Help button on the Edit Component Properties dialog

[in3otd]

A simple idea to allow opening the online Qucs Reference Manual (QRM) directly on the component description, when the Edit Component Properties dialog is open.
As an example, when the properties of a DIAC are being edited and the Help button is pressed

this will (try to) open the page http://qucs.github.io/qucs-manual/0.0.19/html-en/component_reference.html#compdiac

At present this is not working since the web links are not right and some "details" need to be worked out:
Edit: it works now, see latest comments.

• the current component links in the QRM are not directly linked to the component model or graphic, but are a simple counter of the component index
• at present the QRM contains a section for every component symbol, but we should probably have a section for every component model. E.g. we have a resistor and a resistor_US, which have different symbols but the same model. Same for n-JFET and p-JFET and several others.

Of course many improvements are possible, like

• linking the F1 to the component help, even maybe when the component is just selected on the schematic
• point to the local copy of the QRM (which is not currently installed AFAIK)
• ...

[in3otd]

@guitorri looking at the old commits, when you added the components data file generation (qucs -doc) there was a comment saying it uses the bitmap file name to prefix the component data and property files but this was later changed to use a simple numerical index as file prefix. Now I'll need a "unique key" to identify the component so I can open its help page and the component bitmap file name seems a natural choice for the key. Do you remember if there was any issue in using the component bitmap file name as key?

[guitorri]

I think it is still the case that it is required to have one bitmap file per component.
I believe you cannot assign the same bitmap to multiple components.
Back then this did the trick for the qucs-doc proof of concept.
Maybe using the bitmap as key is not the best way. Perhaps the key should come from the implementation, where the component properties are defined.

[in3otd]

Perhaps the key should come from the implementation, where the component properties are defined.

yes, I think this would be better, in the long term.

Anyway, I realized that using the component bitmap file as key is not a practical solution; once a component is place on the schematic there is practically no way to know which was the bitmap associated with it. This makes sense, especially for the MultiViewComponents, since changing their properties can change the component graphic (e.g. like for the Resistor and Resistor_US. Also the component help text should not be related to the component symbol but to the underlying component model; e.g. for PNP and NPN BJTs we have different symbols bust just one model so IMHO it makes sense to have a single help page for both.

I saw that we now have components which are in more than one Category, like the Current Probe and Voltage Probe, which are in both Lumped Components and Probes. That's not an issue for the Qucs GUI but it complicates handling the components cross references in the help text for these components.

[in3otd]

This should now be ready; works together with Qucs/qucs-manual#1.