CHM vs HLP: fight!

[W!ke]

ford prefect


Contact me if you want so we can discuss this some more
email: eengel76@softhome.net

Made a quick chm file, so it might need fine-tuning

Greetings Mike.

[ghisler(Author)]

Wow, looks very nice! However, it takes TWICE the space (zipped) than the Windows HLP file. I'm not using the HLP file compression because it's quite poor, CAB is much better.

Btw, can Robohelp also create an 'online help' from this? I mean, HTML or PHP pages which I could put online for interactive browsing of the help without downloading it? If yes, this would be nice to have!

[Valentino]

2ghisler(Author)
Probably, CHM could be just unpacked for this.

[ford prefect]

Yes the size of the "experimental" chm is enormous despite the fact that the chm is a compressed format. This is because the html pages created via conversion from the rtf are awfully converted (right-click on any page in the chm and select View source to see the mess) It would make a difference when the htm source would be created by "human" e.g in some reasonable html editor which creates clean source. I presume that this way the help could be less than 100kB long (uncompressed).

Yes the RoboHelp is capable of converting help files into an WebHelp which is actually an Help that can be viewed via an web browser. (an online help if you want) It can use an JAVA applet for the topics/index/search tabs so these will also be correctly displayed on any browser

Copy/Paste this link to your browser to see how it can look like http://www.webpark.sk/fourtytwo/totalcmd-webhelp/totalcmd.htm (Another experiment from me, but this one is "undocumented" - [no link on site] and will disapear from my site in a few days...)

BTW W!ke your last post has the time 23:06!!! And I thought that I was the only NightRunner at work (On Sunday I finishet at exactly 0:00am). Be sure that I will drop you a mail later...

[W!ke]

HI,

Yes the html pages look bad.
Also noticed some layout problems in the chm I send to christian, eg the ini pages look bad, but easy to fix.

I will look into the size thing, maybe there is an easy fix.
As I do not know all the settings of robohelp , i think there will be something whcih will make the chm smaller and better.

Greetings Mike.

[piranha]

The best software I've ever seen for help authoring is Help and Manual.
To cleanup word html files you may use: Word HTML CleanUp utility

Help and Manual let's you publish your document in multiple formats HLP, CHM, PDF, HTML which saves a lot of work. Write it once and publish to the format you like. Also their screenshot taking tool is the best I've ever seen.

[piranha]

Hmm.. Help & Manual has two options of importing file: decompile hlp file or use existing .hlp project source.
Since I didn't have .hlp project source I tried with decompilation.
The original .hlp file size = 438'997 bytes
chm file (after decompilation) = 305'472 bytes

so as you see.. There is advantage of .chm

[ford prefect]

Nice to observe how this thread degenerated to an Help Authoring show off

I must say that Help & Manual is also a really good tool. We tried this one some time ago too. But sadly there was no reason why to buy another license for a Help authoring tool since we already own one

I think there is no reason to use an CleanUp utility since the decompiled rtf files are the purest possible (No additional MS Word tags). The only problem is how good the converter to html is. But that's another story...

Since I want to learn here something I'd like to ask piranha how to get rid of error messages produced by the H&M which look like this one:
Topic fkdo9r references an undefined topic: "conljmeov"
Which actually causes some topics to be excluded from the chm
I still stick with the shareware of H&M 3.2 and I'd also like to master this tool too

And finally a question for Mr. Ghisler:
Why were you interested in the online-help??? As this does not make much sense to me because most of the users can be "advised" to look into the manual bundled with the T-Com it self.

And secondary IMHO if any chm should be available then only in a "downloadable" version which wouldn't be included in the T-Com install package. So those users who prefer chm could have this.
But still I don't see any reason why there should be actually two manuals with almost the same content The functionality of the winhelp is sufficient enough. (and in w2k or higher or with good mouse drivers in w9x you can even scroll it with mouse wheel )

Maybe an addition in the form of an topic file (.cnt) would be an better improvement concerning the manual...

[ghisler(Author)]

Why were you interested in the online-help??? As this does not make much sense to me because most of the users can be "advised" to look into the manual bundled with the T-Com it self.

This is useful for those who want to check what the program does BEFORE actually downloading it!

[ford prefect]

Oh I see now
Didn't think about this posibility. An advice from Micro$oft marketing department would be maybe valuable. They got everyone's atention even thus the product is sooooo bare


Now let's gather some opinions about the manual form. My first poll in this "new" forum.

[Black Dog]

[face=courier]On 11-03-2003 17:55:39 +0000 ford prefect wrote:

fp> The functionality of the winhelp is sufficient enough.

AFAIK you can't search a page for certain word(s) in winhelp.
2Val
It looks like my efforts to make from you The Manual Reader do not lost in vain... "Vot teper' tebia hvalyu ya..." [/face]

[Valentino]

The original .hlp file size = 438'997 bytes
chm file (after decompilation) = 305'472 bytes
so as you see.. There is advantage of .chm

CHM is compressed. HLP files can be compressed too but TotalCmd.hlp is not compressed because uncompressed HLP is compressed by CAB (installation package) better than compressed HLP, and thus TC installation pack has smaller size. So to compare fairly you should know compressed TotalCmd.hlp file size.

"Vot teper' tebia hvalyu ya..."

I'm so happy... Going to buy some wine and celebrate this.
Actually I read manuals but first I try to get smth work intuitively. Quite big experience of PC usage allows me to do this in most cases. And I read history.txt to get to know about every new features.
BTW, is there some manual for Mozilla? I decided to give it a try and noticed that when I click on a post while holding down Control key, the post is surrounded by green rectangle. And I want to know what for is this.

[piranha]

I'd like to ask piranha how to get rid of error messages produced by the H&M which look like this one:
Topic fkdo9r references an undefined topic: "conljmeov"

True that. I noticed that this error occurs when decompiling HLP file.
I guess you get better results when you IMPORT existing .hlp project.
I don't decompile HLP files. I author them. And I thought that since Christian has source, he could use (or at least) try this software.
And it always will require some manual work (like assigning topics and stuff), coz 1:1 conversion is impossible in case of complicated projects.
Peace.

[Black Dog]

[face=courier]On 11-03-2003 22:20:10 +0000 Valentino wrote:

V> I'm so happy... Going to buy some wine and celebrate
V> this.

Well, I knew that alcohol make a horrible things with Terrans, but I never thought they can be so dreadful... Do you remember what wine exactly did you drank? Or was it "palionaya" vodka? [/face]

[Valentino]

Or was it "palionaya" vodka?

It was two cakes of soap, three bottles of shampoo and four hours of work...
"Vot i maechka nashlas'..."

How do you find me after washing off all that cosmetic dirt?