Ai carumba! No official help tool at all??

[Aaron Lawrence]

Hi all. I was just reading the links someone posted about the official
help engine. That's disconcerting: there doesn't seem to actually be ANY
officially supported tool for doing help in applications!

All the existing tools are either deprecated or not to be used for
applications. HTMLHelp (CHM) seems to still be the "best" one but
Microsoft state clearly they will not enhance it, or even fix minor bugs.

This is quite a bizarre situation. I can only speculate that there must
have been a big battle inside Microsoft between several teams, that
couldn't be resolved in time for Vista release. But it's still not
solved even now.

Any comments?

[Pete Lees]

Hi, Aaron,

Post by Aaron Lawrence
All the existing tools are either deprecated or not to be used for
applications. HTMLHelp (CHM) seems to still be the "best" one but
Microsoft state clearly they will not enhance it, or even fix minor bugs.

Yes, that's about the strength of it. For the time being, you'd normally
want to deliver the online help for a Windows desktop application in HTML
Help format, although obviously there are other, non-Microsoft technologies
available (RoboHelp AIR, the myriad of browser-based formats, and so on).

Post by Aaron Lawrence
This is quite a bizarre situation. I can only speculate that there must
have been a big battle inside Microsoft between several teams, that
couldn't be resolved in time for Vista release. But it's still not
solved even now.

Officially (see
http://blogs.msdn.com/apblog/archive/2005/05/04/414666.aspx), the reason for
the delay in making Vista (AP) Help available as a general purpose format is
that:

"we had clear feedback from the last PDC and from WritersUA in 2004 that in
order to adopt a new Help engine, you need it to run on more versions of
Windows than just Longhorn. The rearchitecture this required ate into our
schedule such that we had to limit extensibility for this first release, but
we are set up in good position to better meet your needs in the future. While
it is not Microsoft policy to comment on unannounced products, it is
important to us (even personally) to release a general purpose Help engine as
soon as we can."

Of course, this information was posted more than three years ago. There have
been some developments on the AP Help front since then, such as the release
of the AP Help SDK last year, but in general things have gone very quiet.

Microsoft does appear to be working on a new help platform (see
http://blogs.msdn.com/aprilr/default.aspx), but I believe this is primarily
intended as the replacement for Help 2.0 rather HTML Help.

Pete

[Aaron Lawrence]

Hi Pete,

Thanks for your thoughts...

Post by Pete Lees
Yes, that's about the strength of it. For the time being, you'd normally
want to deliver the online help for a Windows desktop application in HTML
Help format, although obviously there are other, non-Microsoft technologies
available (RoboHelp AIR, the myriad of browser-based formats, and so on).

Oh indeed, that is what we are using, and CHM is mostly pretty good -
IMO, Microsoft's efforts since then have been 1 step forward, 2 steps
back. However, CHM does feel a little bit unpolished or unfinished,
especially the editor.

Post by Pete Lees
Microsoft does appear to be working on a new help platform (see
http://blogs.msdn.com/aprilr/default.aspx), but I believe this is primarily
intended as the replacement for Help 2.0 rather HTML Help.

Wouldn't it still be their future help platform?

"vetted an architecture and decided on the 'v1.0' set of features for
our new help platform. [...] everyone agrees - this is going to be cool."

Ouch ... sounds a bit blue sky to me. If they're only deciding on
features and talking about coolness, they are years from release ...

Oh well ... so long as they don't deprecate CHM :)

[Black_Mama]

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are looking for and it will appear.
such as weddings or html or even how to write emails
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Post by Aaron Lawrence
Hi all. I was just reading the links someone posted about the official
help engine. That's disconcerting: there doesn't seem to actually be ANY
officially supported tool for doing help in applications!
All the existing tools are either deprecated or not to be used for
applications. HTMLHelp (CHM) seems to still be the "best" one but
Microsoft state clearly they will not enhance it, or even fix minor bugs.
This is quite a bizarre situation. I can only speculate that there must
have been a big battle inside Microsoft between several teams, that
couldn't be resolved in time for Vista release. But it's still not solved
even now.
Any comments?