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I have long been a fan of on-line help files (as opposed to printed manuals), but used to hate writing them.
Several years ago, I purchased a product called dotHLP to help me create a help file for a commercial app. I had tried several help authoring tools in the past, but rejected them either on price or functionality – they were either too expensive, or too complex for my needs. I tried dotHLP, and bought it at once.
When I started to write PPC applications, I decided to include a help file. I wanted to use dotHLP, but PPC help files were not supported. I bugged the author, and it was on 'the list'.
dotHLP continued to evolve, and I have continued to bug the author to add support for PocketPC help files. The product evolved into Fast-Help (http://www.fast-help.com), with loads of new features, but no support for PPC. A few weeks ago, I got a pre-release version, tested it, and made a couple of suggestions.
Finally, the product was released (I have only just got around to writing this article – sorry), and it now supports:-
- .hlp
- .chm
- Website help
- Printable manuals
- MS Word manuals
- PDF manuals
- POCKET PC HELP FILE FORMAT!!!
Even better, it supports importing files, and then produces help files. When I first produced a help file for PPC, I seem to remember it took me at least a day to produce and test a text only htm file of less than 6k bytes. This I did with much reference to this DEVBUZZ article (http://www.devbuzz.com/content/pocket_commando_004_pg2.asp)
My next help project was much more ambitious - it included 18 screen shots, was 20k bytes long, and took me about 3 days (OK - I am not very quick at churning out HTML).
The new version of Fast-Help arrived just as I was due to write a help file (and a manual!) for a new application we are about to roll out. We have now progressed to > 50k, 70 diagrams/screen shots and a bound printed manual that ships with the software - Time approx 1 day.
Fast-Help is a joy to work with - it is written by developers FOR developers. So, let's go ahead and create a test help. Simply click on File>New Project, and enter your help project title.
Next, click on the ‘New Heading’ icon 
. You are prompted to enter your title, and the context string is automatically generated.
Click on OK, and then simply add your text (and Images). Keep entering new topics. Links to other topics are a breeze to create. Simply highlight the word you wish to link, and right click
Fast-Help automatically shows you all the topics you have created, and if your ‘link’ matches a topic, it will automatically select and highlight the topic for you.
Simply click on OK and the link is created. I am a great believer in ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, and scatter my help file liberally with images. Again, this is no problem to Fast-Help, click on Insert>Image and select your image, and it appears in-line in the help file.
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