User defined Help

Bob Hansen · Post by **Bob Hansen** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 3:55 pm

User defined Help.

Would be a nice feature if we could modify the Help file with our own notes, examples. Would be much better than the collection of text notes/forum samples that are created and saved over time.

Keep the MJT Help notes as Read Only, but allow us to append/insert in some manner. Maybe show a different font/color/block to distinguish our own notes from what is distributed. How to merge our notes with new releases? I have no idea, but I am sure you can solve that for us.

Thanks for listening.

Monkster · Post by **Monkster** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:19 pm

I worked on a project a few months back where the client needed some CHM files translated from English into Spanish. I used a program called PowerCHM which decompiled the CHM files back into their original HTML format (along with other project file types), ran them through Systran and then recompiled them using PowerCHM. It was a very easy and fast process. The $40 for PowerCHM was money well spent and was indispensable for that project.

Anyway, it's an option that is currently available if one can justify the cost. It will be nice if Longhorn's XML based help will provide this functionality like Support mentioned that it may.

They have a trial version should you be interested. http://www.dawningsoft.com/

I should mention that while I tried only one other CHM decompiler, there are others out there. You may even be able to find one that's free. I know that there are free *nix distros available. Since this package wasn't coming directly out of my pocket, I went with the first one that worked sufficiently to suit my needs.

support · Post by **support** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:38 pm

Annoyingly it used to be possible to annotate help files with the old .hlp format. The current .chm format which supersedes .hlp doesn't let you annotate. Unfortunately it seems progress robbed us of a nice feature.