How to get WinCC OA Help as PDF?

[mkoller]

Just a guess: try with windoze style path separators, e.g. "C:\\\\Siemens\\\\Automation..."
Note also the system() call - don't know if windoze knows about "mkdir -p"

[fandersen]

Didn't help either, I added output of dbGetError to the log.

WCCOActrl3:["Path = C:\\\\Siemens\\\\Automation\\\\WinCC_OA\\\\3.14\\\\help\\\\en_US.utf8\\\\WinCC_OA.qch"]
WCCOActrl3:["Errornumber : "][-2147467259]
WCCOActrl3:["BaseError : "][0]
WCCOActrl3:["Description : "]["[Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified"]
WCCOActrl3:["SQL-errortext: "]["IM002"]

[mkoller]

Ah, yes. Windose ...
On Windows we do not use Qt to access a database, therefore it does not work like this with the QSQLITE driver.
You need to get a driver from somewhere which can be used to read from a SQLite database and configure this to be usable with
CtrlADO, e.g. as an ODBC provider, etc. Sorry, I can't help you further here.
Alternatively, use a Linux installation (e.g. in a VirtualBox)

[Gertjan van Schijndel]

I have tried some SQLite odbc drivers, but without much luck.
1. SQLite ODBC Driver crashes
2. SQLite2010 Pro ODBC Driver the blobs only contain 2 bytes

[fandersen]

Hi Gertjan,

I have tried this ODBC driver: http://www.ch-werner.de/sqliteodbc/
and configured a DSN with the name "help", selected the SQLite 3 driver and selected the help file.

I've tried this script to get the data: http://faq.winccoa.net/index.php?action ... artlang=en
and got the same result as Gertjan, data only contains 2 bytes (alll zeroes) ... AND if works it's gonna eat up your memory because it returns a dyn_dyn_any.

I tried the script that Martin posted and edited the connection string to "DSN=help". But it crashed the CTRL manager as it tries to open the database.

I also tried to access the data by writing a .NET program. It works but I have to look for a gzip library to uncompresses the data. I am not sure yet if the class GZipStream will do the job.

Because I need the manual quickly I setup a CentOS 7 vm. Hopefully it works better.

I'll let you know.

[fandersen]

the script of Martin does work under CentOS 7 flawlessly. I was able to extract the html pages including referenced resources.

However, creating a PDF from HTML is not as easy as one might think. I tried wkhtmltopdf.org but it is not following the links of the document. You have to add all of the documents your self. I'll try to make a single html file containing all chapters from all files. Then I will replace the links to the documents with bookmarks. Then the links should also work in the resulting PDF. Tests look promising.

I also created a .NET application to export the manal pages under windows. It uses a library for accessing SQLite. So no ODBC connection required.

Qt Compressed Help Extractor

[Gertjan van Schijndel]

Under Windows reading blob values has not been implemented. However it is possible to use the sqlite3 command line client to write the blob value to a file.

I have modified Martins script, now it also works under Windows there it uses the sqlite3 command line client from the SQLite3 ODBC driver to retrieve the blob values. However I guess it is a bit slower than running it under Linux, because the system function takes quite a bit of time.https://www.winccoa.com/fileadmin/image ... 170213.ctl

[fandersen]

Success...

wkhtmltopdf is a powerful tool. I started it in a script using the argument "--read-args-from-stdin" and write all filepaths in a string as one line to the standard input, adding the output path as last argument.

Manual of wkhtmltopdf

See the resulting pdf: Manual as PDF (Aprox. 114 MByte)

The tool noticed a few missing files. I have to investigate why they are missing.

[tobias_raab]

Any news on this topic? Did you find a solution for windows users?

[peter.strumpf]

This script does not work on my V3.15P010, even, if I adjust paths in the beginning to be suitable to my Version?!

Logviewer reports:

WCCILpmon (1), 2018.06.20 10:01:50.108, SYS, INFO, 24/pmon, Erhielt START Befehl von ::1, starte den Manager WCCOActrl(3) auf Index 15
WCCILpmon (1), 2018.06.20 10:01:50.124, SYS, INFO, 1, Manager Start, C:\\Siemens\\Automation\\WinCC_OA\\3.15\\bin\\WCCOActrl.exe -PROJ GettingStarted_3.15 -pmonIndex 15 extract_help_khd.ctl
WCCOActrl (0), 2018.06.20 10:01:50.248, SYS, INFO, 1, Manager Start, PROJ, GettingStarted_3.15, V 3.15 - 3.15 platform Windows AMD64 linked at Feb 27 2018 21:34:56
WCCOActrl (0), 2018.06.20 10:01:50.248, SYS, INFO, 3, Trying to connect to (SYS: 0 Data -num 0 CONN: 1) @ localhost:4897
WCCOActrl (0), 2018.06.20 10:01:50.280, SYS, INFO, 4, Connected to (SYS: 0 Data -num 0 CONN: 1) @ 04651-CGN-PC7.cgn.khd.top (::1)
WCCILdata (0), 2018.06.20 10:01:50.295, SYS, INFO, 4, Connected to (SYS: 1 Ctrl -num 3 CONN: 1) @ 04651-CGN-PC7.cgn.khd.top (::1)
WCCILdata (0), 2018.06.20 10:01:50.326, SYS, INFO, 0, , Manager (SYS: 1 Ctrl -num 3 CONN: 1) initialised
WCCOActrl (3), 2018.06.20 10:01:50.326, SYS, INFO, 6, Initialization by Data Manager finished
WCCOActrl (3), 2018.06.20 10:01:50.342, SYS, INFO, 3, Trying to connect to (SYS: 1 Event -num 0 CONN: 1) @ localhost:4998
WCCOActrl (3), 2018.06.20 10:01:50.342, SYS, INFO, 4, Connected to (SYS: 1 Event -num 0 CONN: 1) @ 04651-CGN-PC7.cgn.khd.top (::1)
WCCILevent (0), 2018.06.20 10:01:50.389, SYS, INFO, 4, Connected to (SYS: 1 Ctrl -num 3 CONN: 1) @ 04651-CGN-PC7.cgn.khd.top (::1)
WCCOActrl (3), 2018.06.20 10:01:50.404, SYS, INFO, 102, Waiting for user names/passwords
WCCOActrl (3), 2018.06.20 10:01:50.404, SYS, INFO, 103, User names/passwords initialized
WCCOActrl (3), 2018.06.20 10:01:52.604, SYS, INFO, 181, Closing connection to (SYS: 1 Data -num 0 CONN: 1)
WCCILdata (0), 2018.06.20 10:01:52.604, SYS, INFO, 39, Connection lost, MAN: (SYS: 1 Ctrl -num 3 CONN: 1), Connection closed
WCCOActrl (3), 2018.06.20 10:01:52.620, SYS, INFO, 181, Closing connection to (SYS: 1 Event -num 0 CONN: 1)
WCCILevent (0), 2018.06.20 10:01:52.635, SYS, INFO, 39, Connection lost, MAN: (SYS: 1 Ctrl -num 3 CONN: 1), Connection closed
WCCOActrl (3), 2018.06.20 10:01:52.635, SYS, INFO, 39, Connection lost, MAN: (SYS: 1 Data -num 0 CONN: 1), Connection closed
WCCOActrl (3), 2018.06.20 10:01:52.666, SYS, INFO, 39, Connection lost, MAN: (SYS: 1 Event -num 0 CONN: 1), Connection closed
WCCOActrl (3), 2018.06.20 10:01:52.682, IMPL, SEVERE, 54, Unexpected state, some connections have been not closed ( 1) at:348 file:D:\\workspaces\\3.15\\workspace\\Exe\\CtrlExt\\CtrlADO\\DatabaseLayer\\ADOWrap.cxx
WCCOActrl (3), 2018.06.20 10:01:52.698, IMPL, SEVERE, 54, Unexpected state, some connections have been not closed ( 1) at:348 file:D:\\workspaces\\3.15\\workspace\\Exe\\CtrlExt\\CtrlADO\\DatabaseLayer\\ADOWrap.cxx