| Subject | RE: [IBO]Rad Studio D2007 help files? |
|---|---|
| Author | Helen Borrie |
| Post date | 2008-01-23T02:29:39Z |
At 08:03 AM 23/01/2008, [various people] wrote:
http://www.time2help.com/doc/html/idh_t2h20_developments.htm
Help systems built with MSHelp2 are .NET "collections". To compile an integrated help system, all files have to be part of the same collection. There's no public way to "plug in" a separate collection into an existing one. It might be that Codegear has some deal with Microsoft to enable it within the RAD Studio environment. There doesn't appear to be any public comment from Codegear at all regarding this - possibly it's available only if you own the RAD Studio product.
There is a compiler for MSHelp2 (hxcomp.exe) which comes as part of Visual Studio up to but not beyond VS2005. MSHelp2 needs a .NET framework, both for development and run-time use. It's hard to get positive information about the required pieces. Microsoft itself recommends converting exiting MSHelp2 assets to CHM. They provide a free conversion tool for this (hxconv.exe).
There are *ways* (many) to get .hlp files into CHM format. It adds an extra layer or two and manual intervention to get all the ducks line up. I have a licence to Help&Manual v.4.5, which has a lot of conversion capabilities. H&M have *already* made the decision NOT to support MSHelp2, considering that M$ has unofficially killed it off.
A guy in Australia (Rob Chandler) runs a lively site for Delphi users developing helpfiles (http://helpware.net). He has a list forum on Yahoo groups which I've subscribed to. I asked a few questions so I'm looking forward to hearing others' views. Rob also develops shareware for working around Microsoft compiler requirements (known as FARhtml).
HTH,
Helen
>>They are developing a Version 2 which is going to support MSHelp2. See
>> Does your help generating software (or its latest version) have an hxs
>> output option?
>
>I have been using Time-2-Help and I don't know if they are still developing
>their product so we should see if they have made these improvements. From
>the looks of their web-site I rather doubt it.
http://www.time2help.com/doc/html/idh_t2h20_developments.htm
>If they have then it should be relatively straight forward to produce new help files for this. I have an email in to their support to find out.They don't explicitly say they will have a Winhelp-to-MSHelp2 convertor but it will be surprising if they don't. IMO the more important question for you to ask them is whether the javaDoc-style comments in the source code as a content resource will still be supported. For the entire development period even towards Time2Help v.1, their focus has been on XML content files.
>If they don't, do you know of any alternatives to look to?From my own research, Codegear might have put their money on a 3-legged horse. MSHelp2 isn't supported in Vista (only HTML help there...CHM). They even developed a "MSHelp3" known as "AP" during Vista development but dropped it in favour of CHM.
Help systems built with MSHelp2 are .NET "collections". To compile an integrated help system, all files have to be part of the same collection. There's no public way to "plug in" a separate collection into an existing one. It might be that Codegear has some deal with Microsoft to enable it within the RAD Studio environment. There doesn't appear to be any public comment from Codegear at all regarding this - possibly it's available only if you own the RAD Studio product.
There is a compiler for MSHelp2 (hxcomp.exe) which comes as part of Visual Studio up to but not beyond VS2005. MSHelp2 needs a .NET framework, both for development and run-time use. It's hard to get positive information about the required pieces. Microsoft itself recommends converting exiting MSHelp2 assets to CHM. They provide a free conversion tool for this (hxconv.exe).
There are *ways* (many) to get .hlp files into CHM format. It adds an extra layer or two and manual intervention to get all the ducks line up. I have a licence to Help&Manual v.4.5, which has a lot of conversion capabilities. H&M have *already* made the decision NOT to support MSHelp2, considering that M$ has unofficially killed it off.
A guy in Australia (Rob Chandler) runs a lively site for Delphi users developing helpfiles (http://helpware.net). He has a list forum on Yahoo groups which I've subscribed to. I asked a few questions so I'm looking forward to hearing others' views. Rob also develops shareware for working around Microsoft compiler requirements (known as FARhtml).
HTH,
Helen