Choosing a Help Format

[Fei Min Lorente]

Thanks, Jack, but we’re using FrameMaker for the content creation and we’re not planning to move to Flare.

Fei Min

From: Jack DeLand [mailto:jackdeland at comcast.net]
Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2013 10:46 AM
To: Fei Min Lorente; grant at hedgewizard.net; 'Robert Lauriston'
Cc: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: Choosing a Help Format

I haven’t kept up with this thread; has anyone mentioned Flare Help Viewer?  It is much more modern than CHM, and runs in .Net 4.0 (required).  Worth a trial.

Jack DeLand, CSM | 734 972 3026 (cell) | jack.deland (skype) | http://www.linkedin.com/in/jackdeland

From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com> [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Fei Min Lorente
Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2013 9:23 AM
To: grant at hedgewizard.net<mailto:grant at hedgewizard.net>; Robert Lauriston
Cc: framers at lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: RE: Choosing a Help Format

Thanks for the suggestion, Grant, but I’m not clear on whether it supports Windows 7. We’ll look into it.

Yup, Rob confirmed that MS Help Viewer only works with Visual Studio. So it looks like we’re stuck with MS HTML Help (.chm), which is a bit more modern than WinHelp. Eclipse Help and OmniHelp are also still in the running. We found that we can do a rudimentary context-sensitive help with any of them if we link to a URL and don’t try to link to a mid-page anchor.

Thanks to everyone who responded. With your help, we are very close to making a decision.

Fei Min
From: grant at hedgewizard.net<mailto:grant at hedgewizard.net> [mailto:grant at hedgewizard.net]
Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2013 7:48 PM
To: Robert Lauriston
Cc: Fei Min Lorente; framers at lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: Re: Choosing a Help Format

Not only that, but MS stopped support  for the 32-bit help viewer. ( WinHlp32.exe)
However, they do still distribute it  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917607 , albeit with some fairly scary warnings.

There is an alternative viewer: Help Explorer Viewer ( http://download.cnet.com/Help-Explorer-Viewer/3000-6675_4-10666661.html)

Grant Hogarth


> On November 27, 2013 at 9:41 AM Robert Lauriston <robert at lauriston.com<mailto:robert at lauriston.com>> wrote:
>
>
> There's no free runtime help viewer? That would explain why no one
> uses that format.
>
> On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 7:54 AM, Fei Min Lorente
> <FeiMin.Lorente at onsemi.com<mailto:FeiMin.Lorente at onsemi.com>> wrote:
> > We’ve been in touch with Rob Chandler (creator of mshcMigrate) and he’s
> > helped us realize that I might have been describing our challenge
> > incorrectly. The developers are using VS 2010 to create an application that
> > will run independently from Visual Studio, using .NET 4.0 as the framework.
> > From everything we’ve read, it seems that MS Help Viewer only works if
> > Visual Studio is installed; is that right?

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