9 replies to this topic

[Nick]

Hi all,

I'd like to print the whole DirectX SDK Documentation. It's in .chm format (compiled HTML), which means I can only print one page at a time with the default viewer.

So I'm looking for software that can print it in whole. Either I need another viewer that has an option to print all, or I need a tool that converts it to another format (.pdf, .doc, etc) so I can print that in whole.

I've looked at a few tools, but several of them crash, others don't properly recurse the content tree, and yet others are not for free (without a guarantee that it works properly I'm not going to buy anything).

Any suggestions? Anything that can help getting this printed on paper would be much appreciated.

Thanks a lot,

Nicolas

[Punisher]

Doing a quick Google search, i found this: http://www.theta-sof...om/chmtopdf.htm

[Nick]

Punisher said:

Doing a quick Google search, i found this: http://www.theta-sof...om/chmtopdf.htm

That one hangs after converting 1%. :sad:

[Nick]

Anyone? :huh:

[Kenneth Gorking]

Open the .chm file -> Options -> Print... -> Print the selected heading and all subtopics

Don't forget to load up your printer with plenty of paper :lol:

[roel]

Please tell us how many pages it is :)

[monjardin]

Take a look at Microsoft Compiled HTML Help and see if it helps. I found the following:

wikipedia said:

Extracting to HTML

On Windows, a CHM file can be extracted to plain HTML with the command:

hh.exe -decompile extracted filename.chm

This will decompress all files embedded in filename.chm to folder extracted.

or by using HTML Help Workshop.

On Unix systems which use apt as a packaging tool, a CHM file is extracted to plain HTML with (first command is for a Debian based OS)

$ sudo apt-get install libchm-bin
$ extract_chmLib tero.chm tero/

Another useful set of tools for CHM files in non-Windows environments is the CHM Tools Package. It's available as source code, and includes a program, chmdump, which extracts the HTML from a CHM file into a separate directory.

It's also available for Mac OS X via MacPorts.

If MacPorts is installed on your system, you can type:

$ sudo port install chmdump

at a Terminal prompt to install the package. You can then extract a CHM file with:

$ chmdump chmfile.chm outdir

[Nick]

monjardin said:

hh.exe -decompile extracted filename.chm

Interesting, thanks! :yes:

Unfortunately it just dumps all pages separately, with no structure. So it's still hard to just start printing this. But at least it's one more format I can play with. Maybe there's an HTML to PDF compiler somewhere...

roel said:

Please tell us how many pages it is :)

Thanks to monjardin's help I can say that it's 4735 pages. :blink:

I don't want to print it all, just chapters of it. But it would be nice to first have the whole thing in one PDF so it's easy to select which range of pages I want to print.

[Nick]

I just tried this one: ABC Amber CHM Converter, and it works exactly as expected! :w00t:

[Sol_HSA]

Nick said:

I don't want to print it all, just chapters of it. But it would be nice to first have the whole thing in one PDF so it's easy to select which range of pages I want to print.

Install one of the pdf writing printer drivers maybe?