HTML Help Distribution

[Tony]

I'm new to help authoring and this may seem like a very simple question. I'm
an engineer for a large company. We have somewhat complex manufacturing
systems. Unfortunately much of the documentation resides in all sorts of
company authored documents. My thought was to use the HTML Help Workshop to
bring together what I believe is important for my job. At some point when
the help document is complete, I'd like to pass it around to other engineers.
HTML Help Workshop says "Decide whether you will distribute your help system
with a program, or on a Web site. " I would like to give my help file via a
CD or my colleagues could ftp it to their own desktops. Which do I choose,
(1) I'm not distributing with an application, (2) its not going on the web?
What is the right answer here?

[Rob Cavicchio]

That information in the Workshop documentation is just a guideline that
primarily applies to Help systems designed to accompany products.

It sounds like you simply want to create a compiled Help (CHM) file and
distribute it by itself. You can certainly do that. It will run on any
recent Windows system if you just double-click it. Over the past several
years there have been some Windows security updates that might cause mild
headaches with getting the darn thing to open, but in your situation they
shouldn't be difficult to work around. Easiest thing would be if people copy
the CHM file from the CD to their hard disk before trying to open it.

Post by Tony
I'm new to help authoring and this may seem like a very simple question.
I'm
an engineer for a large company. We have somewhat complex manufacturing
systems. Unfortunately much of the documentation resides in all sorts of
company authored documents. My thought was to use the HTML Help Workshop to
bring together what I believe is important for my job. At some point when
the help document is complete, I'd like to pass it around to other engineers.
HTML Help Workshop says "Decide whether you will distribute your help system
with a program, or on a Web site. " I would like to give my help file via a
CD or my colleagues could ftp it to their own desktops. Which do I choose,
(1) I'm not distributing with an application, (2) its not going on the web?
What is the right answer here?

[Tony]

Rob,
Can you suggest a textbook (preferably Microsoft Press) that can get me
going quickly? I went to Amazon and only found a single book and it was
written for Win95.

Post by Rob Cavicchio
That information in the Workshop documentation is just a guideline that
primarily applies to Help systems designed to accompany products.
It sounds like you simply want to create a compiled Help (CHM) file and
distribute it by itself. You can certainly do that. It will run on any
recent Windows system if you just double-click it. Over the past several
years there have been some Windows security updates that might cause mild
headaches with getting the darn thing to open, but in your situation they
shouldn't be difficult to work around. Easiest thing would be if people copy
the CHM file from the CD to their hard disk before trying to open it.

Post by Tony
I'm new to help authoring and this may seem like a very simple question.
I'm
an engineer for a large company. We have somewhat complex manufacturing
systems. Unfortunately much of the documentation resides in all sorts of
company authored documents. My thought was to use the HTML Help Workshop to
bring together what I believe is important for my job. At some point when
the help document is complete, I'd like to pass it around to other engineers.
HTML Help Workshop says "Decide whether you will distribute your help system
with a program, or on a Web site. " I would like to give my help file via a
CD or my colleagues could ftp it to their own desktops. Which do I choose,
(1) I'm not distributing with an application, (2) its not going on the web?
What is the right answer here?

[Ulrich Kulle [MVP]]

Hello Tony,

first of all - don't hesitate asking all your questions in this newsgroup
here.

I read your words "much of the documentation resides in all sorts of company
authored documents". So, you may be warned - help authoring and documentation
is a wide field. And it depends on the IT-structure in your company.
Only some keywords for googling to spend days and weeks of reading: DITA,
DocBook, "Business Intelligence metadata", etc.

What I mean, you have to think about the source of (and for) your
documentation. "single-sourcing" is one thing in this context. Microsoft
HTMLHelp (CHM) is about ten years old now (but working in a good way). XML as
source is used often today (see DITA, DocBook). Please note CHM files are
based on HTML files. All content must be "transformed" to HTML (e.g. XML +
XSLT => HTML).

But don't worry and back to your question. You know, there is only one old
book about HTMLHelp (CHM):
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1572316039

Some links for you now and I think you don't need the book when starting
with HTMLHelp:

http://www.helpware.net/htmlhelp/basics.htm
Note following turial links as a beginner:
http://www.helpware.net/downloads/HelpOnHTMLHelp.zip
http://www.mvps.org/htmlhelpcenter/htmlhelp/hhtutorials.html#char_hhw

And of course:
http://www.mshelpwiki.com/
http://www.helpware.net/
http://www.help-info.de
http://www.grainge.org/

What I'd really recommend is Rob Chandler's shareware tool FAR from
http://www.helpware.net/FAR. It's a low priced tool and the wizards are
great. You may need web-based help generated by FAR later
e.g.:
http://www.help-info.de/en/redirect.htm
http://www.helpware.net/hh_start.htm

One tip - don't look at all the options of FAR when starting.
1. Put your HTML files to structured subfolders of your project folder e.g.
welcome.htm
design.css
First_Steps\download.htm
First_Steps\starting_program.htm
How_to_extend\extend_menu.htm
How_to_extend\power_function.htm
images\gui_screenshot.jpg

2. Drag and drop these files to FAR
3. Start the wizard for HTMLHelp 1.x
4. ready ..

HTH
--
Best regards
Ulrich Kulle
Microsoft MVP - Help
*******************
http://www.help-info.de
*******************

Post by Tony
Rob,
Can you suggest a textbook (preferably Microsoft Press) that can get me
going quickly? I went to Amazon and only found a single book and it was
written for Win95.

[Pete Lees]

Hi, Tony,

Can you suggest a textbook (preferably Microsoft Press) that can get me going
quickly?

Just to add that Jeannine Klein's book "Building Enhanced HTML Help with
DHTML and CSS" is better than the "Official Microsoft Html Help Authoring
Kit", although both are a little outdated now, and neither is comprehensive.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0130179299

The best HTML Help resources are available for free online, as Ulrich
mentions, and the Char James-Tanny tutorial to which he provides a link is as
good a place to start as any.

http://frogleg.mvps.org/helptechnologies/htmlhelp/hhtutorials.html#char_hhw

Pete

[Tony]

Ulrich/Pete
Thank you for the insight and links. It will take me some time to digest
everything you all have provided me. But I see an opportunity to assist
other manufacturing engineers who come to our company and need a fast
resource to get started. HTML Help Workshop seems to be that conduit to
this. Thank you both. I'm sure I'll be asking again in the near future
gentlemen.

Tony

Post by Pete Lees
Hi, Tony,

Can you suggest a textbook (preferably Microsoft Press) that can get me going
quickly?

Just to add that Jeannine Klein's book "Building Enhanced HTML Help with
DHTML and CSS" is better than the "Official Microsoft Html Help Authoring
Kit", although both are a little outdated now, and neither is comprehensive.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0130179299
The best HTML Help resources are available for free online, as Ulrich
mentions, and the Char James-Tanny tutorial to which he provides a link is as
good a place to start as any.
http://frogleg.mvps.org/helptechnologies/htmlhelp/hhtutorials.html#char_hhw
Pete

[Ulrich Kulle [MVP]]

OK Tony - your questions to help authoring are welcome here ..

Ulrich

Post by Tony
Ulrich/Pete
Thank you both. I'm sure I'll be asking again in the near future
gentlemen.
Tony

[Tony]

Went and downloaded FAR. For now, I'm visualizing how to structure the help
system. The first thing that comes to mind is the ability of the Help
Document to complete searches in pdf based documents.

My guess is to create a link to a group of pdf pages (schematics). Will
the HTML Help Workshop/FAR allow me to find words that reside in both HTML
and the PDF documents?

Post by Ulrich Kulle [MVP]
OK Tony - your questions to help authoring are welcome here ..
Ulrich

Post by Tony
Ulrich/Pete
Thank you both. I'm sure I'll be asking again in the near future
gentlemen.
Tony

[Pete Lees]

Hi, Tony,

Post by Tony
Went and downloaded FAR. For now, I'm visualizing how to structure the help
system. The first thing that comes to mind is the ability of the Help
Document to complete searches in pdf based documents.
My guess is to create a link to a group of pdf pages (schematics). Will
the HTML Help Workshop/FAR allow me to find words that reside in both HTML
and the PDF documents?

Not the PDF documents, as only the HTML files are parsed for full-text
search information at compile time.

Pete

[Bruce Kvam]

If much of your data is not HTML files, you may be better off putting
everything into a folder hierarchy, and then copying that hierarchy to
a CD. You can also use WinZIP or some other zip utility to put those
files into a single file. Many versions of Windows now can treat ZIP
files like regular folders.

[Rob Chandler [MVP]]

Hi Tony
This ability to search across all help (CHM and PDF) is lacking.
Here's what we did in a couple of projects. May be of intertest...

1. We created a HTML page for each PDF. The page had a link to the
external PDF, an introduction and ... I copied the entire
contents of the PDF (text) into the bottom of the HTML and
wrapped it in <div style="display:none"> text </div>
so that it did not show (put the HH Compiler found the text
and added it to the full text search).

And in other projects...

2. We pasted the entire PDF into a HTML page. So we had
duplication. At the top of the page we also had a link to
the PDF.

Maybe not very attractive but it did allow our customers to
find all text from withing the CHM. :-)

Cheers
Rob

Post by Tony
Went and downloaded FAR. For now, I'm visualizing how to structure the help
system. The first thing that comes to mind is the ability of the Help
Document to complete searches in pdf based documents.
My guess is to create a link to a group of pdf pages (schematics). Will
the HTML Help Workshop/FAR allow me to find words that reside in both HTML
and the PDF documents?

Post by Ulrich Kulle [MVP]
OK Tony - your questions to help authoring are welcome here ..
Ulrich

Post by Tony
Ulrich/Pete
Thank you both. I'm sure I'll be asking again in the near future
gentlemen.
Tony