From: garyd@netcom.com (Gary Dietz)
Subject: WINHELP.EXE replacement: summary and comments
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 92 23:08:33 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Followup-To: comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.tools

To all who answered (and all who are interested),

Thank you very much for the time spent on your thoughtful answers.
Here is my summary, comments, and questions.  Please help
our continuing 'help' education!!!

A) Full-text search

A number of people said that beacuse windows help files are
compressed, that a full-text search would be slow.  But then how does
OS/2's IPF or BookManager do such a fast search on their compressed
help files?  I was under the impression that IBM used a full-text
indexing procedure during compilation.  I know that IBM's searches
are pretty fast under IPF (and pretty amazing under BookManager, at
least two years ago when I last used it).

B) Keywords and indexing

One poster said that I would be better off spending time
developing a good set of keywords and cross references.
Excellent advice, but there are some practical problems.

Currently in our product, terminology hasn't been refined.  And
it is really time consuming to go into WinWord footnotes and change all
of the keywords every time a term changes.

Yes, a good index is ALWAYS a good thing.  They are just very hard to do
well.  Ideally, I would like an index AND full-text search.

C) Bitmaps and help 'layout'

There is a level of control of placement of bitmaps in the various
versions of the 3.0 and 3.1 help compiler.  3.1 support for hypertext
hot spots has improved.

But, there is no real way to force very specific text flows and
bitmap placements.  Plus, there is no way to turn off the
automatic re-flow of text when you re-size a help window.

There is also a build tag in the help project to force the use
of a specific font.  (But only one font for ALL!  Has anyone tried
this?)

D) Replacing WINHELP and HCx.EXE ain't such a bad idea

Some said that "WINHELP" is what the user is used to. . . so use it.

My opinion:  Not a good enough reason to use it IF something
else becomes available.  Hell, make your help system LOOK like
winhelp.  Just make it more powerful.

My opinion again:  Borland dialogs don't look like MS dialogs.  . . does
that stop people from using (or liking) them in their windows apps?
Plus, ask most windows users about online help, and they don't know how
to use it.  So the 'built in' user knowledge of WinHelp isn't really
going to be lost by going to something better.

Other companies are starting to do some cool stuff.  I guess it is Lotus
and their SmartHelp (correct product name?) that is really pushing the
multi-media side of online help.

Plus, I am assuming that someobody will start to sell some stuff that
will take advantage of WINHELP 3.1's ability to call macros.

E) Is there truth to the rumor that Microsoft disbanded their Help
group?

F)  What is TPW?

G) How does one access the Microsoft WinHelp conference on Compuserve?

H) Help AUTHORING tools like RoboHelp or DOc-2-Help are just that. . . Tools
that feed 'source text' to the windows help compiler.

A new help viewer would very likely require a new help compiler, as MS
fails to document the .HLP file format.  Thus, they will change it the
minute someone comes out with a better viewer.

Cheers,

Gary Dietz



-- 

   "To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult."  -Plutarch

Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.tools