Creating help files

[ASTDan]

I am currently using Microsoft's HTML workshop and have been having problems.

What other tools do people use to create help files.

Thanks

Dan

[smercurio_fc]

Well, this is a bit off-topic as far as LabVIEW, but what kind of problems? Writing the HTML files? I hope you're not using that, unless you enjoy writing HTML raw. There are plenty of WYSIWYG editors out there. Or, are you having some other problem? 

[ASTDan]

I didn't know where to put this thread.  I thought there was some tie ins to LabVIEW since you can call a .chm file from LabVIEW easily.

I am using Microsoft Word to create the HTML files and then HTML Help workshop to compile the .chm file.  I finally got it working.

I was reading up on Microsoft's HTML Help workshop and they are not going to support it anymore.  It is also an older tool.  I am wondering what other people use, and if there was something that was really cool and easier to use relative to Help Workshop.

[smercurio_fc]

I used to use a product called HelpMaker. That was several years ago. It had a lot of features and wasn't too hard to use, but unfortunately, it was buggy at the time, so I gave up on it. I cannot say what the current version is like, but it seems as if it's still in active development. The freeware license only applies for non-commercial use.

[battler.]

There are other recent and useful threads on this topic.  Try searching for them.

[rolfk]

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smercurio_fc wrote:
I used to use a product called HelpMaker. That was several years ago. It had a lot of features and wasn't too hard to use, but unfortunately, it was buggy at the time, so I gave up on it. I cannot say what the current version is like, but it seems as if it's still in active development. The freeware license only applies for non-commercial use.

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I had also once tried the HelpMaker tool. For simple documentation it was actually quite fine and had the benefit that you could create both online help files and documentation from the same sources as well as importing the generated RTF format from LabVIEW as a starting point to creating library help files. At that time the software seemed truely freeware and yes there were bugs in, that got fixed in rather frequent releases to then include new features with new bugs 

However I lost a bit of sight on that endaviour and a recent request prompted me to look into it again. Seems Vizacc had quite a bit of disagreement with the original developers of HelpMaker (which seems to have been developed in Delphi) and they abandoned that project completely to reengineer the entire project inhouse in C++. When that will be released seems to be still undetermined, support for the old version is abandoned, so it seems not anymore an interesting application. Also now there seems to be a clear free for non-commercial use clause only wheras before it was clear free for all use.