arCHMage is a reader and decompiler for files in the CHM format. This is the format used by Microsoft HTML Help, and is also known as Compiled HTML.

archmage -x <chmfile> [output directory]

Extraction does not overwrite existing directories.

archmage -d <chmfile>

archmage -c (html|text|pdf) <chmfile> [output file]

This feature requires htmldoc(1), and lynx(1) or elinks(1) installed.

archmage -p <port> <chmfile|dir with chm files>

TODO: document how to proxy Apache to running archmage -p.

Then http://youserver/sample.chm will serve raw CHM file, and http://yourserver/sample.chm/ will serve unpacked CHM file view.

arCHMage requires the following libraries:

• Python >= 2.3
• PyCHM
• Beautiful Soup

Optional dependencies:

• htmldoc - converting to plain text, single HTML, PDF formats (Debian/Ubuntu: htmldoc)
• Lynx or ELinks - converting to plain text (Debian/Ubuntu: lynx)

Use the regular setup.py stanza:

python setup.py install