Choosing a Help Format

[Robert Lauriston]

OmniHelp is web help. "Web help" is not a standard format but a
generic term for help deliverables that use HTML and JavaScript.
RoboHelp, Flare, and WebWorks ePublisher all have their own
proprietary versions of web help, in some cases several versions.

Which language in Visual Studio? It supports C++, JavaScript, C#,
Visual Basic, and F# out of the box, plus other languages. Which help
formats are appropriate depends on the language.

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:41 AM, Fei Min Lorente
<FeiMin.Lorente at onsemi.com> wrote:
> I’ve got documentation in structured FrameMaker 10 and Mif2Go. I’ve produced
> Eclipse Help routinely in the past, but for the first time, we’re creating a
> user interface in Visual Studio. We want to integrate the Help so that a
> button or menu item in the UI will open a Help window, complete with a table
> of contents and search facility. An index would be nice, and
> context-sensitive links to the documentation would be nice, but are lower
> priority.
>
>
>
> The software is intended for Windows operating systems only, and it’s
> supposed to be a standalone installation—no internet or network required.
>
>
>
> We are considering Microsoft HTML Help, but have a few concerns because it
> seems somewhat dated and lacking in active development on Microsoft’s part.
> We are also considering standalone Eclipse Help because it’s being
> maintained and we can leverage our previous experience, but we are somewhat
> daunted by its size and the fact that we couldn’t find anyone using it when
> they aren’t producing an Eclipse-based product. WebHelp requires us to buy
> RoboHelp, which isn’t out of the question, but I’m not sure we can justify
> the cost because we don’t need it to run cross-platform nor from a server,
> and our developer is a bit concerned about the uncompiled set of output
> files being too easy for customers to mess with. Could anyone suggest any
> other Help formats we should look at? Can anyone endorse a Help format or
> tell us which ones we should avoid? Can anyone (besides Jeremy J) tell me
> about their experience with OmniHelp?