In the current release of MAME (MAME 0.194), the only offline docs provided with MAME Windows _binaries_ are MAN files and the contents of the SWLIST folder. For MAME Windows builds we're currently recommending to visit
http://docs.mamedev.org OR download the MAME source and create offline help using Sphinx and ReadTheDocs. This may change in the near future.
1. MAN files. These end in file extension ".1" and are mostly used in Linux/BSD distributions and may not have been updated recently. In order to view them in Windows, while they are technically viewable with text editors, you really need a MAN binary for Windows to view it as it is intended.
Some suggested places to get a man file formatter and viewer:
a. a full Cygwin installation:
http://www.cygwin.com/
b. the Windows Subsystem for Linux:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_S ... _for_Linux (don't know if it actually does, but I assume so).
c. a formatter such as "mandoc" or "groff", Linux tools, built for Windows:
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/groff.htm or
https://embedeo.org/ws/doc/man_windows/
After formatting, a MAN file can be rather pretty, converted to HTML or otherwise.
2. SWLIST. The SWLIST subdirectory under the DOCS folder, contains notes on software that has not yet been added to the MAME software lists, but was created by project members and contributors. As more and more info gets absorbed into the XML files that are in the /hash/ folder, it is possible that /docs/swlist/ will be emptied and disappear.
---
A historical note: No longer provided with MAME packages: In the past, MAME included a healthy amount of offline user documentation. MAME 0.176 (July 27, 2016) was the last to include this in a standard .txt file format.
Between MAME 0.177 (August 31, 2016) and MAME 0.188 (July 26, 2017), MAME included those documents, freshened and updated, in a source file format known as reStructuredText files (RST). MAME made use of a Python-based converter/formatter known as Sphinx to convert these docs into any desired file format (HTML, PDF, Markup, Markdown, Text). MAME binary packages did not include the tools necessary to do this, but it could be done by downloading Sphinx (
http://www.sphinx-doc.org ) and ReadTheDocs and converting yourself.
Starting from MAME 0.189 (August 30, 2017), the reStructuredText files (RST) for use with Sphinx were kept in the MAME sourcecode package. The binary packages stopped including it.
Ergo the current MAME binary download does not include the "old-style docs" in any known format. Just Linux MAN files.
Not sure what caused this to take place, but we will solve it.