Choosing a Help Format

[Jeremy H. Griffith]

On Fri, 22 Nov 2013 15:53:28 +0000, Fei Min Lorente 
<FeiMin.Lorente at onsemi.com> wrote:

>More clarification: we're planning to just set up a 
>button or a menu item in the VS-based user interface 
>that triggers the help system, and the help system 
>will run in its own application not in VS, so we 
>shouldn't be forced to use MS Help Viewer.

Bad Idea.  AFAIK, Help Viewer is the only way 
you can get CSH.  If a developer hits F1 and
nothing happens, big Fail.  It's unrealistic
to expect them to open another app for help.
Help Viewer is not so bad; other Mif2Go users, 
like Rockwell, have been producing it for a
long time (counting its predecessors too).

>And we weren't worried about OmniHelp losing files; 
>we are worried about users going in and messing with 
>them. Is there any way to lock them down?

Why would anyone do that?  We've never heard of 
it happening.  And there are *no* Help systems
that run on the client that can prevent it.  Even
AIR, Adobe's proprietary ripoff of WebKit, can be 
hacked in a couple of minutes by anyone motivated.

>We're very curious about using standalone Eclipse Help; has 
>anyone here used it for a non-Eclipse-based product? If not, 
>I'll take this question to the eclipse_tw group.

There's a good reason nobody does that.  It has
a huge footprint, a lengthy install that few will
be willing to put up with, and is high maintenance.
Even dot updates often break working systems.

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  <jeremy at omsys.com>    http://mif2go.com/