finding Mif2Go macros to replace WWP functionality

[Jeremy H. Griffith]

On Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:40:44 -0400, Jim Owens <jowens at magma.ca> wrote:

>We're currently using WWP 2003 to generate CHM from our Frame docs, but 
>since there's no support past FM 7.2, we're evaluating our options. This 
>week I've been looking at Mif2Go.

Good!  You're not the only WWP user doing that...  ;-)

>We want to make the most of our existing Frame markup for Related Topic 
>buttons and drop-down hotspots. Out of the box, Mif2Go doesn't support 
>the WWP system for drop-down hotspots, 

We do have one of our own with the usual large set of options.  
See User's Guide par. 6.9, "Including expandable sections in 
Help topics".  We're not familiar with the WWP method, but if
you tell us what the markup for it is in Frame, we'll see what
we can do to support that out of the box.

>and it doesn't support buttons based on a Related Topics list. 
>(ALinks and KLinks are supported.)

I don't quite understand that; "Related Topics" *are* ALinks.
See par. 8.6.3, "Configuring ALink and KLink jumps for HTML Help".

You might also want to look at our browser-based OmniHelp; we
have a different way of using ALinks in it that provides a more 
consistent navigation UI.  We added a tab in the left navigation 
pane for Related, and show all the topics that share an ALink 
with the current topic in it.  No button or popup list needed.

>But Mif2Go has a macro language that seems to be up to the task. The 
>necessary macros would be virtually the same for anyone contemplating a 
>migration from WWP. This leads me to ask whether anyone has already 
>developed "boilerplate" macros that they are willing to share.

We'd like to know that too; if they exist, we'd be happy to include
them in the User's Guide, and in a macro library file that would
be part of the distro.  We don't actually have WWP ourselves, so
we'll need the help of those migrating to Mif2Go from WWP to do that.

Thank you for raising this issue!

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  <jeremy at omsys.com>  http://www.omsys.com/