Newsgroup: it.comp.lang.visual-basic
Titolo: Utility per Help

Mi potete indicare quali sono, a vostro avviso, le migliori utility per
generare gli Help (intendo per la scrittura dei sorgenti in RTF, perchè ho
usato word ma la cosa mi è sembrata troppo incasinata)


La migliore utility che ho trovato si chiama " HELP & MANUALS ", la trovi al
sito della winfiles.
Hai pensato a passare all'help in HTML ?
La MS distribuisce gratuitamente un compilatore per questo tipo di Help.
Ciao
Daniele

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so se altri tool permettono di automatizzare questa fase.
Per scrivere help in Visual-Basic io uso VB-help writer
http://www.teletech-systems.com/vbhw.htm
Indicando il progetto scritto in Visual Basic, in base a parecchie
impostazioni definite dall'utente, crea per praticamente tutti gli "oggetti"
dei forms, dei riferimenti nell'help: sarà poi l'utente che potrà eliminare
o
meno, riportando eventualmente le spiegazioni di quell'oggetto, la pagina
creata in vbhw per ogni "oggetto".
In fase di esecuzione del programma Visual Basic, poi, è sufficiente
cliccare sul tasto F1 per aprire l'help alla pagina d'aiuto relativa
all'oggetto che aveva il focus quando abbiamo premuto F1. Il tutto viene
svolto in modo automatico e veloce. A parte qualche piccolo problema
d'impaginazione, trovo VB help-writer molto valido. Ha ricevuto diversi
riconoscimenti (la lista è nel sito sopra riportato) da cui ne riporto uno:
58 SPRING 1997 BUYER’S GUIDE & PRODUCT DIRECTORY Visual Basic Programmer’s
Journal 
http://www.windx.com
SETUP, DISTRIBUTION, & HELP AUTHORING
VB HelpWriter
...
The new code module also contains constant declarations for all
ContextID numbers, which are automatically generated using
the topic names. This greatly simplifies the process of activating
a specific Help topic from anywhere in your application.
HELP NEEDS HELP
Ironically, VB HelpWriter’s own Help file is not too well de-signed.
The Contents dialog does not cover the entire Help file
contents—I had trouble getting to some topics. I had to use the
browse buttons to “back up” into them, and there are some
spelling and typographical errors that should have been caught.
Fortunately, a combination of reading the 84-page printed
manual, wading around in the crude Help file, and interactive
experimentation with the product got me up to speed quicker
than I’d expected. I like this product a lot, but the Teletech
people would greatly help their product’s cause if they’d take
the time to update their own Help file.
On a more positive note, the dialogs for editing browse se-quences
and for creating the Windows 95-style Contents dialog
are the best I’ve seen among several similar products. These
dialogs are intuitive enough that I didn’t need to read up on how
to use them. New topics are easy to add and edit, and all hypertext
jumps and popups are easy to create and edit. You can get to
utilities from VB HelpWriter’s menu to generate in-depth reports
on all topics, jumps, browse sequences, and other details.
VB HelpWriter lets you import and export RTF source text
and works well with the SHED graphics hotspot editor to create
graphics hotspots. You can easily add sounds, bitmaps, and
even multimedia files such as video clips to your Help files, if
you want to get fancy. All Help file macros are supported, and
you can save any topic as a template, providing a nice way to
standardize the appearance of your topics. Topic titles and
text are automatically formatted, with easy control over the
default format settings. You have complete control over all
Help file appearance settings, such as the positioning and
sizing of the three Help windows, background and non-scroll-ing
region colors, and so on.
The price is right, the power is there, and once you get past
the ironically anemic Help file, VB HelpWriter is a great tool,
especially for Visual Basic programmers. —John Clark Craig
VB HelpWriter is advertised for its power to create Help
files for Visual Basic programs, but it works well to
create any Help file for any version of Windows. The
product has a few kinks and wrinkles, but overall you can’t beat
its price/performance ratio.
Most Help file editing programs are created as add-ins to the
Microsoft Word environment, where menus, buttons, and
toolbars are modified to turn Word into an engine for creating
Help files. VB HelpWriter is different, in that it’s a standalone
Windows program specifically tailored to the task of editing
Help files in a nearly perfect WYSIWYG (what you see is what
you get) environment. The advantage of this approach is two-fold:
you don’t have to own Word to use it, and the program has
a leaner, meaner, snappier feel to it.
The more I use this product the more I like it. As a VB
programmer, I like the way it’s integrated with Visual Basic, but
I know I’m also going to be using it a lot to create non-VB Help
files too. For Visual Basic Help file creation the process goes like
this: throughout your Visual Basic project you enter a descrip-tive
string in the Tag properties for controls for which you want
to add context-sensitive help topics, and you make sure to save
your VB files in ASCII format. These tag strings are scanned by
VB HelpWriter from your source files to create empty, labeled
Help file topics, which you fill in later. You are free to change the
Tag properties at run time, because they are used by VB
HelpWriter just once, before your program is compiled.
VB HelpWriter provides an option to automatically create a
new Help file for a Visual Basic application. You select the MAK
file for your VB project, and VB HelpWriter takes it from there.
After making backup copies of all files to be modified, it uses
the Tag properties to create empty topics. A simple function
call is then inserted into each form’s load and unload events,
and a special code module is created and added to the Visual
Basic project. At this point, if you compile the new Help file and
run your VB application, pressing F1 automatically opens the
Help file topic associated with each form or the topic associ-ated
with each control that has a Tag property entry in its
source code, when that control has the focus. It’s simple, it’s
slick, and it works great.
VB HelpWriter provides lots of control over the process
beyond what I’ve just described. You don’t have to rely on the
Tag property settings, for example, if you prefer to do it a
different way. The code module that VB HelpWriter creates for
your project adds 13 Help-related routines that you can call from
anywhere in your application. For instance, to open the Con-tents
topic from a menu or command button, you add the
ShowHelpContents subprogram call to the menu or the button’s
Click event.
Teletech Systems
750 Birch Ridge Dr.
Roswell, GA 30076
Phone: 
770-475-6985
E-mail: 
fb...@netcom.com
Web: 
www.teletech-systems.com/
Quick Facts: A VB add-in and standalone
program for creating Windows Help files.
Price: Professional: $99; Standard: $69
Environments Supported: VB4
Environments Tested: VB4
Che io sappia VB help-writer attualmente non supporta il nuovo formato di
help previsto per Windows98. Ma non so se possono esistere attualmente
applicazioni VB di generazione di help che lo supportino.
So poco di questo nuovo formato.
Ciao a tutti.
--
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|    __/  _  |  _  |  |  _  | C a s a l e  M o n f e r r a t o
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|Nome:   Paolo Guagliumi    |
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