs of the sidebar would not incur reloading the whole sidebar.
- When network is properly configured, you can run
ChmWebon a server, and access it from other devices.
- There are also some utility classes which you can use as command line tools for handling CHM files,
like listing/searching/extracting files in CHM file (see
src/app).
This project uses Gradle as the build tool.
javapackager in Oracle JDK 8
is used for building native bundles (like dmg, deb, rpm) of ChmWeb.
jchmlib itself is supposed to be compatible with JDK 1.6 or higher (including OpenJDK).
To build jar for jchmlib itself, run
gradle jar
Use gradle javadoc to build javadoc for jchmlib,
the docs can be found under build/docs/javadoc.
To build jar for ChmWeb, run
gradle appJar
Native bundles have to be build on their target platforms.
On Mac OS X, build dmg using
gradle package_dmg
Please make sure package/macosx/Info.plist matches your settings (like version, JVMRuntime).
The dmg can be found under build/deploy/bundles.
On Linux, build rpm using
gradle package_rpm
On some Linux distributions, you may have to install the rpmbuild tool first.
On Ubuntu, you can get it by sudo apt-get install rpm.
On Linux, build deb using
gradle package_deb
On Windows, build exe using
gradle package_exe
This will build a installer for installing ChmWeb.
You can also build exe for Windows on other platforms using
gradle createExe
the exe can be found under build/launch4j.
Note that JRE is not bundled into the exe for now.
You can change the launch4j task in build.gradle to bundle JRE as well.
You can start by reading javadoc, and sample applications under org.jchmlib.app.
To use jchmlib in your project, you can add this to your build.gradle
(when you are using Gradle):
repositories {
jcenter()
maven { url "https://jitpack.io" }
}
dependencies {
compile 'com.github.chimenchen:jchmlib:v0.5.4'
}
You can run ChmWeb in different ways.
You need to have JDK/JRE installed.
You can start it from command line like:
java -jar ChmWeb.jar
This will open a Swing window. You can drag and drop CHM files into the window to open them, or right click and choose "Open CHM file".
A web server will be started to serve each CHM file, and the default web browser will be opened to view the CHM file.
In the ChmWeb window, you can double click on a row to open it in browser (or right click and choose "Open in browser").
To close CHM files, right click and choose "Close".
When you run
java -jar ChmWeb.jar test.chm
it will start and serve the given CHM file. Note that, if there is already one instance running, the file will be opened in that instance instead.
ChmWeb will try to find free ports starting from 50000 to serve CHM files,
to serve a file on a given port, say, 9000, run
java -jar ChmWeb.jar -p 9000 test.chm
But this port will only be used for this file.
To open the file without showing the window,
run with the --no-gui or -n option, like:
java -jar ChmWeb.jar -n test.chm
You can also double click the jar to open ChmWeb,
if you have your system properly configured
(for example, on Windows, you need to associate jar file type with javaw.exe).
The problem of using jar directly is that it may not work as expected in file managers of some platforms. For example, you may want to right click on a CHM file and choose to open with ChmWeb, or to associate chm file type with ChmWeb so that you can double click to open CHM files with ChmWeb, it is not allowed on some platforms when using jar.
To make it easier to open CHM files with ChmWeb in file manager, you can wrap the jar using shell scripts or use native executables.
On Mac OS X, you can build DMG and install the app in DMG (drag to Applications).
On Linux, you can build rpm or deb, and install them using package manager.
It will normally be installed to /opt/ChmWeb/.
On Windows, you can build exe.
The version built using javapackager (gradle package_exe) has to be installed first.
The version built using launch4j (gradle createExe) is smaller and doesn't have to be installed,
but it requires JDK/JRE to be installed.
The native executables (installers) can now be found in the releases page of this project.
On the search tab, search using
several query words
will return pages containing all the query words, ignoring cases.
Search using phrase like
"hello world"
will return pages containing the phrase. Non-word characters (like punctuations) or some stopwords (like "a", "is") are ignored, so it is possible to match pages with phrase "Hello, World".
Search using regular expressions (when "Use regex" is checked) is enumeration-based and can be slow. You don't have use regular expressions though. Here are some typical query strings:
abc
abc abc
"query string" (go)*
Http[a-zA-Z]*Request\(.*\);
The "Toggle Highlight" button can be used to highlight query words in the page and scroll to the first occurrence. But it is not smart enough to handle complex query strings involving regular expressions or to handle the characters and stopwords ignored during search. Sometimes, the occurrences are not highlight as expected.
- Chen Zhongguo (陈钟国) - Initial work - chimenchen
This project is licensed under Apache License 2.0, see the LICENSE file for details.