Vista Help Files.

[Guest]

Hi.

With HLP files no longer instantly available for Vista and CHM support only
receiving critical updates in the future, what tools are there for building
help systems for Vista.

I'm not on Vista, but I need to prepare the documentation for Vista.

I have around a build process which converts around 18,000 XML files to HTML
for the CHM builder.

Any pointers to appropriate tools would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,

Richard Quadling.

 

[Andrew McLaren]

With HLP files no longer instantly available for Vista and CHM support
only
receiving critical updates in the future, what tools are there for
building
help systems for Vista.

Hi Richard,

As far as I can tell, HTML Help 1.4 is still the best way to provide Help
files for Vista.

It is true that HTML Help and HH.EXE is in maintenance mode; but it is by no
means deprected. CHM files will continue to work on Vista for the
foreseeable future.

Vista's own "native" help engine is the "Assistance Platform" or AP, or
HelpPane.exe, version 1.0. However, there are no public APIs for this help
system; so far it looks like this will be a facility only for Microsoft and
OEMs. ISVs will still need to deliver Help in "public" formats such as CHM.

Assistance Platform 2.0 has not been released yet (Server 2008 timeframe?)
but there is no indication that Help system this will be opened up to ISVs
either. I do not understand the rationale for having a closed Help System
like this, but ... there you have it.

HH.EXE continues to run fine on Vista (unlike WinHLP32!) so I would say,
keep producing CHM files and you should be fine. This is the Help system
which gets the most coverage in the Vista version of the Windows SDK!

Other folks may have extra info; hope this helps.