Help & Manual ®

The new standard in

technical documentation

User
Manual
Version 4.31

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 2 Help & Manual Online Help

Table of Contents
Part I Welcome to Help & Manual 4 16

Part II Latest Updates 18

1 Version 4.31...................................................................................................................................
Update 18
2 Version 4.3 Update
................................................................................................................................... 19
3 Version 4.2 Update
................................................................................................................................... 23
4 Version 4.1 Update
................................................................................................................................... 27
5 Changes Since
...................................................................................................................................
Version 3 29
The Editor .......................................................................................................................................................... 29
File format
......................................................................................................................................................... 30
Unicode support
......................................................................................................................................................... 31
Text formatting
......................................................................................................................................................... 31
XML source.........................................................................................................................................................
code editor 32
Tables ......................................................................................................................................................... 33
Font size .........................................................................................................................................................
preview setting 35
Dynamic .........................................................................................................................................................
styles 36
Graphics .........................................................................................................................................................
and hotspots 37
Bullets and
.........................................................................................................................................................
numbering 38
Hyperlink.........................................................................................................................................................
handling 38
Dead link .........................................................................................................................................................
highlighting 40
Mouseover .........................................................................................................................................................
hints 40
Videos and.........................................................................................................................................................
animations 41
Two-way .........................................................................................................................................................
live keyword index 42
Anchors with
.........................................................................................................................................................
keywords 44
Comments .........................................................................................................................................................
and bookmarks 44
Embedded .........................................................................................................................................................
Topics 46
Import and export
.......................................................................................................................................................... 46
RoboHelp® .........................................................................................................................................................
X5 conversion 46
Import functions
......................................................................................................................................................... 47
New output.........................................................................................................................................................
formats 48
Translation/localization
.........................................................................................................................................................
support 50
Menus & Toolbars
.......................................................................................................................................................... 51
Toolbars &.........................................................................................................................................................
keyboard shortcuts 52
Improved.........................................................................................................................................................
context menus 53
TOC selection,
..........................................................................................................................................................
Drag & Drop 53
Multiselect
.........................................................................................................................................................
in the TOC 54
Compile/print
.........................................................................................................................................................
selected topics 54
Enhanced.........................................................................................................................................................
TOC Drag & Drop 55
Copy TOC .........................................................................................................................................................
to create links 56
Mouseover .........................................................................................................................................................
hints 57
Folders in.........................................................................................................................................................
Invisible Topics 57
Miscellaneous..........................................................................................................................................................
new features 57
Build options
.........................................................................................................................................................
/ include conditions 58
JavaScript.........................................................................................................................................................
popups 59
Spell checking
......................................................................................................................................................... 60
Find & replace
.........................................................................................................................................................
images 62

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Contents 3

Entering and
.........................................................................................................................................................
editing HTML code 62
Breadcrumb.........................................................................................................................................................
trail navigation 64
Long topic.........................................................................................................................................................
IDs and anchors 65
Various minor
.........................................................................................................................................................
improvements 65
Baggage .........................................................................................................................................................
files 65
Picture shortcuts
......................................................................................................................................................... 66

Part III Introduction 69

1 About Help &
...................................................................................................................................
Manual 69
2 Why Help & ...................................................................................................................................
Manual? 71
3 Converting old
...................................................................................................................................
projects 72
4 Getting help................................................................................................................................... 73
5 Online information
...................................................................................................................................
and links 75
6 How to buy Help
...................................................................................................................................
& Manual 77

Part IV The User Interface 79

1 The Help & Manual
...................................................................................................................................
workspace 79
2 Topic options
................................................................................................................................... 81
3 Keyboard Shortcuts
................................................................................................................................... 83
4 Customizing...................................................................................................................................
Help & Manual 84

Part V Quick Start Tutorials 88

1 Create a Project
................................................................................................................................... 88
2 Enter and Edit
...................................................................................................................................
Text 91
3 Use Styles ................................................................................................................................... 94
4 Add Topics ................................................................................................................................... 97
5 Organize the
...................................................................................................................................
TOC 100
6 Insert Graphics
................................................................................................................................... 103
7 Insert a Table
................................................................................................................................... 106
8 Create Hyperlinks
................................................................................................................................... 109
9 Compile a Project
................................................................................................................................... 113

Part VI Tutorials and Templates 118

1 DHTML examples
...................................................................................................................................
tutorial 118
2 Conditional...................................................................................................................................
output tutorial 119
3 Modular help
...................................................................................................................................
systems tutorial 119
4 Pocket PC ...................................................................................................................................
help template 120
5 Non-scrolling
...................................................................................................................................
header template 120
6 Help & Manual
...................................................................................................................................
help project template 121
7 Help & Manual
...................................................................................................................................
help source code 121
8 SDL Trados...................................................................................................................................
INI file 122
9 Other templates
...................................................................................................................................
and resources 122

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 4 Help & Manual Online Help

Part VII Basic Working Procedures 125

1 Creating Projects
................................................................................................................................... 125
Choosing your..........................................................................................................................................................
help format 126
Converting .HM3
..........................................................................................................................................................
projects 126
Creating an empty
..........................................................................................................................................................
new project 128
New project ..........................................................................................................................................................
from a compiled HTML Help file 130
New project ..........................................................................................................................................................
from HTML and plain text files 132
New project ..........................................................................................................................................................
from Winhelp project source files 135
New project ..........................................................................................................................................................
from a compiled Winhelp file 137
New project ..........................................................................................................................................................
from a Word RTF file 138
New project ..........................................................................................................................................................
from a H&M XML project file 142
New project ..........................................................................................................................................................
from a RoboHelp® X5 project 144
Editing Project
..........................................................................................................................................................
Properties 147
International..........................................................................................................................................................
languages setup 149
Defining the..........................................................................................................................................................
help viewer appearance 154
2 Importing Data
...................................................................................................................................
into Existing Projects 155
Importing compiled
..........................................................................................................................................................
HTML Help files 155
Importing HTML
..........................................................................................................................................................
and plain text files 157
Merging.........................................................................................................................................................
HTML files into topics 159
Importing Winhelp
..........................................................................................................................................................
project source files 160
Importing compiled
..........................................................................................................................................................
Winhelp files 161
Importing Word
..........................................................................................................................................................
RTF files 162
Importing H&M
..........................................................................................................................................................
XML projects 165
Importing RoboHelp®
..........................................................................................................................................................
X5 projects 167
Importing topics
..........................................................................................................................................................
and merging projects 169
3 Creating and
...................................................................................................................................
Editing Topics 171
Creating new..........................................................................................................................................................
topics 171
Setting up styles
.......................................................................................................................................................... 176
Choosing a help
..........................................................................................................................................................
window 177
Writing and ..........................................................................................................................................................
formatting text 179
Selecting text
..........................................................................................................................................................
and content 183
Spell checking
.......................................................................................................................................................... 184
Copying, cutting
..........................................................................................................................................................
and pasting 189
Searching for..........................................................................................................................................................
text, topics and referrers 191
Creating invisible
..........................................................................................................................................................
topics 193
Creating popup
..........................................................................................................................................................
topics 194
Using JavaScript
..........................................................................................................................................................
popups 199
Exporting and..........................................................................................................................................................
importing topics 202
Comments and ..........................................................................................................................................................
bookmarks 204
Special characters,
..........................................................................................................................................................
lines and breaks 206
Printing topics
.......................................................................................................................................................... 207
Editing XML..........................................................................................................................................................
source code 208
4 Managing Topics
...................................................................................................................................
in the TOC 209
Assigning topic
..........................................................................................................................................................
IDs 210
Assigning help
..........................................................................................................................................................
context numbers 212
Changing topic
..........................................................................................................................................................
IDs and context numbers 214
The TOC Toolbar
.......................................................................................................................................................... 216
Editing the topic
..........................................................................................................................................................
caption and header 217
Moving, cutting
..........................................................................................................................................................
and pasting topics 217
Promoting and..........................................................................................................................................................
demoting topics 219
Multiple TOC..........................................................................................................................................................
entries for one topic 220

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Contents 5

Using embedded
..........................................................................................................................................................
topics 222
Changing the..........................................................................................................................................................
topic icon 224
Changing the..........................................................................................................................................................
topic status 225
Organizing invisible
..........................................................................................................................................................
topics 225
Topic timestamps
.......................................................................................................................................................... 227
5 Text Formatting
...................................................................................................................................
and Styles 228
Styles introduction
..........................................................................................................................................................
for H&M3 users 229
Formatting text
..........................................................................................................................................................
manually 230
Using indents .......................................................................................................................................................... 232
Formatting text
..........................................................................................................................................................
with styles 234
Defining styles
.......................................................................................................................................................... 237
Editing styles.......................................................................................................................................................... 243
Style display..........................................................................................................................................................
in the Toolbar 245
Editor, help file
..........................................................................................................................................................
and print styles 247
Image caption ..........................................................................................................................................................
and comment styles 249
Copying styles..........................................................................................................................................................
from other projects 250
Styles and tables
.......................................................................................................................................................... 251
Numbered and ..........................................................................................................................................................
bulleted lists 252
Bulleted.........................................................................................................................................................
Lists 253
Numbered .........................................................................................................................................................
lists 255
Outline numbered
.........................................................................................................................................................
lists 259
Adjusting.........................................................................................................................................................
list indents 264
Formatting.........................................................................................................................................................
list numbers 265
HTML list .........................................................................................................................................................
output format 265
Formatting.........................................................................................................................................................
lists with styles 266
Formatting program
..........................................................................................................................................................
source code 267
Examples ......................................................................................................................................................... 269
Replacing Formatting
..........................................................................................................................................................
and Styles 271
Introduction
.........................................................................................................................................................
to style replacement 271
Font styles
.........................................................................................................................................................
and formatting 275
Paragraph .........................................................................................................................................................
styles and formatting 282
Styling imported
.........................................................................................................................................................
text 290
6 Links, Anchors,
...................................................................................................................................
Macros, Scripts and HTML 293
Inserting topic
..........................................................................................................................................................
links 294
Inserting Internet
..........................................................................................................................................................
links 298
Inserting file..........................................................................................................................................................
links 300
Inserting script
..........................................................................................................................................................
and macro links 302
Editing and formatting
..........................................................................................................................................................
links 304
Anchors - jump..........................................................................................................................................................
targets 305
Linking to other
..........................................................................................................................................................
projects and help files 308
Links and secondary
..........................................................................................................................................................
windows 310
Inserting plain
..........................................................................................................................................................
HTML code 311
7 Using Graphics
................................................................................................................................... 313
Inserting graphics
..........................................................................................................................................................
and screenshots 314
Positioning graphics
.......................................................................................................................................................... 316
Editing, resizing
..........................................................................................................................................................
and hi-res PDF printing 317
Using the Impict
..........................................................................................................................................................
graphics editor 320
Using the screen
..........................................................................................................................................................
capture function 320
Using graphics
..........................................................................................................................................................
as hyperlinks 320
Graphics with..........................................................................................................................................................
hotspots, macros and scripts 321
Finding and ..........................................................................................................................................................
replacing graphics 324
Managing your..........................................................................................................................................................
graphics 325
Shortcuts for..........................................................................................................................................................
frequently-used graphics 328

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

6 Help & Manual Online Help

8 Working with
...................................................................................................................................
Tables 332
Inserting tables
.......................................................................................................................................................... 333
Controlling column
..........................................................................................................................................................
widths 334
Selecting and..........................................................................................................................................................
formatting cells and tables 336
Adding and deleting
..........................................................................................................................................................
rows and columns 338
Splitting, merging
..........................................................................................................................................................
and unmerging cells 339
Deleting the ..........................................................................................................................................................
contents of cells 339
Converting tables
..........................................................................................................................................................
to text 340
Indenting tables
.......................................................................................................................................................... 340
Applying styles
..........................................................................................................................................................
to tables 341
Nested tables.......................................................................................................................................................... 343
Using background
..........................................................................................................................................................
graphics 344
Handling table
..........................................................................................................................................................
borders 344
9 Toggles: Expanding
...................................................................................................................................
Text and Images 345
Expanding section
..........................................................................................................................................................
toggles 348
Expanding inline
..........................................................................................................................................................
text toggles 354
Expanding image
..........................................................................................................................................................
toggles 357
Toggle IDs .......................................................................................................................................................... 360
Editing and copying
..........................................................................................................................................................
toggles 360
Formatting toggles
..........................................................................................................................................................
with CSS 361
Expand All / ..........................................................................................................................................................
Collapse All 363
Toggle troubleshooting
.......................................................................................................................................................... 365
Updating old..........................................................................................................................................................
expanding sections 367
Printing topics
..........................................................................................................................................................
containing toggles 367
10 Keywords and
...................................................................................................................................
Indexes 369
Adding and editing
..........................................................................................................................................................
keywords 370
Editing the index
..........................................................................................................................................................
directly 373
Find and replace
..........................................................................................................................................................
keywords 376
Managing keywords
..........................................................................................................................................................
and indexes 377
Using keywords
..........................................................................................................................................................
with anchors 379
Using A-keywords
.......................................................................................................................................................... 382
Index section..........................................................................................................................................................
header separators 384
11 Testing Your
...................................................................................................................................
Project 387
Using the reporting
..........................................................................................................................................................
tool 388
Testing links..........................................................................................................................................................
and missing graphics 388
Searching for..........................................................................................................................................................
topics and referrers 390
Testing keywords
.......................................................................................................................................................... 391
12 Configuring
...................................................................................................................................
Your Output 392
Help Windows .......................................................................................................................................................... 393
HTML Help .......................................................................................................................................................... 394
Winhelp .......................................................................................................................................................... 397
Browser-based..........................................................................................................................................................
Help 398
Layout ......................................................................................................................................................... 401
Navigation
......................................................................................................................................................... 403
Full Text.........................................................................................................................................................
Search tricks 404
Adobe PDF and..........................................................................................................................................................
printed manuals 405
eBooks .......................................................................................................................................................... 407
XML .......................................................................................................................................................... 408
MS Word RTF .......................................................................................................................................................... 409
Visual Studio..........................................................................................................................................................
Help 409
13 Compiling ...................................................................................................................................
Your Project 410
Microsoft help
..........................................................................................................................................................
compilers 410

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Contents 7

Publication checklist
.......................................................................................................................................................... 410
Compiling .......................................................................................................................................................... 411
Compiling to..........................................................................................................................................................
XML 415
Distribution ..........................................................................................................................................................
files 417
Changes since..........................................................................................................................................................
H&M 3 419

Part VIII More Advanced Procedures 422

1 Flash Animations
...................................................................................................................................
and Video 422
Inserting movies
..........................................................................................................................................................
and animations 422
Inserting placeholder
..........................................................................................................................................................
graphics 423
Previewing and
..........................................................................................................................................................
snapshots 425
Editing the media
..........................................................................................................................................................
HTML code 426
Support in output
..........................................................................................................................................................
formats 428
2 Using OLE ...................................................................................................................................
Objects 428
Inserting OLE
..........................................................................................................................................................
objects 429
OLE examples.......................................................................................................................................................... 431
3 Using Context-Sensitive
...................................................................................................................................
Help 431
Creating context-sensitive
..........................................................................................................................................................
topics 432
Application calls
..........................................................................................................................................................
to context-sensitive topics 434
Auto-generating
..........................................................................................................................................................
context-sensitive topics 435
Formatted context
..........................................................................................................................................................
popups in HTML Help 436
Context calls..........................................................................................................................................................
to Browser-based Help 438
4 Using Variables
................................................................................................................................... 440
Where you can..........................................................................................................................................................
use variables 440
Inserting variables
..........................................................................................................................................................
in topics and headers 441
Inserting variables
..........................................................................................................................................................
in other project locations 442
Editing, formatting
..........................................................................................................................................................
and disabling variables 444
Find and replace
..........................................................................................................................................................
variables 447
Global predefined
..........................................................................................................................................................
variables 448
User-defined..........................................................................................................................................................
variables 449
Text variables
..........................................................................................................................................................
in HTML templates 450
Text variables
..........................................................................................................................................................
in PDF templates 451
Redefining variables
..........................................................................................................................................................
for conditional output 451
5 Conditions...................................................................................................................................
and Customized Output 451
Using conditional
..........................................................................................................................................................
output 452
Defining include
..........................................................................................................................................................
options 453
Conditional text
..........................................................................................................................................................
include options 454
Topic include
..........................................................................................................................................................
options 457
Modular projects
..........................................................................................................................................................
include options 460
Redefining variables
.......................................................................................................................................................... 461
HTML template
..........................................................................................................................................................
conditions 462
6 Templates ...................................................................................................................................
and Secondary Windows 462
Templates for
..........................................................................................................................................................
projects 463
Content templates
..........................................................................................................................................................
for topics 466
PDF and print
..........................................................................................................................................................
manual templates 468
HTML templates
.......................................................................................................................................................... 470
eBook templates
.......................................................................................................................................................... 471
Using secondary
..........................................................................................................................................................
windows 471
Using external
..........................................................................................................................................................
windows 473
7 Using HTML
...................................................................................................................................
Templates 475
Editing HTML
..........................................................................................................................................................
templates 476

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 8 Help & Manual Online Help

The Topic Page

..........................................................................................................................................................
templates 477
The Layout template
..........................................................................................................................................................
for Browser Help 481
The TOC template
..........................................................................................................................................................
for Browser Help 482
The Search template
..........................................................................................................................................................
for Browser Help 483
The Index template
..........................................................................................................................................................
for Browser Help 484
Variables in ..........................................................................................................................................................
HTML templates 485
Conditional output
..........................................................................................................................................................
in HTML templates 487
Graphics references
.......................................................................................................................................................... 489
Referencing..........................................................................................................................................................
external files 490
Troubleshooting
.......................................................................................................................................................... 491
8 Working with
...................................................................................................................................
Modular Help Systems 492
Creating a modular
..........................................................................................................................................................
project 493
Choosing the ..........................................................................................................................................................
merge method 494
Managing modules
..........................................................................................................................................................
in the TOC 495
Managing graphics
..........................................................................................................................................................
in modules 497
Managing IDs ..........................................................................................................................................................
and context numbers 497
Creating links
..........................................................................................................................................................
between modules 499
Merging invisible
..........................................................................................................................................................
topics 502
Compiling modular
..........................................................................................................................................................
projects 503
Multiple browser-based
..........................................................................................................................................................
projects 505
9 Command ...................................................................................................................................
line options 507
Syntax reference
.......................................................................................................................................................... 508
Basic command..........................................................................................................................................................
line options 511
Using include..........................................................................................................................................................
options 512
Output to multiple
..........................................................................................................................................................
formats 514
Redefining variables
.......................................................................................................................................................... 516
.INI and batch
..........................................................................................................................................................
files 517
10 Using Baggage
...................................................................................................................................
Files 520
Adding and referencing
..........................................................................................................................................................
files 521
Graphics files
.......................................................................................................................................................... 523
Removing and ..........................................................................................................................................................
renaming Baggage files 525
Baggage handling
.......................................................................................................................................................... 525
11 Visual Studio
...................................................................................................................................
Help (MS Help 2.0) 527
Requirements
..........................................................................................................................................................
and limitations 528
About compiling
..........................................................................................................................................................
VS Help 528
12 Translating...................................................................................................................................
Your Projects 530
Translating in
..........................................................................................................................................................
Help & Manual 531
Translating with
..........................................................................................................................................................
external editors 533

Part IX PDF and Printed Manuals 538

1 Printing user
...................................................................................................................................
manuals 538
2 Generating...................................................................................................................................
PDF files 541
3 Using PDF ...................................................................................................................................
templates 543
4 Embedding...................................................................................................................................
files in PDFs 544
5 Unicode languages
...................................................................................................................................
and PDF 544
6 CID mode for
...................................................................................................................................
Unicode fonts 545

Part X Project Properties Reference 548

1 Common Properties
................................................................................................................................... 548

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Contents 9

Title & Copyright

.......................................................................................................................................................... 550
Language Settings
.......................................................................................................................................................... 551
Topic IDs and
..........................................................................................................................................................
Help Context 553
Image Folders
.......................................................................................................................................................... 553
Baggage Files
.......................................................................................................................................................... 554
Text Variables
.......................................................................................................................................................... 555
Custom Builds
.......................................................................................................................................................... 556
2 Help Windows
................................................................................................................................... 557
Common Properties
.......................................................................................................................................................... 558
Color & Position
..........................................................................................................................................................
Tab 558
Winhelp Options
..........................................................................................................................................................
Tab 560
HTML Help Options
..........................................................................................................................................................
Tab 563
3 HTML Help................................................................................................................................... 565
Topic Pages.......................................................................................................................................................... 565
Popup Topics
.......................................................................................................................................................... 567
Modular Help
..........................................................................................................................................................
Options 570
Extended .HHP
..........................................................................................................................................................
Settings 571
HTML Export..........................................................................................................................................................
Options 573
4 Winhelp ................................................................................................................................... 575
Miscellaneous
..........................................................................................................................................................
Settings 575
Modular Help
..........................................................................................................................................................
Options 576
Extended .HPJ
..........................................................................................................................................................
Settings 577
5 Visual Studio
...................................................................................................................................
Help 579
Namespace ..........................................................................................................................................................
& Options 580
Topic Pages.......................................................................................................................................................... 581
HTML Export..........................................................................................................................................................
Options 583
6 Browser-based
...................................................................................................................................
Help 586
Layout .......................................................................................................................................................... 587
Navigation .......................................................................................................................................................... 589
Table of Contents
.......................................................................................................................................................... 591
Keyword Index
.......................................................................................................................................................... 593
Full Text Search
.......................................................................................................................................................... 594
Topic Pages.......................................................................................................................................................... 597
Popup Topics.......................................................................................................................................................... 599
HTML Export..........................................................................................................................................................
Options 601
7 Adobe PDF................................................................................................................................... 604
PDF Layout .......................................................................................................................................................... 604
PDF Options.......................................................................................................................................................... 606
Font Embedding
.......................................................................................................................................................... 606
8 Microsoft Word
...................................................................................................................................
RTF 608
Page Setup &
..........................................................................................................................................................
Headings 608
9 eBooks ................................................................................................................................... 609
Visual Appearance
.......................................................................................................................................................... 609
Functionality..........................................................................................................................................................
& Security 612
Popups in eBooks
.......................................................................................................................................................... 613

Part XI Tools Included with Help & Manual 615

1 The Screen...................................................................................................................................
Capture Tool 615
2 The Project...................................................................................................................................
Reports Tool 618

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 10 Help & Manual Online Help

3 The Impict ...................................................................................................................................

Screenshot Editor 621
4 The Print Manual
...................................................................................................................................
Designer 622
5 The Help Context
...................................................................................................................................
Tool 624
6 The Spell Checker
................................................................................................................................... 629
Using custom..........................................................................................................................................................
dictionaries 631
Creating and..........................................................................................................................................................
editing custom dictionaries 634
7 The Repair...................................................................................................................................
and Recover Tool 638
8 The Project...................................................................................................................................
Converter 641
9 The Project...................................................................................................................................
Synchronization Tool 645
Synchronization
..........................................................................................................................................................
Steps 647
Step 1: Create
.........................................................................................................................................................
a translation pair 647
Step 2: Translate
.........................................................................................................................................................
the original project 648
Step 3: Update
.........................................................................................................................................................
the original project 649
Step 4: Synchronize
.........................................................................................................................................................
the new version 649
Step 5: Translate
.........................................................................................................................................................
the changes 652
Identifying changes
.......................................................................................................................................................... 652
Interim updates
.......................................................................................................................................................... 655
Synching existing
..........................................................................................................................................................
projects 655
Problems and ..........................................................................................................................................................
troubleshooting 658

Part XII Reference 661

1 Menus and...................................................................................................................................
Dialogs 661
The File Menu .......................................................................................................................................................... 661
New ......................................................................................................................................................... 662
Compile.........................................................................................................................................................
Help File 663
Print User.........................................................................................................................................................
Manual 666
Print Preview
......................................................................................................................................................... 669
The Topics Menu
.......................................................................................................................................................... 670
Change .........................................................................................................................................................
Item Options 671
Insert Item
.........................................................................................................................................................
Options 673
Find Topic......................................................................................................................................................... 676
Find Referrers
......................................................................................................................................................... 676
Refresh .........................................................................................................................................................
Topic 678
Print Topic
......................................................................................................................................................... 678
The Edit Menu .......................................................................................................................................................... 679
Paste Text.........................................................................................................................................................
Only 680
Find & Replace
.........................................................................................................................................................
Text 680
The View Menu .......................................................................................................................................................... 682
Undock .........................................................................................................................................................
/ Dock Windows 682
Toolbar .........................................................................................................................................................
display 683
Customize .........................................................................................................................................................
Toolbars 684
The Insert Menu
.......................................................................................................................................................... 684
Insert Hyperlink
......................................................................................................................................................... 686
Insert Picture
.........................................................................................................................................................
/ Open Image 690
Hotspot editor ......................................................................................................................................... 693
Insert Movie
......................................................................................................................................................... 694
Insert Topic
.........................................................................................................................................................
Anchor 695
Insert Text
.........................................................................................................................................................
Variable 696
Insert Toggle
......................................................................................................................................................... 697
Insert Embedded
.........................................................................................................................................................
Topic 700
Insert Plain
.........................................................................................................................................................
HTML Code 701

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Contents 11

Insert OLE
.........................................................................................................................................................
Object 701
Insert Special
.........................................................................................................................................................
Character 703
Insert Comment
.........................................................................................................................................................
/ Bookmark 704
The Format Menu
.......................................................................................................................................................... 704
Format Font
......................................................................................................................................................... 705
Format Paragraph
......................................................................................................................................................... 706
Format Borders
.........................................................................................................................................................
and Background 708
Format Bullets
.........................................................................................................................................................
and Numbering 710
Edit Styles
......................................................................................................................................................... 713
Create Style
.........................................................................................................................................................
from Selection 714
Syntax Highlighting
......................................................................................................................................................... 715
The Table Menu
.......................................................................................................................................................... 717
New Table.........................................................................................................................................................
/ Table Properties 717
The Project Menu
.......................................................................................................................................................... 722
Project Properties
......................................................................................................................................................... 722
Bookmarks......................................................................................................................................................... 723
The Tools Menu
.......................................................................................................................................................... 723
Screen Capture
......................................................................................................................................................... 725
Reports ......................................................................................................................................................... 726
The Report Viewer ......................................................................................................................................... 728
Image Editor
......................................................................................................................................................... 729
Print Manual
.........................................................................................................................................................
Designer 730
Help Context
.........................................................................................................................................................
Tool 730
Spell Check
......................................................................................................................................................... 730
Repair and
.........................................................................................................................................................
Recover 730
Customize......................................................................................................................................................... 731
Customize - General ......................................................................................................................................... 731
Customize - Toolbars ......................................................................................................................................... 733
Customize - Shortcuts ......................................................................................................................................... 733
Customize - Editor ......................................................................................................................................... 734
Customize - Folders ......................................................................................................................................... 737
Customize - Compilers ......................................................................................................................................... 737
Customize - PDF .........................................................................................................................................
Export 738
The Help Menu
.......................................................................................................................................................... 739
2 The Help &...................................................................................................................................
Manual Editor 740
The paragraph..........................................................................................................................................................
end mark 741
The Table of..........................................................................................................................................................
Contents pane 742
Editing in the
..........................................................................................................................................................
Help Text tab 742
Topic Options..........................................................................................................................................................
tab 743
The Index tab.......................................................................................................................................................... 744
3 Formatting................................................................................................................................... 744
Tabs, indents
..........................................................................................................................................................
and HTML 744
4 Dynamic Styles
................................................................................................................................... 746
Why use dynamic
..........................................................................................................................................................
styles? 746
How do styles
..........................................................................................................................................................
work? 748
About inheritance
..........................................................................................................................................................
in styles 749
The standard..........................................................................................................................................................
styles 752
Paragraph and
..........................................................................................................................................................
text styles 753
Style organization
..........................................................................................................................................................
strategies 754
5 Scripts, HTML
...................................................................................................................................
and Macros 757
About JavaScript
..........................................................................................................................................................
links 758
About Winhelp
..........................................................................................................................................................
macro links 761
About inline..........................................................................................................................................................
HTML code 761

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

12 Help & Manual Online Help

6 Help Formats
................................................................................................................................... 763
HTML Help .......................................................................................................................................................... 765
HTML Help
.........................................................................................................................................................
project files 767
Classic Winhelp
.......................................................................................................................................................... 768
Winhelp.........................................................................................................................................................
project files 770
Browser-based
..........................................................................................................................................................
Help 771
Browser.........................................................................................................................................................
compatibility 772
Help & Manual
..........................................................................................................................................................
eBooks 773
Adobe PDF .......................................................................................................................................................... 774
Printed manuals
.......................................................................................................................................................... 776
MS Word RTF .......................................................................................................................................................... 776
Visual Studio
..........................................................................................................................................................
Help 777
XML .......................................................................................................................................................... 778
Windows Vista
..........................................................................................................................................................
Help 779
7 International
...................................................................................................................................
Languages and Unicode 780
About H&M's..........................................................................................................................................................
Unicode support 780
About project
..........................................................................................................................................................
language settings 783
Language settings
..........................................................................................................................................................
and PDF 786
8 XML Export...................................................................................................................................
and Import 786
XML output ..........................................................................................................................................................
files and folders 787
XML output ..........................................................................................................................................................
file formats 792
Zipped XML ..........................................................................................................................................................
output 793
Importing XML..........................................................................................................................................................
files 793
Editing XML..........................................................................................................................................................
files in external programs 795
Instructions ..........................................................................................................................................................
for translators and editors 796
Editing XML..........................................................................................................................................................
files in Word 2003 799
9 Help Windows
................................................................................................................................... 800
Questions and
..........................................................................................................................................................
answers 801
Standard help
..........................................................................................................................................................
window types 805
External windows
..........................................................................................................................................................
and invisible topics 806
Help windows..........................................................................................................................................................
and popups 808
Help windows..........................................................................................................................................................
in HTML Help 809
Help windows..........................................................................................................................................................
in Winhelp 811
Help windows..........................................................................................................................................................
in HTML and eBooks 811
Help windows..........................................................................................................................................................
in RTF and PDF 813
10 About HTML
...................................................................................................................................
Templates 814
The default Topic
..........................................................................................................................................................
Pages template 816
The default Layout
..........................................................................................................................................................
template 818
The default TOC
..........................................................................................................................................................
template 818
The default Index
..........................................................................................................................................................
template 821
The default Search
..........................................................................................................................................................
template 823
HTML template..........................................................................................................................................................
variables 826
HTML template..........................................................................................................................................................
output conditions 830
Graphics in HTML
..........................................................................................................................................................
templates 832
11 Context-Sensitive
...................................................................................................................................
Help & Popups 834
Context-sensitive
..........................................................................................................................................................
help technologies 835
About popup..........................................................................................................................................................
topics 838
About context-sensitive
..........................................................................................................................................................
popups 840
About implementing
..........................................................................................................................................................
context help 843
Popups in Winhelp
..........................................................................................................................................................
and HTML Help 845
About map files
.......................................................................................................................................................... 846
About invisible
..........................................................................................................................................................
topics 848

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Contents 13

12 Topic IDs, Context

...................................................................................................................................
Numbers and Keywords 849
About topic ..........................................................................................................................................................
IDs and anchors 849
About help context
..........................................................................................................................................................
numbers 852
About index ..........................................................................................................................................................
keywords 853
About A-keywords
.......................................................................................................................................................... 854
13 Graphics, Videos
...................................................................................................................................
and OLE Objects 856
Graphic formats
..........................................................................................................................................................
and file size 856
Embedded graphics
.......................................................................................................................................................... 858
About using..........................................................................................................................................................
media files 859
About using..........................................................................................................................................................
OLE objects 861
14 Variables and
...................................................................................................................................
Conditional Output 862
Where you can
..........................................................................................................................................................
use variables 862
Global predefined
..........................................................................................................................................................
variables 863
HTML template
..........................................................................................................................................................
variables 865
HTML template
..........................................................................................................................................................
output conditions 869
PDF template..........................................................................................................................................................
variables 871
Conditional ..........................................................................................................................................................
output 871
15 Modular Projects
................................................................................................................................... 873
Runtime and..........................................................................................................................................................
compile time merging 875
Planning modular
..........................................................................................................................................................
projects 878
16 Topics and...................................................................................................................................
Tables 880
Embedded topics
..........................................................................................................................................................
and multiple references 881
How table sizing
..........................................................................................................................................................
works 882
17 Security and
...................................................................................................................................
Deployment Issues 886
Data security..........................................................................................................................................................
and crash recovery 886
HTML Help for..........................................................................................................................................................
W95 and NT4 888
18 Accessibility
................................................................................................................................... 888

Part XIII Frequently Asked Questions 898

1 Compiling ...................................................................................................................................
questions 898
2 Crash recovery
................................................................................................................................... 898
3 Dynamic styles
...................................................................................................................................
questions 899
4 Editing questions
................................................................................................................................... 900
5 General questions
................................................................................................................................... 902
6 HTML and ...................................................................................................................................
HTML Help questions 902
7 PDF questions
................................................................................................................................... 907
8 Printing questions
................................................................................................................................... 908
9 Searching in
...................................................................................................................................
Browser-based Help 909
10 Spell check...................................................................................................................................
questions 910
11 Table questions
................................................................................................................................... 911
12 Unable to save
...................................................................................................................................
topic! 911
13 User interface
...................................................................................................................................
questions 912
14 Video and animation
...................................................................................................................................
questions 913
15 Winhelp questions
................................................................................................................................... 914

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

14 Help & Manual Online Help

Index 917

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

Part

I
 16 Help & Manual Online Help

1 Welcome to Help & Manual 4

Welcome to a new dimension in help authoring.

Help & Manual is a stand-alone help authoring tool (HAT) that radically simplifies the
production of Windows help files, printed manuals and documentation in general.

In its earlier incarnations Help & Manual has been widely

praised, winning a whole series of prestigious awards – including the Product of the
Year and Best Help Authoring Package awards of Delphi Informant Magazine three
years in a row, and the Shareware Industry Award for the Best Vertical Market Tool for
both 2004 and 2005.
Help & Manual 4 offers everything that the earlier versions included and much more.
Virtually all users' requests have been implemented and every aspect of the program
has been overhauled and improved, without sacrificing familiarity and intuitive ease of
use.

RoboHelp® X5 conversion included!

Help & Manual 4 includes a full conversion and import
feature for RoboHelp® X5 for HTML projects. Virtually
all features are supported.
· For details see Creating Projects 144 and Importing
Data into Existing Projects 167 !

A completely new and yet familiar program:

Version 4 represents a major increase in the capabilities of the program. In fact, Help &
Manual 4 is really a completely new program with radically more powerful and
user-friendly capabilities. It combines all the dynamic formatting capabilities of a modern
word processor with the single-source / multiple-output help authoring power of Help &
Manual.
New features 29 include dynamic styles, complex table formatting with nested tables,
numbered and bulleted lists with their own editable styles, integrated support for
multimedia objects, comments, bookmarks and much more.
However, this does not mean that Help & Manual 3 users will not feel at home. The new
version maintains the familiar intuitive user interface, and all the new functions are
integrated intuitively without making the interface feel overloaded.
After producing the help and documentation for Help & Manual 4 with Help & Manual 4
we are convinced that it is the best help authoring product available today at any price. It
is simply a pleasure to use, and we are confident that you will agree as soon as you
have tried it out for a while.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

Part

II
 18 Help & Manual Online Help

2 Latest Updates
2.1 Version 4.31 Update
Outwardly, this is a very minor update with just a few visible changes. However, we have
corrected a large number of issues that individual users have reported to us for specific
configurations and situations, some of them very rare. And there are also a number of
changes and improvements that we are sure many users will welcome:
Tables now allow page breaks inside rows
Version 4.31 includes an updated version of the editor that makes it possible for pages
to break inside table rows in PDF, RTF and printed manual output. This means that
you no longer need to be careful not to create rows with too much content in projects
you are going to output to PDF. Even very large cells will now break correctly.
Important: This does not work for nested tables. So if you are outputting to PDF you
should avoid tables inside other tables. This also means that when you are
using expanding section toggles you should not create additional tables
inside the toggles.

Updated PDF engine with improved font embedding

PDF output font embedded was improved to better support embedded fonts across
different platforms.

New options for HTML Help TOCs

Four new configuration options 396 have been added that allow you to control the
appearance and behavior of the TOC in HTML Help. You can now switch on a
mouseover effect (TOC entries are underlined when under the mouse pointer), turn on
and off the +/- icons in the TOC, turn on and off dotted lines between items and
automatically collapse all chapters except the chapter being viewed.

Improved CHM import and export for Asian and other languages
Importing and exporting HTML Help .CHM files has been significantly improved for
Asian languages, Russian and some other languages. Even CHMs with variant
encoding will now generally be imported correctly and problems some users have
experienced with full-text search in CHMs in these languages have been corrected.
(These problems were caused by the MS HTML Help viewer's inability to handle
Unicode encoding correctly.)

New Delphi Wizards for Delphi 2007 for Win32

For Delphi programmers version 4.31 includes new versions of the Delphi Wizards that
are compatible with Delphi 2007 for Win32. The new wizards will be installed
automatically if Delphi 2007 is detected on your system.

Project Synchronization leave child modules intact

The project synchronization synchronizes topics and the table of contents of two help
projects for translation. In modular help systems, this function reset child modules with
different file names. The synchronization function has been changed in order to leave

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 19

child modules intact, even if the file names differ.

Improved keyword index sorting for many languages

The keyword index in Browser-based Help now also supports the use of special
characters like German umlauts and Danish special characters as section headers
with correct sorting. The Browser-based Help index now uses the same sorting and
section break algorithm that was already implemented in PDF export.

New meta tag topic ID variable for Browser-based Help

The new <%TOPICID%> variable returns the plain topic ID as written in the Topic ID:
field of Topic Options, without any filename extension and without changing the ID
text to lower case. This can be useful for meta tags in your HTML pages for search
engines. See HTML template variables 826 in the Reference section for details.

Merge imported variables with the current variable list

When you import variables from another .HMX project file you can now opt to merge
the imported variables with your existing variable list, instead of overwriting the current
list. (Project Properties > Common Properties > Text Variables > Copy Properties
From...)

Minor changes and bug fixes

Windows Vista: Help & Manual is now "dpi-aware", which results in a sharper UI
display when used on Vista with large system fonts and Vista font scaling on.
The Topics > Expand menu can expand a single chapter only, the XML editor in the
topic pane has a right-click menu. The Redo function in the text editor was sometimes
disabled when it should have been enabled. The inplace table editor now automatically
adds a new table row when the tab key is pressed in the last cell.
Toggles in print/PDF: screenshot toggles which used different images for expanded
and collapsed view, printed with the collapsed image though.
XML export and import: small change to the XML schema to save background colors
for paragraphs and text styles separately. During import, empty build tags (topics that
don't have any build option selected) were initialized with "all" builds as the default.
Help 2.0 export: when compiled in batch mode, the created HxS file is no longer
automatically registered.
Javascript popups with MSIE shadow and transition effects: those effects are now
hard-coded into the popup style rather than applied at runtime to avoid Javascript
problems with other browsers than Internet Explorer. The script was further changed
to fix a position problem of formatted popups in MSIE 7.
End user license agreement (EULA) changed to handle concurrent user licenses and
installation on multiple computers explicitly used by one person only.

2.2 Version 4.3 Update

Version 4.3 is a relatively minor update but it still brings some valuable new features. PDF
has been improved yet again and the navigation options for Browser-based Help have been

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

20 Help & Manual Online Help

improved quite significantly. Among other things you can now create 3-frame layouts directly
for seamless integration in your own website.
In addition to this some welcome improvements have been made to Impict, Help & Manual's
integrated screenshot editor. You now have an Export As... function that allows you to
continue working on your .IPP images after exporting a version to your project folder. In
addition to this, Impict now supports Drag & Drop and performance for saving images with
reduced colors has been radically improved.
IMPORTANT: New directory structure for Samples and Templates:
Please note that the directory structure of the Samples and Templates folders has
changed in Help & Manual 4.3. In addition to this, the program installer now
automatically creates a folder for your Help & Manual projects inside your My
Documents folder if this does not already exist (Documents in Vista).
The new structure is tidier and it is also necessary for Windows Vista, which has much
stricter read and write permissions rules for folders and files inside the Program Files
directory.
\Templates: The Templates folder is still stored inside the Help &
Manual program directory but it now has separate sub-
folders for all the different template categories:
ebooks: eBook viewer skins and language files for the eBook user
interface.
hmx: Project templates (.HMX). Currently contains the project
template for Help & Manual's own help, complete with
instructions for using the template in your own projects.
html: HTML-related templates. Currently contains the language
files for the user-interface for full-text search 594 in
Browser-based Help.
pdf: Contains a selection of standard print manual templates
543 (.MNL) for PDFs and printed manuals. If you want to

use these templates as a basis for your own templates

you should copy them to your project directory before
editing them.
xml: Contains the templates used for generating XML output
and an INI file for use with SDL Trados (see below).
\Samples: The Samples folder is now stored inside the new
MyHelpAndManualProjects folder in your My Documents
directory (Documents in Vista). This folder contains
several useful tutorials 118 and the complete source for
Help & Manual's own help.

Improvements in the Impict screenshot editor:

Export As...: The new Export As... function in Impict's File menu
makes it possible to export a version of your image in
another format (for example to your project folder) and
continue working on your .IPP image. Impict now

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 21

automatically remembers the last Export As... and Save

As... folders you used.
Drag & Drop: You can now drag files directly to the Impict editing
window from Windows Explorer.
Save with reduced colors: Impict now has a new graphics library that significantly
improves performance for saving images with reduced
colors. You can now reduce your images to 256 colors for
minimum size and still get great-looking screenshots.

Three-frame mode for Browser-based Help

You can now automatically create a 3-frame layout in Browser-based Help for better
integration in your own website. This can be done with just a couple of clicks – all you
need to do is select the 3-frame layout mode in Project Properties and enter the name
of the HTML file from your website that you want to load into the top frame. If you want
you can also edit and generate the file for loading into the top frame directly in the
Project Properties dialog.
The layout modes are selected in the new Layout section in the Browser-based Help
section of Project Properties. The choice between a dynamic or a static TOC is now
also made there and no longer in the Navigation section.
For details see the new chapters for Browser-based Help 398 in Configuring Your
Output and the documentation of the new Layout 587 section in Project Properties.

New navigation options for Browser-based Help:

In Browser-based Help you can now change the way that the TOC behaves when the
user clicks on it:
Single-click navigation: Expand and collapse chapters with a single click instead
of a double click.
Auto-expand TOC: Automatically expand the entire TOC or only top-level
chapters when the user first accesses the help.
Auto-collapse TOC: Automatically collapse all chapters except the chapter the
user is currently view.
For details see the Browser-based Help sections in Configuring Your Output 398 and
Project Properties 586

Embed files in PDF files:

You can now embed external files in the PDF files that you generate with Help &
Manual. This makes it possible to distribute EXE, DOC, PDF, JPG and many other file
types in a single PDF file.
The option is activated with a new option in the PDF project properties. It allows you to
automatically embed all files with specific extensions that are referenced with file links
in your project.
For details see Embedding files in PDFs 544 in the PDF and Printed Manuals chapter.

Syntax highlighter for C#

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

22 Help & Manual Online Help

By popular demand a new syntax highlighter has been added for C# code. You can
now automatically format your C# code examples in Help & Manual with a couple of
clicks.
See Formatting Program Source Code 267 for details on using syntax highlighting.
The option is activated with a new option in the PDF project properties. It allows you to
automatically embed all files with specific extensions that are referenced with file links
in your project.
For details see Embedding files in PDFs 544 in the PDF and Printed Manuals chapter.

New HTML template variables for Browser-based Help:

Two new variables are now available for use in your templates in Browser-based Help.
These variables are primarily designed to optimize your output for search engines.
<%TOPIC_TITLE_PATH%> This works like the breadcrumbs 479 variable but generates
plain text instead of a link list and also includes the title of
the current topic. You can use it in the <title> tag of your
topic pages templates in Browser-based Help to improve
search engine performance.
<%TOPIC_HEADER_TEXT%> This returns the topic header as plain text and can be
used for the description meta tag in your topic pages
templates. It is useful if the text in your header is longer
than the caption in the TOC and you want to make the
header version available to search engines.
For details see HTML template variables 826 in the Reference section.

New CID font mode for PDF output:

CID font mode is now supported for more efficient embedding of Unicode fonts in PDF
files. This option can make PDFs written in Asian languages using Unicode fonts
significantly smaller. It should generally be turned off for languages that do not use
Unicode fonts.
CID font mode should also produce better results for Asian languages when non-Asian
fonts are used. For example, in the past Japanese text formatted with Arial sometimes
did not convert to PDF properly, and this should now work correctly..
For details see CID Font Mode for Unicode fonts 545 in the PDF and Printed Manuals
chapter.

INI file for editing H&M XML with SDL Trados:

An INI file for SDL Trados is now included that makes editing and translating the XML
output generated by Help & Manual much easier. The file automatically configures
Trados to edit the Help & Manual XML schema properly.
You can find the file in the file in the \Templates\xml folder in the Help & Manual
program directory. It is called
HelpAndManual for SDL Trados.ini.

Support for undocumented CHM keyword tags

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 23

When importing HTML Help .CHM files Help & Manual now correctly imports the
undocumented "MS-HKWD" and "MS-HAID" meta tags and converts them to K-
keywords and A-keywords, respectively.
These work as follows (in the source code of the CHM you are importing):

<meta name="MS-HKWD" content="Browser, Options">

<meta name="MS-HAID" content="keyword1, keyword2">

2.3 Version 4.2 Update

Version 4.2 is the second major update to Help & Manual 4. It adds four key new functions
that many users have been asking for: Expanding text and images, search & replace for
styles, support for Unicode and Asian languages in both HTML templates and PDF and
support for right-to-left languages. In addition to this a large number of small modifications,
improvements and bugfixes have been made in response to user feedback and requests.
In addition to this, Version 4.2 also includes a fully-updated set of tutorial projects and
templates, which you can find in the \Samples folder in the Help & Manual program directory.
These projects include a new non-scrolling header template that works in both HTML Help
and Browser-based Help and a template for creating help for Pocket PC.
NEWS: Winhelp is no longer supported in Windows Vista!
Please note that support for the Winhelp format has been completely
discontinued in Microsoft Windows Vista. Even if your applications run under
Vista, any calls to Winhelp help will simply produce an error message. This
also applies to dual-mode popups in HTML Help. We thus strongly recommend
that you start transitioning to an alternative help format as soon as possible.
See here for details

New features in Version 4.2:

Toggles: Expanding sections, inline text and images:
This function is accessed with Insert > Toggle. It allows you to create expanding
sections (like this one), expanding inline text and expanding images with just a couple
of clicks. This function is only available in the Professional version of Help & Manual.
Full details and examples are available in the new help chapter for toggles:
Toggles: Expanding Text and Images 345

Search & Replace Styles:

This function makes it radically easier to integrate imported formatted text in your Help
& Manual stylesheets. In addition to this you can replace manual inline formatting with
new or existing named styles, replace the styles applied to texts with different styles or
even turn named styles into inline formatting.
Full details and examples are available in the new help chapter on the Search &
Replace Styles function:
Replacing Formatting & Styles 271

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

24 Help & Manual Online Help

Support for right-to-left languages:

The language settings in Project Properties > Common Properties > Language Settings
now include a new setting for right-to-left languages like Hebrew, Arabic and Farsi in
HTML Help and Browser-based Help. Support is not yet available in PDF and printed
manuals.
Activating this option switches the entire Help & Manual system to right-to-left mode,
including the Table of Contents and all other relevant components.
This setting is still experimental and we welcome feedback on it from users who work
with right-to-left languages in Help & Manual.

Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 compatibility:

Help & Manual 4.2 is fully compatible with Windows Vista RC2 and also with Internet
Explorer 7 on Windows XP and Windows Vista.
Since support for WinHelp is no longer going to be available in Windows Vista we
have converted Help & Manual's own help system to use CHM only (in earlier versions
we used dual-mode help 436 with an additional Winhelp file containing the popups for
the What'sThis? help popups displayed within the main application). Now the standard
HTML Help plain-text popups are used.
Please note that you still can compile Winhelp .HLP files with Help & Manual under
Windows Vista, you just can't view or use them.

Unicode support in HTML templates:

In earlier versions it was not possible to use Unicode in the HTML templates used to
generate topic pages because the were encoded in ANSI. These are now completely
encoded in UTF-8 Unicode, so that it is possible to include texts in any language in
your templates.
Warning: You may have to edit your templates if you have been using double-byte
encoded characters in them! For example, if your templates contain Russian text and
you did not export your HTML as UTF-8 encoded this will have worked on Russian
versions of Windows in version 4.15 and earlier. This was not Unicode, however, it
was double-byte encoded ANSI. This means that it won't work in 4.2: The strings will
appear garbled in your output because Help & Manual now treats the templates as
UTF-8 encoded Unicode. Western languages will not be affected because UTF-8 is
compatible with single-byte ANSI text.

New PDF engine with support for Unicode and Asian languages:
Help & Manual 4.2 includes a completely new PDF engine with full support for Asian
CID fonts. While all other output formats of Help & Manual already had full support for
Unicode, the old PDF engine did not. This has now been corrected.

New version of the full-text search module for Browser-based Help:

Version 4.2 incorporates the latest improved version of the third-party module for
generating full-text search in Browser-based Help.

Compatibility with MojoPac:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 25

MojoPac is a program that allows you to store your entire Windows environment and
your most frequently-used programs on a USB 2.0 thumb drive, an iPod or an external
hard drive. When you plug the device into any Windows computer you can work on
your own Windows desktop with your own applications without affecting the computer
you are working on in any way.
Help & Manual 4.2 is now fully compatible with MojoPac so that you can take your
entire help authoring environment with you and use it on any Windows computer.

Mode for testing Browser-based Help locally in Internet Explorer

A new option in the Compile dialog makes it possible to test your Browser-based Help
output on your local computer in Internet Explorer without triggering the yellow
"dangerous content" warning bar.

Updated and new tutorials and sample projects

All the tutorial and sample projects included with Help & Manual have been completely
rewritten and expanded and some new projects have been added. New features
include:
· A template for creating help for Pocket PC (Pocket PC Help)
· A new non-scrolling header template that works both in HTML Help and
Browser-based Help, including full printing support with a Print button and
generation of a printer-friendly version (DHTML Examples)
· The latest version of the project template for Help & Manual's own help,
incorporating all the new non-scrolling template features (H&M Help Template)
· Tutorials showing you how to create your own non-scrolling headers, navigation
buttons with mouseover effects, print links and buttons, CSS styles for
hyperlinks, CSS styles for the TOC in Browser-based Help, background images
in the TOC and topics and more (DHTML Examples)
· A tutorial on how to use conditional output (Conditional Output)
· A tutorial on how to work with modular help systems, including instructions for
using A-Links to link between modules (Modular Help Systems)

New tooltips in HTML-based outputs:

You can now enter tooltip texts for hyperlinks, image hotspots and images. The field
for this is called Title: and it exports the text as the HTML title attribute. In image
hotspots this attribute is also exported as the alt attribute.

Copy, Cut & Paste for image hotspots:

You can now use copy, cut and paste in the image hotspots editor (right-click for a
context menu).

IDs for images and tables:

You can now enter IDs for images and tables, which are exported in HTML-based
output formats and can be used for your own purposes. Note that if you enter IDs in
tables used in expanding section toggles 348 the toggle will overwrite your ID with its

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

26 Help & Manual Online Help

own. This is necessary for the functionality of the toggle. You can get around this
problem by entering your own ID for the table explicitly in the Insert Hotspot dialog.

Active support for Thai in HTML import:

HTML files written in Thai are now handled correctly when they are imported to new or
existing Help & Manual projects.

Syntax highlighting improvement:

Tab stops are now automatically converted to four hard spaces when formatting
source code examples.

Improved section recognition in keyword index:

When you add your own section letters to the keyword index Help & Manual will also
list and assign the keywords correctly, also for foreign letters. For example, a
Norwegian list of section header separators 384 like this will now work correctly:

A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z,Æ,Ø,Å

Other improvements and minor changes and fixes:

· Embedded topics now integrate better, all problems with additional space after
embedded topics have now been resolved.
· The Image Folders section in Project Properties has been improved. The dialog now
supports multiple selections, handles the Delete and Insert keys and when you add
folders you will be automatically prompted to add sub-folders if they exist. Both the full
path to the folders and the saved relative paths are now displayed below the folders
list when you select a list entry.
· HTML import now also supports Thai text.
· The syntax highlighter now replaces tab stops with 4 hard spaces.
· Page numbering in PDF and printed manuals has now been changed so that top-
level intro pages now get the number xx-1 instead of 0, which sometimes caused even
numbers to be displayed on right-hand pages.
· Full-text search in Browser-based Help now also handles German typographic quote
characters.
· Images with captions are now centered correctly in HTML
· Several import issues have been corrected for RTF, HTML, CHM, RoboHelp and
HLP data
· Additional checks are now performed for images stored on removable drives.
· Startup error caused by invalid or missing printer drivers corrected.
· A cosmetic issue with partially-selected images in the editor has been corrected.
· Tab stops on colored backgrounds are now displayed correctly in all PDF output.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 27

· Incorrect word breaks with some rare large fonts on Windows 2000 corrected.
· Image and movie filename case conversion corrected for Linux and Unix servers.
· Countless other minor corrections and cosmetic improvements.

2.4 Version 4.1 Update

Version 4.1 is the first major functional update of Help & Manual 4 since the release in early
September 2005. Like all updates between full version numbers, it is free for everyone who
already owns a copy of Help & Manual 4. However, as already announced in the Product
Roadmap some functions (see list below) will only be available to users of the Professional
version.
If you have the Standard version and need these features just visit the purchasing page to
obtain an upgrade.

New features in version 4.1:

XML Export / Import
This is probably the most eagerly-awaited function ever. You can now export your
entire project to a special XML format that can be translated or edited in an external
XML editor or XML-aware translation tool and then re-imported to Help & Manual with
all formatting and project features intact.
Note that you can only import XML files created with Help & Manual. This is a closed,
round-trip function and you currently cannot import any other XML formats like
Darwin or DocBook!
For more information see these topics:
· XML Export and Import 786 (Reference, read this first)
· New project from an XML project file 142 (importing XML packages)
· Importing H&M XML projects 165 (importing XML packages)
· Exporting and importing topics 202 (exporting and importing single topics as XML)
· Editing XML source code 208 (using the new XML source code editor)
· Compiling to XML 415 (outputting your project in XML format)

New XML Source Code editor

The Help & Manual editor pane now includes a third tab called XML Source. This is
a full-featured XML editor with syntax highlighting that allows you to view and edit the
current topic in XML format.
For more information see these topics:
· XML source code editor 32 (general description)
· Editing XML source code 208 (how to use the editor)

Project Synchronization tool

This new tool is designed for translation projects. It enables you to "synchronize" the
updated version of a project in the original language with the old translated version in

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

28 Help & Manual Online Help

a different language. The tool then updates the structure of project with the new
material so that a translator can produce a new version.
For more information see this section:
· Project Synchronization Tool 645

Quick help index search

A search tool in the toolbar now allows you to search in the Help & Manual online
help index without opening the help first.
For more information see this section:
· Getting Help 74

Zoom factor for precise image resizing

You can now resize images precisely in the editor by entering a percentage value.
For more information see this section:
· Inserting graphics and screenshots 314

Interface updates and bugfixes:

eBook viewer:
The HTML rendering engine in the eBook viewer has been updated to fix some minor
formatting problems with lists and tables.

RoboHelp import improvements:

A number of improvements and refinements have been introduced to the RoboHelp
import module. Many thanks to all the users who contributed the feedback to make
this possible!

Customizable keyboard shortcuts:

The plus and minus keys are now included in the shortcuts selection list.

New graphical tabs:

New graphical tabs have been implemented in Help & Manual itself, the Impict
screenshot editing tool and the Print Manual Designer tool. Individual tabs are now
displayed for all sections in Print Manual Designer.

Improved display styles:

The display styles for Help & Manual have been updated and made more attractive.
They can be selected in Tools > Customize > Toolbars > Toolbar & Menu Style.

New Show/Hide feature for the Navigation pane:

The Navigation pane has a new title bar (Navigation) and a "pin" tool with which you
can show and hide the entire pane with a single click.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 29

2.5 Changes Since Version 3

The question "What's new in Help & Manual 4" is not so easy to answer. The quickest
answer would be "everything" – this is the most radical and major upgrade of the program
that we have ever released. Virtually every single function of the program has undergone a
complete overhaul and many, many new features have been added, some of them
extremely powerful. We have listened to the feedback from our users and implemented all
the most frequently-requested functions, plus many that you never even thought of but will
not want to do without.
However, all these changes don't mean that the program has become unfamiliar – on the
contrary. Our top design priority was to maintain the "look and feel" of the program and its
highly-intuitive interface so that users upgrading will feel at home immediately.
This section outlines the main new features and improvements introduced in Help & Manual
.

2.5.1 The Editor

Help & Manual 4 introduces a completely new editor engine that radically enhances the
capabilities of the entire program. It is time to say goodbye to the good old rich text editor,
which was solid but more than a little limited in its functionality (need we say "tables" and
"styles"?). Rest in peace! The new editor is lightning fast, even more stable and has all the
features you are looking for – and many more that you didn't even imagine were possible.
The new editor is "almost WYSIWYG" (full WYSIWYG is not possible for the wealth of
output formats we support) and makes it possible to use justified text, very many more
paragraph and formatting options and a wealth of other major and minor improvements. For
example, it features fully-dynamic styles and stylesheets, can handle Unicode 31 and
supports complex formatted tables and nested tables.

Introducing the new Help & Manual editor:

The new editor eliminates all the editing restrictions of the earlier versions of Help &
Manual, not only those of the table editor or other limitations of the old Rich Text format.
It natively supports tables with all the functionality you can wish for. Above all, we have
the full source code of the editor (no more 3rd party DLLs with workarounds for bugs we

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 30 Help & Manual Online Help

can't see), which means that we can make it do whatever we want it to do – and we
have!
This section outlines just some of the many new features that have been made possible
by the new editor – including Unicode 31 for international languages, complex tables 33 ,
dynamic styles 36 , complex lists 38 with bullets and numbering, a real-time keyword index
42 and much more.

2.5.1.1 File format

Single-file format retained

We are staying with a proprietary, single-file format for the project files, which now has
the extension .HMX. As in earlier versions, the project file functions as a database
containing all the project settings components except the graphics. We feel that it is the
most efficient approach – among other things it makes it much easier to move your
projects around and work on them on different computers.

New internal text format

Under the hood of the new project file format everything has changed. Instead of being
based on rich text the new internal text format is HTML and XML oriented. This makes it
possible to import formatted HTML and XML and brings the added advantage of genuine
dynamic styles and style sheets with inheritance.

Full .HM3 conversion, of course

It goes virtually without saying that you can import and edit your old Help & Manual 3

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 31

projects. A full-featured converter is included that turns your .HM3 projects into .HMX
projects, importing all your formatting, layout and structural elements.

2.5.1.2 Unicode support

Yes, Help & Manual 4 comes with full support for Unicode languages 149 ! This means that
you can now use Help & Manual to edit and generate help in virtually all languages,
including Japanese, Chinese, Thai and other languages requiring double-byte Unicode
character sets.
· Important Note:
Please note that Unicode support is only included in the Professional version of Help &
Manual 4.

Unicode in Browser-based Help:

Unicode is also supported in Browser-based Help output with a switch for generating
Unicode-compliant HTML with UTF-8 encoding.

Unicode in Adobe PDF:

The only output format that currently does not yet support Unicode is Adobe PDF. The
PDF output engine is going to be upgraded as soon as possible. However, it is still
possible to generate Unicode PDF output with Help & Manual 4 if you have the full
version of Acrobat or another Unicode-compliant PDF program that can be configured to
work as a printer driver.

See also:
International languages setup 149
International Languages and Unicode 780 (Reference)
Language Settings 551 (Project Properties)
2.5.1.3 Text formatting

A quick look at the text and paragraph options should be enough to demonstrate just how
radical the formatting improvements are between Help & Manual 3 and 4. Just select Font,
Paragraph, Borders and Backgrounds and Bullets and Numbering in the Format menu to see
for yourself!

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 32 Help & Manual Online Help

New editor paragraph options:

This is just one example of the many powerful new formatting options introduced
in Help & Manual 4!

2.5.1.4 XML source code editor

As of version 4.1 the Professional version of Help & Manual features full support for XML
Export/Import 50 , which includes a new editor tab for editing the XML source code version of
your topics directly.

New XML source code editor tab:

You just need to click on the new XML tab to activate a fully-editable view of the XML
source code for your topic, complete with syntax highlighting to make the code easier to
read.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 33

The XML Source editing tab is only

available in the Professional version of
Help & Manual.

How the XML Source editor works:

The XML code displayed in the editor is generated on the fly when you switch to the
XML editing view. If you edit the code it is then reconverted on the fly when you
switch back to normal Page Editor view, provided the XML code you enter is valid
(XML is much stricter than HTML about correct syntax).
Effectively, switching back and forth between Page Editor and XML Source views
exports the current topic to XML and then imports it back to your project.

IMPORTANT: Help & Manual can only process its own XML
files!
Help & Manual can only process XML files created with Help & Manual.
Currently you cannot export or import any other XML formats. Help &
Manual uses its own XML schema known as the Help & Manual XML
Language. This schema is designed specifically for exporting Help & Manual
projects for external processing and then re-importing them, and it is the
only XML schema with which this is possible.
The Help & Manual XML Language is fully documented in a separate help
file included with the program (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help &
Manual program directory). The schema is fully open and you are welcome
to develop your own applications for converting between the Help & Manual
XML Language and other XML variants.

See also:
XML Export/Import 786 (Reference)
Editing XML source code 208
2.5.1.5 Tables

Along with dynamic styles 36 , improved table handling was probably one of the features
requested most frequently by Help & Manual 3 users. The new editor handles tables
directly – the OLE table implementation that had to be used in Help & Manual 3 has been
completely replaced. This means you now have full freedom to create complex and

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34 Help & Manual Online Help

formatted tables of any size.

Some of the new table capabilities:

· You can insert tables of any size, there is no more restriction on the number of rows
and columns.
· You can format columns, rows and cells individually.
· You can nest tables (i.e. insert tables inside other tables).
· You can paste tables directly from Word, Excel or your browser.
· You can have large tables split across pages automatically when you print a user
manual or generate a PDF. As of version 4.31, page breaks are also possible within
table rows, so a large row containing multiple paragraphs of text will not cause page
break errors.
· Tables are no longer limited to printing on one page. You can now define heading
rows that repeat automatically when tables split across pages.
· Tables can be transparent, colored and have background images.
· Individual rows, columns and cells can have different properties.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 35

2.5.1.6 Font size preview setting

Help & Manual 4 includes a new setting that lets you preview the effects of the Windows font
size setting on your help file. This enables you to make sure that your help file will also
display properly for users who have large fonts activated in their Windows settings:

Quick setting method with the mouse wheel:

· If you have a mouse with a mouse wheel you can instantly change this setting by
clicking in the editor, holding down Ctrl and turning the mouse wheel. Note that this
setting is temporary – it is not stored like the setting in the program customization
dialogs (see above).

How this setting helps

As you probably know, the Windows Display Properties have a setting for increasing the
display size of fonts:

This is nice for users who find larger text easier to read. Unfortunately, it also causes
problems for programmers because the rest of the Windows doesn't automatically adjust
itself to the larger fonts.
In addition to this the large fonts setting can also change the way the layout of help files
works. For example, a paragraph with a hanging indent that works with a small font
might look terrible for a user who has large fonts turned on:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 36 Help & Manual Online Help

Preventing font size problems in your output:

In HTML-based output formats you can also prevent this problem by
setting your output font sizes to pixels in HTML Export Options 573 . This
prevents adjustment of the font size of your help even if the user sets
larger font sizes in Windows.

2.5.1.7 Dynamic styles

The styles tree, illustrating

inheritance relationships. The other feature requested most frequently by Help &
Manual 3 users is dynamic styles, and this is yet another area where Help & Manual 4
delivers. The new version features a complete implementation of dynamic styles with
dynamic linking and inheritance and different settings for design, print and electronic help
output.

Style features:
· Dynamic linking: Styles are dynamically linked to the text formatted with them.
Update the style and all the formatted text updates automatically.
· Dynamic inheritance: Styles inherit properties from their "parents". Change the

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 37

property in a parent and it changes in all its children. For example, this means that you
can change the font and other attributes in an entire style family or your entire project
just by editing the parent style.
· Formatting features: Styles can include all font and paragraph formatting attributes,
which can all be switched on and off individually. In addition to this they can also
include borders and background colors for text and colors.
· Text and paragraph styles: You can define text-only styles for text formatting and
paragraph styles that include both text and paragraph attributes.
· Separate Design, Print and Help definitions: For each style you can define different
sets of attribute definitions for Design (i.e. editing), Print (PDF and printed manuals)
and Help (electronic formats) output. For example, this means that you can use
different fonts in your online help (HTML Help or Winhelp) and your PDF versions – or
even a completely different appearance. Once you have set it up the whole process is
automatic.

Standard and user-defined styles:

There are a number of predefined standard styles used for special purposes. Their
names are predefined and cannot be changed but you can edit all their attributes. In
addition to this you can define as many of your own styles as you like, both as
independent styles and as families in an "inheritance tree".

2.5.1.8 Graphics and hotspots

The basic handling of graphics remains pretty much the same as in Help & Manual 3.
However, some significant improvements have also been introduced here:

New graphics features:

· Interactive image scaling: Images can now be scaled directly in the editor. Just click
on the image and drag to adjust its size. The actual resizing is not done until you
compile, and in PDF the full original image size is used for maximum print quality.
· Hotspot handling: Hotspots (hyperlink areas in images) are now created in the Help
& Manual editor and saved with the help topic. They no longer have to be edited in a
separate graphics program. This means you can create hotspots for all image formats.
The hotspots in .SHG and .IPP images created for .HM3 projects are
converted automatically when you convert your old projects to Help &
Manual 4 .HMX projects.

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 38 Help & Manual Online Help

· Image captions: Every image can now have a caption, which can be added and
edited directly in the Help & Manual editor. If you use the same image more than once
you can create different captions for each instance. In a future release we may also
add the ability to generate a "list of figures" using the image captions.
· GIF support: In addition to all the other image formats already supported Help &
Manual 4 adds native support for compressed GIF images with transparency, making
it much easier to add transparent images to your help files.

2.5.1.9 Bullets and numbering

In addition to dynamic styles 36 the new editor also introduces much more advanced support
for bulleted and numbered lists. The lists are fully customizable and you can also create
complex numbered lists with multiple levels.

2.5.1.10 Hyperlink handling

Inserting and editing hyperlinks has been significantly improved and a new hyperlink type,
file links, has been added:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 39

Single dialog for all link types:

All hyperlinks are now inserted and edited in a single hyperlink editing dialog. The
hyperlink type is selected at the top of the dialog, which then changes to display the
corresponding options:

Each link type displays a different set of options in the

dialog.

New "file link" hyperlinks:

In addition to topic links, Internet links and script / macro links the new dialog introduces
"file links" for hyperlinks to external data and executable files. This eliminates the need to
program these links with the ExecFile() Winhelp macro.

Links are active at design time:

Topic links, Internet and file links can all be tested at design time (just hold down Ctrl
and click on the link).

Links are editable:

Instead of being objects text links now behave like normal text. In addition to editing
them in the Hyperlink dialog (displayed by double-clicking) you can also edit the link text
directly in the editor. You just click once inside the link and the link is displayed
highlighted to show that it is in editing mode.

To correct a misspelled link...

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 40 Help & Manual Online Help

...just click in the link and edit:

2.5.1.11 Dead link highlighting

The Help & Manual editor automatically highlights dead links, in so you can easily find
and check them. This is especially useful when you delete topics, because resulting dead
links are immediately visible. (You can also check links before deleting a topic – just click on
the topic's entry in the TOC and select Find Referrers.)

Dead hyperlink highlighted:

Dead image hotspot highlighted:

2.5.1.12 Mouseover hints

All objects in Help & Manual 4 (links, images, macros, TOC entries etc.) have mouseover
hints that display useful details about the object.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 41

Mouseover hints display

object information directly.
In Help & Manual 3 you had to click on a link to display the link details in the status bar. Now
you just need to position the mouse over the link and the information is displayed directly in
a small popup.

See also:
Mouseover hints in the TOC 57
2.5.1.13 Videos and animations

In Help & Manual 4 inserting videos and animations is as easy as inserting graphics. Several
different video formats are supported, including Macromedia Flash, Windows Media Player,
QuickTime and Real.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 42 Help & Manual Online Help

The film reel icon identifies

a movie object in the editor. Video insertion implementation:
Video formats are detected automatically when you insert them and no HTML or other
coding is necessary. All it takes is a couple of mouse clicks. All the coding is handled by
the program – but you can also edit the HTML code if you want to!
The HTML editor for the optional code editing features full syntax highlighting.

Preview images:
You can insert a preview image of the movie or animation in your topic. In compiled
output formats that support movies like HTML Help and Winhelp the image is displayed
before the movie starts playing if you do not configure it to play automatically. (Note that
preview image function is not available in Browser-based Help.) In other formats like
PDF and RTF the placeholder image will be displayed instead.
You can use your own image for the placeholder or take a snapshot from the movie
directly in Help & Manual. In the output the placeholder is displayed without the film reel
icon you can see in the screenshot, which is only shown in the editor to tell you that the
object is a movie and not a graphic.

2.5.1.14 Two-way live keyword index

Help & Manual 4 introduces a radically-improved keyword index editor that is updated in real
time while you are editing and entering keywords. You can see the finished index while you
are working, which makes it much easier to produce a high-quality index quickly and
efficiently.

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 Latest Updates 43

Multiple index editing methods:

You can add keywords the old way, by adding them in the Keywords entry field in the
topic's Topic Options tab. Or you can do it the new way, inserting keywords directly in
the keyword index and assigning them to one or more topics simultaneously. Or you can
combine both methods for total interactive control over your index.
Whichever method you choose, Help & Manual 4 updates everything simultaneously –
both the topic's Keywords list and the real-time keyword index in the Index tab.

Index proofreading and testing support:

The integrated real-time index is a great tool for proofreading your index as you create it.
In addition to showing you the finished index it also includes some useful proofreading
and testing tools:
· Double-clicking on an index entry takes you to the target topic or displays a list of
available target topics, just as it does in a real help index.
· Identical keywords entered with different cases are highlighted with a red
underline.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 44 Help & Manual Online Help

Identical words with different cases are highlighted for

easy identification. (In this case it was intentional but you
get the general idea...)

2.5.1.15 Anchors with keywords

Anchors in topics are entered in the same way as

in Help & Manual 3. However, they no longer have
captions. Instead, they have an alphanumeric ID
as an address and their position in the topic is
displayed with an anchor icon.
In addition to this you can now enter index
keywords for anchors. This means that index
entries can now jump to specific positions in
Anchors now support keywords, including topics when the user clicks on them.
keywords with sub-keywords.

2.5.1.16 Comments and bookmarks

Design time bookmarks and topic comments have been improved and combined and they
now integrate deeply in the help design process. They can be used both for design notes
and as bookmarks with which you can jump to specific positions in your project.

Every comment is a bookmark:

Every comment is also a named bookmark that you can use to jump to a specific
position in your project. You just select the bookmark's name in the list:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 45

Comments can be displayed as icons or with their text:

You just need to select and drag to display the contents (or double-click to edit):

You can display the entire bookmark contents in the editor:

Topics containing comments are identified in the TOC.

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 46 Help & Manual Online Help

2.5.1.17 Embedded Topics

Embedded topics were already available in Help

& Manual 3. However, when you embedded a
topic in another topic it was only displayed as a
little placeholder icon. Help & Manual 4 displays
the entire contents of the source topic in the
target position, and if the source topic is
updated the changes are also displayed in the
target location.
In addition to this you can now also exclude
invisible topics 58 from your compiled output. T
his makes it possible to create invisible source
topics for your embedded topics. You then
exclude the source topics from your output with
their build options and the invisible source
topics will no longer increase the size of your
output or appear confusingly in full-text
searches.

2.5.2 Import and export

The new editor and internal file format have made it possible to radically improve Help &
Manual's import and export capabilities. New features here include:
· Convert and import RoboHelp X5 for HTML projects
· Decompile and import HTML Help .CHM files with structure and formatting
intact.
· Import HTML and plain text files with formatting intact.
· Copy and paste complex formatted text from and to Microsoft Word.
· Import XML file packages exported by Help & Manual's round-trip XML 786 export/
import function.

2.5.2.1 RoboHelp® X5 conversion

The many former RoboHelp® users looking for an alternative need look no longer. Help &
Manual 4 can convert and import RoboHelp® X5 for HTML projects, maintaining most of the
structure, formatting and features of the original projects.

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 Latest Updates 47

· RoboHelp projects can be imported to a new project 144 or merged with an existing
.HMX project 167 .
· This should make the transition from RoboHelp to Help & Manual 4 quick and
painless.

2.5.2.2 Import functions

Import capabilities
Help & Manual 4 can convert and import the following formats, preserving virtually all of
the original structure and formatting:
· RoboHelp® X5 for HTML projects
· HTML and plain text files
· Compiled HTML Help .CHM files
· Compiled Winhelp .HLP files and Winhelp project source files
· MS Word RTF files
You can also copy and paste text with complex formatting, graphics and tables to and
from Microsoft Word, also with virtually all formatting intact.

Help & Manual 3 .HM3 project conversion

As you might expect you can import your Help & Manual 3 projects with all features
intact. The only things you may need to tweak are styles, tables and any custom code
added to your HTML templates in Help & Manual 3:
The settings for your styles may need to be edited a little because .HM3 projects simply
didn't have dynamic styles, and some of the static tables from .HM3 projects may also
need a little post-editing. Finally, Help & Manual 4's HTML templates have changed
considerably, so custom code added to your templates in .HM3 projects is not
transferred automatically. You must re-enter custom code in the templates in your new
.HMX project, but once you have done this it should also work as before.

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 48 Help & Manual Online Help

2.5.2.3 New output formats

Support has been added XML export and import 48 for translation (as of Help & Manual
version 4.1) and for the MS Help 2.0 50 format (also known as Visual Studio Help).
In addition to this the Browser-based Help 49 output has been completely rewritten from the
ground up, introducing full-text search and radically improved navigation and browser
compatibility, both for all current platforms and for older and security-restricted browsers.
The new Browser-based Help "downgrades gracefully" when it encounters older browsers
with restricted capabilities – some of the more advanced dynamic features will then be
disabled, but the help will still be fully functional.

XML:
As of version 4.1 Help & Manual also supports XML. The XML Export/Import 786 function
allows you to export your entire project in an XML format that can be edited in XML
editors and XML-aware tools, for example for translation. Afterwards you can then
re-import the entire edited project back into Help & Manual with all its layout, formatting,
properties and settings intact.
In addition to exporting XML you can also view and edit the XML code of your topics
directly in Help & Manual with the new XML Source editor, which is integrated in the
main editor pane. Edits are automatically updated in your topic when you return to the
normal Page Editor tab.

Note that the XML Source editor is only

available in the Professional version of
Help & Manual.
XML Export/Import is a round-trip function using Help & Manual's own XML schema. It is
provided so that you export your help projects in XML format, process them externally
and then re-import them with all your layout, formatting and project settings intact.
This function is not designed for importing XML data from other sources! The Help &
Manual XML schema is fully documented in a separate help file included with the
program (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the program directory).
· This is a Professional version feature:
Please note that the support for XML Export/Import is only included in the
Professional version of Help & Manual 4.

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 Latest Updates 49

New Browser-based Help with full-text search:

Browser-based HTML is now called Browser-based Help. This is our help format using
regular HTML files for display with any browser, but emulating the two-frame appearance
and functionality of HTML Help so that navigation is immediately intuitive for all users.
Plus, it implements indexed full-text search for maximum online functionality.
The name change is small but the changes under the hood are radical. In addition to the
full-text search the new format includes a completely rewritten menu system that
automatically "downgrades gracefully" for compatibility with all browsers, also older
browsers and browsers without JavaScript support.
The old version had either JavaScript or plain HTML, and you had to decide which you
wanted to use when you compiled. The new version integrates both in the same output
and works reliably with all browsers from MSIE 6 back to early versions of Netscape. It
has also been tested extensively on Linux browsers (including Konqueror, which couldn't
handle the old version at all) and Mac browsers. In other words: You can now have your
cake and eat it too.
· Professional version features:
Please note that the support for full-text search in Browser-based Help is only
included in the Professional version of Help & Manual 4.

Changes and improvements in Browser-based Help:

· A powerful full-text search engine is included. Search options are fully configurable
and the search is indexed. Once the user has downloaded the compact index file
searching is lightning fast and includes highlighting of found words. Full-text search
does require JavaScript on the user's browser, however. It is not enabled unless the
user's browser has JavaScript support.
· There are now two general output options: "Simple" and "Dynamic". Dynamic is
the standard, integrating both JavaScript and plain HTML functionality with automatic
switching in response to browser capabilities. The Simple version generates plain
HTML without any frames and without JavaScript. This is actually only for very special
requirements, for example if you need to do some post-processing on the HTML
output. Otherwise it will almost never be needed.
· New hybrid HTML format: The Dynamic output option generates a new hybrid HTML
format that automatically switches the table of contents and the keyword index to
JavaScript mode if this is supported by the user's browser. If the browser doesn't
support this the code downgrades gracefully to a static HTML version. The entire
process is automatic and transparent to the user. It just works, always making use of
the current browser's capabilities to ensure the best viewing experience.
· Navigation always works: Users can always navigate through the help with the table
of contents, keyword index and topic links, no matter which browser and operating
system they are using. All the links will always work. The only feature that this doesn't
apply to is the new JavaScript popups – as their name implies, they require JavaScript
to work. JavaScript is also required for full-text search.
· Popups are now supported. The new JavaScript popups 59 (also available in HTML
Help) provide genuine popup topics in Browser-based Help. These popups can include

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 50 Help & Manual Online Help

links, graphics, formatted text and even videos and animations. They do require
JavaScript on the user's browser, however.
· Table of Contents flickering eliminated. The TOC does not have to be rebuilt every
time a branch is opened or closed so TOC flickering is a thing of the past.
· Synchronization between the TOC and the displayed topics is also very much
improved.
· Keyword index improvements: Clicking on single-link keywords takes the user
directly to the linked topic, multi-link keywords (i.e. keywords contained in more than
one topic) display a popup window for selection. The popup window stays open and
doesn't disappear when you move the mouse away.
· Code optimization for HTML: Help & Manual 4 automatically generates different
HTML code for Browser-based Help and HTML Help. The HTML Help .CHM files are
optimized for MS Internet Explorer (which is used to display HTML Help) and the
Browser-based Help code takes the quirks and requirements of the available Internet
browsers into account.
· UTF-8 and XHTML 1.1 compliant output: You can activate both UTF-8 coding for
Unicode languages and XHTML 1.1 compliant output. Both these features can be
switched on or off (UTF-8 is not always required and not all browsers are fully
compatible with XHTML – it's your choice.)

Visual Studio Help (MS Help 2.0) support:

This has been introduced for programmers who need to document components created
for integration in Visual Studio .Net. Microsoft has decided not to release Help 2.0 for
any other purposes but many programmers have asked for this functionality and now we
have provided it.
· This is a professional version feature:
Please note that the support for Visual Studio Help/MS Help 2.0 is only included in
the Professional version of Help & Manual 4.

See also:
Browser-based Help 771 (Help Formats)
Visual Studio Help 777 (Help Formats)
2.5.2.4 Translation/localization support

Translation and localization support in Help & Manual consists of two functions, Project
Synchronization 645 and XML Export/Import 786 .
Both these functions are only supported in the Professional version of Help
& Manual 4. (XML Import is supported in the Standard version and can
only import XML conforming to the Help & Manual XML schema, which
normally means XML created with Help & Manual)
At least Windows 2000 or Windows XP are needed to read and process
the XML files generated by Help & Manual. Earlier versions of Windows
cannot handle the Unicode formatting required for XML.

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 Latest Updates 51

Project Synchronization:
This function compares the latest version of the original language version of a Help &
Manual project with any previous translated version of the same project. It then updates
the translated version with changes in the new version so that the translator can
translate the changes. This is a structural comparison that works on the topic level. It is
not a content-level comparison because it is designed to compare projects in different
languages.
This function is designed primarily for those who are doing their translation work in Help
& Manual itself – i.e. the translator works on the translation in his or her own copy of
Help & Manual. However, if you wish you can also use Project Synch to generate an
updated version of the translated project and then use XML Export to output this version
for processing by a translator.
Please see the chapter on Project Synchronization 645 for full details.

XML Export/Import:
This function outputs the entire project in XML format, using Help & Manual's own XML
schema. In addition to the XML files containing all the data, XSL stylesheet files are also
generated to allow WYSIWYG previews in web browsers and XML editors that support
XSL. The schema is fully documented and anyone who wishes to is welcome to write
their own tools and transformers for it. For full details of the format please see the
separate help file (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the program directory).
XML Export/Import is a round-trip function that allows you to export your project, edit or
translate it with an XML-aware editor or translation tool and then re-import it to Help &
Manual with all project properties, layout and settings intact.
For full details see XML Export/Import 786 in the Reference section.

See also:
Project Synchronization 645
XML Export/Import 786 (Reference)
Compiling Your Project 410
New project from an XML project file 142
Importing H&M XML projects 165
2.5.3 Menus & Toolbars
The menus and toolbars in Help & Manual have been redesigned with a new, more modern
look and they are now fully customizable. You can define which toolbar icons are displayed
and you can assign keyboard shortcuts to all available menu functions and edit the existing
standard keyboard shortcuts as well.

You can also choose the style of the menus and toolbars (classic, Office XP or Windows

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 52 Help & Manual Online Help

XP).

2.5.3.1 Toolbars & keyboard shortcuts

Both the toolbars and the keyboard shortcuts are now fully customizable.

Customizing the toolbars:

Help & Manual 4 comes with a number of new toolbar buttons. You can customize all the
toolbars and switch all the available buttons on and off:

Customizing keyboard shortcuts:

All keyboard shortcuts are now customizable. The standard functions come pre-assigned
but you can change them if you like and you can assign your own keyboard shortcuts to
any menu command:

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 Latest Updates 53

2.5.3.2 Improved context menus

The popup context menus now source their content from the main menu entries. All the
functions available in the main menu – for instance the Insert menu – is also available in the
context menu:

2.5.4 TOC selection, Drag & Drop

Handling and manipulation of the TOC has also been significantly improved. The most
radical feature, which many users have asked for, is multiple selection – you can now select
and manipulate multiple chapters and topics in the TOC.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 54 Help & Manual Online Help

In addition to this a number of other TOC capabilities have been improved and new features
have been added. For example, you can now copy and paste multiple TOC entries to the
editor pane to create lists of links.

2.5.4.1 Multiselect in the TOC

The Table of Contents (TOC) now supports multiple selection. This means that you can
select multiple items in the TOC and cut, copy and move them, either with menu commands
or with drag and drop.
· You can also perform a number of other commands on multiple topics. For example,
you can use the commands in Topics > Change Item to change the status or icons of
multiple topics.

Drag and drop with multiple topics:

Drag & Drop works with multiple topics. For
example, you can drag a group of topics from
one part of the TOC to another, or from the TOC
to the Invisible Topics section:
In addition to Drag & Drop you can also use Copy
and Paste on multiple topics, both within the
same project and between two projects.

2.5.4.2 Compile/print selected topics

In addition to all the other features made possible by multiple selection in the TOC you can
also compile and print selected topics only. This is very useful in a number of situations. For
example, if you have a very large project you no longer need to compile the entire project
just to check the results of a formatting change – you can compile a single chapter or even
just a single topic.
This new function is selected in the Compile Help File dialog, in the same way that you
select the familiar Include Options and the new custom user-defined builds 58 .

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 Latest Updates 55

2.5.4.3 Enhanced TOC Drag & Drop

In addition to multiple selections the TOC also has some new features that making Drag &
Drop easier to use:
· The new TOC Drag & Drop display makes positioning the drop target easier.
· Drag & copy 221 is now also supported by holding down the CTRL key while dragging.
(Doing this makes duplicate TOC entries that point to the same topics. The original
topics are not copied.

New TOC Drag & Drop display features:

The mouse pointer, topic highlights and insertion bar make dragging and dropping in the
TOC easier and more intuitive:
· Making the moved topic the child of the target topic:

· Inserting the moved topic between two target topics (note insertion bar):

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 56 Help & Manual Online Help

2.5.4.4 Copy TOC to create links

Even though many users have asked for it, it is still not possible to drag a TOC item from the
TOC to the editor to create a link. This is because selecting a TOC item automatically
selects the associated topic, and you then don't have a target to drag to. (You can still
create links by dragging selected text to a TOC item though!)
However, what now is possible is copying and pasting TOC items to the editor to create
links. You can use this neat new feature to create both individual and multiple links!

Create links by copying TOC items:

How it works is simple:
1. You just select one or more items in the TOC and press Ctrl+C or select Copy in
the Edit menu.
2. Then you click in the editor and press Ctrl+V or select Paste in the Edit menu.
Copying a single TOC item creates a normal link. Copying multiple items creates a list of
links:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 57

2.5.4.5 Mouseover hints

Similar to the mouseover hints for objects in the topic

editor 40 there are now mouseover hints for items in the Table of Contents (TOC).
Positioning the mouse over an entry in the TOC displays detailed information about the item:
Entries in the TOC now have their own timestamp 227 , which is stored separately from the
timestamp of the topic text. Each TOC entry also has its own unique internal numerical ID
that is assigned when it is created and never changed. Both these features are required for
the new translation support features 50 , making it possible to track changes to every TOC
node and entry separately from the topic text.

2.5.4.6 Folders in Invisible Topics

You can now create folders in the Invisible Topics

section. These folders are not exported to your compiled help files (that wouldn't make
sense because the topics are invisible). However, this feature does make organizing the
items in the Invisible Topics section much easier, because you can now group them by
function etc.

2.5.5 Miscellaneous new features

This section describes new features that did not fit in the other What's New? categories.
Please note that it only covers some of the more outstanding new features included in Help
& Manual 4. It is far from complete – you will find improvements and new capabilities in
almost every single function of the program.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 58 Help & Manual Online Help

2.5.5.1 Build options / include conditions

User-defined custom build options

This is another of the functions that many users have asked. In Help & Manual 3 you
only had four predefined "custom build" options to use as conditions for generating
alternative output versions of your project. Help & Manual 4 introduces custom builds –
you can now define as many output conditions as you like (hundreds, if you really need
them), and can give them any names you like.
User-defined custom build options are stored with your project.

Custom build options in conditional text and templates:

User-defined custom build options are also supported in conditional text tags and HTML
templates. For conditional text they are displayed automatically in the Insert Condition
dialog:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 59

In HTML templates custom builds conditions are entered manually, using the build ID in
the standard condition syntax, for example <IF_ALEX>, <IFNOT_DEMO> and so on.

Build options in mouseover hints:

Both standard and user-defined build options are included in the mouseover hints 57
displayed when you position the mouse over an item in the TOC:

Build options for invisible topics:

You can now also apply build options to topics in the Invisible Topics section. For
example, this makes it possible to create invisible source topics for embedded topics 46 .
You then exclude the source topics from your output with their build options and the
invisible source topics will no longer increase the size of your output or appear
confusingly in full-text searches.

2.5.5.2 JavaScript popups

Help & Manual 3 only supported the popup topic technologies that were actually integrated
in the output formats. That meant that you had regular popup topics in Winhelp, plain-text
only popups in HTML Help and no popups at all in Browser-based Help. In addition to this
HM3 also supported "dual-mode help" for HTML Help, which generated a separate Winhelp
file for the popups. This made it possible to use popups containing formatted text (bold, italic
etc.) and graphics in HTML Help.

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 60 Help & Manual Online Help

JavaScript popups for Browser-based Help and HTML Help:

Help & Manual 4 introduces a new popup topic mode

called JavaScript popups 199 that works equally well in both HTML Help and Browser-
based Help. Click here for an example. As the name suggests these popups are
implemented with JavaScript, so in Browser-based Help they will only work if the user's
browser supports JavaScript.
That is the only limitation, however. JavaScript popups have the following advantages:
· They work equally well in HTML Help and Browser-based Help.
· They support multiple fonts, formatted text (italic, bold etc.), graphics, hyperlinks,
videos and animations.
· They work well on all browsers that support JavaScript.
· In HTML Help JavaScript popups are integrated in the .CHM file. There are no
additional files to distribute – unlike Help & Manual 3's dual-mode help, for which
you had to distribute an additional Winhelp .HLP file.
· They are highly configurable, with separate settings for HTML Help and Browser-
based Help output. They can be displayed on click or mouseover, you can define
borders, padding, width, background and border color, drop shadows, animated
transitions and transparency effects.

2.5.5.3 Spell checking

Live spell checking:

The new spell checker supports live spell checking. Unknown words are highlighted with
a wavy red underline and right-clicking or pressing the Application key on a Windows
keyboard displays a context menu of alternatives and other options:

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 Latest Updates 61

Spell checking topic captions:

It is now also possible to spell-check the captions of your topics in the Table of Contents.
Note that live spell checking is not supported for this function – it must be selected
directly in the Tools menu and performed interactively:

Extended spell checker configuration options:

The spell checker can be configured very extensively and now supports both global and
project-based settings. Global settings are saved with the other program configuration
settings. Project settings are saved with the current project and are only used with that
project, if they are selected. (You can use either the global settings or the project
settings.)

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 62 Help & Manual Online Help

Custom settings and dictionaries for individual projects:

The new spell checker supports any number of custom user dictionaries, which can all
be enabled and disabled at will. Here too, you can define and use both global
dictionaries and project dictionaries.

2.5.5.4 Find & replace images

The Find & Replace function can now search for and replace the names of image files as
well, enabling you to quickly replace images in your entire project:

2.5.5.5 Entering and editing HTML code

Help & Manual 4 still allows you to insert your own inline HTML code in your topics and to
edit the HTML templates that control the layout of your pages in HTML-based output
formats. However, both these functions and the other functions that edit HTML code directly
are now much easier to use: Help & Manual 4 now features an integrated HTML code editor

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 63

with full syntax highlighting.

Resizable HTML code objects:

The display of HTML code objects looks a lot better than before – they are now resizable
and you can make them as small or large as you like:

HTML editor with syntax highlighting:

All the functions that edit HTML code (Plain HTML Code, JavaScript links, edit HTML
templates) now feature an integrated HTML editor with colored syntax highlighting. The
Insert HTML Code and JavaScript links 38 functions also includes a new Load/Save
Snippets feature that enables you to save and reuse blocks of code.

Insert Plain HTML Code:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 64 Help & Manual Online Help

Insert JavaScript hyperlink:

Edit HTML templates:

2.5.5.6 Breadcrumb trail navigation

The new <%TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS%> 479 variable for use in HTML templates automatically
generates a "breadcrumb trail" of active links to the links above the current topic in the Table
of Contents tree. You can see this variable in action in the Navigation: entries displayed
above the topic headers in this help in the HTML Help and online Browser-based Help
versions. (This feature is not displayed in the PDF version, of course.)

We used the breadcrumb trail navigation variable to create

the navigation links above the topic headers in this help.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Latest Updates 65

2.5.5.7 Long topic IDs and anchors

IDs now support up to 256 characters:

The 30-character limit on topic IDs and anchors has been removed. Both topic IDs and
anchor IDs can now have up to 256 characters.

Improved automatic ID generation:

The program still automatically refuses to allow characters that could cause problems in
IDs. However, the handling of this function has now been improved significantly. Instead
of just eliminating illegal characters the program will automatically analyze them convert
them into a legal equivalent. For example, if you enter a topic caption like:
Alt-Österreichische Küche
The suggested ID will be:
Alt-Oesterreichische_Kueche
This function does have its limitations, of course. For example, if you enter a topic
caption like:

The program will give up and suggest something like this:

NewID_15

2.5.5.8 Various minor improvements

Automatic URL detection:

Help & Manual 4 automatically recognizes Web URLs and email addresses as you type
them and automatically converts them into Internet links. This feature can be turned off if
you don't like it.

Display paragraph marks and tabs:

You can now display paragraph marks and tabs in the editor, which makes it much
easier to identify some editing and formatting problems. This setting is global and can be
turned on and off with the tool in the Toolbar and a permanent setting in Tools >
Customize.

Check for lost files:

On startup Help & Manual 4 automatically checks for lost files resulting from a Windows
crash or power failure. If lost files are found a dialog is displayed allowing you to either
recover the files or delete them, as required.

2.5.5.9 Baggage files

Experienced authors often need to integrate a number of small external files in their projects,
for example files containing scripts and other files referenced in manually-entered code. In

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 66 Help & Manual Online Help

Help & Manual 3 integrating files like this was a bit of a chore: You had to remember to
make entries in the Extended .HHP Settings to make sure the files were included in the
HTML Help output and you had to copy the files manually to your output folder for Browser-
based Help output.

New Baggage section in Project Properties:

Help & Manual 4 solves this problem with the new Baggage section in Project Properties.
All files you add to this section are embedded in your .HMX project file and automatically
exported to all relevant output formats.

Once you have added the files to the Baggage section you can refer to them with
confidence without need for any other settings because they will always be available.
You can even move or delete the original files on your hard disk because the Baggage
files are now physically stored in your .HMX project file.

See also:
Using Baggage Files 520
2.5.5.10 Picture shortcuts

Most projects contain a few graphics that are used over and over again – logos, graphical
bullets inserted in paragraphs with hanging indents, eye-catcher images and so on. Help &
Manual 4 introduces a new function called Picture Shortcuts that enables you to create your
own customized menu of images that you can then insert with a single click.

Picture shortcuts for frequently-used graphics:

The shortcuts list is displayed by clicking on the arrow next to the Insert Graphic tool in
the Toolbar:

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 Latest Updates 67

This list is empty until you add images to the list

by selecting "Configure Picture Shortcuts".
The thumbnail images are generated automatically and the list is fully-configurable. To
insert an image you just select it in the list.
You can add as many images as you like and you can also organize the list into
categories with submenus to make it more manageable (in the example we have created
two submenu categories, Logos and Screenshots).

See also:
Shortcuts for frequently-used graphics 328

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

Part

III
 Introduction 69

3 Introduction
The topics in this section provide some basic information about Help & Manual, what it is for
and what you can do with it.

How to get started

Ø Check out What's New in Version 4? 29 for details on the new features introduced
since Version 3.
Ø See Getting help 73 for details on using this help and getting more information about
Help & Manual.
Ø Study the Introduction 69 and The User Interface 79 sections for an introduction to the
program.
Ø Then work through the Quick Start Tutorials 88 to familiarize yourself with using Help &
Manual.
Ø If you are upgrading from Help & Manual 3 see Converting old projects 72 for
information on editing your existing projects in Help & Manual 4.

Learning more
Ø See the Basic Working Procedures 125 section for detailed instructions on using Help &
Manual.
Ø See More Advanced Procedures 422 for, you guessed it, instructions on more advanced
procedures!

3.1 About Help & Manual

Help & Manual makes producing help and documentation a pleasure. All the tools you need
are at your fingertips in a single intuitive environment, and the program handles all the
complex, technical aspects of the process for you. Instead of wasting countless hours
"programming" your help you can focus all your energy on actually writing your help, so that
all your working time is productive time.
This has always been true of Help & Manual, but Version 4 transports power and
user-friendliness to a completely new dimension. We know of no other help authoring tool
available that provides more comprehensive features and so much power in such a
user-friendly package. For more information see What's new in version 4? 29
If you want to get started with Help & Manual right away go to the Quick
Start Tutorials 88 .

Intuitive working environment

Help & Manual 4's working environment gives you all the formatting and editing features
of a modern word processor, including dynamic styles and complex tables. This is
combined with powerful features for generating and editing help and documentation files,
including full support for multimedia and complex modular projects.

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70 Help & Manual Online Help

The WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface leaves out all cryptic
references for hyperlinks, macros and graphics. Instead of struggling with topic IDs,
footnotes and obscure commands you can concentrate on the work of designing your
help file.
Your projects are displayed and edited with the same hierarchical tree structure used by
all Windows help formats. The editor and content tree view are combined in a single
window. Editing topics and manipulating the structure of your projects is fast and
intuitive. This user interface has been copied by the competition but nobody has come
close to the speed and simplicity of Help & Manual.

Single source / multiple output

All the output formats supported by Help & Manual are generated from the same project.
This means you only have to edit your help and documentation once. You can forget
about the nightmare of maintaining different versions of what is basically the same
information for your online help, your web documentation and your printed manuals.
Single source / multiple output is much more than just outputting exactly the same
information to different formats. Help & Manual also has powerful conditional and
customized output features that enable you to include variant content versions for
different output formats and purposes – all in the same project.

Generate all Windows help formats:

You can output your projects to all standard Windows help formats (Winhelp, HTML
Help and MS Help 2.0 / Visual Studio Help), and since Help & Manual is directly
integrated with the Microsoft compilers for these formats all your output is 100%
standard-compliant.
Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0 is supported by popular demand from
programmers. Microsoft has decided not to implement this format for user
help and it is now only used for documenting components added to Visual
Studio .NET.

Generate HTML , PDF and printed manuals

Help & Manual also generates Browser-based Help, PDF and Word RTF. In addition to
this you can generate fully-formatted printed manuals directly from the same projects
used for all the other formats.
The Browser-based Help output for web use includes a full menu structure that emulates
the appearance and functionality of HTML Help and includes full-text search with
highlighting for found words (Professional version only).
PDF output and printed manuals are fully customizable with the bundled Print Manual
Designer program: You can include a table of contents and a keyword index, automatic
page referrers for links and cross-references, customized page layouts, headers,
footers, page numbering, covers, introductions and more.
Word RTF is support is maintained for backward compatibility. Its features are more
limited and PDF is now recommended unless you have a special reason for using RTF.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Introduction 71

Generate eBooks
Last but not least you can also produce eBooks, naturally from the same project files
that you use to generate all your other output formats. Help & Manual's eBooks are
executable .EXE files that include their own viewer. They run on all Windows versions
from Windows 95 to XP without any drivers or additional software.

User-friendliness combined with power user features

The intuitive environment handles all the complexities of help formatting and generation
for you, letting you concentrate on the work of writing. But there is also extensive support
for power users and experienced help authors. You can get under the hood and insert
your own HTML code, change the code the program uses to generate your projects,
manipulate topic and project templates and more. Help & Manual gives you the best of
both worlds.

See also:
What's new in version 4? 29
Quick Start Tutorial 88

3.2 Why Help & Manual?

Help & Manual is more efficient and more fun!

Create hyperlinks by dragging and dropping. Add graphics and multimedia elements in
seconds. Make screenshots of your application with the integrated screenshot tool and
enhance them quickly with the screenshot editing program. Compile your project to any
supported output format with a couple of clicks. Produce help and documentation faster and
more efficiently and have fun in the process!

Save time
Help & Manual helps you to create better documentation quicker. The time required
for producing the help for a medium-sized software project can be measured in days
or weeks instead of months.

Save money
Online help is a key feature of your software and cannot be over valued.
Professional, attractive and well-organized documentation can significantly decrease
your support costs. At the same time it will also increase user satisfaction, generating
a positive snowball effect.

Concentrate on your work

Explain your software to your users, not the help authoring tool to yourself. Help &
Manual's intuitive user interface is transparent and straightforward. All the technical
details are handled in the background by the program. What you see is what you get
and what you get is what you need.

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 72 Help & Manual Online Help

All standard help formats are supported

No matter whether you create old-style Winhelp 768 files, modern HTML Help 765 or
even Visual Studio Help 777 (also known as Help 2.0) for internal Visual Studio .NET
programming documentation, Help & Manual is the right tool for the job. It compiles
all standard help formats and it creates them all from the same single source.
In addition to this Help & Manual also generates multi-browser friendly
Browser-based Help 771 , Adobe PDF 774 , printed manuals 776 , single-file eBooks 773 and
Word RTF 776 – also all from the same single source file, that you only need to edit
once!

Supply a user manual

You can output printed manuals on paper or as a PDF file that your users can view
on screen or print themselves. Here too, Help & Manual delivers where other help
authoring tools just make promises – it creates ready-to-ship user manuals directly
from your help project, including powerful facilities for controlling all the elements that
need to be different in printed and electronic output.
Forget about maintaining different versions for your online help and printed manuals!

Writing help can be fun

Don't believe it? Give it a try with Help & Manual 4...

3.3 Converting old projects

Converting old Help & Manual 3 .HM3 projects to the new .HMX format used in Help &
Manual 4 is very simple. Basically, all you need to do is open the old project in Help &
Manual 4 with Open in the File menu:

How to convert and import old .HM3 projects:

1. Select .HM3 in the Files of type: field and then select your .HM3 project file:

2. The Project Converter 641 is opened automatically. Click on the Options button to
display the fine-tuning settings for optimizing import performance:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Introduction 73

You don't need to specify an output file name.

The .HMX extension is added to the existing
name automatically.

All the features from your .HM3 project are updated and converted to their .HMX
equivalents automatically. However, you may need to make some adjustments to styles
and tables. Also, if your HTML templates contained customized code you will need to re-
enter this manually in the templates of your new .HMX project.
· For full details see Converting .HM3 projects 126 in the Basic Working Procedures >
Creating Projects chapter and The Project Converter 641 in the Tools Included in
Help & Manual chapter.

See also:
Converting .HM3 projects 126
The Project Converter 641

3.4 Getting help

As you would expect from a help authoring tool, Help & Manual provides you with plenty of
help on every aspect of working with the program. In addition to this very comprehensive
help file, which is really a complete book on producing help and documentation with Help &
Manual, the program also has extensive context-sensitive help that you can access in every
situation.

Using this help file:

This help is designed to be used on-screen. It is extensively cross-linked so that you can find
more relevant information to any subject from any location. If you prefer reading printed
manuals a PDF version of the entire help is available from the EC Software website. (This
is not available for the beta release.) This may be useful as a reference but you will probably
find that the active hyperlinks, cross-references and active index make the on-screen
electronic version of the help much more useful.

Getting started
Start by studying the Introduction 69 , The User Interface 79 and Quick Start Tutorials
88 sections.

Using the help while you're working

As far as possible the help separates instructions and background information. This
makes it much easier to refer to the "how-to" instructions when you are in a hurry and

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

74 Help & Manual Online Help

need to get your work done.

· To learn how to do something consult the two working procedures sections,
Basic Working Procedures 125 and More Advanced Procedures 422 .
· To learn about something consult the Reference 661 section.
· When you're frustrated use the Index and Search functions and check out the
Frequently Asked Questions 898 section.
All sections have extensive links to the other relevant sections so it doesn't really
matter where you start.

Context-sensitive help:
Ø Virtually every element and control in Help & Manual has a popup context-sensitive
help topic that describes what it is for. Just right-click on the control and select What's
This? from the popup menu.
Ø All dialogs have a button that displays the relevant section of the online
help.

Quick search in the Help index:

As of version 4.1 Help &

Manual includes a new tool
in the toolbar with which you
can search the Help index
directly.
Just enter a keyword in the
search field in the top right
corner of the toolbar and the
help will open at the selected
keyword in the Index, if the
keyword is found.

Tutorials:
· See Quick Start Tutorials 88 in the help for some basic tutorials to get you started with
using Help & Manual 4.
· You can find some tutorial projects 118 in the MyHelpAndManaulProjects folder in your
My Documents directory (Documents in Vista). The tutorials are stored in the the
\Samples folder.
· You can also find the full source code of Help & Manual's own help in the \Samples
folder.
· The project template used for Help & Manual's own help can be found in the
\Templates\hmx folder in the Help & Manual program directory. Full instructions for
using the template in your own projects are included.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Introduction 75

· A range of tutorials for programmers showing you how to integrate your help with your
application is available here on the EC Software website:
http://www.ec-software.com/tutorial.htm

Getting a printed user manual:

Please don't try to print the HTML Help version of the help from the Microsoft help
viewer, it would look terrible. You can download a formatted PDF version of the entire
documentation designed for printing from our download page at:
http://www.ec-software.com/download.htm
As mentioned above, however, you will probably find that the on-screen version of the
help is much more useful because of the hyperlinks and cross-references.

See also:
Online information and links 75

3.5 Online information and links

You can also find plenty of help and information about Help & Manual and the craft of help
authoring online.

The Help & Manual online users' forum:

This private forum is managed and moderated by Tim
Green, an experienced help author and Help & Manual
user who is also the author of this help. It is now the
central meeting-place for Help & Manual users from all
over the world.
Registration for the forum is free. In addition to sections on all aspects of using Help &
Manual and related products there are also tutorials, tips and tricks, templates and more.
Discussion is lively and the other users are helpful and supportive.
Please note that you must register if you want to post in the forum. To do
this you must choose a user name and password. Since the forum is private
and independent from EC Software you cannot use the user name and
password provided when you purchased Help & Manual!

Forum address:
This address takes you to the main forum portal page:
http://helpman.it-authoring.com

RSS feed link:

This is the address for the forum's RSS feed. The complete text of the most recent
25 topics in the open forum sections is included in the feed. The tutorials, tips and
templates sections that require registration for access are not included.
http://www.it-authoring.com/bb/helpauth/rss.php

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

76 Help & Manual Online Help

(This link requires an RSS aggregator program or an RSS-aware browser. Displaying

it in a normal browser will not produce very satisfactory results.)

Tutorials for programmers:

A range of tutorials for programmers showing you how to integrate your help with your
application is available here on the EC Software website:
http://www.ec-software.com/tutorial.htm

Other help authoring news groups and forums:

Microsoft news groups:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.helpauthoring
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.vstudio.helpauthoring

The Yahoo HATT group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HATT/

Useful web links:

WinWriters:
http://www.winwriters.com/
Training for software user assistance.

Josef Becker's HelpMaster site:

http://www.helpmaster.com
Josef Becker's HelpMaster site is the largest repository of help-related freeware and
shareware tools and utilities anywhere on the internet. If you're looking for
something, try looking here first.

HTML Help Center:

http://mvps.org/htmlhelpcenter/
The HTML Help Center maintained by David Liske is a very helpful resource site that
clarifies features and problems of HTML Help.

The Helpware Group:

http://www.helpware.net/
Also a rich repository of information on all aspects of producing help for Windows
applications.

Shadow Mountain Tech:

http://www.smountain.com

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Introduction 77

Help programming references, information on interfacing to Winhelp and HTML Help

with Visual Basic and C++.

See also:
Getting help 73

3.6 How to buy Help & Manual

You can buy Help & Manual directly online worldwide with all three major credit cards. As
soon as your transaction is completed you will be able to download and install the program
and start working right away.

Direct order link:

http://www.ec-software.com/order.html

EC Software home page:

http://www.ec-software.com

Email support:
[email protected]

Snail mail and fax:

EC Software / Inh. A. Halser
Suedtirolerstrasse 1 b
5201 Seekirchen, Austria
Fax: +43 - 6212 - 30236

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

Part

IV
 The User Interface 79

4 The User Interface

Help & Manual is famous for its clear and intuitive user interface. The program is built
around the three-pane workspace 79 that includes the integrated, full-featured word
processor with full support for dynamic styles and complex tables.
This workspace emulates the appearance of a help file with the Table of Contents (TOC) on
the left and the editor for help topics on the right.

The Help & Manual user interface:

The Help & Manual user interface emulates the appearance and structure of a
finished help file, making editing quick and intuitive.

4.1 The Help & Manual workspace

This topic provides a brief guide to the components of Help & Manual's user interface. Click
on the text balloons or scroll down for detailed descriptions.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

80 Help & Manual Online Help

Main program window showing TOC and the Topic Editor:

The main program window with the Topic Editor and the TOC
pane selected. Click on the callouts balloons for more information.

Table of Contents pane

Help files are made up of "topics" which are like chapters in a book. Each topic can
be thought of like a separate word processing file, all of which are stored together in
your .HMX project file. The topics in your project are created and organized in the
Table of Contents (TOC) pane. This pane provides powerful functions for
organizing your topics and structuring your help project.

Invisible Topics pane

The Invisible Topics pane is like a second Table of Contents. However, the topics
shown here are never included in the TOC. Topics you enter here are used for
popups and for information that is only displayed when the user clicks on a link.

Topic editor
The largest pane in the program window is the Topic Editor, which is like a built-in
word processor with special functions for creating help files and the other
documentation formats supported by Help & Manual. This is where you edit topics
selected in the Table of Contents and Invisible Topics panes. Clicking on a topic in
the TOC displays its contents for editing in the editor.

Topic Header
The Topic Header is actually part of the editor but it is displayed in a separate box.
This is where you edit the header of the current topic. The header is displayed at the
top of the topic page in electronic help formats like HTML Help and is used as the
chapter title in print-type formats like PDF. The header box is only displayed if the
topic you are editing actually has a header.

Style Selector
The Style Selector is a tool for selecting text styles and applying them to text in your

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 The User Interface 81

project. Help & Manual now supports dynamic styles, which give you very powerful
control over the formatting and layout of your text.

Toolbars
The Toolbars provide quick access to the most frequently-used functions. Just
position the mouse over a tool and wait for a second to display a brief text describing
what it is for. For a more detailed description right-click on a tool and select What's
This?

Main program window showing the Index and Topic Options panes:

The main program window with the Index and Topic

Options tabs selected. Click on the balloon callouts for more
information.

Topic Options Tab

The topic options tab contains a number of important settings for the current topic,
including the Topic ID 210 , help context numbers 212 and the help window 177 associated
with the topic. It also contains editing windows in which you can enter the keywords
you want to associate with the current topic in the keyword index of your output.

Index Pane
The Index Pane displays the finished keyword index in real time. As soon as you add
keywords to a topic they appear in the index (save your project or select Topics >
Refresh Topic to update) . You can also edit the index directly in the Index Pane,
updating all topics where the keywords appear simultaneously.

4.2 Topic options

The Topic Options tab is located behind the Topic Editor. It displays the editable settings of
the current topic. The components of this tab are explained below but it is better not to
change any of the settings displayed here until you become more familiar with working with
Help & Manual.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

82 Help & Manual Online Help

The Topic Options tab:

Topic ID:
This is the alphanumeric identifier of the topic. It is the "address" of the topic that is
used to refer to it in hyperlinks, both from within your project and from application
programs. It must be unique. (Help & Manual will not allow you to enter duplicate
topic IDs.)

Help window type:

The help window 154 defines the background colors of the topic and its header. In
electronic help formats the help window type definition also controls the appearance
and features of the help viewer used to display the help. You can define additional
help window types to create topics with different background colors and to display
specific topics in external windows.
The standard help window type for all normal topics is Main.

Keywords:
Keywords entered here will appear as a sorted list in the index of your compiled
project. In electronic help formats clicking on the index entries will display the topics
associated with the keywords.

A-keywords:
A-keywords are a special kind of keyword that are never displayed in an index or
seen by the user. They are used for creating what are known as "associative links"
and lists of related topics. This is a rather advanced subject and if you are just
getting started with Help & Manual it is probably better to leave it until later.

Anchor in topic:
The "anchor 305 " selected here defines the position in the topic to be displayed when

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 The User Interface 83

the user opens the topic in electronic help formats. The default is (Top of Page). If
you enter other named anchors in your topic they will be displayed here and you can
select them to make the topic open at a position other than the top of the page.

Help context number:

The help context number 212 is a numerical code that is used as a second "address"
for the topic. It is not required but it is used by some programming languages to
make context-sensitive "calls" to the help from application programs.

Builds which include this topic:

These options enable you to include or exclude the current topic in your output on
the basis of output format or user-defined conditions. You can define as many of
these conditions, which are known as "include options 451 ", as you need.

4.3 Keyboard Shortcuts

IN THIS TOPIC:
Displaying the available keyboard shortcuts 83

Editing and assigning keyboard shortcuts 84

Assigning keyboard shortcuts to styles 84

Help & Manual 4 introduces fully-customizable keyboard shortcuts. Unlike Help & Manual 3,
which had fixed shortcuts for a limited number of program functions, you can now define
your own key combinations for virtually all of the functions supported by Help & Manual.
Shortcuts for a number of frequently-used functions are predefined but you can also change
these to any key combinations you want. In addition to this you can also define keyboard
shortcuts for all your formatting styles 228 , making it possible for experienced users to control
the program almost entirely with the keyboard.

Displaying the available keyboard shortcuts:

Because the shortcuts are editable a list of them is not included in the help – it would be
outdated as soon as you configured your installation of Help & Manual, making it pretty
useless. You can view the available shortcuts in the following places:
Program menus:
· All the active keyboard shortcuts for menu functions are displayed next to the
functions in the menus. These displays are updated automatically as soon as you
change a shortcut assignment.
· The shortcuts assigned for your styles are also displayed in the menu, in Format >
Format with Style.
Styles definition dialog:
· Styles shortcuts can also be seen (and edited) in the styles definition dialog, which
can be displayed with Format > Edit Styles. See Defining styles 237 and Editing
styles 243 for more details.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 84 Help & Manual Online Help

Shortcuts editing dialog:

· All the currently assigned shortcuts are displayed in the shortcut editing dialog,
which is accessed with Tools > Customize > Shortcuts (see below for details).

Editing and assigning keyboard shortcuts:

1. Select Tools > Customize > Shortcuts.
2. Use the mouse to select the shortcut
you want to assign or change in the list.
(The list is organized by menu
headings.)
3. Select the shortcut you want to apply
with the two drop-down selectors to the
right of the Current Shortcut: entry
below the list.
· Select the letter key first, then the
control key! (In functions which do not
yet have a shortcut assigned the control
key cannot be selected before you have
selected a letter key.)

Assigning keyboard shortcuts to styles:

This is done in the styles editing menu. See Defining styles 237 and Editing styles 243 for
more details.

See also:
The Tools Menu 723
Customizing Help & Manual 84

4.4 Customizing Help & Manual

IN THIS TOPIC:
Customization options in the View menu 84
Customizing by dragging 85
Configuring Help & Manual with the Customize options 86

You can configure the appearance and behavior of many functions and features in Help &
Manual to suit your needs and your own personal preferences.

Customization options in the View menu:

· The View menu contains options for switching the display of toolbars on and off and

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 The User Interface 85

for docking and undocking the Table of Contents (TOC) pane and the Topic Options
tab. (Undocking these components and placing them outside the main program
window can make working easier if you have a larger monitor or a dual-monitor
system.)

· To re-dock the TOC and Topic Options tabs just double-click on their title bars or
select the corresponding Dock options in the View menu.
· You can also customize the individual toolbars by selecting Customize Toolbars in the
View menu. (This opens the corresponding tab in the Customize menu, see below.)

Customizing Help & Manual by dragging:

· You can undock all the toolbars and the TOC pane by dragging them onto the desktop
with the mouse.

· You can re-dock the toolbars by dragging them back into the main program window or
by double-clicking on their title bars. To re-dock the TOC pane you can double-click on

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

86 Help & Manual Online Help

its title bar or select Dock Table of Contents in the View menu.

Configuring Help & Manual with the Customize options:

Select Tools > Customize to display the dialog with all the detailed customization options
for Help & Manual. Most of these options are self-explanatory. See The Tools Menu 723
for detailed descriptions of all the functions.

See also:
The Tools Menu 723
Keyboard Shortcuts 83

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

Part

V
 88 Help & Manual Online Help

5 Quick Start Tutorials

The tutorials in this section provide a quick introduction to using Help & Manual. They are
intentionally kept brief so that you can actually start using the program as quickly as
possible. The objective is not to teach you every single detail but to familiarize you with the
basic principles and the way the program works.
For full details on the procedures described in the tutorials please refer to the Basic Working
Procedures 125 section.
Once you get used to working in the program you will also find plenty of more useful help
and support in the More Advanced Procedures 422 section.

5.1 Create a Project

This tutorial shows you the basics of creating a new project in Help & Manual. For more
detailed instructions and background information see Creating Projects 125 in the Basic
Working Procedures section.
· Note that you don't have to choose your output format when you create a project. In
Help & Manual you can always create all output formats 763 from any project at any
time! See Compile a Project 113 for details.
· See Converting .HM3 projects 126 if you want to start with an existing Help & Manual 3
project.

Creating a new project:

1. Select New in the File menu (or click on in the Toolbar) to display the Create
New Help Project wizard:

2. Choose the name and location for your new project. It's best to create a project
in an empty directory.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Quick Start Tutorials 89

3. Enter a title for your project.

4. The next screen presents a basic topic structure to get you started. You can edit
or add to these "quick start" topics here if you want.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

90 Help & Manual Online Help

5. Now you can start editing your project 91 in Help & Manual:

6. If you are creating a project in a language requiring a special character set you
must configure it correctly for your language:
Go to Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Language Settings:

· See International languages setup 149 for full instructions on configuring your project
for special language requirements.

See also:
Creating Projects 125

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Quick Start Tutorials 91

5.2 Enter and Edit Text

Entering and editing text in your topics in Help & Manual is very similar to working in a
modern word processor. Here too, the main difference is the Table of Contents (TOC) pane
on the left that organizes the individual documents 100 that make up your project.

MS Word users: The paragraph end mark doesn't contain any formatting!
If you're used to using word processors like MS Word you need to forget about the
power of the paragraph end mark. In Help & Manual formatting is associated directly with
the text and paragraphs, not with the paragraph end marks. The paragraph end mark is
just a carriage return marking the end of the paragraph, nothing more.
This means you can't select the paragraph end mark. You can't format the paragraph by
formatting the paragraph end mark and you can't delete a paragraph's formatting by
deleting the paragraph end mark.
If you combine two paragraphs the paragraph attributes of the upper (first) paragraph will
be applied because you can't have two sets of paragraph settings, but this has nothing
to do with the paragraph end mark. The formatting is associated with the entire
paragraph.
· For more information see The paragraph end mark 741 in the Reference > The Help
& Manual Editor chapter.

Editing overview:
· Just start typing in the Page Editor window on the right of the TOC:

· Select text and use the formatting tools in the Toolbar to format it:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

92 Help & Manual Online Help

· You can also format paragraphs by selecting styles (see Use Styles 94 for more
details):

Windows font size preview setting:

Windows has two font size settings 35 that users can use. The editor can preview both
small and large font size settings so that you can see how your output will look on users'
computers with both settings.
· To switch between the two settings while editing just hold down the Ctrl key
and turn the mouse wheel. (You must have a mouse with a mouse wheel to
do this and the editor pane must be active.)

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Quick Start Tutorials 93

The font size preview setting checks how your

output text will look on computers with both

· You can change this setting permanently in the program customization 734
settings.

Preventing font size problems in your output:

In HTML-based output formats you can also prevent this problem by
setting your output font sizes to pixels in HTML Export Options 573 . This
prevents adjustment of the font size of your help even if the user sets
larger font sizes in Windows.

Live spell checking:

Select Tools > Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker and activate the option
. Misspelled words will then be underlined in red as you
type:

Copying and pasting:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 94 Help & Manual Online Help

Copy & paste from MS Word:

You can also copy and paste text from Word into Help & Manual.Virtually
all formatting is supported, including complex tables. If your Word texts
include graphics they will be embedded in your project (i.e. saved in the
project .HMX file) when you paste them with the text. After pasting right-
click on the graphics and select Convert Embedded Picture... to convert them
to external files. (External files are always preferable because they use
much less memory and system resources.)

· You can copy and paste text and other content just as you would in a word
processor:

See also:
Use Styles 94 (Quick Start Tutorial)
Creating and Editing Topics 171
Text Formatting and Styles 228

5.3 Use Styles

You can format all your text manually if you like but it's much more efficient to use Help &
Manual's dynamic styles. Styles are formatting definitions that you can apply to text and
paragraphs with a single click. The style definition is then linked to the formatted text and if
you change the definition everything formatted with the style is updated immediately.

Change the Normal style:

There are a number of predefined standard styles. The most important one is Normal,
which is the default style for all normal body text paragraphs in your project. Almost all
other styles are based on Normal. This is important because it means that you can make
changes to the formatting of your entire project just by changing Normal. For example, if
you change the font of Normal the font of all other styles based on Normal will also
change automatically – except in styles where you have explicitly changed the font.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Quick Start Tutorials 95

1. First, type at least two paragraphs of text in one of your new topics. Click in one
of the paragraphs, then select Edit Styles in the Format menu:

The text before editing the Normal style.

2. This displays the Edit Styles dialog:

· Select and change the font to Times New Roman 14

points.
· Select and change the After setting in the Spacing section
to a value higher than zero. A value of 8 pixels or 10 points is good.

· Then click on to close the dialog. The results are immediately

visible in the editor:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

96 Help & Manual Online Help

The text after editing the Normal style.

Define a new style:

In addition to changing the Normal style you will also want to define your own styles so
that you can apply complex formatting quickly and change it whenever you want.
· Select Edit Styles in the Format menu to display the Edit Styles dialog:

· Select to define a new style, then edit its default name in the
Style Name: field. You can change style names whenever you like!
· By default the style will be based on Normal. Don't change this until you
have learned more about styles.
· Select and to edit the settings for the
style.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Quick Start Tutorials 97

· If you want you can also assign a Shortcut: key so that you can apply the
style quickly.

· Then click on to close the dialog.

Applying styles:
To apply a style to a paragraph just click anywhere in the paragraph and select the
style in the Style Selector:

· If you included a keyboard shortcut in the style definition you can use the
keyboard shortcut instead of the Style Selector. You can also select and
apply styles in the Format menu.
· If you select text before applying a style the style's font attributes will only be
applied to the selected text.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Dynamic Styles 746 (Reference)

5.4 Add Topics

The New Project wizard creates some topics for you automatically but normally you will
create topics yourself. Creating a topic in Help & Manual is very much like creating a new
document in a word processor. However, instead of creating a separate file on a disk Help &
Manual adds your new topic to your project and stores it in the project .HMX file, which you
can think of as a database.
Each new topic is inserted in the Table of Contents (TOC), where you can move it around 100
as you like. And you can also add text 91 and other content 103 to it, of course.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

98 Help & Manual Online Help

Create a new topic:

Topics are created and managed 100 in the Table of Contents (TOC) pane to the left of
the editor window. Topics in the TOC are referred to as "Items".
1. Click in the position in the TOC where you want to insert a new topic, then
select the New Item tool in the toolbar at the top of the TOC pane:

2. In the pop-up menu, choose where you want to insert your topic relative to
the selected topic:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Quick Start Tutorials 99

· Insert Before inserts the new topic above the selected topic.
· Insert After inserts the new topic below the selected topic.
· Insert Child inserts the new topic as a sub-topic of the selected topic, turning
the parent topic into a chapter (if it is not already a chapter).
These options are also available in the Topics menu.

3. This displays the Insert New Item dialog:

· The Topic ID is a unique identifier that is the address of your topic in the project
and in your output help files. Use descriptive IDs 210 , they will make your project
much easier to manage!

4. After entering your settings select to create and insert the new
topic. It will be automatically selected in the TOC:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 100 Help & Manual Online Help

5. Once you have created a topic you can edit it 91 and move it around 100 in the
TOC.

See also:
Creating and Editing Topics 171

5.5 Organize the TOC

The main difference between Help & Manual and a word processor is that in a word
processor you work in a single document. In contrast to this, each topic in a Help & Manual
project is like a separate word processor document, even though all these documents are
stored in a single .HMX project file, which you can think of as your project database.
You can perform search and replace and other functions on all the topic documents in your
project, but they are still separate documents. This gives you great flexibility to organize the
structure of your project. You can move topics around in the Table of Contents (TOC) with
the keyboard and the mouse and you can also change the "level" topics in the TOC tree
hierarchy.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Quick Start Tutorials 101

Table of Contents (TOC) Overview:

Moving topics around in the TOC:

· Use the TOC toolbar arrow buttons to move selected topics:

· Drag a topic onto another topic to make it the child (sub-topic) of the target
topic:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

102 Help & Manual Online Help

· Drag a topic between two topics to insert it between them:

Using cut and paste in the TOC:

You can also use normal cut and paste methods to move topics around in the TOC and
to copy and move topics between projects.

See also:
Managing Topics in the TOC 209

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Quick Start Tutorials 103

5.6 Insert Graphics

In addition to text you will also want to add graphics to illustrate your topics. This tutorial
shows you how to add ordinary graphic images to your topics from files and by cut and
paste.
· You can also use Help & Manual's built-in screen capture utility 320 to capture images of
programs on your screen and insert them in your topics. And in addition to graphics
you can also insert movies and Flash animations 422 and OLE objects 428 from other
programs.
· The most efficient image format for help files is BMP. Help & Manual automatically
converts and compresses BMP graphics when you generate your output. See
Graphics formats and file size 856 for more details.

Inserting a graphic from a file:

The most efficient way to handle graphics in your projects is to store them in external
files. However, if you want you can also insert graphics by cut and paste (see below 104 ).
1. Click in the position where you want to insert a graphic, then select the
Insert Graphic tool in the toolbar:

· You can also insert graphics with Insert > Picture or by pressing Ctrl+P.

2. This displays the Open Image dialog, which has a several options for
controlling how the graphics file is inserted:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

104 Help & Manual Online Help

3. Then just click on to insert the image in your document:

· Note that if you set the Left of text or Right of text attributes text wrapping around
the image is not displayed in the editor. You can only see the results in your
compiled output! Text wrapping is not supported in PDF output.

Inserting images with cut and paste:

1. Copy the image in your graphics program, then switch to Help & Manual and
select Paste in the Edit menu or press Ctrl+V. The Save Image dialog is
displayed with the following options:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Quick Start Tutorials 105

2. Then just click on to save the graphics file. It will be inserted in topic at
the current cursor position automatically.

· After inserting you can then double-click on the image to display the insertion
options shown in Step 2 103 of the instructions above for inserting images from files.

Pasting graphics from MS Word:

If you paste graphics from MS Word together with text they will be embedded in your
project. Although this is possible please note that it will radically increase the size of your
project files and it is not recommended! It is always better to save graphics as external
files.
When you paste images with text from Word always convert them to external files:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 106 Help & Manual Online Help

See also:
Using Graphics 313
Graphics, Videos and OLE Objects 856

5.7 Insert a Table

Tables can be used both to arrange tabular data and as a formatting tool, in the same way
as in HTML pages. Help & Manual 4 introduces full support for complex and nested tables.
This tutorial just shows you the basics of inserting tables – for full details see the Working
with Tables 332 chapter.

Insert a table:
1. Select New Table in the Table menu:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Quick Start Tutorials 107

2. This displays the Insert Table dialog:

Most of the settings here should be self-explanatory. The tricky one is Table Size:
· Autosize Table initially fills the entire width of the page. However, you can adjust
the width of the table later by adjusting its columns and then its right border.
· Size to Fit on Page always fills the entire page.
· Size Table Manually creates a table of the defined width (100% is the same as
Size to Fit on Page ).

3. Select your settings and click on to insert the table.

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108 Help & Manual Online Help

Manipulating tables:
You can manipulate tables with the mouse and the options in the Table menu.
· Manipulating tables with the mouse:

· The width of locked columns stays fixed. Unlocked columns resize automatically
when the user resizes the help viewer or browser window.
· Resizable tables must have at least one unlocked column, otherwise all column
widths will be undefined or resizable!

· Manipulating tables with the Table menu:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Quick Start Tutorials 109

The Table Properties menu has two tabs:

See also:
Working with Tables 332
How table sizing works 882

5.8 Create Hyperlinks

The Web without hyperlinks would be unthinkable and the same applies to interactive help
and documentation. Hyperlinks between topics are what makes your help really effective
and useful. You can create links to topics and specific places in topics. In addition to this you
can also create links to pages on the Web and external files, and you can also create
special links that execute scripts and macros.
This tutorial shows you the basics of creating hyperlinks to topics and specific positions in
topics. For full details on working with hyperlinks see Links, Anchors, Macros, Scripts and
HTML 293 .

Create a hyperlink with drag and drop:

This is the fastest and easiest way to create a hyperlink and it is the method that you will
probably use most frequently when working on a project.
1. Select the text for the link in the editor:

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110 Help & Manual Online Help

2. Drag the selected text to the TOC and drop it on the topic you want to link to:

3. That's it, your hyperlink is finished. You can edit it at any time:

Create a hyperlink manually:

1. Select the text you want to use as the link. (This is optional with this method –

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Quick Start Tutorials 111

you can also create a link without selecting anything first.)

2. Select Hyperlink in the Insert menu or press Ctrl+L to display the Edit Hyperlink
dialog:

3. Click on to create the link.

Link to an anchor:
Sometimes you will want to link to a specific location in the middle of a topic instead of
just displaying the top of the topic. This is achieved with anchors 305 , which are named
"link targets" that you can insert anywhere in a topic.
1. Create an anchor in the topic you want to link to:

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112 Help & Manual Online Help

2. Create a link (see above 109 ) to the topic creating the anchor, then double-
click on the link to edit it:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Quick Start Tutorials 113

· Click on to close the dialog. The link will then point to the anchor in the
target topic instead of the top of the topic.

See also:
Links, Anchors, Macros, Scripts and HTML 293
Topic IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849

5.9 Compile a Project

Once you have completed a couple of topics you will want to compile your output to see
what your finished product is going to look like. You can output any of the formats 763
supported by Help & Manual at any time – you don't have to decide in advance what format
you are building your project for. The only thing you may need to do before you begin is
install the necessary Microsoft help compilers for Winhelp, HTML Help or Visual Studio Help
(a.k.a. Help 2.0).

Installing the Microsoft help compilers:

Winhelp and HTML Help compilers:

Unless you have already done so you need to download and install the free Microsoft
compilers for Winhelp 768 and/or HTML Help 765 if you are planning on using these
formats. You can find the latest versions of these compilers on the EC Software
website, here:
http://www.ec-software.com/reshelp.htm
· If you want to use Winhelp only install the 32-bit version of the compiler. The 16-
bit compiler is only needed for Windows 3.0 and is now completely obsolete (
Help & Manual 4 no longer supports the 16-bit Winhelp compiler).
· After installing the compilers go to Tools > Customize > Compilers and make sure
that Help & Manual knows where to find them. The Winhelp compiler executable
is called hcrtf.exe and the HTML Help compiler executable is called hhc.exe.

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114 Help & Manual Online Help

Visual Studio Help compiler for .NET programmers:

You only need to compile to the Visual Studio Help/Help 2.0 format if you are a
Visual Studio .NET programmer. This help format is only used for documenting
programming components added to Visual Studio .NET. The compiler package can
be downloaded from the Microsoft website but it can only be used in combination
with the Visual Studio .NET package from Microsoft.
· For details on using this format see the chapter on Visual Studio Help 527 in the
More Advanced Procedures section.

Compiling your project:

Compiling your output is very simple. Basically all you have to do is select the output
format you want to generate and click on OK. Here's the basic procedure:
1. Save your project by clicking on in the Toolbar or selecting Save in the File
menu.
2. Click on in the Toolbar or select Compile Help File in the File menu. This
displays the Compile Help File and Run dialog:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Quick Start Tutorials 115

When you compile to Browser-based Help 586 always use an empty folder
because this format can generate hundreds of output files. The program
will suggest creating a folder called \HTML inside your project directory,
which is a good choice.
The layout of your PDF output is controlled by separate template files.
See Adobe PDF 405 in the Configuring Your Output chapter for details.

3. Then just click on to compile. The project will be compiled (how long this
takes depends on the format and the size of your project) and then the finished
product will be displayed along with a window showing any compiler messages
and listing your output files.

Quick-launching your project:

The Quick Launch function compiles your output and displays it without displaying the
Compile Help File dialog.

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116 Help & Manual Online Help

This function automatically uses the last compile settings you used with when you
compiled with the compile dialog. It is thus advisable to compile to the selected format
with the File > Compile Help File option at least once before using Quick Launch.
1. Click on the arrow symbol next to the tool in the Toolbar to display the Quick
Launch output options:

2. Then just select the output format you want to output to. Your project will be
compiled and displayed automatically as soon as the compile process is finished.

See also:
Customize - Compilers 737
Testing Your Project 387
Configuring Your Output 392
Visual Studio Help 527

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Part

VI
 118 Help & Manual Online Help

6 Tutorials and Templates

In addition to the Quick Start Tutorials 88 you can find in this help file, Help & Manual also
comes with a number of other useful tutorials and templates. All the tutorials are stored in
Help & Manual .HMX project files that you can compile and edit yourself, so that you can
experiment with the procedures described directly.
This chapter provides brief descriptions of the subjects covered in these tutorials and
information on where you can find them.
· A template for creating help for Pocket PC (Pocket PC Help 120 )
· A new non-scrolling header template that works both in HTML Help and Browser-
based Help, including full printing support with a Print button and generation of a
printer-friendly version (DHTML Examples 118 )
· The latest version of the project template for Help & Manual's own help, incorporating
all the new non-scrolling template features (H&M Help Template 121 )
· Tutorials showing you how to create your own non-scrolling headers, navigation
buttons with mouseover effects, print links and buttons, CSS styles for hyperlinks, CSS
styles for the TOC in Browser-based Help, background images in the TOC and topics
and more (DHTML Examples 118 )
· A tutorial on how to use conditional output (Conditional Output 119 )
· A tutorial on how to work with modular help systems, including instructions for using A-
Links to link between modules (Modular Help Systems 119 )

See also:
Quick Start Tutorials 88

6.1 DHTML examples tutorial

Tutorial location and name:

Location: My Documents\MyHelpAndManualProjects\Samples\DHTML Examples
(in Windows Vista My Documents is called Documents)
Name: DHTML.hmx

Subjects covered:
This tutorial shows you how to edit your project's HTML templates to create some more
advanced formatting and effects. All the code required is included in the tutorial project,
which you can also use as a template for your own projects. Once you have worked
through all the lessons you will be able to:
· Program your own expanding and collapsing sections (if you don't have the
Professional version of Help & Manual, which can do this for you automatically).
· Create non-scrolling headers for your HTML Help and Browser-based Help output.
· Add graphical navigation buttons to your topic headers, with and without

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 Tutorials and Templates 119

mouseover effects.
· Add a Print link or button to your topic headers.
· Use CSS styles to change the appearance and behavior of all the hyperlinks in
your project.
· Add customized icons to the TOC (table of contents) of your Browser-based Help
projects.
· Add code to suppress underlined TOC entries in Browser-based Help in Firefox
and Mozilla browsers.
· Add a background to the TOC in Browser-based Help.
· Add background images to topics and headers.

See also:
Using HTML templates 475

6.2 Conditional output tutorial

Tutorial location and name:

Location: My Documents\MyHelpAndManualProjects\Samples\Conditional
Output
(in Windows Vista My Documents is called Documents)
Name: CondOutput.hmx

Subjects covered:
This tutorial project walks you through using the conditional output capabilities of Help &
Manual. You will learn how to use build conditions to control the content included in your
output. When you have finished working through this tutorial you will be able to:
· Include and exclude topics, groups of topics and modules from your output on the
basis of output formats or your own defined build conditions.
· Include and exclude topic content (text, images etc.) on the basis of output formats
or user-defined build conditions.
· Define your own build conditions to create multiple versions of the same project for
different purposes.
· Exclude all the topics of a chapter while including the chapter topic (this is a trick
that is not normally possible directly).

See also:
Conditions and Customized Output 451

6.3 Modular help systems tutorial

Tutorial location and name:

Location: My Documents\MyHelpAndManualProjects\Samples\Modular Help

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 120 Help & Manual Online Help

Systems
(in Windows Vista My Documents is called Documents)
Names: Master.hmx, Module_A.hmx, Module_B.hmx

Subjects covered:
This tutorial project is an example of a simple modular help system. It guides you
through all the steps of creating and using modular help systems for a variety of different
output formats. When you have completed the tutorial you will be able to:
· Create and manage modular projects for all types of output formats.
· Add project files to your TOC as modules.
· Create genuine modular help systems for HTML Help and Winhelp formats. This
allows you to create different versions of your help without recompiling, just by
adding or removing help files from your distribution.
· Create dynamic conditional hyperlinks between modules using A-Links.

See also:
Working with Modular Help Systems 492

6.4 Pocket PC help template

Template location and name:

Location: My Documents\MyHelpAndManualProjects\Samples\Pocket PC Help
(in Windows Vista My Documents is called Documents)
Name: ppc.hmx

About the template:

This is a project template for creating help for PDAs and smart phones running Pocket
PC. It can also be easily adapted for other devices with small screens and browsers with
limited capabilities. Full instructions and all the necessary graphics and styles are
included in the template project.

See also:
Templates for projects 463

6.5 Non-scrolling header template

Template location and name:

Location: My Documents\MyHelpAndManualProjects\Samples\DHTML Examples
(in Windows Vista My Documents is called Documents)
Name: DHTML.hmx

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 Tutorials and Templates 121

About the template:

This HTML template is included in the DHTML tutorial project. It is a new version of the
old non-scrolling headers template that now works both in HTML Help and Browser-
based Help. In addition to this it includes full printing support with a Print button and
generation of a printer-friendly version. (Printing did not work properly in HTML Help with
the old version of the non-scrolling header.)

See also:
Using HTML templates 475

6.6 Help & Manual help project template

Location of the templates:

Location: \Templates\hmx folder in the Help & Manual program directory.
Name: H&M_Help_Template.hmx

About the template:

This project template enables you to style your own help like Help & Manual's own help.
It includes all the styles, graphics, HTML templates and other components needed. In
addition to this it includes the latest version of the non-scrolling header code for both
HTML Help and Browser-based Help, which now automatically supports non-scrolling
headers with printing in both HTML and Browser-based Help.
Instructions for using the template for both new and existing projects are included.
Copy the template to your project folder before using it! Particularly in
Windows Vista you cannot edit the template while it is stored in the Program
Files directory tree.

See also:
Templates for projects 463

6.7 Help & Manual help source code

Location of the source code:
Location: My Documents\MyHelpAndManualProjects\Samples\HelpAndManual4
(in Windows Vista My Documents is called Documents)
Name: Helpman.hmx, Hmcontext_help.hmx

About the source code:

This is the complete source code of Help & Manual's own help as an example of a
relatively complex project. You are welcome to reverse-engineer the help and use its
components in any way you like but please don't use the actual text from the help in your

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 122 Help & Manual Online Help

own projects.
Note that the project template for this help project 121 for use in your own projects can be
found in the \Templates folder in the Help & Manual program directory.

6.8 SDL Trados INI file

Location of the INI file:
Location: \Templates\xml folder in the Help & Manual program directory.
Name: HelpAndManual for SDL Trados.ini

About the file:

This is a customized INI file for use with the Trados translation memory tool. It allows
proper display and editing of the XML output generated by Help & Manual in Trados.

See also:
Translating Your Projects 530

6.9 Other templates and resources

Location of the files:
Location: \Templates folder in the Help & Manual program directory.

About the templates and other files:

In addition to the other templates listed in this chapter the \Templates folder in the Help &
Manual program directory also contains a number of other useful templates and
resources:
Print manual templates (*.mnl): \Templates\pdf
These standard template files can be used as a
basis for creating and editing your own print
manual templates forPDF files and printed
manuals 538 .
Please copy these templates to your project
folder before editing them! (In Windows Vista
you will probably not be able to save your own
versions of the templates otherwise.)

eBook viewer templates (*.skin) \Templates\ebooks

and interface language files (*.
lng): The digital .skin templates allow you to change
the appearance of the viewer used for eBooks
generated by Help & Manual. They can be
selected for your project in Project > Project
Properties > eBooks > Visual Appearance.

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 Tutorials and Templates 123

The .lng language files contain the text for the

eBook user interface. They can be edited
manually in a normal text editor.

Full-text search language files \Templates\html

for Browser-based Help in
These files allow you to set the interface texts for
multiple languages (*.zlang):
the full-text search function in Browser-based
Help to a number of different languages. The
language files can be selected for your project in
Project > Project Properties > Browser-based
Help > Full-text Search.

XML schema and stylesheet \Templates\xml

files (*.xsd and *.xsl):
These are the source files for the XML Schema
definition and XSL stylesheets used for and
exported with Help & Manual's XML output.
Do not make any changes to these files!

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

Part

VII
 Basic Working Procedures 125

7 Basic Working Procedures

This section describes the most common basic tasks you will use when working with Help &
Manual. It is designed as a "How-To" guide. You can use the table of contents as an index.
Although it is organized roughly in the order that you would perform the tasks you don't need
to begin at the beginning and work your way through. Every topic contains comprehensive
links to background information and other relevant subjects so you can just pick out the task
you need to perform and begin.
The topics in this section are intentionally kept as brief as possible. The focus is on how to
do what you need to do. More detailed background information on many subjects is provided
in the Reference 661 section and in other areas. Links to this information are provided in every
topic in this section, and links back to the relevant "how-to" subjects are also included in all
the Reference sections.

See also:
Introduction 69
The User Interface 79
Quick Start Tutorial 88

7.1 Creating Projects

About Help & Manual projects

A Help & Manual help or documentation project is stored in a single file with the extension .
HMX. All the data in your project except the graphics files is stored in this binary file. You
can think of it as a kind of database, containing your project structure, topics, text, keywords,
the table of contents (TOC), help window definitions, style definitions and all your other
project information and settings.
The project file is the source from which you can generate all the different output formats 763
that Help & Manual supports. Help & Manual is a single-source / multiple-output help
authoring tool – you can generate Winhelp, HTML Help, Browser-based Help, printed
manuals and all the other formats all from the same project file.

Creating new projects with imported data:

A number of the options described in this chapter create new projects by importing data
from external sources. You can also access most of these import functions by selecting
Open in the File menu and attempting to open the file that you want to import.

Make backups of your work:

Since the project file is so important you are strongly advised to make regular backups
and keep them in a safe place. Help & Manual is very secure and takes great care to
protect your data but MS Windows has been known to crash, and other badly-behaved
applications could also cause problems, so it is better to be safe than sorry.

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 126 Help & Manual Online Help

Automatic backups:
You can set Help & Manual to make automatic backups of your project file at regular
intervals. Go to Tools > Customize > General and select the option Automatically back up
project file every xx minutes . This will automatically create a backup copy of your
project file with the extension .~HMX in your project directory at the specified intervals
(to make these files readable just rename them to .HMX).

See also:
Help Formats 763
The Help & Manual Editor 740
Security and Deployment Issues 886
7.1.1 Choosing your help format
Help & Manual can generate a total of seven different output formats (eight including
printed manuals), each of which has its advantages and disadvantages for specific
purposes.
However, since Help & Manual is a single-source, multiple output format tool you don't ever
need to make a final decision on which format you want to use. You can always generate
any of the supported formats from your project. You can also generate multiple formats from
the same project, for example HTML Help for your online help and PDF for your printable
manual.
For details on the help formats supported by Help & Manual and their individual advantages
and disadvantages see Help Formats 763 in the Reference section.

See also:
Help Formats 763
7.1.2 Converting .HM3 projects
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to convert .HM3 projects 126
Adjustments after conversion 127

If you are upgrading from Help & Manual 3 you will probably want to start by importing and
converting your existing .HM3 projects. This is very simple – basically you just need to open
the .HM3 project in Help & Manual 4 and the converter is started automatically.
· For more details on working with the Project Converter tool see The Project Converter
641 in the Tools Included with Help & Manual section.

How to convert .HM3 projects:

1. Select in the Toolbar or File > Open to open the Open Help Project dialog.
2. In the Files of type: field select H&M Version 3 Project Files (*.hm3) .

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 Basic Working Procedures 127

3. Navigate to the .HM3 file you want to convert and click on , then confirm the
prompt asking you if you want to convert the project file. This will automatically start
the Project Converter with the selected project file:

You don't need to specify an output file name.

The .HMX extension is added to the existing
name automatically.
4. Select Options to check and adjust your conversion options. This is important because
you may need to change your settings depending on the formatting and content in
your .HM3 project to obtain optimum results. See The Project Converter 643 for details
and explanations of the available settings.
5. then click on Start Conversion to convert the project file.
The converted project is automatically saved in the same folder and with the same name
as the old Help & Manual 3 project, but with the extension .HMX instead of .HM3.
After converting you can then open and edit the project normally in Help & Manual 4.

Adjustments after conversion:

There are three areas where you may need to make adjustments after converting and
importing your .HM3 project:

Settings for styles:

The settings for your styles may need to be edited a little because styles in Help &
Manual 3 projects did not have the same close association with text and paragraphs
that they have in Help & Manual 4. All the formatting of your text will be converted
correctly but you may find that some paragraphs are associated with the Normal
style instead of a newly-defined style matching the old formatting.

Imported and converted tables:

Some of the static tables from H&M3 projects may also need a little post-editing.
Tables in Help & Manual 3 were fixed-width only and they were often split into
multiple tables to handle page break problems in PDF and printed manuals. The

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 128 Help & Manual Online Help

Project Converter has options 643 for dealing with both of these issues but because of
the differences between the two table formats you may need to make some manual
corrections to your tables after importing.

Custom code in HTML templates:

The HTML templates 470 used in Help & Manual 4 have changed considerably, so it is
not possible to transfer custom code from your .HM3 projects when they are
imported – the risk of mangling the resulting code would be too great.
If you have entered custom code in your templates you will need to re-enter it in the
templates of your new .HMX project. Your code should continue to work in the new
templates, however. The templates are functionally the same as before, they just
contain some new tags and variables and their structure has been changed.

See also:
The Project Converter 641
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Dynamic Styles 746
Working with Tables 332
7.1.3 Creating an empty new project
When you create a new project Help & Manual automatically generates a table of contents
(TOC) with a small set of topics that you can use as a starting-point.

How to create an empty new project:

1. Select File > New to display the Create New Help Project wizard:

· Select the first option, Create a new help project, and click on Next.
2. In the next screen you define the path and path and file name of the new Help &
Manual .HMX project you want to create:

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 Basic Working Procedures 129

· Click on the button at the end of the Output file: entry field to locate the folder
where you want to create your project.
· Then enter a file name for your project and click on Next.
The option Use this Help & Manual project as a template enables you to
use an existing Help & Manual project as a template 463 for your project.
Leave this option for later if you are just getting started with Help &
Manual.
3. The next screen is for entering the title and basic language settings for your project
(these can be changed later at any time):

· Enter a title for your help project and select your help project language and
character set.
· If your help project is in English or any ordinary western European language leave
these options set to English (United States) and ANSI_CHARSET. See
International languages setup 149 for details on settings for other languages.
· Click on Next to continue to the next screen.
4. In the Table of Contents screen the wizard then displays a small set of standard topics
that you can now edit and add to:

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 130 Help & Manual Online Help

· You can edit, delete and add topics if you want to. Don't worry about getting
everything right now – you can change everything later very easily.

· Click to create and open your new project. All the topics whose titles you
entered in the previous step will automatically be created.

See also:
Importing Data into Existing Projects 155
7.1.4 New project from a compiled HTML Help file
Help & Manual can decompile HTML Help .CHM files. Help & Manual 3 could also do
this, but Help & Manual 4 now includes a full-featured HTML code parser and
translator. This means that it now recreates almost all formatting, in addition to the
structure of the help file with topics, links, TOC structure, keywords and help context
numbers.

· You can also import compiled .CHM files into existing projects. See Importing
compiled CHM files 155 in the Importing Data into Existing Projects section for
details.

How to decompile and import an HTML Help .CHM file:

1. Select File > New to display the Create New Help Project wizard:

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 Basic Working Procedures 131

· Select the Import existing documentation from... option and click the check box
for Compiled HTML Help file (*.CHM).
· In the Specify source file / folder: field click to locate the directory containing the .
CHM file you want to import and select the file. Then click on Next.
2. In the next screen you define the path and file name of the new Help & Manual .HMX
project you want to create:

· Click on the button at the end of the Output file: entry field to locate the folder
where you want to create your project.
· Then enter a file name for your project and click on Next.
The option Use this Help & Manual project as a template enables you to
use an existing Help & Manual project as a template 463 for your project.
However, note that this will also import all the topics from this project. If
you use this option you may want to use an empty project template when
you are decompiling help files. Leave this option for later if you are just
getting started with Help & Manual.
3. Now you need to specify how the contents of the topics in the HTML Help file are to be
identified:

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 132 Help & Manual Online Help

· What settings you will need depends on the internal structure of the .CHM file you
are decompiling. In most cases you should get reasonably good results with the
settings shown in the screenshot above.
For details on the settings and what they do right-click on the individual
settings in the dialog and select What's This?
To check the internal code of the HTML pages in the CHM open the CHM
in Windows, right-click in any page and select View Source.

· Click to decompile and import the file. After importing Help & Manual will
automatically open the new project for editing.

See also
Importing Data into Existing Projects 155
7.1.5 New project from HTML and plain text files
Help & Manual 4 has a full-featured HTML code parser and translator that can import
entire directories containing multiple HTML and plain text files and automatically turn
them into Help & Manual .HMX project files. Every file is converted into a separate
topic and the parser can recreate almost all formatting, including complex tables and
other features.

· You can also import HTML and plain text files into existing projects. See Importing
HTML and plain text files 157 in the Importing Data into Existing Projects section for
details.

How to import a directory of HTML and/or text files:

1. Select File > New to display the Create New Help Project wizard: .

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 Basic Working Procedures 133

· Select the Import existing documentation from... option and click the check box
for Regular HTML and text files .
· In the Specify source file / folder: field click to locate and select the directory
containing the HTML and/or text files you want to import. This directory can contain
subdirectories. (You can only select a directory at this point, not individual files.
You will select those in Step 3 below.) Then click on Next.
2. In the next screen you enter the path and file name of the new Help & Manual .HMX
project you want to create:

· Click on the button at the end of the Output file: entry field to locate the folder
where you want to create your project.
· Then enter a file name for your project and click on Next.
The option Use this Help & Manual project as a template enables you to
use an existing Help & Manual project as a template 463 for your project.
However, this will also import all the topics from this project. If you use
this option you may want to use an empty project template when you are
creating a project with imported files. Leave this option for later if you are
just getting started with Help & Manual.
3. Help & Manual now parses the selected directory and any subdirectories it contains (if

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134 Help & Manual Online Help

you select the Include sub-folders option) and displays all the HTML and plain text
files it finds in the next screen:

Graphics files referenced in the HTML files will be located and imported to
the project directory automatically.
· If you don't want to include sub-folders (subdirectories) deselect the Include
sub-folders option. (Do this first, before making any other selections in the list.)
· Select any folders and/or files you don't want and click on to remove
them from the list. You can select multiple entries with Shift+Click and Ctrl+Click
.
· When you are ready click on Next to move to the next screen.
4. Enter a title for your help project and select your help project language and character
set. If your help project is in English or any ordinary western European language leave
these options set to English (United States) and ANSI_CHARSET. See International
languages setup 149 for details on settings for other languages. Then click on Next to
move to the next screen.

5. Now you need to specify how the contents of the topics in the HTML files are to be
identified:

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 Basic Working Procedures 135

What settings you will need depends on the internal structure of the HTML files you
are decompiling. In most cases you should get reasonably good results with the
settings shown in the screenshot above.
For details on the settings and what they do right-click on the individual
settings in the dialog and select What's This?
You may need to examine the code of the HTML files you are importing to
get the best possible results with the splitting and importing options in
this screen.
These settings don't apply to plain text files, of course, because they don't
contain any formatting that needs to be converted.

6. Click to convert and import the HTML files and create the new project. After
importing Help & Manual will automatically open the new project for editing.

See also
Importing Data into Existing Projects 155
7.1.6 New project from Winhelp project source files
If you have created Winhelp files before you may want to convert your existing
projects into the Help & Manual format rather than re-writing them from scratch. You
can decompile .HLP files 137 but for a full import of an existing Winhelp project, you
need the project source files.
· You can also import Winhelp project files into existing projects. See Importing Winhelp
project source files 160 in the Importing Data into Existing Projects section for details.

How to import an existing Winhelp project:

1. Select File > New to display the Create New Help Project wizard:

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136 Help & Manual Online Help

· Then select the Import existing documentation from... option and click the check
box for Winhelp source files (*.HPJ).
· In the Specify source file / folder: field click to locate the directory with the .HPJ
file you want to import and select the file. In addition to this file you will also need
the .RTF file or files containing the help text and the .BMP files containing the
images, if any. (All these files should be in the same source folder.) The .CNT file
containing the TOC can be regenerated and is not essential.
· Then click on Next to move to the next screen.
2. In the next screen you enter the path and file name of the new Help & Manual .HMX
project you want to create:

· Click on the button at the end of the Output file: entry field to locate the folder
where you want to create your project. It is advisable to use a new, empty folder for
your new project.
· Then enter a file name for your project and click on Next.
The option Use this Help & Manual project as a template enables you to
use an existing Help & Manual project as a template 463 for your project.
However, this will also import all the topics from this project. If you use
this option you may want to use an empty project template when you are

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 Basic Working Procedures 137

creating a project from a decompiled file. Leave this option for later if you
are just getting started with Help & Manual.

· Click on to decompile the Winhelp source files and import them to a new
Help & Manual .HMX project. After importing Help & Manual will automatically open
the new project for editing.

See also
Importing Data into Existing Projects 155
7.1.7 New project from a compiled Winhelp file
Help & Manual can directly decompile classic Winhelp (.HLP) files if you do not have
access to the original project source files. The decompiler can import much of the
formatting and structure. However, some of the necessary project information cannot
be recovered because it is not included in the compiled .HLP file. If the original project
is available it is thus always better to import the Winhelp project source files 135 .

· You can also import compiled Winhelp .HLP files into existing projects. See Importing
compiled Winhelp files 161 in the Importing Data into Existing Projects section for
details.

How to import a compiled Winhelp .HLP file to a new project:

1. Select File > New to display the Create New Help Project wizard:

· Select the Import existing documentation from... option and click the check box
for Compiled Winhelp file (*.HLP).
· In the Specify source file / folder: field click to locate the directory with the .HLP
file you want to decompile. If there is also an accompanying contents file (.CNT) it
must be located in the same directory. Click Next.
2. In the next screen you enter the path and the name of the new Help & Manual .HMX
project you want to create:

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 138 Help & Manual Online Help

· Click on the button at the end of the Output file: entry field to locate the folder
where you want to create your project. It is advisable to use a new, empty folder for
your new project.
The option Use this Help & Manual project as a template enables you to
use an existing Help & Manual project as a template 463 for your project.
However, this will also import all the topics from this project. If you use
this option you may want to use an empty project template when you are
decompiling help files. Leave this option for later if you are just getting
started with Help & Manual.

· Click to import the file and generate the new project. After importing Help
& Manual will automatically open the new project for editing.

See also:
Importing Data into Existing Projects 155
7.1.8 New project from a Word RTF file
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to import an MS Word RTF file to a new project 139
Importing graphics from RTF files 141 (important for modular projects!)

You can also create a new project by importing a standard .RTF file created with MS
Word. Help & Manual imports almost all the formatting created in Word, including
tables, and automatically creates new topics at every hard page break.

· You can also import Word RTF files into existing projects. See Importing Word
RTF files 162 in the Importing Data into Existing Projects section for details.

Copy & paste from MS Word:

You can also copy and paste text from Word into Help & Manual. Virtually
all formatting is supported, including complex tables. If your Word texts
include graphics they will be embedded in your project (i.e. saved in the
project .HMX file) when you paste them with the text. After pasting right-

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 Basic Working Procedures 139

click on the graphics and select Convert Embedded Picture... to convert them
to external files. (External files are always preferable because they use
much less memory and system resources.)

How to import an MS Word RTF file to a new project:

Please note that RTF import may not work correctly with RTF files that were not created
with MS Word. If you experience problems with non-Word RTF files just open and save
them in Word before importing.

Step 1: Prepare your document

Documents using standard Heading 1-9 styles:
Microsoft Word uses its standard Heading 1 through Heading 9 styles to define the
chapter headings for the table of contents. If your document uses these styles you
don't have to make any changes to it. Help & Manual will automatically start a new
topic at each heading, using the text of the heading for the title of the topic.
Chapters and sub-topics are created automatically to reflect the structure of your
document. For example, if a Heading 1 section called Introduction is followed by a
Heading 2 section called Chapter 1, then Chapter 1 will be created as a sub-topic of
Introduction.
· To prepare a Word document using the standard Heading 1 through Heading 9
styles just open it in Word, select Save As in the Edit menu and save it as a Rich
Text Format (.RTF) file.
· If the document contains a table of contents at the beginning you may want to
delete it before importing, as this section is not relevant in Help & Manual.
Every heading must be followed by a paragraph!
For the import to work properly every heading using the Heading 1
through Heading 9 styles must be followed by at least 1 paragraph of
text. Headings followed directly by a second heading will be ignored by
the converter and this may lead to an incorrect topic tree structure.

Documents that don't contain standard Heading 1-9 styles:

If your document doesn't use the standard Heading 1 through Heading 9 styles you
must define the points where you want your topics to begin with hard page breaks.
If your document contains standard Heading 1 – Heading 9 styles hard
page breaks will be ignored and will not trigger the generation of new
topics.
1. Open your file in Word and insert a manual hard page break (Shift + Enter) at
every point where you want a new topic to begin.
2. Then select Save As in Word's Edit menu and save your file as a Rich Text
Format (.RTF) file.
· Here too, if the document contains a table of contents at the beginning you may
want to delete it before importing, as this section is not relevant in Help & Manual.

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140 Help & Manual Online Help

Step 2: Import the RTF document

1. Select File > New to display the Create New Help Project wizard:

· Then select the Import existing documentation from... option and click the check
box for RTF document created with MS Word (*.HPJ) .
· In the Specify source file / folder: field click to locate the .RTF file you want to
import and select the file.
· Then click on Next to move to the next screen.
2. In the next screen you enter the path and file name of the new Help & Manual .HMX
project you want to create:

· Click on the button at the end of the Output file: entry field to locate the folder
where you want to create your project. It is advisable to use a new, empty folder for
your new project.
· Then enter a file name for your project and click on Next.
The option Use this Help & Manual project as a template enables you to
use an existing Help & Manual project as a template 463 for your project.
However, this will also import all the topics from this project. If you use

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 Basic Working Procedures 141

this option you may want to use an empty project template when you are
creating a project from a decompiled file. Leave this option for later if you
are just getting started with Help & Manual.

· Click on to import the .RTF file and create a new Help & Manual .HMX
project. After importing Help & Manual will automatically open the new project for
editing.

Importing graphics with Word RTF files:

The graphics embedded in RTF files don't have names. Word only assigns sequential
alphanumeric IDs to them, restarting at 1 in every file. This means that if you import two
RTF files containing graphics to two different projects in different folders it is quite
possible that the different graphics files in the two projects will all have identical
alphanumeric names!
This is not an issue if you are really creating two separate projects. However, it can be a
major problem if you are using the RTF files as the source for individual modules in the
same modular project 492 in which you are also using compile-time merging 875 . Then you
will have multiple modules with identical filenames and Help & Manual will only ever be
able to find the first version of each graphics file.

Solution 1: Import RTFs for modules to the same folder:

The solution to this problem is to import all RTFs that you want to use in modules to
projects created in the same folder. When you do this Help & Manual will
automatically increment the filename numbers for the graphics in each project you
add, thus preventing duplicate filenames.
· Just follow the instructions above 139 , but in Step 2 always choose the same output
folder (but make sure you create a new project filename every time). When you do
this the following warning message will be displayed:

You can safely ignore this message. It is just a general warning about handling
multiple projects in single folders and will not lead to file overwriting when you are
importing multiple RTFs to multiple projects in the same folder.

Solution 2: Import all your RTFs to a single project

The second solution is to import all your related RTF files containing graphics to a
single project. This too will ensure that you do not have any duplicate filenames.
1. Follow the instructions above 139 to create your project from the first RTF file.
2. With all the subsequent files follow the instructions in Importing Word RTF files 162
to import all the subsequent RTF files into the same project.

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See also
Importing Data into Existing Projects 155
Managing your graphics 325
7.1.9 New project from a H&M XML project file
The Professional version of Help & Manual version 4.1 and above can export your
help projects to XML file packages 786 for editing and processing (for example for
translation) in external, XML-aware programs. After they have been processed you
can then re-import the edited XML files back to Help & Manual with all the original
formatting, layout and project settings intact.

You can also import XML file packages created with Help & Manual into
existing projects. This is normally the option you should choose when you
are re-importing an XML version of your project that has been edited
externally. See Importing H&M XML projects 165 for details.
You cannot import individual XML topic files with this method. See Exporting
and importing topics 202 for instructions on how to import individual XML
topic files.

IMPORTANT: Help & Manual can only process its own XML
files!
Help & Manual can only process XML files created with Help & Manual.
Currently you cannot export or import any other XML formats. Help &
Manual uses its own XML schema known as the Help & Manual XML
Language. This schema is designed specifically for exporting Help & Manual
projects for external processing and then re-importing them, and it is the
only XML schema with which this is possible.
The Help & Manual XML Language is fully documented in a separate help
file included with the program (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help &
Manual program directory). The schema is fully open and you are welcome
to develop your own applications for converting between the Help & Manual
XML Language and other XML variants.

How to create a new project from an XML file package:

It is extremely important to understand that you can only import XML file packages
created with Help & Manual. Currently, you cannot import XML files generated by other
applications or using different XML schemas like DocBook or Darwin.
1. Select File > New to display the Create New Help Project wizard:

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 Basic Working Procedures 143

· Then select the Import existing documentation from... option and click the check
box for XML File.
· In the Specify source file / folder: field click to locate the directory containing the
main .XML project file in the XML file package generated by Help & Manual. This
file is located in the main directory of the XML package and has the the same
name as the project from which it was exported.
· Select the main XML project file. Don't try to select any individual XML topic files in
a \Topics directory if your package contains one – this will not work. (See Exporting
and importing topics 202 for details on importing individual XML topic files.)
· Then click on Next to move to the next screen.
2. In the next screen enter the path and file name of the new Help & Manual .HMX
project you want to create:

· Click on the button at the end of the Output file: entry field to locate the folder
where you want to create your project. As always, it is advisable to use a new,
empty folder for your new project.
· Then enter a file name for your project and click on Next.
The option Use this Help & Manual project as a template enables you to

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 144 Help & Manual Online Help

use an existing Help & Manual project as a template 463 for your project.
However, this will also import all the topics from this project. If you use
this option you may want to use an empty project template when you are
creating a project from an XML file package. Leave this option for later if
you are just getting started with Help & Manual.
3. In the next screen you can choose some options for the XML import process:

Overwrite existing topics: If there are topics in the current project with the same
topic IDs as topics in the XML package they will be
overwritten when you import. This is generally used
for updating a project with a new, edited version.
This setting is irrelevant when you are creating a new
project.
Import project Imports the project properties from the project stored
properties: in the XML file package, overwriting the settings in
the current project.
Import Baggage files: Imports any Baggage 520 files from the project stored
in the XML file package.

4. Then just click on to import the XML file package and create a new Help &
Manual .HMX project. After importing Help & Manual will automatically open the new
project for editing.

See also:
Importing Data into Existing Projects 155
XML Export and Import 786 (Reference)
7.1.10 New project from a RoboHelp® X5 project
Users switching to Help & Manual 4 from RoboHelp® X5 can import their RoboHelp® for
HTML projects directly into Help & Manual. The import is comprehensive, including the table
of contents, the keyword index, the HTML topic pages, A and K keywords, help context
numbers, text popups, custom build tags and topics with special build flags.
Conversion of the original layout and formatting in the RoboHelp® X5 topic pages should

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 Basic Working Procedures 145

also be largely complete and accurate, although you may have to do some minor editing and
tweaking after importing.
The graphics files from the original files are not imported to the new project directory.
Instead, Help & Manual adds the location(s) of the graphics files to the image folders list in
Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Image Folders 553 . You can move the
image files after importing if you want – just change the folder entries in the Image Folders
list accordingly after doing so and Help & Manual will be able to find them.
· You can also import RoboHelp® X5 projects into existing projects. See Importing
RoboHelp X5 projects 167 in the Importing Data into Existing Projects section for details.

How to import a RoboHelp® X5 HTML project:

1. Select File > New to display the Create New Help Project wizard:

· Select the Import existing documentation from... option and click the check box
for RoboHelp® for HTML project file option.
· In the Specify source file / folder: field click to locate the directory containing the
RoboHelp® X5 HTML project you want to import and select the .XPJ project file.
Then click on Next.
2. In the next screen you define the path and file name of the new Help & Manual .HMX
project you want to create:

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146 Help & Manual Online Help

· Click on the button at the end of the Output file: entry field to locate the folder
where you want to create your project.
· Then enter a file name for your project and click on Next.
The option Use this Help & Manual project as a template enables you to
use an existing Help & Manual project as a template 463 for your project.
However, this will also import all the topics from this project. If you use
this option you may want to use an empty project template when you are
importing projects. Leave this option for later if you are just getting
started with Help & Manual.
3. Now you need to specify how the contents of the topics in the HTML topic files in your
RoboHelp® project are to be identified:

· What settings you will need depends on the code and structure of the HTML topic
files you are importing. In most cases you should get reasonably good results with
the settings shown in the screenshot above.
For details on the settings and what they do right-click on the individual
settings in the dialog and select What's This?
If you experience problems you may need to examine the source code of
the HTML topics

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 Basic Working Procedures 147

· Click to decompile and import the file. After importing Help & Manual will
automatically open the new project for editing.

See also
Importing Data into Existing Projects 155
7.1.11 Editing Project Properties
IN THIS TOPIC:
Entering the help title and copyright notice 147

Setting the default topic 147

Configuring your language settings 148
Setting the titles of your help windows 148
Checking your output format settings 148

After creating your project it's a good idea go through your Project Properties 548 and check
all your basic settings, which are initially set to default values by the program. You can
change these settings at any time, but some are easy to forget, like the help title, window
titles and copyright information and so it's a good idea to get into the habit of doing a check
whenever you start a new project.
This topic lists the basic settings in Project Properties that you should always check when
you create a new project. The other sections are also important but these generally contain
things that you will edit while working on or compiling your project. For full details see the
Project Properties 548 chapter.

Setting your help title and copyright notice settings:

The first thing you want to do is to enter the title of your project, the name of the author,
your copyright notice and so on. You should always enter this information immediately
when you are setting up a new project because it's very easy to forget it later.
· Go to Project > Project Properties and select Title & Copyright 550 in the Common
Properties section.
· Enter your details. The information
· See Title & Copyright 550 in the Project Properties chapter for details on the settings.

Setting the default topic:

The default topic in your help is the topic that is automatically displayed when the help is
opened in Winhelp, HTML Help, Browser-based Help, Visual Studio Help (MS Help 2.0)
and eBooks. If you don't set a topic the help will open at the first topic containing text in
your TOC.
1. Go to Project > Project Properties and select Language Settings 551 in the Common
Properties section.
2. Select the topic ID of the default topic in the Default ("Home") topic: field.

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148 Help & Manual Online Help

Setting your language settings:

One of the most important things to check is your language settings. Help & Manual 4
now includes support for almost all international languages and you need to make sure
that your project is configured correctly to handle the language you are using, even if it is
English or a common Western European language.
· See International languages setup 149 for full details!

Setting the title of your help window(s):

By default the Help Title you enter in Title & Copyright section of Project Properties is
displayed in the title bar of your project in electronic help formats. Normally you just have
to enter title there and to change it you edit it there.
If you are using external help windows 473 you may want to enter different titles for each
window type:
1. Go to Project > Project Properties and select the Help Windows 557 section.
2. Click on the name of the help window whose title you want to change. If you have
not defined any additional help windows only the standard Main and Popup help
window types will be displayed. See Using secondary windows 471 and Using
external windows 473 for more information.
3. Edit the name in the Title bar text: field. By default this contains the variable <%
TITLE%>, which inserts the help title text entered in the Title & Copyright settings (
see above 147 ).
· See Help Windows 557 in the Project Properties chapter for full details on the settings
here.

Checking your output format settings:

Most of the other settings in Project Properties are for configuring the output formats
supported by Help & Manual. You will only need to check and adjust the settings for the
formats you are actually going to use, of course.
· See the Project Properties 548 chapter for details on all the individual settings in
these sections.

See also:
Project Properties 548
Configuring your Output 392
Choosing a help window 177
Templates and Secondary Windows 462

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 Basic Working Procedures 149

7.1.12 International languages setup

IN THIS TOPIC:
Where to find the language settings 149
English and Western European languages 149
Eastern European languages, Greek, Turkish etc. 151
Unicode-based languages (Asian languages etc.) 152
Test-compiling Asian languages on non-Asian Windows 154

· Important Note:
Please note that Unicode support is only included in the Professional version of Help &
Manual 4.

Help & Manual 4 introduces full support for Unicode, which means that it can now be used to
edit and compile help files in virtually all international languages, including double-byte
languages with more than 255 characters like Chinese, Thai and so on. In addition to
settings in Help & Manual these languages also have special Windows configuration
requirements. If you are producing help in one of these languages please study the
International Languages and Unicode 780 chapter in the Reference section before continuing.
Even if you are working in English or any other Western European language it is important
to check that the language settings of your project are correct to ensure that you will not
have any problems with your output, for example with the display of special characters and
sorting in the Keyword Index.
See Language Settings 551 in the Project Properties section of the help for more details on
configuration

Where to find the language settings:

· Go to Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Language Settings to view
and edit the language settings for your project.
· See Language Settings 551 in the Project Properties section of the help for details.
· If you are plan to generate PDF files you also need to set CID Font Mode 545 to the
correct setting for the language you are using.

English and Western European languages:

Windows version and configuration:

If you are working in English or any other Western European language you can edit,
compile and display your help on any version of Windows 98 or later. The language
of the Windows version you are using does not have to match the language of your
help.

Language settings in Project Properties:

Go to Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Language Settings 551 :
Language of the The default setting is English (United States). This should not be

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150 Help & Manual Online Help

help file: changed for English and Western European languages unless
you experience problems with sorting in the Keyword Index.

Font character The default setting is ANSI_CHARSET. This should not be

set: changed for English and Western European languages.

Default font: This is not the default font of your help project! This option only
defines the font used in the TOC and dialog boxes by Winhelp
and HTML Help.
Note that Winhelp and HTML Help are designed to work with the
default font and font size settings so please test thoroughly if you
use different fonts or sizes.
The default is MS Sans Serif,8,0. The value 8 defines the font
size and should generally not be changed. The value 0 defines
the character set. You do not need to change the character set
value – if it is necessary Help & Manual will do this for you
automatically when you compile your project.

Unicode mode on If you are working on Windows 2000 or XP you can use this
Windows 2000 setting to gain more control over how text is encoded in your
and XP: output. Since Unicode is becoming the general standard we now
recommend using Force Unicode for all projects.
See Language Settings 552 in the Reference section for more
details.

CID Font Mode for PDF font embedding:

Go to Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF > Font Embedding 606 :
CID Font Mode is a special mode for embedding Unicode fonts in PDF files more
efficiently for Asian languages. It should generally be set to CID Off unless you are
using Asian languages. See CID mode for Unicode fonts 545 for more details.

UTF-8 output option in HTML Export Options:

Go to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > HTML Export Options 573 :
Help & Manual supports UTF-8 Unicode encoding for HTML-based output formats.
This is preferred for Unicode-based languages and should generally be left on for all
other languages as well. All modern browsers support UTF-8 encoding and using it
will reduce the chances of problems with special characters.
Note that all the options in this Project Properties section are shared by all
HTML-based output formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks
and Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0). The options can be accessed in the
corresponding sections in Project Properties but they are the same in all
locations. You cannot enter different options settings for different output
formats.

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 Basic Working Procedures 151

Eastern European languages, Greek, Russian, Turkish etc:

This group of languages is defined as non-Unicode languages with special character
sets.

Windows version and configuration:

If you are working in an Eastern European language, Russian, Greek, Turkish or any
other language with special characters that does not require Unicode you can edit,
compile and display your help on any version of Windows 98 or later. The language
of the Windows version you are using does not have to match the language of your
help.

Language settings in Project Properties:

Go to Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Language Settings 551 :
Language of the This setting must be set to the language in which your help is
help file: written. This is important both for proper sorting in the Keyword
Index and proper identification of the language by the system.

Font character This setting must be set to the correct character set to display the
set: language used in your help file.

Default font: This is not the default font of your help project! This option only
defines the font used in the TOC and dialog boxes by Winhelp
and HTML Help.
Note that Winhelp and HTML Help are designed to work with the
default font and font size settings so please test thoroughly if you
use different fonts or sizes.
The default is MS Sans Serif,8,0. The value 8 defines the font
size and should generally not be changed. The value 0 defines
the character set. You do not need to change the character set
value – Help & Manual does this for you automatically when you
compile your project.

Unicode mode on If you are working on Windows 2000, XP or later you can use this
Windows 2000 setting to gain more control over how text is encoded in your
and XP: output. Since Unicode is now becoming the general standard we
now recommend setting this to Force Unicode.
See Language Settings 552 in the Reference section for more
details.

CID Font Mode for PDF font embedding:

Go to Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF > Font Embedding 606 :
CID Font Mode is a special mode for embedding Unicode fonts in PDF files more
efficiently for Asian languages. It should generally be set to CID Off unless you are
using Asian languages. See CID mode for Unicode fonts 545 for more details.

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152 Help & Manual Online Help

UTF-8 output option in HTML Export Options:

Go to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > HTML Export Options 573 :
Help & Manual supports UTF-8 Unicode encoding for HTML-based output formats.
This is preferred for Unicode-based languages and should generally be left on for all
other languages as well. All modern browsers support UTF-8 encoding and using it
will reduce the chances of problems with special characters.
Note that all the options in this Project Properties section are shared by all
HTML-based output formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks
and Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0). The options can be accessed in the
corresponding sections in Project Properties but they are the same in all
locations. You cannot enter different options settings for different output
formats.

Unicode-based languages:
This group includes all languages that require Unicode 780 , which means languages with
more than 255 characters requiring two bytes to store each character. For example, this
includes most Asian languages like Chinese, Japanese and Thai.

Windows version and configuration:

Editing projects:
Help & Manual projects written in Unicode-based languages can only be edited on
Windows 2000, Windows XP or later with support installed for the language you are
using.
Compiling projects:
· You can compile Unicode projects to Browser-based Help, MS Word RTF, eBooks
and Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0 with any version of Windows 2000, Windows
XP or later with support installed for the language you are using.
· To compile Unicode projects to Winhelp or HTML Help you must also set the
"system locale" of your Windows configuration to match the language of your
project.
Changing the system locale
Note that the system locale and the user locale are different! Simply setting the
display and/or data entry language does not change the system locale!
1. Log in to a user account with administrator privileges.
2. Open the Regional and Languages section in the Windows Control Panel.
· Windows 2000: Activate your language in the list of languages at the
bottom of the main tab and then select the same language as the locale at
the top of the same tab.
· Windows XP: Select your language as the default language for non-
Unicode programs in the Advanced tab (this tab is only displayed if you
have administrator privileges!).

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 Basic Working Procedures 153

· Windows Vista: Select the Change System Locale button in the

Administrative tab (this tab is only displayed if you have administrator
privileges!).
3. Click on OK to apply the setting and then restart Windows.

Viewing compiled help:

Help & Manual's compiled Unicode-based output files can be viewed on most
versions of Windows on which proper support for the specific Unicode languages is
installed. Some features of Unicode-based Winhelp and HTML Help (full-text search,
Keyword Index sorting) will only work properly if the language of the Windows
version matches the language of the help file. For example, all functions of a
Chinese HTML Help file will only work correctly on a Chinese version of Windows.
· See About H&M's Unicode support 783 for more details on this.

Language settings in Project Properties:

Go to Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Language Settings 551 :
Language of the This setting must be set to the language in which your help is
help file: written. This is important both for proper sorting in the Keyword
Index and proper identification of the language by the system. In
Unicode-based languages this setting also tells Help & Manual to
handle the text in your project as Unicode.

Font character This setting must be set to the correct character set to display the
set: language used in your help file. This too is particularly important
for proper handling of Unicode-based languages. You must have
the proper character set for your language installed for Help &
Manual to be able to process and compile the language correctly.

Default font: This is not the default font of your help project! This option only
defines the font used in the TOC and dialog boxes by Winhelp
and HTML Help. The default value is MS Sans Serif,8,0.
The default is MS Sans Serif,8,0, which is the font and size that
Winhelp and HTML Help are designed for. In Asian languages
and other Unicode-based languages you may need to choose an
appropriate font for your language instead of MS Sans Serif.
The value 8 defines the font size and should generally not be
changed. The value 0 defines the character set. You do not need
to change the character set value – Help & Manual does this for
you automatically when you compile your project.

Unicode mode This should generally be set to Force Unicode for all languages
on Windows requiring Unicode.
2000 and XP:
See Language Settings 552 for more details.

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CID Font Mode for PDF font embedding:

Go to Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF > Font Embedding 606 :
CID Font Mode is a special mode for embedding Unicode fonts in PDF files more
efficiently for Asian languages. It should generally be set to CID Off unless you are
using Asian languages. See CID mode for Unicode fonts 545 for more details.

UTF-8 output option in HTML Export Options:

Go to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > HTML Export Options 573 :
Help & Manual supports UTF-8 Unicode encoding for HTML-based output formats.
This should always be on for Unicode-based languages. If UTF-8 is not selected for
a Unicode-based project all characters outside the standard US-ASCII character set
will be exported as numerically-coded characters in the HTML output (&#1234 etc).
This will generally display properly but it can cause problems with full-text search and
it will make viewing the source code difficult or impossible.
Note that all the options in this Project Properties section are shared by all
HTML-based output formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks
and Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0). The options can be accessed in the
corresponding sections in Project Properties but they are the same in all
locations. You cannot enter different options settings for different output
formats.

Test-compiling Asian languages on non-Asian Windows:

Normally, you cannot compile help projects written Asian languages on non-Asian
versions of Windows because the necessary language settings don't match. However, if
you just want to do a quick test compile and don't have a Windows version in the
matching Asian language there is a configuration setting that will allow you to do this.
· Go to Tools > Customize > Compilers and activate the option
.

The resulting help file will contain errors if the languages of your Windows version and
the help file don't match but you will be able to complete the compilation, which is
sufficient for testing.

See also:
International Languages and Unicode 780 (Reference)
Language Settings 551 (Project Properties)
7.1.13 Defining the help viewer appearance
The appearance of the help viewers in which electronic help formats (Winhelp, HTML Help,
Browser-based Help, eBooks) are displayed is controlled by the definition of the Main help
window type in Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557 .
How this works and the amount of control you have over the appearance of the viewer
depend on the output format. See Choosing a help window 178 in the Creating and Editing
Topics section for more information and instructions on how to control the help viewer

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 Basic Working Procedures 155

appearance.

See also:
Choosing a help window 177
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
Help Windows

7.2 Importing Data into Existing Projects

This section describes how to use the Import functions in the File menu to import data from
various sources into existing Help & Manual projects. These functions are almost identical to
the import functions for creating new projects described in the Creating Projects 125 section.
The only major difference is that instead of creating a new project they imported data is
inserted into an existing project.
· Note that in addition to these import functions you can also import external data into
individual topics. For details on this function see Exporting and importing topics 202 in
the Creating and Editing Topics section.
· To import/export topics between projects just open Help & Manual a second time
and cut and paste 217 between the projects.
Integrating imported text in your H&M stylesheet:
Text imported from external sources is all tagged as "manually formatted"
with inline formatting, not with styles. You can quickly integrate this
formatting into your Help & Manual stylesheet with the Replace Formats/Styles
271 function in the Format menu.

See also:
Exporting and importing topics 202
Importing/exporting between projects 217
7.2.1 Importing compiled HTML Help files
Help & Manual can decompile HTML Help .CHM files and import them into existing
projects. The full-featured HTML code parser and translator recreates almost all
formatting and also imports topics, links, keywords and help context numbers.

Integrating imported text in your H&M stylesheet:

Text imported from external sources is all tagged as "manually formatted"
with inline formatting, not with styles. You can quickly integrate this
formatting into your Help & Manual stylesheet with the Replace Formats/Styles
271 function in the Format menu.

How to import an HTML Help .CHM file to an existing project:

1. Open the project you want to import to and click in the Table of Contents (TOC) in the
position where you want to insert the topics generated from the decompiled .CHM file.
2. Select File > Import to display the Import wizard:

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· In the preselected Import existing documentation from... section click the check
box for Compiled HTML Help file (*.CHM).
· In the Specify source file / folder: field click to locate the directory containing the .
CHM file you want to import and select the file. Then click on Next.
3. Now you need to specify how the contents of the topics in the HTML Help file are to be
identified:

· What settings you will need depends on the internal structure of the .CHM file you
are decompiling. In most cases you should get reasonably good results with the
settings shown in the screenshot above.
For details on the settings and what they do right-click on the individual
settings in the dialog and select What's This?
To check the internal code of the HTML pages in the CHM open the CHM
in Windows, right-click in any page and select View Source.

· Click to decompile and import the file. The imported topics will be inserted
at the current position selected in the TOC of the open project.

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 Basic Working Procedures 157

See also
Creating Projects 125
Exporting and importing topics 202
7.2.2 Importing HTML and plain text files
Help & Manual 4 has a full-featured HTML code parser and translator that can import
entire directories containing multiple HTML and plain text files and insert them into
existing Help & Manual .HMX project files. Every file is converted into a separate
topic and the parser can recreate almost all formatting, including complex tables and
other features.

Integrating imported text in your H&M stylesheet:

Text imported from external sources is all tagged as "manually formatted"
with inline formatting, not with styles. You can quickly integrate this
formatting into your Help & Manual stylesheet with the Replace Formats/Styles
271 function in the Format menu.

How to import a directory of HTML and/or text files to an existing project:

1. Open the project you want to import to and click in the Table of Contents (TOC) in the
position where you want to insert the topics generated from the imported files.
2. Select File > Import to display the Import wizard:

· In the preselected Import existing documentation from... section click the check
box for Regular HTML and text files .
· In the Specify source file / folder: field click to locate and select the directory
containing the HTML and/or text files you want to import. This directory can contain
subdirectories. (You can only select a directory at this point, not individual files.
You will select those in the next step.) Then click on Next.
3. Help & Manual now parses the selected directory and any subdirectories it contains
and displays all the HTML and plain text files it finds in the next screen:

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Graphics files referenced in the HTML files will be located and imported
automatically. They are added to the first folder in your Image Folders list
(Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Image Folders 553 ).
· If you don't want to include sub-folders (subdirectories) deselect the Include sub-
folders option. (Do this first, before making any other selections in the list.)
· Select any folders and/or files you don't want and click on to remove them
from the list. You can select multiple entries with Shift+Click and Ctrl+Click.
· When you are ready click on Next to move to the next screen.
4. Now you need to specify how the contents of the topics in the HTML files are to be
identified:

What settings you will need depends on the internal structure of the HTML files you
are decompiling. In most cases you should get reasonably good results with the
settings shown in the screenshot above.
For details on the settings and what they do right-click on the individual
settings in the dialog and select What's This?
You may need to examine the code of the HTML files you are importing to
get the best possible results with the splitting and importing options in
this screen.

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 Basic Working Procedures 159

These settings don't apply to plain text files, of course, because they don't
contain any formatting that needs to be converted.

5. Click to convert and import the HTML files to the current project. The topics
created will be inserted at the current position selected in the TOC.

See also:
Creating Projects 125
Exporting and importing topics 202
7.2.2.1 Merging HTML files into topics

IN THIS TOPIC:
Preparing the external HTML files for merging 159

Inserting the MERGE command 160

In addition to importing HTML and text files Help & Manual also supports a special command
that enables you to merge external HTML files into existing topics at compile time. This can
be very useful if you have material that changes frequently – you can maintain it in an
external HTML file and automatically merge the latest version into your project when you
compile.
Note that this only works in HTML-based output formats. Merged HTML
files will be completely ignored in Winhelp, PDF, printed manuals and MS
Word RTF output files!
You can only insert the content of HTML files using this method
(everything between the <body> and </body> tags). Since your topic
pages already have their own head sections any references outside the
<body> tags in the merged files will not work and may even cause
conflicts.

Preparing the external HTML files for merging:

1. Open the external HTML file in an editor.
2. Locate the opening <body> tag and delete it and everything that comes before it.
3. Locate the closing </body> tag and delete it and everything that comes after it.
4. Save the file in the project folder with the .HTM or .HTML extension.
It is important to understand that the #MERGE command injects the entire external
HTML file into the position in the topic where you insert the command. This means that it
is advisable to remove everything in the external file outside the opening and closing
<body> and </body> tags before merging.
The topic page already has its own header section and <body> tags, and if you don't
remove this material from the external file you will have double header information. This
may work, but it is not recommended because it can and will cause problems in some
situations.

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Inserting the #MERGE command:

1. In the Help & Manual editor click in the position in the topic where you want to insert
the contents of the external HTML file. The topic can be empty but it does not have to
be. The #MERGE command inserts the contents of the file into the current topic
without deleting anything.
2. Select Insert > Plain HTML Code... and type the following code in the editing window:

#MERGE filename.htm

This assumes that the HTML file is in the project directory (i.e. the directory
containing the .HMX project file). You can use a path if you want.
Note that the files you import must be installed on your local file system.
You cannot import files from the Internet using http:// references with the
#MERGE command.

See also:
Inserting plain HTML code 311
7.2.3 Importing Winhelp project source files
Help & Manual can decompile the source files of Winhelp projects and insert them
into the current project. If you have all the original project files the entire project will
be imported with its original structure and merged with your current project. This
option is preferable to decompiling 161 Winhelp .HLP files because it preserves the
attributes and settings of the original project.

Integrating imported text in your H&M stylesheet:

Text imported from external sources is all tagged as "manually formatted"
with inline formatting, not with styles. You can quickly integrate this
formatting into your Help & Manual stylesheet with the Replace Formats/Styles
271 function in the Format menu.

How to import Winhelp project files to an existing project:

1. Open the project you want to import to and click in the Table of Contents (TOC) in the
position where you want to insert the topics generated from the imported Winhelp
project.
2. Select File > Import to display the Import wizard:

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 Basic Working Procedures 161

· In the preselected Import existing documentation from... section click the check
box for Winhelp source files (*.HPJ).
· In the Specify source file / folder: field click to locate the directory with the .HPJ
file you want to import and select the file. In addition to this file you will also need
the .RTF file or files containing the help text and the .BMP files containing the
images, if any. (All these files should be in the same source folder.) The .CNT file
containing the TOC can be regenerated and is not essential.
3. Click on to import the Winhelp project. The project's topics will be inserted at
the current position in the TOC.

See also:
Creating Projects 125
Exporting and importing topics 202
7.2.4 Importing compiled Winhelp files
Help & Manual can directly decompile classic Winhelp (.HLP) files and insert their
topics into a Help & Manual project. The decompiler can import much of the
formatting and structure. However, some of the necessary project information cannot
be recovered because it is not included in the compiled .HLP file. If the original project
is available it is thus always better to import the Winhelp project source files 160 .

Integrating imported text in your H&M stylesheet:

Text imported from external sources is all tagged as "manually formatted"
with inline formatting, not with styles. You can quickly integrate this
formatting into your Help & Manual stylesheet with the Replace Formats/Styles
271 function in the Format menu.

How to import a compiled Winhelp .HLP file to an existing project:

1. Open the project you want to import to and click in the Table of Contents (TOC) in the
position where you want to insert the topics generated from the imported Winhelp file.

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 162 Help & Manual Online Help

2. Select File > Import to display the Import wizard:

· In the preselected Import existing documentation from... section click the check
box for Compiled Winhelp file (*.HLP).
· In the Specify source file / folder: field click to locate the directory with the .HLP
file you want to decompile. If there is also an accompanying contents file (.CNT) it
must be located in the same directory.
3. Click on to decompile and import the Winhelp file. The topics extracted from
the file will be inserted at the current position in the TOC.

See also:
Creating Projects 125
Exporting and importing topics 202
7.2.5 Importing Word RTF files
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to import an MS Word RTF file to an existing project 163

Embedded graphics in RTF files 164

You can also import data from standard .RTF files created with MS Word to existing
projects. Help & Manual imports almost all the formatting created in Word, including
tables, and automatically creates new topics at every hard page break.

Copy & paste from MS Word:

You can also copy and paste text from Word into Help & Manual. Virtually all
formatting is supported, including complex tables. If your Word texts include
graphics they will be embedded in your project (i.e. saved in the project .HMX
file) when you paste them with the text. After pasting right-click on the
graphics and select Convert Embedded Picture... to convert them to external files.
(External files are always preferable because they use much less memory and
system resources.)

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 Basic Working Procedures 163

Integrating imported text in your H&M stylesheet:

Text imported from external sources is all tagged as "manually formatted"
with inline formatting, not with styles. You can quickly integrate this
formatting into your Help & Manual stylesheet with the Replace Formats/Styles
271 function in the Format menu.

How to import an MS Word RTF file to an existing project:

Please note that RTF import may not work correctly with RTF files that were not created
with MS Word. If you experience problems with non-Word RTF files just open and save
them in Word before importing.

Step 1: Prepare your document

Documents using standard Heading 1-9 styles:
Microsoft Word uses its standard Heading 1 through Heading 9 styles to define the
chapter headings for the table of contents. If your document uses these styles you
don't have to make any changes to it. Help & Manual will automatically start a new
topic at each heading, using the text of the heading for the title of the topic.
Chapters and sub-topics are created automatically to reflect the structure of your
document. For example, if a Heading 1 section called Introduction is followed by a
Heading 2 section called Chapter 1, then Chapter 1 will be created as a sub-topic of
Introduction.
· To prepare a Word document using the standard Heading 1 through Heading 9
styles just open it in Word, select Save As in the Edit menu and save it as a Rich
Text Format (.RTF) file.
· If the document contains a table of contents at the beginning you may want to
delete it before importing, as this section is not relevant in Help & Manual.
Every heading must be followed by a paragraph!
For the import to work properly every heading using the Heading 1
through Heading 9 styles must be followed by at least 1 paragraph of
text. Headings followed directly by a second heading will be ignored by
the converter and this may lead to an incorrect topic tree structure.

Documents that don't contain standard Heading 1-9 styles:

If your document doesn't use the standard Heading 1 through Heading 9 styles you
must define the points where you want your topics to begin with hard page breaks.
If your document contains standard Heading 1 – Heading 9 styles hard
page breaks will be ignored and will not trigger the generation of new
topics.
1. Open your file in Word and insert a manual hard page break (Shift + Enter) at
every point where you want a new topic to begin.
2. Then select Save As in Word's Edit menu and save your file as a Rich Text

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164 Help & Manual Online Help

Format (.RTF) file.

· Here too, if the document contains a table of contents at the beginning you may
want to delete it before importing, as this section is not relevant in Help & Manual.

Step 2: Import the RTF document

1. Select File > Import to display the Import wizard:

· In the preselected Import existing documentation from... section click the

check box for RTF document created with MS Word .
· In the Specify source file / folder: field click to locate the .RTF file you want to
import and select the file.
2. Click on to import the Word .RTF file. The topics extracted from the file will
be inserted at the current position in the TOC.

Embedded graphics in Word RTF files:

The graphics embedded in RTF files don't have names. Word only assigns sequential
alphanumeric IDs to them, restarting at 1 in every file. This means that if you import two
RTF files containing graphics to two different projects in different folders it is quite
possible that the different graphics files in the two projects will all have identical
alphanumeric names!
For more information on this subject see the section on importing RTF graphics in New
project from a Word RTF file 141 .

See also:
Creating Projects 125
Exporting and importing topics 202

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 Basic Working Procedures 165

7.2.6 Importing H&M XML projects

The Professional version of Help & Manual version 4.1 and above can export your
help projects to XML file packages 786 for editing and processing (for example for
translation) in external, XML-aware programs. After they have been processed you
can then re-import the edited XML files back to Help & Manual with all the original
formatting, layout and project settings intact.

You can also create new Help & Manual projects from XML file packages
created with Help & Manual. See New project from an XML project file 142 for
details.
You cannot import individual XML topic files with this method, you must
import the entire package with the XML project file. See Exporting and
importing topics 202 for instructions on how to import individual XML topic
files.

IMPORTANT: Help & Manual can only process its own XML
files!
Help & Manual can only process XML files created with Help & Manual.
Currently you cannot export or import any other XML formats. Help &
Manual uses its own XML schema known as the Help & Manual XML
Language. This schema is designed specifically for exporting Help & Manual
projects for external processing and then re-importing them, and it is the
only XML schema with which this is possible.
The Help & Manual XML Language is fully documented in a separate help
file included with the program (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help &
Manual program directory). The schema is fully open and you are welcome
to develop your own applications for converting between the Help & Manual
XML Language and other XML variants.

How to import an XML file package into an existing project:

It is extremely important to understand that you can only import XML file packages
created with Help & Manual. Currently, you cannot export XML files generated by other
applications or using different XML schemas like DocBook or Darwin.
Importing XML file packages can overwrite existing topics and settings so
always make a backup of your current project in a safe place before
importing!
1. Open the project you want to import to and click in the Table of Contents (TOC) in the
position where you want to insert the topics generated from the imported XML file
package.
2. Select File > Import to display the Import wizard:

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· Then select the Import existing documentation from... option and click the check
box for XML File.
· In the Specify source file / folder: field click to locate the directory containing the
main .XML project file in the XML file package generated by Help & Manual. This
file is located in the main directory of the XML package and has the the same
name as the project from which it was exported.
· Select the main XML project file. Don't try to select any individual XML topic files in
a \Topics directory if your package contains one – this will not work. (See Exporting
and importing topics 202 for details on importing individual XML topic files.)
· Then click on Next to move to the next screen of the wizard.
3. In the next screen you can choose a number of options for the XML import process.

You can choose whether you want to import the project properties, pictures (graphics
file) and Baggage 520 files included in the original project. All these options can
overwrite data and settings in the current project!

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 Basic Working Procedures 167

Overwrite existing topics: If there are topics in the current project with the same
topic IDs as topics in the XML package they will be
overwritten when you import. This is generally used
for updating a project with a new, edited version. Use
with caution!
Import project Imports the project properties from the project stored
properties: in the XML file package, overwriting the settings in
the current project.
Import Baggage files: Imports any Baggage 520 files from the project stored
in the XML file package. If any of the Baggage files in
the current project have the same name they will be
overwritten.

Then just click on to import the XML file package. Any new topics will be
inserted in the current position in the TOC.

See also:
New project from an XML project file 142
XML Export and Import 786 (Reference)
7.2.7 Importing RoboHelp® X5 projects
Users switching to Help & Manual 4 from RoboHelp® X5 can import their RoboHelp® for
HTML projects directly into existing Help & Manual .HMX projects, merging the X5 project
topics with the existing TOC. The import is comprehensive, including the table of contents,
the keyword index, the HTML topic pages, A and K keywords, help context numbers, text
popups, custom build tags and topics with special build flags.
Conversion of the original layout and formatting in the RoboHelp® X5 topic pages should
also be largely complete and accurate, although you may have to do some minor editing and
tweaking after importing.
The graphics files from the original files are not imported to the new project directory.
Instead, Help & Manual adds the location(s) of the graphics files to the image folders list in
Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Image Folders 553 . You can move the
image files after importing if you want - just change the folder entries in the Image Folders
list accordingly after doing so and Help & Manual will be able to find them.

Integrating imported text in your H&M stylesheet:

Text imported from external sources is all tagged as "manually formatted"
with inline formatting, not with styles. You can quickly integrate this
formatting into your Help & Manual stylesheet with the Replace Formats/Styles
271 function in the Format menu.

How to import a RoboHelp® X5 HTML project to an existing .HMX

project:
1. Open the project you want to import to and click in the Table of Contents (TOC) in the

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168 Help & Manual Online Help

position where you want to insert the topics generated from the imported RoboHelp®
X5 HTML project.
2. Select File > Import to display the Import wizard:

· In the preselected Import existing documentation from... section click the check
box for RoboHelp® for HTML project file option.
· In the Specify source file / folder: field click to locate the directory containing the
RoboHelp® X5 HTML project you want to import and select the .XPJ project file.
Then click on Next.
3. Now you need to specify how the contents of the topics in the HTML topic files in your
RoboHelp® project are to be identified:

· What settings you will need depends on the code and structure of the HTML topic
files you are importing. In most cases you should get reasonably good results with
the settings shown in the screenshot above.
For details on the settings and what they do right-click on the individual
settings in the dialog and select What's This?
If you experience problems you may need to examine the source code of
the HTML topics

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 Basic Working Procedures 169

· Click Finish! to decompile and import the file. The topics created will be inserted at
the current position selected in the TOC.

See also:
Creating Projects 125
Exporting and importing topics 202
7.2.8 Importing topics and merging projects
IN THIS TOPIC:
Copying topics and chapters between projects 169

Exporting and importing individual topics 169

Merging projects with XML 170
Importing individual topics from XML 171

Sometimes you will want to import topics from other Help & Manual projects or even merge
two entire projects completely. However, you will discover that there is no direct .HMX option
in the Import functions. To import topics from another project you just open Help & Manual a
second time and copy and paste between the two projects. In addition to this you can also
use XML to merge projects if you have the Professional version of Help & Manual.

Copying topics and chapters between projects:

Let's assume that you want to copy topics and chapters between two projects called
ProjectA.HMX and ProjectB.HMX:
1. Start Help & Manual and open ProjectA.HMX.
2. Start Help & Manual a second time and open ProjectB.HMX.
3. Select one or more topics in the Table of Contents (TOC) of ProjectA and select
Copy in the Edit menu (or press Ctrl+C). Use Ctrl+Click and Shift+Click to select
multiple topics.
4. Switch to the the other instance of the program with ProjectB and click at the
position in the TOC where you want to insert the topics.
5. Select Paste in the Edit menu (or press Ctrl+V).
If the pasted topics have the same IDs as topics in the target project H&M
will change them automatically. It's advisable to open the Topic Options
tab and check the IDs of all pasted topics after importing them.

Exporting and importing individual topics:

If you plan to share just a few topics you can export and import them with the Save Topic
to File and Load Topic from File functions in the Topics menu. For more details see
Exporting and importing topics 202 .

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Merging projects with XML:

If you have the Professional version of Help & Manual you can merge projects much
more easily using the XML Export/Import 415 feature.
Note that you can only use these functions with XML files created with Help
& Manual. Currently, you cannot import or export other XML formats.

Avoiding duplicate topic IDs and context numbers:

When you merge projects it is important to avoid duplicate topic IDs and context
numbers. If duplicates are found Help & Manual will automatically change the IDs of
the imported topics, but if you already have direct calls to these topics from your
application this will break these calls.
For details on strategies you can use see Managing IDs and context numbers 497 in
the chapter on working with modular projects.

Merging your projects:

Step 1: Export your project to XML
1. Open the project you want to merge into another project, select File > Compile
Help File and then choose XML as the output format.
2. Select the following settings for XML in the Compile dialog:

3. Click on to export the project to XML.

Step 2: Import the XML version to your other project

1. Open the project to which you want to import, then click in the TOC in the
position where you want to insert the topics from the other project.
2. Select File > Import and then choose the option XML File (from translation).

3. Click on and select the following settings in the next screen:

4. Click on to import project from the saved XML files.

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 Basic Working Procedures 171

Importing individual topics from XML:

You can also import individual topics from the XML file package generated when you
export to XML. If you want to do this you must deselect the Single XML file option in the
Compile Help File dialog when you generate the XML file package. Then each topic will
be exported to a single XML file that can be imported directly.
· To import topics from the XML file package just select Topics > Load Topic from
File and then choose .XML in the Files of Type: field. For more details see
Exporting and importing topics 202 .

See also:
Exporting and importing topics 202
Moving, cutting and pasting topics 217

7.3 Creating and Editing Topics

Every Help & Manual help project is divided up into topics, which are like the chapters in a
book or the pages on a website. Each topic has an entry in the Table of Contents 209 . Topics
can also have sub-topics, which enable you to organize your help more efficiently. A topic
with sub-topics is often referred to as a chapter. For example, this topic, Creating and
Editing Topics, is also a chapter and contains a large number of individual sub-topics:

· Study the topics in this chapter for more information on creating and working with
topics in Help & Manual.

See also:
Managing Topics in the TOC 209
7.3.1 Creating new topics
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create a new topic 172
Creating multiple topics simultaneously 173
Linking to a topic in an external help file 173
Creating a topic containing a web page 174
Using templates for new topics 175
Merging external HTML files into topics 175

You create a new topic by adding an “entry” to the Table of Contents, or TOC. The
procedure is the same for adding entries to the normal TOC and to the Invisible Topics 193

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172 Help & Manual Online Help

section of the TOC.

Avoid topic IDs with 31 characters:
Because of the way long topic names are handled you must avoid using topic
IDs with 31 characters or multiples of 31 characters (62, 93 etc). If you use
them you may experience errors. See here 911 for details.

How to create a new topic:

1. Click in the TOC at the position where you want to add your new topic.
2. Click on the blue Insert Item button in the TOC Toolbar, OR
· Right-click to display the context menu and then select the appropriate Insert Item
option OR
· Select an Insert Item option in the Topics menu.
3. You then have the following options:
Insert Item: Inserts a new topic before current topic
Insert Item After: Inserts a new topic after current topic
Insert Item as Child: Inserts a new topic as sub-topic of current topic
4. Selecting any of these options displays the Insert New Item dialog. See Insert New
Item 673 for full details on the available settings.

· Select Topic or chapter with text to create a normal topic with content.
· The Chapter without text option creates a topic without content that is only used
as a chapter heading for a group of sub-topics.
Note that chapters with text are not supported in Winhelp. When you
compile to Winhelp a sub-topic with the same name as the chapter with
text will be generated containing the texts of the chapter.
· See below 173 for information on the Multiple topics option.
5. Type your title in the Topic Caption: field (this is the title that appears in the TOC). The
Topic ID is generated automatically and is initially based on the caption you enter. You
can edit the automatically-generated topic ID if you like – see Assigning topic IDs 210
for more details.

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 Basic Working Procedures 173

6. Click on to create the topic.

Initially the header of the topic above the editing area will be identical to the
caption. If you edit the caption in the TOC the header will change with the
caption. However, if you edit the header this will turn off the "link" between
the caption and the header. Any changes made to the caption after this will
no longer be reflected in the header.

Manipulating and editing TOC entries:

After adding an entry you can move, edit and manipulate it in many ways.
For details see all the other topics in this chapter and also the chapter
Managing Topics in the TOC 209 .

Creating multiple topics simultaneously:

1. Proceed as described above for creating a new topic.
2. In the Insert New Item 673 dialog select the Multiple Topics option.
3. Enter captions in the Item Captions editing box. Use the button to indent captions,
which makes them sub-topics of the topic above them. The button un-indents
captions. You can also use the TAB key to indent entries to turn them into sub-topics.

4. Click on to create the topics.

· Note that when you use this method the topic IDs are all generated automatically from
the topic captions. You can edit the IDs 214 afterwards if you want.

Linking to a topic in an external help file:

The option Jump to an external help file does not create a topic at all. Instead, it creates
a TOC entry that is only a link to a topic in an external help file – either a Winhelp .HLP
file or a HTML Help .CHM file.

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174 Help & Manual Online Help

· This option only works in Winhelp and HTML Help output! Topic entries
created with Jump to an external help file will be empty or not present in all
other output formats.
· The entry created is really just a link. The external topic is not included
in your project or your help file!
· The .CHM or .HLP help file containing the linked topic must be present in
the same directory as the help file containing the link, otherwise the topic
will not be displayed.

1. Proceed as described above for creating a new topic.

2. In the Insert New Item dialog select the Jump to an external help file option.

3. Use the Browse button in the Help File: field to navigate to the external help file.
You can select topics in .HMX project files or in compiled .CHM or .HLP files. (Type *.
hlp or *.chm in the File name: field of the Open dialog to display these files.)
4. Then use the Browse button in the Topic ID: field to select the ID of the topic you
want to link to.
5. Then click on to create the new topic.

Creating a topic containing a web page:

1. Proceed as described above for creating a new topic.
2. In the Insert New Item dialog select the Link to a WWW address option.
3. Enter the URL of the web page in the WWW address: field displayed. See Insert New
Item 673 for full details on the available settings.

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 Basic Working Procedures 175

You must enter a fully-qualified URL including the http:// protocol

identifier. For example, http://www.ec.software.com/ will work but www.ec-
software.com will not work.

4. Click on to create the new topic.

Using templates for new topics:

You can use content templates for topics to automatically insert a basic layout, including
any content (text, graphics, tables etc.) when you create a new topic. If you have already
created one or more topic content templates in your project directory you can select
them when you create the topic.
· Select the template you want to use in the Use this template for the new topic: field
in the Insert New Item 673 dialog.
· If you have created a template called Template_Main.hmtopic it will be selected by
default.
See Content templates for topics 466 for full details on creating and using topic content
templates.

Merging external HTML files into topics:

In HTML-based output formats you can also use the special #MERGE command to
merge the contents of external HTML files into your topics when you compile your
project. This enables you to maintain external files for information that may change and
insert the latest version automatically every time you compile.
For details see Merging HTML files into topics 159 in the Importing Data into Existing
Projects section.

See also:
Insert New Item 673 (Reference)
Assigning topic IDs 210
Content templates for topics 466

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 176 Help & Manual Online Help

7.3.2 Setting up styles

IN THIS TOPIC:
When to set up your styles 176
Example – defining the appearance of your body text 176

Defining new styles 177

Setting up your styles 746 for formatting your text is another thing you need to do to get your
project "working" for you. A good set of well-defined styles will give your project a uniform
appearance. In addition to this your styles will also handle your formatting for you once they
are set up, leaving you free to concentrate on the content of your project.
Help & Manual 4 includes powerful support for dynamic, inherited styles, which are similar to
the styles used in MS Word, OpenOffice and other major word processors. You don't have
to use styles, but if you don't you will be creating a lot of unnecessary extra work for
yourself.
If you want to be able to change your formatting in your entire project quickly and apply a
uniform appearance to your output you need to use styles. Once you get the hang of it they
are very simple to use and save you a huge amount of time and effort.

If you've never used styles before:

If you are not yet familiar with styles please study the chapter on Dynamic Styles 746 in
the Reference section before you begin. This will make working with styles much
easier. Once you understand the background you can then move on to the
instructions in the Text Formatting and Styles 228 chapter in Basic Working Procedures
section.

When to set up your styles:

· When you set up styles is really a matter of personal preference. Some authors like to
plan the entire appearance and "look and feel" of their projects in advance, others like
to adjust things as they go along.
· Help & Manual is very flexible – you can rename, redefine and reorganize your styles
whenever you like, so it doesn't matter whether you set up everything before you start
or while you are working.
· Even if you rename styles that are used throughout your project the renamed styles
will remain firmly linked to text that you have already formatted. Help & Manual
automatically updates all linked text and references in your project whenever you
redefine or rename a style.

Example – defining the appearance of your body text:

The main style is Normal and it is usually used for all body text paragraphs. It is the
standard style applied the first paragraph in all new topics and it will normally be the style
that you use for all your body text. This is the first style you want to define because it will
define the basic appearance of all the text in your project, including text in all the other
styles based on Normal.

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 Basic Working Procedures 177

· Click in an ordinary paragraph and check that Normal is displayed in the styles
selector box in the Toolbar. If it isn't then select it from the list. This will
automatically format the current paragraph as Normal:

If "Normal" isn't displayed in the style selector then select it.

· Then select Format > Edit Styles. This will display the styles definition dialog with
Normal preselected.
· Now you can select and in the Edit
Styles dialog to adjust the definition of the Normal style. As soon as you click on
OK your current paragraph and all other paragraphs in your project formatted with
Normal will have the new formatting. If you have changed the font then all other
styles based on Normal will now also have this font.

Defining new styles:

· Select Format > Edit Styles and click on to define a new style.
OR:
· Modify the formatting of the current paragraph and select Format > Create Style from
Selection to use the current paragraph as the model for a new style.
· Don't forget to define a keyboard shortcut for styles that you want to use frequently.
This will speed up your work a lot!
Study the chapters listed below for more background information on how styles work and
how to use them.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Dynamic Styles 746 (Reference)
Edit Styles 713 (dialog box reference)
7.3.3 Choosing a help window
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to change the background color of the topic and header 178

How to change the help window type of a topic 178

How to create, delete and edit help window types 178
How to change the appearance of the help viewer 178

Each topic in your project is associated with a "help window type", which you can select and
change in the Topic Options tab. Help window types define the background color of the topic
page and the header. They also control the appearance and behavior of the viewer and
windows in which topics are displayed in electronic help formats.
By default all new topics inserted in the Table of Contents (TOC) are assigned the Main help
window type, which is the standard window for all normal topics. (Topics inserted in the

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178 Help & Manual Online Help

Invisible Topics 193 section are automatically assigned the Popup 194 help window type.)
For more details see Help Windows 800 in the Reference section and Using
external windows 473 in the Advanced Procedures section (this also explains
how to use external windows in HTML Help and Winhelp).

How to change the background color of the topic and header:

The background colors of your topics and headers are controlled by the definition of the
help window type assigned to them. By default this help window type is Main for all topics
in the TOC of your project. To change the background colors you just need to change
the definition of Main. Here's how:
1. Go to Project > Project Properties > Help Windows and select the Main help
window definition.
2. Use the buttons to change the colors of the header and topic
background.
3. Click on to store the new setting.
You can also create additional help windows so that you can assign different background
colors and other properties to individual topics. See below for more details.

How to change the help window type of a topic:

1. Select the topic's Topic Options tab.
2. Select the window type you want to use in the Help Window field.
By default only the types Main and Popup exist in new projects. See below for
instructions on defining your own window types.

How to create, delete and edit help window types:

1. Select Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557 > {WindowName}
2. Edit the attributes to change the properties.
· Add Window creates a new secondary help window type.
· Remove Window deletes the current window type (you cannot delete Main).

How to change the appearance of the help viewer:

The definition of the Main help window type controls the appearance of the help viewer.
The definition is accessed in Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557 . See Help
Windows settings 557 in the Reference section for details of the settings.
The settings have different effects depending on the output format:
Winhelp:
The appearance of the entire help viewer and the main topic window in the viewer is
controlled by the definition of Main. The relevant settings are in the Color & Position

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 Basic Working Procedures 179

and Winhelp Options tabs in Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557 .
HTML Help:
The definition of Main controls the appearance of the entire help viewer and the topic
window. The relevant settings are in the Color & Position and HTML Help Options
tabs in Project > Project Properties > Help Windows. However, the appearance of the
topic window is also defined by the HTML template 470 that is linked to the Main
window definition and accessed in the Browser-based Help 586 section (Topic Pages).
Browser-based help:
The settings in the Color & Position tab in Project > Project Properties > Help
Windows 557 only control the background color of the topic window and its header and
whether the topic window has a header. The position and size settings are ignored.
Everything else is controlled by the settings in Project > Project Properties > Browser-
based Help 586 (Navigation, Table of Contents, Keyword Index, Topic Pages ) and the
associated HTML templates 470 .
eBooks:
The settings in the Color & Position tab in Project > Project Properties > Help
Windows 557 only control the background color of the topic window and its header and
whether the topic window has a header. The position and size settings are ignored.
The appearance of the topic window is also controlled by the HTML template 470 that
is linked to the Main window definition and accessed in Project > Project Properties >
Browser-based Help 586 (Topic Pages). The appearance of the viewer is controlled by
the eBook template 471 selected for your project.

See also:
Help Windows 800
Using secondary windows 471
Using external windows 473
HTML templates 470
7.3.4 Writing and formatting text
IN THIS TOPIC:
Working in the Help & Manual editor 180
Editing and formatting 181
Formatting individual words and phrases 182

Navigating in the editor 182

Displaying paragraph and text marks 182
Using dynamic styles 182
The XML Source editor 183

The Help & Manual editor is the large pane on the right of the Table of Contents (TOC). The
editor has two tabs: The Help Text tab, which is where you write and edit your topic content,
and the Topic Options tab, which contains the basic options and settings for each individual
topic.
For more details see The Help & Manual Editor 740 in the Reference section.
Also check Keyboard shortcuts 83 for editing and other shortcuts.

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Previewing Windows font size settings:

If you have a mouse with a mouse wheel you can switch quickly between
Windows' large and small font size settings to see how your topics will look
on users' computers with different settings. Just hold down Ctrl and turn
the mouse wheel. You can also change this setting permanently in the Help
& Manual customization settings 736 .

MS Word users: The paragraph end mark doesn't contain any formatting!
If you're used to using word processors like MS Word you need to forget about the
power of the paragraph end mark. In Help & Manual formatting is associated directly with
the text and paragraphs, not with the paragraph end marks. The paragraph end mark is
just a carriage return marking the end of the paragraph, nothing more.
This means you can't select the paragraph end mark. You can't format the paragraph by
formatting the paragraph end mark and you can't delete a paragraph's formatting by
deleting the paragraph end mark.
If you combine two paragraphs the paragraph attributes of the upper (first) paragraph will
be applied because you can't have two sets of paragraph settings, but this has nothing
to do with the paragraph end mark. The formatting is associated with the entire
paragraph.
· For more information see The paragraph end mark 741 in the Reference > The Help
& Manual Editor chapter.

Working in the Help & Manual editor:

When you select a topic in the Table of Contents (TOC) its contents are displayed in the
editor window to the right of the TOC. You can type, edit and format text here just as you
would in a normal word processor. You also have most of the same editing and
formatting functions that are available in modern word processors (see below).

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The editor window:

Unlike a normal word processor the editor window is divided into two areas:
· A non-scrolling region at the top where the topic’s header is displayed.
· A large editing region below the header where the topic’s contents (text, graphics
etc.) are displayed.

Editing and manual formatting controls:

Cut, copy and paste: Edit menu, Toolbar and keyboard shortcuts (see Copying,
cutting and pasting 189 )
Bold, italic, etc: Format menu (Font), Toolbar and keyboard shortcuts:

Bold: Ctrl+B
Italic: Ctrl+I
Underline: Ctrl+U
For more details see Formatting text manually 230 in Basic Working
Procedures > Text Formatting and Styles.

Editing and formatting:

Applying formatting and copying, cutting and pasting work in the same way as in any
modern word processor.
· To copy or cut text or other content you must first select 183 it.
· If you select a formatting option without selecting text (font, bold, underline,
color, background color etc.) it will apply from the cursor position onwards if you
continue typing.
If you do this in the middle of a paragraph make sure that there is a
space before the editing cursor, otherwise the word to the left of the
cursor will be formatted automatically (see below).
· To format existing text manually you must first select it and then apply the
formatting options.
· To delete the word to the left of the editing cursor press Ctrl+Backspace.

For more details see Formatting text manually 230 in Basic Working
Procedures > Text Formatting and Styles.

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182 Help & Manual Online Help

Copy & paste from MS Word:

You can also copy and paste text from Word into Help & Manual.Virtually
all formatting is supported, including complex tables. If your Word texts
include graphics they will be embedded in your project (i.e. saved in the
project .HMX file) when you paste them with the text. After pasting right-
click on the graphics and select Convert Embedded Picture... to convert them
to external files. (External files are always preferable because they use
much less memory and system resources.)

Formatting individual words and phrases:

To format individual words just double-click to select the word and then apply the
formatting, either with keyboard shortcuts or by selecting formatting options in the
Toolbar or Format menu.
To format phrases drag the mouse to select and apply the formatting.
For more details see Formatting text manually 230 in Basic Working
Procedures > Text Formatting and Styles.

Navigating in the editor:

Go to hyperlink 293 : Hold down Ctrl and click on the link (double-clicking on links
opens their editing dialog).
Word left/right: Ctrl+Cursor Left/Right
Next/previous topic: Ctrl+Cursor Up/Down
Other nav. controls: PgUp, PgDown, Ctrl+Home, Ctrl+End
Browse sequence: The buttons in the toolbar navigate through the sequence
of topics you have edited in the current session.

Displaying paragraph and text marks:

Just like a modern word processor Help & Manual can display paragraph marks and tabs
in your text to make it easier to identify characters that are normally invisible.
· Click on the button in the Toolbar or select Tools > Customize > Editor > Display
paragraph and text marks in editor .

Using dynamic styles:

If you want you can do all your formatting manually. However, it is much more efficient to
use Help & Manual's powerful dynamic styles because they allow you to standardize
your formatting and change the formatting of all your text at any time with just a couple
of commands.

Styles commands and controls:

Define/edit styles: Format > Modify Styles

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 Basic Working Procedures 183

Apply styles: Toolbar (styles selector box), keyboard shortcuts (you must
define these yourself in the styles definitions)

For full details on using styles see Setting up styles 176 in this section and the
Text Formatting and Styles 228 section.

The XML Source editor:

This tab is only available in the Professional version of Help & Manual and it is
designed for advanced users only.
Please don't edit anything in this tab unless you have plenty of
experience in XML editing and understand all the code. XML
syntax is very strict and unlike HTML not even a single mistake
in the code is permitted!
When you select the XML Source tab the
current topic is converted to XML on the fly
and displayed in the XML editor, which
features full syntax highlighting. You can edit
both the topic text and the XML code. If your
edits are valid and do not contain any syntax
errors they will be converted back and
integrated in your topic when you switch back
to the Page Editor tab.
· For more details see Editing XML source
code 208 , XML Export and Import 786 and the
separate schema documentation help file (
Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help &
Manual program directory).

See also
Topic options 81
Setting up styles 176
Formatting text and styles 228
Editing XML source code 208
7.3.5 Selecting text and content
IN THIS TOPIC:
Selecting with the mouse 183
Selecting with key combinations 184

Selecting with the mouse:

Select a block Click and drag. Or click in the editor, hold down Shift and then click at
of text: the end of the text you want to select.

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 184 Help & Manual Online Help

Select a single Click and drag or double-click on the word.

word:

Select a single Click to the left of the line in the margin of the editor.
line:

Select a Click and drag from the beginning of the paragraph to the end.
paragraph: Note:
There is currently no command for selecting a paragraph
automatically. This is a restriction of the Help & Manual editor.

Selecting Click once on the graphic.

graphics:

Links, macros Click once to select and edit link text, double-click to edit link
etc: properties (Ctrl+Click navigates to the link target topic).

Selecting a Position the mouse pointer just to the left of the table and left-click. For
table: more details see Selecting and formatting cells and tables 336 .

Selecting with key combinations:

Select by Hold down Shift+Ctrl and press right or left cursor arrow.
word:

Select by Hold down Shift and press PgUp or PgDown.

page:

Select Press Ctrl+A or select Edit > Select All.

everything:

See also:
Selecting and formatting cells and tables 336
7.3.6 Spell checking
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to select the spell checking language 185
How to use live spell checking 185
How to use manual spell checking 186
How to spell-check the TOC 186
Choosing the dictionary for Add and Auto-Correct 187

Using Auto-Correct to replace words and phrases 187

How to configure the spell checker 188

In addition to checking the spelling of individual topics and your entire project Help & Manual
4's new spell checker includes live spell checking (misspelled words are highlighted as you
type) and several other powerful new features that make working in Help & Manual just as

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 Basic Working Procedures 185

comfortable as using a modern word processor.

How to select the spell checking language:

· Go to Tools > Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker and select the correct dictionary
for the language you want to check in the Main Dictionaries section.

· You can spell check documents that contain multiple languages by selecting more
than one main dictionary.
· Click on Download dictionaries to download free dictionaries for additional languages.
See Spell Checker 629 in Tools Included with Help & Manual for full details
on configuring the spell checker.

How to use live spell checking:

· Go to Tools > Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker and select the Check spelling as
you type option.
· Unknown words are highlighted with a wavy red underline. Right-click on a highlighted
word (or click on it and press the context menu key on your keyboard if you have one)
to display alternatives.

Note that the live spell checker does not mark repeated words as errors. This
is only marked by the manual spell checker.

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186 Help & Manual Online Help

How to use manual spell checking:

· Select Tools > Spell Check and then choose:
Current Topic to spell check the current topic only.
All Topics (from Current) to spell check from the current topic to the end of the
project.
All Topics (from First) to spell check the entire project.
Topic Captions to spell check the captions in the TOC.
· When an unknown word is found the following dialog is displayed:

Skips this occurrence of the unknown word without correcting it and

continues the spell check.
Skips the unknown word and all future occurrences of the word.
Applies for the current spell check session only.
Changes this occurrence of the unknown word and continues with the
spell check. You can type a word manually in the Replace with: field or
click on a word in the Suggestions: list.
Changes both this occurrence and all future occurrences of the
unknown word without prompting for confirmation. Applies for the
current spell check session only.
Adds the unknown word to the current custom dictionary (see below).
Adds the unknown word and its replacement to the Auto-Correct list in
the current custom user dictionary (see below). When this unknown
word is encountered in future manual spell checks it will be corrected
automatically without prompting for confirmation.

How to spell-check the TOC captions:

You can also spell-check the captions of the entries in the Table of Contents (TOC). To
do this just select Spell Check in the Tools menu and then click on Topic Captions:

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 Basic Working Procedures 187

Choosing the custom dictionary for Add and Auto-Correct:

The and features add words and auto-correction word pairs to the
current custom user dictionary, which you can set with Tools > Spell Check > Configure
Spell Checker > Custom Dictionary:

· The and buttons in the manual spell checker dialog always

add words and word pairs to the dictionary selected here. However, the spell
checker can use multiple custom dictionaries simultaneously to check spelling and
to replace words with Auto-Correct.
· Click on the button to display all the available custom user
dictionaries, define which dictionaries are active and create new user dictionaries.
See Spell Checker 629 in the Tools Included with Help & Manual chapter for
full details on configuring the spell checker.

Using Auto-Correct to replace words and abbreviations:

The spell checker has an Auto-Correct feature that can be used to automatically replace
words with other words when they are encountered. In addition to correcting frequent
typing errors this feature is also a "speed-typing" aid that replaces abbreviations with
words or entire phrases.
Only use Auto-Correct to replace words and phrases that you know will
never change. If you want to replace terms that may change in the future
(for example your application name and version) it is better to use user-
defined variables 449 instead.
Note that at present this feature only works in manual spell checks. It is
not yet supported by the live spelling checker.
1. Select Tools > Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker. and click on the
button to display the available custom user dictionaries:

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188 Help & Manual Online Help

2. Select the dictionary you want to use and click on .

Note that you can enter Auto-Correct entries in multiple custom
dictionaries if you want. The entries from all the dictionaries selected in
the dialog shown above will be used.
3. Select the Auto-Correct Pairs tab and enter the words and/or abbreviations you
want to correct.

4. Click on and close the spell checker configuration dialog. The next time
you perform a manual spell check all the Auto-Correct terms will be replaced
automatically.
See Spell Checker 629 in the Tools Included with Help & Manual chapter for
full details on configuring the spell checker.

How to configure the spell checker:

· Select Tools > Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker to display the Spelling Options
dialog. Most of the options here are self-explanatory.
You can configure both global settings and per-project settings for the spell checker.
Global settings apply for all projects and are set in the Global Settings tab. Per-
project settings are set in the Project Settings tab.

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 Basic Working Procedures 189

Project settings have priority over global settings. For example, if you
switch live spelling on in the global settings and off in the project settings
it will be switched off for the current project.
See Spell Checker 629 in the Tools Included with Help & Manual chapter for
full details on configuring the spell checker.

See also:
Spell Checker 629
7.3.7 Copying, cutting and pasting
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to cut, copy and paste text and content 189
Copying from MS Word and other Office applications 189

Copying, cutting and pasting text without formatting 190

Copying, cutting and pasting between projects 190

Copying project settings between projects 190

Copying, cutting and pasting text and other content in Help & Manual is exactly the same as
in a modern word processor. Just select what you want to copy and then use the standard
cut/copy and paste commands.
See Moving, cutting and pasting topics 217 in Managing the Table of
Contents for details on copying entire topics.

How to cut, copy and paste text and content:

· First select the text or content 183 you want to copy. You then have two options:
Dragging:
· To move the selected text just drag without pressing any keys.
· To copy the selected text hold down Ctrl and drag.
Note: You can use Drag & Drop within topics and between projects (see below) but not
from one topic to another within the same project. This is because dragging
selected text onto a topic entry in the TOC creates a link 294 to that entry!
Using the Cut, Copy and Paste commands:
The Copy, Cut and Paste commands work just as they do in any normal word processor.
They are available in several places:
· Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+C (copy), Ctrl+X (cut), Ctrl+V (paste)
· Edit menu
· Context menu (right-click in TOC)

Copying, cutting and pasting text from MS Word and other Office

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190 Help & Manual Online Help

applications:

Copying from and to MS Word:

You can now copy and paste fully-formatted text both from and back to MS Word
into Help & Manual. Virtually all formatting is supported, including complex tables. If
your Word texts include graphics Help & Manualwill ask you whether you want to
embed the graphics or save them as external files. External files use much less
memory and system resources.

Copying tables from and to MS Excel:

You can also copy tables directly from and to MS Excel. However, in some cases you
may find that you get better results if you copy via MS Word – i.e. first copy the table
from Excel to Word, and then from Word to Help & Manual. Similarly, to copy a table
from Help & Manual to Excel, copy it to Word first and then to Excel. (You can copy
the contents of Excel tables as plain text with Edit > Paste Text Only 680 , see below).

Copying, cutting and pasting text without formatting:

Use the Edit > Paste Text Only 680 function to insert text in your topics without any
formatting. This function strips all formatting, graphics etc. from text in the clipboard and
only inserts the plain text. It can be used to copy text between topics, from other Help &
Manual projects and also from other programs like MS Word, Excel or web browsers.
· This function is also useful for copying text within or between Help & Manual
projects without style information.

Copying, cutting and pasting between projects:

You can copy, cut and paste text between projects in exactly the same way as within a
project. To do this you must open a second instance of Help & Manual – you cannot
open more than one project at a time in a single instance of the program. Just start Help
& Manual a second time and load the project you want to copy to or from. All other
procedures are the same as above.
Drag & Drop is also supported between projects. Just select the text and other content in
your topic and copy, cut or drag from the source topic in the first project to the target
topic in the second project.

Copying project settings between projects:

You can copy settings from Project Properties 548 from one .HMX project to another. You
can copy individual groups of settings or entire settings sections. Note that this will
overwrite your current project settings with the new settings!
1. Open the project you want to copy settings to.
2. Go to Project > Project Properties and click inside the section containing the
settings you want to copy from another project – for example Title & Copyright in
Common Properties :

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 Basic Working Procedures 191

3. Click on at the bottom of the dialog and select the .HMX project file
containing the settings you want to copy.
Warning: This will overwrite your current project settings with the
settings that you copy!
4. In the dialog that appears choose This Page Only to copy only the settings of the
selected page (Title & Copyright in the example) or Copy Section to copy all the
settings in the current section (Common Properties in the example).

See also:
Moving, cutting and pasting topics 217
Project Properties 548
7.3.8 Searching for text, topics and referrers
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to find and replace text 192
How to find and replace graphics 192
How to find topics by ID or context number 192

How to find referrers 192

The functions for finding and replacing text in Help & Manual are very similar to the
comparable functions in word processors, with some additional options for the special
requirements of help projects.
In addition to this the program also has powerful functions for locating individual topics by
their topic IDs and their context numbers, and for locating "referrers", i.e. topics containing
links to the current topic or topics.

You can search and replace:

· The text and headers of your topics
· The topics lists of keywords for your index
· The names of image files (but not their captions)

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192 Help & Manual Online Help

You must search separately in the TOC and Invisible Topics:

Note that in Help & Manual 4 the Table of Contents (TOC) and Invisible
Topics sections are two separate zones. This means that if you want to
search in both sections you must start your search twice, once in the TOC
and once in the Invisible Topics section.

How to find and replace text:

1. Select Edit > Find & Replace Text… 680 or press Ctrl+F.
2. Enter your search text and choose your options. These are self-explanatory and are
very similar to all search and replace functions in all modern word processors.

How to find and replace images:

1. Select Edit > Find & Replace Text… 680 or press Ctrl+F.
2. Select In Images (image file names) in the Find Where section.
3. Enter the exact name of the image file as the search and replacement texts, including
the file extension (e.g. screenshot25.bmp).
4. Choose your other options. These are self-explanatory and are very similar to all
search and replace functions in all modern word processors.

How to find topics by ID or context number:

1. Select Topics > Find Topic… 676
2. Select Topic ID or Help Context Number.

How to find referrers:

"Referrers" are topics containing links or other references to a topic, and also the other
topics that a topic links to. Help & Manual includes functions for finding and displaying
ingoing and outgoing referrers for both one or more selected topics in the TOC and all
topics.
Referrers of current topic: Topics > Find Referrers 676
Right-click on a topic in the TOC and select Find Referrers
Referrers of all topics: Tools > Reports 618
Selecting Find Referrers for a chapter in the TOC will display the referrers
for all the topics in the chapter. You can use this function for multiple topics.
Just select two or more topics in the TOC before selecting the function.
Note that Find Referrers will only find links to the current topic or topics in
the current project! You cannot use this function to locate links to the topic in
other projects or help files.

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 Basic Working Procedures 193

7.3.9 Creating invisible topics

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create an invisible topic 193
Using include options for invisible topics 193

Auto-generating invisible topics 193

Every topic you create in Help & Manual’s Table of Contents (TOC) section has a
corresponding entry in the TOC of your output. The Invisible Topics section (below the TOC)
is for topics that you do not want to include in the Contents of your output. Invisible topics
are most frequently used for context-sensitive popup topics 431 and other popups 194 and for
topics that you only want to link to without including them in the TOC.

How to create an invisible topic:

1. Click in the Invisible Topics section (below the TOC) in the position where you want to
insert your topic.
2. Use any of the standard procedures for creating a new topic 171 .
3. If you do not want to create a popup topic 194 select the Topic Options tab of your new
invisible topic and change its help window type 177 in the Help Window field.
Note: By default topics created in this section are assigned the Popup help window
type, which does not have a header, because help popups and context-
sensitive popups are the most frequent use for invisible topics.
· For details on invisible topics see About invisible topics 848 in the Reference section

Using include options for invisible topics:

Unlike Help & Manual 3 and earlier you can now use include options 451 for invisible
topics as well as for topics in the TOC. This means that you can now explicitly exclude
and include invisible topics in your output on the basis of output format or user-defined
include options.
This feature is particularly useful when you are using invisible topics as the source for
embedded topics 222 . It enables you to exclude the source topic from your output (the
source topic is only needed at compile time to insert the embedded copies in your
output).
· For more details on using include options see Conditions and Customized Output 451 .

Auto-generating invisible topics:

You can also generate invisible topics for context help automatically by using a "map" file
provided by the programmer containing a list of the topic IDs and context numbers
needed for the program's context help calls. See Auto-generating context sensitive
popups 435 for details.

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 194 Help & Manual Online Help

See also:
Creating popup topics 194
About invisible topics 848
Organizing invisible topics 225
Using Context-Sensitive Help 431
7.3.10 Creating popup topics
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create a popup topic 194
Configuring and editing popup topics 195
Creating formatted popups in HTML Help 196
Controlling the width of popup topics 196
Linking to a popup topic from your help 197
Linking to a popup topic from your application 197

Where popups are supported 198

Popups are mini-topics used to display a small amount of information in a small "popup”
window, which is normally displayed when the user clicks on a link. Popups are used both in
the help text itself and in applications, where they are referred to as "context-sensitive
popups".
The topics used for popups are all created in the Invisible Topics pane below the Table of
Contents pane. How these topics are presented and handled in your output depends on the
output format you are using and on your settings for that format, and also on how you link to
the popup topics. A link from an application displays the popup in the application, a link from
a topic in the help displays the popup in the help.
For more details on context-sensitive popups see Using Context-Sensitive
Help 431 and Context-Sensitive Help and Popups 834 .

NEWS: Winhelp is no longer supported in Windows Vista!

Please note that support for the Winhelp format has been completely
discontinued in Microsoft Windows Vista. Even if your applications run under
Vista, any calls to Winhelp help will simply produce an error message. This
also applies to dual-mode popups in HTML Help. We thus strongly recommend
that you start transitioning to an alternative help format as soon as possible.
See here for details

How to create a popup topic:

1. Click in the Invisible Topics section (below the TOC) in the position where you want to
insert your topic.
2. Use any of the standard procedures for creating a new topic 171 .
3. New topics in the Invisible Topics section are created as popup topics by default.
Check this by selecting the Topic Options tab of the new topic. The help window type
177 should be set to Popup in the Help Window: field.

When you create hyperlinks to popup topics 297 in your help they will automatically be
displayed as popups. See Using Context-Sensitive Help 431 for information on calling

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 Basic Working Procedures 195

popups directly from your application.

Configuring and editing popup topics:

How popup topics are processed in your output depends on the output format you
choose and the settings for the output format. These factors also influence what features
are supported in your popup topics. Some output formats do not support popups at all,
other formats only support plain ASCII text without any formatting.
Popups are only supported in HTML Help, Winhelp, Browser-based Help and eBooks.
They are ignored in all other formats. See below 198 for full details on popup support in
Help & Manual's output formats.

HTML Help:
· Go to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Popup Topics 567 to select the
popup type used when you output HTML Help. The features of the various popup
styles available are described in the dialog displayed.
If you choose Text-only popups remember that you can only use plain text.
Formatted text (bold, italics, fonts), graphics, hyperlinks are all not supported and will
be ignored in the output even if you use them. Tables and all their contents will be
deleted.
You can create formatted popups in HTML Help with the Dual-mode Help and
JavaScript Popups options. See below 196 for details.

Winhelp:
Winhelp supports formatted text, fonts, graphics and hyperlinks in popups. There are
no configuration settings for popups in Winhelp – Winhelp popups are actually
normal Winhelp topics without headers.

Browser-based Help :
· Go to Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help > Popup Topics 599 to
configure the settings for popups in Browser-based Help.
Help & Manual 4 introduces support for popups in Browser-based Help, generated
with JavaScript code. These popups are highly-configurable and support formatted
text, graphics, hyperlinks and even animations and videos. See Using JavaScript
popups 199 for full details.

eBooks:
Formatted popups with links and graphics are supported in eBooks but they are not
configurable. Links to popup topics in your project will be displayed automatically as
formatted popups in eBooks. They are sized automatically on the basis of their
content and they use the background color set for the Popup help window type in
Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557 .

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196 Help & Manual Online Help

Creating formatted popups in HTML Help:

The "native" popups supported by HTML Help 845 are plain-text only – they do not support
graphics or formatted text like the popups in Winhelp. Help & Manual now provides two
different solutions for this problem – Dual-mode Help and JavaScript popups:

Dual-mode HTML Help with a Winhelp popup file:

· Go to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Popup Topics 567 and select
Create a dual-mode help file . You can also select the name of the .HLP file that
will be generated for the popups here (the default is default_popup.hlp).
This solution outputs all your popup topics to a separate Winhelp .HLP file, which
must be distributed together with your HTML Help .CHM file. Popup links in your
topics will automatically link to this file. Context popup links from your application
must make calls directly to the Winhelp .HLP file using the Winhelp API.
When this mode is selected all formatting, graphics etc. in your popup topics will be
supported in the popups in your output, both in your help file and in context-sensitive
popups called from your application.
Topic hyperlinks are not supported in dual-mode help – i.e. you cannot
include links to topics in your main help file in your popups. (It is not
possible to link topics between Winhelp and HTML Help files.)
You can also use formatted dual-mode popups as context popups called directly in
your application. See Formatted context popups in HTML Help 436 in the Advanced
Procedures section.

JavaScript popups:
· Go to Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help > Popup Topics 599 and
select JavaScript Popups.
· Click on to configure your popups. (JavaScript popups are
highly customizable!)
For more details see Using JavaScript popups 199 .

Controlling the width of popup topics:

In both Winhelp and HTML Help the width of popup windows is controlled by the help
viewer on the basis of the amount of text in the popup and the user's screen width. Since
this system was designed a long time ago it does not allow for modern computers with
wide-format screens and multiple monitors. When normal popups are displayed on these
computers the popups can be much too wide, which looks terrible.

Controlling popup width in HTML Help:

· In HTML Help's plain text popup topics the only way you can control popup width is
by entering a hard line break (ENTER) at the end of each line. This can make
editing hard work and is yet another reason for using dual-mode or JavaScript
popups.

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 Basic Working Procedures 197

Controlling popup width in Winhelp, dual-mode HTML Help and JavaScript

popups:
· In Winhelp, dual-mode HTML Help and JavaScript popups 199 you can control
popup width precisely by entering the entire text of the popup in a single-cell table
with a fixed width. (Note that this doesn't work in HTML Help's native plain text
popups because the table and its contents are stripped when you compile,
resulting in an empty topic.)
· Note that you must set the width of the single-cell table you use for this to an
absolute value in pixels. Select Size Table Manually and enter the value in pixels.
Don't use percent for this, it won't work properly!
You can generate the table automatically when new popup topics are
created by defining a standard topic template for your popup topics. See
Content templates for topics 466 for details.

Linking to a popup topic from your help:

Any link within a project to a topic with the Popup window type 177 will automatically be
displayed as a popup in any of the output formats where popups are supported (Winhelp
, HTML Help, eBooks and Browser-based Help with JavaScript popups 199 activated).
Just create a normal link 294 to the topic. You no longer need to specify a popup link as
was necessary in Help & Manual 3 and earlier.

Linking to a popup topic from your application:

This is basically a job for the programmer, not the help author (you may be both, of
course). All the help output formats generated by Help & Manual are fully standard-
compliant so you can use the standard procedures for linking to and calling popups.

HTML Help's plain-text popups:

· When you export to HTML Help with native, plain-text popups Help & Manual
stores the popup text topics in an internal text file in the HTML Help .CHM file.
· By default this file is called CSHelp.txt, but you can change this file name in Project
> Project Properties > HTML Help > Popup Topics 567 .
· Plain text popup calls from your application must be made to this file within the
.CHM file using the standard popup syntax of the HTML Help API .

Winhelp popups and dual-mode HTML Help popups:

· Winhelp popup topics are stored in the main Winhelp .HLP file.
· When you create dual-mode popups in HTML Help the popup topics are stored in
a separate .HLP file. This file is a standard Winhelp .HLP file.
· In both cases popup calls from your application must be made directly to the .HLP
file using the standard popup syntax of the Winhelp API (not the HTML Help API!).
Tutorials for interfacing between your help and your application in the most common

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198 Help & Manual Online Help

programming languages are available on the tutorials page at the EC Software

website. A free set of tools for interfacing to help and context-sensitive help Borland
Delphi and Borland C++ is also available at the website, on the Delphi resources page
.

Where popups are supported:

The support for popups depends on the output format you are using. The following table
provides a quick reference to the kinds of popups available and where you can use
them.
Output Format Supported Popup Types Where Supported
HTML Help (. · Plain-text popups integrated in Plain-text and formatted dual-
CHM): the main help file. mode Winhelp popups are
· Formatted dual-mode 436 popups supported both in the help
stored in an external Winhelp . text and as context-sensitive
HLP file. popups in applications.
· Formatted JavaScript popups 199 Formatted JavaScript popups
stored in the main help file. can only be used in the help
text. They are not supported
for context-sensitive help.
Winhelp (.HLP): · Fully-formatted Winhelp popups Winhelp popups are supported
stored in the main help file. both in the help text and as
context-sensitive popups in
applications.
Browser-based · Fully-formatted JavaScript JavaScript popups can only be
HTML popups 199 integrated in the used in help topics. You
(.HTM): individual HTML files. cannot link to them from your
application.
Help & Manual · Fully-formatted popups with Only available within eBooks.
eBooks: graphics, fonts, emphasis (bold, eBooks do not support context
italics etc.) and hyperlinks (topic calls of any kind from
and Internet links). applications.
Adobe PDF and · Popups are not supported.
printed user Popup links are automatically
manuals: converted to plain text.
Word RTF: · Popups are not supported.
Popup links are automatically
converted to plain text.

See also:
Using JavaScript popups 199
Using Context-Sensitive Help 431
Context-Sensitive Help & Popups 834 (Reference)

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 Basic Working Procedures 199

7.3.11 Using JavaScript popups

IN THIS TOPIC:
Using JS popups in HTML Help 199
Using JS popups in Browser-based Help 200

Configuring JS popup options 200

JavaScript popups are a new technology introduced in Help & Manual 4. They make it
possible to create popups in Browser-based Help (this was not supported in Help & Manual
3 and earlier), and in HTML Help you can use them as an third popup alternative, in addition
to HTML Help's own native plain-text popups and Help & Manual 4's dual-mode popups in
which the popups are stored in an external Winhelp .HLP file.
Advantages: JavaScript popups create fully-formatted popups that can contain
formatted text (bold, italic, different fonts etc.), graphics, hyperlinks
(both topic and Internet links) and even video and animation files. In
addition to this they also support a range of cool graphical effects and
transitions (fade-in, transparency etc.) that are displayed in both
HTML Help and Browser-based Help. (In Browser-based Help these
effects are only displayed by Internet Explorer 5.5 and later.) In HTML
Help JavaScript popups are stored in the main help file so that you
only need to distribute one file.
Limitations: JavaScript popups cannot be used for context-sensitive popups 840
called from and displayed in applications. They can only be displayed
within the help file. Also, activating JavaScript popups is a global
setting for all the popup topics in your Invisible Topics section. If you
use JavaScript popups you cannot create formatted context-sensitive
popups in the same HTML Help project – you must then create a
second Winhelp project 437 for your formatted context-sensitive
popups.

Using JavaScript popups in HTML Help:

You can use JavaScript popups as a second alternative 196 to HTML Help's very limited
plain-text popups. This gives you fully-formatted popups with support for hyperlinks,
graphics and even videos. However, when you use this popup mode you cannot use the
same project for your context-sensitive popups called by your application. See Formatted
context popups in HTML Help 436 for details.
1. Go to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Popup Topics 567 and select
JavaScript Popups .
2. Click on to configure your popups. See below 200 for details.
(The JS popups settings for HTML Help are saved separately.)
3. Create your popup topics 194 in the Invisible Topics section. You can use all Help &
Manual's formatting options, including tables, hyperlinks, formatted text, fonts,
graphics, videos and animations. Just don't go overboard – if your popups are too
large and contain too many features they will not be very useful!
4. Create normal topic links to your popup topics in your topics. When you compile to
HTML Help the target topics will automatically be displayed as JavaScript popups.

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200 Help & Manual Online Help

Using JavaScript popups in Browser-based Help:

Popups in Browser-based Help are only possible with JavaScript popups. The JavaScript
code has been thoroughly tested and should work transparently with all major current
browsers. (Netscape 4 and earlier are not supported and will not ever be supported,
however!)
This popup technology should also not cause problems with popup blockers. In addition
to being blocker-transparent the popups are also activated by the user, which is explicitly
permitted by most blockers.
1. Go to Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help > Popup Topics 599 and
select JavaScript Popups.
2. Click on to configure your popups. See below 200 for details.
(The JS popup settings for Browser-based Help are saved separately.)
3. Create your popup topics 194 in the Invisible Topics section. You can use all Help &
Manual's formatting options, including tables, hyperlinks, formatted text, fonts,
graphics, videos and animations. Just don't go overboard – if your popups are too
large and contain too many features they will not be very useful!
4. Create normal topic links to your popup topics in your topics. When you compile to
Browser-based Help the target topics will automatically be displayed as JavaScript
popups.

Configuring JS popup options:

JavaScript popups are highly-configurable. Note that all the configuration options are
global for the current project – you can only use one JavaScript popup configuration for
all the popups in the project. However, you can store separate JavaScript popup
configurations for HTML Help and Browser-based Help.
1. HTML Help:
Go to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Popup Topics 567 and select
JavaScript Popups .

Browser-based Help:
Go to Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help > Popup Topics 599 and
select JavaScript Popups.
2. Click on to display the configuration dialog. This dialog is
exactly the same for both HTML Help and Browser-based Help:

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 Basic Working Procedures 201

Click/ Displays the popup on user click or mouseover (i.e. as soon as the
mouseover: user moves the mouse pointer over the link). Be careful with using the
mouseover option as many users find this intrusive and it may also
trigger popup blockers in some browsers.

Minimum Setting this to 0 makes the popup width automatic, on the basis of the
width: amount of text and/or other content.
Setting it to any other value (in pixels) explicitly defines the width of the
popup. If the popup only contains text it will have the width you specify.
If it contains other content (graphics, videos) it will be at least as wide
as the specified width and wider if required by the content.

Border width: Enter 0 for no border, any value above 0 (in pixels) to draw a border
around the popup box.

Border The distance between the popup content and the border or edge of the
padding: popup (if there is no border) in pixels.

Background: The background color of the popup box.

Border color: The color of the border, if there is one.

Visual effects: These effects are only supported by MS Internet Explorer. This means
that they are available in HTML Help (which uses MSIE) and in
Browser-based Help when the user is using Internet Explorer. They
are ignored by all other browsers.
These effects are easier to see than to describe. Experiment! (Note
that the transition effects are only for opening the popup box. The
popups always close in the same way, no matter what effect you
select.)

See also:
Creating popup topics 194

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 202 Help & Manual Online Help

Formatted context popups in HTML Help 437

7.3.12 Exporting and importing topics
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to export a topic to .RVF, .HMTOPIC or .XML formats 202

How to export a topic to the Word RTF format 203

How to import a topic from an external file 203

You can export and import topics with the Topics > Load/Save Topic functions. Four different
export and import formats are supported: Word RTF, the Help & Manual XML Language
format and two versions of the Help & Manual editor's own internal format called .HMTOPIC
and .RVF.
Both .RVF and .HMTOPIC save all your topic content, including all formatting, tables,
references to graphics, links and so on. The only difference between the two is that the .
HMTOPIC format saves and loads the topic content and the topic header, whilst the .RVF
format only saves and loads the topic content. The XML format 778 also includes the entire
topic with the header and all other information, just like .HMTOPIC.
The .HMTOPIC format is also used for topic content templates 466 .

How to export a topic to the .RVF, .XML or .HMTOPIC formats:

Note that you cannot export multiple topics using this method.
1. Select the topic you want to export in the Table of Contents (TOC).
2. Select Topics > Save Topic to File.
3. Choose the .HMTOPIC (full topic with header), .RVF (full topic without header) or .
XML (full topic in XML format) output format In the Save as type: field.
4. Select the directory where you want to save your topic and save.

IMPORTANT: Help & Manual can only process its own XML
files!
Help & Manual can only process XML files created with Help & Manual.
Currently you cannot export or import any other XML formats. Help &
Manual uses its own XML schema known as the Help & Manual XML
Language. This schema is designed specifically for exporting Help & Manual
projects for external processing and then re-importing them, and it is the
only XML schema with which this is possible.
The Help & Manual XML Language is fully documented in a separate help
file included with the program (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help &
Manual program directory). The schema is fully open and you are welcome
to develop your own applications for converting between the Help & Manual
XML Language and other XML variants.

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 Basic Working Procedures 203

How to export a topic to the Word RTF format:

To do this you must compile your project using the "selected topics" option. Unlike Save
Topic to File you can also export multiple topics at the same time with this function.
However, remember that RTF does not support all of Help & Manual's formatting
features. If you want to re-import your topics later it is better to use the .RVF or .
HMTOPIC formats.
1. Select the topic or topics you want to export in the TOC.
2. Select or File > Make Help File & Run and select the MS Word output option.
3. Select Selected Topics in the section under the Include Options: heading.
4. Use the button in the Output path and file name: field to select the location and
file name for the export.
5. Click on to export the topic(s).

How to import a topic from an external file:

This method is for importing individual topics. For instructions on how to import multiple
topics from a Word RTF file see Importing an RTF file 138 . Note that you cannot import
multiple .RVF or .HMTOPIC files.
1. Create a new, empty topic in the position in the TOC where you want to import the
topic. Click inside the editor window in the new topic.
Importing a topic into an existing topic overwrites the entire contents of
the existing topic!
2. Select Topics > Load Topic from File and select the topic file you want to load. You
can load .RVF, .HMTOPIC and .XML files and .RTF files created with Help &
Manual or MS Word. (RTF files created by programs other than MS Word may
contain incompatible features.)
You can only import XML files created with Help & Manual 4, using the
Help & Manual XML Language schema. Other XML formats or
schemas are not supported.
3. Select the topic file you want to load.
4. See Content templates for topics 466 for more details on loading topics from files.

See also:
Importing an RTF file 138
Content templates for topics 466
Compiling your Project 410
XML Export and Import 786
Importing topics and merging projects 169

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 204 Help & Manual Online Help

7.3.13 Comments and bookmarks

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to insert a comment and/or bookmark 204

How to jump to C/Bs 205

How to edit C/Bs 205
How to change a C/B's text style 205
How to "abuse" C/Bs as a text store 206

As its name suggests, the Insert > Comment/Bookmark feature has a double function: It
enables you to insert comments in your text and the comments also function as bookmarks,
which can be used to mark and find positions in your text while you are working.
To save space we are going to refer to comment/bookmarks as "C/Bs" in this topic.

Bookmarks and comments are only an editing tool!

Neither bookmarks nor comments are exported when you compile your
project. They are only an editing tool for finding positions in your projects
and commenting your topics while you are working – as reminders for
yourself or for your colleagues who may work on the same project later.

How to insert a comment and/or bookmark

You can enter as many C/Bs as you like in a topic. Click in the position in the editor
where you want to insert your C/B. (You can insert C/Bs both in the topics themselves
and in the header but not in the TOC.).
Select Insert > Comment/Topic or in the Toolbar.

To use the C/B as a bookmark:

1. Enter a short descriptive text in the editing field. This will function as the "label" for
your bookmark. If you don't enter any text the topic ID will be used as the label and
this may not be so easy to identify.
2. Select .

3. Click on .

To use the C/B as a comment:

1. Enter your comment text in the editing field. Even if you are only using the C/B as
a comment it's still a good idea to enter a short descriptive text right at the
beginning: this will make it easier to find the comment in the comment list (see
below for details).
2. Leave unchecked if you want to be able to see your comment
in the editor.
3. Click on .
4. Topics containing one or more C/Bs are identified with a pin in the TOC:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 205

How to jump to C/Bs:

· Select Project > Bookmarks and select the C/B you want to jump to from the list.
OR:
Select the list icon next to the Insert Comment/Bookmark tool in the Toolbar and
select the C/B you want to jump to from the list.

Note that When you jump to a C/B you are always jumping to the topic
containing the C/B, not to the C/B itself. No matter where the C/B is in the
topic the jump will always be executed to the top of the topic.

How to edit C/Bs:

· Double-click on the C/B in the editor. If only the pin icon is displayed you must double-
click on the lower half of the icon.
OR:
· Right-click on the C/B in the editor and select Edit. Again, note that the clickable area
is in the lower half of the pin icon.
The clickable area in the C/B pin icon is quite small:
If only the pin icon is displayed you must click in the lower
half of the icon. The clickable hotspot in this icon is quite
small (it is actually the minimized text box containing the
comment text) and you have to position the tip of the
mouse pointer over it for this to work.

Tip:
You can also display the comment's text by dragging the size handles that are visible
when the comment pin icon is selected.

How to change a C/B's text style:

The appearance of the text in the C/B is controlled by the standard Comment style,
which you can edit by selecting Edit Styles in the Format menu. This is a special style
that has quite limited features compared to most other styles. See graphic caption and
comment styles 249 for details on this.

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 206 Help & Manual Online Help

How to "abuse" C/Bs as a text store:

You can insert the text from a C/B into your topic by right-clicking on it in the editor and
selecting Convert to plain text. You can "abuse" this feature to use C/Bs as a store for
text that you may or may not want to include in your topics – for example for text that is
not yet finalized. When you want to insert it just convert the comment to plain text.
The advantage of this method is that the C/B can be placed at exactly the position where
you want to insert the text.

See also:
graphic caption and comment styles 249
7.3.14 Special characters, lines and breaks
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to insert special characters 206
How to insert horizontal lines 206
How to insert hard page breaks 207

Like most modern word processors Help & Manual can also insert special characters not
available on the keyboard, horizontal lines and hard page breaks. However, please note that
special characters and hard page breaks need to be used with consideration for the
limitations of your chosen output format – if the fonts required for the characters are not
available on the user's computer the characters will not be displayed.

How to insert special characters:

Note that It doesn't make much sense to use characters from a rare font in your
Browser-based Help or HTML Help output, because most users won't have that font
installed on their computers. If you use rare fonts in PDF you can embed the font in your
output, but this will significantly increase the size of your PDF file. (Project > Project
Properties > Adobe PDF > Font Embedding 606 .)
1. Click in the editor in the position where you want to insert the special character.
2. Select Insert > Special Character to display the character map selector.
3. Select the font you want to use in the Select Font: field.
4. Select the character you want to insert and click on .
OR:
· Double-click on the character you want to insert.
To access the character map more quickly you can assign a keyboard
shortcut to it in Tools > Customize > Shortcuts.

How to insert horizontal lines:

Horizontal lines are inserted in their own paragraph and they are not formattable. They

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 Basic Working Procedures 207

always occupy the entire width of the page or table cell in which they are inserted.
1. Click in the editor in the position where you want to insert the horizontal line.
2. Select Insert > Horizontal Line to insert the line. A dialog will be displayed allowing
you to choose the line thickness and color.
To access this feature more quickly you can assign a keyboard shortcut to
it in Tools > Customize > Shortcuts.

How to insert hard page breaks:

Hard page breaks are only used in PDF, printed manuals and Word RTF. They are
ignored in all other formats.
1. Click in the editor in the position where you want to insert the hard page break.
2. Select Insert > Manual Page Break.
To access this feature more quickly you can assign a keyboard shortcut to
it in Tools > Customize > Shortcuts.

See also:
Insert Special Character 703
7.3.15 Printing topics
You can print single and multiple topics with Topics > Print Topic. The advantage of this
over File > Print User Manual is that this function only prints the selected topic or topics.
Print User Manual uses a PDF print manual template, which always includes additional
elements like the cover and back page, table of contents, index and so on, even when you
only print one or more selected topics.
See PDF and Printed Manuals 538 for more details on using these other functions.

How to print one or more topics:

1. Select the topics you want to print by clicking on them in the TOC. To select multiple
topics use Ctrl+Click to select topics out of order and SHIFT+Click to select
continuous blocks of topics.
2. Select Topics > Print Topic.
3. Select your printer and other settings in the print menu, then select OK to print.
Note that this print function is quite basic and does not have a preview. To
preview your output use Print Preview in the File menu.

See also:
PDF and Printed Manuals 538

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 208 Help & Manual Online Help

7.3.16 Editing XML source code

IN THIS TOPIC:
Editing in the XML Source tab 208
Using word wrap in the XML editor 209

Switching to other topics 209

If you have the Professional version of Help &

Manual you will see a new tab called XML
Source in the editor pane in version 4.1 and
higher of the program. Selecting this tab
exports the current topic to XML on the fly and
displays the XML code in an editor with full
syntax highlighting so that you can view and
edit it. When you switch back to the normal
Page Editor tab the XML code is converted
back on the fly and redisplayed in the standard
Page Editor view, complete with your editing
changes.
The XML Source editor is only available in
the Professional version of Help &

IMPORTANT: Help & Manual can only process its own XML
files!
Help & Manual can only process XML files created with Help & Manual.
Currently you cannot export or import any other XML formats. Help &
Manual uses its own XML schema known as the Help & Manual XML
Language. This schema is designed specifically for exporting Help & Manual
projects for external processing and then re-importing them, and it is the
only XML schema with which this is possible.
The Help & Manual XML Language is fully documented in a separate help
file included with the program (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help &
Manual program directory). The schema is fully open and you are welcome
to develop your own applications for converting between the Help & Manual
XML Language and other XML variants.

Editing in the XML Source tab:

The XML Source editor works just the same as any normal text editor. You can copy, cut
and paste and and also perform simple searches. If you want you can also copy the
entire contents of the XML Source to a separate file – this is effectively the same as
exporting the topic to an external XML file with Topics > Save Topic to File 202 .
However, please note that XML syntax is extremely strict, much stricter than HTML! If
you make even the smallest mistake you will get a syntax error message and your edits
will be rejected. This is really a function for XML experts, and it also demonstrates Help
& Manual's impressive XML capabilities.
Full documentation of the Help & Manual XML Language schema is included

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 Basic Working Procedures 209

in a separate help file included with the program ( Helpman_XML_ref.chm in

the Help & Manual program directory).

Using word wrap in the XML editor:

Note that there is a Word Wrap check box at the bottom of
the editing window. Selecting and deselecting this check
box turns word wrap on and off for easier editing.

Switching to other topics from the XML Source tab:

Since the topic is converted to XML on the fly when you activate the XML Source tab it is
best to switch back to the Page Editor tab before switching to another topic in the Table
of Contents. If you try to select another topic directly while the XML Source tab is active
you will be returned to the Page Editor tab automatically.

See also:
Exporting and importing topics 202
Compiling to XML 415
XML Export and Import 786 (Reference)
Editing XML files in Word 2003 799

7.4 Managing Topics in the TOC

The Table of Contents (TOC) and Invisible Topics section on the left side of the Help &
Manual screen are much more than just a place to display the contents of your project. They
are also a powerful editing tool for manipulating the structure of your project. The TOC gives
you full control, allowing you to change the structure and organization of your project
whenever you want.
This is also where you create new topics 171 . Once you have added topics to the TOC you
can manipulate them in many ways. You can move them around, change their names,
status and icons, cut and paste them (also between projects) and demote or promote them
to change their positions and status in the TOC tree hierarchy.
All these operations can be performed in seconds with the mouse and/or simple keyboard
and menu commands.

Multiple selection in the TOC:

One of the useful new improvements introduced in Help & Manual 4 is multiple
selection in the TOC and Invisible Topics sections. You can now select multiple
topics and chapters, both continuously and individually, for copying, cutting,
pasting and a large number of other operations.

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 210 Help & Manual Online Help

7.4.1 Assigning topic IDs

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to assign topic IDs 210
Using descriptive Topic IDs 211
Using hierarchical topic IDs 211
Using a unique project prefix 211

The topic ID (look in the Topic Options tab of any topic to see its ID) is the unique
alphanumeric identifier of a topic. It must be unique because it is used to reference the topic,
both by the help viewer and by programmers accessing the topic from applications. All the
internal links 293 you create in your project refer to topics by their IDs, for example.
For more background information see IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 in the
Reference section.
Avoid topic IDs with 31 characters:
Because of the way long topic names are handled you must avoid using topic
IDs with 31 characters or multiples of 31 characters (62, 93 etc). If you use
them you may experience errors. See here 911 for details.

How to assign topic IDs:

Topic IDs are assigned automatically when you create a new topic 171 but you can also
change them at any time. See Changing topic IDs and context numbers 214 for details.

Topic IDs are generated automatically on the basis

of the topic caption when you create a new topic.
As soon as you start typing the topic caption (1)
the same text is also generated in the Topic ID
field (2), replacing spaces with underline
characters and leaving out or converting any
characters not allowed in IDs.

You can edit the topic ID in (2) before clicking on to create the topic. (See the
note on special characters below.) You can also change the topic ID 214 later at any time.)

Don't use special characters in topic IDs!

It is good procedure to only use a..z, A..Z, 0..9, _ and (in some special cases)
$ in topic IDs. Help & Manual will not allow you to enter characters that always
cause problems, like spaces and #, but to be on the safe side you should also
avoid "allowed" special characters like brackets and so on. They may work, but
remember that you use them entirely at your own risk!

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 Basic Working Procedures 211

Using descriptive Topic IDs:

It's advisable to give topics descriptive IDs that make sense to you as well as your
program, as this makes your help projects easier to manage. For example, the Hyperlink
Link dialog 686 and the Find Topic 192 function both display only the topic IDs in
alphabetical lists, not the topic titles, and descriptive names make it a lot easier to know
what you are linking to and looking for in these lists!

Using hierarchical topic IDs:

The "hierarchical" topic ID naming scheme can make managing your help projects much
easier, and since the introduction of IDs with up to 256 characters in Help & Manual 4 it
is also very easy to use.
What is a "hierarchical" ID? Suppose you have a project called Widget Editor with a
chapter called The Editor that contains the topics About the Editor, Editor Controls and
Using the Editor . Descriptive, hierarchical IDs for these topics would look something
like this:
WE_Editor
WE_Editor_About
WE_Editor_Controls
WE_Editor_Using
If you think about it for a moment the advantage of doing this should be immediately
obvious. It keeps the topics of your chapters together in all the alphabetical lists of topic
IDs, which makes these lists much easier to use and manage. Help & Manual 4
introduces IDs with up to 256 characters, so writing descriptive hierarchical IDs is easy
and highly recommended.

Using a unique project prefix:

You may be wondering why the examples above have the prefix WE_. This is a unique
prefix that identifies the project and it is very useful if you ever create modular projects 492
. It makes sure that you will never have problems and errors caused by duplicate IDs
when you combine your modules and link between them, and it also provides an
additional reminder for you by identifying your targets when you are creating links across
modules.
· You can configure Help & Manual to generate a prefix of your choice automatically
for every new topic you create. Just enter the prefix you want to use in Project >
Project Properties > Common Properties > Topic IDs and Help Context 553 .

See also:
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 (Reference)
Assigning help context numbers 212
Changing topic IDs and context numbers 214

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 212 Help & Manual Online Help

7.4.2 Assigning help context numbers

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to assign help context numbers manually 212
How to assign multiple help context numbers to a single topic 212

Assigning help context numbers to anchors 213

How to assign help context numbers automatically 213

The help context number is a second unique identifier for topics. Like the topic ID 210 it must
be unique and it can also be viewed and edited in the Topic Options tab of every topic.
Unlike topic IDs help context numbers are optional – they are not required for normal help
and they are thus also not included in the Insert New Item 673 dialog.
Help context numbers are used by some programmers and programming languages to
access topics from applications, either on their own or in combination with topic IDs.
For more background information on topic IDs and context numbers see
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 in the Reference section.

How to assign help context numbers manually:

· Select the topic's Topic Options tab (above the editor window) and type a help context
number in the Help Context Number field.
Help & Manual stores context numbers as an unsigned 4-byte integer, which
means you can enter values between 0 and 4294967295. This is nearly
4.3 billion, so it should provide you with enough numbers for most
applications.

Check with your programmers before choosing your context

numbers!
Check with your programmers or the documentation of your programming
language before choosing the help context numbers you want to use.
Some languages require numbers to be above or below a certain value.
Also, programmers often want to assign numbers for components and
controls automatically, so you may have to use specific numbers for
specific topics.

How to assign multiple help context numbers to a single topic:

You can assign multiple context numbers to topics so that they can be accessed under
different "addresses". To assign multiple context numbers just separate the numbers
with commas, without any spaces, like this:

17854,22395,339788

All the numbers must be unique – you cannot assign the same number to more than one
topic. This is not a problem within a single project because Help & Manual will not allow
you to enter duplicates in the same project. However, if you are creating modular
projects 492 you must make sure that you do not enter the duplicate context numbers.

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 Basic Working Procedures 213

See Managing IDs and context numbers 497 for more details on this.

Assigning help context numbers to anchors:

In addition to topics you can also assign help context numbers to anchors 305 . This
enables programmers to make calls to a specific position within a topic.
· To apply a context number to a new anchor just select Insert > Topic Anchor and
enter a context number in the Help Context field in the Insert Anchor dialog.
You can also set Help & Manual to generate context numbers
automatically for new anchors as well as for new topics. See below for
details.

How to assign help context numbers automatically:

You have probably already realized that entering different context numbers for each
topic manually would be quite a tedious task. Fortunately, Help & Manual has two
powerful facilities for automating the process of generating and applying help context
numbers:

Auto-generating context numbers for new topics and anchors:

This feature automatically adds context numbers to new topics and anchors when
you create them.
1. Go to Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Topic IDs and Help
Context 553 .
2. In the Help Context Numbers section select Automatically create help context
numbers for new topics.
3. Set a starting number and an increment number. (An increment number greater
than 1 is not essential but it allows you to add more topics between two existing
topics later and still keep their context numbers in sequence.)
For example, a starting number of 10000 and an increment number of 10 would
generate context numbers in the sequence 10000, 10010, 10020, 10030, 10040
and so on.
4. Select Apply help context numbers to topic anchors if you also want to associate
your topic anchors 305 with help context numbers. This makes it possible to make
context calls to anchors (jump targets) within your topics.
Check the required number range and format with your programmers or
programming language documentation before finalizing these settings!

Adding context numbers to existing topics automatically:

Help & Manual's Help Context Tool can automatically apply help context numbers to
your entire project. In addition to this it can also delete existing help context numbers
so that you can renumber all your topics and apply help context numbers from
so-called "map files" provided by your application programmers.
The tool is accessed with Tools > Help Context Tool and its use is pretty

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 214 Help & Manual Online Help

self-explanatory. For more information see The Help Context Tool 624 .

See also:
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 (Reference)
The Help Context Tool 624
Planning modular projects 880
7.4.3 Changing topic IDs and context numbers
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to change a topic's ID 214
Don't edit anchor IDs 214
How to change a topic's help context number 214
What to check after changing the IDs and context numbers 215

Help & Manual allows you to change topic IDs 210 and help context numbers 212 whenever you
like. All links within your project are updated automatically when you do this. Internally this is
not a problem but there are still a couple of important points you need to consider when
changing IDs and context numbers, however – see below 215 for details.
For more background information on topic IDs and context numbers see
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 in the Reference section.

Avoid topic IDs with 31 characters:

Because of the way long topic names are handled you must avoid using topic
IDs with 31 characters or multiples of 31 characters (62, 93 etc). If you use
them you may experience errors. See here 911 for details.

How to change a topic's ID:

1. Click on the topic's entry in the TOC to select it and then click on the Topic Options tab
above the editing window.
2. Edit the topic ID in the Topic ID field at the top of the screen.
Help & Manual does not update the links that refer to the topic until you exit
the Topic Options tab and move to another topic. Alternatively you can also
save your project or select Refresh Topic in the Topics menu.

Don't edit anchor IDs:

· Changing and editing anchor IDs 305 is not advisable. Unlike topic IDs Help & Manual
does not update links to anchor IDs if you change them. Also, no internal index of
references to anchor IDs is maintained. This means that if you change an anchor ID
you may create dead links that will be difficult to find, because they will not be listed in
your project reports 618 .

How to change a topic's help context number:

1. Click on the topic's entry in the TOC to select it and then click on the Topic Options tab

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 215

above the editing window.

2. Edit or delete the context number in the Help Context Number: field on the right of the
screen.
You can also add additional context numbers. Just separate them with commas, like this:

17854,22395,339788

What to check after changing the IDs and context numbers:

Topic IDs and help context numbers are the "addresses" of your topics so changing
them is not a trivial matter. Help & Manual handles much of the work involved in making
the changes automatically but it can't do everything. There are still a number of things
you need to keep in mind:

Topic IDs:
As of Help & Manual 4 graphics containing links in hotspots 321 are also updated
automatically (this was not possible in Help & Manual 3 and earlier). However, you
still need to check the following items:
· Any other help files or .HMX help project files 125 containing links to the topic, for
example if you are using modular help systems 492 .
· Any software containing calls or links to the topic using the topic ID.
· Any macro code and scripts 302 or plain HTML code 311 containing references to
topic IDs that you have inserted yourself.
· Any references to the topic ID in HTML code that you have inserted manually in
your HTML templates 475 . (This is actually extremely unlikely, but you should always
remember that all code you enter in these templates is entirely your own
responsibility, it is not checked by Help & Manual!)

Context numbers:
Help context numbers are only used by external applications. They are not used for
links within or between help files. This means that any changes to help context
numbers are only relevant for calls to your help from applications.
· After (or better, before!) changing help context numbers you need to check with
the programmers to make sure that they have the right numbers for accessing all
your topics and anchors.
· If you are using modular help systems 492 you need to make absolutely sure that
you do not have duplicate help context numbers in your projects. See Managing
IDs and context numbers 498 in the chapter on working with modular help systems
for details.
You can generate lists for your programmers containing all your
topic IDs and help context numbers with the Help Context tool 624
and the Project Reports tool 618 .

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 216 Help & Manual Online Help

See also:
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 (Reference)
Managing IDs and context numbers in modular help 497
The Help Context Tool 624
The Project Reports Tool 618
7.4.4 The TOC Toolbar
The Table of Contents (TOC) has its own special toolbar at the top of the TOC section. The
icons in this toolbar provide quick access to a number of TOC editing functions, two of which
(Promote and Demote) are only available here.

The TOC Toolbar:

Add Inserts a new item 171 (a topic) in the TOC. When you click on it a menu
Item: is displayed with insertion options (before, after or as child of current
topic).

Delete Deletes the current topic in the TOC.

Item:

Edit Edit the caption 217 (title) of the current topic in the TOC.
caption:

Promote Moves the current topic to the left, shifting it up one level in the TOC
: hierarchy. If the item is the child/sub-topic of a topic this moves it up to
the same level as its parent topic. Not available for top-level topics.

Demote: Moves the current topic to the right, shifting it down one level in the TOC
hierarchy and making it a child/sub-topic of the topic directly above it.
Only available if there is a topic above the current topic. (See Promoting
and demoting topics 219 for details on using these functions.)

Move Moves the current item up one step in the TOC without changing its
up: status in the TOC hierarchy (i.e. without promoting or demoting it).

Move Moves the current item down one step in the TOC without changing its
down: status in the TOC hierarchy (i.e. without promoting or demoting it)

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 Basic Working Procedures 217

7.4.5 Editing the topic caption and header

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to change the caption of a topic in the TOC 217
About the link between the caption and the header 217

The topic caption is the title of the topic displayed in the TOC, both in Help & Manualand in
your output, for example the Contents pane of the HTML Help viewer and the Winhelp
viewer and the Contents page of a PDF file.
When you create a new topic the caption text is duplicated in the topic header, which is the
title displayed above the topic itself. The header is also displayed in your output, for example
above the topics in the HTML Help and Winhelp viewers.

How to change the caption (title) of a topic in the TOC:

1. Click on the topic in the TOC.
2. Press F2 or wait a second or two and click again ("slow" double-click) or click on the
Edit Caption button in the TOC Toolbar 216 .
3. Edit the caption and then press Enter to finish

About the "link" between the topic caption and the topic header:
When you create a new topic its caption is automatically duplicated in the topic header. If
you only edit the caption the header is also updated automatically so that the caption and
the header remain identical.
However, you may want the caption and the header to be different. For example, you
may want to have a short title in the TOC and a longer header displayed above the topic.
To switch this link off just click in the topic header and edit it.
As long as the topic caption and the topic header are different the "link" between them is
switched off and you can edit them separately. To re-establish the link just edit the topic
header so that it is identical to the caption in the TOC again. If you then edit the TOC
caption the header will once again change with it.

7.4.6 Moving, cutting and pasting topics

IN THIS TOPIC:
Moving topics with Drag & Drop 218
Moving topics with the TOC Toolbar 219
Moving and copying topics with Cut & Paste 219
Moving and copying topics between projects 219

To change the structure of your project you need to be able to move topics around in the
Table of Contents (TOC). This is extremely easy in Help & Manual and can be accomplished
in seconds.

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218 Help & Manual Online Help

Using Help & Manual as an outliner:

Help & Manual's ability to organize and move around topics in the TOC make it
an excellent outliner. Since you can always see all the topics in the TOC on the
left you will find that it is more efficient for this purpose than a word processor
in which you can only see one document at a time, containing many headings.

Chapters and multiple topics:

· Selecting a chapter always also selects all its sub-topics. If you only want to move, cut
or copy the chapter topic you must first demote 219 it so that it is no longer a chapter.
· All the operations described here can also be performed on multiple entries in the
TOC. To select multiple entries use Shift+Click to select continuous blocks of entries
and Ctrl+Click to select multiple individual entries in different locations.

Moving topics with Drag & Drop:

· Select a topic or chapter and drag it onto another topic (target topic is highlighted) to
make it the child (sub-topic) of the target topic.

· Select a topic or chapter and drag it between two other topics (a blue line is displayed
between the target topics) to insert it before/after the target topic. Position the mouse
pointer to the right or left of the topic caption to display the blue line.

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 Basic Working Procedures 219

Moving topics with the TOC Toolbar:

The Up and Down arrows in the TOC Toolbar move the selected topic up and down one
step at a time.

Moving and copying topics with Cut & Paste:

1. Select a topic or chapter and then use one of the Copy or Cut options:
Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+C (copy), Ctrl+X (cut)
Edit menu: Copy, Cut
Context menu (right-click in TOC): Copy, Cut
2. Click on the topic after which you wish to insert the topic and use one of the Paste
options:
Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+V
Edit menu: Paste
Context menu (right-click in TOC): Paste
When you copy topics " (COPY)" is added to the topic caption in the TOC and
"_2" (or _3 etc.) is added to the Topic ID in the Topic Options to prevent
duplicates. See Multiple TOC entries for one topic 220 for an alternative to
copying.

Moving and copying topics between projects:

You can also copy, cut and paste single and multiple topics and chapters between
projects. To do this just open a second instance of Help & Manual with the second
project. Drag & Drop does not work between projects but you can use all the Cut &
Paste procedures described above.
If you have the Professional version of Help & Manual you can also use XML to export
and import topics and merge entire projects. See Importing topics and merging projects
169 for details.

See also:
Promoting and demoting topics 219
Copying, cutting and pasting 189 (text and content)
Importing topics and merging projects 169
7.4.7 Promoting and demoting topics
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to promote and demote topics with the TOC toolbar 220

How to promote and demote topics with the mouse 220

The Table of Contents (TOC) is organized in a hierarchical tree structure, similar to the

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 220 Help & Manual Online Help

directory structure that Windows Explorer displays for the contents of a hard disk. "Top-
level" topics like the Welcome and Introduction topics in this help are the topics at the top
of this tree.
Any topic that has a sub-topic automatically becomes a "chapter" (book icon in the TOC). A
sub-topic of a top-level topic is a second-level topic, a sub-topic of a second-level topic is a
third-level topic, and so on.
In addition to moving topics up and down you can also restructure your TOC by promoting
and demoting topics to higher and lower levels. For example, if you promote a sub-topic of
the Introduction in this help it would become a top-level topic. If you move the Welcome
topic below the Introduction chapter and demote it, it will become the sub-topic (child) of
Introduction and a second-level topic.

How to promote and demote topics with the TOC toolbar:

The Promote and Demote buttons in the TOC Toolbar 216
move the current topic up and down one level in the TOC
hierarchy. They are very useful for making quick local
changes. It is easier to use Cut & Paste first to move
topics over larger distances (see Moving, cutting and
pasting topics 217 ) – you can then use Promote and Demote
after making the move to perform any necessary fine-
tuning.

· The Promote button (left arrow) promotes the current topic to the next level by
moving it one step to the left.
· The Demote button (right arrow) demotes the current topic to the next level by
moving it one step to the right.

How to promote and demote topics with the mouse:

· Just drag the topic to the new position in the TOC. If you drag onto another topic it
will become the child of the target topic. If you drag between two topics (position
mouse to left of topic icons) it will be inserted between the target topics.
· It is easier to use Cut & Paste 217 to promote and demote topics over large
distances in large, complex TOCs.

See also:
Moving, cutting and pasting topics 217
7.4.8 Multiple TOC entries for one topic
IN THIS TOPIC:
Creating additional topic references with Add Item 221
Creating additional topic references with Drag & Drop 221

Inserting a new item 171 into the Table of Contents (TOC) or into the Invisible Topics 193
section automatically adds both a new entry to the TOC and creates a new topic. However,

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 Basic Working Procedures 221

there may be some situations where you want to use exactly the same topic in more than
one place in the TOC.
You can do this by creating multiple references to an single topic in the TOC. The result is a
single TOC topic that can be accessed from multiple positions in the TOC. There is still only
one topic, but it is displayed in several different positions within the TOC – for example in
different chapters.
See Embedded topics and multiple references 881 in the Reference section for
more background information.

Multiple TOC references are not copies of topics!

It is important to understand that creating additional TOC entries referring
to a topic does not create copies of the topic. There is still only one topic, it
is just accessed with two or more different TOC entries. If you want to
have two very similar topics with slightly different contents make a copy 219
and edit the copy, or use embedded topics 222 .

Creating additional topic references with Add Item:

1. Select the entry in the TOC where you want to add the new reference to the existing
topic.
2. Select any of the options for creating a new topic 171 .
3. When the New Item 673 dialog is displayed select Topic or Chapter with Text and edit
the topic caption. The second reference can have a different caption from the original
topic, this is the only difference allowed.
4. Do not accept the default topic ID generated by Help & Manual!
Instead, click on the browse button in the Topic ID: field and select the ID of the
topic you want to create a second reference to. (If you have made a note of the ID of
the topic or copied it you can also type it in manually or paste it.)
5. Press Enter or select to finish. A prompt will be displayed asking you to
confirm that you want to create a new reference to an existing topic.

Creating additional topic references with Drag & Drop:

You can also create additional references to existing topics with Drag & Drop:
1. Click on the topic you want to make an additional reference to in the TOC to select
it.
2. Hold down Ctrl and drag to the position where you want to create the second
reference. Dragging onto a topic makes the new reference a child (sub-topic) of
the target topic. Dragging between two topics (position mouse to left of topic
icons) inserts the reference between the target topics. (See Moving, cutting and
pasting topics 217 .)

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 222 Help & Manual Online Help

See also:
Using embedded topics 222
Moving, cutting and pasting topics 217
7.4.9 Using embedded topics
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to insert an embedded topic 222
Using invisible topics as sources for embedded topics 222

How to edit embedded topics 223

Linking to topics containing embedded topics 223
Checking where topics are embedded 224
Jumping to the source topic of an embedded topic 224

The Insert > Embedded Topic function enables you to "inject" the contents of a topic into
another topic at any chosen point. This is a more flexible way of reusing topics in multiple
locations than creating multiple TOC references 220 for the same topic.
Embedded topics are copies of a "source" topic that are inserted in the "target" topic
together with their normal index keywords 370 but without their A-keywords 382 , topic IDs or
context numbers. The embedded topic is only actually inserted when you compile your
project. All editing changes in the source topic are reflected in all the target locations, both in
the Help & Manual editor and in your output.
See Embedded topics and multiple references 881 in the Reference section for
more background information.

How to insert an embedded topic:

1. Select the topic in which you want to embed another topic in the TOC.
2. Click in the position where you want to insert the embedded topic. It is best to use an
empty paragraph as the insertion point, you can do any necessary fine-tuning after
insertion.
3. Select Insert > Embedded Topic. Then select the topic ID of the topic you want to
insert and click on .
4. The contents of the embedded topic are displayed in the target topic with a grey
background 46 .
Double-clicking on the embedded topic displays the insertion dialog,
allowing you to select a different topic to embed.

Using invisible topics as sources for embedded topics:

You may not always want to embed topics that are included in the TOC. If you are
reusing topics again and again you will usually want the "source topic" to be invisible to
the user. You can use this by creating your source topics in the Invisible Topics section.
Important: You must exclude the invisible topics from your output

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 Basic Working Procedures 223

If you are only using an invisible topic as a source for an embedded topic you
should exclude it from your output. If you don't do this it will be included
"invisibly" in electronic output formats like HTML Help and Browser-based Help.
This will increase the size of your help and the user may be able to find the topics
with Search. Invisible topics defined as popup topics will not be searchable if you
are using JavaScript popups 199 but they will still increase the size of your output.
To exclude the topic select the Topic Options tab and deselect all options in the
Builds which include this topic section.

Caution with keywords in the invisible topics

If you want you can also enter keywords in the invisible source topic for your
embedded topics. This has the advantage that the keywords are exported to the
topics where the source topic is embedded, so you don't need to enter them again
there. (Only normal keywords, A-keywords are not exported.)
However, if you are exporting to HTML Help this also has a disadvantage: Topics
that contain keywords are always exported to the HTML Help .CHM file as invisible
topics, even if you turn off all their build options in their Topic Options tabs. This
means that the invisible version of the topic will also be found in the index and
with the full-text search function.
If you want to avoid this in HTML Help the only option is to insert the keywords in
the target topics, not in the source topics. (This behavior cannot be changed
because of the way the HTML Help compiler works.)

1. Create an invisible topic 193 . Don't worry about its help window type – you can leave
its help window type set to Popup (the default setting) because the source topic
itself will not be included in your output so its window type is irrelevant.
2. Select the new topic's Topic Options tab and deselect all the options in the Builds
which include this topic section (see above 222 for details on the reason for this).
3. Create the content of your topic. You can use all formatting, tables, graphics, links
etc. Again, don't worry about the topic being defined as a popup and not having a
header! You are only using it as the source for embedded topics, so its window
type and header are irrelevant.
4. Use the instructions above 222 for inserting embedded topics to embed the topic in
as many other topics as you want.

How to edit embedded topics:

· You cannot edit embedded topics directly. You must edit the source topic. When you
do, all the changes you make will automatically be reflected in all the target locations.

Linking to topics containing embedded topics:

· You can create normal hyperlinks to topics containing embedded topics because they
have a unique address – unlike topics with multiple references in the TOC.
· However, if the embedded topic contains anchors you will not be able to link to the

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 224 Help & Manual Online Help

anchors directly. See Anchors - jump targets 307 for a solution to this problem.

Checking where topics are embedded:

You will often want to know where topics are embedded. You can check this with the
Find Referrers function:
· Right-click on the source topic in the TOC and select Find Referrers in the popup
menu.
· The target topics where the topic is embedded are listed as topics with references
to the source topic.

Jumping to the source topic of an embedded topic:

· Press and hold down Ctrl and click on the grey embedded topic. This will automatically
take you to the source topic so that you can edit it.

See also:
Multiple TOC entries for one topic 220
Embedded topics and multiple references 881
Topic include options 457
7.4.10 Changing the topic icon
If you don't like the standard topic icons displayed in the TOC you can change them for
HTML Help, Browser-based Help (HTML) and Help & Manual eBooks. Help & Manual has
an integrated list of supported icons you can choose from.
Winhelp does not support custom icons. If you select custom icons they
will always be displayed in your TOC in Help & Manual but your Winhelp
output will still use the standard icons, which are the only ones it knows.

How to change the topic icon:

1. Select one or more topics in the TOC. Use Ctrl+Click and Shift+Click to select
multiple topics.
2. Select Topics > Change Item > Icon... or right-click and select Change Item > Icon...

3. Choose the new icon from the list displayed and click on . To reset a topic to
its default icon select the first entry in the list (Auto).
When you change chapter icons it doesn't matter which version of the
closed/open icon pair you choose. They are always applied as a pair and
matched to the icon state automatically.

See also:
Changing the topic status 225

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 Basic Working Procedures 225

7.4.11 Changing the topic status

You can assign a background color to your topics' entries in the Table of Contents (TOC)
and Invisible Topics list to identify their status. This is an editing aid only to help you identify
topics that need attention while you are working. The topic status is not exported to your
output, but it can be used to filter topics in your project reports 618 .

How to change the topic status:

1. Click on the topic in the TOC to select it.
You can also change the status of multiple topics at the same time!
Use Shift+Click to select continuous groups of topics and Ctrl+Click to
select multiple individual topics.
2. Select Topics > Change Item > Topic Status or right-click and select Change Item >
Topic Status.
3. Click on the topic status in the dialog. If you also want to set the status of the topic's
children (sub-topics) activate the Apply Status to Child Entries check box.

See also:
Changing the topic icon 224
7.4.12 Organizing invisible topics
IN THIS TOPIC:
Organizing invisible topics in chapters 225
Creating chapters without text 226
Using include options for invisible topics 226

The Invisible Topics section of the Table of Contents (TOC) tab can be organized into
"chapters" and "sub-chapters" in exactly the same way as the normal TOC area. Since the
topics in this section are invisible in your output this feature is only meaningful while you are
editing – it simply helps you to organize your invisible topics better.
Restrictions in the Invisible topics section:
Although the Invisible Topics section looks very similar to the TOC it is
actually a little different and there are a couple of restrictions: You cannot
change the icons of topics in this section and you cannot convert a chapter/
topic in this section to a chapter without text, or a chapter without text to a
chapter/topic with text.

Organizing invisible topics in chapters:

You can use all the normal methods for promoting and demoting topics 219 to arrange
your invisible topics in chapters, sub-topics and sub-chapters.
This organization only has any meaning in the Help & Manual editor. It is completely
irrelevant in your output because the topics are invisible and can only be accessed with
links.

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226 Help & Manual Online Help

In the Invisible Topics section chapters

without text are called "topic folders".
Please note that the icons used in the Invisible topics section cannot be changed. Since
they are only displayed in the editor and not in your output there would also not be much
point in this. All topics and chapters with text use the standard question mark icon and all
chapters without text use the folder icon.

Creating chapters without text:

You cannot convert an existing topic or chapter to a chapter without text in this section.
To create a topic folder chapter without text as a "header" to organize invisible topics you
must create a new topic.
1. Click in the Invisible Topics section where you want to insert your chapter without
text and use any of the standard methods to create a new topic 171 .
2. Select the Topic Folder option in the Item Type section of the Insert New Item
dialog. (Chapters without text are called "topic folders" in the Invisible Topics
section.)

Using include options for invisible topics:

· Unlike Help & Manual 3 and below you can now use include options 451 for invisible
topics as well as for topics in the TOC. This means that you can now explicitly exclude
and include invisible topics in your output on the basis of output format or user-defined
include options.
This feature is particularly useful when you are using invisible topics as the source for
embedded topics 222 . It enables you to exclude the source topic from your output (the
source topic is only needed at compile time to insert the embedded copies in your
output).
For more details on using include options see Conditions and Customized
Output 451 .

See also:
Creating new topics 171
Promoting and demoting topics 219

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 Basic Working Procedures 227

7.4.13 Topic timestamps

IN THIS TOPIC:
Checking the topic timestamp 227
Checking the TOC entry timestamp 227

Variable for the topic date 227

There are many situations where you will want to check the time and date when a topic was
last changed or edited. Every topic in Help & Manual has two timestamps: One for the topic
itself and one for the topic's entry in the Table of Contents (TOC). The topic timestamp is
updated whenever you make any changes to the topic, the TOC timestamp is only updated
when you make changes to the topic's TOC entry.

Checking the topic timestamp:

· Click on the topic's entry in the TOC. The topic timestamp is then displayed in the
status bar:

Checking the TOC entry timestamp:

· Hold the mouse pointer over the topic's entry in the TOC. The TOC entry timestamp is
displayed together with other information in a small popup window:

Variable for the topic editing date:

You can insert the date on which the topic was last edited in the topic with the <%
TOPICLASTEDITED%> variable, which returns the date in short format for the current topic.
(There is no variable for the TOC timestamp). See Global predefined variables 863 for
details.

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 228 Help & Manual Online Help

See also:
Using Variables 440
Global predefined variables 863

7.5 Text Formatting and Styles

IN THIS TOPIC:
Formatting text 228
Dynamic styles 228
Restrictions in Winhelp 228

Formatting text
Help & Manual 4 has much more powerful text formatting features than Help & Manual 3
and below. Font and paragraph formatting have both been radically improved and a new
formatting class, Borders and Backgrounds, has been introduced. Help & Manual's text
formatting is now just as powerful and flexible as in modern word processors.

Dynamic styles
A "style" is a defined, named set of text and/or paragraph formatting rules that you can
apply to text in the Help & Manual editor. Help & Manual 3 and below had styles, but they
were not dynamic – changing the definition of the style did not change the formatting of
text to which the style had already been applied.
Help & Manual 4 introduces true dynamic styles. Once you apply a style it is dynamically
linked to the paragraph or text to which you have applied it. When you change the style
definition the formatting changes automatically throughout your entire project.
If you are not familiar with styles please study the topics in the chapter
Dynamic Styles 746 in the Reference section before getting started. This will
make the whole process much easier for you!

Restrictions in Winhelp output

Please note that Winhelp is an old format that lacks support for a number of modern
formatting options. These include table borders, nested tables, borders, background
colors, superscript and subscript. It is advisable not to use these features for Winhelp. If
you want to output to both Winhelp and other formats you can create alternative versions
using Help & Manual's conditional output features 451 .
For details please see Classic Winhelp 768 in the Help Formats chapter in the Reference
section.

See also:
Dynamic Styles 746 (Reference)

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 Basic Working Procedures 229

7.5.1 Styles introduction for H&M3 users

IN THIS TOPIC:
How can I use dynamic styles efficiently? 229
Where can I get more information on styles? 229

If you are upgrading from Help & Manual 3 you will probably need to spend a little time
getting used to the new dynamic styles, because they make a new way of working
necessary. Although Help & Manual 3 and earlier also had "styles" they were not dynamic –
all formatting was manual. You could apply styles to text and paragraphs, but they were
really just a quick way of applying several formatting commands at the same time. After
applying a style you couldn't change the formatting of the text by changing the definition of
the style. You had to go back and re-apply the changed style again.
All this has changed in Help & Manual 4. Dynamic styles give you full control over your
project, enabling you to change its entire formatting and layout in seconds at any time.

How can I use dynamic styles efficiently?

Using dynamic styles does require a little planning:
· To have full control over the formatting and layout of your project you need to
define a style 237 for each type of paragraph or text format that you use frequently.
You can do this as you work and since you can change your styles 243 at any time
you don't need to worry about making mistakes.
· Only use manual formatting 230 for special individual cases, for example for a single
paragraph or piece of text formatted in a special way that you are never going to
use again.
· Manual formatting can also be used for individual words and phrases that need to
be underlined or made bold or italic. But as soon as you start using more complex
formatting that you want to use again you should define a style.
· You can define as many styles as you like (this help uses nearly 60 styles, for
example). If you make use of styles you will find that they give you full control over
your formatting and layout. Applying formatting becomes a matter of one or two
clicks. Your layout becomes much more uniform, because every style is formatted
in exactly the same way. And you can make changes to your entire project in
seconds.
· Note that using styles efficiently will also make your output files a fair bit smaller,
particularly in HTML-based output (HTML Help, Browser-based Help, Visual Studio
Help, eBooks). Manual formatting must include a large number of detailed tags
every time it is applied. Styles are only defined once and are applied with a simple
and very brief reference.

Where can I get more information on styles?

If you are new to dynamic styles please take some time to study the following chapters
before you start using them in Help & Manual 4, this will make working with styles much
easier for you:

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 230 Help & Manual Online Help

For background information:

· Dynamic Styles 746 in the Reference section

Instructions for using styles:

· Text Formatting and Styles 228 in the Basic Working Procedures section (this
chapter)
· Replacing Formatting and Styles 271 describes the powerful new global search and
replace function for styles and formatting introduced in version 4.2.

See also:
Dynamic Styles 746 (Reference)
7.5.2 Formatting text manually
IN THIS TOPIC:
Use styles instead of manual formatting! 230
How to apply manual formatting to text in the editor 230

Available manual formatting options 231

Manual formatting in Help & Manual now works exactly as it does in a modern word
processor. You apply formatting to text manually with the tools in the Formatting Toolbars
(see below) and the Format menu, where you can select formatting options for Font,
Paragraph and Borders and Background.

Use styles instead of manual formatting!

The first instruction for using manual formatting is: Please only use it for non-standard
formatting!
There is nothing to prevent you from doing all your formatting manually. However, if you
do this you are not using the full capabilities of Help & Manual and you will create a lot of
unnecessary extra work for yourself – particularly if you ever decide you want to change
your formatting. The proper way to format your text in Help & Manual is with styles 234 . If
you take the time to learn how to use them you will find that they are much more
powerful and more efficient than manual formatting.
Manual formatting should only be used for highlighting small sections of text (for
example with bold or italic) and for unique formatting that will not be repeated, for which
it would not be worthwhile to define a style. All your standard formatting should be done
with styles.
If you are new to using styles see the chapter on Dynamic Styles 746 in the Reference
section.

How to apply manual formatting to text in the editor:

Just as in a word processor there are two different ways to apply formatting manually:
Select a formatting option and start typing, or select text and then apply a formatting
option.

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 Basic Working Procedures 231

Method 1: Select a formatting option and start typing

If you select a formatting option without selecting text first the formatting options you
select will apply to all the text you type from that point onwards (unless you move to a
different part of your topic). If you press Enter to create a new paragraph after
applying formatting like this the new paragraph will also have all the formatting
attributes you have just applied.

Method 2: Select text and then apply a formatting option.

If you select text in the editor and then select formatting options the options will be
applied to the selected text and paragraphs. If you then place the cursor directly after
the formatted text any new text you type in that position will also have the formatting.

Available manual formatting options:

All these formatting options can also be applied with styles 234 , which are much more
efficient than manual formatting. (The Format menu also contains style formatting
functions.)
For full details on these options see the chapter on the Format menu 704 in the Reference
section.
You can configure keyboard shortcuts for all these formatting options in
Tools > Customize Shortcuts.

The Format menu:

The Font 705 , Paragraph 706 and Borders and background 708 options in the Format
menu all apply formatting manually in the current position. If text is selected the
options are applied to the selected text. If no text is selected the options apply from
the cursor position onwards when you start typing.

The font and paragraph formatting toolbars:

The most frequently-used manual formatting functions are also available in the Font
and Paragraph formatting toolbars, which are shown below. (If they are not displayed
just select the Text Format and Paragraph Format toolbars in the View menu.) If text
is selected the options are applied to the selected text. If no text is selected the
options apply from the cursor position onwards when you start typing.
The tools all correspond to options in the Font and Paragraph dialog boxes, which
are accessible in the Format menu. See the chapter on the Format menu 704 in the
Reference section for details.
There are two exceptions: The tool in the paragraph toolbar turns paragraph and
text marks on and off and corresponds to a setting in Tools > Customize > Editor.
The tool in the font toolbar selects syntax highlighting for program code 267 ,
which is also available in the Format menu.

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 232 Help & Manual Online Help

See also:
Formatting text with styles 234
The Format Menu 704 (Reference)
Syntax highlighting for program code 267
7.5.3 Using indents
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create an indented paragraph 232
How to create a paragraph with a hanging indent 233
Hanging indents with "overlong" text on the left: 232

Creating indents in a word processor is a trivial task that you hardly even need to think
about. If you've ever done any work with HTML you will know that indents in HTML are more
of a problem. The reason for this is that HTML doesn't know anything at all about tab stops,
and it also does not support multiple spaces.
You can use indented paragraphs in all Help & Manual's output formats – the program will
convert them to stable HTML structures when you compile to HTML-based formats.
However, you should avoid using tab stops and spaces on their own to create indented
effects, because these will not work in HTML-based outputs. You should always use the
paragraph indenting functions described below.
For some background information see Tabs, indents and HTML 744 in the Reference section.

How to create an indented paragraph:

· Select the tool (Increase Indent) in the Toolbar. You can decrease the indent by
selecting the tool.
OR:
· Drag the Indent tool in the ruler above the editor. The tool has three parts, which can
all be dragged separately: The upper triangle adjusts the first-line indent, the lower
triangle adjusts the main paragraph indent and the square box at the bottom adjusts
the first line and the paragraph indent together.

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 Basic Working Procedures 233

OR:
· Select Format > Paragraph and set the indent values in the Indentation section.

How to create a paragraph with a hanging indent:

You can also use hanging indents in HTML-based output, and you can use a single tab
stop in your hanging indent. This single tab stop will be converted to a table structure in
HTML.
This is the only place where you should use a tab stop for HTML-based output. Also,
using more than one tab and combining spaces with tabs will result in errors.
· Use the Indent tool in the Toolbar to define the hanging indent:

OR:
· Select Format > Paragraph and set the indent values in the Indentation section.
See Tabs, indents and HTML 744 in the Reference section for more information on
hanging indents and how they are converted in HTML-based output.

Hanging indents with "overlong" text on the left:

Often you will want to use hanging indents to create paragraphs with some text on the
left referring to a main body of text on the right, like this example:
Hanging indent example:The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. This is a fallacy
that people have believed for years simply because it contains
all the letters of the alphabet. Actually, the dog was only
shamming and he leapt up at the last moment and bit the fox in
the tail.
The problem with this is that sometimes the text on the left is too long, and doesn't fit in
the space available between the left margin and the main body of the paragraph, like
this:

This shows the paragraph with the

overlong text in the Help & Manual editor.

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 234 Help & Manual Online Help

However, this is OK if you are only outputting to HTML-based formats (HTML Help,
Browser-based HTML, eBooks and Visual Studio Help). Help & Manual automatically
converts the paragraph with a hanging indent into a table and the text on the left will then
wrap correctly, like this:

This shows the output in HTML

Help or Browser-based Help.

Don't use this trick for PDF, printed manuals or Word RTF!
You can't use this trick if you are also outputting to PDF, printed manuals or Word
RTF. It only works in HTML-based output!

See also:
Tabs, indents and HTML 744
7.5.4 Formatting text with styles
IN THIS TOPIC:
General instructions for selecting styles 234
The automatic standard styles 235
Applying a style to the current paragraph 236
Applying a style to multiple paragraphs 236
Resetting text attributes in a paragraph formatted with a style 236

Applying text-only styles 237

Formatting text with styles couldn't be simpler: You just select your text and select a style,
and all the attributes of that style are applied to the text in one quick operation.
Help & Manual comes with a basic set of standard styles already predefined, so you can
start using styles right away, even without defining your own styles. Normally, however, you
will want to modify these styles and add styles of your own to create a customized layout
and appearance for your project.
See Defining styles 237 for information on defining and editing styles. If you are not yet
familiar with styles please study the chapter on Dynamic Styles 746 in the Reference section.

Paragraph styles and text styles:

By default style definitions always include both text and paragraph attributes (borders
and backgrounds are included in the paragraph attributes). However, you can also
define text-only styles for formatting text within paragraphs. See Defining styles 239 for
details, and see Applying text styles 237 below for instructions on how to use text-only
styles.

General instructions for selecting styles:

There are several ways to select styles to apply them. All these methods can be used

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 Basic Working Procedures 235

with or without text selected.

· When all the text in one or more paragraphs is selected the font attributes are
applied to the selected text and paragraph, border and background attributes are
applied to any paragraphs included in the selection.
If one paragraph at the end of the selection is partially selected only font
attributes will be applied to that paragraph!
· When part of the text in a paragraph is selected only the font attributes of the
style are applied to the paragraph.
· When no text is selected all style attributes are applied to the current paragraph
only, leaving any manually-applied formatting intact (including manually-applied
paragraph attributes).

Method 1: Select the style with the style selector in the font formatting
toolbar

Method 2: Select the style from the Format with Style list in the Format
menu:

Method 3: Press the keyboard shortcut for the style:

You can define keyboard shortcuts for all your styles in the styles editing dialog. See
Defining styles 237 for details.

The automatic standard styles:

There are several standard styles that are used automatically for various purposes. For
example, when you create a new topic the first paragraph always has the Normal style,
the topic header above the editing area always has the Heading1 style and graphics
captions always have the Image Caption style.
There are a number of other standard styles. They are all identified and displayed in bold
and in the style editing dialog 713 – for example: Normal (Standard style). You can edit
these styles but you cannot delete them or change their names. See The standard styles
752 in the Reference section for details.

You can change the style that is automatically applied to the first paragraph

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236 Help & Manual Online Help

and the header in new topics by defining a new standard topic content
template 466 .

Applying a style to the current paragraph:

Click anywhere in the current paragraph and select the style. All style attributes (font,
paragraph and borders/backgrounds) will be applied to the entire current paragraph –
you don't have to select any text.
Applying styles with this method preserves any manually-applied formatting and text
styles within the paragraph, including paragraph settings.
Using this method will not reset the paragraph attributes if part of the
paragraph is formatted with a different paragraph style (indicated by a bold
display and a + symbol in the style selector 245 ). To apply a style to
paragraphs like this you must select the entire paragraph.
To reset the font style of the entire paragraph including manual formatting
you must select the entire paragraph before applying the style. You must
also do this to reset manually-applied paragraph settings.

Applying a style to multiple paragraphs:

Select the paragraphs to which you want to apply the style, then select the style. The
paragraph attributes of the style will be applied to all the selected paragraphs, the font
attributes to all the selected text.
If you want to apply both paragraph and font attributes to all the paragraphs you must
take care to select all the text in all the paragraphs. Font attributes will not be applied to
text that is not selected and paragraph attributes will not be applied to paragraphs that
are only partially selected.
Applying styles with this method resets all formatting and styles in the
selected text. Unselected text remains unchanged.
If you want to preserve manual font formatting within the paragraphs you
must apply the styles individually to each paragraph without selecting any
text (see above 236 ).

Resetting text attributes in a paragraph formatted with a style:

After formatting text manually you may sometimes want to reset the text attributes to the
standard font settings of the style that is already applied to the paragraph.
· To do this just select the manually-formatted text and re-apply the current
paragraph style.
· For example, suppose you have used a text style (see below) to format a section
of text in a paragraph formatted with the Normal style. To reset this formatting just
select the text formatted with the text style and select the Normal style. This will
reset the font attributes of the text to the attributes of the Normal style, without
resetting any other formatting in the paragraph.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 237

Applying text-only styles:

You can also define text-only styles 239 that only set font attributes. Applying these styles
is very similar to formatting text manually with the Font settings in the Format menu:
To apply the text style to existing text:
Select the text and then select the style. If you want to type new text after the
formatted section make sure that you start at least one character after the formatted
text, otherwise the new text you type will also have the attributes of the text style.
To apply the text style to an entire paragraph:
Click anywhere in the paragraph and select the style. The text style attributes will be
applied to all the text in the paragraph except manually-formatted text. Any text
formatted with other text styles will be reset.
To type new text with a text style:
First press Enter to create a new paragraph. Then select the style and start typing. (If
you do this inside an existing paragraph all the text in the paragraph will be
reformatted with the attributes of the style).

See also:
Defining styles 237
7.5.5 Defining styles
IN THIS TOPIC:
Defining a new paragraph style 238
Defining a new text-only style 239
Defining a new paragraph style from a selection 240
Defining a new text-only style from a selection 241
Adding imported styles to the current document 241
Importing styles from a another project 242

Help & Manual's dynamic styles are defined and edited by selecting Edit Styles in the Format
menu. The style at the cursor position is automatically selected for editing.
If you have not used dynamic styles in a word processor before please study the chapter on
Dynamic Styles 746 in the Reference section before proceeding. This will make using styles
much easier for you.

Paragraph styles and text styles:

There are two different style types in Help & Manual, paragraph styles and text styles.
Paragraph styles apply all attributes (font, paragraph, borders and background), text
styles apply font attributes only.
For details see paragraph styles and text styles 753 in the Reference section. Please also
see About inheritance in styles 749 for some very important background information on
how styles based on other styles work!

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238 Help & Manual Online Help

Defining a new paragraph style:

1. Select Edit Styles in the Format menu.

2. Select . This will automatically create a style called New Style.

3. Enter a name for the style in the Style Name: field (overwrite the default New Style
name).
It's a good idea to organize your styles in families by name, so that related
styles are kept together automatically. For example you might have a Body
Text family with members like Body Text, Body Text Indent 1, Body Text
Indent 2 and so on.
4. In the Based on Style: field select the style you want to base the new style on. The
style will inherit all the attributes of this style. A paragraph style can be based on a
paragraph or a text style – as soon as you set its paragraph or borders/background
attributes it becomes a paragraph style.

Alternatively, select (None) to create a style without a parent.

5. Select the , and
buttons to set the attributes of the style.
See The Format Menu 704 in the Reference section for details on the settings
in these dialogs.
6. If you want to create a hotkey combination for selecting the style click in the Shortcut:
field and press the key combination you want to use. You will be warned if the key
combination is already in use.
7. Click on to save the new style. It is then available immediately in all the style
lists (see Formatting text with styles 234 for details).

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 239

Defining a new text-only style:

A text style is a style that only contains font attributes. See Formatting text with styles 234
for details on how to use text styles.

Note that you cannot create a text style based on a paragraph style. If you create a new
text style based on another style the parent style must also be a text style. If you base a
style on a paragraph style it will always also have paragraph attributes. For example,
this means that you cannot create text styles based on the Normal style because
Normal always has paragraph attributes.

1. Select Edit Styles in the Format menu.

2. Select . This will automatically create a style called New Style.

3. Enter a name for the style in the Style Name: field (overwrite the default New Style
name).
It's a good idea to use a prefix in the name of your text styles to identify
them clearly. For example, you could use T_., so that your text styles
would have names like T_Emphasized, or T_ProductNames.
4. In the Based on Style: field select another text style if you want to base the new
style on another style. The style will inherit all the attributes of this style.
This is very important! If you select a paragraph style as the parent the
new style will also be a paragraph style .
Alternatively, select (None) to create a new text style without a parent.
5. Click on to make absolutely sure that all the non-text attributes of
the style are canceled. Do this both for new text styles with parents and for new
styles without parents.

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240 Help & Manual Online Help

This is very important! If you do not do this the new style may
accidentally be created as a paragraph style .
6. Select the button and set the attributes of the style.
Only set font attributes! Do not set any other attributes for text styles.
See Format Font 705 in the Reference section for details on the settings in
the Font Settings dialog.
7. If you want to create a hotkey combination for selecting the style click in the
Shortcut: field and press the key combination you want to use. You will be warned
if the key combination is already in use.
8. Click on to save the new style. It is then available immediately in all the
style lists (see Formatting text with styles 237 for details).

Defining a new paragraph style from a selection:

The easiest way to define a new style is to use some manually-formatted text in the
editor as a model. This allows you to see what you are doing much more clearly than
when you are setting attributes in the formatting dialogs.
1. In the Help & Manual editor use the manual formatting options 230 to format an
entire paragraph so that it looks exactly as you want your style to look.
2. Make sure that the cursor is in your model paragraph, then select Create Style
from Selection in the Format menu.
You don't need to select any text, the cursor must only be in the
paragraph you want to use as a model. If you do select text it should all
be formatted in the same way – don't try to create a style based on text
with some words formatted in one way and some in another!

3. Select the option (this is the default) and enter a name for the new
style.
4. If you want the style to have a parent select a style in the Based on Style: list. The
new style will then be linked to this style in the inheritance tree and will inherit all
the attributes of the parent style that are not different from the current paragraph in
the editor. See About inheritance in styles 749 for more details on inheritance.

If you do not want the style to have a parent scroll to the top of the list and select
(None).

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 241

5. Make sure that the option is checked, then click on to

create the new style.
See Editing styles 244 for details on using this function to modify existing
styles.

Defining a new text-only style from a selection:

You can also create new text styles based on text in the editor. The procedure is almost
the same as for a paragraph style.
1. In the Help & Manual editor use the manual formatting options 230 to format some
text so that it looks exactly as you want your style to look.
2. Make sure that the cursor is in your model paragraph, then select Create Style
from Selection in the Format menu.
You don't need to select any text, the cursor must only be in the
paragraph you want to use as a model. If you do select text it should all
be formatted in the same way – don't try to create a style based on text
with some words formatted in one way and some in another!

3. Select the option (this is the default) and enter a name for the new
style. It is a good idea to enter a prefix to identify it as a text style, for example "T_
".
4. If you want the style to have a parent select a text style in the Based on Style: list. If
you use this option the parent style must be another text style – you cannot create
a text style based on a paragraph style.

If you do not want the style to have a parent scroll to the top of the list and select
(None).
5. Deselect the option, then click on to create the new
style.
See Editing styles 244 for details on using this function to modify existing
styles.

Adding imported styles to the current document:

If you paste text from another Help & Manual project containing styles that are not
defined in your current project the unknown style will be displayed in red in the style

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242 Help & Manual Online Help

selector.

To convert this to a known style proceed as follows:

1. Place the cursor inside the pasted text so that the red style name is shown in the
style selector.
2. Select Format > Create Style From Selection.

3. Select the option (this is the default).

4. In the New Style Name: field type the name of the unknown style exactly as it
appears in red in the style selector.
5. If you want to make the style the child of an existing style select the name of the
parent style you want to use in the Based On Style: list. The new style will then be
linked to this style by inheritance, sharing all common attributes with the parent
style.
· For more details see About inheritance in styles 749 .

Importing styles from another project:

This function replaces all the styles of the current project with styles imported from
another project. Only use it if you really want to use the styles defined in another project
instead of the current project's styles.
1. Select Format > Edit Styles.
2. Click on in the Edit Styles window and select the .HMX project file
containing the styles you want to copy.
· See Copying styles from other projects 250 for full details on this function.

See also:
Formatting text with styles 234
Editing styles 243
Dynamic Styles 746 (Reference)

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 243

7.5.6 Editing styles

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to edit styles 243
Editing style attributes 244
Changing a style's parent 244
Switching off inheritance for a style 244
Changing a style's name 244
Adding or changing a style shortcut 244
Modifying a style on the basis of a selection 244

Whenever you edit a style in Help & Manual all the text in your project formatted with the
style is updated automatically and immediately. For example, if you change the font of a
heading style from Arial 12 bold to Times Roman 14 bold/italic all the headings formatted
with that style will be formatted with Times Roman 14 bold/italic as soon as you close the
style editing dialog.
In addition to this any changes you make to styles will automatically be inherited by any
other styles based on that style. This makes it possible to make changes to entire families of
styles very quickly and easily by editing the parent styles. For example, you can normally
change the base font in your entire document by changing the font of the Normal style.
· See About inheritance in styles 749 for more details on the background to this.

How to edit styles:

1. Select Edit Styles in the Format menu. (This will automatically select the style of the
text at the cursor position.)
2. Select the style you want to edit from the list at the top of the dialog, then choose the
settings in the dialog to edit its properties.

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244 Help & Manual Online Help

Editing style attributes:

· Select the , , and
buttons to edit the style's attributes.
· See The Format Menu 704 in the Reference section for details in the settings in these
dialogs.
· Select to completely reset all of the style's attributes to the settings of
its parent style (the style listed in the Based on Style: field). If the style has no parent it
will be set to the Help & Manual defaults. (This button is also used for creating text-
only styles 239 .)

Changing a style's parent:

· To change a style's parent select a different parent style in the Based on Style: field.
This will completely reset all the style's properties to the properties of the
new parent style. You must then edit the properties of the style that you
want to change.

Switching off inheritance for a style:

· To switch off dynamic inheritance 749 for a style just select (None) in its Based on Style:
field.
This will prevent the style from inheriting any attributes from any other styles. It will also
make the style the first parent in a new style tree. This can be useful under some
circumstances. See Style organization strategies 754 for details.

Changing a style's name:

You can change the name of a style whenever you like. Help & Manual will automatically
update all instances of the style in your entire project. This makes it very easy to
organize your styles in groups, because you don't need to worry about getting the name
of the style "right" the first time.
· To change the name of a style just select Format > Edit Styles and edit the name in
the Style Name: field.

Adding or changing a shortcut (hotkey combination):

· Click in the Shortcut: field in the Edit Styles dialog and press the key combination you
want to use to select the style.

Modifying a style on the basis of a selection in the editor:

You can also modify a style on the basis of a selection in the editor. This is often the
easiest way to edit a style because it is much easier to see your formatting in the editor.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 245

1. In the Help & Manual editor use the manual formatting options 230 to change a
paragraph or some text formatted with the style you want to change.
2. Make sure that the cursor is inside the formatted text, then select Create Style
from Selection in the Format menu.
You don't need to select any text, the cursor must only be inside the
formatted text you want to use as a model. If you do select text it should
all be formatted in the same way – don't try to create a style based on
text with some words formatted in one way and some in another!

3. Select the option. The style at the cursor should be selected

automatically. If it isn't close the dialog and check the position of the cursor in the
editor.

The option will be selected automatically for paragraph styles

and deselected for text styles. Only change this if you want to change the style
type. (See Paragraph and text styles 753 for details on changing the style type.)
4. Click on to apply the changes to the selected style.
See Defining styles 240 for details on using this function to create a new
styles.

See also:
Paragraph and text styles 753
7.5.7 Style display in the Toolbar
IN THIS TOPIC:
Display for manually-formatted text 246
Display for text styles 246
Display for no style 246
Display for an unknown imported style 247

The style selector in the Font Formatting Toolbar also functions as an indicator to identify
the style of the current text or paragraph. It displays the paragraph and/or text style at the
current cursor position or of the currently selected text. For example, in the screenshot
below the cursor is in a paragraph formatted with the Normal style, with no additional
manual formatting or text styles 239 :

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246 Help & Manual Online Help

Display for manually-formatted text:

If the cursor or selection is at a position containing manually-applied formatting the style
selector shows the name of the style in bold with a + sign after it, to indicate additional
formatting. For example, if you applied bold or underlined or other formatting to text in a
paragraph formatted with the Normal style the style selector will look like this when the
cursor is inside the manually formatted text:

The manual formatting is visible in the styles toolbar.

Here the cursor is positioned in text formatted in bold.
This display is only shown when the cursor or selection is in or on manually-formatted
text. In the rest of the text of the paragraph the style selector display will be normal,
without the bold highlight and the + sign.

Display for text styles:

If you apply a text style 239 to text within a paragraph formatted with a style the display in
the style selector changes to the name of the text style when the cursor or the selection
is in or on the text formatted with the text style. Here too, the style name is shown in bold
and followed by a + sign to indicate that it is additional formatting within a paragraph
formatted with another style. For example, if the cursor is in a passage of text formatted
with a text style called T_Entry the display in the style selector would look like this:

The attributes of the style are visible in the styles toolbar.

For example here the style uses Verdana 11 point italic.
This display is the same no matter what the name of the paragraph style is. The style
selector display will switch back to the name of the paragraph style when the cursor is
positioned in text without additional formatting. (The other indicators in the Font
Formatting Toolbar also switch to the attributes of the text style, of course – this is visible
in the example.)

Display for no style:

If the current paragraph has no style or the definition of the style at the cursor is
contradictory the style selector display will be empty. This display is also shown when
you select (Remove Style) option at the top of the style selector list, which clears the
current style.

The style display is also empty when you paste text from Word or another word
processor that uses styles. The formatting of the text is imported but the styles with

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 247

which the text is tagged are not.

Display for an unknown imported style:

If you paste text from another Help & Manual project containing styles that are not
defined in your current project the unknown style will be displayed in red in the style
selector.

· See Defining styles 241 for instructions on how to add styles from pasted text like
this to the current document.

See also:
Dynamic Styles 746 (Reference)
Formatting text with styles 234
Defining styles 237
7.5.8 Editor, help file and print styles
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to use different fonts for electronic and print output 247
Completely different styles for electronic and print output 248
Different styles for the editor view 248

Help & Manual can maintain up to three different versions of all your styles: One for the Help
& Manual editor, one for electronic help files (Winhelp, HTML Help, Browser-based Help,
Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0, and eBooks) and one for printed output (PDF, manuals
printed with File > Print User Manual and Word RTF).
This means that you can automatically use different fonts and formatting styles for electronic
help and printed manuals. If you want you can also use a different font and style setup for
editing in Help & Manual, although you will normally want the editor layout to look like one of
your output formats.

How to use different fonts for electronic and print output:

The most common use for this function is to use a different base font for your electronic
help and printed documentation. For example, many authors use a sans-serif font like
Arial for electronic help and a serif font like Times New Roman for printed
documentation. (PDF is always classed as printed documentation for this function.)

1. Select Edit Styles in the Format menu.

2. Select the Normal style. This is usually the style that all other styles are based on.

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248 Help & Manual Online Help

3. Select the tab for the output format you want to change (Help File View or Print
Manual View) and check the option. The tab where this
option is not selected will have the same style settings as the editor view.
4. Select in this tab and change the font. For example, to
change the font to Times Roman for PDF and printed manuals select Times
Roman for the Normal style in the Print Manual View tab.

Only change the font face, don't make any changes to any other attributes unless
you want these changes to propagate through all the styles in your entire project.
5. Repeat for any other styles that use a font different from the font in Normal and for
any styles that are not based on Normal.
See About inheritance in styles 749 for some important background
information on how inheritance works in Help & Manual's dynamic styles.
This is particularly relevant for this function.

Completely different styles for electronic and print output:

If you want you can also create completely different layouts for electronic and print
output, with a completely different appearance for your styles in each format.
Remember that you can only redefine existing styles for each output format. You cannot
have different styles for each format because the styles are attached to your text by
name. There is only one list of styles, but each style can have up to three different
definitions, for Editor, Print and Help view.
· Proceed as described above and edit all the style attributes you want to change for
each output format.

Different styles for the editor view:

You can also use different style definitions in the editor view. If you do this remember
that output formats for which is not selected automatically have
the same style definitions as the editor.
If you want the editor styles to have different style definitions from both the help file and
the print manual output then select in both the Print Manual View
and the Help File View tabs. Then define the styles as you want in all three tabs.

See also:
About inheritance in styles 749
Defining styles 237
Editing styles 243
The Format Menu 704 (Reference)

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 249

7.5.9 Image caption and comment styles

IN THIS TOPIC:
Editing the caption and comment styles 249
Formatting caption and comment texts manually 249

Image captions 314 and comments/bookmarks 204 are formatted with two standard styles
called Image Caption and Comment. These styles are applied automatically to all image
captions and comments and they are the only styles that these elements can use.
This means that all image captions and all comments/bookmarks in your project will have
the same style, although you can change the formatting of individual captions and
comments by applying manual formatting (see below).

Restrictions:
Unlike all the other styles in Help & Manual the Image Caption and Comment styles have
a number of restrictions:
Ø These styles only have font attributes. Even if you set paragraph attributes in the
style definition they will simply be ignored.
Ø All the text in captions and comments has same font attributes. For example, if
bold or underlined are selected all the text will be bold and/or underlined. You
cannot format individual words differently from the rest of the text.
Ø Image captions are always centered, comments are always left-aligned. Since the
styles do not have paragraph attributes you cannot change these settings.

Editing the caption and comment styles:

Select Format > Edit Styles, then select the Comment or Image Caption style from the list
and edit its font attributes. (Don't bother editing the Paragraph and Border/Backgrounds
attributes because these are ignored for these styles.)
· See Defining and editing styles 237 for more information.

Formatting caption and comment texts manually:

You can also change the formatting of individual captions and comments manually:
· Just click on the graphic or comment in the editor to select it, then select the font
attribute you want to apply (bold, underlined, font etc).
All formatting will be applied to the entire comment or caption text. You
cannot apply different formatting to parts of the text.
Remember that you cannot apply paragraph attributes, they will simply
be ignored.

See also:
Defining and editing styles 237
Inserting graphics and screenshots 314

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 250 Help & Manual Online Help

Comments and bookmarks 204

7.5.10 Copying styles from other projects
IN THIS TOPIC:
Copying a project stylesheet to a new project 250
Copying a project stylesheet to an existing project 250
Copying individual styles from one project to another 250

Once you have created styles in one project you don't need to redefine them when you
create a new project. You can copy styles between projects, both individually and as
complete collections, which are referred to as "stylesheets".
Note that unlike many word processors Help & Manual does not store its project stylesheets
in separate files. Instead, they are stored in the project files along with all the other project
settings. This is why it is necessary to import them from the project file when you want to
copy them, instead of selecting a different stylesheet.

Copying a project stylesheet to a new project:

If you are creating a new project the easiest way to copy the stylesheet from an existing
project is to use the existing project as a "template" for the new project. Then all the
styles of the existing project will be included in the new project automatically, along with
all of the project's other settings. This is by far the quickest way to set up a new project if
you wish to continue using the same basic style, appearance and layout.
· See Templates for projects 463 for details and instructions.

Copying a project stylesheet to an existing project:

Note that importing a stylesheet completely replaces the stylesheet of the current
project! This is not a merge process: All the styles in the current project will be deleted,
even if they do not have the same names as the styles in the source file.
1. Make a backup of your current project and store it in a safe place. (In case you
change your mind about deleting the styles in your current project.)
2. Select Format > Edit Styles and click on .
3. Select the .HMX project file you want to copy the stylesheet from and click on
.

Copying individual styles from one project to another:

You cannot copy individual styles from other projects directly but it is still possible with
this little trick:
1. Open the project you want to copy the style to. We will call this Project A.
2. Start a second instance of Help & Manual (just start the program again) and open
the project you want to copy the style from. We will call this Project B.
3. In Project B find a paragraph (for paragraph styles) or a piece of text (for text

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 Basic Working Procedures 251

styles) formatted with the style you want to copy. Copy this paragraph or text to an
empty paragraph in Project A. If you now click in this text the name of its style will
be displayed in red in the style selector, like this:

4. Click anywhere in the copied text and select Format > Create Style from Selection.
5. Select the option (this is the default) and enter a name for the new
style. You can use the name shown in the style selector or another name.

6. Select if you are creating a paragraph style, leave it unselected

if you are defining a text style.
7. If you want to make the new style part of another group of styles you can also
select a parent for the style in the Based on style: field. (If you do not do this the
new style will become the parent of a new group of styles and will not be affected
by global changes made to other styles.)
8. Click on to define the new style.

See also:
Templates for projects 463
Defining styles 240
7.5.11 Styles and tables
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to apply a style to the table paragraph 252
How to apply styles to the contents of tables 252

When applying styles 228 to tables it is important to understand how tables are inserted in
your project. A table is basically an object in a paragraph of its own (you can't insert anything
else in the paragraph). For formatting purposes you can think of a table as a paragraph
containing a single character.
This means that can you can apply styles to both the paragraph containing the table and to
the content paragraphs inside the table cells. When doing this it is important to understand
how it works:

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 252 Help & Manual Online Help

Style applied to "table paragraph":

The font attributes of the style are ignored. Only the indents, paragraph spacing,
borders and background are applied.
Although you can use this to apply backgrounds and an outside border to your table
it is best not to do this. Use the table's own borders and backgrounds formatting, this
will prevent possible inconsistencies in printouts and some output formats.

Style applied to content paragraphs inside the table:

This is exactly the same as applying styles to any other paragraphs. All the style
attributes are applied to the paragraphs or selected text in the same way as in the
normal editor window.

How to apply a style to the table paragraph:

1. Click on in the Toolbar to display paragraph marks (this makes it easier to see what
you are doing).
2. Click to the right of the table between the table and its paragraph mark so that you
can see the blinking editing cursor between the table and the paragraph mark.
3. Select the style you want to apply in the drop-down style list in the Toolbar.

How to apply styles to the contents of tables:

· Select text and paragraphs and apply styles just as you would in the normal editor.
You can also apply styles to multiple paragraphs in multiple cells by selecting the cells
and then applying the style.
· Note that if you want to apply a style to all the paragraphs in a table you must select
the entire table by clicking and dragging inside the table. If you click in the left margin
to select the table you will not be able to apply styles because then the table is
selected and not its contents.

See also:
Working with Tables 332
7.5.12 Numbered and bulleted lists
In Help & Manual the system for handling and formatting numbered and bulleted lists is
separate from the dynamic styles. You have extensive control over list formatting and
appearance and you can customize your list definitions, but you cannot create style
definitions for lists and include them in the styles accessed with Format > Edit Styles.
This chapter describes how to use numbered and bulleted lists and how to change their
appearance.

List definitions are not dynamic styles

It is important to understand that list definitions are not dynamic styles. They are not part

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 Basic Working Procedures 253

of Help & Manual's dynamic styles 234 system. This means you cannot create dynamic
list styles that change all linked lists when you change the style definition.
This is much less of a restriction than it sounds, however. List definitions only define the
bullet character, the numbering format and the levels for numbered lists using outline
numbering. The appearance of the text in a list paragraph is still fully controlled by the
dynamic style attached to the text or paragraph that is part of the list.
List indents are a special case. See Adjusting list indents 264 for more details.

See also:
Formatting text with styles 234
7.5.12.1 Bulleted Lists

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to make a quick bulleted list 253
Changing the bulleted list style 253
Customizing a bulleted list definition 254

How to make a quick bulleted list:

This describes the quick way to make a bulleted list. You can also select Format >
Bullets and Numbering to select the specific list definition you want to use.

Making a new list:

1. Click in the paragraph where you want to start the list.
2. Select in the Toolbar.
3. Start typing. Pressing Enter will create a new numbered list item.
4. Select again to turn the list off. Pressing Enter twice without typing any text
also turns the list off.

Turning existing paragraphs into a list:

1. Select 183 the paragraphs you want to turn into a bulleted list.
2. Select in the Toolbar.
If you are adding a bullet to a single paragraph select the entire paragraph
before applying the bullet. If you do not do this the paragraph formatting
may not work properly (particularly indents).

Changing the bulleted list style:

1. Click in the list entry (for a single entry) or select the entire list.
2. Select Format > Bullets and Numbering.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

254 Help & Manual Online Help

3. Select one of the predefined bulleted lists from the Gallery and click on .

OR:
Select one of the definitions and click on to modify the definition (in bulleted
lists you can only select a different bullet with this option).

The button resets the predefined lists to the default values. It is

only active if you have edited a definition.
See Adjusting list indents 264 for information on changing the list indent.

Customizing a bulleted list definition:

In bulleted lists you can only change the bullet character. All other formatting is handled
by the style of the paragraph used for the list.
1. Select Format > Bullets and Numbering, then select in the Bulleted tab
(see above).

2. Select one of the bullets displayed or click on to select a different

bullet character.
See Adjusting list indents 264 for information on changing the list indent.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 255

See also:
Adjusting list indents 264
7.5.12.2 Numbered lists

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to make a quick numbered list 255
Choosing the numbered list format 255
Restarting list numbering 256
Inserting un-numbered paragraphs in a numbered list 257

Changing the numbered list appearance 257

Customizing numbered list definitions 258

How to make a quick numbered list:

Making a new list:

1. Click in the paragraph where you want to start the list.
2. Select in the Toolbar.
3. Start typing. Pressing Enter will create a new numbered list item.
4. Select again to turn the list off. Pressing Enter twice without typing any text
also turns the list off.

Turning existing paragraphs into a list:

1. Select 183 the paragraphs you want to turn into a numbered list.
2. Select in the Toolbar.

Choosing the numbered list format:

1. Click in the paragraph where you want to start the list or select the paragraphs you
want to turn into a numbered list.
2. Select Format > Bullets and Numbering. to display the bullets and numbering 710
formatting dialog.
3. Select the Numbered tab and choose your list style from the gallery.
See below 257 for instructions on how to customize the list style.

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256 Help & Manual Online Help

Restarting list numbering:

Often you will want to reset the numbering of your lists, or set your lists to start with a
specific number.
1. Select the part of the list you want to renumber:
· To renumber the entire list you must select the entire list. If you select a single
entry only that entry will be renumbered, which can have unpredictable and
unwanted results.
· If you want to restart numbering in the middle of a list you must select from the
point where you want renumbering to start until the end of the list.
2. Select Format > Bullets and Numbering.

3. Select to reset the list numbering to start at 1 or to select the

number you want to start with.
Note that Restart Numbering actually creates a new list that begins at the
point where the numbering is restarted. If you restart numbering in the
middle of a list you are splitting the list into two lists with two numbering
sequences.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 257

Inserting un-numbered paragraphs in a numbered list:

Sometimes you want to insert a paragraph without numbering within a numbered list and
have the numbering continue normally after the paragraph. There is an easier way to do
this than resetting the numbering of the list:
1. Create all the text entries of the list with numbering, including the paragraph you
want to be un-numbered.
2. Click in the paragraph you want to be un-numbered and select in the Toolbar.
This will turn off numbering for that paragraph and the entries beneath the
paragraph will be re-numbered correctly. You can also select multiple paragraphs
and turn numbering off for them.
3. Now you can type text or insert a graphic in the un-numbered paragraph.
You can also restart numbering for lists that contain un-numbered
paragraphs (see above 256 ). After resetting the numbering the un-
numbered paragraphs will be numbered again.

Just select them and click on to switch the numbering off again.

Changing the numbered list appearance:

1. Click in the list entry (for a single entry) or select the entire list.
2. Select Format > Bullets and Numbering.

3. Select one of the predefined numbered lists from the Gallery and click on OK.
4. OR select one of the definitions and click on to modify the definition.

The button resets the predefined lists to the default values. It is

only active if you have edited a definition.
See Adjusting list indents 264 for information on changing the list indent.

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258 Help & Manual Online Help

Customizing numbered list definitions:

· Select a list definition in the numbered lists Gallery (see above) and select
to modify the definition.

Note that Levels and Start numbering at: only apply to Outline numbered
lists 259 (start numbering at is for sub-levels). Their settings are grayed out
for normal numbered lists.

Number style:
· You can choose a variety of numbering styles. Just select the style from the list, it
will be displayed automatically in the preview on the right.

Number format:
This field allows you to enter characters to be displayed to the left and the right of the
number.
· <L1> is the variable that enters the number in the list. Don't change or delete this
entry!
"L" stands for "level" and since there is only one level in a normal
numbered list <L1> is the only variable you can use here. You can use
other level variables (<L2>, <L3> and so on) in Outline numbered lists
259 .

1. Enter the characters you want to display with the list number to the left and right of
the <L1> variable.
Examples:
(<L1>) for (1), (2), (3)
[<L1>] for [1], [2], [3]
<L1>. for 1., 2., 3.
2. Click on OK to save your changed definition to the Gallery. This overwrites the
existing Gallery definition.

The button in the Gallery resets the predefined lists to the

default values.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 259

See Adjusting list indents 264 for information on changing the list indent.

See also:
Adjusting list indents 264
Formatting list numbers 265
7.5.12.3 Outline numbered lists

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to make an outline numbered list 259
Creating lower-level items 260
Restarting list numbering 260
Changing outline numbered list appearance 261
Customizing outline numbered list definitions 262

Outline numbered lists are pretty much the same as normal numbered lists except that they
also support multiple numbering levels and each level can have a different style. This is
much easier to demonstrate than to describe.

Example of an outline numbered list:

1. This is the first level of an outline numbered list.
a. The is the second level of the list.
b. This is another second-level list entry.
2. This is another first-level entry in an outline numbered list.
a. This is a second-level entry. In this list second-level entries are numbered with a,
b, c...
b. This is another second-level entry.
i) And this is a third-level entry. In this list third-level entries are numbered with i, ii,
iii...
ii) This is another third-level entry. You get the general idea...

How to make an outline numbered list:

1. Click in a paragraph or select the paragraphs you want to turn into a list and select
Format > Bullets and Numbering.
2. Select the Outline Numbered tab and choose an outline list style from the outline lists
gallery.

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260 Help & Manual Online Help

3. Click on to create the list.

All the items in the list will initially be top-level items. See below for
instructions on creating lower-level items.

Selecting in the Toolbar automatically creates a simple numbered list.

You can change a simple list to an outline list by selecting it and then
selecting a style for it in the Outline Numbered tab.

Creating lower-level items:

1. Click in the list entry you want to make a lower-level item.
2. Select in the Toolbar. Each time you click on the button the level of the current
item is reduced by one.
3. Select in the Toolbar to increase the level of the current item. Each time you click
this button the item level will be increased by one.
See Adjusting list indents 264 for information on changing the list indents.

Restarting list numbering:

Note that you can only reset the numbering for the top-level list entries using this
function, because the lower-level entries have their own independent numbering
sequences. To reset the numbering of lower-level entries you need to customize the list
definition (see below 262 ).
1. Select the entire outline numbered list you want to renumber.
2. Select Format > Bullets and Numbering.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 261

3. Select to reset the list numbering to start at 1 or to select the

number you want to start with.
This will only reset the numbering of the top-level entries. See
Customizing outline numbered list definitions 262 below for

instructions on resetting the numbering of lower-level entries.

Changing outline numbered list appearance:

1. Click in the list entry (for a single entry) or select the entire list. (It does not actually
make much sense to change the appearance for a single list entry...)
2. Select Format > Bullets and Numbering.

3. Select one of the predefined outline numbered lists from the Gallery and click on OK.
4. OR select one of the definitions and click on to modify the definition.

The button resets the predefined lists to the default values. It is

only active if you have edited a definition.
See Adjusting list indents 264 for information on changing the list indent.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

262 Help & Manual Online Help

Customizing outline numbered list definitions:

1. Select a list definition in the outline numbered lists Gallery (see above) and select
to modify the definition.

2. Edit the list definitions for each level of your list that you want to change. The results
for each level are displayed in the Preview box on the right.
Note that there is a separate definition for each level of your outline
numbered list! You must edit all the values for every list level that you want
to change.
3. Click on OK to save your new outline numbered list definition to the Gallery. This will
overwrite the current definition.

The button in the Gallery resets the predefined lists to the default
values.
See Adjusting list indents 264 for information on changing the list indent.

Number style:
You can choose a different numbering style for each level. Select the level from the
list on the left, then select the numbering style. The selected style will be displayed
automatically in the preview on the right.

Number format:
This field allows you to enter characters to be displayed to the left and the right of the
number for each level.
· <L1>, <L2>, <L3> and so on are the variables that enters the numbers in the list
for each level. Don't change or delete these entries! Also note that the number of
each variable must correspond to the level number. For example, <L1> is for level
1, <L6> for level 6, and so on.
· For each level, enter the characters you want to display with the list number to the
left and right of the <Lx> variable.
Examples:
(<L1>) for (1), (2), (3)

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 263

[<L3>] for [1], [2], [3]

<L9>. for 1., 2., 3.

Start numbering at:

This setting allows you to set the number at which numbering is to begin for the
current level. The setting is stored separately for each level and must be set for each
level.

Legal numbering style:

Activates legal numbering style for outline numbered lists, with all the list numbers at
the left margin. Must be set separately for each level of an outline numbered list!

· You cannot have different indent sizes for individual levels in outline numbered
lists. Because of this the legal numbering style is preferable for lists with large
numbers of levels otherwise you would have a very large indent for the top level
and smaller indents for the lower levels, which does not look so harmonious.

Level reset:
When this is selected the numbering of sub-levels in outline numbered lists always
re-starts with 1 or the equivalent. Otherwise the numbering continues from one sub-
level to the next. Must be selected separately for each level of the outline numbered
list!

Changing the number of levels:

By default outline numbered lists have 9 levels. You can increase or decrease this
number with the Count: setting. The maximum number of levels is 20. Even 9 is
actually far too many – lists should never have more than four or five levels at the
maximum, otherwise they are much too confusing for the reader.

See also:
Numbered lists 255
Adjusting list indents 264

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 264 Help & Manual Online Help

7.5.12.4 Adjusting list indents

IN THIS TOPIC:
How list indents are handled 264
How to adjust the indent of a list 264
Turning indented paragraphs into lists 264
Indent problems in outline numbered lists 265

In most cases you will not need to change the standard indent that is applied to your bulleted
and numbered lists. If you do want to change the indent you need to understand how Help &
Manual handles these indents.

How Help & Manual handles list indents:

· Normally lists have their own "hidden" indents that are managed separately from the
indent of the paragraph in which you create the list. This is why the indent of the list is
not reflected in the formatting ruler above the editor window.
· As soon as you adjust the paragraph indent the separate hidden list indent is switched
off. From then on the list indent is "linked" to the indent of the paragraph. Then the
indent is shown by the controls in the formatting ruler above the editor.
· The indent and other paragraph properties of a list are controlled by the formatting of
the first item in the list. Changing the indent of the first item changes the entire list, but
changing any other items will not change anything.

How to adjust the indent of a list:

1. Click in the first item or select the entire list.
2. Adjust the indent by dragging the ruler controls of the Indent tool or by selecting
Format > Paragraph and adjusting the indent values.

Turning indented paragraphs into lists:

When you select indented paragraphs or paragraphs with an indented style and turn
them into a list the indent may seem to disappear at first – the list will jump to the left
margin and the formatting of the numbers or bullets may look a little strange at first. This
is a result of the interaction between the internal list indent and the paragraph indent.
· If this happens just click on or twice to turn the list off and on again, this
should correct the problem.
· When formatting individual paragraphs as lists you must select at least two lines of
the paragraph for the list formatting to work properly. If you don't do this the indent
will be reset to an undefined value.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 265

Indent problems in outline numbered lists:

The indents in outline numbered lists are also controlled by the first element in the entire
list. This means that you can only set one indent size for all the elements in the list,
including all the lower levels.
Because of this it is better to use legal style numbering 263 for outline lists, otherwise the
indent for the higher levels will not look so good because there will be a much larger gap
between the numbers and the text than for the lower levels.

See also:
Formatting list numbers 265
7.5.12.5 Formatting list numbers

Numbered lists and outline numbered lists take the formatting of their numbers from the last
character in the first item of the list. For example, if the last character in this is bold the
numbers in the entire list will also be bold. You can make use of this fact to apply different
formatting to the numbering of your lists to make the lists more attractive.

How to change the formatting of list numbers:

· Add a space character at the end of the first item in the list.
· Select the space character and apply the formatting you want to apply to your list
numbers. For example, if you make this space character bold and italic your list
numbers will be bold and italic.
Example:
1. This is the first item. The invisible space at the end of this item is formatted bold
and italic.
2. This is the second item. The formatting of the space at the end of this item has no
effect on the numbering of the list. Only the formatting of the last character in the
first line has an effect.

See also:
Adjusting list indents 264
7.5.12.6 HTML list output format

By default Help & Manual outputs numbered and bulleted lists as tables in HTML-based
output formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks, Visual Studio Help). This is
necessary to obtain accurate formatting because the rendering of lists varies very
considerably from one browser to another.
Even HTML Help, which uses Internet Explorer for HTML rendering, will frequently produce

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 266 Help & Manual Online Help

very unsatisfactory list formatting if you do not use tables. This applies particularly to more
complex lists and the indents used in lists.

How to choose the HTML list output format:

If you want you can configure your project to output lists as standard HTML <OL> and
<UL> tags with <LI> list elements. This will produce less attractive formatting and layout
in many cases and the appearance will vary greatly from browser to browser. However, it
may be necessary for some applications.
· Go to Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help > HTML Export Options 601
and deselect the option Export lists as tables.
Note that the HTML Export Options settings are available in several different
sections in Project Properties. These are shared settings used by all HTML-
based output formats and it doesn't matter where you access them.

See also:
HTML Export Options 601
7.5.12.7 Formatting lists with styles

IN THIS TOPIC:
Lists must have at least two entries 266
Applying paragraph styles to lists 266
Using indented styles with lists 267
Turning indented paragraphs into lists 267

You can apply styles to bulleted and numbered lists but there are a couple of things you
need to bear in mind when doing this.

Lists must have at least two entries:

Styles with paragraph attributes can only be used on numbered and bulleted lists with at
least two entries. If you apply a style to a list with only one entry some attributes will not
work properly. For example, the paragraph attributes of the style may not be applied,
even if you select the entire list entry paragraph.
· To apply a style to a list with only one entry just press Enter at the end of the
paragraph to create another entry. Then apply the style to both entries and delete
the second entry.

Applying paragraph styles to lists:

If you only need to apply the paragraph attributes of a style to a list you don't need to
select anything. Just click in the first entry of the list and select the style. This will
automatically format the entire list.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 267

Using indented styles with lists:

The interaction between the indents in lists and the indents in styles is quite complex.
You can apply styles with paragraph indents to lists but it's better not to use styles with
hanging indents. This will conflict with the hanging indent in the list and can produce
unexpected and undesirable results!
· See Adjusting list indents 264 for more details on this.

Turning indented paragraphs into lists:

When you select indented paragraphs or paragraphs with an indented style and turn
them into a list the indent may seem to disappear at first – the list will jump to the left
margin and the formatting of the numbers or bullets may look a little strange at first. This
is a result of the interaction between the internal list indent and the paragraph indent.
· If this happens just click on or twice to turn the list off and on again, this
should correct the problem.
· If the list only has one entry always select at least two lines of the paragraph
before selecting or .

See also:
Adjusting list indents 264
Formatting list numbers 265
7.5.13 Formatting program source code
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to format program code 267
Editing the syntax highlighting style 268
Customizing the syntax highlighter 268

Examples of program source code are much easier to read if reserved words, comments,
identifiers and so on are highlighted as they are in a modern programming editor. Help &
Manual's Syntax Highlighting function does this for you. It understands the syntax of Pascal,
C++, C#, Visual Basic, ANSI SQL and Visual Objects. It knows the reserved words of
these languages and can distinguish between plain text, comments, strings, numbers and
even compiler directives, where they are supported. You can also add your own reserved
words.

Support for other languages

You can also use the syntax highlighter if you program in a different language. Just
use the most similar syntax parser and customize it for your needs – you can load
your own list of reserved words from a file.

How to format program code:

1. Paste your program code into your topic and select it.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

268 Help & Manual Online Help

2. Select Syntax Highlighting in the Format menu or click on the drop-down arrow next
to in the Toolbar, then select the language parser you want to use from the list.
Once you have chosen a language parser once it is set as the default until
you select a different language. You can then select it directly by clicking on
the icon in the toolbar.

Editing the syntax highlighting style:

· The syntax highlighter uses a standard style called Code Example for the font and
paragraph attributes. By default this style is set to Courier New, 8 points, no word wrap
and keep paragraph lines together.
· You cannot delete or rename this style but you can edit it. Just position the cursor in a
piece of text formatted with the syntax highlighter and select Format > Edit Styles to
open the style editing dialog with the Code Example style selected. See Editing styles
243 for details.

Customizing the syntax highlighter:

· Select Syntax Highlighting in the Format menu or click on the drop-down arrow next
to in the Toolbar, then select Customize.

Font color and style:

You can define the font style and color for the supported elements for each language
parser. To change the standard syntax highlighting font face click on and
edit the Code Example style that is used automatically by the syntax highlighter (see
above 268 ).

Loading your own reserved words:

You can add your own reserved words to the lists used by the syntax highlighter or
completely replace the highlighter's lists with your own lists:
1. Create a plain text file containing your reserved words, with one word on each line.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 269

2. Select the button in the Load reserved words from file: field and select your
reserved words text file.
3. Select to merge your list of words with the syntax
highlighter's list for the current programming language. Deselect this option to
replace the highlighter's list with your list.

Restoring the default settings

· Clicking on restores all the syntax highlighter's settings for the current
language to Help & Manual's default values, including the list of reserved words.

See also:
Editing styles 243
7.5.13.1 Examples

Pascal code:
{ Syntax Highlighting }

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);

var
Number, I, X: Integer;
begin
{$IFDEF WIN32}
Number := 654321;
{$ELSE}
Number := 123456;
{$ENDIF}
Caption := 'The number is ' + IntToStr(Number);

for I := 0 to Number do
begin
Inc(X);
ListBox1.Items.Add(IntToStr(X));
end;

asm
MOV AX, 1234H
MOV Number, AX
end;
end;

C++ code:
// Syntax Highlighting
void __fastcall TForm1::Button1Click(TObject *Sender)
{
Caption = "The number is " + IntToStr(i);

int i = 123456;
double d = 123.45;
char c = 'a';

#ifdef FULLMOON

asm
{
ASM MOV AX, 0x1234

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270 Help & Manual Online Help

ASM MOV i, AX
}
#endif

Visual Basic code:

'******** Visual Basic syntax highlighting example ********
'**********************************************************
Option Explicit

' User-defined type to store information about child forms

Type FormState
Deleted As Integer
Dirty As Integer
Color As Long
End Type

Public Document() As New frmNotePad

Public gFindString As String
Public Const ThisApp = "MDINote"

Function AnyPadsLeft() As Integer

Dim i As Integer ' Counter variable

' Cycle through the document array.

' Return true if there is at least one open document.
For i = 1 To UBound(Document)
If Not FState(i).Deleted Then
AnyPadsLeft = True
Exit Function
End If
Next
End Function

SQL code:
Select BUYERID, max(PRICE)
from ANTIQUES
group by BUYERID
having PRICE 1000;

Select BUYERID
from ANTIQUES
where PRICE > (Select avg(PRICE) + 100 from ANTIQUES);

alter table ANTIQUES

add (PRICE DECIMAL(8,2) Null);

insert into ANTIQUES (BUYERID, SELLERID, ITEM)

values (01, 21, 'Ottoman');

delete from ANTIQUES

where ITEM = 'Ottoman'
And BUYERID = 01
And SELLERID = 21;

update ANTIQUES
Set PRICE = 500.00
where ITEM = 'Chair';

create index OID_IDX On ANTIQUEOWNERS (OWNERID);

drop index OID_IDX;

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 271

7.5.14 Replacing Formatting and Styles

The Format > Replace Formats/Styles Function added in Help & Manual 4.2 makes
manipulating styles and formatted text radically easier. The advantages of this function
include:
Integrating imported text into your stylesheet
This is probably the most important use for this function. Imported formatted text is all
formatted with inline formatting. You can now quickly turn this into styled text, either by
applying existing styles or by creating new ones and applying them as part of the
Search/Replace process.
Please study this entire chapter first, before you try to integrate
your imported text into your Help & Manual stylesheet! This will be
easier because then you will have a better understanding of how
the function works.

Replacing one style with another

If you suddenly realize that all the texts formatted with StyleA should really be
formatted with StyleB you can now make the change in your entire project in seconds.

Turning inline formatting into styles

If you have a document with a lot of inline formatting you can now easily tidy it up by
automatically applying a style to all inline-formatted text with specific attributes. You
can do this by applying an existing style or you can create a new style as part of the
Search/Replace process

Turning styles into inline formatting and replacing formatting

If you want, you can even convert styles into inline-formatted text or just replace one
type of inline formatting with another.

See also:
Importing Data into Existing Projects 155
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Dynamic Styles 746
7.5.14.1 Introduction to style replacement

Before you start using this function, please read through the following explanations carefully.
They will make it much easier to use this function effectively and get the most out of it. Since
formatting is complex the options must also be quite complex. However, once you
understand how the system works you will find that using the function is really quite
straightforward.
If you are an experienced computer user you will probably find that you will be able to use
the function after reading this section only. If you require more information continue to the
next chapters and follow the instructions provided there.

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272 Help & Manual Online Help

How styles and formatting replacement works:

Font and paragraph
attributes are separate
The first important thing to
understand when you are
using this function is that font
attributes and paragraph
attributes are internally
separate. In Help & Manual
the two sets of attributes are
combined in paragraph styles.
However, every paragraph
style actually has two sets of
attributes with the same
name: one set of font
attributes and one set of
paragraph attributes.
The Replace Styles dialog
For this reason the Replace
Styles dialog has two modes,
which must be used
separately: One mode for the
font attributes and one mode
for the paragraph attributes.

Attributes in the left column

must all match
The search is performed for
all the attributes in the left
column (Search for Format/
Style:). All the replacement or
removal operations are only
performed on text that returns
a perfect match for all the
options in the left column.
This also applies for the
operations defined by the
Inline Formatting: settings (
Remove inline formatting
etc). The operations will only
be performed on text that
matches the search perfectly!

On opening the left column is

set to the current attributes
at the cursor

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 273

When you open the Replace

Styles dialog the search
settings in the left column are
set to the attributes of the text
at the current cursor position.
If you perform your search
without changing anything in
the left column, any
operations you choose in the
right column will only be
performed on text that
precisely matches the text
attributes at the current
cursor position. This includes
both the style name (which is
just one attribute among
many) and all the other
attributes.
For example, if the cursor is
in the normal text of a
paragraph styled with StyleA,
any operations will only be
performed on text styled with
StyleA and all its explicit
attributes. Text within StyleA
text with different formatting
will be ignored and will remain
unchanged, unless you use a
"fuzzy" search (see below).

Inline formatting is also only

changed if it matches
Even if one of the Remove
inline formatting options is
activated, the operation will
only be performed on inline
formatted text that matches
the settings in the left
column.
If all the settings are explicit
and match the style definition
no inline formatting will be
changed because it will never
match the settings. By
definition, inline-formatted text
within styled text is always
different from the formatting

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

274 Help & Manual Online Help

of the styled text.

To apply the inline formatting
options at the same time as
the explicit options you must
use a "fuzzy" search (see
below).

The match can be either

precise or fuzzy
The search is precise for
attributes in the left column
that are specified explicitly.
The search is "fuzzy" for
attributes that are specified
as (Any).
For example, if you want to
include inline-formatted text
that has a different font in
your search you must set the
Font Face setting in the left
column (Search for Format/
Style:) to (Any). Then the
search will find both text
matching the main style and
text with a different font.
The same applies in the same
way to all other attributes.

The style name is just one

attribute among many
Finally, remember that the
name of a style is just one
attribute among many. It too
can be switched to (Any) to
create a fuzzy search, and
doing this does not change
any of the other attributes.
This is so important that we'll
repeat it: Changing the style
name at the top of the column
does not change any of the
other attributes, it only
changes the style name. So
you can search for the same
attributes in combination with
the style name (to find a style

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 275

that has already been

applied) or without the style
name (to find text that you
want to restyle or integrate in
an existing style).

See also:
Importing Data into Existing Projects 155
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Dynamic Styles 746
7.5.14.2 Font styles and formatting

IN THIS TOPIC:
Replacing one existing font style with another - exact search 275
Replacing one existing font style with another - fuzzy search 276
Applying styles to imported and other unstyled text 279
Reformatting manually-formatted text with styles 279
Reformatting manually-formatted text without using styles 281
Turning styles into manually-formatted text 282

Before you try to follow these instructions, please study the Introduction to style replacement
271 for an explanation of how the Replace Styles function works. This will make it much

easier for you to use this feature.

Replacing one existing font style with another – exact search:

This is the most straightforward operation. It simply takes texts formatted with one style
and applies a different style to them. The exact search replaces only text formatted with
the named style. Any inline-formatted text within text formatted with the target style will
be protected, as will any text formatted with other styles.
Note that this method is for text already formatted with a style. See
below 279 for instructions on how to deal with texts that do not have styles
applied.
1. Select multiple topics if you want to replace only in some topics.
If you only want to replace styles in specific topics select those topics in the TOC
first, using Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click. Select the topic containing the example of the
style you want to replace last, so that you can select the style example in the next
step.
2. Select a style in the editor, then select Replace Styles and Font mode.
Click inside some text formatted with the style you want to replace, then select
Format > Replace Styles. Then select the mode at the top of the dialog
that appears.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

276 Help & Manual Online Help

3. Leave all left column attributes unchanged.

All the formatting attributes of the current style are displayed in the left column and
the style name is displayed at the top of the left column. Don't change any of the
left-column font attribute settings – the attributes must all match exactly for an
exact search.
4. Select the new style in the right column.
Select the new style you want to apply from the drop-down list directly below the
Change to Format/Style: heading on the right. If you need to create the style first,
select .
5. Leave inline formatting settings unchanged.
Leave the option Remove inline formatting activated. This will only replace inline
formatting matching the settings in the left column, so any manually-formatted text
with different attributes will be protected. When you are performing an exact
search this option is effectively inactive.
6. Click on to execute.
A dialog will be displayed allowing you to choose where you want to replace: In the
entire project, the main topics, the invisible topics or selected topics only. You can
also perform a test run to check how many styles would be found and replaced
before actually applying the changes.
Note that any changes in the current topic will only be visible in the editor after you
close the Replace Styles dialog.

Replacing one existing font style with another - fuzzy search:

This method allows you to extend the scope of your search, so that in addition to finding
text that exactly matches your style you can also apply the target style to other texts. For
example, it allows you to also reset inline-formatted texts within your search text.
Fuzzy searches only seem complicated at first, they are actually quite simple. If you have
trouble try out the examples at the bottom of the instructions, they will help demonstrate
how it works.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 277

1. Select multiple topics if you want to replace only in some topics.

If you only want to replace styles in specific topics select those topics in the TOC
first, using Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click. Select the topic containing the example of the
style you want to replace last, so that you can select the style example in the next
step.
2. Select a style in the editor, then select Replace Styles and Font mode.
Click inside some text formatted with the style you want to replace, then select
Format > Replace Styles. Then select the mode at the top of the dialog
that appears.

3. Set selected left-column attributes to (Any).

All the formatting attributes of the current style are displayed in the left column and
the style name is displayed at the top of the left column.
Now change those attributes in the left column that you want to make "fuzzy"
to (Any)
· For example, suppose you know that the text whose styles you want to replace
contains sub-texts formatted with a different font that you want to reset. To do
this you need to set the Font Face attribute to (Any).
· If you also want to reset text formatted with a different size you must also set
the Font Size attribute to (Any).
· If you also want to reset text formatted with bold or italics you must set the
Font Styles attribute to (Any).
· The same principle applies to all the attributes in the list. To match any
differences from the standard style settings you need to set the attributes for
those differences to (Any). You can even do this for the style name, but be
careful – this may reset more texts than you expect!

4. Select the new style in the right column.

Select the new style you want to apply from the drop-down list directly below the
Change to Format/Style: heading on the right. If you need to create the style first,

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

278 Help & Manual Online Help

select .
5. Adjust the inline formatting settings for the desired result:
As soon as you have activated fuzzy options in the search can also start to find
manually-applied formatting within your texts, i.e. formatting that does not match
the standard style settings. This makes the Inline Formatting: options relevant.
"Remove inline formatting" resets all matching texts
· This option will reset all inline-formatted texts that match the search settings in
the left-hand column to the settings of the target style selected.
· Any texts that don't match the search settings will not be reset. This means
that you can "protect" texts formatted in certain ways by choosing your search
settings carefully. The best way to learn how to do this is to experiment with
some test texts.

"Remove except B/I/U/Color" protects these attributes

· The second option "protects" bold, italic, underlined and colored text. This
allows you to be a little less careful with your left column settings and still
protect these formatting styles, which are very frequently applied manually.

"Custom Settings" lets you choose for yourself

· This option gives you full control over the target formatting, in the same way
that the individual settings in the left hand column let you control the search
settings.
· By default all the attributes are set to Use style attributes. To change the
output formatting just change any of the settings.
Note that using this option will create new inline formatting
within the styled text!

6. Click on to execute.
A dialog will be displayed allowing you to choose where you want to replace: In the
entire project, the main topics, the invisible topics or selected topics only. You can
also perform a test run to check how many styles would be found and replaced
before actually applying the changes.
Note that any changes in the current topic will only be visible in the editor after you
close the Replace Styles dialog.
Click here for some examples of fuzzy searches

Objective: Search for settings: Change to settings:

Replace one style with · Font Style Name set to · Font Style Name set to
another. Leave manually- the name of the source target style
applied bold, italics, and style · Inline Formatting set to
underlining within the text · Font Styles and Remove except B/I/
intact. Underline set to (Any) U/Color
· All other attributes
unchanged

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 279

Replace one style with · Font Style Name set to · Font Style Name set to
another. Change manually- the name of the source target style.
formatted text with a style · Inline Formatting set to
different font to the target · Font Face, Font Styles, Remove except B/I/
font, leaving all manually- Underline and Text U/Color
applied bold, italics, Color set to (Any)
underlining and text color · All other attributes
within the target text intact. unchanged
Replace one style with · Font Style Name set to · Font Style Name set to
another and reset all the name of the source target style
manually-applied formatting, style · Inline Formatting set to
including bold, italics, · All other attributes set Remove inline
underlining and color. to (Any) formatting

Applying styles to imported and other unstyled text:

Unstyled text is text that does not yet have any Help & Manual style applied to it. This is
visible in the style selector in the toolbar – when it is blank instead of displaying a style
the text at the current cursor position is unstyled.

The style selector looks like this when the cursor is on unstyled text
Basically you proceed exactly as you would for performing an exact or fuzzy search (see
above). When you click in styleless text before selecting the Replace Styles function the
Font Style Name field in the left column of the dialog automatically displays (Unstyled
text only).
Of course, you can also select (Unstyled text only) in the Font Style Name
field manually, no matter where the cursor was when you selected Replace
Styles.
All the other settings and procedures are exactly the same. This is because the only
difference between styled and unstyled text is that styled text has a style name assigned
to it. Remember: the style name is just one attribute among many.
For more details see the example in Styling imported text 290 .

Reformatting manually-formatted text with styles:

Frequently you will format certain texts in a different way to highlight them or make them
easier to identify. For example, you might format the names of menu items using a
different font and italics. The objective here is to apply named styles to these texts, so
that you can later change the formatting of all of them just by changing the style
definition.
This is a two-step process: First you need to create a style on the basis of the manual
formatting, then you need to use Replace Styles to apply this style to all the examples of
that formatting in your project. After you do this you can then change the formatting of all
these texts just by editing the style definition.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

280 Help & Manual Online Help

Step 1: Create a new style on the basis of the formatting

1. Select an example of the text you want to use as the model for the style (click in
the text or select it).
2. Select Format > Create Style from Selection and create a new text style 241 on the
basis of the formatting.
This example creates a text style because it is assumed you are applying
style to text within paragraphs. You can also use the same approach for
creating paragraph styles, but then you must also apply the paragraph
format 282 to the text as well in a second operation.

Step 2: Apply the style to all the texts with matching formatting
1. Select multiple topics if you want to replace only in some topics.
If you only want to replace styles in specific topics select those topics in the TOC
first, using Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click. Select the topic containing the example of the
style you want to replace last, so that you can select the style example in the next
step.

2. Select a style in the editor, then select Replace Styles and Font mode.
Click inside the example of the text you want to style, then select Format > Replace
Styles. Then select the mode at the top of the dialog that appears.
3. Select (Any text) for the Font Style Name.
If a style name is displayed in the Font Style Name: field in the left column change
it to (Any text). This is particularly important if you have selected the text with
which you just created the new style: Since the text you want to style does not yet
have the style name it will not be found unless you make this change.
Leave all other settings in the left column unchanged!
4. Select the name of the style you created in the right column.
Select the name of the new style you just created in the Change to Format/Style
column. Leave all other settings in this column unchanged. The inline formatting
settings are irrelevant because you are performing an exact search.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 281

5. Click on to execute.
A dialog will be displayed allowing you to choose where you want to replace: In the
entire project, the main topics, the invisible topics or selected topics only. You can
also perform a test run to check how many styles would be found and replaced
before actually applying the changes.
Note that any changes in the current topic will only be visible in the editor after you
close the Replace Styles dialog.

Reformatting manually-formatted text without using styles:

Sometimes you may just want to quickly replace one kind of formatting in your document
with another kind of formatting, without using styles at all. You do this by switching off
the style names in the search and target fields and then replacing the formatting.
1. Select multiple topics if you want to replace only in some topics.
If you only want to reformat text in specific topics select those topics in the TOC
first, using Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click. Select the topic containing the example of the
formatting you want to replace last, so that you can select the style example in the
next step.
2. Select a style in the editor, then select Replace Styles and Font mode.
Click inside some text with the formatting you want to change, then select Format
> Replace Styles. Then select the mode at the top of the dialog that
appears.
Leave the settings in the left column as they are or change them, depending on the
formatting you want to change.

3. Change the Font Style Name: setting in the left column to (Any text).
This will find all instances of the text formatted in exactly this way. You can also
use the option (Unstyled text only) if you only want to find text that has no style
applied to it. You may need to perform the search twice, once with each option, to
get all the matching paragraphs.)
4. Select the target style name setting.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 282 Help & Manual Online Help

In the Font Style Name: field in the right column select either (Keep style name) or
(Remove style name) . The first option will keep any style name explicitly
assigned to the reformatted text. The second option will remove any explicit style
name, so that the text is manually formatted only – it will then have the style name
of the paragraph surrounding it.
5. Select Custom Settings: in the right column.
Then manually select all the attributes that you want to apply to the text. All the
attributes you leave set to (Use style attributes) will remain unchanged.
6. Click on to execute.
A dialog will be displayed allowing you to choose where you want to replace: In the
entire project, the main topics, the invisible topics or selected topics only. You can
also perform a test run to check how many styles would be found and replaced
before actually applying the changes.
Note that any changes in the current topic will only be visible in the editor after you
close the Replace Styles dialog.

Turning styles into manually-formatted text:

This is just a variation on reformatting manually-formatted text without using styles.
Basically all you need to do is follow the instructions for reformatting manually formatted
text 281 with the following two changes:
1. Select the name of the style you want to remove in the left column.
2. Select (Remove style name) in the right column.

See also:
Importing Data into Existing Projects 155
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Dynamic Styles 746
7.5.14.3 Paragraph styles and formatting

IN THIS TOPIC:
Replacing one existing paragraph style with another - exact search 282

Replacing one existing paragraph style with another - fuzzy search 284

Applying paragraph styles to imported and other unstyled text 286

Reformatting manually-formatted paragraphs with styles 287
Reformatting manually-formatted paragraphs without using styles 288

Turning styled paragraphs into manually-formatted paragraphs 289

Replacing one existing paragraph style with another – exact search:

This is the most straightforward operation. It simply takes paragraphs formatted with one
style and applies a different style to them. The exact search replaces only the styles of
paragraphs formatted with the named style. Any inline-formatted text within text
formatted with the target style will be protected, as will any text formatted with other
styles.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 283

Note that this method is for paragraphs already formatted with a

paragraph style. See below 286 for instructions on how to deal with
paragraphs that do not have styles applied.
1. Select multiple topics if you want to replace only in some topics.
If you only want to replace styles in specific topics select those topics in the TOC
first, using Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click. Select the topic containing the example of the
style you want to replace last, so that you can select the style example in the next
step.
2. Select a style in the editor, then select Replace Styles and Paragraph mode.
Click inside some text formatted with the style you want to replace, then select
Format > Replace Styles. Then select the mode at the top of the
dialog that appears.

3. Leave all left column attributes unchanged.

All the formatting attributes of the current style are displayed in the left column and
the style name is displayed at the top of the left column. Don't change any of the
left-column paragraph attribute settings – the attributes must all match exactly for
an exact search.
4. Select the new style in the right column.
Select the new style you want to apply from the drop-down list directly below the
Change to Format/Style: heading on the right. If you need to create the style first,
select .
5. Leave the inline formatting settings unchanged.
Leave the option Remove inline formatting activated. This will only replace inline
paragraph formatting matching the settings in the left column, so any manually-
applied paragraph attributes will be protected. When you are performing an exact
search this option is effectively inactive.
Important: The target style will not be applied at all to paragraphs that do not
have precisely matching attributes. If you also want the style to be
applied to "modified" versions of the paragraphs you must use a "fuzzy"
search (see below 284 ).

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

284 Help & Manual Online Help

6. Click on to execute.
A dialog will be displayed allowing you to choose where you want to replace: In the
entire project, the main topics, the invisible topics or selected topics only. You can
also perform a test run to check how many styles would be found and replaced
before actually applying the changes.
Note that any changes in the current topic will only be visible in the editor after you
close the Replace Styles dialog.

Replacing one existing font style with another - fuzzy search:

This method allows you to extend the scope of your search, so that in addition to finding
paragraphs that exactly match your style you can also apply the target style to other
paragraphs. You will probably want to do this, because most texts will contain
paragraphs with additional manual indents and so on.
Fuzzy searches only seem complicated at first, they are actually quite simple. If you have
trouble try the examples at the bottom of the instructions, they will help demonstrate how
it works.
1. Select multiple topics if you want to replace only in some topics.
If you only want to replace styles in specific topics select those topics in the TOC
first, using Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click. Select the topic containing the example of the
style you want to replace last, so that you can select the style example in the next
step.
2. Select a style in the editor, then select Replace Styles and Paragraph mode.
Click inside some text formatted with the style you want to replace, then select
Format > Replace Styles. Then select the mode at the top of the
dialog that appears.

3. Set selected left-column attributes to (Any).

All the formatting attributes of the current style are displayed in the left column and
the style name is displayed at the top of the left column.
Now change those attributes in the left column that you want to make "fuzzy"

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 285

to (Any)
· For example, suppose you know that you have manually changed the indent of
some of the paragraphs formatted with the current style. To include these
paragraphs in the search set the Left Indent and/or Right Indent attributes to
(Any) .
· The same applies for all the other settings. It is the same principle: If you know
that you have manually changed any settings in paragraphs formatted with the
current style you must set those settings to (Any) to include the paragraphs in
the search.

4. Select the new style in the right column.

Select the new paragraph style you want to apply from the drop-down list directly
below the Change to Format/Style: heading on the right. If you need to create the
style first, select .
5. Adjust the inline formatting settings for the desired result.
As soon as you have activated fuzzy options in the search can also start to find
manually-applied paragraph formatting that does not match the standard style
settings. This makes the Inline Formatting: options relevant.
"Remove inline formatting" resets all matching paragraph settings
· This option will reset all manually-applied paragraph settings that match the
search settings in the left-hand column to the settings of the target style
selected.
· Any texts that don't match the search settings will not be reset. This means
that the target style will not be applied to paragraphs with settings that don't
match your combination of exact and fuzzy search options.

"Remove except Alignment+Indent" protects these attributes

· The second option "protects" alignment and indenting from being reset by the
target style. This allows you to be a little less careful with your left column
settings and still protect these formatting styles.

"Custom Settings" lets you choose for yourself

· This option gives you full control over the target formatting, in the same way
that the individual settings in the left hand column let you control the search
settings.
· By default all the attributes are set to Use style attributes. To change the
output formatting just change any of the settings.
Note that using this option will result in paragraphs with
additional manually-applied formatting!

6. Click on to execute.
A dialog will be displayed allowing you to choose where you want to replace: In the
entire project, the main topics, the invisible topics or selected topics only. You can
also perform a test run to check how many styles would be found and replaced
before actually applying the changes.

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286 Help & Manual Online Help

Note that any changes in the current topic will only be visible in the editor after you
close the Replace Styles dialog.
Click here for some examples of fuzzy searches

Objective: Search for settings: Change to settings:

Replace one paragraph style · Left Indent and/or Right · Font Style Name set to
with another. Include Indent set to (Any) or target paragraph style
paragraphs with manually- (Any value <> 0) name
modified indents in the · All other attributes · Inline Formatting set to
search. unchanged, including Remove except
Font Style Name Alignment+Indent
Replace one paragraph style · Left Indent and/or Right · Font Style Name set to
with another. Include Indent set to (Any) or target paragraph style
paragraphs with manually- (Any value <> 0), name
modified indents and Alignment set to (Any) · Inline Formatting set to
manually-modified alignment . Remove except
in the search. · All other attributes Alignment+Indent
unchanged, including
Font Style Name
Replace one paragraph style · Font Face, Font Styles, · Font Style Name set to
with another and reset all Underline and Text target style.
manually-applied paragraph Color set to (Any)
· Inline Formatting set to
formatting, including bold,
· All other attributes Remove inline
italics, underlining and color.
unchanged, including formatting
the style name.

Applying paragraph styles to imported and other unstyled text:

Unstyled text is text that does not yet have any Help & Manual style applied to it. This is
visible in the style selector in the toolbar – when it is blank instead of displaying a style
the text at the current cursor position is unstyled.

The style selector looks like this when the cursor is on unstyled text
Basically you proceed exactly as you would for performing an exact or fuzzy search (see
above). When you click in styleless text before selecting the Replace Styles function the
Font Style Name field in the left column of the Replace Styles dialog displays (Unstyled
text only).
Of course, you can also select (Unstyled text only) in the Font Style Name
field manually, no matter where the cursor was when you selected Replace
Styles. You must then select all the attributes in the left column manually.
All the other settings and procedures are exactly the same. This is because the only
difference between styled and unstyled text is that styled text has a style name assigned
to it. Remember: the style name is just one attribute among many.
For more details see the example in Styling imported text 290 .

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 287

Reformatting manually-formatted paragraphs with styles:

Frequently you will manually format some paragraphs in a different way from other
paragraphs in your project. After a while you may decide that there are enough of these
paragraphs to define a style for them. The following instructions explain how to use
Replace Styles to achieve this.
This is a two-step process: First you need to create a style on the basis of the manual
formatting, then you need to use Replace Styles to apply this style to all the matching
paragraphs in your project. After you do this you can then change the formatting of all
these paragraphs just by editing the style definition.

Step 1: Create a new style on the basis of the formatting

1. Click in the paragraph that you want to use as the model for the style.
2. Select Format > Create Style from Selection and create a new paragraph style 240
on the basis of the formatting.
The font attributes of the new paragraph style will be set automatically.
You can then use mode in a second pass to apply the font
styles to your target text.

Step 2: Apply the style to all the texts with matching formatting
1. Select multiple topics if you want to replace only in some topics.
If you only want to replace styles in specific topics select those topics in the TOC
first, using Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click. Select the topic containing the example of the
style you want to replace last, so that you can select the style example in the next
step.

2. Select a style in the editor, then select Replace Styles and Paragraph mode.
Click inside the example of the paragraph you want to style, then select Format >
Replace Styles. Then select the mode at the top of the dialog that
appears.
3. Select (Any text) for the Para Style Name.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

288 Help & Manual Online Help

If a style name is displayed in the Para Style Name: field in the left column change
it to (Any text). This will ensure that all paragraphs with matching attributes will be
found, including paragraphs that have no style applied. Of course, it also means
that you may also apply the style to some other paragraphs that happen to have
matching attributes.
Leave all other settings in the left column unchanged!
4. Select the name of the paragraph style you just created in the right column.
Select the name of the new style you just created in the Change to Format/Style
column. Leave all other settings in this column unchanged. The inline formatting
settings are irrelevant because you are performing an exact search.
5. Click on to execute.
A dialog will be displayed allowing you to choose where you want to replace: In the
entire project, the main topics, the invisible topics or selected topics only. You can
also perform a test run to check how many styles would be found and replaced
before actually applying the changes.
Note that any changes in the current topic will only be visible in the editor after you
close the Replace Styles dialog.

Reformatting manually-formatted paragraphs without using styles:

Sometimes you may just want to quickly replace one kind of paragraph formatting in
your document with another kind of formatting, without using styles at all. You do this by
switching off the style names in the search and target fields and then replacing the
formatting.
1. Select multiple topics if you want to replace only in some topics.
If you only want to reformat paragraphs in specific topics select those topics in the
TOC first, using Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click. Select the topic containing the example
of the formatting you want to replace last, so that you can select the style example
in the next step.
2. Select a paragraph in the editor, then select Replace Styles and Paragraph
mode.
Click inside a paragraph with the formatting you want to change, then select
Format > Replace Styles. Then select the mode at the top of the
dialog that appears.
Leave the settings in the left column as they are or change them, depending on the
formatting you want to change.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 289

3. Change the Para Style Name: setting in the left column to (Any text).
This will find all instances of the paragraph formatted in exactly this way. You can
also use the option (Unstyled text only) if you only want to find paragraphs that
has no style applied to it. (You may need to perform the search twice, once with
each option, to get all the matching paragraphs.)
4. Select the target style name setting.
In the Para Style Name: field in the right column select either (Keep style name) or
(Remove style name). The first option will keep any style name explicitly assigned
to the reformatted paragraph. The second option will remove any explicit style
name, so that the resulting paragraph is manually formatted only.
5. Select Custom Settings: in the right column.
Then manually select all the attributes that you want to apply to the text. All the
attributes you leave set to (Use style attributes) will remain unchanged.
6. Click on to execute.
A dialog will be displayed allowing you to choose where you want to replace: In the
entire project, the main topics, the invisible topics or selected topics only. You can
also perform a test run to check how many styles would be found and replaced
before actually applying the changes.
Note that any changes in the current topic will only be visible in the editor after you
close the Replace Styles dialog.

Turning styled paragraphs into manually-formatted paragraphs:

This is just a variation on reformatting manually-formatted paragraphs without using
styles. Basically all you need to do is follow the instructions for reformatting manually
formatted paragraphs 288 with the following two changes:
1. Select the name of the style you want to remove in the left column.
2. Select (Remove style name) in the right column.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 290 Help & Manual Online Help

See also:
Importing Data into Existing Projects 155
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Dynamic Styles 746
7.5.14.4 Styling imported text

When you import formatted text from other sources the formatting is retained but the text
does not have any styles. Effectively, it is all manually formatted. You can use the Replace
Styles function to integrate this formatting into the stylesheet of your project, either by
applying existing styles or by creating new styles and applying them.
This topic illustrates this by walking you through the steps of a typical example. For details
on how to perform the individual operations see the Font styles and formatting 275 and
Paragraph styles and formatting 282 topics earlier in this chapter.

Example: Applying the Normal style to imported body text

Let's assume that you want to apply the Normal style to all your imported unstyled body
text. At the same time you also want to apply named styles to inline-formatted text within
your body text, some of which has different font settings to that of the body text (for
example menu names and other items formatted with different fonts etc).

Step 1: Setting up the styles

If you want to use the style of the imported text in your project you first need to
update and create your project's styles on the basis of the styles used in the
imported text.
1. Update the Normal style on the basis of the imported text.
Click in a plain area of the imported body text and select Format > Create Style
from Selection. Then select Change existing style, select Normal in the style list
and activate Assign paragraph attributes.
See Defining styles 237 for more details on using this function.
2. Update or create text styles for the formatted sub-texts.
Click in an example of the subtext and use Format > Create Style from Selection
to update or create a new text style for that sub-text. Repeat for all other sub-
texts within your body text paragraphs.
See Defining styles 237 for more details on using this function.

Step 2: Apply the Normal font attributes to the main body text
Next you want to apply the modified Normal font style attributes to the text of the
body paragraphs in your imported text.
1. Select multiple topics if you want to replace only in some topics.
If you only want to replace styles in specific topics select those topics in the TOC
first, using Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click. Select the topic containing the example of
the style you want to replace last, so that you can select the style example in the

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 Basic Working Procedures 291

next step.
2. Select an example of the body text in the editor, then select Replace Styles
and Font mode.
Click inside one of the body text paragraphs, then select Format > Replace
Styles. Then select the mode at the top of the dialog that appears.

3. Set the Font Style Name to (Unstyled text only) and leave all other
attributes unchanged.
This will find all text with the attributes of the current paragraph and will make
sure that any paragraphs in your project that already have named styles remain
unaffected.
4. Select Normal in the right column.
Select Normal in the drop-down list directly below the Change to Format/Style:
heading on the right.
5. Leave the inline formatting settings unchanged.
The exact settings in the left column will only match the unchanged body text, so
all your differently-formatted sub-texts will be ignored. This makes the Inline
Formatting: options irrelevant – you can leave the default setting of Remove
inline formatting.
6. Click on to execute.
A dialog will be displayed allowing you to choose where you want to replace: In
the entire project, the main topics, the invisible topics or selected topics only.
You can also perform a test run to check how many styles would be found and
replaced before actually applying the changes.
Note that any changes in the current topic will only be visible in the editor after you
close the Replace Styles dialog.

Step 3: Apply the text styles to the sub-texts within the body text
Now you want to apply the text styles created in step 1 to the sub-texts within the
body text. This must be repeated for each sub-text type.

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292 Help & Manual Online Help

1. Select multiple topics if you want to replace only in some topics.

If you only want to replace styles in specific topics select those topics in the TOC
first, using Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click. Select the topic containing the example of
the style you want to replace last, so that you can select the style example in the
next step.
2. Click in an example of the sub-text in the editor, then select Replace Styles
and Font mode.
Click inside one of the sub-texts, then select Format > Replace Styles. Then
select the mode at the top of the dialog that appears.
3. Select (Unstyled text only) or (Any text) in the left column.
If you know that none of the sub-texts are styled select (Unstyled text only),
otherwise select (Any text) to make sure that you find all of them.
4. Select the target style in the right column and execute.
5. Repeat for all sub-text types in your project.

Step 4: Apply the Normal paragraph attributes to your body text

Finally, you also want to apply the paragraph attributes of the Normal style to your
imported body text so that it is fully integrated in your stylesheet.
1. Select multiple topics if you want to replace only in some topics.
If you only want to replace styles in specific topics select those topics in the TOC
first, using Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click. Select the topic containing the example of
the style you want to replace last, so that you can select the style example in the
next step.

2. Click in a body paragraph editor, then select Replace Styles and Paragraph
mode.
Click in one of your body text paragraphs, then select Format > Replace Styles.
Then select the mode at the top of the dialog that appears.
3. Select (Unstyled text only) for the Para Style Name.

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 Basic Working Procedures 293

If a style name is displayed in the Para Style Name: field in the left column
change it to (Unstyled text only). This will ensure that only paragraphs that do
not yet have styles applied to them will be found. This will reduce the possibility
of errors and will protect any styled paragraphs in your project with the same
settings. Leave all other settings in the left column unchanged!
4. Select Normal in the right column.
Select the Normal style in the Change to Format/Style column. Leave all other
settings in this column unchanged. The inline formatting settings are irrelevant
because you are performing an exact search.
5. Click on to execute.
A dialog will be displayed allowing you to choose where you want to replace: In
the entire project, the main topics, the invisible topics or selected topics only.
You can also perform a test run to check how many styles would be found and
replaced before actually applying the changes.
Note that any changes in the current topic will only be visible in the editor after
you close the Replace Styles dialog.

See also:
Importing Data into Existing Projects 155
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Dynamic Styles 746

7.6 Links, Anchors, Macros, Scripts and HTML

Links, more properly referred to as "hyperlinks", are what makes electronic help so much
more useful and flexible than printed documentation. Hyperlinks allow you to refer directly to
related information, creating a non-linear "web" of information that is much better at
describing complex programs and processes than linear documentation.
Earlier versions of Help & Manual had separate dialogs for inserting links. Help & Manual 4
introduces a more efficient, combined dialog 686 for topic links, Internet links file links and
scripts and macros.

Help & Manual can create several different categories of links:

Topic links: These links create "jumps" to other help topics, which can be in the
current help project or in other help projects or help files.

Topic Anchors are not really links in their own right – they are "targets" for
anchors: topic links. They allow you to create a links that go to specific positions
in a topic instead of to the top of the topic.

Internet links: Links to HTML pages on the World Wide Web or email addresses.

File links: Links to external files on the user's computer.

Script/macro These are not really hyperlinks in the real sense of the word. Instead of

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 294 Help & Manual Online Help

links: taking the user to another page or topic clicking on them executes
JavaScript code or a macro (which may actually link to something, but it
doesn't have to).

Plain HTML Code

Another subject covered in this section is Help & Manual's function for editing and
inserting plain or "inline" HTML code in your help files. If you know how to code HTML
you can use this function to add features and formatting with scripts and blocks of code.
Use sparingly however, otherwise it can make your projects more difficult to manage!

7.6.1 Inserting topic links

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create a topic link with Drag & Drop 294
How to create topic links with Copy & Paste 295
How to create a topic link manually 295
Linking to anchors in topics 296
Linking to anchors in embedded topics 297
How to link to a popup topic 297
Topic link compatibility in output formats 297

The easiest way to create a topic link within your current project is with Drag & Drop. For this
method you don't need to edit anything in the Hyperlink 686 dialog box. For more control over
your links use the manual method 295 described further down in this topic or create the link
with Drag & Drop and then double-click on it to edit it 304 .
You can navigate to the targets of your links within your project by
holding down Ctrl and clicking on the link.

How to create a topic link with Drag & Drop:

1. Select the text in your topic that you want to use as the link caption (you can edit this
later).
2. Drag the selected text onto the topic in the Table of Contents (TOC) that you want to
link to and release the mouse button.

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 Basic Working Procedures 295

This will create a simple hyperlink to the top of the target topic. To change the link
settings double-click on the link to display the Hyperlink 686 dialog box.
To quickly create a link to an anchor 305 in the current or another topic just
create the link with Drag & Drop and then double-click on the link to select
the target anchor in the dialog. The anchor is selected in the Anchor in
Topic: field.

How to create multiple topic links with Copy & Paste:

This method works with both single and multiple links. If you select multiple items in the
TOC the result will be a list of links in the editor.
1. Select one or more topics in the TOC that you want to link to.
2. Select Edit > Copy or press Ctrl+C.
3. Click in the editor where you want to insert the links.
4. Select Edit > Paste or press Ctrl+V.

Now is that cool, or what?

How to create a topic link manually:

1. Select text in your document if you want to use it as the link. (You don't have to do
this – you can enter a completely new caption in the Insert Hyperlink dialog box if you
want.)

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296 Help & Manual Online Help

2. Open the Insert Hyperlink dialog box. There are several different ways to do this:
· Press Ctrl+L
· Select the Insert Hyperlink button in the Toolbar
· Select Hyperlink... in the Insert menu
3. Edit the Caption: if necessary and select the link Style:
4. Select the ID of the topic you want to link to from the Topic ID: list. If the topic
contains anchors 305 you can also select an anchor in the Anchor in Topic: field to jump
directly to the position of the anchor.
See The Hyperlink dialog 686 for details of the other settings in the dialog.
See Linking to other projects and help files 308 for details on creating external
links.

Linking to anchors in topics:

If the target topic contains anchors 305 you can link to an anchor to take the user directly
to a point inside the target topic.
· Double-click on the link in the editor to display hyperlink dialog 686 and select the
anchor you want to link to in the Anchor in Topic: field.

· The procedure is the same when you are creating a new link. Just select the

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 Basic Working Procedures 297

anchor you want to link to in the Anchor in Topic: field.

Linking to anchors in embedded topics:

Embedded topics 222 may also contain anchors. However, when you try to link to a topic
containing an embedded topic you will not see the embedded topic's anchors in the
Anchor in Topic: list. They are there, however – you just can't see them because they
cannot be exported to the current view.
1. To link to an anchor in an embedded topic first select the source topic and make a
note of the anchor IDs you want to link to. (The "source topic" is the topic that is
embedded.)
2. Then create the link and enter the ID of the anchor you want to link to manually in
the Anchor in Topic: field. If you enter the anchor ID correctly this will work.

How to link to a popup topic:

Links to popup topics 194 in your project automatically open the target topics as popups.
Unlike Help & Manual 3 and earlier you no longer need to specify that the link is a popup
link when you create it.

Topic link compatibility in output formats:

The functionality of topic links in the individual output formats is as follows:
Classic Fully functional
Winhelp:

HTML Help: Fully functional

Visual Studio Fully functional.

Help:

Browser- Fully functional

based Help:

Adobe PDF: Functional if activated in Project >

Project Properties > Adobe PDF >
PDF Layout 604 .

eBooks: Fully functional

MS Word RTF: Fully functional (links in RTF are

activated with Ctrl+Click)

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7.6.2 Inserting Internet links

IN THIS TOPIC:
Creating Internet links automatically 298
How to insert an Internet link manually 298
Internet link compatibility in output formats 299

This function inserts Internet URLs and email links in your help. Internet links are supported
in all compiled help formats. See below 299 for details.
When inserting weblinks it is always advisable to always include the http://
protocol prefix. Links without this prefix will not always work in all
formats.

Creating Internet links automatically:

· Just type a web URL or an email address in your text. Help & Manual will automatically
recognize the format and turn it into an active link.
If you don't want the address to be a link just right-click on the link and
select Convert to plain text in the context menu.
You can turn automatic URL recognition off in Tools > Customize > Editor.
· You can double-click on automatically-created links to edit them.

Editing the captions of automatically-created links:

When an Internet or email link is created automatically a variable called <%
LINK_CAPTION%> is inserted in the Caption: field instead of the caption text. This
variable automatically uses the highlighted text displayed in the editor as the link.
You can edit this text in the editor, just like other links. Alternatively, you can also
double-click on the link and replace the <%LINK_CAPTION%> variable in the Insert
Hyperlink dialog with an URL.
If you edit the link caption and replace it with a text that is not an URL you
must delete this variable and replace it with a real URL, of course!

How to insert an Internet link manually:

1. Select text in your document if you want to use it as the link. (You don't have to do
this – you can enter a completely new caption in the Insert Hyperlink dialog box if you
want.)
2. Open the Insert Hyperlink dialog box. There are several different ways to do this:
· Press Ctrl+L
· Select the Insert Hyperlink button in the Toolbar
· Select Hyperlink... in the Insert menu
3. Select the Internet Link option at the top of the dialog.
4. Edit the Caption: if necessary and select the link Style:

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5. Select Links to an Internet address or Sends an E-Mail.

6. Enter the web page URL or the email address.
7. Choose the Target Window: This specifies whether the link opens in the help viewer
(not possible in all formats) or an external window.
8. Click on Test to test the link. (This will open web links in your browser, not in the help
viewer.)
See The Insert Hyperlink dialog 688 for full details on the settings in the
dialog.

Notes:
· If you want to display the web page in the same window as the help in Browser-
based Help (HTML) select the Same as referring topic option in the Target
Window: field. This will make sure that the TOC of your help remains visible when
the web page is displayed. If you use Top frame the TOC will be cleared and the
page will fill the entire browser window.
· You can add subject and other standard parameters to email addresses. Always
use %20 instead of spaces to ensure this works in all email programs.
Example:
[email protected]?subject=Support%20Request&body=Dear%20Support%Crew,

Internet link compatibility in output formats:

The functionality of Internet links in the individual output formats is as follows::
Classic Fully functional
Winhelp:

HTML Help: Fully functional

Visual Studio Fully functional

Help:

Browser- Fully functional

based Help:

Adobe PDF: Functional if activated in Project >

Project Properties > Adobe PDF >
PDF Layout 604

eBooks: Fully functional

MS Word RTF: Fully functional

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 300 Help & Manual Online Help

7.6.3 Inserting file links

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to insert file links 300
Embedding linked files in PDF documents 300
File link compatibility in output formats 301

A file link is a link to an executable file (e.g. notepad.exe) or to a data file associated with an
application (e.g. .DOC word processing files or .PDF files). Clicking on the link in the help is
just like double-clicking on an executable or .DOC or .PDF file on your desktop or in
Windows Explorer. It either starts the executable file or opens the .DOC or .PDF or other file
with the associated application.
File links are not supported in all output formats! See below 301 for details.

How to insert file links:

1. Select text in your document if you want to use it as the link. You don't have to do this
– you can enter a completely new caption in the Insert Hyperlink dialog box if you
want.
2. Open the Insert Hyperlink dialog box. There are several different ways to do this:
· Press Ctrl+L
· Select the Insert Hyperlink button in the Toolbar
· Select Hyperlink... in the Insert menu
3. Select the File Link option at the top of the dialog.
4. Edit the Caption: if necessary and select the link Style:
5. Enter the filename with extension in the File Name: field.
6. Enter any execution parameters associated with the file in the Execution Parameters:
field, for example the file to be opened by the executable file or any necessary
parameters for a data file.
· Click on Test to test the link (the file must be present in your project directory for this to
work).
See The Hyperlink dialog 686 for full details on the settings in the dialog.

Avoid using paths!

To be safe it's generally best to include all the external files you want to
link to in the same directory as your help. Paths may work with Winhelp
but the HTML Help viewer has a paths bug and almost always produces
errors on users' computers when you use paths – even though it may
work on your development machine!

Embedding linked files in PDF documents:

You can set Help & Manual to automatically embed files referenced with file links into the

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 Basic Working Procedures 301

PDF file when you export your project to PDF. This makes it possible to distribute
additional files with your PDF document without having to use multiple files.
When the user clicks on the link the file will be displayed with the application with which it
is associated in Windows. This works for most file types, including other PDF files,
documents and images of all kinds and even executable EXE files.
1. Go to Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF > PDF Layout and activate the
option File links - embed linked files with the following extensions .
2. Make sure that the files you want to link to are stored in one of the folders
referenced in your Image Folders 553 list in Project Properties. If you have many
folder references place the files in one of the first few folders in the list.
3. Create your file links using the normal procedure 300 .
When you compile your project to the files referenced with file links will be physically
embedded in the PDF file. This will increase the size of the PDF accordingly, of course.

File link compatibility in output formats:

File link functionality varies depending on the output format you are using:
Winhelp: Supported, both relative paths and execution parameters will
generally work (exported as the ExecFile() macro).

HTML Help: Supported with execution parameters but do not use paths. All
external files must be in the same directory as the HTML Help .
CHM file.
Also, note that links to some types of external files in HTML Help
are now restricted on Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or later.
This is a security feature implemented by Microsoft so you should
test all links on properly-configured XP systems before distributing.
Even more severe restrictions apply to HTML Help files accessed
across network drives. Here file links will not work at all on
Windows XP and HTML Help itself is also severely restricted. See
this topic on the Help & Manual user forum for more details and
a fix.

Browser- Exported, but support depends entirely on the user's browser. Will
based Help: work in Internet Explorer but often not in other browsers. Paths are
not recommended. No execution parameters (for example, "
wordpad.exe" on its own is OK but "wordpad.exe myfile.doc"
will not work).

eBooks: Supported, do not use paths. Simple file links only, no execution
parameters.

Visual Studio Not supported. External file links are explicitly forbidden in Visual
Help: Studio Help / MS Help 2.0.

Adobe PDF: Simple file links only, no execution parameters. Links must be

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activated in Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF > PDF Layout
604 .

Word RTF: Supported but not recommended – users are very likely to move
Word RTF documents around and the links will then be dead. No
execution parameters.

7.6.4 Inserting script and macro links

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to insert a script or macro link 302
Macro implementation 303
Translation of Winhelp macros in HTML Help 303
Script implementation 303
Macro/script link compatibility in output formats 304

This function inserts a piece of JavaScript code or a Winhelp macro that is executed when
the user clicks on the link in your help file. Note that scripts and macros are not supported in
all output formats – see below 304 for details.
See Scripts, HTML and Macros 757 in the Reference section for some more background
information on scripts and macros and how they are implemented and handled.

How to insert a script or macro link:

1. Select text in your document if you want to use it as the link. You don't have to do this
– you can enter a completely new caption in the Insert Hyperlink dialog box if you
want.
2. Open the Insert Hyperlink dialog box. There are several different ways to do this:
· Press Ctrl+L
· Select the Insert Hyperlink button in the Toolbar
· Select Hyperlink... in the Insert menu
3. Select the Script / Macro option at the top of the dialog.

4. Edit the Caption: if necessary and select the link Style:

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5. Select HTML JavaScript or Winhelp Macro and enter your script or macro in the editing
field.
See The Hyperlink dialog 686 for full details on the settings in the dialog.
See Scripts, HTML and Macros 757 in the Reference section for full details on
how scripts and macros are implemented and handled.

Macro implementation:
Macros can be typed and used just as you would use them manually in Winhelp. Note
that Winhelp macros only work in Winhelp. If you are also generating other formats you
need to create alternatives for the other formats using conditional output 451 .
See the help included with Microsoft Help Workshop (the Winhelp compiler package) for
documentation of the macro functions available in Winhelp.

Translation of Winhelp macros in HTML Help:

The following four standard Winhelp macros are automatically translated to their HTML
equivalents when you compile to HTML Help. This can be convenient as the syntax of
these Winhelp macros is simpler and easier to enter:
ALink() KLink()
TCard() Close()

· Note that only keywords are supported as arguments in the ALink and KLink macros
when they are used in HTML Help. All other arguments are ignored.
· If you have upgraded from Help & Manual 3 you may be wondering what has
happened to the ExecFile() Winhelp macro, which used to be translated in HTML
Help. This is no longer necessary because you can use file links 300 instead, which
produce the same result much more efficiently.

Script implementation:
Help & Manual creates script links by inserting the code you type between <a href=" and
">. For example, if you type:

javascript:alert('Hello World!');

The resulting link created in your output will be:

<A HREF="javascript:alert('Hello World!');">

This is just a simple example of course, you can place as much code in the script as you
want.
If you are familiar with JavaScript and HTML you can use this knowledge to
create quite complex scripts! You just have to remember that everything
you write is inserted between <a href=" and ">. See Scripts, HTML and
Macros 757 in the Reference section for more details.

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 304 Help & Manual Online Help

Macro/script link compatibility in output formats:

The functionality of script and macro links in the individual output formats is as follows:
Winhelp: All Winhelp macros, no scripts. Paths will generally work.

HTML Help: JavaScript is broadly supported in CHMs. See the MS HTML Help
Workshop documentation for details. Four standard Winhelp
macros (see above 303 ) are translated to their HTML Help
equivalents. Do not use paths.

Visual Studio Same as for HTML Help.

Help:

Browser- Scripts are supported but support depends to a great extent on the
based Help: user's browser, so use the same caution as when using scripting in
any HTML pages.

eBooks: Script and macro links are not supported.

Adobe PDF: Script and macro links are not supported.

Word RTF: Script and macro links are not supported.

See also:
Scripts, HTML and Macros 757
Inserting plain HTML code 311
Using HTML templates 475
Browser-based Help 586 (Project Properties)
7.6.5 Editing and formatting links
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to edit link captions 305
Link captions at the beginning of a paragraph 305

How to edit the link properties 305

How to format the link caption 305
How to turn a link back into normal text 305

In earlier versions of Help & Manual you always had to double-click on a link and open the
editing dialog just to edit the caption (the link text). Now you can edit the caption directly just
by clicking inside it and typing. You also have great freedom to format the appearance of
your links.
Hold down Ctrl and click on a link to navigate to the link target in your
project.
Double-click on a link to display its editing dialog.

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 Basic Working Procedures 305

How to edit link captions:

You can edit link captions (the text of the link displayed in the editor) in exactly the same
way you would edit normal text. Just click once inside the link or move the cursor into the
link with the cursor keys and start typing.
Sometimes it is easier to double-click on the link and edit its caption in the Hyperlink
dialog 686 .

Link captions at the beginning of a paragraph:

If a link caption is at the beginning of a paragraph you can't insert any text before it; all
the text you type to the left of the link becomes part of the link. Here is how to solve this
problem:
1. Click to the left of the link and press Enter to create a new paragraph.
2. Press the spacebar (this switches off the link highlighting) then type some text.
3. Click to the right of the new text and press Delete to bring the link into the same
paragraph.

How to edit the link properties:

· Double-click on the link to display the Hyperlink 686 dialog.

How to format the link caption:

· Just select the text in the caption and format it in the same way you would format any
other text.
· Note that underlining and color cannot be changed for normal links because they are
always blue and underlined.
· For full control over link caption formatting choose the Custom text link (formatted)
style in the Link Properties 686 dialog.

How to turn a link back into normal text:

· Right-click on the link and select Convert to plain text in the context menu.

7.6.6 Anchors - jump targets

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to insert an anchor 306
How to link to an anchor 306
Linking to anchors in embedded topics 307
Linking to anchors in Browser-based Help 307

Using keywords in anchors 307

Don't edit anchor IDs 308

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306 Help & Manual Online Help

Normally, topic links 294 execute jumps to the top of the target topic. However, often you will
also want to create jumps to some point inside a topic. This is done with anchors
(sometimes also referred to as "bookmarks" in books on help), which are named "targets"
that you insert at any position within a topic so that you can jump to them with a link.
Anchors no longer have the captions they had in Help & Manual 3.
Instead, they are identified by an anchor icon in the editor.

How to insert an anchor:

1. Click in the text at the point where you want to insert the anchor (i.e. the position you
want to be able to jump to with your links). Don't select any text, if you do it will be
overwritten by the anchor!
2. Open the Insert Anchor dialog box. There are several different ways to do this:
· Press Ctrl+H
OR
· Select the Insert Anchor button in the Toolbar
OR
· Select Topic Anchor... in the Insert menu

3. Type in a descriptive ID for the anchor in the Anchor ID: field. This will be displayed in
the link dialog when you are creating links so it should be easy to identify. You cannot
use spaces or special characters (Help & Manual will not allow you to use illegal
characters).
Like topic IDs, anchor IDs can be up to 256 characters long. However, since
you need to view anchor IDs in dialog boxes in Help & Manual it is advisable
to keep them relatively short.
4. If you want to use a help context number 212 you can type it in manually. You can also
set Help & Manual to assign help context numbers to anchors automatically in Project
> Project Properties > Common Properties > Topic IDs & Help Context 553 .
5. Type in any keywords 369 you want to associate with the anchor (see below 307 for
details).

How to link to an anchor:

1. First proceed exactly as you would for creating a normal topic link 294

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 Basic Working Procedures 307

2. Open the Edit Hyperlink 686 dialog box. Just double-click on the link to open the dialog
if it is not already open. The anchor is selected in the Edit Hyperlink 686 dialog.
3. Select the anchor ID from the drop-down list in the Anchor in Topic: field and click on
.
To quickly create a link to an anchor in the current or another topic just
create the link with Drag & Drop and then double-click on the link to select
the target anchor in the dialog.

Linking to anchors in embedded topics:

Embedded topics 222 may also contain anchors. However, when you try to link to a topic
containing an embedded topic you will not see the embedded topic's anchors in the
Anchor in Topic: list. They are there, however – you just can't see them because they
cannot be exported to the current view.
1. To link to an anchor in an embedded topic first select the source topic and make a
note of the anchor IDs you want to link to. (The "source topic" is the topic that is
embedded.)
2. Then create the link and enter the ID of the anchor you want to link to manually in
the Anchor in Topic: field. If you enter the anchor ID correctly this will work.

Linking to anchors in Browser-based Help:

You can also create URL links from your application or from web pages to anchors in
Browser-based Help output so that users are taken directly to a specific point in a topic
when they use your links. The syntax is exactly the same as the standard HTML syntax
for URLs containing anchor references:

index.html?topicname.htm#anchorname

· Note that this is different from the syntax required in Help & Manual 3. There a
comma was required instead of the # character between the topic name and the
anchor name.
· The topic name is simply the Topic ID of the topic, plus the extension .htm. The
entire URL must be written in lower case because Help & Manual automatically
converts all file names to lower case in HTML output for compatibility with Unix and
Linux servers.
See Context calls to Browser-based Help 438 for some more details on this.

Using keywords in anchors:

You can also associate ordinary keywords (index keywords) with anchors. Selecting
these keywords in the help index will then jump to the anchor instead of the top of the
topic. See Keywords and Indexes 369 more information on using keywords and Using
keywords with anchors 379 for more information on using keywords in combination with
anchors.

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· Type the keywords into the Keywords: field of the Anchor dialog. You can enter
both main keywords and sub-keywords. Use the TAB key to enter sub-keywords
(an indented keyword automatically becomes the sub-keyword of the keyword
above it).
· Typing a space or tab in front of a keyword automatically makes it a sub-keyword
of the entry directly above it. (Only one level of sub-keywords is allowed.)
It is possible to have the same keywords in both the topic's Topic Options
and in one or more anchors in the same topic. However, if you want your
index entries to enable jumps to the anchor without confusing the user it
is better to avoid this.

Don't edit anchor IDs:

Changing and editing anchor IDs is not advisable. Unlike topic IDs Help & Manual does
not update links to anchor IDs if you change them. Also, no internal index of references
to anchor IDs is maintained. This means that if you change an anchor ID you may create
dead links that will be very difficult to find, because they will not be listed in your project
reports 618 .

See also:
Inserting topic links 294
Using embedded topics 222
7.6.7 Linking to other projects and help files
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to link to an external project or help file 308
Linking to topics in other browser-based projects 309

By default the ID list in the Hyperlink dialog 686 displays the IDs of the current project, but you
can also link to topics in other projects and in other help files. When you distribute your help
these files must be present in the same directory as the help file containing the link.

How to link to an external project or help file (.HMX, .CHM or .HLP):

1. Follow the basic instructions for inserting a normal topic link 294 .
2. In the Hyperlink dialog 686 click on the browse button in the Help File: field and
choose the project or help file containing the topic you want to link to.

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 Basic Working Procedures 309

3. If you choose a project (.HMX) or HTML Help (.CHM) file the topic IDs of the external
project or help file will now be displayed in the Topic ID list. Choose the topic (and
anchor 305 if applicable) you want to link to and click on OK.
Links to Winhelp .HLP files only work from other Winhelp files. Also, you can
only open the external Winhelp file at its default topic with this method, you
cannot access its topics directly. To link to individual topics in an external
Winhelp file you must use the .HMX project and here too only links between
Winhelp files are possible, you cannot link from other formats.
See Modular Projects 873 for more details on links between projects.

Linking to topics in other Browser-based Help (HTML) projects:

The situation is a little different when you want to create links between different Browser-
based Help 771 projects, which are by definition stored in different directories. These are
effectively just groups of HTML pages, like any other set of HTML pages on a website.
Topic links will not work here because this is really a website, not a help project – you
have to use Internet links instead.
1. Follow the instructions for inserting an Internet link 298 and choose the Links to an
Internet address option.
2. Enter the URL of the page in the other project in the Address: field. You can enter
either the absolute address or the relative address (the relative address will
depend on the relative positions of the directories on your website, of course):
Absolute address:
http://www.yourdomain.com/subdirectory/index.html?topicname.htm#anchorname

Relative address:
../subdirectory/index.html?topicname.htm#anchorname

Here index.html is the index file of your project (this is the default, you can change
it in the Compile Help File 663 dialog when you compile), topicname.htm is the name
of the topic (topic ID 214 plus .htm) and anchorname (optional) is an anchor 305 in the
topic you want to link to.
It is important to use the syntax shown above for the links, including the
index.html part, otherwise the user will not be able to return to the
calling project with the browser's Back button.
Note that Help & Manual 4 now uses the standard # character between
the topic file name and the anchor name, instead of the comma that was
required in Help & Manual 3.
· If you want to display the TOC of the target project in the current browser window
select the Top Frame option in the Target Window: field. If you don't do this the
topic will overwrite the TOC in a single browser window. Selecting New Window
opens the topic in a new browser window together with its TOC.

See also:
Working with Modular Help Systems 492

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7.6.8 Links and secondary windows

IN THIS TOPIC:
Selecting a different window type for the target topic 310

Opening the target topic in an external window 310

Every topic is associated with a help window type 177 . In addition to defining the appearance
of the topic and the features of the help viewer the help window type also controls how the
topic behaves when you link to it. If the help window type is Main (the default for all normal
topics) a link to the topic will open it in the main help viewer in all electronic output formats. If
the help window type is Popup (the default for all topics in the Invisible Topics section) a link
will open the topic as a popup window in all electronic output formats that support popups.
If you define your own additional help window types you can assign them to individual topics
177 to give them a different appearance. In addition to this you can also use them to make

links open topics in external windows 473 in HTML Help and Winhelp. This is useful if you
want to display both the information in the current topic and the target topic at the same
time.
In addition to assigning a secondary help window type to a topic permanently you can also
define a link to open a topic with a different window type than the one that is actually
assigned to it. This makes it possible to open topics that are normally displayed in the main
help viewer in an external window instead. This functionality is only available in Winhelp and
HTML Help.
To be able to open topics in different window types you must first define
one or more additional window types. 178
Window types are only supported in electronic help formats ( Winhelp 768 ,
HTML Help 765 and eBooks 773 ).

Selecting a different window type for the target topic:

1. Define at least one additional help additional window type 178 .
2. Follow the basic instructions for inserting a topic link 294 .
3. Open the Hyperlink dialog 686 (double-click on the link) and select the alternative
window type in the Window: field, then click on OK.
The link will then open the target topic using the selected help window type instead of
the topic's default window type.
In Winhelp this will always open the target topic in an external window and
will also apply the appearance of the selected help window type (background
colors of header and topic).
In HTML Help it will only open the topic in an external window if this has
been configured in the help window types setup (see below) .

Opening the target topic in an external window (Winhelp & HTML Help
only):
Whether or not a topic opens in the main help viewer or an external window is

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determined by the definition of the window type assigned to the topic or specified in a
link.
If you define an external window type 473 and assign it to a topic 177 that topic the topic will
always open in an external window when you link to it in Winhelp. In HTML Help it will
open in an external window if this functionality is activated in the help window settings.
You can also open any topic in an external window by selecting the appropriate window
type in the link definition 310 .

To define and use an external window type proceed as follows:

1. Define a new window type 178 .
2. In the window's HTML Help Options 563 tab select the Allow secondary HTML Help
windows option. (This allows external windows in HTML Help. In Winhelp
secondary windows are always external.)
3. You will probably also want to use the other options in the dialog 557 to switch off
the external windows' control buttons and navigation panel as they can confuse
the user in external windows.
4. Create a link to a topic and choose the external window type as described above
310 .

Or assign an external window type 178 to the topic in its Topic Options tab, then it
will always be opened in an external window when you link to it.
Activating secondary HTML Help windows is a global option that makes
all window types except Main external.

See also:
Choosing a help window 177
Help Windows 557 (settings in Project Properties)
Help windows and external windows 473
Help Windows 800 (Reference)
7.6.9 Inserting plain HTML code
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to insert plain HTML code in a topic 312
Referencing external files in plain HTML code 312

Help & Manual 4 supports so many powerful formatting features that you will normally not
need to make additions of your own. However, if you do need to add special features or
formatting with HTML code or scripts you can do it with this function. For example, you can
write dynamic HTML code with JavaScript to add expandable sections or other dynamic
features to your topics.
This function "injects" HTML code into your topic at the point where you insert it. The code
is entirely your responsibility and is not checked or parsed by Help & Manual in any way, so
you need to be familiar with HTML coding.
Plain HTML Code is only supported in HTML Help 765 (.CHM), Browser-based Help 771 (HTML)
and Visual Studio Help (MS Help 2.0). It is completely ignored in all other formats, including

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312 Help & Manual Online Help

Help & Manual eBooks 609 (eBooks are formatted with HTML but do not include full browser
functionality).
· Note that if you want to use this feature in projects that will also be compiled to formats
where it is not supported you need to use Help & Manual's conditional output 451
features to create alternative text for those versions.

How to insert plain HTML code in a topic:

1. Click in the editor at the point where you want to insert the plain HTML code and
select the button in the Toolbar or select Plain HTML Code in the Insert menu.

2. Type your code in the editing window displayed. You can resize the window for easier
editing by dragging on the lower right corner.
The and functions allow you to save blocks of code in text files for
reuse.
You can resize the HTML code object in the Help & Manual editor by
dragging its corners. This allows you to see more of the object's content in
the editor without actually opening it.

Referencing external files in plain HTML code:

If you reference external files in your plain HTML code you are entirely responsible for
making sure that the files are included in your output. Help & Manual does not parse or
check the code and will not do this for you. There are two ways to make sure that
referenced files are included in your project:

Add the files to the Baggage section:

This is the simplest solution. Help & Manual 4's new Baggage function provides a
quick and easy way to integrate external files in your project and make sure that they
are available to the compiler and included in your output.
· See Using Baggage Files 520 for details on using this function.
· See Graphics references 489 for more details on referencing graphics files. Since
graphics files are often large it is not always a good idea to add them to the
Baggage.

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Manually integrate the files in your output:

· In Browser-based Help you must manually copy the files to your output directory if
you have not added them to the Baggage section (see above).
· In HTML Help you need to tell the compiler to include the files in the .CHM. Proceed
as follows:
1. Copy the external file(s) to your project directory (the directory containing your .
HMX project file).
2. Open Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Extended .HHP Settings 571 .
3. In the Additional Settings editing box add the following entries:

[FILES]
..\donald.js
..\mickey.asp

· Don't add a second [FILES] header if one already exist. Enter each external
filename on its own line below the [FILES] header and precede it with the ..\
relative path reference. (This is necessary because the project is compiled from a
temporary subdirectory in the project directory, so files in the project directory are
one level up.)

See also:
Inserting script and macro links 302
Using HTML templates 475
Scripts, HTML and Macros 757
Browser-based Help 586 (Project Properties)
Using Baggage Files 520
Graphics References 489

7.7 Using Graphics

Inserting graphics in your topics with Help & Manual couldn't be easier – just select the
Insert Graphic button in the Toolbar and choose your graphic file. Graphics can now also
have captions that are stored with the graphic so that you no longer need to maintain
separate captions in your text.
Help & Manual also has an integrated screenshot program 320 for making quick illustrations
and supports dynamic resizing 317 and graphics with clickable hotspots 321 that can use all the
link types supported in topic text, including file links, scripts and macros.

Directly supported graphics formats:

All the following graphics formats can be inserted in your projects directly with Insert
> Picture 314 :
Ø Standard bitmaps (.BMP)
Ø Compuserve Graphics Interchange Format (.GIF)
Ø JPEG Graphics (.JPG)
Ø Portable Network Graphics (.PNG)

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Ø Photoshop images (.PSD)

Ø Paint Shop Pro images (.PSP, single-layer only)
Ø TIFF images (.TIF)
Ø Kodak PhotoCD images (.PCD)
Ø Windows Metafiles (.WMF, .EMF)
Ø Impict graphics (.IPP, the special format of our Impict graphic editor)
Ø Segmented Hyper Graphics (.SHG, the Winhelp hotspot graphics format.)
Using old .SHG graphics containing hotspots:
The .SHG format for Winhelp graphics is now deprecated because hotspots can be
added to all graphics formats 321 directly in the Help & Manual editor. You no longer
need .SHG files to use hotspots in your images in Help & Manual.
However, if you have old .SHG files with hotspots you can now use them in your
projects directly. As of version 4.2, Help & Manual will automatically convert the
hotspots in these graphics into its own format.

Hotspots in old .IPP graphics can only be imported with their project:
Hotspots in .IPP graphics created with Help & Manual 3 cannot be imported to Help &
Manual 4 projects on their own because they are linked to specific projects. The
hotspots will only be imported if the .IPP images are imported together with the .HM3
project for which they were created.

See also:
Inserting graphics and screenshots 314
About Graphics in Help & Manual 856
7.7.1 Inserting graphics and screenshots
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to insert a graphic from a file 314
How to insert a graphic with Cut & Paste 315

How to format the image caption 316

You can insert graphics in your projects from files or with Cut & Paste. Drag & Drop from the
desktop or Windows Explorer is not supported.
Note that although Cut & Paste may be more convenient you may get slightly better image
quality when you insert graphics directly from files. This applies particularly to pasting from
programs like Word, which generally resize the image very slightly (just a couple of percent)
when you copy it via the Windows clipboard.

How to insert a graphic from a file:

1. Click in the editor at the position where you want to insert the graphic.
2. Select in the Toolbar or select Insert > Picture or press Ctrl+P. This displays the
Open Image dialog 690 .

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 Basic Working Procedures 315

3. Select the graphics file you want to insert.

4. Set the Alignment: (With text, Left of text, Right of text ) to position the graphic and
set a Spacing: value (empty space around the graphic) if required.
5. Enter an Image Caption: if you want. This caption will be displayed beneath the
graphic and can be edited at any time. (See below for instructions on formatting the
caption text.)
6. Select Autosize Image to display the graphic without resizing or select a Zoom % factor
to adjust the size 317 of the graphic. (You can also select graphics in the Help & Manual
editor and resize them with the mouse.)
7. The Spacing: value (in pixels) inserts white space around the graphic to keep it away
from the text.
8. Click on Open to insert the graphic.
You don't need to worry about setting the dimensions of your graphic as you
would have to do in a HTML editor. Help & Manual does this automatically.

Tip for inserting inline graphics:

When inserting a graphic in a paragraph always type a space as the first
character after the graphic, this will prevent the image caption style from
being applied to the text you type.

How to insert a graphic with Cut & Paste:

1. Copy the graphic to the Windows clipboard in the source program. If you are copying

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 316 Help & Manual Online Help

from Word make sure that you only select and copy the graphic (just click on it once).
If text is included the graphic will be embedded in your project file, which will make the
file much larger.
You can convert embedded graphics to external graphics files by right-
clicking on the graphic in the editor and selecting Convert Embedded Picture.
2. Click in the editor at the position where you want to insert the graphic and press Ctrl
+V or select Edit > Paste.
3. To edit the graphic properties double-click on the graphic to reopen the Open Image
dialog 690 .
Pasted graphics are automatically stored in files named clipxxxx.bmp and
stored in your project directory. The xxxx in the name is an
automatically-assigned consecutive number (clip0001.bmp, clip0002.bmp
etc).

How to format the image caption:

· The formatting of the caption text is controlled by a standard style 249 . You can change
this for the entire project by editing the style 237 .
· You can also change the appearance of the caption text by applying font attributes
directly:
· Select the graphic in the editor, then select the font attribute you want to apply (bold,
underlined, font etc).
Note that you can only format the entire caption text. You cannot apply
different font attributes to individual parts of the text. For more details see
Image caption and comment styles 249 .

See also:
Graphics, Videos and OLE 856 (Reference)
7.7.2 Positioning graphics
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to align a graphic without wrapping text around it 317

How to wrap text to the left or right of the graphic 317

By default a graphic inserted in Help & Manual is a handled as a single object in a

paragraph, essentially the same as a character. This means that if it is alone in its paragraph
it can be centered, left-justified and right-justified by adjusting the paragraph formatting
settings. In addition to this you can also make text wrap around it to the left or right with the
Alignment: settings in the Open Image dialog 690 .
For more complex control over the position of graphics on your page you need to place the
graphics in tables 332 , in the same way that you would in a HTML page.

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 Basic Working Procedures 317

How to align a graphic without wrapping text around it:

1. Click in the paragraph containing the graphic. There shouldn't be any text in the
paragraph as the result would not look good in the output.
2. Format the paragraph to position the graphic. For example you can left-justify, center
or right-justify the paragraph or add space before and space after to separate the
graphic from the paragraphs above and below it. (You can also add space around the
graphic with the Spacing: setting in the Open Image dialog 690 .

Formatting options:
Select Format > Paragraph or use the paragraph settings in the Toolbar:

How to wrap text to the left or right of the graphic:

1. Double-click on the graphic to re-open the Open Image dialog 690 .
2. Select Left of text or Right of text in the Alignment: field.
3. Set the Spacing: value to increase the amount of free space around the image.
The wrapping is not displayed in the editor. You must compile your output to
see the effect. Also, this feature is not supported in PDF because the PDF
format does not have an equivalent formatting function.

See also:
About Graphics in Help & Manual 856
Working with Tables 332 Help & Manual 856
7.7.3 Editing, resizing and hi-res PDF printing
IN THIS TOPIC:
Editing graphics properties and captions 318
Resizing graphics in the Help & Manual editor 318
Using high-resolution graphics for PDF and printing 319
Resizing graphics with the Impict graphics editor 319

In addition to positioning 316 the graphics in your Help & Manual project you can also resize
them and edit their properties at any time.
Help & Manual now allows you to resize graphics directly in the editor by dragging with the
mouse. Although this function is primarily designed for high-resolution printing with PDF files
you can use it for all your output formats whenever you need a quick resize. You may obtain
slightly better quality if you resize in a graphics program, but the algorithm used is still pretty
good, and can be a great time-saver when you are working on a tight deadline.

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Editing graphics properties and captions:

· Just double-click on any graphic to display the Open Image dialog 690 where you can
edit the caption, alignment, spacing (empty space around the graphic) and hotspots 321
(clickable links in the graphic).
· As of Help & Manual 4.1 you can adjust the size of graphics precisely with the new
Zoom % setting in the Open Image dialog. This does not physically resize the image
until you compile and in PDF the full image resolution is used (see below).

· You can also edit the properties and hotspots by right-clicking on a graphic and
selecting from the Picture... options in the context menu.

Resizing graphics in the Help & Manual editor:

· Just click once on the graphic to select it and resize it by dragging the resize handles
displayed at the edges. It doesn't matter which handle you drag because the height
and width of the graphic are always resized proportionally.
· For precise resizing double-click on the graphic to display the Image dialog and enter
a Zoom % factor.
· You can change the size of the graphic in your topic whenever you want. (The actual
graphic is not resized so the full resolution is always available.) To return the graphic
to its original size just double-click on it to display the Open Image dialog and select
the Autosize option.
Both the new size and the original size of the graphic file (which is still unchanged on
your disk) are displayed in the graphic on the screen.

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 Basic Working Procedures 319

This function does not actually change the size of the graphic, it resizes the graphic on
the screen and leaves the original file stored on your disk unchanged. Nothing actually
happens until you compile your output. In all output formats except PDF (see below) the
graphic is physically scaled and resized when you compile.

Resizing may increase the size of your output file

Only True Color (65m colors) graphics can be resized. This means that
resized graphics must be converted to True Color when you compile. Also,
if you resize formats like PNG, JPG etc. in HTML-based formats they will be
converted using the conversion options 573 instead of just being copied to
your output. Both these factors can increase the size of your output.
Generally, it's best to resize your images in a graphics program before
inserting them.

See Formats, Compression and File Size 856 in the Reference section for
important information on how file formats affect (and don't affect) the file
sizes of your help.

Using high-resolution graphics for PDF and printing:

This is actually the main purpose of the resize function. The graphics in electronic
documentation are normally dimensioned for viewing on computer screens, which have
much lower resolution than printers. If you use a graphic like this in a PDF file it will look
fine in normal resolution on the computer screen but very "blocky" and "jaggy" in a
high-resolution printout or when the PDF is enlarged on the screen.
· To use a high-resolution graphic just insert a graphic that is large enough to print
well on a high-resolution printer and then resize it to the size you want to use in
your document as described above.
· This will increase the size of your PDF files because larger graphics are bigger. It
will not increase the size of other output formats because there the graphics are
physically resized when you compile.
· Physical resizing when you output to formats other than PDF is automatic.
However, if you want to create one PDF for printing and a compact version for on-
screen viewing you can do this by inserting two versions of the graphic: One small
graphics file that does not need to be resized and one large one that you resize.
You can then use Help & Manual's conditional text 454 feature to select which
version you want to include when you compile.

Resizing graphics physically with the Impict graphics editor:

For the best possible resize quality you can also resize your graphics files physically
with Impict, the screenshot enhancement and graphics editor included with Help &
Manual, or with any other graphics editor.
· To open a graphic for editing just click on the graphic in the editor to select it and
then select the Impict icon in the Toolbar.
· After saving the new version in Impict (don't change the filename or location) just
select another topic briefly in Help & Manual and then return to the current topic to
reload the topic with the modified graphic.

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See also:
About Graphics in Help & Manual 856
Conditions and Customized Output 451
7.7.4 Using the Impict graphics editor
Help & Manual comes with its own powerful graphics program for editing and enhancing
screenshots and other graphics. This editor has a wide range of powerful features for
making professional help graphics and screenshots and it stores all the objects you create
on separate layers so that you can re-edit them easily at any time.

How to open a graphic in Impict:

· Click once on the graphic in the editor screen to select it, then select the Impict
button in the Toolbar.
Impict comes with its own comprehensive help and documentation. Please refer to this
for full details on using the program.

7.7.5 Using the screen capture function

Help & Manual has a powerful integrated screen capture function that includes most of the
functionality you need to make attractive screenshots quickly and efficiently. The function
will automatically select windows, controls and menus and you can also select freely-defined
rectangular regions of applications or the desktop and fixed size regions.
In addition to simple screenshots you can also make screenshots with a wide variety of
different shapes, add shadows and background colors and automatically resize your
screenshots with a choice of high-quality scaling filters.

Using the screen capture function:

· Select the Screen Capture button in the Toolbar or select Tools > Screen Capture.
The screen capture tool is pretty self-explanatory but for full instructions see Screen
Capture 615 in the Tools Included with Help & Manual chapter.
· For even more screenshot power try TNT, the combined screen capture and graphics
editor tool from EC Software:
TNT Screen Capture Program Page

See also:
Screen Capture 615
About Graphics in Help & Manual 856
The Impict Screenshot Editor 621
7.7.6 Using graphics as hyperlinks
In addition to standard text links you can also use graphics as links 293 in your help project,
for all the different supported link types. You can use this feature to turn entire illustrations
into clickable links, or to use your own graphical buttons as links.

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In addition to this you can also add hotspots to your graphics, clickable regions that can
have all the properties that any other link in a Help & Manual can have. See Graphics with
hotspots, macros and scripts 321 for details.

How to use a graphic as a link:

Note that you cannot turn an existing graphic in your text into a link, you have to edit a
link and select a graphic instead of a caption.
1. Insert a new link 293 or double-click on an existing link to edit it.
2. Select the Picture option in the Style: section of the Hyperlink dialog 686 . The title of
the entry field at the top changes to Picture:.
3. Click on the browse button next to the entry field to select your graphic file.
4. Click on to close the dialog.

7.7.7 Graphics with hotspots, macros and scripts

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to insert a hotspot in a graphic 321
How to align hotspots precisely 323
How to edit hotspots 323
Old .IPP and .SHG files with hotspots 323
Hotspot compatibility in output formats 323

Hotspots are active, clickable areas in graphics. Help & Manual now stores all your graphic
hotspot information in your project file, allowing you to edit your hotspots directly instead of
switching to an external graphics program. This new method also makes it possible to create
hotspots for all graphics types supported by Help & Manual.
All the link types supported in the editor are also supported in hotspots (topic links, Internet
links, file links and script/macro links).
Since the link types are identical to those used in normal topics their settings are only
described briefly here. You should familiarize yourself with the link types described in the
Links, Anchors, Macros, Scripts and HTML 293 section before working with hotspots. Only the
method of inserting the links is different, everything else is the same – including the
restrictions on the individual hyperlink types in some output formats.
Note that hotspots in graphics are only supported in electronic output
formats (HTML Help, Winhelp, Browser-based Help, eBooks, Visual Studio
Help / Help 2.0 and electronic PDF with hyperlinks activated).

How to insert a hotspot in a graphic:

1. Insert the graphic 314 in your topic (hotspots can only be added to graphics inserted in
topics).
2. Open the hotspot editor:
· Double-click on the graphic and select

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OR
· Right-click on the graphic and select Picture > Edit Hotspots in the context menu.

3. Click on one of the Insert Hotspot icons (this will insert a new hotspot in the top left
corner of the graphic):
inserts a topic link hotspot.
inserts an Internet link
hotspot.
inserts a file link hotspot.
inserts a script link hotspot.

4. Move and resize the hotspot with the mouse and select the hotspot style (Rectangle or
Ellipse). You can also enter the precise size and position of your hotspot as pixel
values.
5. Select and enter the hotspot details. These are exactly the same as for ordinary links
in topics, so for details please see the chapter Links, Anchors, Macros, Scripts and
HTML 293 .
Topic link Select the topic ID of the topic you want to link to and any anchor
settings: 305 you want to link to in the topic. You can also create links to

external help files or projects by selecting the file or project in the

Help File: field and select a different window type 310 to open the
topic in, if one exists.

Internet link Enter the link URL or email address in the Address: field. For web
settings: pages select how you want to open the page in the Target
Window: field. (In Browser-based Help use Top frame instead of
Same frame as referring topic to keep the TOC visible.)

File link Enter the name of the file or use the button to select it. Don't use
settings: paths, the file should be in the same directory as your help file at
runtime. You can enter execution parameters just as you can for
file links in your topics.

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 Basic Working Procedures 323

Script link Enter your script or Winhelp macro in the editing window. See
settings: Inserting script and macro links 303 and Scripts, HTML and Macros
757 for more details on syntax and implementation.

How to align hotspots precisely:

Sometimes you want to arrange several hotspots in a precise row and doing this with the
mouse can be tricky. The Align buttons arrange all the selected hotspots in a row,
aligning them to first hotspot that you select:
· Use Shift+Click to select all the hotspots you want to align. The hotspots will be
lined up with the first hotspot you select.
· Select one of the two Align tools to align the hotspots:
aligns the hotspots in a vertical
row, using the first hotspot
selected as the reference.
aligns the hotspots in a horizontal
row, using the first hotspot
selected as the reference.

How to edit hotspots:

1. Open the hotspot editor:
· Double-click on the graphic and select or
· Right-click on the graphic and select Picture > Edit Hotspots in the context menu.
2. Click on the hotspot you want to edit and edit its settings (see above).

· To delete a hotspot click on it and select or just press the Delete key on your
keyboard.

Old Impict .IPP and Microsoft .SHG files with hotspots:

In Help & Manual 3 and earlier hotspots were stored in Impict .IPP graphics files and in
files in the standard Microsoft .SHG format. If you convert .HM3 projects containing
these graphics to the Help & Manual 4 .HMX format the hotspots will be converted
correctly.
However if you insert old .IPP or .SHG graphics containing hotspots in a .HMX project the
hotspots will not be available in your .HMX project. If you want to use hotspots in these
graphics you must re-enter them using the Help & Manual 4 methods described here.

Hotspot compatibility in output formats:

Graphics with hotspots are not supported in all output formats:

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 324 Help & Manual Online Help

Winhelp: Supported (Winhelp macros but no JavaScript)

HTML Help: Supported (JavaScript and four standard Winhelp macros

303 )

Visual Studio Same as HTML Help but all external file links are explicitly
Help: forbidden in Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0.

Browser- Supported (JavaScript but no Winhelp macros, JavaScript

based Help: support also depends to a great extent on the user's
browser, so use with caution)

eBooks: Hotspot topic links are supported, no support for script or

macro links

Adobe PDF: Hotspot topic links are supported, no support for script or
macro links

Word RTF: No support for graphics hotspots.

See also:
Links, Anchors, Macros, Scripts and HTML 293
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849
7.7.8 Finding and replacing graphics
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to find and replace graphics with Find & Replace 324

A quicker way to replace graphics files 325

Help & Manual's find and replace function can also locate and replace graphics files in your
entire project. This can be very useful if a graphic that you have used over and over again in
your entire project needs to be replaced quickly!

How to find and replace graphics with Find & Replace:

1. Make a note of the exact names of the graphics files you want to find and replace.
2. Select Edit > Find & Replace Text.

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 Basic Working Procedures 325

3. Select the In Images option in the Find Where section of the dialog.
4. Use the other options in the dialog to define the scope of your search. See Find &
Replace Text 680 in the Reference section for details.
This function only searches for entire graphics file names. Wildcard
characters are not supported. This means you must enter the entire
name, including the dot and the file extension.
· When you are replacing it is advisable to select the Match case option and enter
the file names with upper and lower case characters exactly as they are used to
make sure that they match the graphics files on your disk. If you are only searching
to locate files you can ignore the case.

A quicker way to replace graphics files:

There is a quicker way to do this if the name of the graphics file you want to replace is
not important:
· Just overwrite the original graphics file in your project graphics directory with the
updated or different graphic, so that the new graphic is in the same location and
has the same name as the old graphic.
· Help & Manual always checks the size of graphics when it loads them so this also
works with graphics that have different dimensions. The two graphics must both
have the same format, however! (You cannot use this method to replace a .JPG
with a .GIF graphic, for example.)

See also:
Searching for text, topics and referrers 191
Find & Replace Text 680
Find Topic 676
Find Referrers 676
7.7.9 Managing your graphics
IN THIS TOPIC:
Adding and removing image folder references 326

Where to store your image folders 326

How many image folders to use 327
Moving and renaming image folders 327
Splitting and consolidating image folders 327
Moving projects to different locations 327
Managing graphics in modular projects 328

When you add graphics to a project Help & Manual does not actually physically store the
graphic file in your project (that would make your project files much too big). Instead, it
inserts a reference to the graphic that only contains the name of the file, without any path
information. When you open the topic again later or generate your output Help & Manual
finds the file by looking in the list of image folders in Project > Project Properties > Common
Properties > Image Folders 553 .

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326 Help & Manual Online Help

Although the full paths are displayed in the Image Folders list for your
information the references are actually relative paths, which tell Help &
Manual where the image folders are in relation to your project folder.
Help & Manual searches the image folders in the order they are displayed in the list and it
always uses the first file with a matching name that it finds. This means that it is very
important to make sure that you do not have graphics files with duplicate names in different
image folders. If you do the wrong images may be inserted in your project because Help &
Manual will never be able to find the versions in the folders lower down in the list.
This strategy is used to ensure that you can easily move your projects, images and image
folders to different locations without "breaking" the links to the images in your project. This
topic explains how to use these functions efficiently.

Avoid duplicate graphics filenames!

If you use multiple graphics folders it is very important to avoid duplicate
filenames! If you have duplicates Help & Manual will only find the first
version of the graphics file with the same name. This version will be used
everywhere in your project where that filename is used, even if you
selected other versions when you inserted the images!

Adding and removing folders in the Image Folders list:

Help & Manual locates graphics on the disk by searching for files in the directories in the
Image Folders list. You do not normally need to add image folders to the Image Folders
list manually. If you insert an image 314 in your project from a folder not included in the list
it will be added to the list automatically.
· To edit the Image Folders list manually go to Project > Project Properties >
Common Properties > Image Folders.
· For more details see Image Folders 553 in the Project Properties chapter.
By default the project folder is included in the Image Folders list so that any images in
this folder will be found automatically. You can remove it if you want, however. (Unless
you only have very few images it is best not to store them in the project folder because
this makes your project a more difficult to manage.)

Where to store your image folders:

Although the entire path is displayed in the Image Folders 553 list the references to the
folders stored in your project are actually relative to your project folder (the folder
containing your .HMX project file). This means that if you move your project folder to a
different location Help & Manual will no longer be able to find the image files because the
relative paths to the folders will no longer be correct. You can correct this quite easily,
however: All you need to do is to delete all the old entries in the Image Folders list and
replace them with the new references.
· Because of this the best place for your image folders is inside your project folder.
This makes it very easy to move your entire project to a different location because
the relative links to your image folders will never be broken, even if you move the
project folder to a different drive or computer.

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 Basic Working Procedures 327

· Placing your image folders inside your project folder is also much more practical,
because it keeps all the files associated with your project in one place.

How many image folders to use:

Ideally you should keep the number of image folders you use to a minimum. If you really
have a lot of images you might want to create separate folders for different categories –
for example buttons, screenshots, photos and so on. However, the more folders you
have the greater the risk is that you might accidentally store two image files with the
same names in different folders.
· What you should really avoid is using images from many different folders in many
different locations outside your project folder. This is almost a guarantee that you
will have problems of one kind or another later. It is much better to copy or move
images used by your project to image folders inside your project directory.

Moving and renaming image folders:

Because of the way Help & Manual manages images you can always change the names
and locations of your image folders. Since only the image file names are stored in your
project you just need to change the references in the Image Folders 553 list to tell Help &
Manual where to look for the files.
1. Move and/or rename the image folders and their contents.
2. Go to Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Image Folders 553 . Delete
the old references to the image folders and add the new image folders locations.
Help & Manual will now find your images in the new location(s).

Splitting and consolidating image folders:

Because of the way Help & Manual manages images you can also split and consolidate
image folders – i.e. move some of the images from an image folder to a new folder or
take all of the images from two or more folders and put them into a single folder. Since
only the image file names are stored in your project you just need to change the
references in the Image Folders 553 list to tell Help & Manual where to look for the files.
1. Make any changes necessary to your image folders and the image locations. You
can create new folders and move some of your images to the new folders or move
all the images from multiple folders to a single folder and delete the original
folders. None of this is a problem for Help & Manual.
2. Go to Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Image Folders 553 . Delete
the old references to the image folders and add the new image folders locations.
Help & Manual will now find your images in the new location(s).

Moving projects to different locations:

· If your images folders are stored inside your project folder you do not need to make
any changes at all when you move your project to a different location. Since the

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 328 Help & Manual Online Help

internal path references to the image folders are all relative to your project folder they
will all also be found in the new location.
· If your image folders are stored outside your project folder you may need to refresh
the Image Folders List after moving your project folder: Go to Project > Project
Properties > Common Properties > Image Folders 553 , delete the old references to the
image folders and add the new image folders locations.

Managing graphics in modular projects:

It's always important to avoid duplicate filenames 326 for your graphics. This applies in
particular for modular projects, because you will often have separate graphics folders for
each project.
Duplicate names are OK if you use runtime merging 876 because then each module is
compiled individually and the correct graphics will be used. However, if you use compile-
time merging 875 Help & Manual will only find the first instance of any duplicates as it
searches through the graphics folders to locate the correct files.

Use filename prefixes for graphics files in modules

The simplest solution for this problem is to add a unique prefix to the filenames of
graphics files used in modules, in the same way that you use prefixes for the topic
IDs 498 in modules. The prefix should be short – two letters and an underline character
are usually plenty – and should identify the module.

See also:
Image Folders 553 (Project Properties)
New project from a Word RTF file 141 (importing RTF files containing graphics)
7.7.10 Shortcuts for frequently-used graphics
IN THIS TOPIC:
Displaying the Picture Shortcuts list 328
Adding graphics to the Picture Shortcuts list 334
Inserting Picture Shortcuts graphics in your project 328

Managing the Picture Shortcuts list 328

Including Baggage files in Picture Shortcuts 328

If you are like most help authors you will probably have a number of graphics files that you
use again and again in your project. These can include logos, little callout images used in
indented lists and so on. Help & Manual 4 introduces a new function called "Picture
Shortcuts" that makes accessing images like these much easier.

Displaying the Picture Shortcuts list:

· To display the Picture Shortcuts list click on the arrow symbol next to the Insert
Graphic tool in the Toolbar:

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 Basic Working Procedures 329

This list is empty until you add images to the list

by selecting "Configure Picture Shortcuts".

· You can add as many graphic images to the Picture Shortcuts list as you want.
Thumbnail images of the images are generated automatically and displayed in the list.
You can also organize the list in categories to make it easier to manage. In the
example above the categories "Logos" and "Screenshots" have been created.

Adding graphics to the Picture Shortcuts list:

Note that unlike files added to the Baggage section 520 , Picture Shortcuts graphics are
not embedded in your project. They are simply links for quick access to frequently-used
graphics. This means that you can also use shortcuts for larger images.
1. Click on the arrow icon next to the Insert Graphic tool in the Toolbar and then
select Configure Picture Shortcuts...

2. Select in the Configure Picture Shortcuts dialog to add a new graphic to

the list:

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330 Help & Manual Online Help

You can add multiple images simultaneously by selecting them with Ctrl
+A, Ctrl+Click and Shift+Click. in the Open Image dialog.

3. Click on to close the dialog. The images you have added will now be
displayed in the Picture Shortcuts list.

Inserting graphics with Picture Shortcuts:

· Click on the arrow next to the Insert Image tool in the Toolbar and select the image
you want to insert in the menu displayed:

Just select an image in the list to insert it.

· Note that categories like "Logos" and "Screenshots" shown in the example will only be
displayed if you create them.

Managing the Picture Shortcuts list:

In addition to adding pictures you can also adjust the display order of the links in the
drop-down menu and organize the image links in categories. Using categories is
recommended if you have a lot of image links because it makes the images easier to
select and speeds up display when you activate the menu.

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 Basic Working Procedures 331

· Use and to adjust the order of your image links. Just select a
link and then click on the buttons. You can also use these buttons to adjust the display
order of the category headings (see below).
· Use to create a new category. All image links moved directly below the
category heading will automatically be listed in the submenu displayed for the
category.
Note that this button is disabled when a category is selected. You must
select an image instead of a category to display the button.
Note that you can only create one category level. Categories cannot contain
other categories.
· Use to remove images and categories from the list.

Including Baggage files in the Picture Shortcuts list:

· The option includes any graphics files you have added to
the Baggage section 520 in the Picture Shortcuts list. This option is selected by default.
· Note that Baggage graphics cannot be organized in categories and they are not
displayed in the Configure Picture Shortcuts dialog.
For more information on using Baggage files see Using Baggage Files 520 in the More
Advanced Procedures section.

See also:
Using Baggage Files 520
Graphics References 489

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 332 Help & Manual Online Help

7.8 Working with Tables

IN THIS TOPIC:
What you can do with tables 332
How tables are inserted 332
Restrictions in tables 332
Restrictions in Winhelp output 332

Help & Manual 4 introduces full, integrated support for fully-formatted complex tables. If you
are new to Help & Manual this may seem normal but for everyone upgrading from Help &
Manual 3.x working in tables in Help & Manual 4 will feel like your birthday, Christmas,
Easter and Chinese New Year all rolled into one. Table editing is now smooth, powerful and
easy, with all the features familiar from modern word processors and HTML.

What you can do with tables in Help & Manual:

Ø Create complex tables with merged cells in both horizontal and vertical directions
Ø Create nested tables
Ø Automatically break tables at page boundaries with repeating headers at the top of
each new page (PDF and Print Manual)
Ø Apply formatting to the entire table or individual cells, groups of cells, rows or columns
Ø Apply complex formatting with background graphics, background colors, cell spacing
and padding and a variety of border styles

How tables are inserted in Help & Manual:

A table is inserted as a single paragraph containing a single object (the table). It is not
possible to add any more objects to this paragraph. For example, if you type a character
in the paragraph before or after the table this will automatically insert a new paragraph.
This has two important consequences:
· You can delete an entire table by pressing the Delete or Backspace key once.
· You can use styles with tables by applying the style to the paragraph containing
the table.

Restrictions in Help & Manual tables:

Copying, cutting and pasting is restricted to single cells and entire tables. You can copy,
cut and paste entire tables and the contents of single cells. You cannot copy either the
contents of multiple cells, or columns, rows or ranges of cells.

Restrictions in Winhelp output:

Please note that Winhelp is an old format that lacks support for a number of modern
formatting options. These include table borders, nested tables, borders, background
colors, superscript and subscript. It is advisable not to use these features for Winhelp. If
you want to output to both Winhelp and other formats you can create alternative versions
using Help & Manual's conditional output features 451 .

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 Basic Working Procedures 333

For details please see Classic Winhelp 768 in the Help Formats chapter in the Reference
section.

See also:
Classic Winhelp 768
7.8.1 Inserting tables
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create a new table 333
Choosing the table size option 333
Setting column widths 334
Setting up tables for printing 334

How to create a new table:

1. Select Table > New Table…

2. Enter the number of rows and columns and choose your formatting options.
For full details see New Table/Table Properties 717 in the Reference section.

Choosing the table size option:

Autosize: Creates a table that calculates its size automatically on the basis of cell
contents. The absolute width of the table in your output will depend on
how you adjust the width of the cells and the table itself and the content
you put in them.
Autosized tables can be made narrower by dragging their right margin

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 334 Help & Manual Online Help

with the mouse. (You may need to adjust the size of two of the rightmost
columns in the table first before you can do this.)

Size table to Creates a table that is permanently maximized to the width of the current
fit on page: paragraph (if the paragraph has indents the table will be narrower than
the page). This is exactly the same as sizing manually and setting a width
of 100%.

Size table Creates a table with a fixed width in percent or pixels. Percentage values
manually: are relative to the width of the current paragraph. Setting a value of 100%
is exactly the same as Size table to fit on page.

For full details see New Table/Table Properties 717 in the Reference section.

Setting column widths:

Column widths are not set when you create the table. Please see Controlling column
widths 334 for details on setting and adjusting the widths of columns in tables.

Setting up tables for printing:

Tables can be set to split automatically at page boundaries for PDFs and manual
printouts. Note that this function is not supported by the Topics > Print Topic option,
which is a very simple print function.
· Select Table can split to next page to ensure that page breaks can be inserted
inside larger when you output to PDFs and printed manuals. (Page breaks within
table rows are possible, but not in rows containing nested tables 343 !)
· Select the Number of heading rows that you want repeat on each page as the
ongoing header of the table.

See also:
New Table / Table Properties 717 (Reference)
How table sizing works 882 (Reference)
7.8.2 Controlling column widths
IN THIS TOPIC:
Setting and adjusting column widths 335
Locking and unlocking column widths 335

In Help & Manual the widths of columns in tables are initially calculated automatically. After
you create a table you can adjust the widths of columns by adding content to them, by
dragging their borders with the mouse and by setting their widths to absolute or percentage
values in the Table Properties dialog.
You can also "lock" the widths of columns. This can be necessary if you are using tables as
a layout tool and want to have column widths that do not change dynamically when the users
adjusts the size of the help viewer window.

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 Basic Working Procedures 335

Setting and adjusting column widths:

Column widths are not set when you create the table, they must be set or adjusted
afterwards. There are several ways to adjust the widths of table columns:
· Insert content in the cells. The cells will automatically adjust to fit the content you
enter. Cells/columns are always at least as wide as any fixed-width content you
enter, such as graphics or movie files.
· Drag column borders with the mouse. This sets the width of the columns you
adjust to "locked". A locked column has a fixed width in pixels.
Note that if the table has a variable width ("fit on page" or percentage) it
must contain at least one variable column in order to be able to adjust its
width. If all column widths are locked in a variable-width table they will
automatically all be unlocked in the output, producing unpredictable
results.
· Select 336 one or more columns. Then right-click and select Table > Table Properties
> Selected Cells and adjust the Preferred width value.
Setting a width in pixels sets an absolute width and "locks" the width of
the column.
A percentage value sets the width in relation to the total width of the
table. If you set percentage widths for all columns they must add up to
100%, otherwise your entries will be ignored and the column widths will
be calculated automatically.

Locking/unlocking column widths:

You need to lock the width of columns if you want to make sure that they will not change
when the user changes the viewer window size. Remember that tables must have at
least one unlocked column to allow adjustment of the table width without changing the
width of a locked column!
There are two ways to set the width of table columns to "locked" or "unlocked":

Lock Column Width in the context menu:

· Select 336 one or more columns. Then right-click and select

Table > Lock Column Width. This is a toggle function –
selecting it locks unlocked columns and unlocks locked
columns.
· Locking a column locks it to its current width to an absolute
width in pixels.
· The current status of the selected column or columns is
indicated by the check mark to the left of the function.
Checked is locked, unchecked is unlocked.

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 336 Help & Manual Online Help

Preferred Width in the Table Properties dialog:

· Select 336 one or more columns. Then right-click

and select Table > Table Properties and select
the Selected Cells tab.
· Set Preferred Width to a value in pixels to lock
the column width.
· See Setting column widths 333 above for more
details.

See also:
New Table / Table Properties 717 (Reference)
How table sizing works 882 (Reference)
7.8.3 Selecting and formatting cells and tables
IN THIS TOPIC:
Selecting and resizing tables with the mouse 336
Resizing tables and cells with Table Properties 337
Formatting tables and individual cells 337

Selecting and resizing tables with the mouse:

Select entire Position the mouse just to left of table and click. Or click and drag
table: through the entire table.
OR
Click in a cell and press Ctrl+A. Pressing once selects the current cell,
pressing again selects the entire table.

Select single Just click in the cell. Even though it is not highlighted it is selected for
cell: formatting the cell properties (see below). This does not select any
text that the cell contains, however – this must be selected, formatted
and edited just like text in the editor.

Select Click and drag

multiple cells:

Select row: Position mouse over left border of table ( mouse pointer) and click.
Or click and drag through row. Using the click method takes a little
practice, the mouse pointer only appears in a very narrow area.

Select Position mouse over top border of table ( mouse pointer) and click. Or
column: click and drag through column. Using the click method takes a little
practice, the mouse pointer only appears in a very narrow area.

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 Basic Working Procedures 337

You cannot select a column if the cursor is currently in the top cell of
the column. Click in a cell to the left or right of the top cell before
selecting using this method!

Resize table: Drag the right and bottom borders of the table.

Resize cells: Drag the cell borders.

Resizing tables and cells with Table Properties:

Note that most of the settings you can enter are not absolute. All widths except pixel
values are relative to the output page, which can vary depending on how the user sizes
the viewer window (electronic formats) and the size of the printout page (PDF etc). You
can only set a minimum height for cells; the actual height is controlled by the cell
contents.
1. Select the table or the cells you want to resize (see above).
2. Select Table > Table Properties or right-click and select Table > Table Properties.
3. To resize the entire table use the settings in the Table Layout tab.
4. Select the Selected Cells tab to adjust the size settings for individual cells.
For details see The Table Properties dialog 717 in the Reference section.

Formatting tables and individual cells:

To display the Table Properties 717 dialog select Table > Table Properties or right-click
and select Table > Table Properties.
Formatting Place the cursor in the table and select Table Properties.
entire table:

Formatting Place the cursor in the cell and select Table Properties, then click on
single cells: the Selected Cells tab.

Formatting Select the cells, rows or columns and select Table Properties, then
multiple cells: click on the Selected Cells tab.

For full details on all formatting options see The Table Properties dialog 717 in
the Reference section.

See also:
New Table / Table Properties 717 (Reference)
How table sizing works 882 (Reference)

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 338 Help & Manual Online Help

7.8.4 Adding and deleting rows and columns

IN THIS TOPIC:
Adding rows and columns with the menu options 338
Deleting rows, columns and entire tables with the menu options 338

Adding and deleting rows and columns with Table Properties 338

Adding rows and columns with the menu options:

1. Click in the table at the point where you want to insert new rows or columns.
2. Select Table > Insert or right-click and select Table > Insert, then select the rows or
columns option to insert new rows relative to the cursor position (Left, Right, Above or
Below ).

Deleting rows, columns and entire tables with the menu options:
1. Select 336 the rows or columns you want to delete or click in a cell to delete only the
row or column containing that cell.
2. Select Table > Delete or right-click and select Table > Delete and then select what you
want to delete (Rows, Columns or Table).
You can also delete an entire table by placing the cursor directly before
or after the table and pressing Delete or Backspace.

Caution when deleting in complex tables!

If you have split and merged 339 cells to create a complex table deleting
rows and columns may delete more or less than you expect because the
"rows" and "columns" are no longer clearly defined. If this happens select
Undo and then use Split and Merge to clear up the situation before trying
to delete entire rows or columns.

Adding and deleting rows and columns with Table Properties:

1. Select Table > Table Properties or right-click and select Table > Table Properties.
2. Adjust the Rows and Columns settings to increase or delete.
· Increasing and decreasing the values adds or deletes rows or columns in the last
positions (right and bottom) of the table.

See also:
New Table / Table Properties 717 (Reference)
How table sizing works 882 (Reference)

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 Basic Working Procedures 339

7.8.5 Splitting, merging and unmerging cells

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to merge cells 339
How to split cells 339
How to unmerge cells 339

Help & Manual now allows you to create complex tables by splitting and merging cells both
vertically and horizontally. In addition to this you can also nest tables 343 inside one another to
create even more complex structures.

How to merge cells:

1. Select 336 the cells you want to merge (you must select at least two cells).
2. Select Table > Merge Cells or right-click and select Table > Merge Cells in the context
menu.

How to split cells:

1. Select 336 the cells you want to split. If you just want to split a single cell just click inside
the cell, it is then selected automatically even though it is not highlighted.
2. Select Table > Split Cells or right-click and select Table > Split Cells in the context
menu and choose Vertically or Horizontally to choose the direction of the split.
3. Enter the number of columns or rows you want to split into (the default is 2).

How to unmerge cells:

This function restores the original number of rows and/or columns in the selected cells,
basing the number on the original definition of the entire table.
1. Select 336 the cells you want to unmerge. If you just want to unmerge a single cell
just click inside the cell, it is then selected automatically even though it is not
highlighted.
2. Select Table > Unmerge or right-click and select Table > Unmerge in the context
menu and then choose Rows, Columns or Rows and Columns.

See also:
Nested tables 343
New Table / Table Properties 717 (Reference)
How table sizing works 882 (Reference)
7.8.6 Deleting the contents of cells
Selecting cells and pressing Delete just deletes the contents (i.e. text, graphics etc.) of the
cells, not the cells themselves. The only exception to this is when you select the entire table.
If you do this and press Delete it will delete both the contents and the entire table!
See Adding and deleting rows and columns 338 for instructions on how to delete cells entirely.

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How to delete the contents of cells:

1. Select the cells 336 whose contents you want to delete. (Don't select the entire table as
this will delete both the contents and the entire table.)
2. Press Delete.

See also:
New Table / Table Properties 717 (Reference)
How table sizing works 882 (Reference)
7.8.7 Converting tables to text
You can convert a table to ordinary text in the same way that you convert hyperlinks to text.

How to convert a table to plain text:

1. Click to the left of the table to select the entire table and the paragraph containing the
table. You can drag with the mouse to make sure that everything is selected if you
want.
2. Right-click with the mouse and select Convert to plain text in the pop-up menu.

Converting text to tables:

At the moment it is not possible to convert text to tables in Help & Manual. However, if
you really need to do this you can copy the text to MS Word, convert it to a table there
and then paste the table back to Help & Manual.
In addition to pasting you can also save Word documents as RTF files and then import
them to your project with Topics > Load Topic from File 202 f or File > Import 162 .

See also:
Selecting and formatting cells and tables 336
Exporting and importing topics 202
Importing Data into Existing Projects 155
7.8.8 Indenting tables
In Help & Manual, a table is handled as a single object in a paragraph that is not allowed to
contain any other objects. The formatting of the table itself is handled by the table properties
but the position of the table on the page is controlled by the paragraph properties of the
paragraph containing the table.
This means that to indent a table you need to adjust the indent settings of the paragraph
containing the table. This can be done either with a style or by adjusting the paragraph
formatting manually.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 341

How to select the table paragraph for indenting:

To indent a table's paragraph you first need
to place the cursor between the table and its
paragraph mark. Doing this can be a little
tricky until you get the hang of it. To make it
easier it is better to turn on paragraph marks
display in the editor with the tool in the
Toolbar. Then just click directly between the
paragraph mark and the end of the table.
Alternatively, you can just place the cursor at
the end of the last cell in the table and then
press the right arrow cursor key on your
keyboard once, or place the cursor at the
beginning of the next paragraph after the
table and press the left arrow cursor key
once. Both these operations will also position
the cursor between the table and its
paragraph mark.

Adjusting table indent settings:

First position the cursor between the table and its paragraph marker (see above), then
adjust the indent settings with a style or manual formatting:
· To adjust the settings with a style create a style (see Text Formatting and Styles 228 )
with the necessary indent settings, then position the cursor and apply the style by
selecting it in the Style Selector in the toolbar (or by pressing the style's keyboard
shortcut if you have defined one).

The style selector in the Toolbar

· To adjust the settings manually position the cursor and then select Format >
Paragraph and adjust the paragraph settings.

See also:
Selecting and formatting cells and tables 336
Applying styles to tables 341
7.8.9 Applying styles to tables
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to apply a style to the table paragraph 342
How to apply styles to the contents of tables 342

When applying styles 228 to tables it is important to understand how tables are inserted in
your project. A table is basically an object in a paragraph of its own (you can't insert anything

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

342 Help & Manual Online Help

else in the paragraph). For formatting purposes you can think of a table as a paragraph
containing a single character.
This means that can you can apply styles to both the paragraph containing the table and to
the content paragraphs inside the table cells. When doing this it is important to understand
how it works:

Style applied to "table paragraph":

The font attributes of the style are ignored. Only the indents, paragraph spacing,
borders and background are applied.
Although you can use this to apply backgrounds and an outside border to your table
it is best not to do this. Use the table's own borders and backgrounds formatting, this
will prevent possible inconsistencies in printouts and some output formats.

Style applied to content paragraphs inside the table:

This is exactly the same as applying styles to any other paragraphs. All the style
attributes are applied to the paragraphs or selected text in the same way as in the
normal editor window.

How to apply a style to the table paragraph:

1. Click on in the Toolbar to display paragraph marks (this makes it easier to see what
you are doing).
2. Click to the right of the table between the table and its paragraph mark so that you
can see the blinking editing cursor between the table and the paragraph mark.
3. Select the style you want to apply in the drop-down style list in the Toolbar.

How to apply styles to the contents of tables:

· Select text and paragraphs and apply styles just as you would in the normal editor.
You can also apply styles to multiple paragraphs in multiple cells by selecting the cells
and then applying the style.
· Note that if you want to apply a style to all the paragraphs in a table you must select
the entire table by clicking and dragging inside the table. If you click in the left margin
to select the table you will not be able to apply styles because then the table is
selected and not its contents.

See also:
New Table / Table Properties 717 (Reference)
How table sizing works 882 (Reference)
Text Formatting and Styles 228

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 Basic Working Procedures 343

7.8.10 Nested tables

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to insert a nested table 343
Nested tables prevent page breaks 343

The table formatting functions of Help & Manual 4 are powerful but they do have some
limitations. For example, you can't set cell borders (or different cell borders) for just a
defined range of cells, and you can only set a background picture 344 for the entire table, not
for a single cell or group of cells.
There are also limits to the kind of complexity you can achieve by merging cells. You can
encounter difficulties if you want to apply any of the properties in the Table Layout 718 tab
(which apply to the entire table) to single cells or a range of cells.
Some of these problems can be solved by using nested tables, i.e. by inserting a second
table inside the first table. Then you can apply different table properties to the second table,
which can be a single cell, row or column in the "parent" table.
Don't go overboard with nested tables. It's tempting to use them but it can
get very complicated very quickly!
Nested tables are not supported by Winhelp and will cause compiler errors if
you try to use them for Winhelp output.
Page breaks 343 are not possible inside table rows containing nested tables.

How to insert a nested table:

Inserting a nested table is just like inserting any other table. The only difference is where
you insert it:
1. Click inside the cell of the table where you want to insert another table.
2. Use any of the standard methods for inserting a new table 333 .
The nested table is a fully independent table in its own right. You can use all the normal
table formatting and editing functions on it, including applying a style 341 to its "table
paragraph". You just need to keep track of where your nested tables are.

Nested tables prevent page breaks:

Since Help & Manual version 4.3 page breaks inside table rows are supported. However,
pages cannot break inside rows that contain nested tables (Table can split to next page
718 setting). So it's best not to use large nested tables in projects you are going to output

to PDF, RTF or as printed manuals.

See also:
New Table / Table Properties 717 (Reference)
How table sizing works 882 (Reference)

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 344 Help & Manual Online Help

7.8.11 Using background graphics

In addition to defining background colors you can also add background graphics to your
tables. For example, you can insert a single large graphic behind a table like a "watermark",
or you can tile a small graphic to create a repeating pattern or texture as a background for
the table.

How to apply a background graphic to a table:

1. Click in the table and select Table > Table Properties or right-click and select Table >
Table Properties to display the Table Properties 717 dialog.
2. In the Table Layout tab select the Background Picture option.
3. Click on and select the graphics file you want to use.
4. Select Tile to repeat the graphic in a pattern or Center to display the graphic only
once, centering it on the center of the table.
When using Center matching the size of graphics to your tables can be
tricky. The most practical solution is to use graphics that have an edge the
same color as the page or table background so that you don't have to line
up precisely with the edge of the table.
Graphics are normally applied to the entire table. If you want to apply a
graphic to a single cell or range of cells you can do this by inserting a nested
table 343 and applying the background graphic to the nested table.

See also:
New Table / Table Properties 717 (Reference)
How table sizing works 882 (Reference)
7.8.12 Handling table borders
IN THIS TOPIC:
The relationship between table and cell borders 344

Cells with different border colors 345

When you are defining borders around tables it is important to remember that there are two
different "objects" in tables for which you can define borders: The table itself and the cell.
Cell borders and table borders are separate definitions.

The relationship between table borders and cell borders:

The table border is outside the cell borders. If you set both cell and table borders the
resulting border around the table will have the width of the cell borders plus the width of
the table border.
· For example, if you set both the cell borders and the table border to a width of 3 pixels
the table border will have a width of 6 pixels, like this:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 345

Table border width: 3 pixels

Cell borders width: 3 pixels

· If you want to create a table with borders that are the same as the cell borders just set
a width for the cell borders and leave the table border set to 0.

Table border width: 0 pixels

Cell borders width: 3 pixels

· The following example does the opposite. Here the table border width is set to 3 pixels
and the cell border width is set to 0 pixels. The grid lines are visible to show that it is
the same table:

Table border width: 3 pixels

Cell borders width: 0 pixels

Cells with different border colors:

You cannot define different colors for cell and table borders in a single table. To create
one or more cells with different colored borders insert a second table inside the first table
and define different border color settings for the two tables. See Nested tables 343 for
details.

See also:
Nested tables 343
New Table / Table Properties 717 (Reference)
How table sizing works 882 (Reference)

7.9 Toggles: Expanding Text and Images

This new feature added in Help & Manual 4.2 enables you to create expanding text and
images in your projects with just a few simple clicks. Toggles are powerful and easy to use
and they can make your help much more useful and accessible to the user.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

346 Help & Manual Online Help

Toggles are available in Help & Manual Professional only:

The Toggles feature is only supported in the Professional version of Help &
Manual 4.2 and later. If you have the Standard version you can edit
toggles in projects created with the Pro version but you cannot include
them in your output. Text toggles will be exported fully expanded as static
text and image toggles will be exported as normal static images.

You can use three kinds of toggles:

Expanding section toggles:
Click here to display an expanding section toggle
These toggles are ideal for instructions. They enable you to place your how-to
instructions in the normal flow of your topic text instead of linking to other topics.
To view or hide the instructions the user just clicks on the toggle link. Expanding
section toggles can contain as much text or as little text as you want.
There are no restrictions on the content of expanding sections. You can insert
images links, embedded topics 222 and anything else that you can use in normal
topics. You can also insert both expanding image toggles 357 and expanding inline text
toggles inside expanding sections.
You can also nest expanding sections – i.e. you can insert one expanding section
inside another one.
A nested expanding section
This is an example of one expanding section nested inside another one.
Theoretically you can nest expanding sections as deep as you like but more then
one or two levels will get very confusing for your users.

Expanding inline text toggles:

Example of an expanding inline text toggle
Click here to display an inline toggle! These toggles are ideal for definitions and other
short references. They "expand" text within the flow of a paragraph, as though it had
been pasted into the paragraph. This is much more practical and less obtrusive than
using a popup window. It also has the advantage that it can't trigger browser's popup
blockers when you are using Browser-based Help 771 .
You can apply a style to the inline text displayed for the toggle and if you want you
can use a different style for every toggle.

Expanding image toggles:

Example of an expanding image toggle
Expanding image toggles enable you to display larger versions of your images
without having the image dominate the page all the time. The user clicks on the
image to see the larger version if he or she wants to, otherwise a small, compact
version of the image is displayed.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 347

Creating
expandin
g image
toggles is
very
easy.
You just
select the
image
you want
to use
and Help
& Manual
generate
Click on the image to switch back to the smaller version! s the
smaller
version
for you
automatic
ally,
using the
zoom
factor
that you
choose.

Supported output formats:

Toggles are generated using JavaScript and HTML. This means that their full
functionality is only available in HTML-based output formats where JavaScript is
supported.
Support for toggles in Help & Manual's output formats

HTML Help, Browser-based Help and Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0.
Toggles are fully functional in all these formats. In Browser-based Help JavaScript
must be turned on for the toggles to be operational. If JavaScript is turned off the
toggles are automatically displayed in their expanded state.
PDF, MS Word RTF and Printed Manuals
In all these static formats toggles are automatically displayed in their expanded
state. This is the default setting – however, you can also choose to have them
displayed in their collapsed state (option in Insert Toggle 697 dialog).
WinHelp and eBooks
Winhelp and eBooks do not support JavaScript and so all text toggles are
displayed as static text and in their expanded state. Image toggles will display the
target version of the toggle image in a separate page when the user clicks on it.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 348 Help & Manual Online Help

7.9.1 Expanding section toggles

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create a new expanding section 348
Adding existing text to an expanding section 350
Using an existing table for the expanding section 351
Formatting the expanding section header 351
Adjusting the indents for expanding sections 352
Using your own icon images in the header 352
Swapping and manipulating the standard icons 353

Expanding sections enable you to insert entire blocks of text and other content – as much as
you like – that expand and collapse when the user clicks on the header. See the introduction
topic 345 in this section for some examples.
If you plan to output your project to PDF it is advisable not to insert
additional tables inside your expanding section toggles ( nested tables 343 ).
If you do, page breaks will not work correctly inside the rows containing
additional tables!

About expanding sections:

There are no restrictions on the content of expanding sections. You can insert images,
links, embedded topics 222 and anything else that you can use in normal topics. You can
even insert embedded topics that contain their own expanding sections. You can also
insert both expanding image toggles 357 and expanding inline text 354 toggles inside
expanding sections.
You can also nest expanding sections – i.e. you can insert one expanding section inside
another one. There is no restriction on the number of levels you can nest but be careful
because more than one or two levels will quickly get very confusing for your users! Also,
nested expanding sections are actually nested tables 343 , and page breaks are not
possible inside table rows containing nested tables.

A word of warning:
Expanding sections are so useful that it's very tempting to over-use them. If you want to
keep your topics accessible, they should be used with care. Don't try to use them for
everything and don't make them too large, that will make your topics confusing and
difficult to handle for the user.
As a general rule of thumb, expanding sections should be used for small, manageable
chunks of material. If you find that you have to scroll more than a single screen to see
the entire contents of an expanding section then you should be using a link to another
topic, not an expanding section toggle.

How to create a new expanding section:

Expanding sections are handled by placing all the text and other content you want to
include in the section in a table. Normally, this table will be created automatically by the
Toggle function but you can also use an existing table 351 if you want.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 349

You can have a maximum of one empty paragraph between the

expanding section header and its table. If you have two or more empty
paragraphs the expanding section will not work!
1. Click in your topic in the place where you want to insert an expanding section
toggle. If you want to use existing text as the expanding section caption (header)
select it in the editor.
2. Select Insert > Toggle. and select the Expanding Text option (default setting) and
Toggle a Table: (default setting
3. Configure the settings in the Insert Toggle dialog.
Insert Toggle dialog options for expanding sections

The Insert Toggle

dialog
Export Options: These options control whether the toggle is expanded or
collapsed in your output. Normally, toggles are expanded in
print formats (PDF, printed manuals and Word RTF) and
collapsed by default in supported electronic formats.
Note that toggles are not supported in WinHelp
and eBooks and so toggles are always displayed
expanded in these formats.
Optional ID: This is optional and we recommend that you leave it
blank. You only need to enter an ID here if you plan to access
the toggle IDs in the HTML code of your output for any
reason.
If you leave this field blank Help & Manual will give each toggle
a unique internal ID. If you enter your own ID you must make
sure that each ID in the current topic is unique and you must
also edit your IDs manually if you copy your toggles, otherwise
you will have ID conflicts.
Caption: This is the "header" of your expanding section. It is also the
active link that the user clicks on to expand or collapse the
section. (If you select text before inserting the toggle the text
will automatically be displayed here).
Link style: Selecting this displays the toggle header formatted as a
normal hyperlink, deselecting it displays the header as plain
text (it is still an active link).
For more details on formatting toggle links see below 351 and in
the Formatting toggle links 361 topic.
Tooltip: Text you enter here is displayed as a mouseover tooltip when
the user positions the mouse pointer over the toggle header.

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350 Help & Manual Online Help

Icon: This option allows you to choose the image to be displayed to

the left of the toggle header. You can choose no icon, one of
the three standard icons or use your own icons.
If you choose a standard icon the icon files (one for each state)
will be copied to your project or graphics directory the first time
you select the function.
If you choose to use your own icons you can then select the
graphics for the two icon states in the Collapsed: and
Expanded: fields. We recommend storing the icons in your
standard graphics folder 325 or your project folder. See below 352
for more details on using your own icons for expanding
sections.
Toggle a Table: This option selects an expanding section toggle.
Create a new table:
This is the standard option. It automatically creates a new,
single-cell table for the text that you want to expand. This table
is inserted directly after the toggle header (caption). The table
and the header are both automatically indented by the same
amount from the icon.
Toggle the table below this link:
This option is displayed if there is a table directly below the
current position and it allows you to toggle an existing table.
There can be a maximum of one paragraph of empty space
between the toggle header and the table. See Using an
existing table 351 below for more details.
Toggle Inline This option creates an expanding inline text toggle. For details
Text: see the Expanding inline text toggles 354 topic.
Format text with This option is only relevant for inline text toggles 354 .
Style:

4. Click on to insert the toggle. This will insert the toggle header and an
empty, single-cell table into which you can insert the content of your expanding
section:
5. Enter or copy the text and other content you want to include in your expanding
section in the table. See further below for details on using existing text for
expanding sections 350 and expanding existing tables 351 .
6. Format the header 351 of your expanding section if you want.

Adding existing text to an expanding section:

Adding existing text to an expanding section is very easy: Just cut the text and paste it
into the expanding section table. Alternatively, you can also turn an existing table 351 into
an expanding section.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 351

Using an existing table for the expanding section:

Normally, Help & Manual will automatically create an empty, single-cell table together
with your expanding section header when you create the toggle with Insert - Toggle.
However, you can also create a toggle for an existing table if you want.
1. Create an empty paragraph directly before the table that you want to turn into an
expanding section and click in this paragraph to place the cursor in it.
If you want you can have a maximum of one empty paragraph between
the toggle and the table that it controls. However, if you insert more than
one empty paragraph between the two the toggle will not work!
2. Select Insert > Toggle.
3. Proceed in the same way as for creating a new expanding section 348 but when you
select Toggle a Table, choose the option Toggle the table below this link . All other
settings are the same as for a normal expanding section.
If your existing table already has an ID it will be overwritten by the toggle
ID! This applies both for manually-entered toggle IDs and the toggle IDs
generated automatically when you leave the ID field empty.
4. When you toggle an existing table you may need to adjust the indents 352 of the
toggle and the table.
If you plan to output your project to PDF it is advisable not to insert
additional tables inside your expanding section toggles ( nested tables 343 ).
If you do, page breaks will not work correctly inside the rows containing
additional tables!

Toggling existing tables with IDs:

Toggle links know which table to toggle by referencing the ID of the table.
If you have already assigned an ID to your existing table this ID will be
overwritten by the toggle ID. If you want the table to keep its ID you must
enter this ID as the toggle ID in the Insert Toggle 697 dialog. Then it will still
be overwritten, but with the correct ID.

Formatting the expanding section headers:

By default, the header (caption) of your expanding section either uses the standard
hyperlink format or plain formattable text, depending on whether the Link Style option is
selected in the Insert Toggle dialog.
Using manual formatting and styles for the section header:
If you deselect the Link Style option the header initially has the same style as the
paragraph in which it is located. You can then apply manual formatting to it or use a
style to format it.
You must apply the same formatting to the entire header! If you
change formatting within the header (for example by formatting
individual letters or words differently) you will break up the header
into multiple links.

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352 Help & Manual Online Help

Manual formatting:
Select the entire header text and apply formatting 230 using Format - Font... or the
formatting tools in the Toolbar.
Styles:
Click inside the header apply a text style or a paragraph style 234 . If you apply a
paragraph style you must make sure that the indents match your requirements for the
toggle, of course.

Using CSS styles for formatting the header in your HTML-based output:
Help & Manual exports individual CSS classes for all three toggle types. (The name of
the class used for expanding sections is dropdown-toggle.)
This means that you can define CSS styles in your HTML template to control both the
appearance and behaviour of your toggle links. See the Formatting toggle links 361
topic for details.
CSS formatting only works on links when the Link Style option is
selected in the Insert/Edit Toggle dialog! If it is not selected you
must format the link in the eidtor with a style or manual formatting
using Format > Font.

Adjusting the indents for expanding sections:

When you create the expanding section table together with its toggle both are
automatically given the same indent. Normally this will be fine and will not need to be
changed. However, you may want to use a different indent and if you are using a toggle
with an existing table you will probably need to make some adjustments.
Adjusting the indent of the toggle:
· The expanding section toggle header is a normal paragraph with a hanging indent
for the toggle icon (if you are using one). Just click anywhere in the toggle and
select Format - Paragraph and adjust the indent settings 232 as you would for any
other paragraph.
· You can also use a normal paragraph style 234 to apply the desired indents to the
paragraph.

Adjusting the indent of the toggle table:

The table containing the expanding text for the toggle is a normal table. Like any other
table, it is effectively a single object in a paragraph that cannot contain any other
objects. To adjust the indent of this table you need to adjust the indent settings 232 of
the paragraph containing the table. This too can be done with manual formatting or
with a style.
For detailed instructions on how to do this see Indenting tables 340 in the Working with
Tables section.

Using your own icons in the headers:

You can also use your own icons in your toggle headers. Just select Custom Icons in

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 353

the Icon: field when you are defining or editing your toggle. Then select your icon files for
the Collapsed: and Expanded: icon states in the fields directly below.
· It is best to store your icon files in your project folder or your standard graphics
folder.
· You will have to adjust the indents 352 of your toggle and its table manually when
you use your own icons.

Manipulating and swapping the standard icons:

When you choose one of the standard icon pairs for an expanding text toggle, Help &
Manual first looks in your project folder to see if the necessary graphics files are there. If
they are not there, it will write copies of the files to your project folder from its internal
database.
You can use this behavior and the filenames of the standard icon pairs to use up to three
pairs of your own icons, which you can then select with the standard icon options in the
Insert Toggle dialog. In addition to this, you can also swap the standard icons round – for
example if you prefer to have the "+" for the open state and the "-" for the closed state.
To replace the standard icon pairs with your own icons:
Just give your icons the names of the standard icon pairs (see below) and store them
in your project folder. Help & Manual will not overwrite them and they will be used
automatically when you select the corresponding standard icon option (Plus/Minus
Symbol, Folder, Arrow).

To swap the existing icons:

First create the toggle normally and select one of the standard icon pairs – for
example Plus/Minus Symbol. Then locate the icon files in your project folder and
change their names (see below).

Filenames of the the standard icons:

Standard Filenames
Icons
Plus/Minus Closed state:
Symbol hmtoggle_plus0.
gif
Open state: hmtoggle_plus1.
gif

Folder Closed state:

hmtoggle_folder0.
gif
Open state: hmtoggle_folder1.
gif

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 354 Help & Manual Online Help

Standard Filenames
Icons
Arrow Closed state:
hmtoggle_arrow0.
gif
Open state: hmtoggle_arrow1.
gif

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Working with Tables 332
Indenting tables 340
Using indents 232
Formatting toggles with CSS 357
Toggle IDs 360
Editing and copying toggles 360
7.9.2 Expanding inline text toggles
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create an inline text toggle 354
Formatting the text of inline text toggles 356

Formatting inline toggle links 356

When you click on an expanding inline text toggle its text is "inserted" in the topic directly
after the link, as though it had been pasted into the paragraph. This is ideal for short
explanations and definitions that would otherwise disturb the flow of the topic. It is also much
better and simpler than using a popup topic.

How to create an inline text toggle:

Making inline text toggles is a very quick and easy process. Basically you just enter a
caption, your inline text and an optional tooltip and you're done. You can also choose a style
to format the inline text.
1. Click in your topic in the place where you want to insert your inline text toggle. If you
want to use existing text as the toggle link text select it in the editor first.
2. Select Insert > Toggle and then select Expanding Text (default setting, at the top) and
Toggle Inline Text .
3. Enter a caption (the link text to be displayed) in the Caption: field if you did not select
text in the editor for the caption.
4. Enter your inline text in the text entry box directly below the Toggle Inline Text: option.
This box is highlighted in red to show that you must enter text there. You can only
enter plain text here. You can also enter carriage returns with Enter and they will be
converted to line breaks in the output.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 355

5. Choose a style for the inline text in the Format text with style: field. It is best to define
a style that makes the text stand out against the normal text in your topic. See Text
Formatting and Styles 228 for more information on working with styles.
Insert Toggle dialog options for inline text

The Insert Toggle

dialog
Export Options: These options control whether the toggle is expanded or collapsed
in your output. Normally, toggles are expanded in print formats
(PDF, printed manuals and Word RTF) and collapsed by default in
supported electronic formats.
Note that toggle switching is not supported in WinHelp
and eBooks and so toggles are always displayed
expanded in these formats.
Optional ID: This is optional and we recommend that you leave this field
blank. You only need to enter an ID here if you plan to access the
toggle IDs in the HTML code of your output for any reason.
If you leave this field blank Help & Manual will give each toggle a
unique internal ID. If you enter your own ID you must make sure
that each ID in the current topic is unique and you must also edit
your IDs manually if you copy your toggles, otherwise you will
have ID conflicts.
Caption: This is the link text of your inline toggle. (If you select text before
inserting the toggle the text will automatically be displayed here).
Link style: Selecting this displays the toggle link text as a normal hyperlink,
deselecting it displays it as plain text (it is still an active link).
For more details on formatting toggle links see the Formatting
toggle links 361 topic.
Tooltip: Text you enter here is displayed as a mouseover tooltip when the
user positions the mouse pointer over the toggle header.
Icon: This option is disabled in inline text toggles, it is only used with
expanding section toggles.
Toggle a Table: Selecting this option creates an expanding section toggle 348 .
Toggle Inline This option creates an expanding inline text toggle.
Text:
Enter your text in the editing box. You cannot enter any formatting
in this box. You can enter hard returns with enter for easier editing
but they will be ignored in the generated toggle.
Format text with Select a style here to be applied to the text of your inline toggle.
style: The same style will be applied to the entire text. You cannot enter

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

356 Help & Manual Online Help

different formatting for individual parts of the text.

6. Click on to insert the toggle, which will be displayed in your topic in the
same way as other hyperlinks.

Formatting the text of inline text toggles:

The inline text of these toggles can only be formatted with styles 228 . You can only apply a
single style to the entire inline text and the style must be selected in the Insert/Edit
Toggle dialog. You should define a style that makes the text stand out well against the
rest of the text in the paragraph, otherwise the user may be confused after clicking on
the toggle because the new text won't be immediately visible.
Selecting a style in a new toggle:
Select the style in the Format text with style: field. If you need to define a style 237 first
just save the toggle and then double-click on the toggle link in the editor later to open
the Edit Toggle dialog.

Applying or changing the style in an existing toggle:

Double-click on the toggle link in the editor to open the Edit Toggle dialog, then select
the style in the Format text with style field.

Formatting inline toggle links:

By default, the link of your inline text toggle is displayed either with the standard
hyperlink format or as plain formattable text, depending on whether the Link Style option
is selected in the Insert Toggle dialog.
Using manual formatting and styles for the toggle links:
If you deselect the Link Style option the link initially has the same style as the
paragraph in which it is located. You can then apply manual formatting to it or use a
style to format it.
You must apply the same formatting to the entire link! If you
change formatting within the link (for example by formatting
individual letters or words differently) you will break it up into
multiple links.
Manual formatting:
Select the entire link text and apply formatting 230 using Format - Font... or the
formatting tools in the Toolbar.
Styles:
Select the entire link text and apply a text style 237 . It is important to use text-only styles
because a paragraph style would also reset the formatting of the current paragraph.

Using CSS styles for formatting your inline toggle links:

Help & Manual exports individual CSS classes for all three toggle types. (The name of
the class used for expanding sections is inline-toggle.)

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 Basic Working Procedures 357

This means that you can define CSS styles in your HTML template to control both the
appearance and behaviour of your toggle links. See the Formatting toggle links 361
topic for details.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Formatting toggles with CSS 357
Toggle IDs 360
Editing and copying toggles 360
7.9.3 Expanding image toggles
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create an expanding image toggle 357
Using a different collapsed state image 359
Converting existing images into toggles 359
Formatting the image with CSS 360

Expanding image
toggles like the one on
the right use a small
"display version" of the
image that the user can
click on to display the
full version. This can
make your topic pages
much easier to read
because the larger
versions of the image
are only displayed when
needed.
Help & Manual does all Click on the image to collapse it!
the work for you. You
just select the full-size
image you want to
display and the smaller
version is generated
automatically.

How to create an expanding image toggle:

To make an expanding image toggle you just select the image you want to use, choose a
zoom factor for the thumbnail display version and enter tooltips and/or captions if you want
to use them.
1. Click in your topic in the place where you want to insert your expanding image toggle.
Don't select any text (it would be deleted when you insert the image toggle).

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358 Help & Manual Online Help

2. Select Insert > Toggle and then select Screenshot Toggle at the top of the dialog.
3. Select the full-sized image you want to toggle by clicking on the browse button in
the Picture file name: field. This file should be stored in your graphics folder or project
folder, just like all the other graphics in your project.
4. Select a zoom factor for the thumbnail version and enter tooltips and captions for the
expanded and collapsed versions.
Insert Toggle dialog options for expanding images

The Insert Toggle

dialog
Export Options: These options control whether the toggle is expanded or collapsed
in your output. Normally, toggles are expanded in print formats
(PDF, printed manuals and Word RTF) and collapsed by default in
supported electronic formats.
Note that toggle switching is not supported in WinHelp and
eBooks and so toggles are always displayed expanded in
these formats.
Optional ID: This is optional and we recommend that you leave this field
blank. You only need to enter an ID here if you plan to access the
toggle IDs in the HTML code of your output for any reason.
If you leave this field blank Help & Manual will give each toggle a
unique internal ID. If you enter your own ID you must make sure
that each ID in the current topic is unique and you must also edit
your IDs manually if you copy your toggles, otherwise you will
have ID conflicts.
Picture file name: This is the full-size image to be used in your toggle. You can use
all image formats supported by Help & Manual. Click on the
Browse button to select an image file directly.
Spacing: Inserts spacing around the image. The value is in pixels.
Tooltip: The tooltip and caption you enter here are normally displayed in
Caption: both the expanded and the collapsed states. The texts are
automatically copied to the When Collapsed: fields, which are
grayed out unless you select them to enter different texts there.
The tooltip is displayed when the user positions the mouse
pointer over the image. The caption is displayed beneath the
image using the standard image caption style 249 .
When collapsed Normally, the toggle will use the same image, tooltip and caption
use different for both the expanded and the collapsed states. You can select
settings: the options here to use a different image and enter a different

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Basic Working Procedures 359

tooltip or caption.
Picture: Select this option to use a different image 359 in the collapsed
state.
Alternatively you can use your own image for the thumbnail
version. If you do this you must create this version yourself with
Impict 621 or your favorite graphics program. You must create the
image with the correct size you want to display – Help & Manual
will not zoom the image for you.
Tooltip: Select these options to enter a different tooltip and/or caption for
Caption: the collapsed state.

5. Click on to insert your expanding image toggle.

Using a different collapsed state image:

You can specify a completely different image for the collapsed state version. For
example, you could use a button image that the user clicks on to display a larger image,
like this:

This is the expanded version.

· Just select the Picture: option beneath When collapsed, use different settings...
and then select the image you want to use.
· When you use this option you are completely responsible for the size and
appearance of the collapsed state version. Help & Manual will not apply a zoom
factor for you.
· You can use captions and tooltips with your own images in the same way as for
those generated by Help & Manual. Just select the Tooltip: and Caption: options
and enter your texts.

Converting existing images into toggles:

You can convert any image in your project into a toggle image. Just right-click on the
image and select Picture > Make Picture a Toggle... The procedure is then the same as

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 360 Help & Manual Online Help

for inserting a new image toggle 357 .

Formatting the toggle image with CSS:

The CSS class image-toggle is exported with the <img> tag for your image toggles. If
you know how to use CSS and HTML you can add style definitions for this class to your
HTML template to control the formatting of your toggle image. See Formatting toggles
with CSS 361 for details.

See also:
Formatting toggles with CSS 361
Toggle IDs 360
Editing and copying toggles 360
7.9.4 Toggle IDs
The toggle ID is optional and we recommend that you leave this field blank in the Insert
Toggle dialog. Then Help & Manual will automatically assign a unique ID to each toggle
when you compile your help.

When you need static, manually-entered IDS:

You only need to enter your own ID manually if you plan to access the toggle IDs
with your own code after generating your help. The automatically-assigned IDs can
change every time you compile and so you must enter a manual ID if you always
want to have the same ID to refer to.

Copying toggles containing manually-entered IDs:

If you make copies of toggles containing manually-entered IDs within the same topic
you must change the IDs in the copies, otherwise you will have ID conflicts. Help &
Manual automatically flags toggles containing ID conflicts by highlighting them in red.
Copying toggles containing manually-entered IDs to other topics will not cause
conflicts unless the other topic already contains a toggle or another element with the
same ID.

See also:
Editing and copying toggles 360
7.9.5 Editing and copying toggles
Toggles are stored in your topics as hyperlinks so editing toggles is basically just the same
as editing any other kind of hyperlink. They can also be copied and moved in the same way
as normal text.

Editing toggles:
To edit a toggle just double-click on its link in the editor (it looks just like an ordinary
hyperlink), or right-click on it and select Edit in the context menu. This opens the Edit
Toggle dialog in which you can change all the settings of the toggle.

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 Basic Working Procedures 361

Editing the contents of expanding section toggles is exactly the same as editing
normal text in the editor. You just have to be careful that all the text is inside the table
and that you never insert more than one empty paragraph between the expanding
section's table and its header.

Copying expanding sections:

There are no restrictions on copying toggles. The copies will be fully functional, both
within the same topic and when you copy them to other topics.
You only have to be a little careful when you copy toggles in which you have entered
the toggle IDs yourself. When the IDs are manually entered they will not be updated
automatically. This is OK when you copy a toggle to a different topic but duplicate
IDs within the same topic will cause conflicts.
When you copy toggles containing manually-entered IDs within the same topic you
should always edit the toggle and update the IDs. (Help & Manual automatically
highlights toggles with duplicate ID conflicts in red.)

See also:
Toggle IDs 360
7.9.6 Formatting toggles with CSS
IN THIS TOPIC:
CSS classes for toggle link types 361
Example of CSS class definitions for toggles 362

When your help is exported to HTML-based formats the <a> link tags for the text toggles
and the <img> tag for the image toggles are exported with CSS classes, which makes it
possible to change the appearance and behavior of your toggle links by adding CSS style
definitions for these classes to the HTML template for your topic pages.

This topic is for experienced users:

Following the instructions in this topic requires some experience with writing HTML
manually and using CSS styles. If you feel stumped by this we recommend that you get
an experienced friend or colleague to help you.
See the Using HTML Templates 475 and About HTML Templates 814 chapters more
information on using and editing HTML templates.
You can find a basic tutorial explaining how to do this on the Help & Manual User
Forum. (If you're not yet a forum member click on Register in the forum header, it's free!)
The tutorial explains how to do it for regular hyperlink styles but if you use the examples
362 from below you can apply the same procedure for your toggle styles.

The CSS classes for the toggle link types:

Help & Manual exports CSS classes to the main tags of all three toggle types. The
classes are applied to the <a> link tags for the expanding section and expanding inline
text toggles and to the <img> image tag for the expanding image toggles.

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362 Help & Manual Online Help

Class names used in the toggle link and image tags:

Toggle Type Class Name Link Code Example

Expanding dropdown- <a class="dropdown-toggle" title="Tooltip
section toggle text"
toggles: href="...JavaScript toggle code...">
Section toggle header/link text</a>

Expanding inline-toggle <a class="inline-toggle" title="Tooltip

inline text text"
toggles: href="...JavaScript toggle code...">
Inline toggle link text</a>

Expanding image-toggle <img id="TOGGLE0186A2" class="image-

image toggles: toggle"
src="imagename.jpg" border="0"
alt="imagename.jpg" title="Tooltip text">

Use the classes as tag properties!

You must use the classes as properties of the tags that you want to
apply them to, otherwise they won't work properly. This means that you
must use the syntax img.image-toggle {} for defining styles for your image
toggles and a.inline-toggle {} and a.dropdown-toggle {} for defining styles
for your text toggle links.

Example of style CSS class definitions for toggles:

The following example shows you how to format your toggle links and images with a
CSS style definition using the class names listed above. The style definitions are shown
inserted in the standard HTML template for topic pages.
Example style definitions:
The toggle styles are shown in blue, the other style definitions are for the other
hyperlink types in the help. See the tutorial on the Help & Manual User Forum for
more details. If you are not a member you will have to register for the forum for access
(this is free and without obligation).

Sample CSS Definitions for Toggles

<%DOCTYPE%>
<html>
<head>
<title><%TOPIC_TITLE%></title>
<meta name="generator" content="Help &amp; Manual" />
<meta name="keywords" content="<%TOPIC_KEYWORDS%>" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=<%DOCCHARSET%>" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
<link type="text/css" href="<%STYLESHEET%>" rel="stylesheet" />

<style type="text/css">
<!-- These are the normal hyperlink styles -->
a { color: #0000FF; text-decoration: none }

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 Basic Working Procedures 363

a:visited {color: #0000FF }

a:hover {color: #E4641C; text-decoration: underline }
a.weblink {color: #0000FF; text-decoration: underline }
a.weblink:visited {color: #0000FF}
a.weblink:hover {color: #E4641C }
a.popuplink {color: #FF0000; text-decoration: none}
a.popuplink:visited {color: #FF0000}
a.popuplink:hover {color: #FF0000; text-decoration: underline}
a.filelink {color: #04BC14; text-decoration: none}
a.filelink:visited {color: #04BC14}
a.filelink:hover {color: #04BC14; text-decoration: underline}
<!-- These are the toggle styles -->
a.dropdown-toggle {color: Navy; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;
font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; }
a.dropdown-toggle:visited {color: Navy; }
a.dropdown-toggle:hover {text-decoration: underline}
a.inline-toggle {color: Green; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;
font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; }
a.inline-toggle:visited {color: Green; }
a.inline-toggle:hover {text-decoration: underline}
img.image-toggle { border: 2px; border-color: red; border-style: solid;}
</style>

</head>
<body style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; background: <%TOPIC_TEXT_BGCOLOR%>;">
....

See also:
Tutorial on User Forum
Using HTML Templates 475
About HTML Templates 814
7.9.7 Expand All / Collapse All
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create Expand All / Collapse All links 363
Adding Expand All / Collapse All links to all pages 364
Expand All / Collapse All only in topics containing toggles 364

Creating a Print link that pre-expands your toggles 365

You can create special links with which you can allow the user to expand and collapse all the
toggles in the current topic with a single click. There are a number of very useful things you
can do with this feature. For example, it allows you to write help for both novice and
experienced users on the same page. You could then create More Detail / Less Detail links
in the topic header for switching between the two versions. You can also use it to create a
Print button that will pre-expand all the toggles in the current topic before it is printed.

How to create Expand All / Collapse All links:

1. Click in the place where you want to insert the links, for example in the header of your
topic.
2. Select Insert - Hyperlink and choose at the top of the dialog and HTML
JavaScript as the script/macro type.
3. Enter the following code in the Script: editing box (you need to create a separate link

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364 Help & Manual Online Help

for each function):

Expand All: Collapse All:

javascript:HMToggleExpandAll(true) javascript:HMToggleExpandAll(false)

Adding Expand All / Collapse All links to all pages:

To add Expand All / Collapse All links you need to insert the necessary code manually in
the HTML template for your pages. You will need some experience in editing HTML for
this. See The topic page templates 477 in the Using HTML Templates 475 chapter for
detailed instructions on how to add code to your topic page templates.
· Locate the position in the template where you want to insert your links and then
insert the following code (you can change the title text to insert your own
tooltips, of course):

Expand All: Collapse All:

<a href="javascript: <a href="javascript:
HMToggleExpandAll(true)" HMToggleExpandAll(false)"
title="Tooltip text">Expand All</a> title="Tooltip text">Collapse All</
a>

Locating the correct position in the template:

The <%TOPIC_TEXT%> variable in the HTML template inserts the content of your
topic from the editor into the template. This means that everything inserted directly
above this variable is inserted directly before the beginning of your normal topic
content, everything directly below it is inserted directly after the end of your topic
content.
The topic header is in the code between the <IF_TOPIC_HEADER> and </
IF_TOPIC_HEADER> tags. The header components are in a table. You may need to
add cells or rows to achieve the effect and positioning you want.

Conditional Expand All / Collapse All in topics containing toggles:

Along with the toggles, Help & Manual 4.2 also introduces a condition called
<IF_TOGGLES> that you can use in your HTML templates 487 . This condition only
evaluates true if the current topic contains one or more toggles. This means that you can
use them to create Expand All / Collapse All links that will only be displayed in topics
containing toggles.
Making a conditional Expand All / Collapse All link:
You use this condition just like any other condition in HTML templates 487 . Just enclose
the link code (and any other additional code you are using for the links) in a pair of
<IF_TOGGLES> condition tags, like this:

<IF_TOGGLES><a href="javascript:HMToggleExpandAll(true)" title="Tooltip

text">Expand All</a>

<a href="javascript:HMToggleExpandAll(false)" title="Tooltip

text">Collapse All</a>< /IF_TOGGLES>

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 Basic Working Procedures 365

Creating a Print button that pre-expands your toggles:

You can use the Expand All function to create a Print link for HTML Help and Browser-
based Help that will pre-expand all the toggles in the current topic before printing it. For
instructions Printing topics containing toggles 367 .

See also:
Using HTML Templates 475
The topic page templates 477
About HTML Templates 814
The default topic page template 816
7.9.8 Toggle troubleshooting
IN THIS TOPIC:
Problems with IDs 365
Problems with expanding section toggles 365
Problems with formatting in toggle links 366
Larger output files 366
Page breaks in PDFs and printed manuals 366

Toggles are generally stable and reliable but since they are based on HTML and JavaScript
there are a few things you need to keep in mind when you are using them.

Problems with IDs:

When you need to enter IDs manually:
The ID field in all three toggle types is optional and we strongly recommend that you
leave it blank unless you have a very good reason for using your own IDs – for
example if you need to access the IDs with your own program code in the output
generated by Help & Manual. If you need to do this you must enter your own IDs
manually because the automatically-assigned IDs may change every time you compile
your output.
If you enter your IDs manually you must make sure that there are no conflicts between
them in the same topic. Duplicate IDs in different topics are OK but duplicate IDs
within the same topic will cause problems and malfunctions.

Toggles don't work or clicking on one toggle "toggles" a different toggle:

This can happen if you have duplicate IDs in the same topic when you are entering
your IDs manually. Check all the toggles in the topic for duplicate IDs. Invalid or
duplicate IDs will be displayed highlighted in red in the editor.

Problems with expanding section toggles:

Clicking on the header doesn't "toggle" the section:

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366 Help & Manual Online Help

If you don't have duplicate IDs (see above) you have probably entered more than one
empty paragraph between the toggle header and the toggle table. You can have one
empty paragraph between the two but not more.

Unwanted interaction with other images in the same line as the header:
The toggle header icon is a normal image. If you insert other images directly next to it
the toggle may also attempt to toggle those images. You can usually solve these
problems by editing the toggle (double-click on the header link) and saving it again
with OK.

Problems with formatting in toggle links:

The toggle link is broken into several individual links:
This happens when you try to format different parts of the link text differently. You can
format toggle links but you must format the entire text in exactly the same way,
otherwise the link will be broken up.

CSS styles are not applied to the links:

CSS styles 361 will only work if the Link style option is checked in the Edit Toggle
dialog. If this option is not checked you must format the links in the editor, either
manually or with styles.

Larger output files:

Output files are larger when you use image toggles:
This is normal because each image toggle must use two images instead of one. In
addition to this you are probably using a larger image for the full-size version than you
would normally use. It is thus advisable to use image toggles sparingly and not to use
images that are larger than absolutely necessary, even in the full-size versions.

Page breaks in PDFs and printed manuals:

Don't insert additional tables in your toggles!
As of version 4.3, Help & Manual can create page breaks within table rows and not just
at row boundaries. This means that it is OK to have a large expanding section toggle
consisting of just one big table cell with multiple paragraphs of text and other content.
However, this only works with single-level tables. It is not possible to create correct page
breaks in rows containing additional tables. So if you want your pages to break correctly
in PDF don't insert additional tables inside your main toggle tables.

See also:
Formatting toggles with CSS 361
Working with Tables 332

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 Basic Working Procedures 367

7.9.9 Updating old expanding sections

If your existing projects contain manually-programmed expanding sections you will probably
want to replace them with toggles because they are much easier to manage.

How to convert your old expanding sections:

The new toggles are not compatible with manually-programmed expanding sections so
you need to remove the old expanding sections and replace them with toggles.

Step 1: Remove all the code of the old expanding sections:

1. Check through your HTML template and remove all the code that you added to
create your expanding sections.
2. Open Project Properties and check the Baggage Files (in Common Properties) and
Extended .HHP Settings (in HTML Help) for any files and references added for
your expanding sections and delete them.
3. For each expanding section in your project delete any plain HTML code blocks
added with Insert > Plain HTML Code, so that only the content of your expanding
sections remains.

Step 2: Create the new expanding section toggles:

1. Create a table for each expanding section and cut and paste the contents of your
expanding section into the table. Create multiple rows if you have a lot of text and
plan to output your project to PDF (see troubleshooting 366 ).
2. Position the cursor in an empty paragraph directly above the table.
3. Select Insert > Toggle, then select the Expanding Text option (default setting) and
Toggle a Table: (default setting).
4. In the drop-down box below the Toggle a Table option select Toggle the table below
this link so that the toggle uses the table containing your old expanding section text.

For full details, see Expanding section toggles 348 .

See also:
Expanding section toggles 348
7.9.10 Printing topics containing toggles
IN THIS TOPIC:
Including Expand All / Collapse All links 368

Creating an "auto-expand" Print link 367

You need to do a little planning to make it possible for your users to print topics containing
toggles. Of course, this is only necessary in the formats where toggles are "active" – toggle
printing is not a problem in formats like PDF and Word RTF because the toggles are always
static and fully-expanded in these formats, so their entire contents are always printed.

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368 Help & Manual Online Help

In all formats where dynamic toggles are supported (Browser-based Help, HTML Help, MS
Help 2.0) the toggles are always printed exactly as they are currently displayed. Expanded
toggles are printed expanded, collapsed toggles are printed collapsed.
Generally, your users will want to print out the entire contents of the topic, including the
contents of all toggles.

Including Expand All / Collapse All links:

The simplest method is to provide your user with Expand All / Collapse All links in your
topic header, as explained in the topic Expand All / Collapse 363 all in this chapter. Then
they can click on Expand All before they print.
The disadvantage of this method is that you have to explain it to your users. If they miss
the explanation it may take them a while to figure out what they need to do, and they will
probably waste a lot of paper in the process.

Creating an "auto-expand" Print link:

The best solution is a Print link that automatically expands the toggles in the topic. These
are created in exactly the same way as an Expand All link, you just need to add one
more small snippet of code:
1. Follow the instructions for creating Expand All links 363 to create a new link in the
location where you want to have your Print link.
2. Create the code for the link as follows:

Code for a Script Link: Code for your HTML template:

javascript:HMToggleExpandAll(true); <a href="javascript:
print(); HMToggleExpandAll(true); print
();">Print this Topic</a>

See Expand All/Collapse All 365 for more detailed instructions on creating
Print links and buttons.
If you want you can also use a graphical button instead of a text link:

<a href="javascript: HMToggleExpandAll(true); print();">

<img name="printbutton" border="0" alt="Print This Topic" title="Print This
Topic" src="print2.gif"></a>

Add your button images to the Baggage Files 520 section and replace the image names
in the above code with the filenames of your own images.
For more details on how to implement this kind of thing see the tutorials Using icons
and mouseover buttons in your topic headers and Detailed instructions for
mouseovers on the user forum.
You can also use an image with a mouseover function:
This is the code used in the print button in Help & Manual's own help.
<a href="javascript: HMToggleExpandAll(true); print();" onmouseover="document.

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 Basic Working Procedures 369

images.printbutton.src='print1.gif'" onmouseout="document.images.printbutton.
src='print2.gif'">
<img name="printbutton" border="0" alt="Print this Topic" title="Print this
Topic" src="print2.gif"></a>

Add your button images to the Baggage Files 520 section and replace the image names
in the above code with the filenames of your own images.
For more details on how to implement this kind of thing see the tutorials Using icons
and mouseover buttons in your topic headers and Detailed instructions for
mouseovers on the user forum.
It's not possible to "auto-collapse" after printing!
You might think it's a good idea to add an HMToggleExpandAll(false); command
after the print(); command, but unfortunately this doesn't work. The command
would be executed as soon as the Print dialog is displayed, collapsing all the text
again before the user has a chance to print it.

Excluding the Print link in eBooks:

If you also plan to generate eBooks from your project you must exclude the Print link
there because toggles and JavaScript are not supported in eBooks (toggles are
always displayed as static text, fully expanded).
· If you use script links enclose the links in conditional text 454 conditions to make
sure that they are only included in the output formats where dynamic toggles are
supported (HTML Help, Browser-based Help and MS Help 2.0).
· If you use links in your HTML templates enclose the link code in a pair of
<IFNOT_EBOOK> </IFNOT_EBOOK> build conditions 462 to make sure that they
are excluded from eBooks.

See also:
Expand All / Collapse All 363
Using HTML Templates 475
The topic page templates 477
About HTML Templates 814
The default topic page template 816

7.10 Keywords and Indexes

Every help file or manual needs a keyword index and Help & Manual 4 makes creating and
maintaining a good index much easier than ever before. The finished index is displayed in
the Index tab (located behind the TOC pane) and updated dynamically while you work,
allowing you to see the finished index in real time.

Instant feedback and fast navigation

Since you can see the results immediately it is very easy to avoid multiple entries that
are only slightly different from one another. In addition to this you can produce a much
better index because you can refer to the finished index while adding new entries, and

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 370 Help & Manual Online Help

you can also navigate directly to the topics associated with index entries by clicking on
the entries in the Index tab.

Anchors with index entries

You can now also enter index entries for anchors 305 . This makes it possible to create
index entries that take the user directly to a specific location in a topic when they click on
the entry, instead of to the top of the topic. This makes the index much more useful in
documentation with long topics.

Editing the entire index directly

Help & Manual 4 comes with powerful functions that allow you to edit the entire index
directly 373 . All changes you make to keywords you edit in the index are immediately
updated in all topics in which the keywords occur.
If you correct a keyword that was written slightly differently from another keyword (for
example file names and filenames) the result will automatically be merged to a single
keyword in the index.
You can also add, delete and edit keywords in multiple topics simultaneously.

See also:
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 (Reference)
7.10.1 Adding and editing keywords
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to add keywords from the topic editor 371
How to add and edit keywords in the Topic Options tab 371
How to add and edit sub-keywords in the Topic Options tab 372

Adding and editing keywords in the Index tab 372

Keywords in popup topics and invisible topics 372

Each topic in your project can have its own list of "keywords", each of which will create an
index entry in your output. You can add both simple keywords (master keywords) and
keywords with sub-entries (child keywords). Please note that only one level of child
keywords is supported (this is a restriction imposed by the output formats, not by Help &
Manual).
Index generation is automatic – an index will be generated when you compile as soon as
you have added one or more keywords to any topic in your project.

Important note for former Help & Manual 3 users:

The format for entering sub-keywords has changed in Help & Manual 4.
The old format with repeated main keywords and commas is no longer
supported and will not work in Help & Manual 4. The keyword lists from
your old projects will be updated to the new format automatically when
you convert them from the .HM3 format to the .HMX format.

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 Basic Working Procedures 371

How to add keywords from the topic editor:

You can quickly add any word or series of words in the topic editor as a keyword:
· Just select the word or phrase you want to add and press Ctrl+K.
· This is the standard keyboard shortcut for this function. You can change it if you
like in Tools > Customize > Shortcuts.

How to add and edit keywords in the Topic Options tab:

1. Select the topic you want to add a keyword to and select its Topic Options tab.
2. Select the Index tab in the Table of Contents (TOC) pane on the left so that you can
also see the finished index.
3. Type your index entries in the Keywords: field. Enter one keyword per line and press
Enter after each keyword to create a new line.
4. To view the entries in the index save your project (File > Save, or Ctrl+S) or refresh
the current topic (Topics > Refresh Topic or Shift+Ctrl+R). This will update the index in
the Index tab so that you can see the "finished product" immediately.

· If you enter two identical main

keywords with different
capitalization one of them will be
highlighted with a red underline
in the real-time index shown in
the Index tab.

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372 Help & Manual Online Help

How to add and edit sub-keywords in the Topic Options tab:

1. Proceed as described above for adding keywords.

2. Enter child keywords in the line directly below their master keyword and indent them
with the TAB key. This will make it the sub-keyword of the keyword directly above it.
You can enter as many child keywords as you like for each master keyword
– one per line.
You can only enter one level of child keywords. Child keywords cannot have
their own child keywords.
· Do not use the old Help & Manual 3 format for entering keywords – it does not work in
Help & Manual 4 and will result in indexes with duplicate and incorrectly formatted
keyword entries!
New format: Old format: (does not work in Help & Manual 4)
standard styles standard styles
Normal standard styles, Normal
keywords keywords
about keywords, about

Adding and editing keywords in the Index tab:

In addition to adding and editing keywords for the current topic in the Topic Options tab
you can also edit the real-time index directly in the Index tab. See Editing the index
directly 373 for details.

Keywords in popup topics and invisible topics:

It is not a good idea to enter keywords in popup topics and invisible topics. Clicking on
Keyword Index entries for popups and invisible topics will display the topics in the main
help viewer, which is not very useful and is quite likely to confuse the user. Since popups
and invisible topics are not included in the TOC they should only be opened in the
context for which they were designed.

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 Basic Working Procedures 373

See also:
Editing the index directly 373
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 (Reference)
7.10.2 Editing the index directly
IN THIS TOPIC:
Editing keywords 373
Other editing functions 374
Adding a new master keyword 374
Adding a new child keyword 375
Deleting keywords 376

In addition to entering adding and entering keywords in the Topic Options tab you can also
edit the real-time index directly in the Index tab. When you use this editing mode you can
edit keywords in all the topics where they occur simultaneously. You can also add keywords
to multiple topics and delete keywords from multiple topics at the same time, in one quick
operation.

Editing keywords:
This method allows you to edit keywords in all the topics where they occur
simultaneously. Any changes you make to the keyword in this editing dialog updates all
the topics containing the keyword. You can also use this dialog to add keywords to
additional topics and to delete keywords from selected topics (see below).
1. Select the Index tab in the TOC pane.
2. Right-click on the keyword you want to edit and select Edit Caption in the popup
menu. You can select a master keyword or a child keyword (the example below
shows a master keyword).

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374 Help & Manual Online Help

3. Edit the keyword in the keyword field, then click on to save your
changes. This will save the modified keyword in all the topics whose IDs are listed
in the Topic: box

Other functions available in the Edit Keyword dialog:

The Edit Keyword dialog shown above can do much more than just edit keywords
selected in the Index:
· If you add more topic IDs to the Topic: list from the Available Topics: list the
keyword in the editing box will be added to those topics as well.
Select one or more topics in the Available Topics: list and click on
to add them to the Topic: list. If you are editing a child keyword when you
do this both the child keyword and its master keyword will be added to
the additional topics.
You can also double-click or drag to the left to add topics.
· If the topics contain anchors 379 you can add the keywords to the anchors. Just click
on the topic in the Topic: list, then select the anchor in the Anchor: box (anchors
will only be displayed here if the topic contains anchors). The anchor ID will then
be added to the topic ID in the Topic: list with a # character.
· If you remove topic IDs from the Topic: list the keyword in the editing field will be
removed from those topics.
Select topics in the Topic: list and click on to remove them from
the Topic: list.
You can also double-click or drag to the right to remove topics.

Adding a new master keyword:

You can add the same keyword to any number of topics in one easy process:
1. Select the Index tab in the TOC pane.
2. Right-click on any master keyword in index and select Insert Keyword in the
popup menu.

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 Basic Working Procedures 375

Make sure that is selected in the dialog displayed.

3. Select the topic ID of the topic you want to add the keyword to in the Available
Topics: list in the dialog and click on to add the ID to the list on the left.
4. If you want to assign the keyword to an anchor 379 in the topic you can select the
anchor in the Anchor: field. The anchor ID will then be added to the topic ID in the
Topic: list. Repeat for all the topics you want to add the keyword to.
5. Type the keyword in the Keyword: field and click on .
This adds the keyword to all the topics whose IDs you have selected.

Adding a new child keyword:

You can add the same child keyword to any number of topics in one easy process. If the
target topic does not already contain the corresponding master keyword it will be added
together with the child keyword.
1. Select the Index tab in the TOC pane.
2. Right-click on a master keyword in the index and select Insert Child Keyword in
the popup menu. Check that is selected in the dialog displayed and that
the correct master keyword is displayed in bold type to the right of it. (You cannot
change the master keyword selection in this dialog.)

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 376 Help & Manual Online Help

The IDs of the topics that already contain the master keyword are added
to the Topic: list automatically. If you add more topics to the list both the
master keyword and the new child keyword will be added to the
additional topics.
3. If you want to add the new child keyword to additional topics not already included
in the list:
· Select topic IDs in the list on the right and use to add them to the Topic:
list.
· If you want to assign the keyword to an anchor 379 in the topic you can select
the anchor in the Anchor: field. The anchor ID will then be added to the topic
ID in the Topic: list.
4. Type the keyword in the Keyword: field and click on .

Deleting keywords:
Warning!
This method deletes keywords from all the topics in which they occur! If you only want to
remove keywords from individual topics use Edit Keyword 373 or edit the keywords for the
topics directly in the Topic Options tab.
1. Select the Index tab in the TOC pane.
2. Right-click on the keyword you wish to delete and select Delete Item from the
popup menu.

See also:
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 (Reference)
7.10.3 Find and replace keywords
You can also perform search and replace operations in all the keywords in your project. This
is a very useful Help & Manual function that is very easy to overlook!

How to find and replace keywords:

1. Select Edit > Find and Replace Text.
2. In Find Where select In topic keywords.
· For more information on using Find and Replace see Searching for text, topics and
referrers 191 .
· Note that Find and Replace does not work on keywords attached to anchors 379 , but
it does work on A-keywords 382 .

See also:
Searching for text, topics and referrers 191
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 (Reference)

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 Basic Working Procedures 377

7.10.4 Managing keywords and indexes

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to use the Index tab 377
Editing keywords in the Index tab 378
Using expanded view in the Index tab 378

Undocking the Topic Options tab 378

The index features introduced in Help & Manual 4 make entering keywords and managing
indexes much easier than ever before. The new Index tab in the Table of Contents pane
shows the finished index in real time, so that you can immediately evaluate your work and
identify and correct "near duplicates" with slightly different wording or spelling.

How to use the Index tab:

The most efficient way to work when you are entering and editing index keywords is with
both the Topic Options and Index tabs visible, like this:

· Setting the Help & Manual program screen up like this makes it possible to enter
keywords for the topic on the right and simultaneously view the results in the
finished index on the left.
· You need to save your project or refresh the current topic to update the Index tab
after entering or editing keywords in the Topic Options tab. Just press Ctrl+S to
save or Shift+Ctrl+R to refresh. (These are the standard keyboard shortcuts,
which you can change if you like. See Keyboard shortcuts 83 for details.)
· Double-clicking on an entry in the Index tab takes you to the topic containing the
keyword. If a keyword is found in more than one topic a dialog is displayed
showing the topic IDs of the topics:

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378 Help & Manual Online Help

· If the keyword is an anchor keyword 379 it is displayed in the format Topic ID + # +

Anchor ID:

Editing keywords in the Index tab:

The Index tab also has powerful editing functions with which you can add, edit and
delete keywords in multiple topics at the same time. See Editing the index directly 373 for
details.

Using expanded view in the Index tab:

The Index tab has two display modes, which are selected with the option at
the bottom of the Index pane. When Expanded View is activated a list of the topic IDs of
the topics containing the keywords is displayed in a second column on the right:

The Index tab with Expanded View switched on.

· Clicking on the links takes you directly to the corresponding topics. No dialog
needs to be displayed because in this mode all the instances of the keywords are
displayed in the Topics column, with one link for each instance.

Undocking the Topic Options tab:

If you select Undock Topic Options in the View menu you can see the contents of the
current topic while you are editing your index keywords in the Topic Options tab:

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 Basic Working Procedures 379

Undocking the Topic Options tab (View menu) makes it easier to work on index
keywords.
This makes working on the index much easier because it allows you to see both the
keywords entry fields and the contents of the current topic at the same time.
· To redock the Topic Options tab just double-click on its title bar or select Dock
Topic Options in the View menu.

See also:
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 (Reference)
7.10.5 Using keywords with anchors
IN THIS TOPIC:
Adding keywords to an anchor 379
Displaying anchor keywords in the Index 380

Anchor keyword display in HTML Help 381

Normally, clicking on an entry in the index of a help file executes a jump to the top of the
topic containing the keyword. The user then has to scan through the topic to find the
relevant passage of text. This is usually adequate for most purposes but there are also
situations where you will want the index entry to take the user directly to a specific position in
a topic.
With Help & Manualyou can achieve this by adding keywords to anchors 305 , which are "jump
targets" in your topic that can also be used to create hyperlinks to a specific location in a
topic. When you add a keyword to an anchor instead of in the Topic Options tab clicking on
the corresponding index entry in the help will take the user to the anchor instead of the top
of the topic.

Adding keywords to an anchor:

Note that you can also add keywords to anchors by editing the keyword in the Index

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380 Help & Manual Online Help

pane. See Editing the index directly 373 for details.

1. Select Insert > Topic Anchor to insert a new anchor or double-click on an anchor
icon in your topic text to edit an existing anchor. This displays the anchor dialog:

2. Type the keywords into the Keywords: field of the Anchor dialog. You can enter
both main keywords and sub-keywords. Use the TAB key to enter sub-keywords
(an indented keyword automatically becomes the sub-keyword of the keyword
above it).
· Typing a space or tab in front of a keyword automatically makes it a sub-
keyword of the entry directly above it. (Only one level of sub-keywords is
allowed.)
· It is possible to have the same keywords in both the topic's Topic Options and in
one or more anchors in the same topic. However, if you want your index entries
to enable jumps to the anchor without confusing the user it is better to avoid this.

Displaying anchor keywords in the Index:

Anchor keywords are integrated in the main index in the Index tab in exactly the same
way as normal keywords. In normal display mode you cannot distinguish between normal
keywords and anchor keywords, because the Index is displayed exactly as the user will
see it.
· If you select in the Index tab you can identify anchor keywords in the
Topics list:

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 Basic Working Procedures 381

· The links to anchor keywords are shown with the syntax Topic ID + # + Anchor ID
in the Topics column.

Anchor keyword display in HTML Help:

When the user clicks on a keyword found in multiple topics a dialog is displayed showing
the names of the topics in which the keywords are found together with the title of the
help project (this is only really relevant for modular projects containing multiple help
files).
In HTML Help, however, the keyword text is displayed instead of the name of the topic.
This is a restriction of the HTML Help format and cannot be changed, unfortunately.

Both the entries found here refer to the keyword

"Horticulture". The first keyword is an anchor keyword, the
second is a normal keyword in a topic.

See also:
Editing the Index directly 373
Managing keywords and indexes 377
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 (Reference)

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 382 Help & Manual Online Help

7.10.6 Using A-keywords

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to make an automated "See also" list 382

How to link between help modules 383

A-keywords, also known as "A-link keywords", are quite similar to normal keywords but they
not displayed in the index, they are always "hidden". What use is a keyword that isn't
displayed in the index? There are two major uses for A-keywords: To create "See also" lists
of related topics and to create links between help files in modular help systems 492 .
See About A-keywords 854 for more background information on A-keywords.

A-keywords are only supported in Winhelp and HTML Help!

Note that A-keywords are a Microsoft help technology that is only
supported in Winhelp and HTML Help. They are completely ignored in all
other output formats. If you need to output to another format as well (e.g.
PDF) use Help & Manual's conditional output features 451 to create
alternative output.

How to make an automated "See also" list with A-keywords:

This method creates links that display a list of related topics. It works in both Winhelp
and HTML Help – the Winhelp Alink macro used here is translated automatically when
you compile to HTML Help.
We should mention that although this Microsoft linking technology is quite "cool" it is not
really very practical because you need to keep track of all the A-keywords and where
they are if you want to display topics that are genuinely relevant. It is actually simpler and
more effective to create your See also: lists manually and include them in your topics,
which is how we created the lists at the bottom of the topics in this help.

Step 1: Enter the A-keywords

1. Select a topic and display its Topic Options tab.
2. Enter one or more keywords in the A-Keywords: section at the bottom of the
screen. Note that child keywords are not supported with A-keywords!
3. Repeat for all topics you want to "associate" with one another, adding the same A-
keyword to each topic.

Step 2: Create the link

The link that displays the list of See also: topics is created using the Winhelp ALink
macro. The syntax of this macro is much simpler than its HTML Help version (which
must also be entered in two parts) and so Help & Manual automatically translates it
when you output to HTML Help.
1. Select the topic where you want to create the link and type the link text. Select the
text, then click on in the Toolbar or select Insert > Hyperlink or press Ctrl+L.
2. Select and in the Insert Hyperlink dialog.

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 Basic Working Procedures 383

3. Enter Alink() in the Script: field and type the keywords you want to link to
between the parentheses. If you enter more than one keyword separate them with
semicolon (;) characters, like this:

This example will create a link that displays a list of all topics that contain
either "troubleshooting" or "solutions" or both in their A-keywords lists.
You can use all the normal options available the Hyperlink dialog 686 for
formatting your link.
Note that when you are working in HTML Help you can only enter
keywords as the argument for the Winhelp macro. You cannot enter the
other parameters for the Winhelp A-Link macro because they are not
translated into HTML Help code!

How to link between help modules with A-keywords:

This method works in both Winhelp and HTML Help (here too, the A-link macro is
translated automatically when you compile to HTML Help). Use it to create links between
the help files of modular help systems if there is a possibility that the help files containing
the target topics may not be present at runtime. This can happen when you use runtime
merging and choose not to include one or more of the help files in your distribution.
Please study Working with Modular Help Systems 492 before trying to use this method!

Step 1: Prepare the alternative topic in the master project

The alternative topic should be in the master project because this is the only help file
that is always present in a runtime-merged modular help system.
1. Open the master help project and choose or create the alternative topic that you
want the user to be able to view when the other help file module containing the
target topic is not available. This can be an invisible topic or a topic in the normal
TOC.
2. Select this alternative topic, display its Topic Options tab and enter a unique A-
keyword in its A-Keywords: field.

Step 2: Prepare the target topic in the child project

1. Open the child project and select the topic you want to link to.
2. Display the topic's Topic Options tab and enter the same A-keyword as above in
its A-Keywords: field.

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 384 Help & Manual Online Help

Step 3: Create the link

1. Open the module in which you want to create the link. This can be a master
module or another child module.
2. Select the topic where you want to create the link and type the link text. Select the
text, then click on in the Toolbar or select Insert > Hyperlink or press Ctrl+L.
3. Select and in the Insert Hyperlink dialog.
4. Enter Alink() in the Script: field and type the keyword between the parentheses.
If your keyword is "about widgets" the dialog would look like this:

If the target help file is not present when the user clicks on the link the alternative
topic will be displayed automatically. If the target topic is present a dialog will be
displayed in which the user can select either the target topic or the alternative topic.
This is just a very simple example to show you how this solution works in principle. In
practice you can also make more complex solutions, using more alternative topics
and more keywords. If you use multiple keywords remember to separate them with
semicolons, like this:

Alink(about widgets;troubleshooting;widget solutions)

Note that when you are working in HTML Help you can only enter
keywords as the argument for the Winhelp macro. You cannot enter the
other parameters for the Winhelp A-Link macro because they are not
translated into HTML Help code!

See also:
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 (Reference)
7.10.7 Index section header separators
IN THIS TOPIC:
Editing the separators for Browser Help and PDF 385
Adding "letter links" to the separators for Browser Help 386

When Help & Manual generates keyword indexes in Browser-based Help and PDF, it
automatically adds section headers corresponding to the letter of the alphabet. The
keywords are then organized beneath the section headers by letter, which makes them
easier for the user to find quickly:

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 Basic Working Procedures 385

Example of index section headers in Browser-based Help

You can edit the index section header separators if necessary, for example to add letters for
non-English languages.

Editing the separators for Browser-based Help and PDF:

1. Locate the separators setting for Browser-based Help or PDF:
Separators setting location in Browser-based Help:

· Go to Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help > Keyword Index.
· Add your own separators to the list at the bottom of the page.

Separators setting location in PDF:

· Open the print manual template 543 for your project in the Print Manual Designer
and select the Keyword Index section.
· Select File > Page Options and then choose the Keyword Index Section tab.

2. Then edit the list of separators for your own requirements. For example, for German
you would enter:

A,Ä,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,Ö,P,Q,R,S,T,U,Ü,V,W,X,Y,Z

Note that you don't need to enter separators for non-alphabetic characters
like "#" and ".". If there are keywords starting with characters like these
Help & Manual will generate these automatically.

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386 Help & Manual Online Help

Adding "letter links" to the separators for Browser-based Help:

If you open the online version of Help & Manual's own help and look at the index you
will notice that there is a set of "letter links" at the top of the index that takes you down to
the corresponding letter when you click on them:

The "letter links" in the Index

You can create links like these for your own help by adding some code to the HTML
template for the Browser-based Help index. You need some experience with editing
HTML manually to do this.
1. Go to Project Properties > Browser-based Help > Keyword Index and select Let me
edit HTML code directly.
2. Locate the <%KEYWORD_INDEX%> variable. This variable inserts the content of
your keyword index, so you want to insert your link list directly above it.
3. Insert one or two <br /> codes, then insert one link for each letter in your link list,
using the following syntax:

<a href="#A">A</a>

If you want links to keywords beginning with non-alphabetic characters you must also
enter lines for them yourself.
The result will look something like this:

...
<a href="<%HREF_CONTENT_PAGE%>">Contents</a>
<IF_INDEX_PAGE> | <b>Index</b></IF_INDEX_PAGE>
<IF_SEARCH_PAGE> | <a href="<%HREF_SEARCH_PAGE%>">Search</a></
IF_SEARCH_PAGE>
</p><hr size="1" />
<br><a href="#.">-.-</a>
<a href="#A">A</a>
<a href="#B">B</a>

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 Basic Working Procedures 387

<a href="#C">C</a>
<a href="#D">D</a>
<a href="#E">E</a>
<a href="#F">F</a>
<a href="#H">H</a>
<a href="#I">I</a>
<a href="#J">J</a>
<a href="#K">K</a>
<a href="#L">L</a>
<a href="#M">M</a>
<a href="#N">N</a>
<a href="#O">O</a>
<a href="#P">P</a>
<a href="#R">R</a>
<a href="#S">S</a>
<a href="#T">T</a>
<a href="#U">U</a>
<a href="#V">V</a>
<a href="#W">W</a>
<a href="#X">X</a>
<a href="#Y">Y</a>
<a href="#Z">Z</a>
<!-- Placeholder for the keyword index - this variable is REQUIRED! -->
<%KEYWORD_INDEX%>
...

See also:
Using HTML templates 475
About HTML templates 814
The default Index template 821

7.11 Testing Your Project

Testing your help project is just as important as testing your application. You should compile
your project 410 regularly, view the output, test its interaction with your application 431 and also
use Help & Manual's powerful tools and features for checking your project for help bugs.
In addition to invalid macros and scripts 302 (which you are responsible for checking yourself)
help bugs can include dead and inappropriate links, missing graphics, inappropriate index
keywords and incorrect browse sequences for Winhelp output. Since the release of Help &
Manual 4 checking for help bugs has become easier than ever before.

Help & Manual's tools and features for finding help bugs:
Project reports
The project report tool 388 gives you a comprehensive overview of the current state of
your project, allowing you to check topics, links, graphics and other elements.

Testing links and missing graphics

You can test links 388 directly in the Help & Manual editor and dead and invalid links
are now highlighted automatically in the editor. Missing graphics are immediately
visible in the editor.

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 388 Help & Manual Online Help

Searching for topics and referrers

There are a number of different ways to search for topics 390 by text, topic IDs and
help context numbers. You can also locate referrers (other topics that refer to the
current topic or topics) to the current topic or all the topics in a chapter.

Checking keywords
The new Index tab 373 in the Table of Contents is an extremely powerful tool for
checking and managing the keywords in your project. Among other things, it enables
you to immediately see and eliminate duplicate keywords with variant spellings and
formats.

7.11.1 Using the reporting tool

The Project Reports tool is another very useful aid included with Help & Manual that it is
easy to overlook. You can use it to generate reports with varying degrees of detail on your
entire project, chapters or even individual topics. You can also generate reports on topics
modified between specific dates, topics associated with specific help window types 177 and
topics with a specified status 225 .
For details see The Project Reports Tool 618 in Tools Included with Help & Manual.

Information you can get with the Project Reports tool:

· Topic details of all topics, including titles, topic IDs, help context numbers, inclusion
options and date edited
· Keywords in all topics, listed by topic
· All hyperlinks, both to and from topics, listed by topic
· All topic anchors, listed by topic, including anchor keywords and context numbers
· All images used, listed by topic
· Unused images found in the project's image folders
· Detailed project statistics, including the number of topics with topic type, number of
keywords with keyword type, number of links and hotspots with types (including scripts
and macros) and the number of images with names and list of where they are
referenced

See also:
The Project Reports Tool 618
7.11.2 Testing links and missing graphics
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to test links in the editor 389
Dead links and images in the editor 389
Locating dead links and images with the reporting tool 389

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 Basic Working Procedures 389

All links and graphics inserted in your projects incorporate dynamic validity checking
features. Dead links are automatically highlighted in red and a mouseover explanation is
displayed if the mouseover hints feature is enabled in Tools > Customize > General. Missing
pictures are clearly indicated by a square graphic with a red X in the middle.

How to test links in the editor:

· Hold down Ctrl and click on the link to visit the topic to which the link points. This is
different from Help & Manual 3 and earlier, in which double-clicking followed links.
Double-clicking now edits a link.
· In addition to topic links you can also use this feature to test Internet links and file
links.
· Click on in the Toolbar to return to the topic you were editing before testing the link.

Dead links and graphics in the editor:

Dead links and graphics are clearly highlighted in the editor, you can't miss them. Note
that the mouseover popup information for dead links is only displayed if this feature is
activated in Tools > Customize > General.

Locating dead links and graphics with the reporting tool:

You can generate a full list of dead links and missing graphics in all or part of your
project with the Reporting Tool 618 , which is accessed in Tools > Reports.

See also:
The Project Reports Tool 618

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 390 Help & Manual Online Help

7.11.3 Searching for topics and referrers

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to find and replace text 390
How to find topics by ID or context number 391

How to find referrers 391

When you are testing your project you will often want to find topics and check links to and
from your topics. Help & Manual includes several tools that make this a quick and easy
process. In addition to the search functions described here you can also use the Project
Reports Tool 618 to generate detailed reports on your project with full lists of topics, links,
graphics and other details.
The functions for finding and replacing text in Help & Manual are very similar to the
comparable functions in word processors, with some additional options for the special
requirements of help projects.
In addition to this the program also has powerful functions for locating individual topics by
their topic IDs and their context numbers, and for locating "referrers", i.e. topics containing
links to the current topic or topics.

You can search and replace:

· The text and headers of your topics
· The topics lists of keywords for your index
· The names of image files (but not their captions)

You must search separately in the TOC and Invisible Topics:

Note that in Help & Manual 4 the Table of Contents (TOC) and Invisible
Topics sections are two separate zones. This means that if you want to
search in both sections you must start your search twice, once in the TOC
and once in the Invisible Topics section.

How to find and replace text:

1. Select Edit > Find & Replace Text… 680 or press Ctrl+F.
2. Enter your search text and choose your options. These are self-explanatory and are
very similar to all search and replace functions in all modern word processors.

How to find and replace images:

1. Select Edit > Find & Replace Text… 680 or press Ctrl+F.
2. Select In Images (image file names) in the Find Where section.
3. Enter the exact name of the image file as the search and replacement texts, including
the file extension (e.g. screenshot25.bmp).
4. Choose your other options. These are self-explanatory and are very similar to all
search and replace functions in all modern word processors.

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 Basic Working Procedures 391

How to find topics by ID or context number:

1. Select Topics > Find Topic… 676
2. Select Topic ID or Help Context Number.

How to find referrers:

"Referrers" are topics containing links or other references to a topic, and also the other
topics that a topic links to. Help & Manual includes functions for finding and displaying
ingoing and outgoing referrers for both one or more selected topics in the TOC and all
topics.
Referrers of current topic: Topics > Find Referrers 676
Right-click on a topic in the TOC and select Find Referrers
Referrers of all topics: Tools > Reports 618
Selecting Find Referrers for a chapter in the TOC will display the referrers
for all the topics in the chapter. You can use this function for multiple topics.
Just select two or more topics in the TOC before selecting the function.
Note that Find Referrers will only find links to the current topic or topics in
the current project! You cannot use this function to locate links to the topic in
other projects or help files.

See also:
The Project Reports Tool 618
7.11.4 Testing keywords
Help & Manual 4 introduces a whole package of powerful keyword and index management
tools that make it very much easier to check your keywords and indexes while you are
working:
· The new Index tab in the Table of Contents (TOC) pane of the editor provides real-
time access to your finished index, and it is also fully editable, allowing you to edit and
correct keywords in all the topics where they occur at the same time. For details see
Editing the index directly 373 .

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 392 Help & Manual Online Help

You can edit the finished index directly

by right-clicking in the Index tab.

· The Edit > Find and Replace Text function also works on keywords. You can locate
and replace keywords in your entire project in a just a few seconds. For details see
Find and replace keywords 376 .

See also:
Keywords and Indexes 369
Searching for text, topics and referrers 191

7.12 Configuring Your Output

When your project is finished you will want to output it to one of the seven output formats 763
supported by Help & Manual (eight if you count printed manuals, which are basically a
printout of the PDF output). You can generate all these formats from the same project
without any changes to your content, with the exception of a few formatting features 768 that
are not supported by Winhelp.
The layout of the content of your topic pages is controlled by what you enter in the Help &
Manual editor but there are many other aspects of your output that you can configure
individually for different output formats. You have very extensive control over how Help &
Manual generates the output in the individual formats. These options are all configured with
settings for the individual output formats in Project Properties 548 .
The topics in this chapter provide an introduction to configuring the options for each format
with references to documentation of the individual settings available for each format.
For more information on the individual output formats see Help Formats 763 in the Reference
section.

See also:
Project Properties 548
Help Formats 763

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 Basic Working Procedures 393

7.12.1 Help Windows

IN THIS TOPIC:
Where to find more information 393
What the help window definitions control 393

Available help window types 393

In HTML Help, Winhelp, Browser-based Help and eBooks the appearance and functions of
the help viewer are controlled by the help window definitions in Project > Project Properties
> Help Windows 557 .
Every topic is associated with a help window type, which can be selected in
the Help Window: field in each topic's Topic Options tab.

Where to find more information:

The information in this topic is just a general introduction.
· For details on the individual settings see Help Windows 557 in the Project Properties
chapter.
· For more information on help windows and what they are for see Help Windows 800
in the Reference section.

What the help window definitions control:

· In all output formats except PDF and Word RTF the help window settings control the
background colors of topics and topic headers, whether or not the topics have headers
and the initial size and position of the help viewer and external windows 473 (if you are
using them).
· In Winhelp and HTML Help the help window settings also control the appearance and
functions of the help viewer, including the controls displayed in the viewer and how
secondary windows 471 and external windows 473 are handled (in HTML Help).

Available help window types:

By default two help window types are defined:
Main: This is the standard window type that is assigned to all topics created in
the Table of Contents (TOC). The settings for Main control the appearance
and behavior of the main help viewer and the background colors of all
standard topics displayed in the main help viewer.
Popup: This is the standard window type assigned to all topics created in the
Invisible Topics section. This window type is not configurable because the
appearance of popups is controlled by the help viewer.
In addition to this you can also define your own help window types:
User-defined: If you are not using external windows 473 user-defined window types only
define the background colors of the topics to which they are assigned and
allow you to use different HTML templates 475 for individual topics.

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 394 Help & Manual Online Help

If you use external windows user-defined window types also define the
appearance and behavior of the external windows.

See also:
Choosing a help window 177
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
Help Windows 557 (Project Properties)
Help Windows 800 (Reference)
7.12.2 HTML Help
IN THIS TOPIC:
Settings in the Help Windows section 394

Settings in the HTML Help section 394

Settings to control TOC behavior 396

This topic lists the settings that control your HTML Help output. The appearance and
functionality of HTML Help output is controlled by the settings in two Project Properties 548
sections:
· Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557
· Project > Project Properties > HTML Help 565
For more information on this format see HTML Help 765 in the Reference > Output Formats
chapter.

Settings in the Help Windows section:

In addition to the settings in the HTML Help section the configuration and appearance of
your HTML Help output is also controlled by the settings in Project > Project Properties >
Help Windows 557 .
· See Configuring Your Output - Help Windows 393 for more information on this
subject.

Settings in the HTML Help section:

The settings in Project > Project Properties > HTML Help 565 directly control the
appearance and functionality of your HTML Help output. The notes below explain what
the sections are for, which settings you need to check and where you can find more
information.
The most important section is HTML Export Options 573 . You should always check the
settings in this section before compiling a new project for the first time.

Topic Pages:
This section 565 provides access to the HTML templates used in all HTML-based output
formats. These templates define the layout of the HTML pages into which the text from
your topics is inserted.

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 Basic Working Procedures 395

Editing HTML templates directly requires experience with editing HTML code. If you are
just getting started with Help & Manual it is recommended that you leave the option Let
me edit HTML code directly unchecked. This allows you to use the default template
while you are getting used to using the program.
· For full details on all the settings in this section see Topic Pages 565 in the HTML
Help section of the Project Properties chapter.
· For information on using and editing HTML templates see the Templates and
Secondary Windows 462 and Using HTML Templates 475 chapters in the Reference
section.
This is a shared section! The templates in Topic Pages are used for all
HTML-based output formats. In addition to HTML Help this also includes
Browser-based Help, eBooks and Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0. The
same templates are used for all output formats. You cannot create
different templates for the individual formats.

Popup Topics:
The options in this section 567 control how popup topics 194 are handled and exported in
HTML Help. These settings are important if you are using popups because the modes
are all very different and they all have different advantages and disadvantages. For
example, if you use JavaScript popups you will have to create a separate project for
context-sensitive popups called from your application.
· For full details on all the settings in this section see Popup Topics 567 in the HTML
Help section of the Project Properties chapter.
· For information on creating and using popup topics see Creating popup topics 194
and Using JavaScript popups 199 in the Creating and Editing Topics chapter and
Using Context-Sensitive Help 431 in the More Advanced Procedures section.

Modular Help Options:

These options 570 control how modular help projects 492 are handled in HTML Help. This is
quite an advanced subject and if you are just getting started with Help & Manual we
recommend leaving it until later.
· For full details on all the settings in this section see Modular Help Options 570 in the
HTML Help section of the Project Properties chapter.
· For information on working with modular projects and modular help systems see
Working with Modular Help Systems 492 in the More Advanced Procedures section
and Modular Projects 873 in the Reference section.

Extended .HHP Settings:

This section 571 is for advanced users who have experience with the manual configuration
of HTML Help projects. If you are just getting started with Help & Manual you don't need
to worry about it at all. It enables you to add and modify settings in the .HHP project
configuration file that is fed to the Microsoft HTML Help compiler together with all the

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396 Help & Manual Online Help

other project files.

· For details using in this section see Extended .HHP Settings 571 in the HTML Help
section of the Project Properties chapter.

TOC options in the Extended .HHP Settings:

Below the Extended .HHP Settings editing window are some additional options with
which you can adjust the appearance and behavior of the TOC in the Microsoft HTML
Help viewer:

What the HTML Help TOC options do

Display plus/minus icons:
Activates or deactivates the +/- icons displayed to the left of closed/open chapter icons
("books") in the HTML Help viewer's TOC.
Draw lines between items:
When this is activated fine dotted lines are displayed between related items in the
TOC, making it easier see which topic belongs to which chapter in complex TOCs.
Track selection (mouseover effect):
When this is activated an underline is displayed below topic entries in the TOC when
the user moves the mouse over them. This makes it easier to be sure which topic you
are going to click on.
Only expand a single heading:
When the user selects a new chapter any other chapters on the same level in the TOC
that are open will be closed automatically. This is useful for complex help documents
with lots of chapters, because it is easier to navigate in the TOC if you do not have
multiple chapters open.

HTML Export Options:

This section 573 contains some of the most important options for your HTML Help output.
They control how your project is converted to HTML code and you should always check
them before compiling a new project for the first time. Changes made here can cause
radical differences in the behavior and appearance of your HTML Help output.
· For full details on all the settings in this section see HTML Export Options 573 in the
HTML Help section of the Project Properties chapter.
· This is a shared section! The options in HTML Export Options are used for all
HTML-based output formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks and Visual
Studio Help / MS Help 2.0). The settings of these options are the same for all
these formats. You cannot enter different settings for the individual output formats.

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 Basic Working Procedures 397

See also:
Project Properties - HTML Help 565
Output Formats - HTML Help 765
7.12.3 Winhelp
IN THIS TOPIC:
Settings in the Help Windows section 397

Settings in the Winhelp section 397

This topic lists the settings that control your Winhelp output. The appearance and
functionality of Winhelp output is controlled by the settings in two Project Properties
sections:
· Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557
· Project > Project Properties > Winhelp 575
For more information on this format see Winhelp 768 in the Reference > Output Formats
chapter.

Settings in the Help Windows section:

In addition to the settings in the Winhelp section the configuration and appearance of
your Winhelp output is also controlled by the settings in the Project > Project Properties
> Help Windows 557 section.
· See Configuring Your Output - Help Windows 393 for more information.

Settings in the Winhelp section:

The settings in Project > Project Properties > Winhelp 575 directly control the appearance
and functionality of your Winhelp output. The notes below explain what the sections are
for, which settings you need to check and where you can find more information.

Miscellaneous settings:
These options 575 include settings for configuring Winhelp's full-text search function and
some other functions of the Winhelp format. The full-text search index is no longer
necessary on modern computers. It is generated automatically almost instantly on the
user's computer and it can be left out if you want to make your help more compact.
· The only setting that is really important here is Limit images to 256 colors ,which
will prevent the Winhelp viewer from crashing on computers with screen
resolutions of less than 256 colors.
· See Miscellaneous Settings 575 in Project Properties > Winhelp for more details.

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 398 Help & Manual Online Help

Modular Help Options:

These options 576 control how modular help projects 492 are handled in Winhelp. This is
quite an advanced subject and if you are just getting started with Help & Manual we
recommend leaving it until later.
· For full details on all the settings in this section see Modular Help Options 576 in
Project Properties > Winhelp.
· For information on working with modular projects and modular help systems see
Working with Modular Help Systems 492 in the More Advanced Procedures section
and Modular Projects 873 in the Reference section.

Extended .HPJ Settings:

This section 577 is for advanced users who have experience with the manual configuration
of Winhelp projects. If you are just getting started with Help & Manual you don't need to
worry about it at all. It enables you to add and modify settings in the .HHP project
configuration file that is fed to the Microsoft Winhelp compiler together with all the other
project files.
· For details on using the features of this section see Extended .HPJ Settings 577 in
Project Properties > Winhelp.

See also:
Project Properties - Winhelp 575
Help Formats - Winhelp 768
7.12.4 Browser-based Help
IN THIS TOPIC:
Different appearance in different browsers 398
Settings in the Help Windows section 399
Settings in the Browser-Based Help section 399

The appearance and functionality of Browser-based Help output is controlled by the options
in two Project Properties sections:
· Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557
· Project > Project Properties > Browser-Based Help 586
For more information on this format see Browser-based Help 771 in the Reference > Output
Formats chapter.

Different appearance in different browsers:

It is unavoidable that your Browser-based Help output will look slightly different
depending on the browser used to view it. HTML Help and Visual Studio Help / Help 2.0
are controlled Microsoft outputs that use MS Internet Explorer to render their HTML
code, and your output in these formats will always closely resemble your source in the
Help & Manual editor.

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 Basic Working Procedures 399

This is not possible in Browser-based Help. The HTML code generated is the best
possible compromise between the many quirks of all the browsers now in use and
compliance with the W3C specifications for XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.01 and CSS1.
Unfortunately, no browser is really compliant with all the standards. In addition to this,
individual browsers often interpret the same rules and formatting tags differently.

Settings in the Help Windows section:

In Browser-based Help the help window definitions in Project > Project Properties > Help
Windows 557 only control the background colors of your topic pages and their headers,
and whether the topics have headers. All the other settings there, including window size
and position, are irrelevant in this format.
· See Help Windows 393 in this chapter for more information on the Help Windows
section.

Settings in the Browser-Based Help section:

Project > Project Properties > Browser-Based Help 586 contains the settings that are only
relevant for Browser-based Help.
The most important sections are Layout, Navigation and HTML Export Options. Always
at least check the settings in these sections before compiling a new project.

Editing HTML templates:

If you plan to edit HTML templates please first study the chapters Using HTML
Templates 475 and Templates and Secondary Windows 462 .
The Layout section:
The options in this section control the layout of your Browser-based Help. The choice
between a dynamic and static TOC is now made here, not in the Navigation section.
You can also choose a 3-frame layout with a top frame in which you can insert the
header of your website or any other web page. This makes it easier to integrate your
help in the look and feel of an existing website.
When you choose a 3-frame layout you can either load an existing page into the top
frame or edit the code for the top frame directly in the Layout section.
If you load an external page you are responsible for making sure that it is available at
runtime. If you want to store it in the same directory as your help you must copy it to
the correct directory on your server, along with any graphics files and other files that it
uses. Help & Manual will not do this for you.

The Navigation section:

The options in this section control how Help & Manual generates the navigation for
your Browser-based Help. The choice between a dynamic and static TOC is now
made in the new Layout 401 section.
You can also choose a number of other options, including:
Ø Single-click or double-click functionality in the Table of Contents (TOC)

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400 Help & Manual Online Help

Ø Whether (and how) you want the TOC to be expanded automatically when the
help is opened
Ø TOC indentation
Ø Custom TOC icons
Ø Add TOC ordering numbers
· See Navigation 403 in this chapter for more detailed instructions on configuring the
options in this section.
· For full details on all the settings in this section see Navigation 589 in the Browser-
based Help section of the Project Properties chapter.

The Table of Contents, Keyword Index and Full Text Search sections:
These sections allow you to edit the HTML templates for the Table of Contents 591 ,
Keyword Index 593 and Full-Text Search 594 features of your Browser-based Help. The
pages using these templates are loaded into the corresponding frames in Dynamic
HTML mode and generated as separate, stand-alone pages in Simple HTML mode
(see Navigation 589 ).
Note that the Full-text Search feature for Browser-based Help is
only available in the Professional version of Help & Manual. The
Search template is locked in the Standard edition.
Editing HTML templates directly requires experience with editing HTML code. If you
are just getting started with Help & Manual it is recommended that you leave the
option Let me edit HTML code directly unchecked in these sections. This allows you to
use the default templates while you are getting used to the program.
· For full details on all the settings in these sections see Browser-Based Help 586 in
the Project Properties chapter.
· For full details on using and editing HTML templates see Using HTML Templates
475 and Templates and Secondary Windows 462 .

· See Compiling 413 for an important note on compiling Browser-based Help with
full-text search.

The Topic Pages section:

This section provides access to the HTML templates used in all HTML-based output
formats. These templates define the layout of the HTML pages into which the text from
your topics is inserted.
Editing HTML templates directly requires experience with editing HTML code. If you
are just getting started with Help & Manual it is recommended that you leave the
option Let me edit HTML code directly unchecked. This allows you to use the default
template while you are getting used to the program.

· For full details on all the settings in this section see Topic Pages 597 in the Browser-
based Help section of the Project Properties chapter.
· For information on using and editing HTML templates see the Templates and
Secondary Windows 462 and Using HTML Templates 475 chapters in the Reference
section.

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 Basic Working Procedures 401

This is a shared section! The templates in Topic Pages are used for
all HTML-based output formats and can be accessed in the several
sections of Project Properties. However, the same templates are
used for all output formats.

The Popup Topics section:

The options in this section 599 control how popup topics 194 are handled and exported in
Browser-based Help. Help & Manual 4 introduces support for genuine popups in
Browser-based Help with JavaScript, and you can select and configure this popup
technology here.
· For full details on all the settings in this section see Popup Topics 599 in the
Browser-based Help section of the Project Properties chapter.
· For information on creating and using popup topics see Creating popup topics 194
and Using JavaScript popups 199 in the Creating and Editing Topics chapter and
Using Context-Sensitive Help 431 in the More Advanced Procedures section.

The HTML Export Options section:

The options in this section 601 control how your project is translated to HTML code.
They have a major influence on your output and you should always check them before
compiling a new project for the first time. Changes made here can cause radical
differences in the behavior and appearance of your Browser-based Help output.
· For full details on all the settings in this section see HTML Export Options 601 in
the Browser-based Help section of the Project Properties chapter.
This is a shared section! The settings in HTML Export Options are
used for all HTML-based output formats and can be accessed in the
several sections of Project Properties. However, the same settings
are used for all output formats.

See also:
Project Properties - Browser-based Help 586
Output Formats - Browser-based Help 771
7.12.4.1 Layout

IN THIS TOPIC:
Settings that used to be in the Navigation section 402

Choosing your layout mode 402

Content of the head frame in 3-frame mode 403

The options in this section define the layout of your Browser-based Help. This is a new
section introduced in Help & Manual 4.3 and it includes some of the settings that used to be
in the Navigation 403 section.
You can now choose a three-pane layout and load your own header HTML file into the top
frame for seamless integration in your own website.

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Settings that used to be in the Navigation section:

In previous versions of Help & Manual 4 the choice between a dynamic and static TOC
(Table of Contents) was made with check boxes in the Navigation section. This choice is
now made by selecting a layout option in the Layout section:
· "No frames, no scripts" replaces the option "Simple HTML pages"
· "Two frames" replaces "Dynamic HTML with navigation"

Choosing your layout mode:

There are now three different layout modes to choose from. In addition to the no-frame
and 2-frame modes that are exactly the same as Simple and Dynamic layout options in
earlier versions, you can now also create a 3-frame mode for better integration in your
own websites.
No frames, no scripts: Choose for fully manual website integration
This replaces the Simple HTML Pages option in the Navigation
section in previous versions of Help & Manual 4. It completely
turns off the dynamic TOC and outputs your help as simple HTML
pages without frames, without any scripting and with a single
separate TOC page containing all the links to your individual
topics.
Only choose this layout option if you want to integrate your
individual HTML pages in your website yourself manually after
generating it. The output generated with the Two frames and
Three frames options will also work with older browsers and
browsers with JavaScript support turned off – the dynamic
features will simply be disabled automatically.

Two frames: Default, choose for stand-alone help

This replaces the Dynamic HTML with Navigation in the
Navigation section in previous versions of Help & Manual 4.
Two frames is the default layout. It creates a stand-alone help
project that is effectively a website in its own right. It is not
integrated in another web page. Navigation is dynamic with an
expanding and collapsing contents tree if the user's browser
supports it and static if it doesn't.

Three frames: Choose for integration in an existing website

This is the same as two frames but with an additional frame above
for integration in your website – you can use the top frame to
insert your standard website header components. Navigation is
dynamic with an expanding and collapsing contents tree if the
user's browser supports it and static if it doesn't.
You can edit the code for the top frame directly in the dialog or

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 Basic Working Procedures 403

provide a reference to your own external HTML file that you want
to load into the top frame.

Content of the head frame in 3-frame mode:

When you choose 3-frame mode you have two options for inserting your own top frame:
You can either insert a reference to an existing web page that you want to load into the
top frame or you can enter the HTML code for the top frame directly in the Layout
dialog.
Inserting a reference to an existing web page:
Choose the option Head frame loads external file: and enter the name of the
HTML file you want to load into the top frame.
Ø Help & Manual does not copy this file for you! You must make sure that the
file and all the files it references (graphics etc.) are copied to the correct
location on your server.
Ø The HTML file does not have to be stored in the same directory as your help.
If it is located somewhere else you must include the correct relative or
absolute path to the HTML file in the dialog together with the filename.

Entering your own code in the Layout dialog:

Choose the option Edit head frame HTML code: and edit the code manually in the
editor box that activates when you choose this option. You should have experience
with manual HTML code editing to do this!
Ø When you use this option the head frame HTML file is generated automatically
and copied to your output folder together with the rest of your help.
Ø You can reference graphics files and other external files in your code in the
same way as you would in the other HTML template files. See Using HTML
Templates 475 for details.

Special variables for the layout template

There are three special variables that you can use in the Layout page's HTML
template. See HTML template variables 829 for details.

See also:
Layout 587 (Reference)
HTML template variables 829 (Reference)
Using HTML Templates 475
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
7.12.4.2 Navigation

This section defines how the navigation of your project functions. The main choice of an
dynamic or static navigation is made with the layout type choice in the Layout 401 section. The
settings you make in the Navigation section control how the layout that you have chosen
behaves when the user interacts with it.

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 404 Help & Manual Online Help

Most of the settings in this section should be self-explanatory. You can find detailed
descriptions of all the settings in Navigation 589 in the Project Properties section.

Settings moved to the Layout section:

In earlier versions of Help & Manual 4 the choice between a dynamic and static TOC
(Table of Contents) was made with check boxes in the Navigation section. This choice is
now made by selecting a layout option in the Layout 401 section:
· "No frames, no scripts" replaces the option "Simple HTML pages"
· "Two frames" replaces "Dynamic HTML with navigation"

See also:
Navigation 589 (Reference)
7.12.4.3 Full Text Search tricks

There are a couple of manual settings and switches you can use to change the way that full-
text search works in Browser-based Help. These aren't absolutely essential but they can be
useful for advanced users to fine-tune search performance.
For full details on all the standard search configuration settings please refer to Full Text
Search 594 in the Project Properties section.
Excluding topics and files from the search index:
HTML files with names beginning with an underscore (_myfile.htm) are not indexed for
searching. You can use this knowledge to exclude both topics and other files from
your Browser Help search index (i.e. files not generated by Help & Manual).
· To exclude topics from the search: Add an underscore to the beginning of the
topic's topic ID in the Topic Options tab. For example, to include a topic with the
ID Introduction from the search change the ID to _Introduction. (Note that you
will then also have to change the addresses of any existing calls to your topic
from your application!)
· To exclude additional files from the search: Just add an underscore to the
beginning of the file name. For example, change myfile.html to _myfile.html.

Excluding page components from the search index:

Out of the box the full-text search feature in Browser-based Help indexes everything in
the page, including all the text in the header. When the user executes a search the
header text gets displayed at the beginning of the "excerpt" for each topic displayed in
the list of search results.
You can change this with two switches that turn indexing on and off in your HTML
templates. These can be used to exclude the both the header itself and the header
information from the index, which means that the excerpts will begin with the actual
text of your topics. Here's how to do it:
1. Go to Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help > Topic Pages.
2. Select "Let me edit HTML code directly" and select the Main template. (You

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 Basic Working Procedures 405

must repeat this for the other templates if you have created any other custom
templates.)
3. Enter <!--ZOOMSTOP--> on a single line of its own directly before the beginning
of the header code, (directly before the <IF_TOPIC_HEADER> switch), like this:

<!--ZOOMSTOP-->
<IF_TOPIC_HEADER>

4. Enter <!--ZOOMRESTART--> on a single line of its own directly before the <%
TOPIC_TEXT%> variable, like this:

<!--ZOOMRESTART-->
<%TOPIC_TEXT%>

That's it. When you recompile everything in the header will be excluded from the index
and the excerpts. You can also exclude parts of individual topics from the search
index. To do this just use the Insert - Plain HTML Code function to insert the stop and
start switches before and after the text you want to exclude.

See also:
The Search template for Browser Help 483 (Using HTML Templates)
Full Text Search 594 (Project Properties)
7.12.5 Adobe PDF and printed manuals
IN THIS TOPIC:
Settings for printed manuals 406
The Print Manual Designer 406
Settings in the Adobe PDF section 406
Printer driver for generating Adobe PDF 407

The appearance and functionality of Adobe PDF output is controlled by the settings and
tools in the following locations:
· Tools > Print Manual Designer 622 (for editing Print Manual Templates)
· Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF 604
· Tools > Customize > PDF Export 738

Important note for former Help & Manual 3 users:

In Help & Manual 3 and earlier you could include and exclude individual PDF
items (topics, TOC etc.) both with settings in Project Properties and with
settings in the print manual template. This has now been simplified.
Inclusion/exclusion of PDF items is now only controlled by the print manual
template 543 . There are no corresponding settings in Project Properties.

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406 Help & Manual Online Help

Settings for printed manuals:

Manuals printed with File > Print User Manual are also generated with Adobe PDF.
However, the configuration options in the Project Properties section do not apply here.
Printed manuals are configured entirely with Print Manual Templates (see below) and the
settings in the File > Print User Manual screens.
For more information see PDF and Printed Manuals 538 .

The Print Manual Designer:

The appearance and layout of your PDF output is controlled by special template files
called Print Manual Templates. These templates are edited with an editor called the Print
Manual Designer 622 , which is included with Help & Manual and can be accessed from
the Tools menu. Print manual templates control much more than the appearance of your
PDF page. They can also be used to add cover pages, introductions, a keyword index
and many other features.
· To attach a print manual template to your project for PDF output go to Project >
Project Properties > Adobe PDF > PDF Layout 604 and select a template in the Print
Manual Template field. You can then open the selected template directly for editing
by clicking on the button.
· The print manual template for printed manuals is selected in File > Print User
Manual.
· For details see The Print Manual Designer 622 in the Tools Included with Help &
Manual chapter and the separate help and documentation of the Print Manual
Designer program.

Settings in the Adobe PDF section:

The three groups of options in Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF 604 control the
basic functionality of your Adobe PDF output.

Important note for former Help & Manual 3 users:

In Help & Manual 3 and earlier you could include and exclude individual PDF
items (topics, TOC etc.) both with settings in Project Properties and with
settings in the print manual template. This has now been simplified.
Inclusion/exclusion of PDF items is now only controlled by the print manual
template 543 . There are no corresponding settings in Project Properties.

PDF Layout:
These options 604 are critical for PDF output and should always be checked before
generating PDF from your project for the first time. This is where you select the Print
Manual Template, which defines the entire appearance and content of your PDF
document. The Output Style specifies whether you want to create an interactive PDF for
on-screen viewing or a document-style PDF for printing.

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 Basic Working Procedures 407

· For details see PDF Layout 604 in the Project Properties > Adobe PDF section and
PDF and Printed Manuals 538 .

PDF Options:
These options 606 are not quite so crucial but they can make a big difference to how your
PDF document functions. They should always be checked before publishing a PDF or
distributing it to your users.
· For details see PDF Options 606 in the Project Properties > Adobe PDF section.

Font Embedding:
The options in this section 606 can significantly effect the size of your PDF output file, and
whether your users see your files with the same fonts that you chose when you produced
the document.
· For details see Font Embedding 606 in the Project Properties > Adobe PDF section.

Printer driver for generating Adobe PDF:

Help & Manual uses a printer driver to generate PDF documents. This will normally be
your default printer (you must have at least one printer installed to be able to output
PDF). If your PDF output is OK you don't need to change this but if you experience
problems you may need to install an additional standard printer driver for PDF
conversion.
· For details see Customize - PDF Export 738 .

See also:
Output Formats - Adobe PDF 774
Customize - PDF Export 738
The Print Manual Designer 622
7.12.6 eBooks
IN THIS TOPIC:
Settings in the Help Windows section 408

Settings in the eBooks section 408

The appearance and functionality of eBooks output is controlled by the settings in two
Project Properties sections:
· Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557
· Project > Project Properties > eBooks 609
For more information on this format see Help & Manual eBooks 773 in the Reference > Help
Formats chapter.

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 408 Help & Manual Online Help

Settings in the Help Windows section:

In eBooks the help window definitions in Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557
only control the background colors of your topic pages and their headers, and whether
the topics have headers. All the other settings there, including window size and position,
are irrelevant in this format.
· See Configuring Your Output - Help Windows 393 for more information.

Settings in the eBooks section:

Project > Project Properties > eBooks 609 contains the settings that are only relevant for
Help & Manual eBooks:
The most important option is Viewer Template in the Visual Appearance section. This
setting defines the "skin" of the eBook viewer.

Visual Appearance:
The only really important option here is Viewer template, which selects the "skin" that
controls the entire appearance of the eBook viewer, including whether or not it has a
Table of Contents pane. These skin templates are not user-editable.
· For full details see Visual Appearance 609 in the Project Properties > eBooks chapter.

Functionality and Style:

These options configure some of the functions of the eBook viewer, including the
language of the user interface and whether the viewer has a keyword index and a full-
text search function. You can also activate some practical security features, including
copy protection for CD-ROMs.
· For full details see Functionality & Security 612 in the Project Properties > eBooks
chapter.

See also:
Output Formats - eBooks 773
7.12.7 XML
Compiling to XML exports your project in its current state to a package of XML files.
Although this format is generated from the Compile dialog it is not really a help format. It is
basically just a different way of storing your project files, in a format that can be read and
edited with XML-aware programs like XML editors and some major translation support tools.
Since XML output stores your entire project and all its settings in their current state there are
no special options or settings for configuring XML output. All the settings you can make are
included in the Compile 415 dialogs.This is also why there is no XML section in the Project
Properties.

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 Basic Working Procedures 409

IMPORTANT: Help & Manual can only process its own XML
files!
Help & Manual can only process XML files created with Help & Manual.
Currently you cannot export or import any other XML formats. Help &
Manual uses its own XML schema known as the Help & Manual XML
Language. This schema is designed specifically for exporting Help & Manual
projects for external processing and then re-importing them, and it is the
only XML schema with which this is possible.
The Help & Manual XML Language is fully documented in a separate help
file included with the program (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help &
Manual program directory). The schema is fully open and you are welcome
to develop your own applications for converting between the Help & Manual
XML Language and other XML variants.

See also:
XML Export and Import 786 (Reference)
Compiling to XML 415
7.12.8 MS Word RTF
The appearance and layout of your MS Word RTF output is controlled entirely by the options
in the following location:
· Project > Project Properties > MS Word RTF 608
All other settings are irrelevant for Word RTF output. Also, please note that Word RTF is a
deprecated and rather limited format that is only provided for backward compatibility. Adobe
PDF is always preferable unless you have a specific application for which RTF is an
absolute requirement.
· For details see Page Setup & Headings 608 in the Project Properties > Microsoft Word
RTF chapter.

See also:
Output Formats - Word RTF 776
7.12.9 Visual Studio Help
Visual Studio Help is also known as MS Help 2.0. Originally this help format was intended to
be the successor to HTML Help. However, Microsoft then postponed its release indefinitely
and it is now clear that it is never going to be released as a help format for normal user
applications.
Please note that this is a special help format that is only used for documenting third-party
programming components designed for integration into Visual Studio .NET. It is not suitable
for any other purpose and cannot be used for normal help projects for application programs!

About configuring Visual Studio Help output:

MS Help 2.0 is only relevant for system programmers designing programming

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components for Visual Studio .NET. If this does not apply to you please don't worry
about this help format. It cannot be used for any other purpose.
· Please refer to the special Visual Studio Help 527 chapter in the More Advanced
Procedures section for details on working with Visual Studio Help in Help & Manual.

See also:
Visual Studio Help 579 (Advanced Procedures)
Visual Studio Help 579 (Project Properties)
Visual Studio Help 777 (Reference)

7.13 Compiling Your Project

To distribute or check your project you need to output it to the help or documentation format
you want to use. This process is known as "compiling". When you compile your project Help
& Manual translates all the information in the database into the selected output format.
This chapter explains how to compile your project to the output formats supported by Help &
Manual.

7.13.1 Microsoft help compilers

The Microsoft help formats Winhelp, HTML Help and MS Help 2.0 are generated with the
help of the standard Microsoft help compilers for these formats. If you do not have these
compilers installed you need to install them before you can output to these formats.

Winhelp and HTML Help compilers:

The Winhelp and HTML Help compilers are available on the EC Software website at:
http://www.ec-software.com/reshelp.htm

Visual Studio Help/MS Help 2.0 compiler:

The MS Help 2.0 compiler tools can be downloaded from Microsoft with the Visual Studio
Help Integration Kit ( VSHIK) but they cannot be used without the Visual Studio .NET
package. You also don't need to be able to use the compiler unless you have and use
Visual Studio .NET, because the Help 2.0 help format is not designed for producing
normal help for user applications. It is only used for documenting software components
that integrate into Visual Studio .NET, so you will only need it if you are programming
.NET components with Visual Studio.

See also:
Customize - Compilers 737
7.13.2 Publication checklist
Before actually distributing your files there are a few things you should check because they
are quite easy to forget:

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 Basic Working Procedures 411

Title and copyright information:

· Have you set the project title, author and copyright information in Project > Project
Properties > Common Properties > Title and Copyright 550 ?

Help window titles:

· Have you set the correct titles for your help window title bars in Project > Project
Properties > Help Windows 557 ?

Language settings:
· Have you set the correct language settings in Project > Project Properties >
Common Properties > Language Settings 551 ? This is particularly important if you are
using languages requiring special character sets or Unicode. See International
languages setup 149 for details.

Embedded topics:
· Are you using embedded topics? If you are and your source topics are stored in
the Invisible Topics section remember to exclude the source topics from your
output. (Select the Topic Options tab of the each source topic and deselect all the
options in Builds which include this topic.) If you don't do this your source topics will
also be exported with your output and they will appear in the search and possibly
also in the keyword index. See Using embedded topics 222 for details.

Notes that aren't for the user:

· Does your project contain any author's notes and other "production information"
that users shouldn't see? It's a good idea to use Insert > Comment / Bookmark 204
for information like this to ensure that it isn't included in the output. You can also
exclude information from your output with Insert > Conditional Text 454 .

See also:
Configuring Your Output 392
7.13.3 Compiling
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to compile your project 411
Compiling Visual Studio Help 412
Compiling Browser Help 413
Compiling selected topics only 414
Using the "Include Options" 414
Quick-launching your project 411
Test-Compiling Asian languages 415

Once you have made all your preparations and set your configuration options 392 for the
output format you are using compiling is basically just a question of selecting the output
format and clicking on OK. Everything else is handled by Help & Manual.

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412 Help & Manual Online Help

Compiling to XML:
Note that generating XML 786 output us a special case with a number of
special settings unique to this output format. It is also not possible to
include or exclude individual topics or chapters in XML, the output always
contains your entire project. In this sense, it is really more a save format
than an output format. For detailed instructions see Compiling to XML 415 .

How to compile your project:

1. Save your project, then select File > Compile Help File or in the Toolbar. This
displays the Compile Help File and Run 663 dialog:

2. Select the output format in the Output Format: field. Some of the options displayed in
the dialog will change depending on the format you choose.
· For details on the options in the compile dialog see Compile Help File 663 in
Reference > Menus and Dialogs > The File Menu.
3. Check the Output File: field. In most cases the program will automatically compile to
the project folder, using the project name as the file name. You can change both the
output folder and the file name if you want and Help & Manual will remember this
change next time you compile.
4. Select the output options and click on to compile. This can take a couple of
minutes with very large projects.
5. A report on the compile process including any errors and a list of the files and/or
folders you need to include when you distribute your help 417 to your users is displayed
in an external viewer window. This window contains controls with which you can save
the report to an external HTML file if you want.

Compiling Visual Studio Help:

Please note that Visual Studio Help (MS Help 2.0) is a special case. Please see the
special Visual Studio Help 579 section in the More Advanced Procedures section for
details.

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 Basic Working Procedures 413

Visual Studio Help is a special help format that is only used for documenting third-party
programming components designed for integration in Visual Studio .NET. It cannot be
used for normal application programs and if you are not a VS.NET system programmer
you don't need to know anything about it!

Compiling Browser-based Help:

Compiling Browser-based Help is almost the same as compiling any other format.
However, since you are actually creating a website consisting of a large number of
individual files there are a couple of additional points you need to bear in mind:
Always compile to an empty folder:
Always compile Browser-based Help to its own folder, which should preferably be
empty. A large project can consist of several hundred files in this format! (The program
will suggest creating a folder called \HTML inside your project directory, which is a
good choice.)
When you compile to Browser-based Help you can the use the
option to clear the output folder before compiling. You don't need to use this during
normal working but it is a good idea to select it before creating a build that you are
going to publish.
Clearing the output folder makes sure that no files for topics that you have deleted are
included in your output unnecessarily. In addition to taking up space these files will
also be indexed and will appear in the full-text search (see below).
Clearing the output folder is also essential when you change the name of the project,
as this changes the names of a number of important files that are components of your
Browser-based Help. If you don't clear the folder the old files will remain in place and
will be included in the index.
Timestamps and clearing the output folder:
You don't need to worry about the timestamps of your output HTML files when you
clear the output folder. The the HTML file timestamps are always set to the last time
the topic was edited, not the time when the project was compiled.

Testing Browser-based Help locally on Internet Explorer:

Microsoft Internet Explorer now displays a yellow warning bar when you open any
HTML files containing scripting on your local machine. You can disable this warning by
activating the option Enable local testing for MS Internet Explorer in the Compile Help
File 663 dialog.
Your Browser-based Help files will then open normally in Internet Explorer, without the
yellow warning bar. If you plan to deploy your Browser-based Help for installation on
local computers you can leave this setting activated for your production output if you
want.
Important: Note that file links do not work when this option is activated.

Full-text search issues:

When you are compiling the new Browser-based Help with full-text search 594 it's

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414 Help & Manual Online Help

important to understand that the search index is not generated from your .HMX project
file or from the files on your server. It is generated from the HTML files on your local
computer, after the HTML files have been generated.
· If the output directory contains any other HTML files these will be included in
the index.
To prevent this do not place any other files in the output directory. Since the index is
generated locally you can upload other files to your server separately, then they will
not be included in the index.
· Outdated HTML files will be included in the index if you don't delete them.
To ensure that the HTML files of outdated topics are not included in the index use
the option in the Compile dialog to delete the contents of the
output directory before compiling. This will not cause problems with the timestamps
of topic files that have not been changed – the HTML file timestamps are always set
to the last time the topic was edited, not the time when the project was compiled.

Compiling selected topics only:

For test purposes you can compile only the topics that are currently selected in the Table
of Contents pane (TOC). Note that this will result in dead links in topics that contain links
to topics which are not included in your output!
1. Select the topics you want to compile in the TOC pane. You can use Ctrl+Click
and Shift+Click to select multiple topics out of order and sequences of topics.
Selecting chapters automatically selects all the chapters' sub-topics.
2. Select File > Compile Help File or in the Toolbar to display the Compile Help File
and Run dialog.
3. Select the output format, then select Selected Topics in the Include Options: box.
The box will be highlighted in yellow to remind you that only selected topics will be
included in your output.
4. Select your other compile options, then click on to compile.

Using the "Include Options":

With the exception of the Selected Topics option (see above) the Include Options
settings in the Compile Help File dialog are only relevant if you are using Help & Manual
's conditional output functions to control which topics and content are included in your
compiled output.
When you select include options only topics and content tagged with matching include
options in your project will be included in your compiled output. You can tag topics in the
Topic Options tab and individual content with the Insert > Conditional Text function.
By default the include options are set to the selected output format. Do not change this
unless you are explicitly using conditional output.
· For more information see Conditions and Customized Output 451 in the More
Advanced Procedures section and Compile Help File 663 in Reference > Menus and
Dialogs > The File Menu.

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 Basic Working Procedures 415

Quick-launching your project:

The Quick Launch function compiles your output and displays it without displaying the
Compile Help File dialog.
This function automatically uses the last compile settings you used with when you
compiled with the compile dialog. It is thus advisable to compile to the selected format
with the File > Compile Help File option at least once before using Quick Launch.
1. Click on the arrow symbol next to the tool in the Toolbar to display the Quick
Launch output options:

2. Then just select the output format you want to output to. Your project will be
compiled and displayed automatically as soon as the compile process is finished.

Test-compiling Asian languages on non-Asian Windows:

Normally, you cannot compile help projects written Asian languages on non-Asian
versions of Windows because the necessary language settings don't match. However, if
you just want to do a quick test compile and don't have a Windows version in the
matching Asian language there is a configuration setting that will allow you to do this.
· Go to Tools > Customize > Compilers and activate the option
.

The resulting help file will contain errors if the languages of your Windows version and
the help file don't match but you will be able to complete the compilation, which is
sufficient for testing.

See also:
Compile Help File 663 (Reference)
Compiling to XML 415
Conditions and Customized Output 451
7.13.4 Compiling to XML
Compiling to XML exports your entire project in its current state to a package of XML files 786 .
Although this format is generated from the Compile dialog it is not really a help format. It is
basically just a different way of storing your project files, in a format that can be read and
edited with XML-aware programs like XML editors and some major translation support tools.

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416 Help & Manual Online Help

IMPORTANT: Help & Manual can only process its own XML
files!
Help & Manual can only process XML files created with Help & Manual.
Currently you cannot export or import any other XML formats. Help &
Manual uses its own XML schema known as the Help & Manual XML
Language. This schema is designed specifically for exporting Help & Manual
projects for external processing and then re-importing them, and it is the
only XML schema with which this is possible.
The Help & Manual XML Language is fully documented in a separate help
file included with the program (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help &
Manual program directory). The schema is fully open and you are welcome
to develop your own applications for converting between the Help & Manual
XML Language and other XML variants.

For more details on Help & Manual's XML output and the files that are
generated please see XML Export and Import 786 in the Reference section.
You can also export and import individual topics in XML format. For details
see Exporting and importing topics 202 .

How to generate an XML version of your project:

Compiling to XML creates an XML file package 787 that is essentially a copy of your .HMX
project file and all its contents in XML format, using Help & Manual's own XML schema.
1. Save your project, then select File > Compile Help File or in the Toolbar. This
displays the Compile Help File and Run 663 dialog:

2. Select XML in the Output Format: field. This will display some special options for
generating XML output (see below for details).
3. Check the Output File: field. By default the program will automatically suggest
creating a new XML source folder in your project folder, using the project name as the
file name for the main XML project file. You can change both the output folder and the
file name if you want and Help & Manual will remember this change next time you
compile. However, you should always use an empty folder as your XML output folder

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 Basic Working Procedures 417

4. Select the options for generating your XML file package:

Single XML file: By default XML packages are exported with a separate XML file for
each topic. This is recommended because it generally makes
editing easier. However, if you wish you can also output your entire
project to a single XML file containing all your topics. See XML
output files and folders 787 for more details.
Create ZIP This option stores the entire XML file package in a ZIP archive so
archive from that you can send it to an editor or translator for processing. The
XML files: archive contains the entire folder structure that is normally
generated. Note that Help & Manual cannot read XML file
packages from ZIP archives, you must unpack them first.
Export Project Includes all the settings in Project Properties 548 in the XML
Properties: package. This makes it possible to generate a new Help & Manual
project with all the original settings from the XML file package. This
is not needed if you are just exporting updated or modified material
that you plan to re-import to the same project later.
Export headings This option ensures that your export project is complete by
of TOC and including the entries for the Table of Contents (TOC) for both the
Invisible Topics: normal TOC and the Invisible Topics topics. This is essential if you
want to reimport your project to Help & Manual!
Only export This allows you to export only those topics that have changed
changes since: since a certain date. This is useful if you want to send a translator
or editor only the changed material for processing. Afterwards you
can then import the edited version 165 back into your project.
Display file when If this is selected the main XML file will be opened automatically in
compilation is your default XML application when compilation is finished. If you
finished: do not have an XML editor this will normally be your default
browser. Note that the quality of the XML display and the functions
supported can vary widely from browser to browser.

Click on to compile. This can take a couple of minutes with very large projects.
5. A report on the compile process including any errors and the name of the XML file
package folder are displayed in an external viewer window. This window contains
controls with which you can save the report to an external HTML file for
documentation purposes if you want.

See also:
XML Export and Import 786 (Reference)
New project from an XML project file 142
Importing H&M XML projects 165
Exporting and importing topics 202
Editing XML source code 208
7.13.5 Distribution files
When you compile your output a report is displayed in an external window listing the files
and/or folders that you need to distribute to your users. Here is a summary checklist of the

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418 Help & Manual Online Help

files you normally need to distribute for each output format supported by Help & Manual:

HTML Help:
HTML Help is compiled to a single .CHM file containing everything needed for the fully-
functional help. You will only need to distribute additional files if you are creating a
modular project 492 with multiple help files or if you are accessing additional external files
in your help, for example with file links 300 . If you do access and distribute external files
with HTML Help you must store them in the same directory as the .CHM file. Links to
external files with path information will fail on many (but not all) user's computers!

Classic Winhelp:
Winhelp always consists of two files: A .HLP file containing the main body of the help and
a .CNT file containing the Table of Contents (TOC).If you forget to include the .CNT file
your help will be functional but it will not have a TOC.

Browser-based help:
Browser-based Help is actually a self-contained website. Like any website it consists of a
large number of separate files, including HTML files, graphics files, JavaScript files and
other files. If you have a large help project your Browser-based Help can easily consist
of several hundred files. You must upload all the files in the output directory to your
server for Browser-based Help to work properly! Also, you must upload all the files to
the same directory! Do not make any changes to these files. For example, do not
change the case of file names.
If you are distributing any additional files with your Browser-based Help you must add
them to the directory manually.

Adobe PDF:
Adobe PDF output always consists of a single .PDF file.

Help & Manual eBooks:

Help & Manual eBooks consist of a single executable .EXE file that contains both the
eBook content and the viewer program needed to display it. This file is completely self-
contained and it is the only file you need to distribute.

MS Word RTF:
MS Word RTF is output to a single .RTF file. However, if the file contains images the
graphics files are external and need to be distributed with the .RTF file, otherwise the
user will not be able to see them.

Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0:

Help 2.0 is normally output to a single, self-contained .HXS file. This is the only file you

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 Basic Working Procedures 419

need to distribute. However, you can also choose an option to create both an .HXS file
and a separate .HXL file in Project > Project Properties > Visual Studio Help > Namespace
& Options 580 .Please note that this format is not designed for general help for user
applications! Visual Studio Help is only used to document programming components
added to Visual Studio .NET and the compiler can only be used in combination with the
Visual Studio .NET package! This help format is completely irrelevant for normal help
and documentation applications!

See also:
Help Formats 763 (Reference)
7.13.6 Changes since H&M 3
From the user's point of view two changes have been made to how output is compiled since
Help & Manual 3. One change is trivial and the other is quite important:

Include Options always visible:

The Include Options section in the Compile Help File 663 dialog is now always visible.
Many users overlooked this in Help & Manual 3 because you had to click on a button to
display it.

New strategy and folders for temporary files:

The structure of the temporary files generated during compiling has not changed – these
files are dictated by the requirements of the Microsoft help compilers and must remain
the same. However, the way deleting the temporary files is handled has been changed
and the names of the folders for the temporary files have also changed.

Deleting temporary files:

In Help & Manual 3 the Delete temporary files after compilation option in the
Compile Help File dialog was always "on" by default. You could switch it off but the
changed setting was not saved with your project, so it would be on again the next
time you started the program. In addition to this H&M3 only deleted temporary files
created during the current compile session, so once a temporary folder was left over
it was never deleted.
In Help & Manual 4 the Delete temporary files after compilation option setting is
saved with your project, so it now also works for command line compiling 507 . In
addition to this the temporary folder and all its contents are now always deleted when
the setting is active, even if it is a folder left over from a previous session.

Temporary files folder names:

The temporary folders for the temporary files are still created in the project directory
(i.e. the directory containing the .HMX project file you are compiling) but they have
new names:
HTML Help: \~tmpchm
Winhelp: \~tmphlp

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420 Help & Manual Online Help

Visual Studio Help \~tmphxs

/
MS Help 2.0:

See also:
Compile Help File 663 (dialog reference)

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Part

VIII
 422 Help & Manual Online Help

8 More Advanced Procedures

The chapters in this section describe functions and procedures that are a little more
advanced. Once you get used to working with Help & Manual you may use them just as
frequently as the functions described in the Basic Working Procedures 125 section. However,
is probably a good idea to wait until you have a good working knowledge of the program
before you start studying these chapters.

8.1 Flash Animations and Video

Help & Manual now takes all the manual labor out of adding videos and Flash animations to
your help projects. Basically you just need to click at the point where you want to insert your
movie and select the movie or Flash animation file. Help & Manual handles everything else
for you, including choosing and inserting the correct code for integrating the media files in
the various output formats.
Please see About using media files 859 for important information on using
media files in your projects and support for media files in the various
output formats!

See also:
About using media files 859
8.1.1 Inserting movies and animations
Inserting a movie or Flash animation file is now just as easy as inserting a graphic.
Please see About using media files 859 for important information on using
media files in your projects and support for media files in the various
output formats!
Note that movies must generally be in the same folder as your help to
run. If you want to be relatively sure that movies will run properly then
use the Flash SWF format. Other formats frequently cause problems
because

How to insert a movie or a Flash animation:

1. Click in the editor at the point where you want to insert the movie.
2. Select in the Toolbar or select Insert > Movie or right-click and select Insert > Movie
.

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 More Advanced Procedures 423

3. Click on the browse button in the File Name: field and select the movie file.
4. Select the Start options:
Start Starts the movie as soon as
automatica the topic is displayed.
lly:

Loop Repeats the movie indefinitely

playback: as long as the topic is
displayed.

Show Displays playback control

controls: buttons together with the
movie.

5. Use to select the placeholder graphic 423 to be displayed in the topic

when the movie is not running. This graphic is also displayed in the Help & Manual
editor.
6. Check the Width: and Height: values and correct them if they do not correspond to
the original width and height of the movie (some players do not read these values
correctly).
This function is not intended to be used for scaling ! Scaling your media
objects is not recommended as the quality of the results is often very poor
(i.e. really, really, really bad), particularly with Flash animations.

7. Click on to insert the movie in your topic.

See also:
About using media files 859
8.1.2 Inserting placeholder graphics
The "placeholder graphic" is a graphic that is displayed in your topic when the movie is not
running. This graphic is also displayed in the Help & Manual editor and in output formats that

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424 Help & Manual Online Help

do not support movies like, eBooks (Flash is supported in eBooks, other video formats are
not), PDF and printed user manuals. Alternatively you can also use Help & Manual's
conditional output 451 features to create alternative topics or topic content for formats that do
not support media files.

How to insert a placeholder graphic:

1. If the Edit Movie dialog is not already displayed open it by double-clicking on the
movie icon in the editor.

2. Click on . This displays a dialog with three options:

Run movie Allows you to make a screenshot from the

and take movie and insert it as a placeholder graphic.
snapshot: See Previewing and snapshots 425 for
detailed instructions.

Load image Loads a graphic image from a file and uses

from file: it as the placeholder graphic. The graphic is
automatically resized to the size of the
movie display so it should have the same
dimensions as the movie.

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 More Advanced Procedures 425

Copy image Pastes an image from the Windows

from clipboard. You must copy an image to the
clipboard: clipboard first, of course. Here too, the
image should have exactly the same
dimensions as the movie.

See also:
About using media files 859
8.1.3 Previewing and snapshots
You can preview inserted movies in Help & Manual and take snapshots from the movies to
use as placeholder graphics 423 in your topics.
If the preview function does not appear to be working see About using media
files 859 for more information.

How to preview movies and take snapshots:

1. Insert a movie 422 in your topic.
2. If the Edit Movie dialog is not already displayed open it by double-clicking on the
movie icon in the editor.

3. Click on and select the Run movie and take snapshot option to
display the movie player window.

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 426 Help & Manual Online Help

You can also load placeholder images from files or paste them from the
Windows clipboard after copying an image from another location.
4. Use the controls to play the movie and locate the graphic you want to use as your
placeholder graphic. The actual movie playback controls displayed here depend on
the individual player, which in turn depends on the format of the movie.
5. Click on to take the snapshot and insert it in the Edit Movie dialog.
6. Click on to close the dialog and insert the placeholder graphic in your topic.

See also:
About using media files 859
8.1.4 Editing the media HTML code
Help & Manual automatically generates the HTML code needed to display and play media
files in HTML-based output formats (HTML Help and Browser-based Help). Normally you will
not need to touch this code but there may be special circumstances where you want to
change or edit the code for your own purposes.
eBooks: Note that although you can now play Flash animations in Help &
Manual eBooks (videos are not supported) this is handled by special internal
routines. Editing the HTML code will not make any difference in your eBooks
output.

How to edit the media HTML code:

1. Insert a movie 422 in your topic and/or double-click on the movie icon to display the Edit
Movie dialog.

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 More Advanced Procedures 427

2. Click on the HTML Code tab and select the I want to enter the embedded HTML
code manually option.

3. This displays the code that would normally be entered by Help & Manual.

4. Edit the code and click on .

Your code is your responsibility!

Note that you need to be familiar with writing HTML code and scripts to use
this function. Any changes you make are entirely your own responsibility,
Help & Manual will not parse or check your code in any way!

· If you enter additional file or image references in your code the compiler will not
know about the files you are referring to and will not automatically include them in
your output. To solve this problem add these external files to the Baggage Section
520 – then they will be included in your HTML output automatically.

See also:
About using media files 859

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8.1.5 Support in output formats

Support for flash animations and video varies according to the output format you are using.
This support is dependent on the output formats themselves, not on the capabilities of Help
& Manual.

Support for animations and videos in output formats:

The bottom line is that if you want to be relatively sure that your movie will play on the
user's computer than use the Flash .SWF format. This is the only real standard that will
always play if support for it is installed, and most users now have it. If support for Flash
is not installed the user will be prompted to download and install it automatically. Other
formats may or may not play, depending on the configuration of the user's computer.
HTML Help: Flash animations and all supported video formats are supported.
However, support for playing the formats used must also be installed
on the user's computer. For example, if you use a DiVX video don't
expect it to be playable on all user machines!

Winhelp: Multimedia support in Winhelp is very limited. Only standard Windows

.AVI videos are supported. Flash animations and other video formats
are not supported.

Browser- Flash animations and videos are supported. Here too, support for
based Help: playing the formats used must be installed on the user's computer.
Also, the degree and quality of the support also depends on the
support provided by the browser the user is using. So please test your
output on all relevant browsers before distributing!

eBooks: Flash animations are supported if support for playing Flash is installed
on the user's computer. Videos are not supported.

Adobe PDF: No multimedia support.

Word RTF: No multimedia support.

See also:
Help Formats 763 (Reference)

8.2 Using OLE Objects

OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) objects are active links in your project to documents
created and edited in other applications. This enables you to insert formatted objects that
you cannot create directly in the Help & Manual editor, such as formulas created in the MS
Equation Editor.
OLE objects can be inserted as links to external files (recommended) or as links to objects
that are actually embedded in your project file. Embedded objects are stored in your .HMX
project file and will increase its size considerably.
When your help file is compiled, OLE objects are converted into static bitmap graphics. The

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 More Advanced Procedures 429

advantage of OLE over screenshots is that the objects remain editable – double-clicking on
an OLE object in the Help & Manual editor opens it for editing in its associated program.
Please see About using OLE objects 861 in the Reference section for some important
additional information.

See also:
Insert OLE Object 701
About using OLE objects 861
8.2.1 Inserting OLE objects
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to insert an external file as an OLE object 429
How to create a new OLE object and embed it in your project 430

How to edit OLE objects 430

How to delete OLE objects 430

Note that OLE objects are actually controlled by the OLE server of the associated
application, not by Help & Manual. Whether and how the object is editable depends on the
server and if the function fails it is due to the server, not to Help & Manual.
Please also note the restrictions 862 on using OLE. In particular, remember that you can only
use OLE objects that can be displayed as graphics. You cannot insert multimedia OLE
objects. If you want to insert media objects use the Insert Movie 422 or File Link 300 functions.

How to insert an external file as an OLE object:

Inserting a OLE link to an external file:

1. Select Insert > OLE Object.
2. Select the Create from File option in the dialog displayed.
3. Use the button to select the file you want to insert. The file does not have
to be in your project directory. Remember that only objects that can be displayed
as static graphics are supported.
4. Select the Link check box. This inserts a link to the external file instead of
embedding 861 the file in your project.
5. Select Display as Icon if you only want to display a placeholder icon for the object
in the Help & Manual editor. If you deselect this option you can preview and size
the object in the editor.
6. Click on to insert the OLE object.

Embedding an OLE copy of an external file in your project:

· Proceed exactly as described above but deselect the Link check box in Step 4.
This will embed a copy of the external file in your .HMX project file.
· When an OLE object is embedded editing the external file will not change the copy

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430 Help & Manual Online Help

in your project! To edit the embedded OLE object you must double-click on the
object in the Help & Manual editor.

How to create a new OLE object and embed it in your project:

1. Select Insert > OLE Object.
2. Select the Create New in the dialog displayed.
Create from File (see above 429 ) is preferable. Create New always embeds 861
the object in your project and this is not recommended.
3. Select the application in the Object Type list. Remember that only OLE objects that
can be displayed as static graphics are supported.
4. Select Display as Icon to display the OLE object as a small icon link. Otherwise a
graphical image of the object will be inserted in your topic.
5. Click on to open the external application to create the object.
When you save the file in the application it will be embedded in your Help &
Manual .HMX project file. It will not be saved as an external file!

How to edit OLE objects:

All OLE objects:

· To edit an OLE object with the application that created it just double-click on the
object in the Help & Manual editor. Or right-click on the object and select Edit or
Open.
· This method works both for OLE objects that are embedded in your .HMX project
file and OLE objects inserted as links to external files.

OLE objects inserted as links:

· When you insert an OLE object as a link (see above for details) you can also edit it
by editing the external file with the application associated with it directly.

How to delete OLE objects:

· Place the cursor before or after the OLE object and press Backspace or Delete.

See also:
Insert OLE Object 701
About using OLE objects 861

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 More Advanced Procedures 431

8.2.2 OLE examples

Example 1 – a Word file:

This example was created by pasting the first block of instructions from Inserting OLE
objects 429 to Word and saving it as a .DOC file. This file was then inserted as an OLE
object. Note that in the output this is actually a graphic, not text!
The object has been inserted in a single-cell table with a border and centered to
distinguish it from the rest of the text.

A Word file inserted as an OLE object:

Example 2 – an equation:
This example shows an equation created with the MS Equation Editor:
x+ y
n
Z

8.3 Using Context-Sensitive Help

All modern applications should make full use of context-sensitive help. Available context-
sensitive help technologies in Windows now include tooltips (mouseover hints), What's This?
help, Help buttons in dialogs, F1 context help, training card help (a Microsoft technology for
interactive tutorials) and interactive wizards. See Context-sensitive help technologies 835 for
more details on this.
Implementing context-sensitive help takes a little work up front but it will save you a huge

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 432 Help & Manual Online Help

amount of time and money later because it will make your product much easier to
understand for your users. And that will translate into fewer support requests. Also,
applications with good context-sensitive help are more popular and sell better because they
are easier to use.

Normal and popup context-sensitive topics:

Context-sensitive help can use both normal topics included in your Table of Contents
(TOC) and popup topics 194 .
· A normal context-sensitive topic is a just any topic in your TOC called directly by
your application, and it is always displayed together with the entire help.
· Context-sensitive popup topics are displayed on their own in a little window that
is closed after the user has read the text.

Context help is only fully supported in Winhelp and HTML Help:

You can make standard HTML calls to normal topics in Browser-based Help 438 from
applications but the full range of context help features is only supported in Winhelp and
HTML Help. In particular, all the popup context-sensitive help functions described in this
chapter are only supported in Winhelp and HTML Help.
For more details on context-sensitive help, the available context-sensitive
help technologies and implementation information for programmers see the
Context-Sensitive Help & Popups 834 chapter in the Reference section.

See also:
Context-Sensitive Help & Popups 834 (Reference)
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 (Reference)
Creating popup topics 194
Creating invisible topics 193
Organizing invisible topics 225
8.3.1 Creating context-sensitive topics
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create a normal context-sensitive topic 433
How to create a context-sensitive popup topic 433
Creating "dual-mode" popups in HTML Help 434

Context-sensitive help can use both normal topics and popup topics. A "normal" context-
sensitive topic is just any topic in your TOC called directly by your application, and it is
always displayed together with the entire help. Context-sensitive popup topics are called
directly and displayed on their own in a little window that is closed after the user has read
the text.
As the help author you don't actually need to do anything special to create context-sensitive
topics. They are simply normal TOC topics and normal popup topics. They become "context-
sensitive" when they are called directly from the application.
What makes context-sensitive popup topics a little different is the fact that they can be called

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 More Advanced Procedures 433

on their own, without the help, but within the help they are still identical to any other popups.
For more background information see the Context-Sensitive Help & Popups 834 chapter in
the Reference section.

How to create a normal context-sensitive topic:

Normal context-sensitive topics are simply normal topics in the TOC. Just follow the
instructions in Creating new topics 171 to create a new topic in the TOC.
· These topics become context-sensitive topics when they are called directly from
the application. How this is done depends on the programming language and your
output format.
· HTML Help topics are always called with the HTML Help API, Winhelp topics
with the Winhelp API. The way these APIs are accessed varies depending on the
programming language you are using. For details see Application calls to context-
sensitive topics 434 .
· You can also make context calls to Browser-based Help topics. For details see
Context calls to Browser-based Help 438 .

How to create a context-sensitive popup topic:

Context-sensitive popup topics are simply normal popup topics in the Invisible Topics
section. Just follow the instructions in Creating popup topics 194 to create and edit popup
topics in the Invisible Topics section.
Remember that context-sensitive popup topics are only supported in
Winhelp and HTML Help. (Popups within your help are also supported in
eBooks.)
· Here too, HTML Help popup topics are called with the HTML Help API, Winhelp
topics with the Winhelp API. The way these APIs are accessed varies depending
on the programming language you are using. For details see Application calls to
context-sensitive topics 434 .
· You cannot make context calls to popup topics in Browser-based Help.
· If the programmers provide you with a "map file" of the topic IDs and context
numbers for the elements in the program that need to be documented you can also
generate your context-sensitive popup topics automatically! See Auto-generating
context-sensitive topics 435 for details.

Don't use links in context-sensitive popups:

Even in Winhelp and dual-mode help (see below) where links are supported
it is bad practice to use links in context-sensitive popups. These topics are
designed to be viewed, read quickly and then closed again. If you need to
use links it is better to use a normal topic instead of a popup topic. Then
the programmer can make a context call to the normal topic, which will call
up entire help so that the user can browse it.

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Creating "dual-mode" popups in HTML Help:

The native HTML Help popups 845 are plain-text only, they do not support graphics or
formatted text like the popups in Winhelp. If you want formatted popups for use in your
help or in context-sensitive help 431 Help & Manual can solve this problem for you by
creating "dual-mode" help for HTML Help, with a .CHM file for the main help and a .HLP
Winhelp file for the popups. (Microsoft also uses this method in the help of a number of
their own applications.)
· For details see Formatted popups with dual-mode help 436 in the Advanced
Procedures section.
· Help & Manual 4 also introduces JavaScript popups 199 which can be used to create
formatted popup topics in HTML Help. However, JavaScript Popups cannot be
used for context-sensitive help in applications.

See also:
Creating popup topics 194
Auto-generating context-sensitive popups 435
Context-Sensitive Help & Popups 834
Organizing invisible topics 225
8.3.2 Application calls to context-sensitive topics
IN THIS TOPIC:
Calls to normal topics in the TOC 434
Calls to plain-text HTML Help popups 435
Calls to the dual-mode HTML Help popups 435

Tutorials and tools for programmers 435

Making the calls to your context-sensitive topics is basically a job for the programmer, not
the help author (you may be both, of course). Again, in the help there is no difference
between context-sensitive topics and popups and normal topics and popups – the difference
is how they are called.
All the Microsoft help output formats generated by Help & Manual are fully standard-
compliant so you can use the standard procedures for linking to and calling context-sensitive
topics.
You will normally only use Winhelp or HTML Help for context-sensitive help but you can also
make limited context-sensitive calls to the Browser-based Help generated by Help & Manual
if you can make browser calls from your application. For details see Context calls to
Browser-based Help 438 .

Calls to normal topics in the TOC:

These are normal topic calls. See your programming language's documentation for
making calls to the help format you are using. (See also Tutorials and tools for
programmers 435 below.)

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 More Advanced Procedures 435

Calls to plain-text HTML Help popups:

When you export to HTML Help with native, plain-text popups Help & Manual stores the
popup text topics in an internal text file in the HTML Help .CHM file. By default this file is
called CSHelp.txt, but you can change this file name in Project > Project Properties >
HTML Help > Popup Topics 567 . When your application makes context calls to plain-text
popups you must include this file name in the call.

Calls to the dual-mode HTML Help popups:

When you use dual-mode help 436 in HTML Help to create popups with support for
formatted text and graphics the popups are stored in a separate Winhelp .HLP file. Even
though your main help is HTML Help you must thus use Winhelp API calls to this file to
display context-sensitive popups.

Tutorials and tools for programmers:

· Tutorials for interfacing between your help and your application in the most major
programming languages are available on the tutorials page at the EC Software
website.
· A free set of tools for interfacing to help and context-sensitive help Borland Delphi and
Borland C++ is also available at the website, on the Delphi resources page.

See also:
Context-Sensitive Help & Popups 834 (Reference)
8.3.3 Auto-generating context-sensitive topics
Complex applications have a lot of components and controls and if you document them all
with context-sensitive popup topics this means you need to create a lot of popup topics. This
can be a very tedious task and it's also easy to make mistakes, because it means entering
hundreds of context numbers and topic IDs that may not have very descriptive names.
Help & Manual can do all this work for you with the help of map files 846 , which are simple text
files containing lists of the topic IDs and help context numbers to be used for documenting
the controls in the program. These files can be provided by the programmers (they can be
generated by most modern programming languages). They have a standard format and
syntax and Help & Manual can use them both to apply missing help context numbers to
existing topics and to generate missing topics with the necessary IDs and help context
numbers.

How to auto-generate your popup topics with the map file:

1. Obtain the map file from the programmers and make sure that it only contains the
topics you want to use.
2. Open your project (you might want to make a backup first) and select Tools > Help
Context Tool.

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3. Select the option in the first screen and click on .

4. Use the button to navigate to and select the map file.
5. Select the check box below the map file name field.
6. Click on to import the map file and generate the missing topics.
· Note that all topics generated with this method are automatically created in the
Invisible Topics section as popup topics. If you need to use the function to
generate topics in the TOC you must drag them to the TOC with the mouse after
generating them. Then change their help window type in their Topic Options tabs
and edit their captions manually.

See also:
About map files 846
The Help Context Tool 624
8.3.4 Formatted context popups in HTML Help
IN THIS TOPIC:
Dual-mode help with Winhelp popups in HTML Help 437
Combining dual-mode context popups with JS popups 437

HTML Help popups are plain-text only, they do not support graphics or formatted text like
the popups in Winhelp. If you want formatted popups Help & Manual can solve this problem
for you by creating "dual-mode" help for HTML Help, with a .CHM file for the main help and
a .HLP Winhelp file for the popups. (Microsoft also uses this method in the help of a number
of their own applications.)
· Help & Manual 4's new JavaScript popups 199 cannot be used for context-sensitive help
because they cannot be called directly from applications. They can only be called from
links within your help.

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 More Advanced Procedures 437

NEWS: Winhelp is no longer supported in Windows Vista!

Please note that support for the Winhelp format has been completely
discontinued in Microsoft Windows Vista. Even if your applications run under
Vista, any calls to Winhelp help will simply produce an error message. This
also applies to dual-mode popups in HTML Help. We thus strongly recommend
that you start transitioning to an alternative help format as soon as possible.
See here for details

How to generate dual-mode help with Winhelp popups in HTML Help:

1. Go to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Popup Topics 567 and select Create a
dual-mode help file.
2. The default name for the .HLP file that will be generated for the popups is
default_popup.hlp – you can change this if you want.
· Everything else is handled by Help & Manual. An additional .HLP file containing
your popups will now be generated automatically when you compile your HTML
Help output. This file must be distributed with your application and it is the file the
programmer must link to when programming context-sensitive help. The calls to
this file must use the Winhelp API, of course, not the HTML Help API!
· Remember that you cannot use links in popups in dual-mode help. Links between .
HLP and .CHM files are not supported.
What's wrong? The .HLP popup file isn't getting generated!?
Due to an uncorrected bug in the Winhelp compiler you must have a
minimum number of popup topics in your Invisible Topics section for dual-
mode help to work. If your .HLP file is not getting generated when you
compile just add two or three empty dummy popup topics to your Invisible
Topics section.

How to use dual-mode context popups and JavaScript popups:

Help & Manual's new JavaScript popups 199 cannot be used for context help because
they cannot be called from applications. If JavaScript popups are activated in your
project you cannot generate a dual-mode .HLP file for your popups from the same
project. The simplest solution for this problem is to use dual-mode popups instead of
JavaScript popups. Then you can have formatted popups both in your help and in the
context-sensitive popups called from your application.
However, if you want to use the features of JavaScript popups in your help file and have
formatted context popups you can do this by creating a separate Winhelp project for
your context popups:
1. Configure JavaScript popups and use them for the popups in your help topics.
2. Create a separate Help & Manual project for your context popup topics.
3. In this project do not create any topics in the Table of Contents section (TOC).
Create all your popup topics in the Invisible Topics section.
4. Compile this project directly as Winhelp. This will generate a Winhelp .HLP file

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containing only your formatted popup topics.

5. Distribute this .HLP file together with your HTML Help .CHM file. All context popup
calls from your application must be made to the .HLP file using the Winhelp API.
(The JavaScript popups are stored in the .CHM so you still only need to distribute
two files.)

See also:
Creating popup topics 194
Context-Sensitive Help & Popups 834
Using JavaScript Popups 199
Organizing invisible topics 225
8.3.5 Context calls to Browser-based Help
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to make calls to Browser-based Help topics 438

Direct calls to the topic.htm file 439

You can create context-sensitive calls to Browser-based Help 771 (web HTML) from your
application or web pages with normal URLs using the syntax explained below. These calls
can be made locally, across networks or across the Internet.
However, note that you cannot use context popups on their own as you would in Winhelp or
HTML Help, because these popups are a Microsoft technology that is an integral part of the
HTML Help and Winhelp help viewers. The JavaScript popups 199 supported in Browser-
based Help can only be used within your help, you cannot make calls to them from your
application or web pages.

How to make calls to Browser-based Help topics:

Calls to Browser-based Help must be normal HTML calls, made in the same way as any
other URL link that opens a browser with a specific web location or local HTML file, using
exactly the same syntax:

Syntax:
index.html?topicname.htm#anchorname

· Note that Help & Manual 4 uses the standard # character to separate the topic file
name and the anchor name in links to anchors 305 (sometimes also known as
bookmarks). This is different from Help & Manual 3's Browser-based HTML output,
where a comma was required!

Examples:
This example uses the standard file names and extensions and accesses an anchor
in the referenced topic:

index.html?introduction.htm#gettingstarted

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 More Advanced Procedures 439

The following example shows a call to a project that was compiled with both a non-
standard index file name (see Compile Help File 663 ) and a non-standard extension for
the topic files (see below). There is no reference to an anchor in this example.

help.html?new_features.html

Elements of the calls:

index.html This is the name of the index file of your Browser-based Help (this
is the default, it can be changed in the Compile Help File 663 dialog
when you compile). If you use this on its own it will simply display
the help system with the standard home topic.

?topicname.htm This is the name of the topic you want to display. This is created by
combining the topic ID 210 with the extension .htm.
This is the default topic extension, you can change it in Project >
Project Properties > Browser-based Help > HTML Export Options 601
. (These settings are shared with the other HTML-based output
formats and can also be accessed in the HTML Help and Visual
Studio Help sections.)

#anchorname (optional) This is the name of an anchor 305 in the topic that you
want to jump to. Note that the standard # character is now used as
the separator instead of the comma required in Help & Manual 3!

Direct calls to the topic.htm file:

Theoretically you don't actually need to include the index.html file in the call – if you
make a direct call with the format topicname.htm or topicname.htm#anchorname this
will automatically display the entire help system with the Table of Contents.
This is not a good idea, however: Under some circumstances it can confuse the browser
history, making it impossible for users to navigate with the Back and Next buttons. (This
applies in particular when you have different Browser-based Help projects in different
directories with links between them. See Multiple browser-based projects 505 for more
details on this.)
It is thus always advisable to use the full call including the index file, using the standard
syntax:

index.html?introduction.htm#gettingstarted

See also:
Creating popup topics 194
Context-Sensitive Help & Popups 834
Organizing invisible topics 225

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8.4 Using Variables

Variables are used to insert text that may change in your output when you compile your
project. They are ideal for things like program names and version numbers – to update you
then just need to edit the variable definition and recompile. Predefined variables make it
easy to insert things like the current date, the title of your help project and so on.
Variables in Help & Manual work pretty much like string variables in programming
languages. They have a maximum length of 256 characters. Help & Manual supports both a
wide selection of predefined variables and user-defined variables.
In addition to this you can also change the values of variables at compile time 451 by using
external text files with alternative variable definitions.

New variable format!

In Help & Manual 4 a new variable format has been introduced. Like
hyperlinks, you can now edit variable names directly in the editor and you
can also search for them and replace them with Find & Replace. In addition
to this you can also type in variables manually in the topic text and topic
headers. The variables will then not be highlighted but they will work just
the same as variables entered with Insert > Text Variable.

See also:
Variables and Conditional Output 862 (Reference)
8.4.1 Where you can use variables
The following table provides a quick reference showing where you can use which kinds of
variables:

Location: Supported variables:

Topic text and Global predefined variables and user-defined variables inserted
headers 441 with Insert > Text Variable 696 or typed manually.
Note that variables typed in manually are not highlighted in the
editor and double-clicking on them will not open the variable
selection list.
TOC, keywords, Global predefined variables and user-defined variables inserted
image captions, link manually by typing the variable names.
captions, macros
and scripts 442

HTML code objects Global predefined variables and user-defined variables inserted
311 manually by typing the variable names.

HTML templates 450 Global predefined variables, user-defined variables and special
HTML template variables inserted manually by typing the

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 More Advanced Procedures 441

variable names.
PDF templates 451 Global predefined variables, user-defined variables and special
PDF template variables inserted manually by typing the variable
names.

See also:
Variables and Conditional Output 862 (Reference)
8.4.2 Inserting variables in topics and headers
IN THIS TOPIC:
Using Insert Variable to insert variables in topics and headers 441

Typing variables in topics and headers manually 442

You can use both Help & Manual's predefined variables and your own user-defined variables
in your topics and topic headers. These are all displayed automatically in the Insert Text
Variable dialog so you don't need to refer to a list to use them.
Your user-defined variables are also displayed automatically in the list of
available variables in the Insert Text Variable dialog.

Using Insert Variable to insert variables in topics and headers:

The procedure is identical for predefined variables and user-defined variables. They are
all displayed together in the same dialog:
1. Click in the editor where you want to insert the variable, either in the text or the
topic header above the text.
2. Select in the Toolbar or Insert > Text Variable or press Ctrl+T.

3. Select the variable you want to use from the list and click on OK (or just double-
click on the variable in the list).

Variable display:
Variables inserted with this method are displayed with a green highlight (like this:
). This is only to make the variable easier to see in the editor. Variables
typed in manually (see below) are also fully functional.

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 442 Help & Manual Online Help

Double-clicking on a variable opens the Insert Variable dialog with which

you can change the variable to a different variable or access the Edit
Variables dialog.
See Variables and Conditional Output 862 in the Reference section for lists
of the available predefined variables and what they do.

Typing variables in topics and headers manually:

Since Help & Manual 4 variables can also be typed in manually in topics and headers.
They are parsed automatically when you generate your output and work in exactly the
same way as variables entered with the Insert Variable dialog.
· Just type in the variable exactly as it appears in the variable list. Use all upper-case
characters, and enclose the variable name in <% and %> tags. (Unlike Help &
Manual 3 spaces are now permitted in variable names in Help & Manual 4).
Manually-typed variables are not highlighted!
Variables inserted with this method are not highlighted in the topic text
and you cannot double-click on them to open the Edit Variables dialog. Also,
if you make a mistake when you type the name of a variable it won't work!

Example:
The following text contains manually-typed variables as they would appear in the
Help & Manual editor. To make them appear here they have been disabled,
otherwise you would only see the variable values here instead of the variables
themselves. See Editing, formatting and disabling variables 446 for details.
This text was published on <%DATELONG%> (the date in long format)
at
<%TIMELONG%> (the time in long format). It was written by <%MAIN
AUTHOR%> (a user-defined variable). It is included in the <%
DEMOVERSION%> (another user-defined variable) of the
documentation.

See also:
Variables and Conditional Output 862 (Reference)
Where you can use variables 440
Editing, formatting and disabling variables 444
8.4.3 Inserting variables in other project locations
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to use text variables in the TOC 443
How to use text variables in keywords 443
How to use text variables in link captions 443
How to use text variables in macros and scripts 444

How to use text variables in HTML code objects 444

In addition to topics and headers 441 you can use all the global predefined variables 448 and
your own user-defined variables 449 in the captions in the Table of Contents, keywords, image

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 More Advanced Procedures 443

captions, link captions, macros and scripts.

There is one difference, however: In all these locations you cannot use the Insert > Text
Variable function, you must type the variables in manually.

Displaying available variables:

· See Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Text Variables 555 in Help &
Manual to view your user-defined variables 449 .
· See global predefined variables 863 for a list of the available predefined
variables.

How to use text variables in the TOC:

1. Click on the TOC entry you want to edit and press F2 to activate caption editing.
2. The variable insertion dialog used in topics is not available here! Type in the variable
exactly as it appears in the variable list.

Examples:
<%DATELONG%> A predefined variable (the date in long format)
<%MYPROJECT%> A user-defined variable

When you enter a variable manually in the TOC caption it is transferred

automatically to the topic header along with the rest of the caption. Unlike
Help & Manual 3 you do not need to edit the automatically-inserted
variable in the header to make it work.

How to use text variables in keywords:

Text variables are supported both in normal index keywords and in A-keywords.
· The procedure here is exactly the same: Just type in the variable, entering it
exactly as it is listed, complete with the opening <% tag and the closing %> tag.
See Keywords and Indexes 369 for details on editing and using keywords.

How to use text variables in image captions:

1. Double-click on the graphic in the editor to open its properties dialog.
2. Type in the variable in the Image Caption field, entering it exactly as it is listed,
complete with the opening <% tag and the closing %> tag.

How to use text variables in link captions:

You can also use text variables in link captions, i.e. the texts of links shown in your
topics. You can now edit these directly, just by clicking once in the caption and typing,
but it is still a little easier to double-click on the link to edit it in its properties dialog.

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 444 Help & Manual Online Help

1. Double-click on the link to display the Hyperlink dialog 686 .

2. Type in the variable in the Caption: field, entering it exactly as it is listed, complete
with the opening <% tag and the closing %> tag.

How to use text variables in macros and scripts:

You can also use text variables in macros and scripts inserted in macro and script links
and graphics hotspots.
· Just follow the instructions for inserting macros and scripts in macro and script
links 302 and graphics hotspots 321 and type the variable in the Script: editing field in
the place where you want to use it, entering it exactly as it is listed, complete with
the opening <% tag and the closing %> tag.

How to use text variables in HTML code objects:

Text variables are also supported in HTML code objects 311 inserted with Insert > Plain
HTML Code.
· Here too, just type in the variable in the code object using the standard syntax and
the opening and closing <% and %> tags around the variable name (spaces are
permitted in variable names in Help & Manual 4). The variables will be parsed and
replaced automatically when you compile your project.
Note that no syntax checking is performed on HTML code objects; you are entirely
responsible for the proper syntax and structure of your HTML code! This also applies for
variables: If the translated variable results in code with incorrect syntax no errors will be
displayed by the compiler, but your code will fail in your output.

See also:
Variables and Conditional Output 862 (Reference)
8.4.4 Editing, formatting and disabling variables
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to edit variables in the editor 444
How to use formatting and styles with variables 445
How to disable variables to display their names 446
How to disable the variable highlight 447

This topic describes how to edit variables in the Help & Manual editor, how to format the
content of variables in your output (i.e. with bold text or text styles) and how to disable
variables so that the variable name is displayed in your output instead of the content of the
variable.

How to edit variables in the Help & Manual editor:

Unlike, Help & Manual 3, where variables were non-editable objects, variables are now
inserted in the Help & Manual editor as plain text that can be edited. When you use the

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 More Advanced Procedures 445

Insert > Text Variable function the variables are highlighted for easy identification and
you can double-click on them to display the variables list, but they are still really fully-
editable plain text. The highlight is just an editing convenience to make the variables
easier to see.

Editing variables inserted with Insert > Text Variable:

Variables inserted with Insert > Text Variable are highlighted in green for easy
identification. You can still, edit them, however.
· To edit a variable just click once inside the highlighted variable name and type. (If
you change the variable to one that does not exist it will not work, of course...)
· To display the variables list double-click on the highlighted variable in the editor.
If you then select a different variable from the list it will replace the original variable
in the editor.

Editing variables typed manually:

Variables typed manually are normal text and can be edited normally. They cannot
be highlighted and you cannot double-click on them to display the variables list.

Special case – highlighted variables at the beginning of a paragraph:

If a highlighted variable is at the beginning of a paragraph you can't insert any text
before it; all the text you type to the left of the variable will also be highlighted. Here
is how to solve this problem:
1. Click to the left of the variable and press Enter to create a new paragraph.
2. Press the space bar and type your text.
3. Click to the right of the new text and press Delete to bring the variable up into the
same paragraph.
If you type text instead of pressing the space bar it will be highlighted as
a variable. To correct this just right-click on the highlight and select
Convert to plain text.

How to use formatting and styles with variables:

The values of variables are stored as plain text, without any formatting information.
However, you can easily turn the content of variables into formatted text with bold,
underline or styles in your output by formatting the variable in the Help & Manual editor.

Formatting variables manually:

1. Select the variable in the editor so that the entire variable is highlighted (this is the
same for both variables typed manually and variables inserted with Insert > Text
Variable).
Be extremely careful to select the entire variable – if you only format part
of the variable it can no longer be identified correctly by the compiler!
2. Use Format > Font or the formatting buttons in the Toolbar to format the variable.
For example, if you format the variable with bold and italic the variable's value will

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446 Help & Manual Online Help

be bold and italic in your output.

Formatting variables with styles:

If you include variables in paragraphs that use paragraph and font styles you don't
need to do anything – the variables' values will automatically be formatted like the
rest of the text in the paragraph.
If you have defined text-only styles (see Defining styles 239 ) you can apply them to
variables:
1. Select the variable in the editor so that the entire variable is highlighted (this is the
same for both variables typed manually and variables inserted with Insert > Text
Variable).
Here too, be extremely careful to select the entire variable – if you only
format part of the variable it can no longer be identified correctly by the
compiler!
2. Apply your text-only style by selecting it in the style selector in the Toolbar,
pressing the hotkey combination you have defined for the style or by selecting
Format > Format with Style.

How to disable variables so that the variable names are printed:

Sometimes you may want to include the variables themselves rather than their values in
your output. For example, this was necessary in this help in all the places where
examples of the variables are displayed – if we had not disabled the variables here the
values of the variables would have been displayed and the examples wouldn't have
made much sense!
· To disable variables just type a \ backslash character between the opening <% tag
and the variable name. This works in exactly the same way for all variables
anywhere in your project. It also works both for the green highlighted variables
inserted with Insert > Text Variable and variables typed in manually.
· Note that you only need to disable variables that are actually defined in the place
where you are using them. You don't need to use the backslash character to
disable undefined variables or for variables that are not supported where you are
using them. For example, if you type the special HTML template variables 826 in a
topic the variable names will be displayed in the output because they are not
defined there.
To also include the backslash character as shown in the examples below
just type two backslash characters!

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 More Advanced Procedures 447

Examples:
To enter the backslash in highlighted variables just click
inside the variable and start typing.
<%\TIMELONG%> All the examples on the left were typed with two
<%\NOW%> backslashes inside the variable to show how they are
<%\AUTHOR%> entered in the editor. With a single backslash you would
simply see the variable name in the output.
<%TOPIC_TEXT%> These two examples were entered without backslashes.
<% They do not need to be disabled because they are not
FANTASY_VARIABLE% supported in normal topics – the first is a HTML template
> variable, the second is simply undefined.

How to disable the variable highlight:

· The green highlight displayed for variables inserted with Insert > Text Variable uses
the same system as the highlighting used for hyperlinks. You can turn the highlight off
by right-clicking on the variable and selecting Convert to plain text in the context menu
displayed.
· The variable will still work when you do this, but it is then just like a manually-typed
variable. You can no longer-double click on it to display the variables list.
This is not reversible! You can undo it with Edit > Undo, Ctrl+Z or directly
after making the change but later you cannot convert an non-highlighted
variable to a highlighted one. The only alternative is to re-enter the variable
with Insert > Text Variable.

See also:
Variables and Conditional Output 862 (Reference)
8.4.5 Find and replace variables
In Help & Manual 4 you can now find and replace text variables in exactly the same way as
you would find and replace normal text. You can replace variables with variables, normal
text with variables and variables with normal text.
· When you insert or replace variables with Find and Replace the variables are not
highlighted in the topic text. This is exactly the same as typing in variables manually 442
– the variables are still fully functional, they are just not highlighted in the text. (The
highlight is just an editing convenience to make the variables easier to see.)

How to find and replace variables:

1. Select Find & Replace 191 in the Edit menu.
2. To search for a variable or replace text with a variable enter:
<% + VARIABLENAME + %>
For example if your variable is called DEMOBUILD you would type:

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 448 Help & Manual Online Help

<%DEMOBUILD%>

Variables inserted with Find & Replace are not highlighted!

Variables inserted with this method are not highlighted in the topic text and
you cannot double-click on them to open the Edit Variables dialog. They are
fully functional, however, just like the variables inserted with Insert > Text
Variable.

See also:
Variables and Conditional Output 862 (Reference)
8.4.6 Global predefined variables
IN THIS TOPIC:
Where you can use global predefined variables 448

New standard variable syntax 448

Reference list of global predefined variables 449

Help & Manual has a number of global predefined variables that you can use to insert items
that you may want to change, for example the title of the project, the copyright note, the date
and time in various formats and the date and time at which the current topic was last edited.
· Click here to display a list of the available global variables. 863

Where you can use global predefined variables:

Help & Manual's global predefined variables can be used everywhere in your projects
where variables are supported: In topics and headers, the Table of Contents, keywords,
image captions, link captions, macros, scripts, HTML code objects, HTML templates and
PDF templates.
See the other topics in this section for details on how to use variables of all kinds in all
these locations.

New standard variable syntax:

As of Help & Manual 4 exactly the same syntax is used for variables in all parts of your
projects. There are no longer different versions of the global predefined variables for
different locations in your project. All variables have the syntax:

<%VARIABLENAME%>

· Since you can now also type variables manually in topic text and topic headers it is
important to observe this syntax!
· The variable name VARIABLENAME must be in all upper case and it must be
enclosed between opening and closing <% and %> tags.
· Spaces are now allowed in variable names because the beginning and end of the
variable are clearly defined by the <% and %> tags. For example:

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 More Advanced Procedures 449

<%VARIABLE NAME WITH SPACES%>

Reference list of global predefined variables:

You can find a reference list 863 of the available global predefined variables in the
Reference section.

See also:
Variables and Conditional Output 862 (Reference)
Global predefined variables 863 (Reference)
8.4.7 User-defined variables
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to define a variable 449
How to edit user-defined variables 449
Importing and exporting your user-defined variables 450

You can define any number of your own variables to use in your project. These user-defined
variables are stored in your project file, which means that they are only available to the
project in which they are defined. However, you can transfer variables between projects with
the Export and Import functions (see below).
User-defined variables can be used everywhere in your projects where variables are
supported: In topics and headers, the Table of Contents, keywords, image captions, link
captions, macros, scripts, HTML code objects, HTML templates and PDF templates. See the
other topics in this section for details on using variables in these locations.

How to define a variable:

1. Go to Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Text Variables 555 .

2. Select , enter the name for your variable and click on . (You don't
need to worry about case, the variable name will be converted to all upper case
automatically.)
3. Click in the Text Value column next to your new variable and enter the text. Only plain
text is supported and the maximum variable length is 256 characters.
4. Click on or Apply.

How to edit user-defined variables:

· Go to Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Text Variables 555 .
OR:
· Double-click on a variable in the editor and select .
This only works with variables entered with Insert > Text Variable. Variables

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 450 Help & Manual Online Help

typed in manually are not highlighted and you cannot display the variables
list by double-clicking on them.

Importing and exporting your user-defined variables:

You can use these features to copy variables between projects and to define variables in
a text editor and then load them into your project. (This can be easier than defining a lot
of long variables directly in Help & Manual.)
Exporting user-defined variables:
Open the variables editing dialog (see above) and select to export your
project variables to a text file.
Importing user-defined variables:
Use an editor like Windows Notepad to create a list of variables in a plain text file.
The file must be plain text – if you use a word processor like Word make
very sure that you save it in text-only format, otherwise it won't work!
Make sure that you don't use the names of any of Help & Manual's
predefined variables, otherwise you will get errors when you try to import.
See the other topics in this section for details.
· Use the Export function (see above) to see an example of the necessary format
and the syntax of the file. It's very simple.
· Open the variables editing dialog (see above) and select Import to import the text
file containing the list of variables.

See also:
Variables and Conditional Output 862 (Reference)
8.4.8 Text variables in HTML templates
The HTML templates that generate the pages in Help & Manual's HTML-based output
formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help and eBooks) make extensive use of variables.
You can use all global predefined variables and all your user-defined variables in your HTML
templates, plus a number of special predefined variables for use in these templates only.
For details on these variables and how to use them see Variables in HTML templates 485 .

Don't edit HTML templates if you don't understand HTML!

Any changes you make to the HTML templates used in Help & Manual are
not checked for plausibility or syntax errors. You are entirely responsible for
all the code you enter and all the changes you make. Making changes to
the template code without knowing what you are doing can cause serious
errors and malfunctions.

See also:
Using HTML Templates 475
Variables in HTML templates 485

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 More Advanced Procedures 451

Conditional output in HTML templates 487

8.4.9 Text variables in PDF templates
You also can use all the global predefined variables 863 and your user-defined variables 449 in
text objects in your PDF templates 468 .
In addition to this there are large number of special predefined variables for use in PDF
templates only. These are described in the help of the Print Manual Designer program used
to edit the PDF templates that control the formatting of Help & Manual's PDF output and
print manuals.
To start this program select Print Manual Designer in the Tools menu or go to Project >
Project > Properties > Adobe PDF > PDF Layout and click on the button.

How to use text variables in PDF print manual templates:

Just type the variable into the text of the text object. Always type the variables exactly as
listed, complete with the opening <% tag and the closing %> tag – for example <%TITLE
%> or <%VERSION%>.
· For more details see the help included with the Print Manual Designer program.

See also:
PDF and print manual templates 468
PDF and Printed Manuals 538
8.4.10 Redefining variables for conditional output
You can always change the definitions of your variables individually in Project > Project
Properties > Common Properties > Text Variables 555 . However, there are sometimes
situations where you may want to temporarily redefine multiple variables. For example, you
may want to produce two versions of your documentation using different names and
references for specific products or subjects.
This can be achieved with Help & Manual's command line compilation feature, which allows
you to specify a text file with a list of definitions of the variables you want to change. The
variables specified in this file will then be redefined in your compiled output, using the values
provided in the file.
· For details on using this feature see Redefining Variables 516 in the Command Line
Options chapter.

See also:
Variables and Conditional Output 862 (Reference)
Command Line Options 507

8.5 Conditions and Customized Output

There are many situations where you may want to generate different output versions of your
projects with different content. You might need different versions of your help for light and
professional versions of a program, or specific products might have different names in

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 452 Help & Manual Online Help

different versions.
It is also often necessary to change your content to adapt it to the output format – for
example, things that you can write in the electronic HTML Help version of the help might not
make sense or might need to be expressed or formatted differently in the PDF print version.

Include options
Help & Manual supports conditions called "include options" that give you very fine control
over what you include and exclude in your output. You can "tag" text, individual words or
entire topics and chapters with these options and the tagged items are only included in
the output if the condition evaluates as true when you compile. There are two types of
include options:

Format-based include options:

These include options are predefined. They correspond to the output formats
supported by Help & Manual. For example, if you tag an item with the HTML Help
option that item will only be included when you compile to HTML Help.
User-defined include options:
These include options are conditions that you define yourself. You can define as
many of them as you want. You can tag text and topics with them in exactly the same
way as with the format-based options.
You select the include options (both format-based and user-defined) you want to apply
when you compile your project, in the Compile Help File 663 dialog. If you select a user-
defined include option in this dialog all items in your project tagged with that option will
be included in the output.

Other conditional output features

In addition to include options you can also control and vary your output with variables,
HTML template conditions and modular projects. For more background information see
the Variables & Conditional Output 862 chapter in the reference section.

See also:
Using Variables 440
Variables and Conditional Output 862
Conditional output in HTML templates 487
8.5.1 Using conditional output
Conditional output works in the same way on all the levels where it is supported: You mark a
part of your project (text, graphic, topic, chapter etc.) with a condition, referred to as an
"include option", and then choose whether you want to apply the condition when you
compile.

Basic instructions for using conditional output:

Please note that these principles are only for include options. They do not apply for

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 More Advanced Procedures 453

variables 461 and HTML template conditions 462 .

Step 1: Set a condition in the editor

Mark a passage of text or other items in a topic (conditional text 454 ), or an entire topic
or chapter (topic include options 457 ) with an include option. If the condition
represented by the include option is fulfilled the item will be included in your output.
Before excluding a topic always right-click on its TOC entry and select
Check Referrers to make sure that excluding it will not create any dead
links. If it will the topic will not be excluded from the compiled output.
See Conditional output features 871 in the Reference section for details.

Step 2: Activate the condition when you compile

When you compile select the include options that you want to apply in the Compile
Help File 663 dialog, in the Include Options box on the right. You can choose to apply
individual options, combinations of options, all options or no options for every compile
run.

Include options based on output format are activated automatically when

you select that format. For example, when you compile to HTML Help the
HTML Help include option in the Make Help File & Run dialog is always
activated. You can deactivate it manually if you want but this wouldn't
really make all that much sense.

See also:
Variables and Conditional Output 862 (Reference)
Compiling Your Project 410
8.5.2 Defining include options
There are two kinds of include options (also known as build conditions): Output format
include options and user-defined include options. Output format options are used to include
or exclude content in specific output formats (HTML Help, Winhelp, PDF etc). User-defined
options are used to include or exclude content on the basis of options that you define
yourself. In both cases you select or deselect the include options you want to apply when
you compile your project.

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 454 Help & Manual Online Help

Both types of include options are displayed in the same lists and are accessed in the same
way. For details see the other topics in this chapter.

How to define your own include options:

Note that an include option or "custom build" condition is basically just a tag with a name.
It does not actually contain any conditions itself. It becomes a condition when you use it
in combination with the include options in the Compile Help File 663 dialog.
1. Go to Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Custom Builds 556 .
2. Use and to add and delete include options. When you define a
new include option you must enter a "Build ID". This is the actual include option
tag and it cannot be changed later. (Changing it would break existing conditions in
your project.)
3. Click in the Display Text column to edit the descriptive texts for your include
options. These are just informative and do not have any effect on the functioning
of the conditions.
All the definitions you enter here are automatically displayed in all locations where
include options are used (Insert > Conditional Text, Topic Options, Compile Help File).

See also:
Conditions and Customized Output 451
Conditional text include options 454
Topic include options 457
8.5.3 Conditional text include options
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to set conditional text include options 455
Using the ELSE condition 455
How to edit text conditions 456
How to apply include options when you compile 456

Conditional text include options are used to include or exclude specific passages of text and
other items within a topic on the basis of one or more conditions.
See Command Line Options 507 for details on how to use these options from the command
line and in batch files.
When excluding text be careful not to exclude anchors 305 to which links
point!

Conditional text and tables:

A condition that starts before a table must end after the table. You cannot
start a condition before a table and end it inside the table. Inside tables
conditions must start and end inside the same cell. You cannot start a
condition in one cell and end it in another cell!

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 More Advanced Procedures 455

How to set conditional text include options:

Method 1, preselection:
1. Select 183 the text or items you want to include or exclude in the editor.
2. Select in the Toolbar or select Insert > Conditional Text.
3. In the Text Condition dialog select:
· IF to include the selection if the condition is fulfilled
· IFNOT to exclude the selection if the condition is fulfilled (the selection is
included if the condition is not fulfilled)
4. Select all the conditions you want to apply by checking the boxes next to their
names. You can apply multiple conditions in a single conditional text tag.
5. Click on . The beginning and end of the conditional text block are marked
by orange tags in your text.

Method 2, setting the IF and ENDIF tags:

1. Click in the position where you want the text condition to begin.
2. Select in the Toolbar or select Insert > Conditional Text.
3. In the Text Condition dialog select:
· IF to include the selection if the condition is fulfilled
· IFNOT to exclude the selection if the condition is fulfilled (the selection is
included if the condition is not fulfilled)
4. Select all the conditions you want to apply by checking the boxes next to their
names. You can apply multiple conditions in a single conditional text tag.
Multiple conditions use OR logic. The include option is "true" if any of the
conditions apply (IF), or if none of the selections apply (IFNOT).

5. Click on . This enters an orange IF or IFNOT tag to mark the beginning of

the conditional text block.
6. Click in the position where you want the text condition to end.
7. Select in the Toolbar OR select Insert > Conditional Text again.
8. Select ENDIF in the Text Condition dialog and click on . (You do not need
to select any conditions for the end tag). This enters an orange ENDIF tag to mark
the end of the conditional text block.
You can nest conditional text blocks but do this with caution, it is easy to
get confused with complex conditions and to produce unexpected results.

Using the ELSE condition:

The ELSE condition can be used to provide an alternative text to be displayed if your

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456 Help & Manual Online Help

main condition is not fulfilled. It is inserted as a single tag between a pair of IF/ENDIF or
IFNOT/ENDIF tags. The ELSE condition is not associated with any include options. It
simply provides an alternative block of content to be included if the previous conditions
do are not evaluate as true when you compile.
· Just click in the position in the text where you want to insert the ELSE condition,
select Insert > Conditional Text or , and then select ELSE.
· If the condition is fulfilled everything between the IF tag and the ELSE tag is output.
· If the condition is not fulfilled everything between the ELSE tag and the ENDIF tag
is output.
For example, the following condition will output TEXT 1 if the output format is HTML Help
(CHM), otherwise it will output TEXT 2:

Note that the ELSE condition is not available in HTML templates.

How to edit text conditions:

Double-click on the orange text condition tag in your text to display the Text Condition
dialog, OR right-click on the tag and select Edit.

How to apply include options when you compile:

The include option for the current output format is always selected automatically. Any
other include options must be selected manually. However, if you select user-defined
include options you must always also select at least the option for the current output
format.
1. Select in the Toolbar or select File > Compile Help File.

If the selected Include Options evaluate as true when you compile items
tagged with IF will be included in the output, items tagged with IFNOT will
be excluded from the output.
2. Select the options you want to apply from the list by checking the boxes next to the

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 More Advanced Procedures 457

names in the Include Options section on the right.

3. Select your compile options 663 , then click on to compile.

See also:
Conditions and Customized Output 451
Defining include options 453
Topic include options 457
Command Line Options 507
8.5.4 Topic include options
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to set topic include options 457
Checking for and correcting links from other topics 458

How to apply include options when you compile 459

Excluding ALL a topic's subtopics 459

Topic include options are used to include or exclude entire topics or chapters from your
output on the basis of one or more conditions. When you apply topic includes to a chapter
you can include or exclude all the chapter's sub-topics with a single setting.
· See Command Line Options 507 for details on how to use these options from the
command line and in batch files.

How to set topic include options:

1. Select the topic or chapter you want to include or exclude by clicking on its entry in the
Table of Contents (TOC).
2. Select the topic's Topic Options tab.
3. In the Builds which include this topic section select all the options you want to apply by
clicking in the boxes next to the options' names. You can select multiple options.
4. Select Topics > Find Referrers to make sure that there are no links to the topic that will
be dead in the output if the topic is excluded. If this happens Help & Manual will ignore
the option and include the topic anyway to prevent the creation of dead links.
· ALL BUILDS is the default. Selecting it deselects all other options.
· Options selected in a chapter (book icon in the TOC) are automatically applied to
all the sub-topics and sub-chapters of the chapter. You can then edit the options of
the sub-items individually.
· Including a sub-topic automatically includes its parent chapter topic; you can't
include a topic that has a parent without including its parent as well.
· By the same token you cannot exclude all the sub-topics of a chapter and include
the chapter. Excluding all a chapter's sub-topics automatically excludes the chapter
as well, because a chapter without sub-topics would have an undefined status.

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458 Help & Manual Online Help

Checking for and correcting links from other topics

When you exclude topics from your output it is extremely important to make sure that
there are no links to the excluded topic from other topics in your project. If there are,
Help & Manual will include the excluded topic in your output anyway, but without an entry
in the TOC (in electronic help formats). This will make it possible for the user to find the
topic with Search and in the keyword index if the topic has keywords. This is done to
prevent dead links in your output.

Checking for dead links

1. Right-click on the TOC entry of the topic you want to exclude and select Find
Referrers in the context menu. The following dialog is displayed:

2. If any links to the current topic are listed (Incoming Referrers) click on the links to
jump to the topics containing the links so that you can correct them.

Correcting dead links with conditional text

You can use the same condition that you are using to exclude the topic to
simultaneously exclude the links to the topic. You just need to enclose the links in
conditional text 454 tags using the same condition that you used to exclude the topic.
For example, if you want the topic to only be included in HTML Help output you
would tag all the links to the topic with an IF CHM conditional text condition to match
the HTML Help setting in Builds which include this topic. The procedure is similar for
user-defined conditions.

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 More Advanced Procedures 459

Inserting alternative text for the excluded links

In addition to excluding the links you can also use conditional text 454 tags to include
alternative text to replace the links that are being excluded. For example, if the topic
is only to be included in HTML Help you might use an ELSE or an IFNOT CHM
condition to include the alternative text in all other formats, or an IF PDF condition to
show the alternative text in the PDF version. Here too, the procedure is similar for
user-defined conditions.

How to apply include options when you compile:

The include option for the current output format is always selected automatically. Any
other include options must be selected manually. However, if you select user-defined
include options you must always also select at least the option for the current output
format.
1. Select in the Toolbar or select File > Compile Help File.

All topics whose Include Options ( Builds which include this topic in the
Topic Options tab) match the Include Options selected here will be
included in your output.
2. Select the options you want to apply from the list by checking the boxes next to the
names in the Include Options section on the right.
3. Select your compile options 663 , then click on to compile.

Excluding ALL a topic's subtopics:

Help & Manual will not allow you to exclude all the subtopics of a topic and leave the
"chapter" topic on its own. This is because this would create a "chapter" without topics,
which would be undefined and an error condition in several output formats. However,
you can get around this problem with a little of Help & Manual's conditional output magic:
1. First you need to make a "second reference" to the chapter topic. To do this create
a new topic directly above the chapter topic. Enter the same caption as for the
other topic but don't enter a new ID. Instead, enter the ID of the chapter topic, or

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 460 Help & Manual Online Help

select it using the browse button). This will create a second TOC entry for the
same topic, like a second door opening onto the same room. Make sure that the
new reference has the same name in the TOC as the original.
See Multiple TOC entries for one topic 220 for more information on this
technique.
2. Now select the new topic reference in the TOC and open its Topic Options tab. In
the Builds which include this topic: section select all the builds where you want
only the chapter topic to appear, without any subtopics. (You may have to define
some build conditions 453 to do this.)
3. In the original chapter topic with the sub-topics set the build options in Topic
Options tab so that this version is included in all those builds where the chapter
has sub-topics.
That's it. You just have to be careful that your conditions don't overlap, so that you don't
ever get both versions of the topic in the same output.
For a more detailed description of how to do this see the Conditional Output
tutorial project, which you can find in the \MyHelpAndManualProjects
\Samples folder in your My Documents directory (in Windows Vista My
Documents is called Documents).

See also:
Conditions and Customized Output 451
Defining include options 453
Topic include options 457
Command Line Options 507
8.5.5 Modular projects include options
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to set module include options 460
How to apply include options when you compile 461

Help & Manual's modular projects capabilities enable you to insert an entire Help & Manual
project in your TOC as a "child module". Since these modules are handled as topics in your
TOC you can include and exclude them with include options, just as if they were topics. We
refer to a topic include option applied to a module as a "module include option".
A module include option can include or exclude an entire project with its entire directory tree,
all its chapters, sub-chapters and topics and all its invisible topics as well. In fact, if the
module also has child modules a single module include option can include or exclude
multiple projects.
See Working with Modular Help Systems 492 for details on creating and using modular
projects.

How to set module include options:

In a project containing child modules select the child module you want to include or
exclude by clicking on its blue book entry in the Table of Contents (TOC).

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 More Advanced Procedures 461

1. Select the Topic Options tab above the editor (the editor pane is blank for
modules).
2. In the Builds which include this topic section select all the options you want to
apply by clicking in the boxes next to the options' names. You can select multiple
options.
Before excluding a module generate a project report 618 to make sure that excluding the
module will not create any dead links. (Links with targets in other help files and projects
are listed in the reports.) You can get around this problem by creating links between
modules with A-keywords 383 .

How to apply include options when you compile:

The include option for the current output format is always selected automatically. Any
other include options must be selected manually. However, if you select user-defined
include options you must always also select at least the option for the current output
format.
1. Select in the Toolbar or select File > Compile Help File.

All modules whose Include Options ( Builds which include this topic in the
module's Topic Options tab) match the Include Options selected here will
be included in your output.
2. Select the options you want to apply from the list by checking the boxes next to the
names.
3. Select your compile options 663 , then click on to compile.

See also:
Working with Modular Help Systems 492
Defining include options 453
8.5.6 Redefining variables
Normally you change the values of your user-defined variables 449 by editing them in your
Project Properties 548 settings. Sometimes, however, you may want to temporarily redefine

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 462 Help & Manual Online Help

multiple variables – for example for variant product versions. You can do this with Help &
Manual's command line compilation 507 functions, using an external file containing the new
values of the variables you want to redefine.
For instructions on how to do this see Redefining Variables 516 in the Command Line Options
chapter.

See also:
Command Line Options 507
Using Variables 440
8.5.7 HTML template conditions
Help & Manual also supports a number of conditional switches for HTML templates 475 with
which you can include and exclude blocks of code in the compiled output generated by the
templates. In addition to output format include options you can also use user-defined include
options 453 and a number of special predefined conditional switches that are only relevant for
templates.
For details see Conditional output 487 in the chapter on using HTML templates.

See also:
Using HTML Templates 475
Conditional output in HTML templates 487
HTML template output conditions 830 (reference list)

8.6 Templates and Secondary Windows

Templates in Help & Manual

Templates are like an empty framework for topics, projects, PDF files and printed
manuals. They are used to define the layout and appearance of these objects and to
include text and other elements that the objects always or usually contain so that you
don't have to enter them manually every time.

Help & Manual uses five different kinds of templates:

Project templates: 463 A project template is an empty .HMX project file that stores all
the settings you want to use in a project, including all your
Project Properties settings, text styles, HTML templates and so
on. Project templates can also include topic content that you
want to use in every new project.
Topic content templates: 466 Topic content templates are entire topics and can include
everything that a topic can include. They can be loaded
manually, or automatically when you create a new topic.
PDF templates: 468 These templates define the layout and appearance of your PDF
output and print manuals. They are created and edited with the
Print Manual Designer, a separate program that can be
accessed in the Tools menu.

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 More Advanced Procedures 463

HTML templates 470 : These templates define the layout, general appearance and
features of your topic pages in Help & Manual's HTML-based
output formats (HTML Help 765 , Browser-based Help 771 and
eBooks 773 ).
eBook templates: 471 These templates control the layout and appearance of the
viewer used to display Help & Manual's proprietary eBook
format. They are not editable – you can think of them as "skins"
for the eBook viewer.

Secondary windows:
Secondary windows are used to define alternative layouts that can be applied to
individual topics and to display topics in external windows in HTML Help and Winhelp
projects.

See also:
Help Windows 800
8.6.1 Templates for projects
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create a project template from an existing project 463

How to create a new project template 464

How to use a template to create a new project 464
How to apply a template to an existing project 464
How to use the Help & Manual help template 465

A help project template is simply an entire Help & Manual project with all its settings,
including all your text styles 228 , Project Properties 548 settings, help window definitions 800 ,
HTML templates 475 , variable definitions 440 and so on. A project template can include topics
with content but it does not have to. If you have topics that you always use (for example
terms and conditions, introductions and so on) you may want to include them.
Help project templates are useful if you have a standard or corporate layout that you always
use. If you often create similar projects you can also use project templates as a basis for
editing to save time when you create new projects.

How to create a project template from an existing project:

This is generally the easiest way to create a project template because then you don't
have to go through all the project settings.
1. Create a backup copy of the project you want to use as a template and open the
backup.
2. Delete all the topics you don't want to include in the template and edit any topics
that you do want to include so that they do not contain any unnecessary text or
other items.
3. Select File > Save As or press Shift+Ctrl+S and save the edited project in a safe
place. You don't have to use a special format, a project template is exactly the

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464 Help & Manual Online Help

same as a normal Help & Manual project.

How to create a new project template:

Creating a new project template is exactly the same process as creating a new project.
1. Follow the instructions in Creating an empty new project 128 to create a new project.

2. Add and edit any topics you want to include in your template and edit all the
relevant settings.
3. Save the project in a safe place.

How to use a template to create a new project:

Creating a project from a template is almost exactly the same as creating an ordinary
new project.
1. Follow the instructions in Creating an empty new project 128 to create a new project.

2. When the screen for defining the output file is displayed select the option Use this
Help & Manual project as a template and select the .HMX project file you want
to use as a template:

All the other steps are exactly the same as for creating a normal new project.

How to apply a template to an existing project:

You can also apply project templates to existing projects. However, this cannot be done
in one process, you need to choose the parts of the template you want to apply.

Applying the template stylesheet to an existing project:

1. Open your existing project and select Format > Edit Styles...
2. Select and then select the project template you want to copy the

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 More Advanced Procedures 465

stylesheet from.
Note that this will overwrite all the styles in your existing project!

Applying other template settings to an existing project:

All the other settings in your projects are stored in the Project Properties 548 section.
You can import the properties here section by section:
1. Open your existing project and Select Project > Project Properties.
2. Select a section that you want to copy and click on the button at
the bottom of the screen. Then select your project template file to copy the
properties from.
You will be asked whether you want to copy the properties from just the current
sub-section or from the entire section (for example: just the Image Folders section
of Common Properties or the entire Common Properties section).
Note that this will overwrite all the settings in your existing project!
3. Repeat for all the template sections you want to copy.

Which sections to copy:

If you want to copy the complete template copy all the Common Properties and
Help Windows sections, plus all the sections for any output formats you are using.

How to use the Help & Manual help template:

Do you like the appearance of the Help & Manual help? In case you do we've included a
template project containing all the integrated features that you can use for your own
projects. It is stored in the templates folder (\Templates\hmx in the Help & Manual
program directory) and is called H&MHelp_Template.hmx.
The project template contains everything you need, including instructions for using it in
your own projects and the graphics for the mouseover buttons in the headers, the code
for the non-scrolling headers etc.

Using the template for a new project:

· Just follow the instructions for creating a new project based on a template (see
above 464 ) and select the C:\Program Files\HelpAndManual4\Templates\hmx
\H&MHelp_Template.hmx project template file in the Use this Help & Manual
project as a template field. (This file is selected as the default when you
choose this option.)

Applying the template to an existing project:

· Follow the instructions for applying project templates to existing projects (see
above 464 ) and select C:\Program Files\HelpAndManual4\Templates\hmx
\H&MHelp_Template.hmx project template file as your source project.
· This template is set up for HTML Help and Browser-based Help so you need to
copy the following sections:
ü Stylesheet (in Format > Edit Styles)

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 466 Help & Manual Online Help

ü Project Properties > Common Properties (entire section)

ü Project Properties > Help Windows (entire section)
ü Project Properties > HTML Help (entire section)
ü Project Properties > Browser-based Help (entire section)

See also:
Creating Projects 125
Creating and Editing Topics 171
8.6.2 Content templates for topics
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create a topic content template 466
How to automatically insert the TOC caption in the header 467

How to use topic content templates 467

Topic content templates for header styles 466
How to create auto-templates for topics and popups 468

A topic content template is an external file containing an entire topic. It can contain
everything that a topic can contain, including tables, formatted text, graphics, links and so
on. You can create as many content templates as you like and load them as a "framework"
for new topics – for example to provide a standard layout that you use repeatedly. You can
also create content templates that are loaded automatically when you create new topics.

New content template support:

Help & Manual now allows you to select a topic content template when you create a new
topic 171 . All the templates stored in your project directory are now shown in a drop-down
selection list in the Insert New Item in TOC 673 dialog.

How to create a topic content template:

1. Create a new topic. The ID is irrelevant because you are going to delete the topic as
soon as you have saved the template.
2. Edit the topic and add everything that you want to have in the template. You can use
all the features that you can use in a normal topic, including tables, graphics,
formatted text, hyperlinks and so on. There are no restrictions.
3. Enter the topic header (in the area above the editor, not in the TOC) exactly as you
want it to appear in the topic. See the instructions below for how to create a header
that automatically inserts the TOC caption in the header.
4. Select Topics > Save Topic to File and save the topic in your project directory with the
extension .hmtopic. (The .RVF format also saves the entire topic contents but without
the header, and it cannot be used for auto-templates.)
You must save the template file or a copy of it in your project directory if you
want to use the template for creating new topics in your project.
5. Delete the topic you have just created if you don't want to use it in your project now.

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 More Advanced Procedures 467

How to automatically insert the TOC caption in the topic header:

When you create topic templates to use for creating new topics you can include a special
variable in the header that will automatically insert the topic caption (the title of the topic
in the TOC) in the header of the topic. If you don't use this variable the template will be
loaded with the header saved with the topic.
1. Delete the header of the template topic (in the area above the editor, not in the
TOC) and replace it with the following variable:
%TEXT%
2. Type in the variable manually exactly as shown, using all upper case. Only enter
% and % before and after the variable name. This is the only variable that does
not use <% and %> tags.

· You can also include other text and elements in the header, including graphics.
Only the variable is replaced when a new topic is created.
· This only works when you create a new topic 171 with a template. The %TEXT%
variable is not translated when you load the template into a empty topic with Topics
> Load/ Topic from File.

How to use topic content templates:

To create a new topic with a template:

· Create a new topic 171 and select the template in the Use this template for the new
topic: field of the Insert New Item in TOC 673 dialog.

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 468 Help & Manual Online Help

To load a template into an empty topic:

1. Create an empty topic.
2. Select Topics > Load Topic from File and select the template file you want to load.
Don't try to load a template into an existing topic, this will overwrite the
entire contents of the topic!

Topic content templates for topic styles

If you frequently use topics with different standard styles you could create a separate
template for topics with each set of styles already preset in the topic header and body.
Then you just need to select the appropriate template when you create a new topic (see
above).

How to create auto-templates for normal topics and popups:

If you usually use the same layout for most of your topics you can also create two
templates that will be selected automatically whenever you create a new topic, one for
the normal topics in the TOC and one for popup topics in the Invisible Topics section.
· Follow the instructions above to create your template topics.
· For normal topics save your template topic in your project directory as:
Template_Main.hmtopic
· For popup topics save your template topic in your project directory as:
Template_Popup.htmtopic
These templates will then be selected automatically in the Insert New Item in TOC 673
dialog when you create a new topic. The main template is selected when you create
topics in the TOC, the popup template when you create topics in the Invisible Topics
section. You can always change it if you want before actually creating the topic.

See also:
Creating new topics 171
Exporting and importing topics 202
8.6.3 PDF and print manual templates
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to find the standard print manual templates 469

How to select a print manual template 469

How to edit a print manual template 469

The layout of Help & Manual's PDF and print manual output is controlled by special print
manual templates that do much more than just define the appearance of your pages. You
can use them to design entire manuals, with cover and back cover pages, multiple title
pages at the beginning, an introduction, a formatted table of contents, title pages for
individual chapters, graphics, headers and footers, a formatted index and multiple endnotes

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 More Advanced Procedures 469

pages.
Print manual templates have full support for Help & Manual's predefined variables and user-
defined variables, which they access from your project file. Since the templates are external
files you can use them in multiple projects.

Important note for former Help & Manual 3 users:

In Help & Manual 3 and earlier you could include and exclude individual
PDF items (topics, TOC etc.) both with settings in Project Properties and
with settings in the print manual template. This has now been simplified.
Inclusion/exclusion of PDF items is now only controlled by the print manual
template 543 . There are no corresponding settings in Project Properties.

How to find the standard print manual templates:

Help & Manual comes with a selection of standard print manual templates that are stored
in the \Templates\pdf subdirectory in the Help & Manual program directory. These
templates have the file extension .MNL.

How to select a print manual template:

Both the File > Print User Manual function and PDF output use PDF and are generated
with the help of print manual templates. However, you can select different print manual
templates for PDF output and print manual generation.
Selecting a print manual template for PDF output:
1. Go to Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF Export Layout > PDF Layout 604 .
2. Click on the button in the Print Manual Template: field to select the template you
want to use.
Selecting a print manual template for printing a user manual:
1. Select File > Print User Manual 666 .
2. Click on the button in the Print Manual Template: field to select the template you
want to use.
In both these dialogs you can open the selected template for editing by
clicking on the button next to the template selection field.

How to edit a print manual template:

· Select Tools > Print Manual Designer 622 to open the Designer. Then select File > Open
in the Designer to open a template for editing. See above for information on the
location of the standard templates.
OR:
· Select a template with one of the methods described above and select the
button next to the template selection field.

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 470 Help & Manual Online Help

The Print Manual Designer is a separate program. See the help in the
Designer for details on how to use it.

See also:
PDF and Printed Manuals 538
8.6.4 HTML templates
IN THIS TOPIC:
Where to access HTML templates 470
Doing more with HTML templates 470

HTML templates are used to define the layout of all Help & Manual's HTML-based output
formats (HTML Help 765 , Browser-based Help 771 and eBooks 773 ). What you enter in the editor
defines the content, the templates define the framework in which your content is presented.
The HTML templates are stored together with your project, in the internal database in the
main .HMX project file.
The same HTML templates are used for the topic pages in all three formats. In addition to
this there are also separate templates for the Table of Contents and Keyword Index frames
used in Browser-based Help, where they emulate the HTML Help viewer user interface.

You don't normally need to think about HTML templates

For normal work with Help & Manual you don't have to think about what HTML
templates contain and how to edit them. That is all handled in the background by the
program. A simple style editor is provided that allows you to modify the basic layout
of your pages in the associated output formats without having to edit the HTML code
directly.

Where to access HTML templates:

For everyday work you can adjust the settings of your HTML templates just as you would
adjust any of the other output settings in Project Properties 548 . The simple style editor
hides the HTML code with a point-and-click interface.
· HTML templates and their settings are accessed in Project > Project Properties >
Browser-based Help 586 .
· The Topic Pages 597 template defines the layout of your topic pages in HTML Help,
Browser-based Help and eBooks. (This template is shared for all HTML-based
formats.)
· The Table of Contents 591 and Keyword Index 593 templates define the layout of the
TOC and Index in Browser-based Help only.
For details on the settings see Browser-based Help settings 586 in the Reference section.

Doing more with HTML templates:

If you are familiar with writing HTML Help & Manual's HTML templates are a very
powerful tool that gives you a great deal of control over the appearance of your output

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 More Advanced Procedures 471

pages in the HTML-based formats.

If you feel like getting under the hood and finding out what you can do with HTML
templates have a look at the Using HTML Templates 475 chapter.

See also:
Browser-based Help settings 586
Using HTML Templates 475
8.6.5 eBook templates
The layout of the topic pages in Help & Manual's own eBooks format 773 is defined by the
same HTML templates 470 that are used for the topic pages of HTML Help 765 and Browser-
based Help 771 .
In addition to this, however, eBooks also use a special kind of template that defines the
appearance and layout of the eBook viewer program, which is stored together with every
eBook you output. This program is part of every eBook, enabling the eBook to "display itself"
on any Windows computer without any other software.

Selecting eBooks templates:

eBooks templates have the extension .DFM. They are non-editable digital files and you
cannot create new templates yourself. A set of templates is included with Help & Manual
and can be found in the \Templates\ebooks folder in the Help & Manual program
directory.
1. Go to Project > Project Properties > eBooks > Visual Appearance 609 .
2. Click on the button in the Viewer Template: field to locate and select a template.

See also:
eBooks settings 609
8.6.6 Using secondary windows
IN THIS TOPIC:
What you can do with secondary windows 471
Changing topic appearance with secondary windows 472

Secondary windows allow you to create topics with a different appearance in all electronic
help formats and to open topics in external windows in Winhelp and HTML Help.

What you can do with secondary windows:

· You can use secondary windows to change the background color of the topic and the
topic header and to turn the topic header on or off.
· In Winhelp and HTML Help you can use secondary windows to display topics in
external windows. This is described in Using external windows 473 .

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472 Help & Manual Online Help

· In the output formats that use HTML templates 470 selecting a secondary window for a
topic also applies a different HTML template to the topic. See Using HTML Templates
475 for full details on this.

· The help window type definitions also control the appearance of the entire help viewer
for both the primary window (the Main type) and secondary windows displayed in
external windows. For details see Choosing a help window 178 and Using external
windows 473 .

Help windows are irrelevant for PDF and RTF:

The window types assigned to topics (both the default Main window type
and all user-defined secondary types) are completely irrelevant for PDF,
printed manuals and Word RTF output. The layout of PDF output and
printed manuals is controlled by PDF templates 468 . The appearance of Word
RTF output is defined by the settings in Project Properties > Microsoft Word
Output.

Using secondary window types to change the appearance of topics:

1. Go to Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557 and define a new window type 178
.
2. Select your new window type in the list and set its properties 557 in the Color & Position
tab. (The position and size settings are only relevant for external windows 473 and the
Main 154 window 154 ).
If you are outputting to HTML Help:
Deselect the option Allow secondary HTML Help windows in the HTML Help Options
tab. Otherwise all secondary windows will be opened in external windows (this is a
global setting).
If you are outputting to Winhelp:
In Winhelp secondary windows are always opened in external windows when
accessed with hyperlinks. However, if you include a topic associated with a
secondary window in the TOC selecting it will simply switch the entire help viewer to
the secondary window definition, it will not open a new instance of the help viewer in
an external window. See External windows and invisible topics 806 for more details on
this.
If you are outputting to Browser-based Help or eBooks:
External windows are not supported in these formats so secondary windows only
define the appearance of the associated topics in the main help viewer.
See Using external windows 473 for more details on the subject of external
windows in HTML Help and Winhelp.

3. Click on to close the Project Properties dialog.

4. Select the topic whose appearance you want to change in the TOC. Display its Topic
Options tab and select the secondary window you want to use in the Help Window:
field.

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 More Advanced Procedures 473

5. This applies the settings of the help window type to that topic and also links the HTML
template 470 of that help window type to the topic for the output formats that support
HTML templates.

See also:
Help Windows 800
Choosing a help window 178
Using external windows 473
HTML templates 470
Using HTML Templates 475
8.6.7 Using external windows
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to use external windows in HTML Help 473
How to display ordinary topics in external windows in HTML Help 474

How to use external windows in Winhelp 475

How to display ordinary topics in external windows in Winhelp 475

Winhelp and HTML Help can both display topics in external windows. This makes it possible
for you to display a second topic with a link while leaving the first topic on the screen so that
the user can refer back to it. This can be very useful for lists of instructions, for example.
External windows are handled quite differently by Winhelp and HTML Help. You need to
take this into consideration when using them. External windows are not supported in
Browser-based Help or eBooks – in these formats you can only use secondary windows to
change the appearance of topics 471 .

Links in external windows:

External windows are complete new instances of the HTML Help and
Winhelp viewer. This means you can insert links to other topics (and to
other external windows) in external windows. However, this is not generally
a good idea as it can get very confusing for the user when you do this. It is
best to keep your main navigation in the main viewer and to only use
external windows to display single topics.

How to use external windows in HTML Help:

Step 1 – Define a help window type:

1. Go to Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557 and define a new window
type 178 .
2. Select the new window type in the list and select the option Allow secondary HTML
Help windows in its HTML Help Options tab. (This is a global option and will
display all topics associated with secondary window types in external windows.)
3. Define the appearance of your secondary window in the Color & Position and

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474 Help & Manual Online Help

HTML Help Options tabs. See Help Windows settings 557 in the reference section
for details.
In most external windows you will generally want to switch off the
navigation panel and all the normal control buttons.

4. Click on to close the Project Properties dialog.

Step 2 – Create a topic in the Invisible Topics section:

Topics you always want to display in secondary windows should almost always be
created in the Invisible Topics section. See External windows and invisible topics 806
for more background information.
1. Create a new topic 171 in the Invisible Topics section.
2. Select the new topic, display its Topic Options tab and select the secondary
window you want to use in the Help Window: field.
This applies the settings of the help window type to that topic and also links the
HTML template 470 of that help window type to the topic. HTML templates can be used
for even more control over topic appearance and layout.

Step 3 – Link to the topic:

You don't need to do anything special to display a topic associated with a secondary
window in an external window. Just create a normal link 294 to the topic. If the Allow
secondary windows option is set (see Step 1) all secondary windows in HTML Help
will display in external windows.

How to display ordinary topics in external windows in HTML Help:

Sometimes you may want to display a normal topic that is usually displayed in the main
help viewer in an external window. To do this you just need to specify a different window
type for it in the hyperlink dialog 686 when you create the link to the topic:
1. Open Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557 , select the Main window type
and activate the option Allow secondary windows in HTML Help in the HTML Help
Options 563 tab. (This is a global option for all secondary windows.)
2. Create a link 294 to the topic you want to display in an external window.
3. Double-click on the link to open the hyperlink dialog 686 if it is not already open.
4. Select a secondary window type 178 in the Window: field and click on OK.
This will only display the topic in an external window, with the viewer
navigation features associated with that secondary window type. It will
not change the topic's appearance. Since the topic is not defined with the
attributes of the secondary window it will still have the background color
and other features associated with its own window and associated HTML
template.

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How to use external windows in Winhelp:

The basic procedure for using external windows in Winhelp is exactly the same as for
HTML Help, except that you define the navigation features of the window in the Winhelp
Options 560 tab in Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557 .
Also, unlike HTML Help you do not need to activate external windows with a special
option because secondary windows are always displayed in external windows in
Winhelp when accessed with hyperlinks. You need to bear this in mind when using
secondary windows in Winhelp. See External windows and invisible topics 806 in for more
background information on this.

How to display ordinary topics in external windows in Winhelp:

1. Create a link 294 to the topic you want to display in an external window.
2. Double-click on the link to open the hyperlink dialog 686 if it is not already open.

3. Select a secondary window type 178 in the Window: field and click on .
In Winhelp window definitions are applied dynamically at runtime, so this
will apply all the properties of the secondary window to the link target topic,
including header, background color, position and size.
In HTML Help the target topic will be opened in an external window but it will
keep its own appearance attributes, which are defined by its HTML template
(the colors from the original help window definition are hard-coded in the
template).

See also:
Using secondary windows 471
Help Windows 800
External windows and invisible topics 806
HTML templates 470

8.7 Using HTML Templates

HTML templates are used to define the topic layout of all Help & Manual's HTML-based
output formats (HTML Help 765 , Browser-based Help 771 , eBooks 773 and Visual Studio Help/MS
Help 2.0 777 ). What you enter in the editor defines the content, the templates define the
framework in which your content is presented. The HTML templates are stored together with
your project, in the internal database in the main .HMX project file.

Where HTML templates are used

The same HTML templates are used for the topic pages in all HTML-based formats. In
addition to this there are also separate templates for the Table of Contents 482 , Keyword
Index 484 and Full-text Search 483 frames used in Browser-based Help to emulate the
HTML Help viewer user interface.

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 476 Help & Manual Online Help

How HTML templates are implemented

HTML templates are linked to help window types 177 . Each help window type has its own
template that can be edited separately. To assign a different template to a topic you
simply change its help window type in its Topic Options tab.
For more background information see HTML templates 814 in the Reference
section.

See also:
HTML templates 814 (Reference)
Help Windows 800
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
Choosing a help window 177
8.7.1 Editing HTML templates
All the various HTML templates used in your projects are edited in the same way. For details
on the relationships between templates and help windows please study the Help Windows 800
and Templates and Secondary Windows 462 chapters before trying to edit your HTML
templates.

Editing HTML templates requires familiarity with HTML:

You must be familiar with manual HTML coding to edit the HTML templates
used in Help & Manual manually. Your code is also entirely your own
responsibility – it is not syntax-checked in any way by Help & Manual or
the compiler. Only delete or change code in the standard templates if you
really understand what you are doing, otherwise you may experience errors
and malfunctions in your output!

How to edit HTML templates:

Topic page templates:

Go to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Topic Pages 477 to edit the
templates for your topics.
These templates are used for all HTML-based output formats and can also be
accessed in the Browser-based Help and Visual Studio Help sections of Project
Properties.

Browser-based Help templates:

Go to Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help > Table of Contents 482 /
Keyword Index 484 to edit the templates for the TOC and keyword index of the
Browser-based Help output.
1. In the Design Mode: field at the top of the dialog displayed select Edit HTML template
directly.

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2. In the HTML template for help window type: field select the help window type whose
template you want to edit. This is Main for the standard window type that is applied to
all topics in the TOC by default (in the Topic Pages section).
3. Edit the template in the editor window displayed. The editor supports syntax
highlighting to make editing easier.
4. When you are finished click on . The changes will be applied immediately but
some of them may only be visible in your compiled output, not in the Help & Manual
editor.
Don't switch back to simple editing mode after editing a template! This
automatically overwrites the HTML template for the window type you were
editing with the standard template.

See also:
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
Help Windows 800 (Reference)
8.7.2 The Topic Page templates
IN THIS TOPIC:
Template locations 477
Editing the topic page template 478
Simple editing mode (default) 478
"Let me edit HTML code directly" 478
Structure of topic page templates 479
The default topic page template 479
Breadcrumb trail navigation links 479
Navigation links to parent chapter 480

The topic page templates are used to define the layout and behavior of topic pages in all
HTML-based output formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks and Visual Studio
Help / MS Help 2.0). Each help window type you define has its own copy of the default topic
page template that can be edited separately. To apply a different template to a topic you just
need to define a new window type, edit its template and assign the window type to the topic.
See Using secondary windows 471 for details.

Topic page templates are shared!

Note that the topic page templates are shared by all HTML-based output
formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks and Visual Studio Help /
MS Help 2.0). All these help formats use the same versions of the topic
page templates. You cannot save different versions for different output
formats.

Template locations:
Note that although the topic page HTML templates are available in several locations they
are always the same templates. They are shared by all the HTML-based output formats,
but they can be accessed in the following three locations:

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· Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Topic Pages
· Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help > Topic Pages
· Project > Project Properties > Visual Studio Help > Topic Pages

Editing the topic page template:

Select Let me edit HTML code directly to display the template code in the integrated
HTML editor. All HTML templates are edited in the same way. See Editing HTML
templates 476 for details.

Simple editing mode (default):

This mode is active when the option Let me edit HTML code directly is not selected. In
simple mode you cannot access the full HTML code of the topic page template and you
cannot edit the code for additional topic pages templates created by defining additional
Help Windows 393 .
In simple mode you can make the following changes to the HTML pages:
Text above topic:

Everything you enter in this box is inserted at the top of every topic, before your topic
text. Effectively, this adds a header to your topics (beneath the actual topic header
containing the topic title).
You can enter HTML tags here to format the text, including references to images.

Topics with headers have <Top>, <Previous> and <Next> links:

This allows you to activate navigation links in your topic headers, either as simple text
links or is a graphical icons. To insert an icon click in the Image File column, click on
the Browse button and select the file.
· Image files must be located in one of the folders listed in your Image Folders
settings in Project Properties > Common Properties > Image Folders.

Text below topic:

Everything you enter in this box is inserted at the bottom of every topic, after your topic
text. Effectively, this adds a footer to your topics.
Here too, you can enter HTML tags here to format the text, including references to
images.

"Let me edit HTML code directly"

This mode gives you full access to the HTML code of both your main topic page
template and any additional topic page templates created by defining additional Help
Windows 393 .
Editing HTML templates directly requires experience with editing HTML code. If you are
just getting started with Help & Manual it is recommended that you leave the option Let

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 More Advanced Procedures 479

me edit HTML code directly unchecked. This allows you to use the default template
while you are getting used to the program.
· For full details on all the settings in this section see Topic Pages 597 in the Browser-
based Help section of the Project Properties chapter.
· For instructions on editing HTML templates see Editing HTML templates 476 .

Structure of topic page templates:

Topic content:
The most important thing to know about topic page templates is that your final HTML
pages are made by combining code of the the template with the contents of the
topics edited in Help & Manual. In HTML terms, the content from the editor is
everything between the <body> and </body> tags, the HTML template provides
everything else.
The content of your topic is inserted in the template at compile time by the variable <
%TOPIC_TEXT%> in the template. When you compile, the HTML page is created by
replacing this variable in the template with the content of the current topic.

Creating "headers" and "footers":

This means that you can create "headers" and "footers" by editing the HTML
template and adding material above and below the <%TOPIC_TEXT%> variable.
Everything above this variable will be a header, everything below it will be a footer.
This can also be done in "Simple Mode" (see above 478 ).

Adding material to the topic header:

The code for the topic header is located between the conditional tags
<IF_TOPIC_HEADER> and </IF_TOPIC_HEADER>. You can add material to the header
on every topic page by adding text, links images etc. inside this section.

The default topic page template:

See The default topic page template 816 in the Reference > Templates > HTML Templates
section for the default template code and full details of the default template.

Breadcrumb trail navigation links:

The <%TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS%> variable can be used to create a "breadcrumb trail" of
navigation links to the topics above the current topic in the TOC tree. This can be useful
for showing the user where he/she is, even in the Index and Search panes of the help
where the TOC is not visible. (This is generally only really needed in help systems with
many levels.)
If you need to create a breadcrumb trail without active links you can do this
with the <%TOPIC_TITLE_PATH%> variable. This is almost the same as the
breadcrumbs variable but it creates no links and also includes the title of the
current topic. See HTML Template Variables 826 for details.

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For example, if the current topic is The Editor in the sequence Introduction > About the
Program > User Interface > The Editor, inserting the <%TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS%> variable
would create this series of links in your output (note that the current topic is not
included):
Introduction > About the Program > User Interface
The links are active, i.e. clicking on them will take the user to the referenced topics.
· This feature is used to create the breadcrumb trail of links above the headers in
the HTML Help and Browser-based Help versions of this help.

How to insert a breadcrumb trail:

These instructions show you how to insert a breadcrumb trail at the top of the topic text,
directly below the header.
1. Open the topic template for the Main help window type (see Editing HTML
templates) 476 and locate the following code:

<!-- Placeholder for topic body. -->

<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5">
<tr valign="top"><td align="left">
<%TOPIC_TEXT%>
</td></tr></table>

2. Add the following code (highlighted in blue):

<!-- Placeholder for topic body. -->

<<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5">
<tr valign="top"><td align="left">
<IF_TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS><p style="font-size: 8pt; margin-bottom: 15px">
<%TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS%> &gt; <%TOPIC_TITLE%></p></IF_TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS>
<%TOPIC_TEXT%>
</td></tr></table>

· The <IF_TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS> condition ensures that the trail is only inserted

where it is relevant. (The breadcrumbs variable is empty in top-level topics and in
all topics in the Invisible Topics section.)
· If you want you can also use <IFNOT_TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS> to insert alternative
content to be displayed in top-level topics.
· Note that the title of the current topic is not included in the <%TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS%
> variable because it may not be needed if the topic title is visible directly above
the breadcrumb trail. In our example we have included the current topic title with
the <%TOPIC_TITLE%> variable to show how it is done. (The &gt; code inserts the
> character, which could otherwise be misinterpreted by some browsers.)
· For more details on variables and output conditions in HTML templates see HTML
template variables 826 and HTML template output conditions 830 .

Navigation links to parent chapter:

Have you tried clicking the green "home" button in the header of this help? Instead of

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 More Advanced Procedures 481

taking the user rigidly to the default page of the help it automatically links to the parent
chapter of the current topic, if there is one. If the current topic doesn't have a parent
chapter (for example if its top chapter is a chapter without text 172 ) the link will
automatically take the user to the project's default topic.
· This is done using the new variable <%HREF_PARENT_CHAPTER%> 826 .
· Just use this variable instead of the <%HREF_DEFAULT_PAGE%> variable in your topic
page template. Everything is automatic – when you compile the correct links are
generated automatically to the parent chapter or the default topic, depending on
whether a parent chapter is available or not.

See also:
The default topic page template 816
Editing HTML templates 476
HTML template variables 826
HTML template output conditions 830
Variables 485
Conditional output 487
Help Windows 800
8.7.3 The Layout template for Browser Help
IN THIS TOPIC:
Template locations 481
Editing the Layout template 481
The default Layout template 482

The layout template is the "frameset" template that defines the frames containing the topic
pane and the navigation pane, and also the header frame if you are using a three-frame
layout. Basically it only provides the external framework and tells the browser which files to
load into which frames. This means that you should not normally have any reason to edit it.
This template is also highly specialized and should only be edited if you have advanced
HTML editing skills. It is essential for the proper functioning of the entire navigation system
in Browser-based Help and editing errors you make here can easily make your help
unusable.

Template location:
The layout template for Browser-based Help is accessed here:
· Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Layout

Editing the Layout template:

Select Let me edit HTML code directly to display the template code in the integrated
HTML editor. All HTML templates are edited in the same way. See Editing HTML
templates 476 for details.
Please don't try to change anything in this template unless you fully understand the code

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 482 Help & Manual Online Help

and the results that your editing changes will have.

The default Layout template:

See The default Layout template 818 in the Reference > Templates > HTML Templates
section for details on the variables used in this template.

See also:
The default topic page template 818
Editing HTML templates 476
HTML template variables 826
HTML template output conditions 830
Variables 485
Conditional output 487
8.7.4 The TOC template for Browser Help
IN THIS TOPIC:
Template location 482
The TOCs in HTML Help and eBooks 482
Editing the TOC template 483
The default TOC template 483
Script links to expand/collapse TOC 483

This HTML template is only used in Browser-based Help. It generates the Table of Contents
(TOC) pane in the frame layout that emulates the appearance and functionality of the HTML
Help viewer in a normal browser.

Be particularly careful when editing this template!

The TOC template is an integral part of the dynamic TOC of the help viewer
generated by Help & Manual for Browser-based Help. Its code is essential
for the proper functioning of the viewer and the TOC. Please be extremely
careful when you are editing this template – if you don't understand what
a piece of code is for it's better to leave it alone!

Template location:
The TOC template for Browser-based Help is accessed here:
Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help > Table of Contents 591

The TOCs in HTML Help and eBooks:

The TOC in HTML Help cannot really be customized. The appearance of the TOC in the
eBooks viewer is defined by the eBook templates 471 .

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Editing the TOC template:

Select Let me edit HTML code directly to display the template code in the integrated
HTML editor. All HTML templates are edited in the same way. See Editing HTML
templates 476 for details.

The default TOC template:

See The default TOC template 818 in the Reference > Templates > HTML Templates
section for the default template code and full details of the default template.

Script links for expanding and collapsing the TOC:

You can use the following code to create links that will allow the user to expand and
collapse the entire TOC with a single click:

<a href="javascript:parent.fullexpand()">Expand the TOC</a>

<a href="javascript:parent.fullcollapse()">Collapse the TOC</a>

See also:
The default TOC template 818
Editing HTML templates 476
Variables 485
Conditional output 487
Help Windows 800
8.7.5 The Search template for Browser Help
IN THIS TOPIC:
Template location 484
Editing the Search template 484
The default Search template 484

This HTML template is only used in Browser-based Help and is only active if you have the
Professional version of Help & Manual. It generates the full-text search 594 pane in the frame
layout that emulates the appearance and functionality of the HTML Help viewer in a normal
browser.

Be particularly careful when editing this template!

The Search template is an integral part of the full-text search function in
the Browser-based Help output. Its code is essential for the proper
functioning of the search function. Please be extremely careful when you
are editing this template – if you don't understand what a piece of code is
for it's better to leave it alone!

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Template location:
The Search template for Browser-based Help is accessed here:
Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help > Full Text Search 594

Editing the Search template:

All HTML templates are edited in the same way. See Editing HTML templates 476 for
details.

The default Search template:

See The default Search template 823 in the Reference > Templates > HTML Templates
section for the default template code and full details of the default template.

See also:
The default Search template 823
Editing HTML templates 476
Variables 485
Conditional output 487
Help Windows 800
8.7.6 The Index template for Browser Help
IN THIS TOPIC:
Template location 484
The indexes in HTML Help and eBooks 485
Editing the keyword index template 485
The default keyword index template 485

This HTML template is only used for Browser-based Help. It generates the keyword index
pane within the frame layout that emulates the appearance and functionality of the HTML
Help viewer in a normal browser. (The index in HTML Help cannot really be customized. The
index in the eBooks viewer is defined by eBook templates 471 .)

Be particularly careful when editing this template!

The keyword index template is an integral part of the help viewer
generated by Help & Manual for Browser-based Help. Its code is essential
for the proper functioning of the index in this viewer. Please be extremely
careful when you are editing this template – if you don't understand what
a piece of code is for it's better to leave it alone!

Template location:
The Index template for Browser-based Help is accessed here:
Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help > Keyword Index 593

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The indexes in HTML Help and eBooks:

The index in HTML Help cannot really be customized. The appearance of the index in
the eBooks viewer is defined by the eBook templates 471 .

Editing the keyword index template:

All HTML templates are edited in the same way. See Editing HTML templates 476 for
details.

The default keyword index template:

See The default keyword index template 821 in the Reference section for the code and full
details of the default template.

See also:
Editing HTML templates 476
Variables in HTML templates 485
Conditional output in HTML templates 487
8.7.7 Variables in HTML templates
IN THIS TOPIC:
Variables reference 485
Using user-defined variables 486
Using predefined variables 486

You can use all global predefined variables 448 and user-defined variables 449 in all HTML
templates. In addition to this there are a number of special HTML template variables 826 ,
which are only relevant in HTML templates.
In addition to these variables you can also use a number of conditional switches that allow
you to include or exclude content on the basis of conditions. This is particularly useful for
variables, which are often only relevant in certain contexts. For details see Conditional
output in HTML templates 487 .

Variables reference:
More information on the variables and conditions that you can use in HTML templates
can be found in the following locations:
· List of global predefined variables 863
· List of HTML template variables 826
· Creating user-defined variables 449
· List of HTML template output conditions 830

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How to use user-defined variables in HTML templates:

You can use all your user-defined variables in HTML templates. Just type in the variable
in the position where you want to use it in the standard format, complete with the
opening <% tag and the closing %> tag.

Example:
...
<br><br>
</IF_TOPIC_HEADER>
<br><hr>
By: <%HELPAUTHOR%>
<br><hr>
<%TOPIC_TEXT%>
</body>
</html>

The above example inserts the contents of the user-defined variable between horizontal
rules above the topic text on every page.

How to use predefined variables in HTML templates:

You can use both the global predefined variables 863 and the special HTML template
variables 826 . They are used just in the same way as user-defined variables. Just type
them into the template in the position where you want to use them. Always type the
variables exactly as shown in the variable lists, complete with the opening <% tag and
the closing %> tag.

Example:
...
<%TOPIC_TEXT%>
<IF_HTML>
<br><br><hr><center>Page URL:
<a href="http://www.domain.com/help/index.html?
<%HREF_CURRENT_PAGE%>" target="top">http://www.domain.com/help/index.html?
<%HREF_CURRENT_PAGE%></a></center>
</IF_HTML>
...

The above example inserts the web URL of the current page at the bottom of every topic
page in Browser-based Help. (This makes it easy for support staff to give users the
address of specific help topics in the online version of your help.)

See also:
Editing HTML templates 476
Global predefined variables 863 (reference list)
HTML template variables 826 (reference list)
Conditional output in HTML templates 487

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 More Advanced Procedures 487

8.7.8 Conditional output in HTML templates

IN THIS TOPIC:
Conditional output reference 487
Using include options in HTML templates 487
User-defined include options in HTML templates 488

You can use all of Help & Manual's standard conditional output options in HTML templates,
both your user-defined include options 453 and options based on the current output format. In
addition to this there are a few special conditional switches which are only for use in Help &
Manual's Browser-based Help output, because they are only relevant there. See the lists
below for details.
You can think of these conditions as proprietary HTML tags. They are used to enclose
blocks of HTML code in your template that you want to include in the output only if the
condition is fulfilled.
Conditions based on the output format are only relevant in the topic page template 477 , which
is used in HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks and Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0.
The TOC and keyword index templates are only used in Browser-based Help so it does not
make sense to use format-based conditions there.

Conditional output reference:

For more information on the available output conditions, variables and how to use them
see the following topics:
· List of HTML template output conditions 830
· Defining your own include options 453
· List of global predefined variables 863
· List of HTML template variables 826
· Creating user-defined variables 449

How to use include options in HTML templates:

Like most HTML tags each condition has an opening tag and a corresponding closing
tag, using the same </ syntax to identify the closing tag as all regular tags. Simply
enclose the code you want to include conditionally between the two tags.
Note that the ELSE condition is not available in HTML templates.

Examples:
<IF_TOPIC_HEADER>
<font size="3">This text only appears in the topic if the topic has a
<b>header</b>.<br><br>
It will not be included in popup topics, which never have a header, or in
topics assigned
help window types defined without a header.</font>
</IF_TOPIC_HEADER>

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<IFNOT_PREVIOUS_PAGE>This text will only be displayed in

the very first topic in your help.</IFNOT_PREVIOUS_PAGE>

<IF_NEXT_PAGE>
<a href="<%HREF_NEXT_PAGE%>">Click here to jump to the next topic</a>
</IF_NEXT_PAGE>

· Note that the last example only displays the link if there is a next topic to jump to.

How to use user-defined include options (custom builds) in HTML

templates:
Basically this is exactly the same as using the predefined include options, you just have
to use the following syntax rules to create your conditional switches from the names of
your include options in Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Custom
Builds 556 :

Syntax:
Opening tag: < + IF_ + OPTION + >
Closing tag: </ + IF_ + OPTION + >
NOT version: < + IFNOT_ + OPTION + >
NOT closing tag: </ + IFNOT_ + OPTION + >

Example:
This example shows how to use the user-defined include options ALPHABUILD and
BETABUILD :

<IF_ALPHABUILD>
This text will be included if ALPHABUILD is selected in the Include Options
in the
Make Help File & Run dialog.
</IF_ALPHABUILD>
<IFNOT_BETABUILD>
This text will be excluded if BETABUILD is selected in the Include Options in
the
Make Help File & Run dialog.
</IFNOT_BETABUILD>

See also:
HTML template output conditions 830 (reference list)
Editing HTML templates 476
Variables in HTML templates 485

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 More Advanced Procedures 489

8.7.9 Graphics references

IN THIS TOPIC:
Supported graphics types 489
Supported HTML image reference tags 489
Adding graphics to the Baggage section 490

You can reference external graphics in HTML templates – Help & Manual parses the
template code for image references and automatically includes the graphics in your output.
In addition to this you can also embed graphics in your project by adding them to the
Baggage section 520 . Baggage graphics are always exported automatically when you compile
and they can be referenced without any path information in all HTML-based output formats.
See below 490 for details.

Supported graphics types:

· You can use .JPG, .GIF and .PNG images. It is best to store your external graphics in
the project directory (i.e. in the same directory as the .HMX project file) so that you can
reference them as filenames only without path information.
· If your graphics are not stored in the project directory use relative path names to
reference them. (If you reference directories outside the project directory the image
references will fail when you move the directory to another computer.)

Supported HTML image reference tags:

This function only supports image references in the following three HTML tags:
<BODY> Images referenced with the BACKGROUND="" attribute.
OR
Images referenced within the STYLE="" attribute using the syntax
STYLE="background: #FFFFFF url(image.jpg)"
(this can be combined with other style elements, of course)

<IMG> Images referenced with the SRC="" attribute

<TABLE> Images referenced with the BACKGROUND="" attribute.

All other image tags and attributes are ignored. If you reference graphics in your
templates in any other way you must take steps yourself 490 to make sure they are
exported with your project. In particular, this also includes the variant images for
mouseover buttons as they are not referenced with the tags listed above!
For more details on using image references and an example see Graphics
in HTML templates 832 in the Reference section.

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Adding graphics to the Baggage section:

In addition to this function you can also add graphics and other files to the Baggage
section. All files included in the Baggage section are integrated in your project
automatically and can be referenced in your template code without any path information.
However, please note that Baggage graphics are physically embedded in your .HMX
project file, so this function is only suitable for a relatively small number of small graphics
files. Don't use it for large graphics images as this will radically increase the size of your
project file!
· For more information see Using Baggage Files 520 .

See also:
Graphics in HTML templates 832 (Reference)
Editing HTML templates 476
Variables in HTML templates 485
Conditional output in HTML templates 487
Using Baggage Files 520
8.7.10 Referencing external files
IN THIS TOPIC:
Adding files to the Baggage section 490
Manually integrating files in your output 490

With the exception of a limited number of graphics references 489 external files you reference
in your template code are not automatically exported with your project because Help &
Manual does not know about them. There are two ways to solve this problem:

Add the files to the Baggage section:

This is the simplest solution. Help & Manual 4's new Baggage function provides a quick
and easy way to integrate external files in your project and make sure that they are
available to the compiler and included in your output.
However, please note that Baggage graphics are physically embedded in your .HMX
project file, so this function is only suitable for a relatively small number of small graphics
files. Don't use it for large graphics images as this will radically increase the size of your
project file!
· See Using Baggage Files 520 for details on using this function.

Manually integrate the files in your output:

· In Browser-based Help you must manually copy the files to your output directory if
you have not added them to the Baggage section (see above).
· In HTML Help you need to tell the compiler to include the files in the .CHM. Proceed
as follows:

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 More Advanced Procedures 491

1. Copy the external file(s) to your project directory (the directory containing your .
HMX project file).
2. Open Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Extended .HHP Settings 571 .
3. In the Additional Settings editing box add the following entries:

[FILES]
..\functions.js
..\updatelist.txt

· Don't add a second [FILES] header if one already exists. Enter each external
filename on its own line below the [FILES] header and precede it with the ..\
relative path reference. (This relative path reference is necessary because the
project is compiled from a temporary subdirectory in the project directory, so files in
the project directory are one level up.)

See also:
Using Baggage Files 520
8.7.11 Troubleshooting
IN THIS TOPIC:
Backing up your template before editing 491

Testing your output before saving 491

Reverting to the default template 492

When you edit HTML templates manually (i.e. not with point-and-click interface of the
integrated simple style editor 470 ), Help & Manual does not verify the code in any way. You
are entirely responsible for the code you write and if it doesn't work it is not Help & Manual's
fault.
It is a always good idea to back up your template in an external text file before editing,
particularly if your template already contains editing changes. You can also test your output
by compiling before you save your project. If something doesn't work you can then revert to
the previous template version by closing the project and re-opening without saving.

Backing up your template before editing:

· Copy the entire contents of the template, paste it to an editor and save it in an external
file. Then if anything goes wrong you can always paste the original version from the
saved file back into the template editing window.
You should always do this if your template already contains editing changes
because reverting to the default template overwrites the entire template
with the standard version.

Testing your output before saving:

· Save your project before you start editing your template to protect any editing changes
in your topics.

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 492 Help & Manual Online Help

· Edit your template but don't save your project (or use Save As.. in the File menu to
save in a project file with a different name).
· Compile your output. If everything looks OK you can save your project. If there are
problems select File > Recent Projects and reopen the saved version of your project
without saving your changes when the prompt is displayed. (Or just reopen the original
version if you used Save As..)

If something goes wrong revert to the default template:

· You can always restore the default template. Just select in the template
editing dialog.
· However, this will completely replace your version of the template with the standard
version, so you will also lose any earlier changes you may have made to it. If you
already have an edited version of the template it is best to use a backup (see above).

See also:
Editing HTML templates 476

8.8 Working with Modular Help Systems

A modular help system is a help system that consists of multiple Help & Manual help
projects that can be edited separately but compiled and output as though they were a single
project. This can make it easier to manage large projects and to work on projects in teams.

Modular projects in Winhelp and HTML Help

In Winhelp and HTML Help you can create genuinely modular help systems, in which
your output consists of multiple help files that are all displayed in a single Table of
Contents (TOC). In these systems you can create different versions of your help simply
by including or excluding help file modules from your distribution package: Modules that
are not there are excluded from the TOC automatically.

Modular projects in other output formats

You can also use Help & Manual's modular project features in other output formats.
However, here the advantages of using modular projects is only available during the
editing stage. The output is always a single help system.
See Modular Projects 873 in the Reference section for detailed background
information on modular help systems and what you can do with them.

See also:
Modular Projects 873 (Reference)

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 More Advanced Procedures 493

8.8.1 Creating a modular project

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create a master project 493
How to add child projects 493
Adding compiled help files as child modules 494

Creating a modular project is just as easy as adding a topic to a project. The child project is
displayed as a blue book icon in the TOC, just like a chapter, and in many ways it also
behaves like a chapter. When you compile the master project the entire TOC of the child
project is inserted in the master TOC at the point where you insert the child project in the
master TOC tree.
See Modular Projects 873 in the Reference section for detailed background
information on modular help systems and what you can do with them.

How to create a master project:

You do not have to do anything special to create a master project. Just follow the
standard instructions for creating new projects 125 . A master project is a normal Help &
Manual project. The only thing that makes it a "master" is the fact that it contains child
projects. You can create either an "empty" master project or a master project with
content:
· An empty master project is a project without any topics of its own. It is simply a
framework for handling your child projects, and all the items in its TOC are child
projects.
· A master project with content also has its own topics. Your child projects are
inserted in the TOC along with the master project's own topics.
This distinction is actually a little arbitrary. You can always add topics to the master
project at any time, even if it is empty when you start. The only thing you need to
remember is that the master project's own topics will always be included in the output.

How to add child projects:

1. Click at the point in the master project's TOC where you want to insert the child
project.
2. Use any of the standard methods for creating a new topic 171 .
3. In the Insert New Item in TOC 673 dialog select the Include another help file option and
select the Help & Manual .HMX project file you want to include at that position in the
TOC. This project does not have to be in the same directory as the master project.
4. Enter a caption for the child project in the Item Caption: field. When you compile this
will be the name of a chapter heading and the topics of the child module will be
included as sub-topics of this chapter heading.

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 494 Help & Manual Online Help

Adding compiled help files as child modules:

You can also add compiled help files (Winhelp .HLP files and HTML Help .CHM files) as
child modules. Just proceed as described above and select the file you want to add.
However, there are two important limitations:

Limitations of compiled help files as child modules:

· You can only add a file in the same format as the output format you are going to
generate. You cannot include a compiled .HLP file in a HTML Help project or a
compiled .CHM file in a Winhelp project.
· You cannot link to topics within compiled Winhelp files from the other modules in
your modular project.

See also:
Modular Projects 873 (Reference)
8.8.2 Choosing the merge method
IN THIS TOPIC:
Choosing the merge method for HTML Help output 494

Choosing the merge method for Winhelp output 495

In Winhelp and HTML Help you can create genuine modular projects with separate help files
that are displayed in a single TOC. This is called runtime merging 876 .
Alternatively, you can also combine all your modules to one large help file, just like the
output from a single project. This is called compile time merging 875 .
Note that runtime merging with truly modular help systems is only supported by the Winhelp
and HTML Help formats. All other output formats merge all the modules in your project to
create output that is exactly the same as output generated from a single project.
See Runtime merging and compile time merging 875 in the Reference section
for full details of the capabilities of these two different output methods for
modular projects.

Choosing the merge method for HTML Help output:

Open Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Modular Help Options 570 .
Settings for the master module:
· Select Merge files at compile time to create a single output file including all child
modules when the master module is compiled. All the child modules will be
included automatically when you compile the master module.
· Select Merge files at runtime to create a master module that will automatically
integrate the separate child modules in its TOC if they are found in the same
directory at runtime. (You must compile all the child modules separately when you
use this method.)

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 More Advanced Procedures 495

Settings for the child modules:

· The merge method setting is irrelevant for child modules that do not contain
additional child modules. Also, the merge method settings of the child modules are
always ignored when you are using compile time merging; then only the master
module settings apply.
· If you are using runtime merging 876 set which TOC you want to be displayed when
the child help files are opened directly. If you select Table of contents of the
master file opening the child module will automatically display the entire master
TOC, just as if the master help file had been opened directly. If you select Its own
table of contents opening the child help file only displays its own TOC and it is run
as a separate file.

Choosing the merge method for Winhelp output:

Open Project > Project Properties > Winhelp > Modular Help Options 576 .
Settings for the master module:
· Select Merge files at compile time to create a single output file including all child
modules when the master module is compiled. All the child modules will be
included automatically when you compile the master module.
· Select Merge files at runtime to create a master module that will automatically
integrate the separate child modules in its TOC if they are found in the same
directory at runtime. (You must compile all the child modules separately when you
use this method.)
· Leave the TOC Offset 577 set to 0.

Settings for the child modules:

· The merge method setting is irrelevant for child modules that do not contain
additional child modules. Also, the merge method settings of the child modules are
always ignored when you are using compile time merging; then only the master
module settings apply.
· If you are using runtime merging 875 set the TOC Offset 577 to the value
corresponding to the indentation you want to use for the child module. A value of 1
is one level of indentation, 2 is two levels and so on.

See also:
Modular Projects 873 (Reference)
8.8.3 Managing modules in the TOC
IN THIS TOPIC:
Moving, promoting, demoting and deleting module entries 495

Opening a child project from the TOC 495

You can manage module entries in the Table of Contents (TOC) in exactly the same way as

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496 Help & Manual Online Help

normal TOC items – they are normal TOC items. The only thing you cannot do is open the
TOC of a module inside the TOC of your master project. (To see the TOC of a child module
you must right-click on its entry and select Open Child Project.)

Moving, promoting, demoting and deleting module entries:

You can move, promote and demote module entries in exactly the same way as any
other TOC entries.

The main difference modules and topics in

the TOC is that you can't edit the
contents of a module directly.

To move a module entry:

· Drag the entry (the blue book entry) within the TOC with the mouse or select the
entry and use any of the cut and paste options (Ctrl+X to cut and Ctrl+V to paste,
or use Cut and Paste in the Edit menu, or right-click and use the Cut and Paste
options). You can also move entries up and down in the TOC tree one step at a
time with the and buttons above the TOC.

To promote or demote a module entry:

· Select the entry and click on the Promote and Demote buttons above the TOC.
(Promoting and demoting changes the level of the entry within the TOC tree.)

To delete a module entry:

· Just select the entry and click on the button above the TOC or press the
DELETE key on your keyboard. (This does not delete the module project, it just
removes the module entry from the current TOC.)

To copy a module entry:

· You cannot create a second copy of a module entry within the same project!
Please don't try to do this as it would cause irreconcilable conflicts in your output
project because of the duplicate topic IDs and context numbers it would create.
You can only copy and paste entries between completely separate projects (open
a second instance of Help & Manual to do this).

Opening a child project from the TOC:

The blue book icons of child project module entries are only placeholders. You cannot
expand a module entry to display the contents of its associated child project within the
master project. To edit the child project you must close the master project and open the

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 More Advanced Procedures 497

child project on its own:

1. Right-click on the module's blue book entry in the TOC.
2. Select Open Child Project.

See also:
Modular Projects 873 (Reference)
8.8.4 Managing graphics in modules
It's always important to avoid duplicate filenames for your graphics because of the way Help
& Manual manages graphics and locates your graphics files 325 . This applies in particular for
modular projects, because you will often have separate graphics folders for each project.
Duplicate names are OK if you use runtime merging 876 because then each module is
compiled individually and the correct graphics will be used. However, if you use compile-time
merging 875 Help & Manual will only find the first instance of any duplicates as it searches
through the graphics folders to locate the correct files.

Use filename prefixes for graphics files in modules:

· The simplest solution for this problem is to add a unique prefix to the filenames of
graphics files used in modules, in the same way that you use prefixes for the topic IDs
498 in modules.

· The prefix should be short – two letters and an underline character are usually plenty –
and should identify the module.

See also:
Managing your graphics 325
8.8.5 Managing IDs and context numbers
IN THIS TOPIC:
When you need to avoid duplicates 497
How to avoid duplicate topic IDs 498
How to avoid duplicate help context numbers 498
How to set up existing projects to avoid conflicts 499

In modular projects you also have to devote some thought and planning to topic IDs and
context numbers 849 . Modules are completely separate projects and Help & Manual can only
prevent conflicts caused by duplicate IDs and context numbers within a single project. This
means you are responsible for making sure that you do not have duplicates in the modules
you are going to include in your help system.

When you need to avoid duplicates:

· It is only really important to prevent duplicates when you use compile time merging 875 .
Duplicate topic IDs and help context numbers in modules merged at compile time will

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498 Help & Manual Online Help

cause link failures and other errors because they are all in the same output help file.
· Duplicate topic IDs and help context numbers are actually not a problem in projects
merged at runtime. Since the output consists of separate help files there are no
conflicts and all links will work normally. However, it is still a good idea to avoid
duplicates within projects because then you can always switch to compile time merging
without any problems if you need to.

How to avoid duplicate topic IDs:

Help & Manual has a new feature that makes preventing duplicate topic IDs very easy. In
each project you can automatically add a unique prefix to your topic IDs. Then even
topics with the same basic ID will actually be different. For example, with an auto-prefix
the ID Introduction could be Master_Introduction in one project and Mod1_Introduction
in another project.
1. Go to Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Topic IDs & Help
Context 553 .
2. Enter a prefix for your topic IDs in the Topic ID Prefix: field. It's helpful to add an
underline character after the prefix, this makes the IDs easier to read in the
various ID lists displayed in Help & Manual. For example, the topics in this help file
all use the prefix HM_.
3. Repeat for each project you want to include in your modular help system.
If you assign a unique prefix to each project used in your help system and make sure
that it is used for all modules you won't have any problems with ID conflicts.

How to avoid duplicate help context numbers:

Since you can't add prefixes to help context numbers you have to avoid conflicts here by
assigning a predefined range of numbers to each project in your help system.
1. Choose a range of numbers for each of your modules. Make sure that the range is
large enough to avoid overlaps even if you add a lot more topics to your project
than you initially expect to use! Help context numbers can have a value of 0 –
4294967295 (unsigned 4-byte integer) so this shouldn't be a problem.
2. Go to Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Topic IDs & Help
Context 553 .
3. Enter the starting number for the range assigned for the current project in the Start
with: field.
4. Enter a reasonable number for the Increment by: value. This should be large
enough to allow you to add topics between existing topics but small enough so that
you won't go out of your assigned context number range even if you add a lot of
topics to your project.
5. Repeat for every project you want to include in your modular help system.

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 More Advanced Procedures 499

How to set up existing projects to avoid conflicts:

The above methods are fine for new projects. However, when you want to include
existing projects in a modular help system you may already have duplicates conflicts that
you need to deal with.
1. Check your projects to see whether the context number ranges and IDs used have
potential conflicts. The Project Reports 618 tool can be a helpful aid here.
2. Use the Help Context Tool 624 to assign new context numbers to your individual
modules.
Remember that when you change context numbers your programmers
must also change the corresponding calls to your topics made from your
application!
3. Edit your topic IDs to eliminate the conflicts. Introduce a prefix naming scheme for
IDs with a different prefix for each module. (This must be done manually. Search
and replace has been deliberately excluded for topic IDs because it is potentially
dangerous.)
4. After doing this use the Help Context Tool 624 and the Project Reports 618 tool to
export lists of the new context numbers and topic IDs for your programmers.
5. Check whether any scripts 302 or plain HTML code objects 311 inserted in your
project contain references to the old topic IDs. These are not updated
automatically and need to be checked. The same applies to any links to the old
IDs from other projects and help files.

See also:
Modular Projects 873 (Reference)
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849 (Reference)
8.8.6 Creating links between modules
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create normal links between modules 500
How to use A-links to link between modules 500

How you create links between modules depends to a great extent on whether you use
runtime merging 876 or compile time merging 875 . If you use compile time merging all the
modules are always present so you can use normal topic links. If you use runtime merging
you should use the A-link method (see below 500 ) for all links to modules which might not be
present at runtime.
Even with runtime merging links from child modules to the master module
are always OK because the master module is always present.
It is better to use A-links for all links from the master to child modules and
between child modules for runtime merging projects. Then you can always
be sure that you will not have problems if you ever need to leave a module
out.
External windows cannot be used across module boundaries in modular help

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500 Help & Manual Online Help

492 with HTML Help. You cannot make a link that opens a topic from another

help file in an external window. This is a restriction of HTML Help.

How to create normal links between topics in different modules:

In modular projects you can create normal links between topics in different modules in
almost exactly the same way as between topics within a normal Help & Manual project.
You just have to bear in mind that the help file containing the target of the link must be
present at runtime, otherwise the link will be dead and the user will get an error
message.
1. Open the project in which you want to insert the link. If the project is displayed as a
blue book module entry in the TOC of the current project right-click on its blue
book icon and select Open Child Project.
2. Follow the basic instructions for inserting a normal topic link 294 .
3. In the Hyperlink dialog 686 click on the browse button in the Help File: field and
choose the project or compiled help file containing the topic you want to link to. (It
is always preferable to choose a project rather than a compiled help file if
possible.)
Never try to use compiled Winhelp files in HTML Help projects or compiled
HTML Help files in Winhelp projects. This will not work!
Links to compiled Winhelp .HLP files are extremely limited: You can only
link to the default topic, you cannot display or link to any of the other
topics in the hyperlink dialog. Frankly, it is best not to use compiled
Winhelp files at all in modular projects.
4. If you choose a project (.HMX) or HTML Help (.CHM) file the topic IDs of the
external project or help file will now be displayed in the Topic ID list. Choose the
topic (and anchor 305 if applicable) you want to link to and click on OK.
5. Remember that this link depends on the presence of the target help file, which is
not checked by the compiler. If there is any chance that the target file may not be
there at runtime don't link to it, or use the A-link method described below.

How to use A-links to create links between modules:

Use this method to create links between modules when you are not sure whether the
module containing the link target will be present at runtime or not. It creates a link that
points to both the main link target topic and to an alternative topic in the master help
module. If the main target is present the user can select it from the dialog. If it is not
present the alternative topic is displayed automatically.
This method works in both Winhelp and HTML Help (the A-link macro is translated
automatically when you compile to HTML Help). Use it for creating links between the
help files of modular help systems if there is a possibility that the help files containing the
target topics may not be present at runtime. This can happen when you use runtime
merging and choose not to include one or more of the help files in your distribution.

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 More Advanced Procedures 501

Step 1: Prepare the alternative topic in the master project

The alternative topic should be in the master project because this is the only help file
that is always present in a runtime-merged modular help system.
1. Open the master help project and choose or create the alternative topic that you
want the user to be able to view when the other help file module containing the
target topic is not available. This can be an invisible topic or a topic in the normal
TOC.
2. Select this alternative topic, display its Topic Options tab and enter a unique A-
keyword in its A-Keywords: field.

Step 2: Prepare the target topic in the child project

1. Open the child project and select the topic you want to link to.
2. Display the topic's Topic Options tab and enter the same A-keyword as above in
its A-Keywords: field.
· This A-keyword should only be used in these two topics. If you use it in any
other topics in any module these topics will also be displayed in the link list.

Step 3: Create the link

1. Open the module in which you want to create the link. This can be a master
module or another child module.
2. Select the topic where you want to create the link and type the link text. Select the
text, then click on in the Toolbar or select Insert > Hyperlink or press Ctrl+L.
3. Select and in the Insert Hyperlink dialog.
4. Enter Alink() in the Script: field and type the keyword between the parentheses.
If your keyword is "about widgets" the dialog would look like this:

If the target help file is not present when the user clicks on the link the alternative
topic will be displayed automatically. If the target topic is present a dialog will be
displayed in which the user can select either the target topic or the alternative topic.
This is just a very simple example to show you how this solution works in principle. In
practice you can also make more complex solutions, using more alternative topics
and more keywords. If you use multiple keywords remember to separate them with
semicolons, like this:

Alink(about widgets;troubleshooting;widget solutions)

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 502 Help & Manual Online Help

See also:
Using A-keywords 382
About A-keywords 854
Creating a modular project 493
Modular Projects 873 (Reference)
8.8.7 Merging invisible topics
IN THIS TOPIC:
How invisible topics are handled in modular projects 502
Merging invisible topics when you use runtime merging 502
Merging invisible topics when you use compile time merging 503

When you are working with modular projects you need to devote some thought to the
invisible topics 193 in your child projects. The invisible topics in the master project are always
included in your output but this does not always apply for the invisible topics in your child
projects.

How invisible topics are handled in modular projects:

How invisible topics are handled depends on which merging method 875 you use:
Runtime When you use runtime merging 876 every child project is compiled separately
merging: 503 and its invisible topics are included automatically.

This merge method is only supported in HTML Help and Winhelp.

Compile When you use compile time merging 875 the topics in the Invisible Topics
time sections of your child modules are not included automatically.
merging:
This merge method is supported in all output formats. In Winhelp and HTML
Help compile time merging is an option 494 . In all other output formats
compile time merging is always used.

Merging invisible topics when you use runtime merging:

You don't need to take any special action to include invisible topics when you use
runtime merging. All the individual projects are compiled separately and include their
own invisible topics. There are just two things you need to bear in mind:
· All links to invisible topics must be made to the correct modules and help files (i.e.
linking to the master module won't work if the invisible topics are in child modules).
This applies both to links from other modules 499 and to links from your application
843 .

· If you use dual-mode help 436 for popup topics in HTML Help the popups for each
module will be in a separate Winhelp .HLP file. You need to make sure that these
files are included with the distribution and that their names do not conflict with

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 More Advanced Procedures 503

those of the .HLP popup files for other modules. (You can change the .HLP file
name in Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Popup Topics 567 .)

Merging invisible topics when you use compile time merging:

When you use compile time merging all modules included in the TOC are compiled into
the single output file. However, invisible topics are not included automatically. If you want
to include them you must add a second reference to the child module in the Invisible
Topics section of the master module:
1. Open the Help & Manual project file of the master module.
2. Follow the instructions in Creating a modular project 493 to add your child module to
the TOC of the master project.
3. Then use the same procedure to add the same child module to the Invisible Topics
section of the master module. (Since the invisible topics are invisible it does not
matter where you insert the references in the Invisible Topics section.)
4. Repeat for all child modules whose invisible topics you want to include in the
output.
Remember that you must also avoid duplicate topic IDs and help context
numbers 497 in invisible topics.
This is the only situation in which you can add duplicate references to
child modules in a single master project. It only works with the first
reference in the TOC and the second reference in Invisible Topics. Adding
two references to the same child module to either the TOC or the Invisible
Topics section will cause serious errors.

See also:
Modular Projects 873 (Reference)
8.8.8 Compiling modular projects
IN THIS TOPIC:
Compiling modular projects with compile time merging 503
Compiling modular projects with runtime merging 504
Settings controlled by the master project in compile time merging 504

The procedure for compiling modular projects depends on the merging method 494 you are
using for your output. In HTML Help and Winhelp you have a choice of two merging
methods so you must remember to use the correct compile procedure for the merge method
you have chosen. All other output formats only use compile time merging.

Compiling modular projects with compile time merging:

When you use compile time merging 875 all the child modules of the master module are
compiled to a single output file. You only need to compile the master file, all child
modules are included automatically in a single compile run. In Winhelp and HTML Help
compile time merging is an option 494 . All other output formats always use compile time

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504 Help & Manual Online Help

merging.
1. If you are outputting to Winhelp or HTML help you must select the merge method
494 before compiling.

2. Then compile 410 the master module project. All the child projects will be included
automatically.
· See Merging invisible topics 502 for some important information on including the
invisible topics of child modules when you are using compile-time merging.

Compiling modular projects with runtime merging:

Runtime merging 875 is only possible for Winhelp and HTML Help. When you use runtime
merging you must compile all the modules included in the help system individually. The
child modules are not compiled automatically when you compile the master module!
1. Select the merge method 494 for HTML Help or Winhelp before compiling. Do this in
all your project modules, both the master module and the child modules.
2. Open the project files of all the child modules in your modular help system one
after another and compile 410 them. If any of your child modules contain their own
child modules their project files must also be opened and compiled individually.
3. Open the master module's project file and compile it.
Every time you compile a project file check the compiler report screen and
make a note of all the output files you need to distribute. Remember that
Winhelp files always have a separate .CNT file for the contents and that
dual-mode 436 HTML Help files always have an additional .HLP file
containing the popups.
4. Copy all the compiled help files to the same directory, making sure that none of
them have duplicate names.

Settings controlled by the master project in compile time merging:

When you use compile time merging 875 almost everything is controlled by the master
project. The settings of the child projects are ignored and replaced by the settings of the
master project. The only exceptions are the following items, where the settings of the
child projects are used if they are unique:
Image folder Image folder paths defined in the child projects that are not defined in
paths: the master project are added to the end of the master project's list of
paths. When inserting a graphic Help & Manual then searches through
all the paths in order and inserts the first graphic file it finds with a
matching name. This means you must be careful not to use graphics
with duplicate names in your child projects.

User-defined The same applies to the definitions of the variables. If child projects
variables: contain user-defined variables with names that are not used in the
master project the definitions in the child projects will be used.
However, if the master project contains variables with identical names

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 More Advanced Procedures 505

then the definitions from the master project will be used.

Custom include If a child project contains user-defined include options 453 not defined in
options: the master project they are available in compile time merging.

HTML topic The HTML topic page templates 477 of the master project replace all
templates: child project templates that have the same names. For example, this
means that the master project template for Main is always used in all
child modules, replacing any template changes that may have been
made in the child projects.
If child projects contain window type definitions 178 with names not used
for window types in the master project then the HTML templates of
these window types will be used in the child projects.
For example, if you have defined a help window called SecWin in your
child module the HTML template of this window type will be used in the
child module if there is no window type called SecWin in the master
module.
However, if the master module contains a window type called SecWin
then the HTML template of the master module's version will be used in
the child module as well. (See Help Windows 800 for background
information.)

Baggage files: Baggage files in the master project have priority over Baggage files
with the same name in child projects. See Baggage handling 526 for
further details.

See also:
Merging invisible topics 502
Compiling Your Project 410
Modular Projects 873 (Reference)
Baggage file handling 526
8.8.9 Multiple browser-based projects
IN THIS TOPIC:
Restrictions with "modular" Browser-based Help projects 506

Compiling projects to separate HTML directories 506

Creating links between Browser-based Help projects 506
Syntax for links between collections 507

You cannot use runtime merging 876 for Browser-based Help 771 – it wouldn't make sense
because this output format always consists of multiple individual files, with one HTML file for
each topic. When you compile a project containing child modules to Browser-based Help all
the child projects are always compiled to a single HTML directory with a single index file and
Table of Contents (TOC).
However, sometimes you may still want to set up a larger Browser-based Help project with a
modular structure, using a separate directory and index file for each module. When you do

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506 Help & Manual Online Help

this the projects in the separate directories are referred to as "collections".

Restrictions with "modular" Browser-based Help projects:

There are some important restrictions and also some important points you need to
observe when working with collections and the links between them.
· You cannot use a master project for Browser-based Help projects of this type. If
you include "child" modules in a master module all the modules will automatically
be integrated in a single output folder, which is not what you want here. Separate
"modules" must be opened and compiled as separate collections.
· You can link between collections but you cannot merge their TOCs.
· You cannot create links to the target topics in the project files of the other projects
because Help & Manual cannot manage links between collections across directory
boundaries. You must use Internet links 298 , inserting the correct URLs and/or paths
between your planned directory locations yourself.

Compiling projects to separate HTML directories:

· Open each project and compile it separately, to a separate directory. A Browser-based
Help project like this in its own directory is called a "collection".
· If your Help & Manual project files are stored in the same directory make sure that you
manually enter a different output directory for each project in the Index Page: field of
the Compile Help File 663 dialog, otherwise the projects will all be compiled to the
\HTML subdirectory in your project directory, overwriting each other's index.html files
and generally creating a fine mess. (You only need to do this once for each project,
after this they will remember their output directory settings.)

Creating links between Browser-based Help projects:

Do not try to use the methods described in Creating links between modules 499 for links
between Browser-based Help projects output to separate directories. This will not work!
Use Internet links 298 (see below 507 for syntax).
· In Target window: field of the Hyperlink dialog 686 select:
Same as to open the target topic in the current window. The TOC of the
referring topic: current collection will continue to be displayed.

Top frame: to open the target topic in the current window with the TOC of
the target collection. The TOC of the current collection will no
longer be displayed.

New window: to open the target topic in a new window together with its own
TOC. The current window remains open.

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 More Advanced Procedures 507

Syntax for links between collections:

The standard syntax for links between collections is as follows:

index.html?topic_id.htm#anchor

Use lower The names and extensions of all the files generated for Browser-
case: based Help are all lower case, even if the topic IDs used to generate
the file names contain upper case characters (all file names are
automatically "down-cased" when you compile). This is very important
– if you use upper-case characters your links will fail on all Unix and
Linux servers and many other systems!

index.html This is the index file of the target project and it should always be
included in the links. Even though linking directly to the topic file may
seem to work the browser history may not be stored properly, making
it impossible for the user to return to the original topic by using the
browser's Back button.
By default the index file of Browser-based Help has the extension .htm
unless you enter a different extension in the Index Page: field of the
Compile Help File 663 dialog.

?topic_id.htm The ? character is necessary between the index file and the topic
filename. Each topic is stored in a separate file and the file name is
generated by adding .htm to the topic's topic ID 210 . For example, if the
topic ID is HM_Intro then the topic file name would be hm_intro.htm.
Always write the entire file name in lower case!

#anchor This is optional and links to an anchor 305 in the target topic. Note that
Help & Manual 4 now uses the standard # hash character as the
anchor separator instead of the comma that was required in Help &
Manual 3!

See also:
Browser-based help 771

8.9 Command line options

Help & Manual supports a number of command line options that make it possible to
automate compilation.
Command line compilation supports Help & Manual's conditional include options 871 . In
combination with INI files and batch files 517 this makes it possible to generate multiple
versions of your project in multiple formats and to multiple destinations in one quick, efficient
process.
In addition to this you can also use command line compilation to redefine your project's
variables 516 with values taken from an external text file.

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 508 Help & Manual Online Help

Including the Help & Manual program directory in the Windows

PATH variable:
If you are an experienced Windows user it might seem like a good idea to
include the Help & Manual program directory in the Windows PATH variable.
We don't recommend this because the program file also needs access to
other files in the program directory and this works best with a fully-
qualified path command.

8.9.1 Syntax reference

This syntax guide is a quick reference for users familiar with using the command line. For
detailed instructions see the other topics in this chapter.

Paths in the command line:

The syntax examples all assume that you are entering the command lines in the Help &
Manual program directory, which is normally C:\Program Files\HelpAndManual4.
When you do this you must only enter a path for the project file argument (project.hmx
in the syntax guide). All the other file name arguments automatically use this path so you
don't need to enter a path for them if they are stored in the project directory. You must
enter path information for all files stored in any other location. You can use relative paths
if you want – they are then relative to the project directory.

Command line syntax:

helpman.exe "<Path>\project.hmx" /<format> /<other switches> ...

Always enclose all paths and filenames containing spaces in quotes.

helpman.exe The Help & Manual program file.

<Path> The path to the project file, e.g. "F:\Projects\Help Project
\project.hmx". Always enclose this and the project file name
in quotes if they contain spaces. This path is used
automatically for all other file arguments for which you do not
enter paths.
The project file you want to open. This must always come
project.hmx
directly after the Help & Manual program file name.
/<format> The output format switch. This must always be the first switch
entered after the project file name. The other switches listed
below can be used in any order but they must come after the
output format switch.
Switches:
/CHM (HTML Help)

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 More Advanced Procedures 509

Command line syntax:

helpman.exe "<Path>\project.hmx" /<format> /<other switches> ...

Always enclose all paths and filenames containing spaces in quotes.

/HLP (Winhelp)
/HTML (Browser-based Help)
/HXS (Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0)
/PDF (Adobe PDF)
/RTF (Word RTF)
/EBOOK (Help & Manual eBook)
/XML (XML file package)
Output file name and path:
You can also specify the output file name and path. If you
don't specify it the values used when you last compiled to the
specified format will be used.
Examples:
/CHM=testproject.chm
/HLP="F:\Final Build\widgethelp.hlp"
/XML="D:\XML Output\projectb.xml"
/I=<include options> Corresponds to the include options set in the Make Help File &
Run 663 dialog. User-defined options 453 are also supported. Use
upper case only, separate options with commas and don't type
any spaces between individual options.
If you don't specify the /I switch the program will use the last
include options used when you last compiled to the specified
format.
Important: These options do not select the output format!
Format include options:
ALL All builds and user-defined options "true".
CHM (HTML Help)
HLP (Winhelp)
HTML (Browser-based Help)
HXS (Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0)
PDF (Adobe PDF)
RTF (Word RTF)
EBOOK (Help & Manual eBook)
Note that there are no format include options for XML. XML
output always includes the entire project.
Examples:
/I=CHM,MYBUILD
/I=HTML,HXS,DEMOVERSION
If you use the /I switch you should also specify an include for
the current output format as shown in the examples above,
otherwise items specifically tagged for this format only will not
be included.
You can use your user-defined include options in exactly the

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

510 Help & Manual Online Help

Command line syntax:

helpman.exe "<Path>\project.hmx" /<format> /<other switches> ...

Always enclose all paths and filenames containing spaces in quotes.

same way as the format include options.

/V=<filename> Redefines some or all of the variables in your project with a

list of variables in an external text file. You can redefine both
global and user-defined variables. You do not need to enter a
path if the file is stored in the project directory. Use quotes if
the path or filename contain spaces.
File format:
TITLE=Widget Editor V2.8
EDITORS=John and Jane Doe
COPYRIGHT=Widgets Inc., all rights reserved
One line per definition, no quotes, no spaces on either side of
the = sign.
Examples:
/V=variables.txt
/V="F:\Data Sources\variables.txt"

/ Specifies the name of the PDF template file. Include the path
Template=<filename and use quotes if the path or file name contain spaces. Only
> supported for PDF output. You do not need to enter a path if
the file is stored in the project directory.
If you don't specify this switch the program uses the template
selected for PDF in Project Properties 604 .
/noclose Leaves Help & Manual open after compiling is completed (it
normally exits automatically).
/keeptemp Don't delete the temporary source directories and files
generated when compiling HTML Help, Winhelp and Visual
Studio Help / MS Help 2.
/L=<compiler log Outputs the compiler log to the specified text file. If you don't
file> enter a path the file is stored in the project directory. Use
quotes if the path or filename contain spaces.
If you use multiple output format 514 options or .INI files 517 you
can enter this switch after the last output format switch to log
the error messages for all output formats.
/debug Display a message window before outputting showing the
batch commands and whether they have been recognized
properly. Use for troubleshooting if your command line doesn't
work as expected.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 More Advanced Procedures 511

8.9.2 Basic command line options

IN THIS TOPIC:
Paths in the command line 511
Opening a project from the command line 511
Compiling a project from the command line 511
Compiling a project to a different location and file name 512
Compiling to PDF with a specific PDF print manual template 512

This topic describes the basic command line options available and how to use them by
entering the commands manually from a command line prompt. See INI and batch files 517 for
details on how to automate the process and for information on using more complex
sequences of commands.
See Syntax reference 508 for details of all the command line switches and arguments
available.

Paths in the command line:

The syntax examples all assume that you are entering the command lines in the Help &
Manual> program directory, which is normally C:\Program Files\HelpAndManual4. When
you do this you must only enter a path for the project file. All the other file name
arguments automatically use this path so you don't need to enter a path for them if they
are stored in the project directory.
However, you must enter path information for all files stored in any other location. You
can use relative paths if you want – they are then relative to the project directory.

Basic syntax – opening an Help & Manual project from the command
line:
This is the simplest possible command. It just starts Help & Manual and loads the
specified project file. This is rather pointless but it illustrates how the command line is
used.
· Switch to the Help & Manual program directory and enter the following command,
replacing F:\My Projects\ with the path to your project file and projectfile.hmx with
your project file name:

helpman.exe "F:\My Projects\projectfile.hmx"

· Note the use of quotes! Since the project path contains a space it must be
enclosed in quotes. The same applies for any file names in the command line that
contain spaces.

Compiling a project from the command line:

The command for compiling a project from the command line is quite similar. You just
need to add an additional command known as a "switch" to specify the output format you
want to use. The following example compiles the project to an HTML Help file, using the
last output location and file name you used when you compiled manually. (The default

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 512 Help & Manual Online Help

values are the project directory and project name.)

See the Syntax reference 508 for details of the available output format switches.

helpman.exe "F:\My Projects\projectfile.hmx" /CHM

The output format switch must always be the first switch after the project
file name. All the other switches can come in any order but they must be
after the output format switch.
Note the use of quotes! All paths and file names that contain spaces must be enclosed
in quotes.

Compiling a project to a different location and file name:

To compile a project to a different location and file name just add them to the output
format switch with an equals sign:

helpman.exe" "F:\My Projects\projectfile.hmx" /CHM="F:\My Projects\Help

\WidgetHelp.chm"

Note the use of quotes! All paths and file names that contain spaces must be enclosed
in quotes.

Compiling to PDF with a specific PDF print manual template:

These examples generate PDF files with an explicitly-specified print manual template 468 .
The first example assumes that the print manual template is stored in the project
directory. The second example gets the template from the \Templates\Pdf folder in the
program directory.

Example 1:
helpman.exe "D:\Help Project\MyHelp.hmx" /PDF=widget.pdf /
Template=a4_template.mnl

Example 2:
helpman.exe "D:\Help Project\MyHelp.hmx" /PDF=widget.pdf /Template="<%
PROGPATH>Templates\Pdf\widget.mnl"

8.9.3 Using include options

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to use include options 513
Output format and user-defined include options 513

You can use include options 451 in the command line. These options control what is included
in your compiled output on the basis of output format or user-defined include options 453 .
Setting them is equivalent to setting the include options in the Compile Help File 663 dialog
when you compile manually.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 More Advanced Procedures 513

Specifying include options optional. If you don't specify this switch Help & Manual will use
the default include options, which are the options you used the last time you compiled to the
current output format.
· See the Syntax reference 508 for details on all the available switches and parameters.

Include options do not select the output format!

Note that include options do not select the output format! This is an easy
mistake to make because include options can also use conditions based on
output formats. Include options only control what is included or excluded
from your project, not the output format of your project.

How to use include options:

· The format you are compiling to is only "included" automatically if you don't specify
the /I= include options switch. When you use this switch you should always also
specify an include option for the current output format, otherwise items tagged for that
format only will not be included.
· Follow the instructions provided in this chapter for using command lines. Add the /I=
include options switch after the output format switch. Follow it with all the include
options you want to use, separated by commas. Don't use quotes or spaces (a space
would identify a new switch).

Examples:
helpman.exe D:\Projects\widgethelp.hmx /CHM /I=CHM,FINALBUILD,USVERSION

helpman.exe D:\Projects\widgethelp.hmx /CHM /I=CHM,HLP,DEMO

Both these examples output to HTML Help files (/CHM). Note that the CHM include
option is included in both cases, to make sure that anything in the project tagged
specifically for CHM is included (otherwise only the items tagged for All Builds and
the other include options would be included.)
The second example also includes items specifically tagged for Winhelp (HLP) in the
HTML Help output, which would normally only be included when you compile to
Winhelp.

Output format and user-defined include options:

Output format include options (i.e. for the output formats supported by Help & Manual)
and user-defined include options are both used in exactly the same way. Just type the
options after the /I= switch, separated by commas.

See also:
Conditions and Customized Output 451

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 514 Help & Manual Online Help

8.9.4 Output to multiple formats

IN THIS TOPIC:
Basic syntax 514
Local and global switches 515

Examples 515

You can generate output to more than one format with a single command line. The output
files are then generated one after another, in the order entered. This is OK if you want to do
a single multiple compile quickly but if you want to automate the process it is best to use INI
and batch files 517 .

Basic syntax:
helpman.exe <path>\projectfile.hmx /<format1> /<switches> /<format2> /<switches>
... /<formatX> /switches

Each format switch must be directly followed by all the switches you want to apply to that
format. Each format must have its own set of switches, they are not applied to multiple
formats.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 More Advanced Procedures 515

Local and Global Switches for Multiple Output

Local switches:
The following switches are "local". They must be applied to each output
format individually by inserting them after the format switch for which they
should apply and before the next format switch.
/I=<include options> The include options you want to use for the output
format.
/Template=<PDF template> The PDF template to be used for PDF
output (only for PDF output).
/V=<filename> This switch specifies an external file to redefine the
values of variables in your project file.

Global switches:
These switches are "global". They apply for all output formats in the
command line and it is best to put them at the end of the command line,
after all the output format switches and their respective local switches.
/noclose Leaves Help & Manual open after compiling.
/keeptemp Doesn't delete the temporary directories and source
files generated for Winhelp and HTML Help output.
(Applies to Winhelp and HTML Help only.)
/E=<compiler log file> Outputs the compiler log to the specified file.
/debug Displays debug information for each output format
before compiling.
See Syntax reference 508 for more information on the individual switches and
parameters.

Examples:

Example 1:
The following example compiles a project file to HTML Help and PDF, using include
options 512 for the HTML Help file and selecting a specific PDF print manual template
468 for the PDF output file (see also Basic command line options 511 ). The template is

assumed to be in the project directory; if it is stored somewhere else you must

include its path.

helpman.exe D:\Projects\widget.hmx /CHM=widgethelp.chm /I=CHM,DEMO /

PDF=manual.pdf /Template=manual.mnl

Example 2:
The following example compiles to Winhelp and Browser-based Help using include
options. The /noclose switch at the end of the command line leaves the program

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 516 Help & Manual Online Help

open when compiling is finished.

helpman.exe D:\Projects\widget.hmx /HLP /I=HLP,FINAL /HTML=D:\HTML\index.html

/I=HLP,FINAL /noclose

See also:
.INI and batch files 517
8.9.5 Redefining variables
The /V switch allows you to redefine some or all of the variables 440 in your project with
values taken from an external text file. To use this feature you just need to create a plain
text file with a list of the variables you want to redefine together with their new definitions.
· You can redefine both the global predefined variables 448 and your user-defined
variables 449 .
When you are outputting to multiple formats you must enter a separate /V switch for each
output format for which you wish to redefine the variables. See Output to multiple formats 514
and .INI and batch files 517 for details.

Step 1: Create a text file with the new values for the variables
1. Create a new plain-text file with an editor like Notepad. (If you use a text processor
like Word make sure you save the file in text-only format.)
2. Enter each variable you want to redefine with its new value on a separate line using
the following syntax. You don't have to redefine all the variables. Only those included
in the file will be affected.

VARIABLENAME1=The new value of variable 1

VARIABLENAME2=The new value of variable 2
VARIABLENAME3=The new value of variable 3

Don't enter the <% and %> tags for the variable names this file and don't
insert quotes around the variable value strings. Don't enter tabs or spaces to
the left or right of the = signs.
3. Save the file with the .TXT extension in your project directory.

Step 2: Compile your project with the /V=<filename> command line

option
· Follow the instructions provided in this chapter for using command lines and add the /
V= switch with the name of your variables file. If the file is stored in your project
directory you don't need to enter a path for the variables file because the path to the
project file is used automatically. If it is stored anywhere else you must enter a path.
(You can enter either absolute paths or relative paths relative to the project directory.)

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 More Advanced Procedures 517

Examples:
helpman.exe "D:\Project Files\Widget Help\Myproject.hmx" /V=variables.txt

helpman.exe "D:\Project Files\Widget Help\Myproject.hmx" /V="D:\Data Files

\variables.txt"

Remember, if any paths or file names contain spaces you must enclose
them in quotes!

See also:
Using Variables 440
8.9.6 .INI and batch files
IN THIS TOPIC:
How to create an .INI file 517
Local and Global Switches 519
How to use the .INI file from the command line 519

How to use the .INI file from a batch file 520

As you have probably already realized, command lines can get quite long and complex,
particularly if you use them to generate multiple outputs 514 simultaneously. To solve this
problem Help & Manual allows you to create external files called .INI files that contain all the
parameters you want to process, including output to as many different formats as you want.
If you combine this with a batch file in the Help & Manual program directory and create a
shortcut to this file on your desktop you can automate the entire process and perform
multiple complex compiles with a single mouse click.

How to create an .INI file:

Use a text editor to create a plain text file with the extension .INI (for example
batchcompile.ini ) in the project directory of the project for which you want to perform
the compile.
(If you are using Notepad you must enclose the file name in quotes when
you save it, otherwise Notepad will automatically add the extension .TXT,
resulting in an invalid file name like finalbuild.ini.txt!)

· The .INI file contains all the switches and parameters that come after the project
file name, with one switch or parameter per line. They must be entered in exactly
the same order as you would enter them on the command line. That means the
output format switch always comes first, followed by all the other switches.
· The rules for multiple output 514 are also the same as on the command line. First
the first output format switch followed by its switches, then the next output format
switch followed by its switches, and so on.
· The switches you can use in the .INI file are exactly the same as the command
line switches. However, they must all be entered on a single line and they are not

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518 Help & Manual Online Help

preceded by a slash.
· Also, you must not use quotes in .INI files, even if your arguments contain spaces!
This is very important!

Example:
CHM=F:\Project Files\Help Project\Help\WidgetHelp.chm
I=CHM,FINALBUILD
KEEPTEMP
PDF=F:\Project Files\Help Project\PDF\WidgetHelp.pdf
I=PDF,FINALBUILD
Template=usletter.mnl
L=F:\Project Files\Help Project\Logs\compilerlog.txt

What this example .INI file does:

· The first line compiles to HTML Help with a specific output directory and filename.
Specifying the output explicitly allows you to compile to other destinations manually
in Help & Manual without worrying about changing the destination of the .INI file
output. (Every time you compile manually you automatically reset the default output
destination.)
· The I=CHM,FINALBUILD include options 512 switch includes everything tagged
with the user-defined option FINALBUILD. Since you have specified a
user-defined option you must also specify CHM to ensure that all the standard
HTML Help topics and items are also included (this is specified automatically if you
don't include any include options). KEEPTEMP tells the compiler not to delete the
temporary source files used to generate the HTML Help output.
· Then the same project is output to PDF, also with a specific output directory and
filename. The include options are the same, but with PDF instead of CHM to include
the appropriate topics in addition to everything tagged with FINALBUILD. The next
line specifies the PDF print manual template 468 to be used for the output. Since no
path is specified this is assumed to be in the project directory. If it is stored in any
other location you must include a path.
· Finally, the L= parameter stores all the compiler error messages in a log file in a
specified location. If no path had been included this file would have been stored in
the project directory.

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 More Advanced Procedures 519

Local and Global Switches for Multiple Output

Local switches:
The following switches are "local". They must be applied to each output
format individually by inserting them after the format switch for which they
should apply and before the next format switch.
I=<include options> The include options you want to use for the
output format.
TEMPLATE=<PDF template> The PDF template to be used for PDF
output (only for PDF output).
V=<filename> This switch specifies an external file to redefine
the values of variables in your project file.

Global switches:
These switches are "global". They apply for all output formats in the
command line and it is best to put them at the end of the command line,
after all the output format switches and their respective local switches.
NOCLOSE Leaves Help & Manual open after compiling.
KEEPTEMP Doesn't delete the temporary directories and
source files generated for Winhelp and HTML Help
output. (Applies to Winhelp and HTML Help only.)
E=<compiler log file> Outputs the compiler log to the specified file.
DEBUG Displays debug information for each output
format before compiling.
See Syntax reference 508 for more information on the individual switches and
parameters.

How to use the .INI file from the command line:

To use an .INI file just specify it as the first and only parameter after the project file
name in the command line. If it is stored in the project directory you don't need to specify
a path for it. If it is stored anywhere else you must specify a path.
As usual, the example assumes that you are working from the Help & Manual program
directory.

Example:
helpman.exe "D:\Help Project\Widget\WidgetHelp.hmx" batchcompile.ini

This starts Help & Manual, opens WidgetHelp.hmx and then executes all the
commands specified by the switches and parameters contained in batchcompile.ini.

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How to use the .INI file from a batch file:

You can take this one step further and automate the process completely by putting the
command line (or lines!) with the reference to the .INI file in a batch file. Then you can
create a shortcut to the batch file and perform the entire complex compile process by
double-clicking on the shortcut. Here's how:
· Create a plain text file with the extension .BAT (for example batchcompile.bat) and
store it in the Help & Manual program directory. Then you only need to enter the
path to the project file, since all other parameters automatically use the path of the
project directory.
· Enter each command lines you want to execute on a separate line in the file, as
shown in the example below.

Example:
@ECHO OFF
helpman.exe "D:\Help Project\Widget\WidgetHelp.hmx" batchcompile.ini
helpman.exe "D:\Help Project\Widget Two\WidgetTwoHelp.hmx" batchtwo.ini

· The @ECHO OFF command suppresses the output to the command console. It is not
really required, it is just customary to use it.
You will normally only want to use one command line with an .INI file per
batch file, but there is nothing to prevent you from including as many as
you like. They will all be processed one after another when you call the
batch file.
Remember to store each .INI file in its own project directory – i.e. in the
directory in which its associated .HMX Help & Manual project file is stored.
· Finally, create a shortcut to the batch file. The most convenient location for this is
normally on your desktop, but it can be anywhere you like. Then double-clicking on
the shortcut will execute the batch file, which will use the settings in the specified
.INI file (or files) to perform all the operations you have specified.

See also:
Output to multiple formats 514

8.10 Using Baggage Files

Help & Manual 4 introduces a new function called Baggage, which enables you to add a
collection of small, frequently-used files to your project. Baggage files are not references,
they become a physical part of your project. They are stored in your .HMX project file and
they are always accessible, even if you delete the original source files.

What are Baggage files for?

Baggage files have two purposes:

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Integrating files referenced in HTML code and scripts:

There are a number of functions in Help & Manual that allow you to insert your own
inline HTML code in your output or to modify the HTML code generated by the
program. These include Insert > Plain HTML Code 311 , the HTML code editing
function in Insert > Movie 426 , all the HTML editing functions for HTML templates 475
and the code you enter in scripts and macros 302 .
If you reference external files in this code the compiler used to generate your output
does not know anything about them. To solve this problem in earlier versions of the
program you had to manually add [FILES] references to the Extended .HHP settings
312 for HTML Help and remember to manually copy your referenced files to your

output directories for Browser-based Help.

Baggage provides a quick and elegant way of solving this problem. All files that you
add to your project as Baggage are embedded in your .HMX project file and
automatically made available to the compiler when you generate your output.

Quick access to frequently-used graphics:

If your Baggage files include graphics files you can display them as shortcuts with
thumbnail images in the drop-down list in the Toolbar.

Baggage files should not generally be used for this purpose, however, because
graphics files tend to be large and using more than a couple will bloat your project
file. It is much more efficient to use the picture shortcuts 328 feature, which adds
graphics files to the drop-down list without embedding them in your project file.

See also:
Shortcuts for frequently-used graphics 328
Graphics References 489
8.10.1 Adding and referencing files
IN THIS TOPIC:
Adding files to the Baggage section 522
Referencing Baggage files in your code 522

All files you add to the Baggage section are automatically included/exported in your HTML-
based output. This is the best way to include files referenced in manually-edited code in your

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projects. You can reference all files in the Baggage section directly in your code. You don't
have to add any path information because the files are always available on the same
directory level as the other help files. All necessary copying and references are handled
automatically by Help & Manual.
· Note that non-graphics Baggage files are only exported in HTML-based formats
(HTML Help and Browser-based Help). They are ignored in all other formats.
You can use Baggage files for files referenced in the code entered with Insert > Plain HTML
Code 311 , the HTML code editing function in Insert > Movie 426 , all the HTML editing functions
for HTML templates 475 and the code you enter in scripts and macros 302 .

Adding files to the Baggage section:

Files you place in the Baggage section are actually stored in your project file. Once they
have been added to the Baggage section they are part of your project and are always
available. They do not have to be loaded from any external directory – you can even
delete the original files after adding them to your Baggage.
1. Select Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Baggage Files 554 .

2. Click on Add File and select the appropriate file filter in the Files of type: field.

3. Select the file you want to add and click on . The file will be added to the
Baggage list and will become part of your project.
The names of Baggage files have a maximum length of 31 characters.
Longer file names will be shortened automatically by the program. When
you reference the file in your project you must then use the shortened file
name!

Referencing Baggage files in your code:

Baggage files are always directly accessible for your code and they are always in the
same directory as the other files in your output. This also applies in HTML Help – here
the Baggage files are in the same internal "virtual directory" inside the .CHM file as all
the other files in your HTML Help system.

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 More Advanced Procedures 523

· Baggage files can be referenced directly without any path information because
they are always stored on the same directory level as the other help files. Just
enter the name of the file as it is shown in the list in the Baggage section.

See also:
Inserting plain HTML code 311
Flash Animations and Video 426
Using HTML Templates 475
Inserting script and macro links 302
8.10.2 Graphics files
IN THIS TOPIC:
Adding baggage graphics to the drop-down list 523

Inserting Baggage graphics in your project 524

Graphics files included in the Baggage section can be added to the drop-down list of Picture
Shortcuts 328 in the Toolbar, with thumbnail images of the Baggage graphics:

However, please note that this function is only provided for quick access to graphics files
that need to be included in the Baggage because they are referenced by HTML code or
scripts. For general graphics it is more efficient to use the linking facility for the Picture
Shortcuts 328 feature, which adds graphics files to the drop-down list as references without
embedding them in your project file.

Adding Baggage graphics to the drop-down list:

1. Click on the arrow next to the Insert Graphic tool in the Toolbar to display the Picture
Shortcuts list and select Configure Picture Shortcuts.

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2. Select the option and click on . All the graphics in

Baggage section will automatically be added to the drop-down list with thumbnail
images.

· For more details on the Picture Shortcuts function see Shortcuts for frequently-
used graphics 328 .

Inserting Baggage graphics in your project:

To insert a Baggage image just click in the Toolbar to display the Picture Shortcuts drop-
down list and select the image you want to insert:

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See also:
Shortcuts for frequently-used graphics 328
Using Graphics 313
Graphics References 489
8.10.3 Removing and renaming Baggage files
Removing, renaming and exporting files stored in the Baggage section are all generally quite
straightforward operations but there are a couple of points you need to bear in mind.

Removing, renaming and exporting Baggage files:

Select Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Baggage Files 554 .

· To remove a Baggage file from your project just click on the image name in the
Baggage section and select .
· To rename a Baggage file click on the graphic file name and select .
You can only rename Baggage files that have not yet been used or
referenced in your project. The Rename function is automatically disabled for
files that are referenced.
· To export a Baggage file click on the file name and select . (Remember
that Baggage files are part of your project file, they are not stored externally.)

8.10.4 Baggage handling

This topic summarizes how Baggage files are handled by Help & Manual. This information
will help you to understand how Baggage works.

Where Baggage files are used:

· Graphics in the Baggage section can be used for all output formats. If you use
graphics formats not directly supported by the output format they will be converted
automatically when you compile, just like the other graphics in your project.

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· Non-graphics files in the Baggage section are only relevant for HTML-based
formats. They are ignored in all other formats.

Baggage graphics files have priority:

· Baggage graphics files have priority over graphics files stored in your project's
graphics folders. If a graphics file in the Baggage section has the same name as a
file in one of your graphics folders the Baggage version will always be used in the
output.
· This means you must take care to avoid duplicate file names in your graphics
folders and the Baggage section, otherwise the versions in your graphics folders
will be "invisible" to the program when you generate your output. (In any case it is
better to use the Picture Shortcuts 328 function for graphics than Baggage.)

Size of the Baggage section:

· Since Baggage files are physically stored in your .HMX project file they should only
be used for a small collection small files if you want to keep your project file size
down. Large graphics files in particular will radically increase the size of your
project file. This will not compromise data security but it may slow down editing on
some computer configurations. Use the Picture Shortcuts 328 function for frequently-
used graphics files.
· When the total size of the files in the Baggage section exceeds 512KB the size
information is displayed in red under the file list. When the total size exceeds 2MB
a warning will be displayed every time you try to add another file to the Baggage
section. Again, adding more files will not compromise data security but it will make
your project file much larger and may use a large amount of system resources and
slow down editing on some computer configurations.

File names and supported formats:

· The names of files added to the Baggage section cannot exceed 31 characters.
Longer file names will be shortened automatically.
· You can add files of any type to the Baggage section but only graphics files can be
displayed in the Insert Picture drop-down list in the Toolbar.
· Microsoft's .SHG format is not supported in the Baggage images drop-down list in
the Toolbar. You can add .SHG files to the Baggage section but they will not be
displayed in the drop-down list. (In classic Winhelp .SHG files used for creating
images with hotspots but they not needed in Help & Manual, see Graphics with
hotspots 321 )
· You cannot add images with hotspots to the Baggage drop-down list. Hotspots
cannot be stored together with image files, they can only be added to images in
the Help & Manual editor.

Baggage files in modular projects:

The Baggage files from project modules are also merged in your output when you
are using compile-time merging. If individual modules contain Baggage files with the
same names Help & Manual always uses the first Baggage file encountered and

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ignores all other Baggage files. This means that Baggage files in the master module
always have priority, followed by the child modules in the order in which they are
processed.
For example, if both the master module and the child modules contain Baggage files
called redarrow.gif and functions.js the versions of the files in the master will
project be used in the entire project, both in the master module's topics and in the
child module's topics. The versions in the child modules will be ignored.
If two child modules contain different versions of a file with the same name the first
version encountered will be used in the topics of both modules and the other version
will be ignored.
To make sure that Baggage files in child modules are used in the child module you
must make sure that their names are unique and not used in any other modules,
including the master module.

See also:
Working with Modular Help Systems 492

8.11 Visual Studio Help (MS Help 2.0)

Visual Studio Help is also known as MS Help 2.0. Originally this help format was intended to
be the successor of HTML Help. However, Microsoft then postponed its release indefinitely
and it is now clear that it is never going to be released as a help format for normal user
applications.
· Important Note:
Please note that the support for Visual Studio Help/MS Help 2.0 is only included in the
Professional version of Help & Manual 4.

Visual Studio Help is not a consumer help format!

Visual Studio Help is now only used for documenting add-on components designed to
be integrated into the Visual Studio .NET programming environment. The advantage of
this is that the documentation becomes part of the VS.NET's own documentation,
making it possible to provide context-sensitive help for third-party VS.NET components.

About this documentation:

This section provides a very brief introduction to compiling Visual Studio Help with Help
& Manual. If you want to use Visual Studio Help you need to be experienced in VS.NET
programming, otherwise you shouldn't even think about using this help format. In
addition to this you should also study the relevant Help 2.0 documentation in both VS.
NET and the Visual Studio Help Integration Kit (VSHIK) very carefully.

See also:
Visual Studio Help 777 (Help Formats)
Visual Studio Help 579 (Project Properties)

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 528 Help & Manual Online Help

8.11.1 Requirements and limitations

What you need to compile and view Visual Studio Help:

To compile Help 2.0 you need Visual Studio .NET and the Visual Studio Help Integration
Kit, which can be downloaded from the Microsoft website (see below for address 528 ).
Both these packages must be installed to compile Help 2.0 with Help & Manual.
· After installing the Help 2.0 compiler go to Tools > Customize > Compilers 737 in Help
& Manual and make sure that the correct path is entered to the compiler
executable.
To view Help 2.0 documentation you only need VS.NET, the VSHIK does not have to be
installed.
Unlike HTML Help there is no stand-alone version of the Help 2.0 viewer. If you don't
have VS.NET installed you can't view Help 2.0. (Remember, we did say that this is not a
help format for general user documentation!)

The MS Help 2.0 compiler:

The MS Help 2.0 compiler is part of the Visual Studio Help Integration Kit (VSHIK),
which you must download from the Microsoft website in the correct version for your
version of Visual Studio .NET. Unlike the HTML Help and Winhelp compilers it is not
a stand-alone compiler system. It can only be used in combination with Visual
Studio .NET, which you will have if you are programming Visual Studio .NET
components. If you are not programming Visual Studio .NET components you don't
need it. Got it?

The Visual Studio Help Integration Kit:

This package is available directly from the Microsoft website:
Visual Studio .NET Help Integration Kit

Limitations of Visual Studio Help:

Surprisingly, Visual Studio Help is actually considerably more limited than both Winhelp
and HTML Help. Many common features of Microsoft's earlier help formats are not
available in Visual Studio Help. For example, window types 177 are not supported at all,
nor are links to external files. Links to external videos are also taboo in Visual Studio
Help. The only external links that are permitted are web URLs with absolute addresses.

See also:
Visual Studio Help 777 (Reference)
8.11.2 About compiling VS Help
If you are not familiar with Visual Studio .NET you shouldn't really even think about working
with Visual Studio Help (Help 2.0). It is an extremely complex help system and the compiler
is both tricky and very picky.

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Required settings:
The Help 2.0 compiler requires a "Namespace" and a "Unique Identifier" (also referred to
as a "Unique Title ID" in the documentation). Both must be entered otherwise the
compiler will quit with an error message. (The Namespace is used to call the help viewer,
the Unique Identifier is like a Topic ID for the entire help file.)
In Help & Manual you can enter these settings in Project > Project Properties > Visual
Studio Help > Namespace & Options 580 .

Registration is required for .HXS help files:

Unlike HTML Help .CHM files you cannot just double-click on a Visual Studio Help .HXS
file to start it. It must be installed and registered with the MS Installer first.
When you compile .HXS files with Help & Manual they are installed and registered
automatically on your development machine so that you can view them there. However,
when you distribute your files you must configure the MS Installer to do this. See the
documentation of the installer and VS.NET for details.

Referencing files in your HTML topic templates:

If you reference any additional files in your HTML topic templates 477 you must add them
to the Baggage Section 520 in Project Properties. MS Help 2 does not have anything like
an .HHP file with which you can tell the compiler to include additional files. (Yet another
surprising limitation compared to Microsoft's other earlier help formats.)
If you add files to the Baggage Section they will be included in your compiled output
automatically.

"Do not compile" option for debugging:

Help & Manual supports two different compile options for Visual Studio Help. Normally
you will compile a finished .HXS file, which will then be automatically registered on your
local development computer and opened. If this does not work properly there is also a
debugging option in the Compile Help File 411 dialog:

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· If you select the option Do not compile, open help project with VStudio Help & Manual
generates a Visual Studio Help Project file with the extension .HWProj in the
temporary output directory. This is a small XML file that acts as a wrapper for VS.Net.
· When you select this option the temporary output directory (in your project directory) is
not deleted after you compile the project. After compiling you can then use the .
HWProj file to open and compile the project file directly in VS.Net, using the debugging
options available there.

Example calls:
The following two calls are just brief examples. For full details please refer to the
documentation of VS.NET and the VSHIK!
Manual registration of an .HXS file:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Help 2.0 SDK\hxreg" -n Namespace -i UniqueID -c

MyHelpfile.HXS

Call to view an .HXS file:

"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Help\dexplore.exe" /helpcol

ms-help://ECSoftware

As you can see there is no file name in the call. In the above example
ECSoftware is the Namespace. The viewer will only find the file if it has
been registered correctly.

See also:
Visual Studio Help 777 (Reference)
Compiling Your Project 410

8.12 Translating Your Projects

Whilst you can also work in multiple western languages in the Standard version of Help &
Manual 4, full support for translation and localization is only included in the Professional

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version. The topics in this chapter provide an introduction to the program's translation and
localization features show you where to find the information you need to use them.
Translation tutorials and Trados INI file:
You can find more detailed tutorials on translating and localizing your
projects in two parts at the Help & Manual user forum: Part 1 / Part 2.
You must register as a forum member (this is free) to access this section.
A customized INI file 122 for SDL Trados is included with Help & Manual for
proper display and editing of the XML output in Trados.

Translation and localization features in Help & Manual Pro:

XML export/import for translation with external tools:
The Professional version of Help & Manual 4 includes full Unicode 780 support so that
you can edit and generate help in all the world's languages except right-to-left
languages. In addition to this you can also export your projects to package of XML
files that can be translated in another program and then re-imported to Help &
Manual with all original layout, formatting, links etc. intact. You can translate your
projects with an XML editor or with an XML-aware professional translation tool like
Trados or Across.

Support for translation in Help & Manual itself:

You can also translate your projects in Help & Manual itself. This can be done either
in-house using your own copy of the program or by an outside translator working
with Help & Manual. The Unicode support means that you can work directly in your
target language.
In addition to this the Project Synchronization Tool 645 makes it easy to identify topics
containing changes in the next version of your documentation so that you can
provide the translator with a new version of the project file to update.

See also:
Translating in Help & Manual 531
Translating with external editors 533
XML Export and Import 786
Compiling to XML 415
The Project Synchronization Tool 645
8.12.1 Translating in Help & Manual
IN THIS TOPIC:
Procedure for translating projects in Help & Manual 532

Procedure for updating translated projects 533

Translating projects in Help & Manual is basically exactly the same as working on a project
in your own language. You just make a copy of the project, set up the language settings
appropriately for the target language and work you way through the project, translating as
you go. When a new version of your project becomes available you can then use the Project
Synchronization Tool 645 to create an updated version of the translated project containing all

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532 Help & Manual Online Help

the topics with new material to be translated.

Procedure for translating projects in Help & Manual:

1. Make a "translation pair" from your original project.
If you want you can just make a copy of your original .HMX project file for translation
but if you make a translation pair now updating the translation will be easier later.
Select Tools > Project Synchronization and follow the instructions for creating a
translation pair in The Project Synchronization Tool 647 .
2. Make a copy of your project folder for the translator.
This will be easiest if all the project files are contained in the same folder, including
your graphics files. If you have separate source graphics, for example Impict .IPP
graphics containing editable text objects, remember to include those too, preferably in
a separate folder inside your project folder. Remember to copy any other external files
that you are referring to in your project as well (these should also be kept in your
project folder).
3. Copy the .HMX file copy created in Step one to the translator's project folder.
This may sound obvious but it's important. For easier synchronization later the
translator needs to work on a paired copy, not just a plain copy.
4. Set up the language settings for the target language in the translation version.
This is very important and can lead to unexpected errors in your output if you forget it.
For details on the settings you need to make and the issues you need to consider
study International languages setup 149 and International Languages and Unicode 780 .
5. Translate the project in Help & Manual.
Obviously, the first thing you will translate will be the texts of your topics. But there are
also a number of other things that you should not forget, and a few things that you
should not translate:
· Remember to translate all the normal index keywords in the Topic Options and
Index tabs. See Keywords and Indexes 369 for details on working with index entries.
· Don't translate any A-keywords 854 in the Topic Options tab. These keywords are
never seen by the user and they will work best if you leave them unchanged.
· Check through all the sections of Project Properties 548 and translate any texts that
will be visible to the user, including the values of text variables 440 .
· Don't translate the names of variables or include options 453 (build conditions). You
can translate the display texts for include options if you want but you don't have to,
they are never seen by the user.
6. Update your graphics and translate any text they contain.
Check through all your graphics and make sure that any text they contain is translated
and that the graphics will make sense in the target language. Update any screenshots
containing texts. Translating text in graphics is much easier if you store source
versions of your graphics in Impict's 621 .IPP format, which stores text as editable
objects.
7. Generate your output and distribute.

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Procedure for updating translated projects:

Translating the first version of your project is very straightforward. It becomes slightly
more difficult when you update your documentation and want the translator to create a
new version for you.
If you are using Help & Manual Standard you must make notes of all your changes and
tell the translator where they are.
If you have Help & Manual Professional you can use the Project Synchronization Tool to
make an updated version of the translated project. Project Synch will delete removed
topics, add new topics and mark changed topics as changed. Full copies of the original
text of all new and changed topics, topic titles in the TOC and topic headings can be
inserted for the translator if you want. (Otherwise you must provide a copy of the original
version for the translator to refer to.)
1. Create an updated version of translated project for the translator.
Follow the instructions in The Project Synchronization Tool 649 for synchronizing the
new version of your documentation with the translated version. This will create a
new version of the old translated .HMX file for the translator, with deleted topics
removed, new topics inserted and changed topics marked as changed. You can
also choose to insert full copies of the new content of all new and changed topics
for the translator to work with.
2. Make copies of all new and changed graphics and other external files.
Before sending the updated .HMX file to the translator, make sure that you also
include all new and modified graphics in the translation package, along with any
new and changed external files. Here too, keeping everything in one project folder
makes things a lot easier.
3. Translate the changes in Help & Manual and generate your output.
Once the translator has produced the new version you can generate your output
as normal. Don't forget to check through the Project Properties to make sure that
all relevant texts visible to the user have been translated.

See also:
The Project Synchronization Tool 645
International languages setup 149
International Languages and Unicode 780 (Reference)
8.12.2 Translating with external editors
IN THIS TOPIC:
Procedure for translating in an external editor with XML 534

Procedure for updating translations with XML 535

Translating individual topics with XML 536

A growing number of professional translators use industry-grade translation assistance and

translation memory programs like Trados or Across that can edit XML files directly. Help &
Manual Pro can output your projects as an XML file package together with all the necessary
graphics and other components, including XSL stylesheets for WYSIWYG previews and

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534 Help & Manual Online Help

schema description files for automatic syntax and well-formedness checking.

When you receive the translated XML file package you can import it to a new Help & Manual
project just like opening an existing project with all your layout, links, styles, settings etc.
intact. In fact, you can think of XML as an alternative save format – it contains everything
that the .HMX project files contain.
It is also possible to translate the XML file package with any XML editor, along with
WYSIWYG previews if the editor supports that feature. However, some editors do not
provide "protection" for XML tags and when translators work with these editors they have to
be very careful not to delete or change any tags while they are working.

INI file for SDL Trados:

An INI file for SDL Trados is now included that automatically configures
Trados to edit the Help & Manual XML schema properly. This makes editing
and translating Help & Manual projects in Trados much easier. See here 122
for details.

Procedure for translating in an external editor with XML:

Important note: The instructions here are just a brief outline of working with XML. For
full details please refer to the following chapters in the help:
XML Export and Import 786 (Includes full details on translation
procedure)
Configuring your XML output 408
Compiling to XML 415
Creating projects from XML packages 142 (for re-importing after
translation)
Importing XML packages to existing projects 165
1. Decide whether you want a single or multiple XML files for your topics.
You have two choices for your topics when you generate an XML file package: You
can store all the topics in a single large XML file or you can generate a single XML file
for each topic. In addition to your own considerations you will probably want to ask the
translator which variant she or he prefers. Multiple files are generally easier to manage
but if the translator doesn't have a multi-file search and replace function she or he
may prefer a single file.
2. Compile your project to XML.
This is just like compiling to any other format. Just select File > Compile Help File and
select XML as your output format. You will then be able to select your output options
(single/multiple files etc.) in the Compile dialog. You can also compile directly to a ZIP
archive to make sending the package to the translator easier. For full details see
Configuring your XML output 408 and Compiling to XML 415 .
Always output XML to an empty folder! This will ensure that you don't have
extraneous files left over from previous XML compile operations.
3. Distribute the XML file package to the translator.
The XML output folder contains the entire project, including all the graphics files and
the full contents of the Baggage Files 520 section of Project Properties. Generally you

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will not need to send the translator anything else, unless you have any additional
external files that you are referencing.
4. Translate the XML files.
The physical procedure for translating will depend on the tool you use to edit the XML
files. However, there are some important instructions for translators that should always
be observed. See Instructions for translators and editors 796 for full details.
5. Import the translated XML file package to a new Help & Manual project.
It is possible to import XML files into an existing project, overwriting existing topics.
However, this is not necessary at this point. Since the XML file package contains
everything that the .HMX project file contains, plus the graphics, it makes much more
sense to create a new project. Keep the old version as a backup archive of the
previous version. Follow the instructions in Importing XML packages to existing
projects 165 .
6. Set up the language settings in your project for the new language.
This is very important and can lead to unexpected errors in your output if you forget it.
For details on the settings you need to make and the issues you need to consider
study International languages setup 149 and International Languages and Unicode 780 .
7. Check through the Project Properties to make sure that everything is OK.
Make sure that all the relevant texts 532 in Project Properties have been translated to
the new language.
8. Generate your output from the new project.
Generally you should then be able to generate the new version of your output in the
target language directly.

Procedure for updating translations with XML:

Here too, you can use the Project Synchronization Tool to make an updated version of
the translated project, which you can then generate to XML for updating by the
translator. Project Synch will delete removed topics, add new topics and mark changed
topics as changed. Full copies of the original text of all new and changed topics, topic
titles in the TOC and topic headings can be inserted for the translator if you want.
(Otherwise you must provide a copy of the original version for the translator to refer to.)
1. Create an updated version of translated project for the translator.
Follow the instructions in The Project Synchronization Tool 645 for synchronizing the
new version of your documentation with the translated version of the .HMX file
created by importing the translated XML files. This will create a new version of the
translated .HMX file for the translator, with deleted topics removed, new topics
inserted and changed topics marked as changed. You can also choose to insert
full copies of the new content of all new and changed topics for the translator to
work with.
2. Generate a new XML package from the updated translated .HMX file.
Compile your project to XML 415 . As always, remember to use an empty folder for
your output.
3. Translate the new material in the XML package.
This is the same procedure as above. The translator just translates the new
material in the updated XML package.

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536 Help & Manual Online Help

4. Import the translated version to the old translated .HMX project.

This time you don't want to create a new .HMX project when you import the
updated XML file package. The reason is that you have created a "translation pair"
in Step 1 above and you don't want to break the link in that pair. Instead, open the
old version of the translated .HMX project, select File - Import and import the
translated version over the existing version. Remember to select Overwrite
existing topics in the second screen of the import process. See Importing XML
projects 165 for full details.
5. Generate your output from the updated project.
You don't need to check your language settings because you are already using a
project set up for the target language. After checking that everything has been
translated correctly you can generate your output with Help & Manual normally.

Translating individual topics with XML:

You can also export individual topics to XML files for quick translations and updates:
1. Select the topic you want to export and select Topics > Save Topic to File.
2. Select .XML as the save format in the Save as type: field.
3. After the topic has been translated you can then re-import it with Topics > Load
Topic from File.
For full details on exporting and importing individual topics see Exporting and importing
topics 202 .

See also:
XML Export and Import 786
Configuring your XML output 408
Compiling to XML 415
Creating new projects from XML packages 142
Importing XML packages to existing projects 165

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

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9 PDF and Printed Manuals

In addition to compiling electronic help formats Help & Manual can also generate fully-
formatted user manuals, which can be printed directly or output as Adobe PDF files for
distribution so that users can print their own manuals. In addition to the content of your help
these manuals can also have a number of additional, automatically-generated components,
including a table of contents, an index, cover and back pages, an introduction, chapter title
pages and so on.

The difference between PDF output and printed manuals

Actually, there isn't really any fundamental difference between PDF output and printed
manuals. Both output options generate a PDF document using a PDF print manual
template 543 .
Print User Manual:
When you print a manual with File > Print User Manual the PDF document is only
created temporarily and deleted as soon as the printout is complete.
A PDF document is also generated on the fly in the background when you use the
File > Print Preview function. (This is also a quick way to preview your output without
actually generating and saving a PDF file.)
Compile to PDF:
When you compile to PDF 541 Help & Manual generates and saves a PDF document
without sending anything to the printer.
Separate print manual templates:
You can use different standard print manual templates for your printed manuals and
your PDF files. You can also change the templates for both output options at any
time. See Printing user manuals 538 and Generating PDF files 541 in this section for
details.

See also:
The Adobe PDF format 774

9.1 Printing user manuals

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to print user manuals 539
Using Print Preview 539
Printing/previewing selected topics 540

Before you print a user manual you will probably want to modify one of the standard print
manual templates 543 supplied with Help & Manual for your own needs. These standard
templates provide a basic framework for your user manuals and PDF documents but they
contain a number of elements which you will want to change, like the content of the cover
page and introduction and so on.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 PDF and Printed Manuals 539

Only 6 TOC levels are supported in PDF and manuals:

Note that you cannot use more than six TOC levels in printed user manuals
and PDF documents. If you have more levels than this (which is very
unlikely) all levels below level 6 will be included on the same level in the
Contents. The content of the topics will be included in your output but they
will not have headings because the heading generation system only
supports a maximum of 6 levels.

Step 1: Prepare your print manual template

· Follow the instructions in Using PDF templates 543 to edit a PDF print manual template.
Store your edited template with a different name so that you can return to the standard
template later if you want. You only need to do this once.
· Once you have created a personalized print manual template you can use it as often
as you like, both for your current project and for other projects.
· You may find it convenient to use a copy of your edited template and store it in your
project directory. This keeps all the files associated with your project together and
makes your project more portable.

Step 2: Use Print Preview to check your user manual

1. Open your project and select File > Print Preview... 669
2. Select the printer you want to use in the Printer section at the top of the dialog. You
must select a printer here even if you only want to preview your output because the
printer driver is used to generate the preview. (You must have a printer driver installed
to use the Print User Manual and Print Preview functions.)
3. Select the print manual template you prepared in Step 1 539 in the Print Manual
Template: field. Use the button to navigate to and select the template file, which has
the extension .MNL.
4. Select any Include Options appropriate for your manual. The default selection here is
Print Manual and you will not need to change this unless you have made use of
include options in your project. (See Conditions and Customized Output 451 for more
details on include options and how to use them.)
5. Set the other options in the dialog as you would like to have them, then click on
to display the print preview.
See Print Preview 669 in the Reference section for details of the settings in the
two print dialog pages.

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540 Help & Manual Online Help

Navigating in the Print Preview screen:

These buttons select the page display mode. You can
choose between 100%, page width (uses the entire width of
the window), full page (shows the entire page on the
screen) and facing pages.
These buttons navigate through the preview document.
Just try them out and you will quickly see how they work.

PgUp and PgDn Scroll through the preview document one page at a time.

Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl Go to the beginning or end of the preview document.

+PgDn
The mouse scroll wheel scrolls in the current page if only
Mouse Scroll Wheel part of the page is visible on the screen. If the full page is
visible the scroll wheel scrolls one page at a time.
Ctrl+ Mouse Scroll
Scrolls up and down one page at a time.
Wheel

Step 3: Print your user manual

1. Open your project and select in the Toolbar or File > Print User Manual 666 .
2. Select the print manual template you prepared in Step 1 in the Print Manual Template:
field. Use the button to navigate to and select the template file, which has the
extension .MNL.
3. Select any Include Options appropriate for your manual. The default selection here is
Print Manual and you will not need to change this unless you have made use of
include options in your project. (See Conditions and Customized Output 451 for more
details on include options and how to use them.)
4. Set the other options in the dialog as you would like to have them, then click on
and set the remaining options you wish to use.
5. Click on to print.
See Print User Manual 666 in the Reference section for details of the settings in
the two print dialog pages.

Printing or previewing selected topics only:

· If you only want to print or preview individual chapters or topics select them first in the
TOC with the mouse. Use Ctrl+Click to select individual topics out of order and SHIFT
+Click to select continuous blocks of topics.
· Then follow the instructions in Step 2 539 or Step 3 540 above but select Selected Topics
in the Include Options: section on page 1 of the Print dialog.

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 PDF and Printed Manuals 541

This method will always generate any additional pages you have defined in
your print manual template (Cover, Introduction, Index etc.) as well as the
selected topics. To print the topics only select the topics you want to print
and choose Topics > Print Topic.

See also:
Printing topics 207

9.2 Generating PDF files

Before you generate a PDF file you will probably want to modify one of the standard print
manual templates 543 supplied with Help & Manual for your own needs. These standard
templates provide a basic framework for your user manuals and PDF documents but they
contain a number of elements which you will want to change, like the content of the cover
page and introduction and so on.

Only 6 TOC levels are supported in PDF and manuals:

Note that you cannot use more than six TOC levels in printed user manuals
and PDF documents. If you have more levels than this (which is very
unlikely) all levels below level 6 will be included on the same level in the
Contents. The content of the topics will be included in your output but they
will not have headings because the heading generation system only
supports a maximum of 6 levels.

Step 1: Prepare your print manual template

· Follow the instructions in Using PDF templates 543 to edit a PDF print manual template.
Store your edited template with a different name so that you can return to the standard
template later if you want. You only need to do this once.
· Once you have created a personalized print manual template you can use it as often
as you like, both for your current project and for other projects.
· You may find it convenient to use a copy of your edited template and store it in your
project directory. This keeps all the files associated with your project together and
makes your project more portable.

Step 2: Set your Adobe PDF settings

Changes since Help & Manual 3:

If you are upgrading from Help & Manual 3 you may be looking for the
Project Properties settings that activate and deactivate PDF components
(TOC, Introduction etc.) in your output. This functionality is now only
available in the print manual template, which you must edit with the Print
Manual Designer. In Help & Manual 3 it was possible to make these
settings in two places (Project Properties and the template), and this
caused many mistakes.

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542 Help & Manual Online Help

1. Open your project and go to Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF 604 to set the
export settings for Adobe PDF. All these settings only need to be set once for your
project. Any changes you make are stored automatically, including the selection of a
print manual template to be used for PDF export.
2. In the PDF Layout 604 section select the print manual template you edited in Step 1.
Use the button to navigate to the template file, which has the extension .MNL. See
Adobe PDF settings 604 in the Reference section for details on the other available
settings.

A printer driver is needed for PDF output:

· Go to Tools > Customize > PDF Export 738 and check your reference device for PDF
output. This is the printer driver used to generate PDF files and it does not have to
be the driver for a printer physically connected to your computer.
You must have at least one printer driver installed on your computer, otherwise you
will not be able to generate PDF files at all!
The "Default reference device" is your default printer driver on Windows NT, 2000
and XP. If you experience any problems with your PDF output they may be caused
by proprietary printer drivers. If this happens try installing a standard driver for a
common printer like a LaserJet or a DeskJet from the Windows CD. Then select this
driver as your reference device in the PDF Export tab.

Embedding fonts in your PDF output file:

If you use rare fonts in your project you should make sure that those fonts are
embedded in your PDF file, otherwise they will not be displayed on computers where
they are not installed. However, note that this will significantly increase the size of
your PDF file, so using rare fonts should generally be avoided wherever possible!
By default Help & Manual automatically embeds all fonts except a list of standard
fonts. To check this exclusion list go to Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF
Output > Font Embedding 606 .

Step 3: Compile to Adobe PDF format

· Select in the Toolbar or File > Compile Help File 663 , and select Adobe PDF in the
Output Format: section.
· See Compiling Your Project 410 for more details on compiling.

See also:
Compiling Your Project 410
Using PDF templates 543
Conditions and Customized Output 451
PDF Questions 907 (FAQ)

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 PDF and Printed Manuals 543

9.3 Using PDF templates

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to find the standard print manual templates 543

How to select a print manual template 543

How to edit a print manual template 544

The layout of Help & Manual's PDF and print manual output is controlled by special print
manual templates that do much more than just define the appearance of your pages. You
can use them to design entire manuals, with cover and back cover pages, multiple title
pages at the beginning, an introduction, a formatted table of contents, title pages for
individual chapters, graphics, headers and footers, a formatted index and multiple endnotes
pages.
Print manual templates have full support for Help & Manual's predefined variables and user-
defined variables, which they access from your project file. Since the templates are external
files you can use them in multiple projects.

Important note for former Help & Manual 3 users:

In Help & Manual 3 and earlier you could include and exclude individual
PDF items (topics, TOC etc.) both with settings in Project Properties and
with settings in the print manual template. This has now been simplified.
Inclusion/exclusion of PDF items is now only controlled by the print manual
template 543 . There are no corresponding settings in Project Properties.

How to find the standard print manual templates:

Help & Manual comes with a selection of standard print manual templates that are stored
in the \Templates\pdf subdirectory in the Help & Manual program directory. These
templates have the file extension .MNL.

How to select a print manual template:

Both the File > Print User Manual function and PDF output use PDF and are generated
with the help of print manual templates. However, you can select different print manual
templates for PDF output and print manual generation.
Selecting a print manual template for PDF output:
1. Go to Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF Export Layout > PDF Layout 604 .
2. Click on the button in the Print Manual Template: field to select the template you
want to use.
Selecting a print manual template for printing a user manual:
1. Select File > Print User Manual 666 .
2. Click on the button in the Print Manual Template: field to select the template you
want to use.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 544 Help & Manual Online Help

In both these dialogs you can open the selected template for editing by
clicking on the button next to the template selection field.

How to edit a print manual template:

· Select Tools > Print Manual Designer 622 to open the Designer. Then select File > Open
in the Designer to open a template for editing. See above for information on the
location of the standard templates.
OR:
· Select a template with one of the methods described above and select the
button next to the template selection field.
The Print Manual Designer is a separate program. See the help in the
Designer for details on how to use it.

See also:
Templates and Secondary Windows 462

9.4 Embedding files in PDFs

How to embed linked files in PDF documents:

You can set Help & Manual to automatically embed files referenced with file links into the
PDF file when you export your project to PDF. This makes it possible to distribute
additional files with your PDF document without having to use multiple files.
When the user clicks on the link the file will be displayed with the application with which it
is associated in Windows. This works for most file types, including other PDF files,
documents and images of all kinds and even executable EXE files.
1. Go to Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF > PDF Layout and activate the
option File links - embed linked files with the following extensions .
2. Make sure that the files you want to link to are stored in one of the folders
referenced in your Image Folders 553 list in Project Properties. If you have many
folder references place the files in one of the first few folders in the list.
3. Create your file links using the normal procedure 300 .
When you compile your project to the files referenced with file links will be physically
embedded in the PDF file. This will increase the size of the PDF accordingly, of course.

See also:
Inserting file links 300

9.5 Unicode languages and PDF

Help & Manual 4 introduces full support for Unicode, which means that you can now use it to
edit and output help in all languages supported by Windows, including Asian languages and
other languages with more than 255 characters.

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 PDF and Printed Manuals 545

The original version of Help & Manual 4 did not support Unicode in PDF output. As of
version 4.2 the program now has a new PDF engine that includes full support for Unicode
and Asian languages in PDF output.

How to output projects using Unicode-based languages to PDF:

In Help & Manual version 4.2 and above you can now output projects using Unicode
languages to PDF directly. Just select File > Compile Help File and then choose PDF as
your output format.
See PDF and Printed Manuals 538 for more details on working with PDF.

See also:
PDF and Printed Manuals 538
International Languages Setup 149
International Languages and Unicode 780 (Reference)

9.6 CID mode for Unicode fonts

The CID Font Mode option is in the Adobe PDF > Font
Embedding settings

The CID Font Mode option can reduce the size of your PDF for projects written in Unicode-
based languages.
When you set CID Font Mode to Unicode only the characters actually used in the font are
embedded in the PDF file, in a special internal format.
This works correctly with most Asian languages. However, it may sometimes cause
problems with western languages like Russian or other European languages with special
characters.

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546 Help & Manual Online Help

How to use CID Font Mode:

Western languages: Set CID Font Mode to CID Off for all normal western languages like
English and most other Western European languages. You should also
turn CID off for Eastern European languages like Russian, Czech,
Polish and so on.
Asian languages: Set CID Font Mode to Unicode for all Asian languages based on
Unicode fonts.

About CID Font Mode

Although Help & Manual can generate PDFs from projects written in Unicode-based
languages, the Adobe PDF format does not actually support Unicode directly. This is
because PDF is a universal format designed to be displayed on any computer running any
operating system. If PDF files were encoded with Unicode they would not display on older
operating systems like all Windows 9x that have no Unicode support.
PDF files gets around this problem by using a different encoding internally that can map
and represent all the Unicode characters. PDF currently supports two internal encoding
formats for Unicode: double-byte characters (which are often mistakenly confused with
Unicode) and "character identity definition" or CID. The option for embedding fonts in CID
Font Mode was introduced in Help & Manual 4.2.
CID Font Mode: Unicode
When you set CID Font Mode to Unicode the PDF engine does not embed the entire
font. Instead, it only embeds the characters that are actually used, which are stored in a
special internal format. This works well for most Asian languages and will usually
provide a significant reduction in PDF file size.

CID Font Mode: CID Off

When CID Font Mode is set to CID Off Unicode character codes are exported in
double-byte format and fonts are generally embedded in the PDF (except for common
fonts like Arial). This works well with western languages but it does not work with Asian
languages and other languages based on Unicode.

See also:
International languages setup 149
Adobe PDF - Font Embedding 606 (Project Properties)

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Part

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 548 Help & Manual Online Help

10 Project Properties Reference

The Project Properties section in the Project menu is the control center for your project.
Unlike the settings in Tools > Customize 731 (which are program settings), all the settings you
enter here are stored in your current .HMX project file and are only available to the project in
which they are stored. They define all the basic parameters for your help project and how it
is output to the formats supported by the program.

Using variables in Project Properties:

You can use both user-defined variables and global variables in the text
fields in Project Properties. For example, in the Copyright: field in Title &
Copyright you might want to enter something like: © <%YEAR%> by <%
AUTHOR%>

There are three groups of settings in Project Properties: General settings, help window
settings and output format settings.

General settings:
These settings are stored in the Common Properties 548 section. They define things like
the name of your project displayed in help window title bars, copyright messages,
language settings, where images used in the project are stored, text variables used in
the project and so on.
It is always a good idea to check all the settings in this section when you create a new
project.

Help window settings:

These settings define the appearance and behavior of the viewers and/or windows used
to display your help in electronic help formats (HTML Help, Winhelp, Browser-based
Help and eBooks).
Not all settings here are relevant for all output formats. For more information see Help
Windows 800 in the Reference section.

Output format settings:

These settings are organized in sections by output format. They allow you to control how
each output format is handled, providing a high degree of customization. For example, in
all the HTML-based formats you can edit the HTML templates used to generate your
topics and all the other pages generated by Help & Manual when you compile your
project.

10.1 Common Properties

Most of these settings are "housekeeping" for your project. They include things like the title
of your project, language settings and the locations of images used in the project.

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 Project Properties Reference 549

In addition to this section also includes three of Help & Manual's most powerful and useful
functions:

Baggage Files:
This is a new function that allows you to store small, frequently-used images and
other files in your project. This provides quick access to images and ensures that the
files are exported when you compile - for example in the case of files that are only
referenced in scripts or manually-inserted HTML code.

Text Variables:
This section allows you to define and store any number of variables for use in your
project. This is very useful for texts that may change after you create your project,
such as program names and so on. You can then change the texts in your entire
project just by editing the variables, and you are always sure that all instances have
been changed.

Custom Builds:
This section allows you to define your own include options 453 . Include options are like
tags that you use to include or exclude text, topics, chapters or entire modules from
your help output. You simply tag content with your include options in your project and
then select or deselect the corresponding options in the Compile Help File 663 dialog
when you compile.

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 550 Help & Manual Online Help

10.1.1 Title & Copyright

Settings in the Title & Copyright section

Help title: The title of your help project. By default, this text is displayed in the title
bar of the help viewer in electronic help formats. This is done with the
global <%TITLE%> variable in the Title Bar Text: field for the Main help
window definition in the Help Windows 558 section.
If you want to change the title displayed in title bar of your project you
can either change the text here or delete the variable in the Title Bar
Text: field in the Help Windows section and replace it with a different
text.
You can also insert the help title anywhere in your project by using the
<%TITLE%> variable.

Author: The author of your help project. This text is not used automatically by
Help & Manual. You can use it yourself anywhere in your project by
inserting the <%AUTHOR%> variable.

Summary: A short text describing your project. This text is not used automatically
by Help & Manual. You can use it yourself anywhere in your project by
inserting the <%SUMMARY%> variable.

Copyright: The copyright notice for your project. This text is not used automatically
by Help & Manual. You can use it yourself anywhere in your project by
inserting the <%COPYRIGHT%> variable.

Comment: Space for a comment about your project. This text is for information
and documentation only. There is no corresponding variable so you
cannot insert it in topics in your project.

Major These fields have four corresponding variables that can be used to
Version: generate three-part version numbers.
Minor
The variables corresponding to the individual components are <%
Version:
VERSION_MAJOR%>, <%VERSION_MINOR%> and <%VERSION_BUILD%>.
Build Version:
The fourth variable, <\%VERSION%>, combines the contents of the three
fields with dots between them, like this:
6.5.456

See also:
Creating Projects 125
Using Variables 440

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Project Properties Reference 551

10.1.2 Language Settings

These settings are very important for correct handling of languages and character sets in
your output. Before making any changes here please study the International Languages and
Unicode 780 chapter in the Reference section carefully. For more detailed instructions for
individual languages please also refer to International languages setup 149 in the Creating
Projects chapter.

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552 Help & Manual Online Help

Settings in the Language Settings section:

Language of Defines the language of the compiled help file. This option controls
help file: sorting in the keyword index and full-text search in the compiled help
file. In addition to this it also identifies the language to the system for
proper handling of languages with special character sets and
languages requiring Unicode 780 for proper processing.
· The default setting (English United States) works correctly for all
Western European languages and should not be changed unless
really necessary.
· The language setting should be changed for Eastern European
languages (including Greek and Turkish) and the Font character
set setting (see below) should then be set to match.
· This setting must be changed for all Asian languages and other
languages requiring Unicode 780 support (all languages with more
than 255 characters that store characters as two bytes). Here too,
the Font character set must also be set to match. Correct
Unicode support for these languages is not possible without a
correct language setting and a matching font character set
setting.

Bi-directional This setting is for activating support for right-to-left languages like
Language Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi. The default is Left to Right and it should
Mode: only be changed if you are working with a right-to-left language like
Hebrew, Farsi or Arabic.
The setting makes radical changes in the way Help & Manual
operates, switching the direction of all the texts in the editor, TOC and
everywhere else, both in Help & Manual itself and in the compiled
output.

Font character Defines the character set to be used both in your compiled help file
set: and in the Help & Manual editor.
· The default setting (ANSI_CHARSET) should be used for English
and all other Western European languages.
· This option must be set to the correct, specific character set for
all Eastern European languages (including Greek and Turkish).
Furthermore, this setting must match the Language of the help
file setting.
· This option must also be set to the correct, specific character set
for all languages requiring Unicode 780 support (most Asian
languages and other languages with more than 255 characters).
In these languages too it is essential to set both this option and
the Help file language option to the correct, matching settings for
the language you are using.

Default font: This is not the default font for your help file! This option only sets the
font used by Winhelp and HTML Help for their dialog boxes and table
of contents entries. The default is MS Sans
© 1997 Serif,8,0
- 2007 by EC Software,
and both all rights reserved
Winhelp and HTML Help are optimized for this font. If you change this
font always test thoroughly before publishing your help.
 Project Properties Reference 553

See also:
International Languages Setup 149 (Procedures)
International Languages and Unicode 780 (Reference)
Test-compiling Asian languages on non-Asian Windows 415
10.1.3 Topic IDs and Help Context
The settings in this section allow you to automatically generate help context numbers 213 and
prefixes for topic IDs 211 for new topics. Help context numbers are used to make direct calls
to help topics from application programs. Topic ID prefixes are useful for preventing
duplicate IDs in modular help systems 498 , and programmers sometimes also require them
for help calls.

Settings in the Topic IDs and Help Context section:

Topic ID Prefix: Any text you enter here is automatically added as a prefix to the
suggested topic ID when you create a new topic. Note that this
function can only be used for new topics; you cannot automatically
change existing topic IDs.

Help Context If you activate this function help context numbers will be assigned to
Numbers: new topics automatically, starting with the Start with number. Each
new number will be generated by incrementing the last number
Start with:
assigned by the Increment by setting.
Increment by:
This function can only be used for new topics. You can add, delete
and change the context numbers of existing topics with the Help
Context Tool 624 .

Apply help This setting will also automatically generate help context numbers for
context new topic anchors 305 so that anchors can also be used for calls to help
numbers to topics from applications.
topic anchors:

See also:
Assigning topic IDs 210
Assigning help context numbers 212
IDs and context numbers in modular help 497
Anchors - jump targets 305
10.1.4 Image Folders
This section contains the list of folders containing the graphics files used in your project.
Although you can enter these folder paths manually you do not actually have to. Every time
you insert a graphic in your project from a folder not included in this list Help & Manual adds
the corresponding path automatically.

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 554 Help & Manual Online Help

Image folder paths are relative!

Please note that although the entire absolute image folder path is
displayed in the dialog screen for your information the paths stored by
Help & Manual are actually relative to the project directory (i.e. the
directory containing the .HMX project file). This means that you can always
move the entire project directory and the graphics folders it contains
without causing errors.

How Help & Manual locates graphics:

When you insert an image file in your project Help & Manual only stores the file name, it
does not store the path to the file. It finds the graphics file by searching all the folders
listed in Image Folders, in the order in which they are listed.
This makes it easy to move project and graphics folders to other locations. However, it
also means you must be careful to avoid duplicate graphics file names in different
folders. See Managing your graphics 325 for more information.

Image Folders dialog controls:

To insert a new entry click on Add Entry and navigate to the folder you
want to add.

To delete an entry click on the entry to select it, then click on Remove
Entry.

The Move Up and Move Down buttons move entries up and down in the
list. This controls the order in which Help & Manual searches folders to
locate graphics files.
Remember that Help & Manual always inserts the first file with a
matching name that it finds with a matching name. If two folders in the
search list contain files with the same name the first file will always be
inserted. The second file will never be found.

See also:
Using Graphics 313
Managing your graphics 325
10.1.5 Baggage Files
This is a new function that allows you to store small, frequently-used images and other files
in your project. This provides quick access to images and ensures that the files are exported
when you compile - for example in the case of files that are only referenced in scripts or
manually-inserted HTML code.
See Using Baggage Files 520 for full details on using this function.

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Baggage Files dialog controls:

To add a new file to the Baggage section click on Add File and navigate
to the file you want to add. Note that this physically copies the file into
your .HMX project file, so no path information needs to be stored. After
doing this you can even delete the original file if you want.

To delete a file from the Baggage section click on its entry to select it
and then click on Remove File. This physically deletes the file from your
.HMX project file.

You can only rename files in the Baggage if they have not yet been
referenced in your project. As soon as they are referenced this button is
grayed out and cannot be used.

Save File As can be used to export files from the Baggage and save
them as external files on your hard disk.

See also:
Using Baggage Files 520
10.1.6 Text Variables
This section allows you to define and store any number of variables for use in your project.
This is very useful for texts that may change after you create your project, such as program
names and so on. You can then change the texts in your entire project just by editing the
variables, and you are always sure that all instances have been changed.

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Text Variables dialog controls:

To add a new variable click on Add and enter a name for the variable in
the dialog displayed. Then click on the variable's default enter value text
the Value column and enter the value for the variable.
Unlike Help & Manual 3, variable names in Help &
Manual 4 can contain spaces.
Note that Help & Manual automatically makes variable names all upper
case, irrespective of what you enter.

To delete a variable just select it in the list and click on Delete.

Note that Help & Manual does not check whether you have used the
variable in your project when you do this! Undefined variables will be
output to your project as the variable name. You can search for them and
remove them with Find & Replace in the Edit menu.

Imports a list of variables and corresponding values from a plain text file,
adding them to the project's variable list.
Syntax: VARIABLENAME=Variable value
Enter one variable per line without spaces on either side of the = sign
and with a hard carriage return at the end of each line.
Example:
PRODNAME=Widget Confabulator 3
PRODUCT PATH=\Application\Widget\Program
CURRENT LOCATION=Bombay, India

This function exports the current variable list to a text file, using the same
format as shown above. (You can use this to get a full example of the
format if you like.)
This only includes user-defined variables. Help & Manual's own
predefined variables are not exported.

See also:
Using Variables 440
10.1.7 Custom Builds
This section allows you to define your own include options, which are also referred to as
Build IDs. These IDs are like tags that you use to include or exclude text, topics, chapters or
entire modules from your help output. You simply tag content with your include options in
your project and then select or deselect the corresponding options in the Compile Help File
dialog when you compile.
· See Conditions and Customized Output 451 for details on using this function in your
projects.

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Custom builds dialog controls:

To add a new user-defined include option click on Add and enter a Build ID
name in the dialog displayed.
Spaces and a number of special characters are not allowed in Build ID
names. They will simply be removed if you enter them. It is best just to use
A..Z and 0..9. All the characters you enter will also be converted to upper
case.
The Display Text is displayed in the lists of Build IDs used in the program
to help you identify the individual IDs. By default it is the same as the Build
ID name but you can change it if you want. Just click in the text in the
Display Text column and edit.

To delete an include option just select its Build ID in the list and click on
Delete.
Note that Help & Manual does not check whether you have used the
include option in your project when you do this!
Undefined include option tags used in your topics will still be functional and
since you cannot select them in the Compile Help File 663 dialog they will
always exclude the text they enclose.

See also:
Conditions and Customized Output 451

10.2 Help Windows

These settings define the appearance and behavior of the viewers and/or windows used to
display your help in electronic help formats (HTML Help, Winhelp, Browser-based Help and
eBooks).
Note that not all settings here are relevant for all output formats. For example, all the
settings here are completely irrelevant for PDF, printed manuals and MS Word RTF output,
and in eBooks the window size and position settings are also ignored.
For more information see Help Windows 800 in the Reference section.

Creating new help windows:

The button is displayed in the editing screens for all the help windows.
To display it just click on any of the windows in the list on the left.

See also:
Choosing a help window 177
Configuring Your Output 392
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
Help Windows 800 (Reference)

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10.2.1 Common Properties

These common properties are displayed at the top of the editing screen and are always
available no matter which tab is selected.

Common properties section settings and controls:

Add Window creates a new help window type definition, adding it to

the Help Windows list on the left. By default all new windows are
given the name NewWin, which you should change. Just click in the
Window Name: field to edit.
This button is available in every help window definition screen.

To delete a help window definition select its name in the list of

windows on the left and then click on Remove Window.
Note that you can only delete user-defined help window types. You
cannot delete the standard Main and Popup window types.

Window name: This is the identifying name of your help window type, which is
displayed in the Help Window: field in each topic's Topic Options tab.
It is restricted to a maximum length of 8 characters. No spaces or
non-alphanumeric characters are allowed.
You can change the names of help window definitions even if they
are in use (i.e. assigned to topics in your project) but it is not
advisable. After doing so you should always check the Help Window:
field in the Topic Options tabs of all topics using the window to make
sure that the help window assignment is correct.

Title bar text: This is the text displayed in the title bar of the help window. The text
entered for the Main help window defines the title displayed in the
main window of your project. You can enter different texts for other
window definitions to display different titles in their title bars.
By default this field contains the <%TITLE%> variable, which
automatically displays the text entered in Help Title: field in the Title
& Copyright 550 section, so you only need to change this if you want to
display a different text.

See also:
Choosing a help window 177
10.2.2 Color & Position Tab
The settings here define the background colors, size and position of the help window
associated with the definition.

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Important note for dual-monitor systems:

If you are developing your help on a dual monitor system always set up your primary
monitor to be on the left and your secondary monitor to be on the right. Windows
always defines the X and Y zero points as the top left corner of the primary monitor
and if it is on the right the secondary monitor on the left will use negative X values,
which will cause problems for your window definitions on users' computers. (See the
documentation of Windows and your graphics card for details on setting up your
primary and secondary monitors.)
Always define the size and position of help windows in you primary monitor, never in
your secondary monitor. This will ensure correct positioning on users' computers
with single monitors.

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Color and position tab settings and controls:

Left: Top: These values define the initial position and size of the help window
Width: Height: when it is first displayed (it can always be resized by the user). You
can enter them manually as pixel values or use the Position Wizard
button.
Entering these values for the Main help window type defines the
size and position of the main help viewer. Entering them for user-
defined help window types defines the size and position of external
windows 473 , if you are using them.
The default values of -1 for all four settings leave the window size
and position undefined and let Windows choose them
automatically.

The Position Wizard displays a dummy window that you can

position and resize on the screen to set the size and position
values.
If you have a dual monitor system use the position wizard in the
primary monitor and make sure that the primary monitor is on the
left: On dual-monitor systems the 0,0 position is defined as the top
left corner of the primary monitor, so doing this will make sure that
the resulting values also work on single-monitor computers.

The Default Positions button resets all the position and size values
to -1 to let Windows handle the window sizing (see above).

Suppress window Activating this check box defines a window without a header. This
header: setting is applied both to external windows 471 and to secondary
windows 471 displayed in the main help viewer.
The header display is also turned off in the Help & Manual editor
for topics associated with window type definitions without headers.

Click on the Change Color buttons to change the background colors

Header and topic of the topic header and topic text area. These colors are also
colors: displayed in the Help & Manual editor.
These settings are applied both to external windows 471 and to
secondary windows 471 displayed in the main help viewer.

See also:
External windows 473
Secondary windows 471
10.2.3 Winhelp Options Tab
The options in this tab only apply when you compile your project to Winhelp. They control
the appearance and behavior of the main Winhelp viewer window (Main help window type

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 Project Properties Reference 561

definition) and the viewer window for secondary windows 471 (user-defined help window type
definitions).

In Winhelp secondary windows are always external:

Note that in Winhelp secondary windows are always displayed as external
windows 473 when you link to them. This has the following consequences for
your project:
· The Winhelp Options for the Main help window define the appearance
and behavior of the main help viewer.
· The Winhelp Options for all user-defined help window types define the
appearance and behavior of your external windows.

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Winhelp Options tab settings:

Auto-size Automatically adjusts the height of secondary windows on the basis of
window height: their contents.
Note that this option is only available for secondary (user-defined)
windows, not for the Main window.

Maximize Automatically maximizes the help viewer when it is opened to fill the
window: user's entire screen. Be careful with this setting, many users don't like
it!

Keep window Keeps the help window on top of all other windows on the user's
on top: screen. This is another setting that should be used with caution. Many
users still use small monitors with relatively low resolution and on
these systems keeping the help window on top makes it impossible to
see the application without closing the help, which users generally find
very annoying!

Window The Winhelp help viewer normally adjusts window sizes and positions
coordinates are you enter interactively on the basis of the user's monitor size and
absolute: screen resolution. If you activate this option the values you enter for
window position and size will be taken as absolute and will not be
adjusted by the help viewer on the user's computer.
It is better to leave this unchecked unless you have a very good
reason for using absolute values.

Visible buttons: These options define the help viewer control buttons to be displayed in
the window.
Defaults displays the standard set of controls in the main help viewer.
It does not have any effect in secondary (user-defined) windows.
The Browse option which displays Previous/Next browse buttons is
only available in secondary (user-defined) windows, not for the Main
window. This is because these buttons cannot be disabled for the
main help viewer window.

User-defined This section allows you to define and display additional buttons of your
buttons: own, which execute Winhelp macros when the user clicks on them.
You must type the macros manually in the Winhelp Macro field.
See the documentation of Microsoft Help Workshop for details of
Winhelp macros and how to use them.

See also:
Secondary windows 471
External windows 473

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10.2.4 HTML Help Options Tab

The options in this tab only apply when you compile your project to HTML Help. They control
the appearance and behavior of the main HTML Help viewer window (Main help window type
definition) and the viewer window for external windows 473 (user-defined help window type
definitions) if they are activated with the Allow secondary HTML Help windows option (see
below).
Note that if the Allow secondary HTML Help windows option is not activated all the settings
here will be ignored for user-defined-help window type definitions. Then these secondary
windows will only define the background colors of the associated topics and whether or not
they have a header.

HTML Help does not have a "keep window on top" setting:

Note that there is no Keep window on top setting for HTML Help. This
property cannot be set in the help itself in HTML Help, it must be activated
by the programmer in the call from the application program that opens the
help. See the Microsoft documentation of the HTML Help API for details on
how to do this.

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HTML Help Options tab settings:

Allow If this is selected your secondary (user-defined) help window types will
secondary be displayed in external windows in HTML Help. Note that this is a
HTML Help global option: If it is selected all topics associated with user-defined
windows: help window types will be displayed in external windows (even topics
in the TOC), and only topics associated with the Main window type will
be displayed in the main help viewer.
If this option is not selected all the settings here are disabled for user-
defined help window type definitions. Then these secondary windows
will only define the background colors of the associated topics and
whether or not they have a header.

Save user- This option is only available for the Main help window type definition. If
defined it is activated the HTML Help viewer will save the user-defined help
positions after window size and position in the registry and use these values the next
first use: time the help is opened.
Leave this option activated unless you have a very good reason not to
use it. Most users hate it when programs reset windows that they have
resized!

Visible buttons: These options are used to choose which control buttons are displayed
in the help viewer. You may want to switch them all off for external
windows 473 .

Window has a This option activates or deactivates display of the help viewer's
navigation navigation panel containing the Table of Contents, keyword index and
panel: other tabs. You may want to disable this for external windows 473 . Note
that if you also disable the Hide/Show button (see above) the user will
not be able to activate the navigation panel at all!

Search tab: These options activate or deactivate the display of the Search and
Favorites tabs in the navigation panel. Note that if they are disabled it
Favorites tab:
will not be possible for the user to enable them.

User-defined Allows you to define two HTML links (i.e. URLs) as targets for the
buttons: Home button and two user-defined buttons. (These buttons must also
be activated in Visible buttons: to be displayed.)
You cannot enter links to topics in the help here. Note that you must
enter fully-qualified URLs including the protocol (i.e. http://, ftp:// etc).
Simple URLs without the protocol (e.g. www.domainname.com) will
not work on most users' machines.
You can edit the names of the Jump 1 and Jump 2 buttons but you
cannot change the name of the Home button.

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See also:
Secondary windows 471
External windows 473

10.3 HTML Help

The settings in this section control how your project is exported to HTML Help. Since HTML
Help is an HTML-based format it shares several groups of settings with the other HTML-
based output formats supported by Help & Manual.

Shared settings:
The options in the following two sections are shared by all HTML-based output formats (
HTML Help, Browser-Based Help, eBooks and Visual Studio Help (MS Help 2.0).
Topic Pages: These are the HTML templates 475 that control the layout of your topic
pages. There is only one version of each template for all HTML-based
output formats. You cannot create separate templates for each output
format.

HTML Export These are the general settings for all HTML output formats, including
Options: image conversion and export options and the options for the CSS style
sheet used to export the style formatting information from your project.
Here too, there is only one CSS style sheet and one set of HTML
Export Options for all four output formats. You cannot enter different
settings for each output format.
· Note that not all the settings in this section are relevant for all
HTML-based output formats. See HTML Export Options 573 for
details.

See also:
HTML Help 765 (Help Formats)
HTML Help Options 563 (Help Windows)
10.3.1 Topic Pages
This section allows you to edit the HTML templates 470 that define the layout and general
appearance of your topic pages in all HTML-based output formats. See Using HTML
Templates 475 for full details.

This is a shared section:

Note that the same HTML templates are used for all four HTML-based output
formats (HTML Help, Browser-Based Help, eBooks and MS Help 2.0). They are
accessible in several locations in Project Properties but no matter where you edit
them you are always editing the same templates. You cannot save different
templates for the individual formats.

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Simple editing mode:

When the Let me edit HTML code directly option at the top of the dialog is not selected
you can only define some basic options for the HTML template. This mode is
recommended if you do not have experience with editing HTML code!
Note that simple editing mode adjusts the template settings for all help window
definitions, both the Main window and any secondary user-defined help window types
you may have defined in the Help Windows 557 section.

Let me edit HTML Activate this check box to view and edit the HTML code of the
code directly: template. See below for details on direct HTML editing mode.

This button automatically clears the HTML template and reloads

the default template, overwriting any changes you have made.
Use with caution!
If you select the button accidentally just click .

Text above topic: Any text you enter in these two editing boxes will be inserted on
Text below topic: every page above and below the main text of your topic.
Note that you can only use plain text. No formatting or
HTML tags are allowed.

Topics with headers Activating this option adds additional navigation links to the
have <Top>, headers of your topic. These links always point to the Top topic
<Previous> and (the home topic defined in Common Properties > Language
<Next> links: Settings 551 ) and the Next and Previous topics in your help.
You can edit the captions of the links in the Caption column but
you cannot change their functionality.
By default the links are text-only. You can create button links by
selecting graphics files for your buttons in the Image File
column. Use the browse button to locate the graphics files.

HTML editing mode:

When the Let me edit HTML code directly option at the top of the dialog is selected you
can edit all the code of the HTML templates for your help window definitions manually. In
this mode you can also edit the templates of the Main help window and your user-
defined help window types separately (i.e. windows defined in the Help Windows 557
section). Experience in editing HTML code is necessary for using this mode!
Note that switching back to simple editing mode from HTML editing mode
will overwrite all your changes with the default templates, for all window
types! If you do this accidentally just select Cancel.

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HTML template for Select the help window type whose template you want to edit
window type: here. Each help window type definition has its own template that
can be edited separately.
By default only Main and Popup are displayed. Other templates
will only be listed if you have defined additional help window
types in the Help Windows 557 section.
Note that the Popup template is only used when you output
popups as HTML-encoded topics. See Creating popup topics 193
for details.

Editing window: The editor provides full HTML syntax highlighting to make
editing easier. To enlarge the window for easier editing just
resize the Project Properties window.

See also:
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
Using HTML Templates 475
HTML Help Options 800 (Help Windows)
HTML Help 765 (Help Formats)
10.3.2 Popup Topics
These options define how popup topics are exported in HTML Help. For full details see
Creating popup topics 194 and Using JavaScript popups 199 .

Popup topics section settings:

Text-only This activates HTML Help's native popup mode. You cannot use
popups: formatted text (bold, italics etc.), images, hyperlinks, tables or any
other non-text features. When this mode is activated hyperlinks to
popup topics in your help will display as popups automatically.
HTML Help's text-only popups are stored in an internal text file in the
output .CHM help file. By default this file is called CSHelp.txt. You
can change this here but since this is the default name of this file you
should only change it if the programmer specifically asks you to.
This mode can be used for context-sensitive popups called from
applications. The calls are made to the plain text file inside the .CHM
file using the HTML Help API.

HTML-encoded Selecting this option effectively turns your popups into normal topics
topics: without headers. When this mode is activated links to popup topics will
display the topics in the main help viewer.
This mode cannot be used for context-sensitive popups called from
applications.

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Dual-mode This mode outputs popup topics to an external Winhelp .HLP file. This
help: allows you to use formatted text (bold, italics etc.), images, Internet
links and tables in your popups. When this mode is activated,
hyperlinks to popup topics in your help will display as popups
automatically.
Important notes:
· Borders around paragraphs and tables, table gridlines and nested
tables are not supported in Winhelp or Winhelp popups.
· You cannot create normal hyperlinks from Winhelp popups to
your main HTML Help .CHM file because the two help formats are
not compatible.
· When you use dual-mode help you must distribute two files with
your application, the main .CHM file and the .HLP file containing
the popups.
This mode can be used for context-sensitive popups called from
applications. The calls are made directly to the separate Winhelp .HLP
file using the Winhelp API.

JavaScript This mode outputs popup topics using JavaScript code that allows you
popups: to use formatted text (bold, italics etc.), images, Internet and topic
hyperlinks, tables (with gridlines and borders) and even video files in
your popups.
The popups are stored inside the main .CHM help file so you only
need to distribute one file with your application.
This mode cannot be used for context-sensitive popups called from
applications. If you want to use both JavaScript popups and context-
sensitive popups called from your application you must create a
separate project for your context popups. See Formatted context
popups in HTML Help 437 for details.

Customizing JavaScript popups:

JavaScript popups are highly-customizable. Click on to display the
configuration dialog:

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Click/ Displays the popup on user click or mouseover (i.e. as soon as the
mouseover: user moves the mouse pointer over the link). Be careful with using the
mouseover option as many users find this intrusive and it may also
trigger popup blockers in some browsers.

Minimum Setting this to 0 makes the popup width automatic, on the basis of the
width: amount of text and/or other content.
Setting it to any other value (in pixels) explicitly defines the width of the
popup. If the popup only contains text it will have the width you specify.
If it contains other content (graphics, videos) it will be at least as wide
as the specified width and wider if required by the content.

Border width: Enter 0 for no border, any value above 0 (in pixels) to draw a border
around the popup box.

Border The distance between the popup content and the border or edge of the
padding: popup (if there is no border) in pixels.

Background: The background color of the popup box.

Border color: The color of the border, if there is one.

Visual effects: These effects are only supported by MS Internet Explorer. This means
that they are available in HTML Help (which uses MSIE) and in
Browser-based Help when the user is using Internet Explorer. They
are ignored by all other browsers.
These effects are easier to see than to describe. Experiment! (Note
that the transition effects are only for opening the popup box. The
popups always close in the same way, no matter what effect you
select.)

See also:
Creating popup topics 194

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Using JavaScript popups 199

Using Context-Sensitive Help 431
Formatted context popups in HTML Help 436
HTML Help 765 (Help Formats)
HTML Help Options 563 (Help Windows)
10.3.3 Modular Help Options
These options define how modular help is handled in HTML Help projects. Please study
Working with Modular Help Systems 492 and Modular Projects 873 before using these features!

Modular Help Options settings:

Merge method: This setting is only relevant if the current project is the master project
in your modular help system.
Merge child files at compile time
This merges all child projects included in your TOC with the master
project when you compile to HTML Help. The result is one large .CHM
file containing all your projects. You do not have to compile your child
projects separately when you use this method. However, you must
take steps 497 to ensure that you do not have duplicate topic IDs and
help context numbers in your projects, otherwise you will experience
puzzling errors in your help.
Merge child files at runtime
This creates a master .CHM file that loads the child .CHM help file
modules when it is run on the user's computer. If these modules are
present their TOCs will be merged with the master TOC and the effect
is the same as one help file containing all modules. If the modules are
not present on the user's computer they will not be included in the
TOC. When you use this method you must compile the child projects
separately and place all the .CHM files to be included in the TOC in
the same directly as the master .CHM on the user's computer.

Child file TOC This setting is only relevant if the current project is a child project in
settings: your modular help system. It controls what happens when the user
tries to open the child .CHM module directly.
Its own table of contents
This makes the child file open with its own table of contents as a
separate help file in its own right.
Table of contents of the master file
This automatically opens the master .CHM and loads the child .CHM
into its TOC. This is effectively the same as opening the master .CHM
directly. Use the browse button to select the master .CHM file (this
must be present in the same directory on the user's computer at
runtime).

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See also:
Working with Modular Help Systems 492
Modular Projects 873 (Reference)
HTML Help 765 (Help Formats)
HTML Help Options 563 (Help Windows)
10.3.4 Extended .HHP Settings
This section enables you to add or overwrite sections of the .HHP project file used to
generate your HTML Help output. (See HTML Help project files 767 for details). Normally you
will never need to use this feature but there may be situations where you want or need to
make changes to your HTML Help output by making changes or additions to the .HHP file.
Please only use these feature if you understand .HHP files and how to edit them. You can
find information on the sections and settings in the documentation distributed with
Microsoft HTML Help Workshop.

HTML Help TOC options:

Below the Extended .HHP Settings editing window are some additional options with
which you can adjust the appearance and behavior of the TOC in the Microsoft HTML
Help viewer:

What the HTML Help TOC options do

Display plus/minus icons:
Activates or deactivates the +/- icons displayed to the left of closed/open chapter icons
("books") in the HTML Help viewer's TOC.
Draw lines between items:
When this is activated fine dotted lines are displayed between related items in the
TOC, making it easier see which topic belongs to which chapter in complex TOCs.
Track selection (mouseover effect):
When this is activated an underline is displayed below topic entries in the TOC when
the user moves the mouse over them. This makes it easier to be sure which topic you
are going to click on.
Only expand a single heading:
When the user selects a new chapter any other chapters on the same level in the TOC
that are open will be closed automatically. This is useful for complex help documents
with lots of chapters, because it is easier to navigate in the TOC if you do not have
multiple chapters open.

Use Baggage for files referenced in your own code:

If you are a power Help & Manual 3 user you have probably quite often used Extended .

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HHP Settings for graphics files and other files referenced in HTML and script code
entered manually (e.g. in your HTML Templates 814 or inserted with Insert > Plain HTML
Code 311 ). This was necessary to tell the compiler to include files referenced in your own
code in your .CHM output.
This is no longer necessary in Help & Manual 4. You can now use the Baggage 554
section in Project Properties > Common Properties to add external files to your project
and they will then be automatically included in your .CHM file when you compile to HTML
Help. See Using Baggage Files 520 for more information.

How to add entries:

To add entries to the .HHP file enter the section heading name in upper case and
enclosed in square brackets, followed by the settings you want to add or change,
entering one setting per line with a hard line break (Enter) at the end of each line. Don't
enter any section heading more than once.
Example:

This example shows some of the Extended .HHP settings we used for the Help & Manual
3 help, before the Baggage section was available.

About paths to referenced files:

When Help & Manual compiles your project all the necessary HTML Help project files
767 , including the .HHP file, are generated in a temporary directory called \~tmpchm

and then fed to the Microsoft HTML Help compiler. This directory is created in your
project directory, which is the directory containing your .HMX project file.
This means that all file paths entered in the Extended .HHP settings must be relative
to this directory, because that is where the .HHP file is located. In the example above,
for instance, the files referenced are located in the project directory, which is one
directory up from \~tmpchm. This is why ..\ must be prefixed to each file reference so
that the compiler can find the files.
If your files are stored in other locations you must adjust the relative paths
accordingly. Storing them in the project directory is usually the simplest solution,
however.

See also:
Using Baggage Files 520
Using HTML Templates 475
Inserting Plain HTML Code 311
HTML Help 765 (Help Formats)
HTML Help Options 563 (Help Windows)

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 Project Properties Reference 573

10.3.5 HTML Export Options

These options control many key aspects of how your project content is converted to HTML
code for all the HTML-based output formats, including how the styles used in your project
are exported to a CSS cascading style sheet file, how graphic images are converted and
exported and a number of other important settings.

This is a shared section:

Note that these options are shared by all four HTML-based output formats (HTML Help,
Visual Studio Help (MS Help 2.0), Browser-Based Help and eBooks). They are accessible
in several locations in Project Properties but no matter where you edit them you are
always editing the same settings. You cannot save different HTML Export settings for the
individual HTML-based output formats.
With a couple of small exceptions (noted in the descriptions of the individual settings) all
the options are used by all output formats.

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574 Help & Manual Online Help

HTML Export Options settings:

Extension for By default all HTML topic files are exported with the extension .htm.
HTML topic You can change this to .html, .asp or .php, but these extensions are
files: only supported in Browser-Based Help. If you select .asp or .php the
standard .htm extension will be used in HTML Help, and MS Help
2.0.
This setting is irrelevant for eBooks.

CSS style sheet This setting allows you to change the name of the style sheet file
file name: exported with the CSS style information. The default file name is
default.css.
Since the stylesheet is not accessible in eBooks this setting is
irrelevant for eBooks.

Font size This setting allows you to choose how font sizes are defined in your
encoding: output. You can choose pt (points), px (pixels), % (percent) or ems
(where 1 em = 100%). Which setting you choose controls how fonts
are displayed on the user's screen and whether or not the user can
change the font size.
Choose Pixels to lock your font size and layout, Percent to
allow the user to change the font size.
Points:
When you export the font size in points the user cannot adjust the
font size. However, the size of the fonts displayed on the user's
computer screen will vary depending on the Windows screen DPI
setting and/or font size settings. For example, if you develop your
help on a machine with Windows set to 96dpi (the standard) your
text layout may be incorrect on computers set to 120dpi (fonts look
much too big, text in hanging indents may be wider than the indent
etc). This is because the size of the fonts changes but the size of the
other layout elements (indents, locked table cells etc.) doesn't.
Pixels:
This is the only setting that ensures that the fonts and your layout will
always be displayed exactly as you see them on your development
machine. The font size is always uses the same number of pixels, so
it is always the same size relative to other elements of your layout
like indents, graphics and so on.
Percent or Ems:
If you select percent or Ems the user will be able to adjust the font
size in the help, for example by holding down Ctrl and turning the
mouse scroll wheel. This may or may not be a good thing, because
the size of other layout elements (graphics, indents, locked table
cells etc.) will not change, so the user adjustments may "break" your
layout.

Font size of If you choose percent or ems for font size encoding (see above) you
Normal style: can also use this setting to define the size of the Normal style in
relation to the default font of the user's browser. The value is
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
expressed in percent and the default is 100%. This is normally
preferable because most users will have set the default font in their
browsers to the size of font they prefer.
 Project Properties Reference 575

See also:
Configuring Your Output 392
Compiling Your Project 392
HTML Help 765 (Help Formats)
HTML Help Options 563 (Help Windows)

10.4 Winhelp
The settings in this section control how your project is exported to Winhelp. Winhelp is now
an obsolete format that should not be used for modern applications but Help & Manual 4 still
includes full support for it for backward compatibility. However, support for the 16-bit
Winhelp format used in Windows 3.0 is no longer provided as this format is no longer
relevant or necessary for any purposes.
Since the introduction of Windows 98 HTML Help 765 has been the standard format for help
for Windows applications and it should be used for all new applications.
NEWS: Winhelp is no longer supported in Windows Vista!
Please note that support for the Winhelp format has been completely
discontinued in Microsoft Windows Vista. Even if your applications run under
Vista, any calls to Winhelp help will simply produce an error message. This
also applies to dual-mode popups in HTML Help. We thus strongly recommend
that you start transitioning to an alternative help format as soon as possible.
See here for details

See also:
Winhelp 768 (Help Formats)
Winhelp Options 560 (Help windows)
10.4.1 Miscellaneous Settings
These settings configure the basic features of Winhelp in your output file.

Miscellaneous Settings for Winhelp:

Full text search If you enable full text search capabilities for Winhelp (.HLP) files the
index: help compiler will generate a full-text search index for the help file and
the Find tab in the Winhelp viewer will be populated the first time the
user selects it.
The only advantage of this is that your users will not be prompted to
generate the index the first time they open the help. On modern
computers generating the index is completed almost instantaneously
and users are used to doing it, so you can speed up compiling and
reduce your distribution file size by turning this option off.

Citation: When users copy and paste text from a Winhelp help file this text is
automatically included at the top of the pasted text. You can use it for
a copyright notice or any other information you want to display when

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 576 Help & Manual Online Help

your uses paste text.

You can also use the text entered here anywhere in your project by
using the <%CITATION%> variable. See Using Variables 440 for details.

Encoding of Winhelp treats anchors in topics as absolute IDs that have the same
topic anchors: status as topic IDs. If anchor IDs were used on their own it would
theoretically be possible to have an anchor ID that was identical to an
existing topic ID, and this would cause problems.
To ensure that an anchor is always unique Help & Manual generates a
new ID for anchors by combining the topic ID and the anchor ID,
separating the two with a colon (:) by default.
This is suitable for most situations. If you need a different encoding,
you may either select a different separator (an underscore or a dot).
Alternatively you can choose the last option: Use anchor ID without
topic ID. This option encodes the anchor IDs as they are and
assumes that they are unique and do not conflict with topic IDs. Note
that Help & Manual does not check for duplicates so you use this
option at your own risk.

Export A- By default Help & Manual generates A-keywords 382 as A-footnotes in

keywords as: the temporary RTF file used to generate the Winhelp output. This is
the default value for Winhelp and if you don't know what it is for
please do not change this setting.
If you do need to change it you can enter any footnote character you
like here for the A-keywords. (See the documentation of Microsoft
Help Workshop if you need more information on this subject.)

Limit images to The Winhelp viewer has an uncorrected bug that can cause the
256 colors: viewer to hang or crash on computers with a display that has limited
color depth if the help file contains images with more than 256 colors.
This option automatically reduces all images to 256 colors to prevent
these crashes. Using it is strongly recommended since you have no
control over the display configuration on your users' computers!

See also:
Winhelp 768 (Help Formats)
Winhelp Options 560 (Help Windows)
Anchors - jump targets 305
Using Variables 440
Keywords and Indexes 369
10.4.2 Modular Help Options
These options define how modular help is handled in Winhelp projects. Please study
Working with Modular Help Systems 492 and Modular Projects 873 before using these features!

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 Project Properties Reference 577

Modular Help Options settings:

Merge method: This setting is only relevant if the current project is the master project
in your modular help system.
Merge child files at compile time
This merges all child projects included in your TOC with the master
project when you compile to Winhelp. The result is one large .HLP file
containing all your projects. You do not have to compile your child
projects separately when you use this method. However, you must
take steps 497 to ensure that you do not have duplicate topic IDs and
help context numbers in your projects, otherwise you will experience
puzzling errors in your help.
Merge child files at runtime
This creates a master .HLP file that loads the child .HLP help file
modules when it is run on the user's computer. If these modules are
present their TOCs will be merged with the master TOC and the effect
is the same as one help file containing all modules. If the modules are
not present on the user's computer they will not be included in the
TOC. When you use this method you must compile the child projects
separately and place all the .HLP files to be included in the TOC in the
same directly as the master .HLP on the user's computer.

Table of This setting adjusts the indentation ("offset") of your child help
contents offset: modules Table of Contents entries when they are inserted in the TOC
of the parent (master) module. A value of 1 represents an offset of
one sub-topic level, a value of 2 represents an offset of two sub-topic
levels and so on.
You only need to adjust the setting for child modules in modular help
projects. Set it to 0 for non-modular projects and master modules.

See also:
Winhelp 768 (Help Formats)
Winhelp Options 560 (Help Windows)
Working with Modular Help Systems 492
Modular Projects 873 (Reference)
Choosing the merge method for Winhelp 495
10.4.3 Extended .HPJ Settings
This section enables you to add or overwrite sections of the .HPJ project file used to
generate your HTML Help output. (See Winhelp project files 770 for details). Normally you will
never need to use this feature but there may be situations when you want or need to make
changes to your Winhelp output by making changes or additions to the .HPJ file.
This feature is designed for advanced users familiar with manual Winhelp encoding! Please
do not make any entries here unless you understand .HPJ files and how to edit them. You
can find information on the sections and settings in the documentation distributed with

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578 Help & Manual Online Help

Microsoft Help Workshop.

How to edit the extended .HPJ settings:

Normally Help & Manual generates the settings for the .HPJ file automatically and you
will almost never need to change them. If you do want to add settings that are not
generally included you must enter them in with same format and syntax as in an .INI
file.
This example shows a typical .HPJ file exported by Help & Manual to generate a Winhelp
file:

Example of an .HPJ file as exported by H&M

; This file is maintained by HCW. Do not modify this file directly.
[OPTIONS]
HCW=0
COMPRESS=12 Hall Zeck
LCID=0x409 0x0 0x0 ;English (USA)
REPORT=Yes
CHARSET=1
FTS=1
CONTENTS=Introduction
TITLE=Help & Manual help
CNT=.\HELPMAN.cnt
COPYRIGHT=© 2005 EC Software, all rights reserved
CITATION=© 2005 EC Software
DEFFONT=MS Sans Serif,8,0
HLP=.\HELPMAN.hlp

[FILES]
.\HELPMAN.rtf

[WINDOWS]
Another="Secondary window",(110,276,679,408),27904,(r16777088),(r12632256),1
Main="Main window",(204,3,592,743),28420,(r16777215),(r12632256),f3

There is no [MAP] section in this file because no help context numbers were defined in
any of the topics. Let's assume that you want to include another file that contains the
mappings for context sensitive help. You can achieve this by adding the appropriate
entry to the [MAP] section together with an #include statement to include the external
file containing the mappings.
In addition to this, let's also assume that you want to change the target path of the
compiled help file. This requires two lines in the [OPTIONS] section, one each for the
main help file and the contents file.
To make these changes you would enter the following lines in the edit box of the
Extended .HPJ Settings section:

[OPTIONS]
CNT=F:\data\common projects\help\helpman.cnt
HLP=F:\data\common projects\help\helpman.hlp
[MAP]
main_index=HID_MAIN
#include .\ProjektX.txt

The next time Help & Manual exports your project these lines will be merged with the
standard output and the result will look like this (the inserted items are shown in red):

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Project Properties Reference 579

Merged .HPJ file with manually-inserted lines:

; This file is maintained by HCW. Do not modify this file directly.
[OPTIONS]
HCW=0
COMPRESS=12 Hall Zeck
LCID=0x409 0x0 0x0 ;Englisch (USA)
REPORT=Yes
CHARSET=1
FTS=1
CONTENTS=Introduction
TITLE=Help & Manual help
CNT=F:\data\common projects\help\helpman.cnt
COPYRIGHT=© 2005 EC Software, all rights reserved
CITATION=© 2005 EC Software
DEFFONT=MS Sans Serif,8,0
HLP=F:\data\common projects\help\helpman.hlp

[FILES]
.\HELPMAN.rtf

[WINDOWS]
Another="Secondary window",(110,276,679,408),27904,(r16777088),(r12632256),1
Main="Main window",(204,3,592,743),28420,(r16777215),(r12632256),f3
[MAP]
main_index=HID_MAIN
#include .\ProjektX.txt

· See the documentation distributed with Microsoft Help Workshop. for full details
on .HPJ files and their settings.

See also:
Winhelp 768 (Help Formats)
Winhelp Options 560 (Help Windows)

10.5 Visual Studio Help

This section allows you to configure the options for compiling Visual Studio Help, which is
also known as MS Help 2.0.

Do not use Visual Studio Help for normal applications!

Please note that this is a special help format that is only used for documenting third-
party programming components designed for integration into Visual Studio .NET. It is not
suitable for any other purpose and cannot be used for normal help projects for
application programs!

Since Visual Studio Help is an HTML-based format it shares several groups of settings with
the other HTML-based output formats supported by Help & Manual.

Shared settings:
The options in the following two sections are shared by all HTML-based output formats (
HTML Help, Browser-Based Help, eBooks and Visual Studio Help (MS Help 2.0).
Topic Pages: These are the HTML templates 475 that control the layout of your topic

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 580 Help & Manual Online Help

pages. There is only one version of each template for all HTML-based
output formats. You cannot create separate templates for each output
format.

HTML Export These are the general settings for all HTML output formats, including
Options: image conversion and export options and the options for the CSS style
sheet used to export the style formatting information from your project.
Here too, there is only one CSS style sheet and one set of HTML
Export Options for all four output formats. You cannot enter different
settings for each output format.
· Note that not all the settings in this section are relevant for all
HTML-based output formats. See HTML Export Options 573 for
details.

See also:
Visual Studio Help 527 (Advanced Procedures)
Visual Studio Help 777 (Reference)
10.5.1 Namespace & Options
This section is where you enter the special settings required for compiling Visual Studio Help
(MS Help 2.0). Please refer to the documentation of Visual Studio .NET and the Visual
Studio Help Integration Kit for full details!

Help file registration:

Unlike HTML Help .CHM files, Visual Studio Help .HXS files cannot be opened unless
they are registered (see About compiling VS Help 528 ). Also, they are not called by their
file name but by their "Namespace".
Namespace The Namespace identifier used for calling MS Help 2.0 files. No special
: characters or spaces are permitted. See the VS.NET documentation for
details.

Unique The unique identifier (rather like a topic ID for an entire help file) required
Identifier: for Visual Studio Help files. See the VS.NET documentation for details.

Export options:
Output file You can output either a single .HXS file or an .HXS file with a separate .
type: HXL file. See the VS.NET documentation for details.

Indexes: Help & Manual can generate both full-text search and associative keyword
indexes using the A-keywords entered in the Topic Options tabs of your
topics.

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 Project Properties Reference 581

See also:
Visual Studio Help 527 (Advanced Procedures)
Visual Studio Help 777 (Reference)
10.5.2 Topic Pages
This section allows you to edit the HTML templates 470 that define the layout and general
appearance of your topic pages in all HTML-based output formats. See Using HTML
Templates 475 for full details.

This is a shared section:

Note that the same HTML templates are used for all four HTML-based output
formats (HTML Help, Browser-Based Help, eBooks and MS Help 2.0). They are
accessible in several locations in Project Properties but no matter where you edit
them you are always editing the same templates. You cannot save different
templates for the individual formats.

Simple editing mode:

When the Let me edit HTML code directly option at the top of the dialog is not selected
you can only define some basic options for the HTML template. This mode is
recommended if you do not have experience with editing HTML code!
Note that simple editing mode adjusts the template settings for all help window
definitions, both the Main window and any secondary user-defined help window types
you may have defined in the Help Windows 557 section.

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582 Help & Manual Online Help

Let me edit HTML Activate this check box to view and edit the HTML code of the
code directly: template. See below for details on direct HTML editing mode.

This button automatically clears the HTML template and reloads

the default template, overwriting any changes you have made.
Use with caution!
If you select the button accidentally just click .

Text above topic: Any text you enter in these two editing boxes will be inserted on
Text below topic: every page above and below the main text of your topic.
Note that you can only use plain text. No formatting or
HTML tags are allowed.

Topics with headers Activating this option adds additional navigation links to the
have <Top>, headers of your topic. These links always point to the Top topic
<Previous> and (the home topic defined in Common Properties > Language
<Next> links: Settings 551 ) and the Next and Previous topics in your help.
You can edit the captions of the links in the Caption column but
you cannot change their functionality.
By default the links are text-only. You can create button links by
selecting graphics files for your buttons in the Image File
column. Use the browse button to locate the graphics files.

HTML editing mode:

When the Let me edit HTML code directly option at the top of the dialog is selected you
can edit all the code of the HTML templates for your help window definitions manually. In
this mode you can also edit the templates of the Main help window and your user-
defined help window types separately (i.e. windows defined in the Help Windows 557
section). Experience in editing HTML code is necessary for using this mode!
Note that switching back to simple editing mode from HTML editing mode
will overwrite all your changes with the default templates, for all window
types! If you do this accidentally just select Cancel.

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 Project Properties Reference 583

HTML template for Select the help window type whose template you want to edit
window type: here. Each help window type definition has its own template that
can be edited separately.
By default only Main and Popup are displayed. Other templates
will only be listed if you have defined additional help window
types in the Help Windows 557 section.
Note that the Popup template is only used when you output
popups as HTML-encoded topics. See Creating popup topics 193
for details.

Editing window: The editor provides full HTML syntax highlighting to make
editing easier. To enlarge the window for easier editing just
resize the Project Properties window.

See also:
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
Using HTML Templates 475
Visual Studio Help 527 (Advanced Procedures)
Visual Studio Help 777 (Reference)
10.5.3 HTML Export Options
These options control many key aspects of how your project content is converted to HTML
code for all the HTML-based output formats, including how the styles used in your project
are exported to a CSS cascading style sheet file, how graphic images are converted and
exported and a number of other important settings.

This is a shared section:

Note that these options are shared by all four HTML-based output formats (HTML Help,
Visual Studio Help (MS Help 2.0), Browser-Based Help and eBooks). They are accessible
in several locations in Project Properties but no matter where you edit them you are
always editing the same settings. You cannot save different HTML Export settings for the
individual HTML-based output formats.
With a couple of small exceptions (noted in the descriptions of the individual settings) all
the options are used by all output formats.

HTML Export Options settings:

Extension for By default all HTML topic files are exported with the extension .htm.
HTML topic You can change this to .html, .asp or .php, but these extensions are
files: only supported in Browser-Based Help. If you select .asp or .php the
standard .htm extension will be used in HTML Help, and MS Help
2.0.
This setting is irrelevant for eBooks.

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584 Help & Manual Online Help

CSS style sheet This setting allows you to change the name of the style sheet file
file name: exported with the CSS style information. The default file name is
default.css.
Since the stylesheet is not accessible in eBooks this setting is
irrelevant for eBooks.

Font size This setting allows you to choose how font sizes are defined in your
encoding: output. You can choose pt (points), px (pixels), % (percent) or ems
(where 1 em = 100%). Which setting you choose controls how fonts
are displayed on the user's screen and whether or not the user can
change the font size.
Choose Pixels to lock your font size and layout, Percent to
allow the user to change the font size.
Points:
When you export the font size in points the user cannot adjust the
font size. However, the size of the fonts displayed on the user's
computer screen will vary depending on the Windows screen DPI
setting and/or font size settings. For example, if you develop your
help on a machine with Windows set to 96dpi (the standard) your
text layout may be incorrect on computers set to 120dpi (fonts look
much too big, text in hanging indents may be wider than the indent
etc). This is because the size of the fonts changes but the size of the
other layout elements (indents, locked table cells etc.) doesn't.
Pixels:
This is the only setting that ensures that the fonts and your layout will
always be displayed exactly as you see them on your development
machine. The font size is always uses the same number of pixels, so
it is always the same size relative to other elements of your layout
like indents, graphics and so on.
Percent or Ems:
If you select percent or Ems the user will be able to adjust the font
size in the help, for example by holding down Ctrl and turning the
mouse scroll wheel. This may or may not be a good thing, because
the size of other layout elements (graphics, indents, locked table
cells etc.) will not change, so the user adjustments may "break" your
layout.

Font size of If you choose percent or ems for font size encoding (see above) you
Normal style: can also use this setting to define the size of the Normal style in
relation to the default font of the user's browser. The value is
expressed in percent and the default is 100%. This is normally
preferable because most users will have set the default font in their
browsers to the size of font they prefer.

Export style When this is selected Help & Manual uses the full names of your
names: styles in the style sheet. This makes the sheet much easier to read if
you ever want to view or edit it manually.

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 Project Properties Reference 585

If you deselect this option the style names are converted to brief,
alphanumeric codes that are not so "human-friendly". This can make
your project a little bit smaller but not much.

Export lists as This setting is recommended. When it is selected numbered and

tables: bulleted 252 lists are converted to tables in HTML-based output. This
is the only way to make stable lists that display correctly in all
browsers, using the indents that you set. Even in HTML Help, which
uses MS Internet Explorer for HTML rendering, you will find that lists
display better as tables.
If you deselect this option lists will be exported as standard <OL> and
<UL> lists with <LI> list elements. Unless you use very simple lists
the rendering of these elements will be unsatisfactory in many
browsers.

Export UTF-8 When this option is selected Help & Manual uses UTF-8 encoding to
encoded HTML: export fully Unicode-compliant HTML. This is not normally necessary
for English and other Western European languages, even for special
characters. It is only needed for languages like Chinese and
Japanese that absolutely require Unicode to be displayed properly.
Since UTF-8 encoding uses multiple bytes per character activating
this option can increase the size of your output files. Only use it if
you really need it.
See Wikipedia for an excellent background discussion of UTF-8
and other Unicode encoding methods.

Export XHTML If you select this Help & Manual will generate HTML code that is
1.1 compliant compliant with the XHTML 1.1 specification.
HTML:
This is only used in Browser-based Help (the HTML Help compiler
cannot handle XHTML-compliant code and it is also not relevant for
eBooks).
Note that XHTML code is fine for modern browsers but the
specification contains a number of features that older browsers
cannot handle correctly. If you believe you have a significant number
of users still using old browsers it is better to deselect this. New
browsers will not have a problem with this because they can also
handle code that is not fully XHTML-compliant .

If an image has Images in HTML pages can have an ALT attribute that displays a
no caption export small text in a "tooltip" when the user positions the mouse pointer
file name as hint: over the image.
Selecting this option exports the image file name as the ALT attribute
if the image doesn't have a caption. Unless your graphics files have
very descriptive names it is normally advisable to switch this off.

Conversion This option controls how the images in your project are converted
options for and exported when you compile to HTML-based formats.

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 586 Help & Manual Online Help

bitmaps and Which option provides the best results depends on the type of
Impict images: images in your project. GIF provides the smallest files with the best
quality for screenshots with 256 colors or less.
Screenshots of any resolution almost always look terrible when
converted to JPG so you should always choose your settings to
make sure that this doesn't happen. Always use GIF and no more
than 256 colors for screenshots.
JPG and true-color PNG are really only needed for photographs and
continuous-tone graphics. To minimize help file size make sure that
all other files have no more than 256 colors.
Note that Do not convert images at all completely
suppresses the output of all graphics in your output.

Output quality You can reduce file size by decreasing the quality but this will also
for JPEG images: make the images look less good. A value of between 80 and 90 is
normally acceptable.
Note that this quality setting is only applied to JPEG images actually
generated by the program on the basis of the conversion settings
(see above). JPEG images that you insert in your project directly are
not affected. They are use as they are, without any changes.

See also:
Configuring Your Output 392
Compiling Your Project 392
Visual Studio Help 527 (Advanced Procedures)
Visual Studio Help 777 (Reference)

10.6 Browser-based Help

The settings in this section control how your project is exported to Browser-based Help,
which can be displayed with any modern web browser. Help & Manual's Browser-based Help
provides a close approximation of the HTML Help viewer layout so that it can be used
intuitively by all Windows users. In addition to a Table of Contents with expanding and
collapsing sections it also includes a Keyword Index, full-text search and JavaScript popups
199 that will also work transparently on all modern browsers.

Since Browser-based Help is an HTML-based format it shares several groups of settings

with the other HTML-based output formats supported by Help & Manual.

Shared settings:
The options in the following two sections are shared by all HTML-based output formats (
HTML Help, Browser-Based Help, eBooks and Visual Studio Help (MS Help 2.0).
Topic Pages: These are the HTML templates 475 that control the layout of your topic
pages. There is only one version of each template for all HTML-based
output formats. You cannot create separate templates for each output

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 Project Properties Reference 587

format.

HTML Export These are the general settings for all HTML output formats, including
Options: image conversion and export options and the options for the CSS style
sheet used to export the style formatting information from your project.
Here too, there is only one CSS style sheet and one set of HTML
Export Options for all four output formats. You cannot enter different
settings for each output format.
· Note that not all the settings in this section are relevant for all
HTML-based output formats. See HTML Export Options 573 for
details.

See also:
Browser-based Help 771 (Help Formats)
Browser-based Help 398 (Configuring Your Output)
10.6.1 Layout
These settings define the layout of your Browser-based Help output. The default setting is
Two Frames and you should leave this unchanged for most projects.
· For more background information see Browser-based Help 398 in the Configuring Your
Output chapter and Browser-based Help 771 and Browser compatibility 772 in the
Reference > Help Formats chapter.
· There are also some special variables you can use in the layout page's HTML
template. For details see HTML template variables 829 in the Reference section.

Layout settings:
Let me edit HTML Selecting this lets you edit the code of the frameset page
code directly: manually. Please only choose this option if you have experience
in editing HTML code manually and understand all the details of
the code you are changing. Errors made here can make your
help unusable.
returns you to the standard code if something goes
wrong.

Two frames: Default, choose for stand-alone help:

Two frames is the default layout. It creates a stand-alone help
project that is effectively a website in its own right. Navigation is
dynamic with an expanding and collapsing contents tree if the
user's browser supports it and static if it doesn't.
The output is fully compatible with all modern browsers, even if
they have features like JavaScript turned off, and it will also
display and work correctly in older browsers, just with fewer
features.

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Three frames: Choose for integration in an existing website

This is the same as two frames but with an additional frame
above for integration in your website – you can use the top frame
to insert your standard website header components. Navigation is
dynamic with an expanding and collapsing contents tree if the
user's browser supports it and static if it doesn't.
Here too, the output is fully compatible with all modern browsers,
even if they have features like JavaScript turned off, and it will
also display and work correctly in older browsers, just with fewer
features.

No frames, no Choose for fully-manual website integration

scripts:
This completely turns off the dynamic TOC and outputs your help
as simple HTML pages without frames, without any scripting and
with a single separate TOC page containing all the links to your
individual topics.

Show borders Displays border lines between the two or three frames of your
between frames: layout. Turn off for a "seamless" look.

Width of the left Defines the width of the navigation frame containing your
frame: project's TOC. Only displayed if a frame mode is activated. You
can enter the values as either pixels or percent:
· Values under 100 are interpreted as percent.
· Values above 100 are interpreted as pixels.

Height of head Defines the height of the head frame in pixels. Only displayed if
frame: the Three Frame option is selected. The height of this frame is
always fixed so you must choose the right height to match the
layout of the file you are loading into the head frame.

Head frame has If you deselect this no scrollbars will be displayed, even if the
scrollbars: content does not fit in the head frame. Only displayed if the Three
Frame option is selected. Deactivate for a seamless appearance
(you must plan the height of your head frame content precisely
for this to work properly).

Head frame loads Select to load an existing HTML file into the top frame. Only
external file: displayed if the Three Frame option is selected.
Enter the name of the HTML file you want to load into your top
frame here. Filenames are case sensitive in most web servers so
be careful to enter the entire name correctly.
Enter the absolute or relative path to the file if is not going to be
in the same directory as your help (for example if you are going
to use the standard header file for your website).
Important: Help & Manual will not copy this file or any files that it

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 Project Properties Reference 589

references to your output folder for you! You are

responsible for ensuring that the file and any files it
references (graphics etc.) are stored in the correct
location.

Examples:
File will be in help directory:
headframe.html
File will be in another directory two levels up from your help on
the server:
././headframe.htm
File will be on a different server:
http://www.servername.com/general/headframe.htm

Edit head frame Choose this option to create and edit the HTML code to be
HTML code: loaded into the head frame directly. Only displayed if the Three
Frame option is selected.
When you choose this option the head frame file is generated
automatically using the code you enter here when you compile
your help. You can reference graphics and other files in it in the
same way that you would in all other HTML template files.
Please study Using HTML Templates 475 first.

See also:
Browser-based Help 398 (Configuring your Output)
Browser-based Help 771 (Help Formats)
HTML template variables 829 (Reference)
Browser compatibility 772
10.6.2 Navigation
These settings control how the navigation is handled in your Browser-based Help output.
Like the settings in the Layout section they are essential for the functioning of your help. You
should always check them very carefully before publishing your Browser-based Help to
make absolutely sure that the help will behave as you want.

Change in Help & Manual 4.3:

The Simple HTML and Dynamic HTML options have been removed from this section in
Help & Manual 4.3. These settings have been replaced by the No Frames and Two
Frames options in the new Layout 587 section.
· For more background information see Browser-based Help 398 in the Configuring Your
Output chapter and Browser-based Help 771 and Browser compatibility 772 in the
Reference > Help Formats chapter.

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Navigation settings:
Include Keyword These features should be self-explanatory. They simply switch
Index individual features in your Browser-based Help on and off.
Include Full-text
Note that Full Text Search will only work if the user has
Search JavaScript enabled.
If you activate Full Text Search you should also configure the
search options in the Full Text Search 594 section.

Add ordering Adds topic/chapter numbering to the TOC in your output, using
numbers to Table of the standard legal format (1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.2.1 etc).
Contents:

Lazy content This is a specialized setting for advanced users that should be
synchronization: left turned off for all normal output. Activating it will slow down
synchronization between topics and the TOC, particularly in
menus with many entries.
Lazy synchronization activates a different method for
"synchronizing" the item highlighted in the TOC pane with the
topic displayed in the topic pane.
In normal mode, when lazy synchronization is deactivated, all
topics include information about where their entries are in the
TOC. When the user clicks on a topic hyperlink the entry for the
target topic in the TOC will be highlighted as soon as the topic is
displayed.
Activating lazy synchronization removes this TOC address
information from the individual topics. When the user clicks on a
link the browser must first search for the matching entry in the
TOC, and this can cause a small delay.

Single click on By default, the user must double-click on chapters to expand

caption in Table of them in the TOC. This option allows you to change this to expand
Contents expands on a single click.
chapter:
Note:
We recommend leaving this option off. The default mode allows
you to select chapters without expanding them automatically and
you can still expand chapters with a single click on the chapter
icon.

Automatically When you set this option all chapters except the chapter in which
collapse unfocused the user is currently browsing collapse (close) automatically. This
entries: can make navigation easier in large help projects because you do
not have a large number of chapters open at the same time.
Note:
Selecting this option will generally disable On load, expand... All

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 Project Properties Reference 591

Entries (see below)

On load, expand: Allows you to expand the TOC automatically when the user
opens the help. You can expand either all entries or just top-level
entries (main chapters).
Note:
Expand All Entries is disabled when Automatically collapse
unfocused entries is selected (see above).

Icons in the TOC: If you want you can select your own icons to be used in the Table
of Contents here. If you select custom icons stored in folders
listed in your Image Folders 553 they will be copied to your output
directory automatically.

See also:
Browser-based Help 398 (Configuring your Output)
Browser-based Help 771 (Help Formats)
Browser compatibility 772
10.6.3 Table of Contents
This section allows you to edit the HTML template 470 that defines the layout and appearance
of the Table of Contents pane in your Browser-based Help output. See Using HTML
Templates 475 for full details.

Simple editing mode:

When the Let me edit HTML code directly option at the top of the dialog is not selected
you can only define some basic options for the Table of Contents template. This mode is
recommended if you do not have experience with editing HTML code!

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592 Help & Manual Online Help

Let me edit HTML Activate this check box to view and edit the HTML code of the
code directly: template. See below for details on direct HTML editing mode.

This button automatically clears the HTML template and reloads

the default template. Use with caution – this function completely
overwrites all your editing changes!
If you select the button accidentally just click .

Text above TOC Any text you enter in these two editing boxes will be inserted
headings: above and below the TOC tree with the topic entries. For
example, you might want to enter the title of your project above
Text below TOC
the tree and a copyright notice below the tree. HTML tags are
headings:
allowed.
The default code inserts the title of your project and links to the
Keyword Index and Full-text Search panes (if activated in your
settings). Please do not change this code unless you really
understand how it works.

Format of TOC These settings define the formatting styles to be used for the
headings: headings in your TOC. You can use up to six levels. However,
note that users will normally find anything more than a maximum
of three levels generally and four in exceptional cases confusing
and difficult to navigate.

HTML editing mode:

When the Let me edit HTML code directly option at the top of the dialog is selected you
can edit all the code of the TOC template manually. Experience in editing HTML code is
necessary for using this mode!
Also, please note that the code in this template is essential for the proper functioning of
the TOC. Please don't change or delete anything that you don't understand!
Note that switching back to simple editing mode from HTML editing mode
will overwrite all your changes with the default TOC template! If you do this
accidentally just click Cancel.

Here too, this button automatically clears the HTML template and
reloads the default template. Use with caution – this function
completely overwrites all your editing changes!
If you select the button accidentally just click .

Editing window: The editor provides full HTML syntax highlighting to make editing
easier. To enlarge the window for easier editing just resize the
Project Properties window.

See also:
Browser-based Help 771 (Help Formats)

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 Project Properties Reference 593

Using HTML Templates 475

HTML Templates 814 (Reference)
10.6.4 Keyword Index
This section allows you to edit the HTML template 470 that defines the layout and appearance
of the Keyword Index pane in your Browser-based Help output. See Using HTML Templates
475 for full details.

Simple editing mode:

When the Let me edit HTML code directly option at the top of the dialog is not selected
you can only define some basic options for the Keyword Index template. This mode is
recommended if you do not have experience with editing HTML code!
Let me edit HTML code Activate this check box to view and edit the HTML code of the
directly: template. See below for details on direct HTML editing mode.

This button automatically clears the HTML template and

reloads the default template. Use with caution – this function
completely overwrites all your editing changes!
If you select the button accidentally just click Cancel.

Text above Keyword Any text you enter in this editing box will be inserted above the
Index: Keyword Index. HTML tags are allowed.
The default code inserts the title of the Keyword Index and
links to the TOC and Full-text Search (if activated in your
settings) panes. Please do not change this code unless you
really understand how it works.

Keyword Index Font: These settings define the font styles to be used for the
components of your Keyword Index.

Index Separators: These entries generate the headings for each letter group in
the Keyword Index. If your help is not in English you can add
appropriate letters for your language.

HTML editing mode:

When the Let me edit HTML code directly option at the top of the dialog is selected you
can edit all the code of the Keyword Index template manually. Experience in editing
HTML code is necessary for using this mode!
Also, please note that the code in this template is essential for the proper functioning of
the Keyword Index. Please don't change or delete anything that you don't understand!
Note that switching back to simple editing mode from HTML editing mode
will overwrite all your changes with the default Keyword Index template! If
you do this accidentally just click Cancel.

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 594 Help & Manual Online Help

Here too, this button automatically clears the HTML template

and reloads the default template. Use with caution – this
function completely overwrites all your editing changes!
If you select the button accidentally just click Cancel.

Editing window: The editor provides full HTML syntax highlighting to make
editing easier. To enlarge the window for easier editing just
resize the Project Properties window.

Index Separators: These entries generate the headings for each letter group in
the Keyword Index. If your help is not in English you can add
appropriate letters for your language.

See also:
Using HTML Templates 475
HTML Templates 814 (Reference)
Browser-based Help 771 (Help Formats)
10.6.5 Full Text Search
This section configures the Full-text Search function for Browser-based Help output. It
includes both the options for configuring the behavior of the search function and the HTML
template 470 that defines the layout and appearance of the Search pane in your Browser-
based Help output. See Using HTML Templates 475 for full details.
· See Compiling 413 for some important information using Browser-based Help with full-
text search.
· Professional version feature only:
Please note that the support for full-text search in Browser-based Help is only included
in the Professional version of Help & Manual 4.

How full-text search works:

Full-text search uses an index of words found in the project, together with
the locations where the words are found. This means that it is not possible
to search for phrases because the index only knows about the locations of
the individual words.
Searching for exact words:
You can use quotes to search for exact words. For example, cat will find cat
, catalog and advocate, but "cat" will only find cat. This can be combined
with wildcard characters – "cat*" will find catalog but not advocate.

Configuration options:
The configuration options for Full-text Search are quite simple but they are important
because they make a major difference to how search functions. The Accent and Single-
case options are particularly important for international languages.

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 Project Properties Reference 595

String Constants / The String Constants table is a list of the texts that are used
Translation: in the user interface of the Search function. You can edit the
default texts in the Text column directly. HTML tags are not
permitted here, you can only enter plain text.

In addition to editing the string constants yourself you can

(Load / Save Constants): also load sets of constants for a variety of different
languages, and save your own constants to external files.
The constants are stored in Unicode text files, so you can
store your texts in any language. The files have the
extension *.zlang and are stored in the \Templates\html
folder in the Help & Manual program directory, which is
normally C:\Program Files\HelpAndManual4. We have
included the original translations from the full-text search
programmers but new translations are welcome.

Exclude these words This list defines common words you don't want to include in
from search: the full-text search index to save space. This is an important
point because the JavaScript full-text index has to be
completely downloaded from your server by the user's
browser before a search can be executed.
In a reasonable-sized project this index file can easily be 300
to 400KB or larger, and excluding common words can help to
reduce its size.
You can add your own words and delete existing words. Just
click in the list and edit, and only enter one word per line.
Copy and paste is supported.
Note that this list must contain at least one word. If you delete
all the entries it will default to the standard entries when you
save your project.

Skip words with less This is another function that decreases the size of the index.
than ... characters: Words with less then 3 characters are usually not very
meaningful and excluding them from the search is strongly
recommended.

Word-joining The indexing function automatically treats words linked with

characters: the characters you specify here as single words. For
example, if the "-" character is included here ready-mix and
readymix would both be treated as the same single word.
You can edit the list to add your own characters or delete
existing characters.

Enable "Sort results by When this is activated users can sort the search results by
date": score (relevance of the topic found) or date.

Search is Accent- This converts accents and umlauts to their base characters

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596 Help & Manual Online Help

Insensitive: so that the search doesn't make a difference between base

characters and their accented versions.
This is strongly recommended for highly-accented languages
like French and German, as it will make the searches much
more effective for the user.

Support for single-case This creates a case-insensitive search index. You don't need
languages: this for western languages but it is a requirement for Asian
languages. It is also helpful for languages like German in
which all common nouns are capitalized.

Simple editing mode:

When the Let me edit HTML code directly option at the top of the dialog is not selected
you can only define some basic options for the Full-text Search template. This mode is
recommended if you do not have experience with editing HTML code!
Let me edit HTML code Activate this check box to view and edit the HTML code of the
directly: template. See below for details on direct HTML editing mode.

This button automatically clears the HTML template and

reloads the default template. Use with caution – this function
completely overwrites all your editing changes!
If you select the button accidentally just click Cancel.

Text on top of Search The text here defines what appears at the top of the Search
page: pane in the Browser-based Help shown in the user's browser.
HTML tags are allowed.
The default code inserts the title of the Full-text Search and
links to TOC and Index. Please do not change this code
unless you really understand how it works.

HTML editing mode:

When the Let me edit HTML code directly option at the top of the dialog is selected you
can edit all the code of the Keyword Index template manually. Experience in editing
HTML code is necessary for using this mode!
Also, please note that the code in this template is essential for the proper functioning of
the Keyword Index. Please don't change or delete anything that you don't understand!
Note that switching back to simple editing mode from HTML editing mode
will overwrite all your changes with the default Keyword Index template! If
you do this accidentally just click Cancel.

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 Project Properties Reference 597

Here too, this button automatically clears the HTML template

and reloads the default template. Use with caution – this
function completely overwrites all your editing changes!
If you select the button accidentally just click Cancel.

Editing window: The editor provides full HTML syntax highlighting to make
editing easier. To enlarge the window for easier editing just
resize the Project Properties window.

See also:
Browser-based Help 771 (Help Formats)
Using HTML Templates 475
HTML Templates 814 (Reference)
10.6.6 Topic Pages
This section allows you to edit the HTML templates 470 that define the layout and general
appearance of your topic pages in all HTML-based output formats. See Using HTML
Templates 475 for full details.

This is a shared section:

Note that the same HTML templates are used for all four HTML-based output
formats (HTML Help, Browser-Based Help, eBooks and MS Help 2.0). They are
accessible in several locations in Project Properties but no matter where you edit
them you are always editing the same templates. You cannot save different
templates for the individual formats.

Simple editing mode:

When the Let me edit HTML code directly option at the top of the dialog is not selected
you can only define some basic options for the HTML template. This mode is
recommended if you do not have experience with editing HTML code!
Note that simple editing mode adjusts the template settings for all help window
definitions, both the Main window and any secondary user-defined help window types
you may have defined in the Help Windows 557 section.

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Let me edit HTML Activate this check box to view and edit the HTML code of the
code directly: template. See below for details on direct HTML editing mode.

This button automatically clears the HTML template and reloads

the default template, overwriting any changes you have made.
Use with caution!
If you select the button accidentally just click .

Text above topic: Any text you enter in these two editing boxes will be inserted on
Text below topic: every page above and below the main text of your topic.
Note that you can only use plain text. No formatting or
HTML tags are allowed.

Topics with headers Activating this option adds additional navigation links to the
have <Top>, headers of your topic. These links always point to the Top topic
<Previous> and (the home topic defined in Common Properties > Language
<Next> links: Settings 551 ) and the Next and Previous topics in your help.
You can edit the captions of the links in the Caption column but
you cannot change their functionality.
By default the links are text-only. You can create button links by
selecting graphics files for your buttons in the Image File
column. Use the browse button to locate the graphics files.

HTML editing mode:

When the Let me edit HTML code directly option at the top of the dialog is selected you
can edit all the code of the HTML templates for your help window definitions manually. In
this mode you can also edit the templates of the Main help window and your user-
defined help window types separately (i.e. windows defined in the Help Windows 557
section). Experience in editing HTML code is necessary for using this mode!
Note that switching back to simple editing mode from HTML editing mode
will overwrite all your changes with the default templates, for all window
types! If you do this accidentally just select Cancel.

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 Project Properties Reference 599

HTML template for Select the help window type whose template you want to edit
window type: here. Each help window type definition has its own template that
can be edited separately.
By default only Main and Popup are displayed. Other templates
will only be listed if you have defined additional help window
types in the Help Windows 557 section.
Note that the Popup template is only used when you output
popups as HTML-encoded topics. See Creating popup topics 193
for details.

Editing window: The editor provides full HTML syntax highlighting to make
editing easier. To enlarge the window for easier editing just
resize the Project Properties window.

See also:
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
Using HTML Templates 475
Browser-based Help 771 (Help Formats)
10.6.7 Popup Topics
These options define how popup topics are handled in Browser-based Help. Note that only
the JavaScript popups option will export popup topics that really function as popups.
For full details see Creating popup topics 194 and Using JavaScript popups 199 .

Popup mode:
HTML-encoded Selecting this option generates popup topics as normal topics
topics: without headers – i.e. they are no longer popup topics. When this
mode is activated links to popup topics will display the topics in
the main browser window in the topic pane.

JavaScript popups: This mode outputs popup topics using JavaScript code that
allows you to use formatted text (bold, italics etc.), images,
Internet and topic hyperlinks, tables (with grid lines and borders)
and even video files in your popups.

Customizing JavaScript popups:

JavaScript popups are highly-customizable. Click on to display the
configuration dialog:

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600 Help & Manual Online Help

Click/ Displays the popup on user click or mouseover (i.e. as soon as the
mouseover: user moves the mouse pointer over the link). Be careful with using the
mouseover option as many users find this intrusive and it may also
trigger popup blockers in some browsers.

Minimum Setting this to 0 makes the popup width automatic, on the basis of the
width: amount of text and/or other content.
Setting it to any other value (in pixels) explicitly defines the width of the
popup. If the popup only contains text it will have the width you specify.
If it contains other content (graphics, videos) it will be at least as wide
as the specified width and wider if required by the content.

Border width: Enter 0 for no border, any value above 0 (in pixels) to draw a border
around the popup box.

Border The distance between the popup content and the border or edge of the
padding: popup (if there is no border) in pixels.

Background: The background color of the popup box.

Border color: The color of the border, if there is one.

Visual effects: These effects are only supported by MS Internet Explorer. This means
that they are available in HTML Help (which uses MSIE) and in
Browser-based Help when the user is using Internet Explorer. They
are ignored by all other browsers.
These effects are easier to see than to describe. Experiment! (Note
that the transition effects are only for opening the popup box. The
popups always close in the same way, no matter what effect you
select.)

See also:
Creating popup topics 194

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Using JavaScript popups 199

10.6.8 HTML Export Options
These options control many key aspects of how your project content is converted to HTML
code for all the HTML-based output formats, including how the styles used in your project
are exported to a CSS cascading style sheet file, how graphic images are converted and
exported and a number of other important settings.

This is a shared section:

Note that these options are shared by all four HTML-based output formats (HTML Help,
Visual Studio Help (MS Help 2.0), Browser-Based Help and eBooks). They are accessible
in several locations in Project Properties but no matter where you edit them you are
always editing the same settings. You cannot save different HTML Export settings for the
individual HTML-based output formats.
With a couple of small exceptions (noted in the descriptions of the individual settings) all
the options are used by all output formats.

HTML Export Options settings:

Extension for By default all HTML topic files are exported with the extension .htm.
HTML topic You can change this to .html, .asp or .php, but these extensions are
files: only supported in Browser-Based Help. If you select .asp or .php the
standard .htm extension will be used in HTML Help, and MS Help
2.0.
This setting is irrelevant for eBooks.

CSS style sheet This setting allows you to change the name of the style sheet file
file name: exported with the CSS style information. The default file name is
default.css.
Since the stylesheet is not accessible in eBooks this setting is
irrelevant for eBooks.

Font size This setting allows you to choose how font sizes are defined in your
encoding: output. You can choose pt (points), px (pixels), % (percent) or ems
(where 1 em = 100%). Which setting you choose controls how fonts
are displayed on the user's screen and whether or not the user can
change the font size.
Choose Pixels to lock your font size and layout, Percent to
allow the user to change the font size.
Points:
When you export the font size in points the user cannot adjust the
font size. However, the size of the fonts displayed on the user's
computer screen will vary depending on the Windows screen DPI
setting and/or font size settings. For example, if you develop your
help on a machine with Windows set to 96dpi (the standard) your

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text layout may be incorrect on computers set to 120dpi (fonts look

much too big, text in hanging indents may be wider than the indent
etc). This is because the size of the fonts changes but the size of the
other layout elements (indents, locked table cells etc.) doesn't.
Pixels:
This is the only setting that ensures that the fonts and your layout will
always be displayed exactly as you see them on your development
machine. The font size is always uses the same number of pixels, so
it is always the same size relative to other elements of your layout
like indents, graphics and so on.
Percent or Ems:
If you select percent or Ems the user will be able to adjust the font
size in the help, for example by holding down Ctrl and turning the
mouse scroll wheel. This may or may not be a good thing, because
the size of other layout elements (graphics, indents, locked table
cells etc.) will not change, so the user adjustments may "break" your
layout.

Font size of If you choose percent or ems for font size encoding (see above) you
Normal style: can also use this setting to define the size of the Normal style in
relation to the default font of the user's browser. The value is
expressed in percent and the default is 100%. This is normally
preferable because most users will have set the default font in their
browsers to the size of font they prefer.

Export style When this is selected Help & Manual uses the full names of your
names: styles in the style sheet. This makes the sheet much easier to read if
you ever want to view or edit it manually.
If you deselect this option the style names are converted to brief,
alphanumeric codes that are not so "human-friendly". This can make
your project a little bit smaller but not much.

Export lists as This setting is recommended. When it is selected numbered and

tables: bulleted 252 lists are converted to tables in HTML-based output. This
is the only way to make stable lists that display correctly in all
browsers, using the indents that you set. Even in HTML Help, which
uses MS Internet Explorer for HTML rendering, you will find that lists
display better as tables.
If you deselect this option lists will be exported as standard <OL> and
<UL> lists with <LI> list elements. Unless you use very simple lists
the rendering of these elements will be unsatisfactory in many
browsers.

Export UTF-8 When this option is selected Help & Manual uses UTF-8 encoding to
encoded HTML: export fully Unicode-compliant HTML. This is not normally necessary
for English and other Western European languages, even for special
characters. It is only needed for languages like Chinese and
Japanese that absolutely require Unicode to be displayed properly.

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 Project Properties Reference 603

Since UTF-8 encoding uses multiple bytes per character activating

this option can increase the size of your output files. Only use it if
you really need it.
See Wikipedia for an excellent background discussion of UTF-8
and other Unicode encoding methods.

Export XHTML If you select this Help & Manual will generate HTML code that is
1.1 compliant compliant with the XHTML 1.1 specification.
HTML:
This is only used in Browser-based Help (the HTML Help compiler
cannot handle XHTML-compliant code and it is also not relevant for
eBooks).
Note that XHTML code is fine for modern browsers but the
specification contains a number of features that older browsers
cannot handle correctly. If you believe you have a significant number
of users still using old browsers it is better to deselect this. New
browsers will not have a problem with this because they can also
handle code that is not fully XHTML-compliant .

If an image has Images in HTML pages can have an ALT attribute that displays a
no caption export small text in a "tooltip" when the user positions the mouse pointer
file name as hint: over the image.
Selecting this option exports the image file name as the ALT attribute
if the image doesn't have a caption. Unless your graphics files have
very descriptive names it is normally advisable to switch this off.

Conversion This option controls how the images in your project are converted
options for and exported when you compile to HTML-based formats.
bitmaps and
Which option provides the best results depends on the type of
Impict images: images in your project. GIF provides the smallest files with the best
quality for screenshots with 256 colors or less.
Screenshots of any resolution almost always look terrible when
converted to JPG so you should always choose your settings to
make sure that this doesn't happen. Always use GIF and no more
than 256 colors for screenshots.
JPG and true-color PNG are really only needed for photographs and
continuous-tone graphics. To minimize help file size make sure that
all other files have no more than 256 colors.
Note that Do not convert images at all completely
suppresses the output of all graphics in your output.

Output quality You can reduce file size by decreasing the quality but this will also
for JPEG images: make the images look less good. A value of between 80 and 90 is
normally acceptable.
Note that this quality setting is only applied to JPEG images actually
generated by the program on the basis of the conversion settings
(see above). JPEG images that you insert in your project directly are

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not affected. They are use as they are, without any changes.

See also:
Configuring Your Output 392
Compiling Your Project 392
Browser-based Help 771 (Help Formats)

10.7 Adobe PDF

The settings in this section control how your project is exported to Adobe PDF, which can be
displayed with Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Reader version 3 or later. The most important
setting is the link to the print manual template 543 which defines the appearance and layout of
your PDF output.
In addition to selecting the template you can choose whether you want to generate an
interactive PDF with active hyperlinks for on-screen viewing or a print manual style PDF
designed to enable the user to print out a hard copy of the user manual. You can also adjust
a number of security-related settings.

See also:
Customize - PDF Export 738
PDF and Printed Manuals 538
Adobe PDF 774 (Help Formats)
10.7.1 PDF Layout
The settings in this section control the layout and appearance of your PDF output. The most
important setting is the link to the print manual template 543 which defines the appearance
and layout of your PDF output. See PDF and Printed Manuals 538 for details.

Important note for former Help & Manual 3 users:

In Help & Manual 3 and earlier you could include and exclude individual
PDF items (topics, TOC etc.) both with settings in Project Properties and
with settings in the print manual template. This has now been simplified.
Inclusion/exclusion of PDF items is now only controlled by the print manual
template 543 . There are no corresponding settings in Project Properties.

PDF layout settings:

Print Manual This selects the template to be used for formatting your project
Template: when you output to PDF. This template controls the appearance
and layout of your PDF document and the elements it contains.
You can also use the template to specify which elements (index,
TOC etc.) you want to include in your PDF output. This facility
was previously also available in Project Properties but it can now
only be done by editing the print manual template. (Too many

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Project Properties Reference 605

users had problems with conflicts between the two sets of

settings.)
Clicking on the button opens the selected template for
editing in the Print Manual Designer 622 program.

Interactive PDF Generates a PDF designed for interactive on-screen viewing.

document: When you select this option you can also select active hyperlinks
and an interactive Table of Contents (see below).

Similar to a printed Generates a static PDF designed for printing rather than on-
manual: screen viewing. Automatically disables all the other interactive
options in this section.

Create Table of Generates an interactive Table of Contents which is displayed in

Contents: the Bookmarks section of Acrobat reader. Only available for
interactive PDF documents.
Note that this is not the same as the Table of Contents
section configured in the print manual template 543 !

Create thumbnails of Generates the thumbnail views of all pages that can be displayed
pages: in Acrobat Reader. This is really just an "eye candy" feature and
you should switch it off if you want to minimize PDF file size.

PDF has active Makes all the hyperlinks in your PDF output active. Topic links,
hyperlinks: Internet links and file links (without parameters) are all supported.
See Links, Anchors, Macros, Scripts and HTML 293 . Only available
for interactive PDF documents.
Note that the active links will only be visible if you activate the
Underline topic links and paint in color option (see below).

File links - embed Activating this option physically embeds external files in the PDF
linked files with the file so that you can distribute additional files with your PDF
following extensions: document. Only files linked to in your document with file links 300
will be embedded.

Insert page Inserts a small icon containing the link target page number after
referrers: every hyperlink. Recommended for PDFs designed for printing.

Underline topic links This allows you to choose whether the links in your PDF are
and paint in color: visible and defines the color.
If you turn this off in a PDF document with active
hyperlinks the links will still be active but they will be
formatted as normal text and will not be visible!

Ignore blank pages If you configure your print manual template 543 to start chapters on
in PDF file: odd pages you will have blank pages in your PDF file. This is fine
for printing but not so good for on-screen viewing.
This option enables you to suppress the blank pages without

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 606 Help & Manual Online Help

editing the print manual template. Don't forget to turn it off after
using it, however – otherwise it's easy to think that "Start on odd
page" isn't working!

See also:
Customize - PDF Export 738
PDF and Printed Manuals 538
Embedding files in PDFs 544
10.7.2 PDF Options
These options set the standard options for saving the PDF output file. These are identical
with the options that you can set in Acrobat and they should all be self-explanatory.

Using variables:
Note that you can use variables 440 in all the Document Information fields.

See also:
Customize - PDF Export 738
PDF and Printed Manuals 538
10.7.3 Font Embedding
If you use non-standard fonts in your project your PDF document will normally only be
displayed correctly on the user's computer if the fonts are also installed there. You can solve
this problem by embedding the fonts in your PDF document, but this can increase the size of
your document very considerably, particularly if you are using Unicode-based languages 152 .
If you need to keep your PDF files as small as possible it is advisable to only use standard
fonts like Arial and Times Roman that will be installed on all users' computers. You can then
reduce the PDF file size by adding these fonts to the exclusion list (see below).

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Project Properties Reference 607

PDF Font Embedding settings:

Embedding If you must embed fonts you can reduce the size of your PDF files by
True Type selecting the right embedding option.
fonts:
Embed TrueType fonts embeds all TrueType fonts except the fonts
you add to the exclusion list (see below).
Embed symbol fonts only only embeds fonts like Symbol and
Wingdings. This ensures that special characters that depend on these
fonts will be displayed correctly. Other fonts not found on the user's
computers will be substituted with available similar fonts.
Use Base 14 Type1 fonts tells Acrobat to substitute its own built-in
fonts. This switches off font embedding and will work adequately if
your fonts are similar enough to the Base 14 fonts (Times/Mac or
Times New Roman PS MT /Win; Helvetica/Mac or Arial MT/Win;
Courier, Symbol, and Zapf Dingbats, each with regular, bold, italic or
oblique, and bold italic styles).
Embed TrueType subset only embeds the code pages of the
TrueType fonts that are actually used in your project.
Embed TrueType subset (used characters only) saves even
more space by only embedding the characters that are actually used
in your project. Note that this can slow down compiling considerably
with larger projects.

Do not embed If you choose Embed TrueType fonts you can reduce the size of your
these fonts: output file by excluding all the common fonts that all users are likely to
have installed on their computers.
All the fonts you add to this list will not be embedded in your output
file.

CID Font The CID Font Mode option can reduce the size of your PDF for
Mode: projects written in Unicode-based languages.
When you set CID Font Mode to Unicode only the characters actually
used in the font are embedded in the PDF file, in a special internal
format.
This works correctly with most Asian languages. However, it may
sometimes cause problems with western languages like Russian or
other European languages with special characters.
For more details see CID mode for Unicode fonts 545 .

See also:
Customize - PDF Export 738
PDF and Printed Manuals 538

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 608 Help & Manual Online Help

10.8 Microsoft Word RTF

The settings in this section control how your project is exported to MS Word RTF, which
generates Rich Text files compatible with the RTF files generated by Microsoft Word.
Support for this format is provided for backward compatibility but it is no longer maintained
in Help & Manual.

Limitations of the Word RTF format:

Because of its limitations Word RTF is generally not recommended. PDF provides very
superior output and much more control over formatting. There may be some special
cases where you still need to use RTF, but generally PDF is always preferable.

10.8.1 Page Setup & Headings

The options in this section control the layout, appearance and functionality of your MS Word
RTF output. These are the only options that have an effect on Word RTF output. Everything
else is controlled by your formatting in your topics.

Word RTF Page Setup & Headings settings:

Page Format: These settings configure the basic format of your output pages
Margins: and are the same as in Word.
Mirror margins automatically reverses asymmetrical margins so
that they are displayed correctly on facing even and odd pages.

Texts for Header, The text and font settings for the headers, footers and page
Footer and "Page": numbering. You can use variables 440 in these fields.
Note that the page number is inserted after the "Page:" text. You
don't need to use a variable for this.

Level formats for Sets the fonts and settings for your topic headers. The levels are
topic headings: the levels in the TOC.
You can also activate heading chapter numbering and automatic
insertion of page breaks for the individual levels.

Export active Exports the hyperlinks supported by Word RTF so that they can
hyperlinks: be used for online viewing. (Not all link types are supported.
Unsupported links will be exported as plain text.)

Insert file name Images in your project are not embedded in the RTF file because
marker for linked this can make it impossible to open the file in projects with a lot of
images: images. Selecting this option inserts the name of the file after the
image, which makes it easier to identify the external image files.

See also:
MS Word RTF 776 (Help Formats)

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Project Properties Reference 609

10.9 eBooks
The settings in this section control how your project is exported to eBooks, a self-contained
format including your help project and a viewer program in a single file. Like Help & Manual's
Browser-based Help, the standard eBooks viewer provide a close approximation of the
HTML Help viewer layout so that it can be used intuitively by all Windows users. In addition
to a Table of Contents with expanding and collapsing sections it also includes a Keyword
Index, full-text search and supports fully-formatted popup topics with graphics, formatted text
and links.
In addition to the standard layout the eBooks viewer also has a number of alternative skin
files (viewer templates 609 ) with which you can create other layouts.
Since eBooks is an HTML-based format it shares some settings with the other HTML-based
output formats supported by Help & Manual:

Shared settings:
The options in the following two sections are shared by all HTML-based output formats (
HTML Help, Browser-Based Help, eBooks and Visual Studio Help (MS Help 2.0).
Topic Pages: These are the HTML templates 475 that control the layout of your topic
pages. There is only one version of each template for all HTML-based
output formats. You cannot create separate templates for each output
format.

HTML Export These are the general settings for all HTML output formats, including
Options: image conversion and export options and the options for the CSS style
sheet used to export the style formatting information from your project.
Here too, there is only one CSS style sheet and one set of HTML
Export Options for all four output formats. You cannot enter different
settings for each output format.
· Note that not all the settings in this section are relevant for all
HTML-based output formats. See HTML Export Options 573 for
details.

Common settings in the Help Windows section:

The settings in the Help Windows section also define the background colors of the topics
and their headers in eBooks, and whether the topics have headers. The size and
position of the eBook viewer are defined in the Visual Appearance 609 section. All other
settings in the Help Windows section are irrelevant for eBooks.

See also:
Help & Manual eBooks 773 (Help Formats)
10.9.1 Visual Appearance
As the name indicates, the settings in this section control the appearance of your eBooks
output. In addition to the template for the viewer and size and position of the viewer on the

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610 Help & Manual Online Help

screen you can also select a graphic for a splash screen, a file icon and two sound effects.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Project Properties Reference 611

eBooks Visual Appearance settings and controls:

Viewer template: This template defines the appearance of the eBook viewer. You
must choose one of the templates stored in the \Templates
\ebooks folder in the Help & Manual program directory.
These templates are not user-editable. Also, please note that the
graphical templates are not resizable so their size cannot be set
with the Default Position & Size settings (see below).

Form icon: This option allows you to select an icon file to be displayed in
Windows explorer for your eBook .EXE file. You can only select
standard .ICO icon files.

Startup screen: The graphic image you select here will be displayed briefly in an
external window as a "splash screen" when the user starts your
eBook.
The image must be in .BMP format. It will be converted to a
compressed format automatically by Help & Manual when you
compile your project.

Startup sound: You can use these options to add sound effects to your eBook.
Page turn sound: The startup sound is played when the eBook is opened and can
be a little longer. The page turn sound should be very brief,
otherwise users will be annoyed by the delay.
You can only use audio files in the standard Windows .WAV
format.

Default position and These values define the initial position and size of the eBook
size: viewer when it is first displayed if you are using a resizable
template. You can enter them manually as pixel values or use the
Position Wizard button.
The default values of -1 for all four settings leave the viewer size
and position undefined and let Windows choose the window size
and position automatically.
If you choose a fixed-size template only the position values are
used, the size values are ignored.

Viewer window is Maximizes the eBook viewer on the user's screen when it is
maximized: opened. This option is not supported for fixed-width viewer
templates.

The Position Wizard displays a dummy window that you can

position and resize on the screen to set the size and position
values.
If you have a dual-monitor system use the Position Wizard in the
primary monitor and make sure that the primary monitor is on the
left: On dual-monitor systems the 0,0 position is defined as the
top left corner of the primary monitor, so doing this will make sure
that the resulting values also work on single-monitor computers.
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

The Default Positions button resets all the position and size
values to -1 to let Windows handle the window sizing (see
 612 Help & Manual Online Help

See also:
Help & Manual eBooks 773 (Help Formats)
10.9.2 Functionality & Security
This section includes options that control how your eBook works, its interface language and
some useful security features to protect your content.

eBooks Functionality & Security settings:

Language pack: Allows you to select the language to be used for the eBook
interface. Several language packs for common languages are
included with the program. They can be found in the \Templates
\ebooks folder in the Help & Manual program directory.
Language packs are plain text files with the extension .LNG
containing the definitions for the texts used in the viewer.
If there is no language pack available for your language you can
create one yourself by making a copy of the English.lng pack
and editing it. Don't delete or change any variable names and be
careful not to change the format of the file!

Enable keyword Include or exclude the keyword index and full-text search options
index: in the viewer.
Enable full text
search:

Compress viewer This reduces the size of the eBook by compressing the viewer
application: program. This can cause a slight delay when the program is
started so if you are distributing your eBook on a CD it is better
not to compress the application.

Text for About box: The text to be displayed when the user clicks on the About icon
in the viewer. You can use user-defined variables 449 to insert text
in this box.

Security: Here you can prevent users from being able to copy text from the
eBook to the clipboard and password-protect your eBook.

Copy protect viewer: If you select this option the viewer can only be run from a CD with
the specified serial number. If it is copied to a hard disk or
another CD it will not be functional.
Important:
Your CD burning program must be able to burn a specific serial
number to a CD for this function to work!

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Project Properties Reference 613

See also:
Help & Manual eBooks 773 (Help Formats)
10.9.3 Popups in eBooks
Formatted popups with links and graphics are supported in eBooks but they are not
configurable – that is why there are no settings for them in the eBooks section of Project
Properties. They are sized automatically on the basis of their content and they use the
background color set for the Popup help window type in Project > Project Properties > Help
Windows 557 .

See also:
Creating popup topics 194
Help & Manual eBooks 773 (Help Formats)

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

Part

XI
 Tools Included with Help & Manual 615

11 Tools Included with Help & Manual

In addition to the main program Help & Manual also includes a number of tools that make
producing help and documentation easier and more efficient. Some of these tools are
separate programs and some are integrated in Help & Manual itself, but they are all
available from within the main program.
This chapter provides descriptions of the tools and instructions on how to use them. In some
cases the instructions here are very basic because some of the tools have their own
separate help and documentation.

11.1 The Screen Capture Tool

IN THIS TOPIC:
Capturing a window, control or menu 615
Capturing a free region 616
Capturing a fixed-size region 617
Using extended options for more effects 617

Help & Manual has a powerful integrated screen capture function that includes most of the
functionality you need to make attractive screenshots quickly and efficiently. The function
will automatically select windows, controls and menus and you can also select freely-defined
rectangular regions of applications or the desktop and fixed size regions.
In addition to simple screenshots you can also make screenshots with a wide variety of
different shapes, add shadows and background colors and automatically resize your
screenshots with a choice of high-quality scaling filters.
For more control over effects and appearance you can edit your screenshot
with Impict 320 , the screenshot editing and enhancement program included
with Help & Manual.

Dual-monitor displays:
If you have a dual-monitor display the program you are capturing and Help
& Manual must both be in the same display, otherwise capturing will not
work. You may also find that capturing only works well in the primary
display. To check which is the primary display right-click on your desktop
and select Properties and then the Settings tab.

Capturing a window, control or menu:

1. Make sure that the program containing the element you want to copy is on the screen,
then click in the editor in the position where you want to insert the screenshot.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

616 Help & Manual Online Help

2. Select the Screen Capture button in the Toolbar or select Tools > Screen Capture.
3. Select the A Window, Control or Menu option and click on Start Capture.
4. Help & Manual minimizes and now you can move the mouse to select what you want
to capture. The selected element is indicated by a red outline.
You can also click to select and deselect windows and elements and open
menus and dialogs, this will not activate the capture.
5. When you are ready to capture hold down Ctrl and click. This will display the Save
Image dialog, in which you can choose where you want to save the graphic, the
filename and the color depth (or greyscale).
When you select Save the screenshot file will be saved and simultaneously inserted in
your topic.

Capturing a free region:

You cannot click on elements to activate them while capturing with this method so
arrange everything as you want to have it for the capture before you start. If you want to
capture something in a program select it briefly and then return to Help & Manual, this
will ensure that its window is active when you capture.
1. Click in the editor in the position where you want to insert the screenshot.

2. Select the Screen Capture button in the Toolbar or Tools > Screen Capture.
3. Select the A free region of the desktop and click on Start Capture. Help & Manual
minimizes and a cross-hair pointer is displayed along with a lens window that helps
you to see exactly what you are selecting.
4. Position the cross-hair pointer at the top left corner of the area you want to select.
Press the left mouse button and drag down and to the right to define the area to
select.
5. Release the mouse button and then click inside the selected area. This will display
the Save Image dialog, in which you can choose where you want to save the

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Tools Included with Help & Manual 617

graphic, the filename and the color depth (or greyscale).

When you select Save the screenshot file will be saved and simultaneously inserted in
your topic.

Capturing a fixed-size region:

Capturing a fixed-size region is very similar to capturing a window or control. However,
instead of automatically selecting elements on the screen the red outline remains the
same predefined size. This can be useful for selecting elements that are otherwise
difficult to "grab" and elements that all need to be exactly the same size (like icons).
1. Make sure that the program containing the element you want to copy is on the
screen, then click in the editor in the position where you want to insert the
screenshot.

2. Select the Screen Capture button in the Toolbar or Tools > Screen Capture.
3. Select the A fixed-size region option and set the size of the region you want to
capture (in pixels). Then click on Start Capture.
4. Help & Manual minimizes and now you can move the mouse to select what you
want to capture. A fixed-size red rectangle showing the area to be captured is
displayed.
You can also click to select and deselect windows and elements and open
menus and dialogs, this will not activate the capture.
5. When you are ready to capture hold down Ctrl and click. This will display the Save
Image dialog, in which you can choose where you want to save the graphic, the
filename and the color depth (or greyscale).
When you select Save the screenshot file will be saved and simultaneously inserted in
your topic.

Using extended options for more effects:

All three capture methods can be combined with a selection of options to automatically
resize your screenshots and enhance them by adding shadows, applying shapes and
other effects. See Screen Capture 725 in the Reference section for explanations of the
individual options. Experiment!

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 618 Help & Manual Online Help

· Before making your screenshot click on the button to display the available
options. All the options you select here are applied automatically when the screenshot
is made.
· For even more screenshot power try TNT, the combined screen capture and graphics
editor tool from EC Software: TNT Screen Capture Page

See also:
Screen Capture 725 (dialog reference)
About Graphics in Help & Manual 856
The Impict Screenshot Editor 621

11.2 The Project Reports Tool

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to generate a project report 618
Saving reports as HTML files 619
Viewing reports in your web browser 621

Report types 620

This tool generates detailed reports on your project that can be used for a wide range of
purposes, including documentation, providing your programmers with lists of topic IDs for
their help calls, checking project status, locating dead links, finding missing images and
unused images and so on. Reports are displayed immediately in a special viewer but you
can also save them in HTML files for documentation and other purposes.
See the report dialog reference 726 in the Reference > Menus and Dialogs > Tools chapter for
details on the dialog options and the available report types 728 .

How to generate a project report:

1. Click on in the Toolbar or select Reports in the Tools menu.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Tools Included with Help & Manual 619

2. Select the report type 728 in the Report Type: field.

3. Select the other options to change the sort order of your report and which topics you
wish to include or exclude (see the dialog reference 726 for details).
4. Uncheck View report in external browser to display the report in the integrated report
viewer (recommended).
5. Click on to display the report. See The Report Viewer 728 for details on
viewer controls and functions.

Saving reports as HTML files:

· To save the report as an HTML file click on in the report viewer. See The Report
Viewer 728 for more details on viewer controls and functions.
· Alternatively you can also select the View report in external browser function (see
below). This automatically saves the report in an HTML file as soon as it is generated.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

620 Help & Manual Online Help

Viewing reports in your web browser:

Normally the integrated report viewer is the best way to view project reports because it is
optimized for the report format. However, if you want more extensive searching and
printing options you can also view the report in your default web browser.
1. Proceed as described above, but select the View report in external browser
option.

2. Use the browse button in the File name: field to select a location and name for
saving the report as an HTML file.
3. Click on to display the report.

Report types:
Short report: Simple list of all topics in your project with status, caption (i.e. the TOC
title), topic IDs, help context numbers, builds in which the topics are
included and date last edited. The report also includes a summary of
the number of topics and keywords in your project.
This is a practical format for providing your programmers with a list of
topic IDs and context numbers for their calls.

Extended Also includes each topic's keywords and help window and a more
report: detailed project summary with a list of the images used in the project.
Missing images are shown in red.

Long report: Also includes lists of the images used in each topic, lists of the links in
each topic with their targets (including topic links, Internet links, file
links and script links) and the first lines of the text with which the topic
begins.
Missing images and dead links are shown in red.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Tools Included with Help & Manual 621

Full report Same as the Long Report but also includes an additional full list of
including image images used in the project with a lists of the topics in which each
references: image is used. In addition to this there is also a list of images in the
project's graphics folders that are not used in the project (useful for
tidying up your project folders).
Missing images and dead links are shown in red. Unused images are
listed at the end of the report.

See also:
Reports 726 (dialog reference)

11.3 The Impict Screenshot Editor

IN THIS TOPIC:
Setting your default image editor 621
How to start Impict 621
How to open an image from the editor 622

Help & Manual comes with a fully-featured graphics editing program called Impict. This
program is designed specifically for editing and enhancing screenshots and other graphics
used in help and documentation projects. Since Impict comes with its own comprehensive
help this topic only explains how to start the program and how to open graphics files for
editing in Impict from the Help & Manual editor.
For full details on editing images with Impict see the program's own help.

Setting Impict as your default image editor:

Several of the functions described below only open Impict if it is set as your default
image editor. This is the default setting when Help & Manual is installed.
1. Open Tools > Customize > General.
2. Check that impict.exe is selected in the Default Image Editor: field. If it isn't use
the browse button to select this file in the Help & Manual program directory,
which is normally C:\Program Files\HelpAndManual4.
Alternatively you can also select any other graphics editing program. Then most of the
functions described below will open this program instead of Impict.

How to start Impict:

There are several different ways to start Impict:
· Select the icon in the Toolbar.
· Select Image Editor in the Tools menu.
· Select Impict in the Help & Manual program group in the Windows Start menu.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 622 Help & Manual Online Help

How to open an image in Impict from the editor:

1. Click once on the image you want to edit in the Help & Manual editor to select it.
2. Select the icon in the Toolbar or select Image Editor in the Tools menu.
Note that these options will open the image in a different image editor if Impict is not
defined as your default image editor (see above).

See also:
Using Graphics 313
Screen Capture 615

11.4 The Print Manual Designer

IN THIS TOPIC:
How to open the Print Manual Designer 622
How to select a print manual template for your project 623

How to edit the current print manual template 623

The Print Manual Designer is another separate program included with Help & Manual. It is
used for editing the template files that define the layout and appearance of the PDF files
and printed manuals generated from your projects. (PDF output and the Print User Manual
function in the Files menu actually both generate a PDF file. The only difference is that the
file is automatically deleted after printing when you print a manual.)
This tool can be used to design entire manuals. In addition to defining the layout you can
also add additional pages and content not included in your project, including cover and back
cover pages, multiple title pages at the beginning, an introduction, a formatted table of
contents, title pages for individual chapters, headers and footers, a formatted index and
multiple endnotes pages.
The Print Manual Designer has its own help so this topic only describes the basic
procedures for opening templates for editing and selecting them in your projects.
Print manual template files have the extension .MNL.

How to open the Print Manual Designer:

· Select in the Toolbar or Print Manual Designer in the Tools menu.
This opens the Print Manual Designer with a new empty template file. It is generally
easier to edit an existing template, particularly when you are using the program for the
first time. You can find a collection of sample templates in the \Templates\pdf folder in
the Help & Manual program directory, which is normally C:\Program Files
\HelpAndManual4.
It is a good idea to make a copy of the sample template instead of working on the
original.
You can also place a copy of your print manual template in your project directory if you
want to keep all the files used by your project in one place.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Tools Included with Help & Manual 623

How to select a print manual template for your project:

You must select a print manual template in your Project Properties to use it for your
project. You can select separate templates for printed manuals and Adobe PDF output.

Selecting a template for Adobe PDF output:

1. Open your project and go to Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF > PDF
Layout 604 .
2. Enter the path and name of the template you want to use in the Print Manual
Template: field. Use the browse button to locate and select the template you
want to use.

Selecting a template for printed manuals:

1. Open your project and go to File > Print User Manual.
2. Enter the path and name of the template you want to use in the Print Manual
Template: field. Use the browse button to locate and select the template you
want to use.

How to edit the current print manual template:

You can also open the print manual template for the current project directly for editing.

Opening the template for Adobe PDF output:

1. Open your project and go to Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF > PDF
Layout 604 .
2. Click on the button to the right of the Print Manual Template: field. This
opens the Print Manual Designer and loads the current template.

Selecting a template for printed manuals:

1. Open your project and go to File > Print User Manual 666 .
2. Click on the button to the right of the Print Manual Template: field. This
opens the Print Manual Designer and loads the current template.

See also:
PDF and Printed Manuals 538
PDF and print manual templates 468
Adobe PDF 774
Printed manuals 776

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 624 Help & Manual Online Help

11.5 The Help Context Tool

IN THIS TOPIC:
When to use the Help Context Tool 624
Supported context number range 624
Assigning new help context numbers 625
Deleting help context numbers 626
Importing context numbers from a map file 626
Auto-generating context help topics 626
Exporting IDs and context numbers to a map file 627

The Help Context Tool helps to manage the help context numbers 212 in your project. You
can use it to assign, delete, import and export help context numbers in batch mode for your
entire project. In addition to this you can also use the tool to automatically generate context
help topics from a map file containing a list of topic IDs and context numbers.
The help context number is a second unique identifier for topics. Like the topic ID 210 it must
be unique and it can also be viewed and edited in the Topic Options tab of every topic. Help
context numbers are used by some programmers and programming languages to access
topics from applications, either on their own or in combination with topic IDs.

When to use the Help Context Tool:

The Help Context Tool can save you hours of boring and error-prone manual work if
you suddenly realize that you need to add, change or delete help context numbers in
an entire project.
If you know you need to add context numbers to new projects it is generally more
practical to generate context numbers automatically. See Assigning help context
numbers 213 for details.

Supported context number range:

Help & Manual stores context numbers as an unsigned 4-byte integer, which means
you can enter values between 0 and 4294967295. This is nearly 4.3 billion, so it
should provide you with enough numbers for most applications.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

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Assigning new help context numbers to your project's topics:

Note that this function will only assign context numbers to topics that do not yet have
context numbers. If you want to renumber all the topics in your project use the deletion
function (see below 626 ) first to clear all the numbers in your entire project.
1. Open your project and select Tools > Help Context Tool.

2. Select and then click on .

3. Set the Start value to define the first help context number you want to assign and
the Increment to define the steps between each automatically-assigned number.
(It is a good idea to use an increment of around 10 to allow for the addition of
more topics later.)
The start value and increment are particularly important when you are
assigning numbers in modular projects 492 and you want each project to
use a defined range of context numbers.
4. Choose where you wish to assign context numbers:
To topics in the Assigns context numbers to all the topics in the Table of
TOC: Contents section.

To "invisible" Assigns context numbers to all the topics listed in the Invisible
topics: Topics section. These are normally your context help topics so
you can use this option to assign context numbers to context
help topics only.

To topic Assigns context numbers to all the anchors 305 in your project,
anchors: which makes it possible to make context calls to specific
locations inside topics. This option assigns numbers to all
anchors in both the TOC and the Invisible Topics section,
irrespective of whether these sections are selected above or not.

5. Click on to assign the context numbers.

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Deleting help context numbers:

1. Open your project and select Tools > Help Context Tool.

2. Select and then click on .

3. Choose whether you want to delete all the context numbers in the entire project or
only the numbers within a specific range. "All" is global and will delete all context
numbers everywhere in your entire project. The range option is useful when you are
working on modular projects and need to remove numbers outside a certain range
from individual modules.
4. Choose where you want to delete the context numbers:
From topics in Deletes the context numbers from all the topics in the Table of
the TOC: Contents section.

From Deletes the context numbers from all the topics listed in the
"invisible" Invisible Topics section. These are normally your context help
topics: topics so you can use this option to delete context numbers from
context help topics only.

From topic Deletes the context numbers from all the anchors 305 in your
anchors: project, which makes it possible to make context calls to specific
locations inside topics. This option deletes numbers from all
anchors in both the TOC and the Invisible Topics section,
irrespective of whether these sections are selected above or not.

5. Click on to delete the context numbers.

Importing context numbers and auto-generating topics from a map file:

Software development tools like Visual Studio can generate so-called "map" files with
lists of context IDs and matching help context numbers. Programmers often provide
these lists to inform the help authors of the topic IDs and context numbers needed for
the context-sensitive help calls.

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 Tools Included with Help & Manual 627

In addition to importing missing context numbers to existing topics this function can also
auto-generate missing topics from a map file. Since context-sensitive help often consists
of hundreds of very short topics this capability can save you many hours of boring and
frustrating work. It creates the basic framework for your context help in seconds.
1. Obtain the map file from the programmers and make sure that it only contains the
topics you want to use. These files have a standard syntax – you can create an
example by using the Help Context Tool's export function (see below).
2. Open your project (you might want to make a backup first) and select Tools > Help
Context Tool.
3. Select the option in the first screen and click on
.

4. Use the button to navigate to and select the map file.

5. Select the check box below the map file name field if you want to
generate new topics for all IDs in the map file that do not match topics in your
project.
6. Click on to import the map file.
Note that all topics generated with this method are automatically created
in the Invisible Topics section as popup topics.
If you need to use the function to generate topics in the TOC you must
drag them to the TOC with the mouse after generating them. Then
change their help window type in their Topic Options tabs and edit their
captions manually.

Exporting IDs and context numbers to a map file:

You can also use the Help Context Tool to export the topic IDs and help context
numbers from your project to a map file that the application programmers can use for
writing their context help calls (and also to obtain an example of the map file syntax).
Note that you can only generate a map file for all the topics in your project.
1. Open your project (you might want to make a backup first) and select Tools > Help

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Context Tool.
2. Select the option in the first screen and click on .

3. Enter the name and path to the output file in the Output file: field. Use the
browse button to choose a directory. You can also append the output to an
existing file – if you do this you also need to deselect the Overwrite output file:
option.
4. Choose the Map File Syntax:
· #Define is the default and selects the standard #define syntax used in most map
files.
· INI Style selects the standard INI file format.
· Custom allows you to define your syntax yourself. To do this you can combine
the three map file variables with any text or additional characters of your own.
Variable syntax for custom map file output
v <%TOPICID%> inserts the Topic ID of the current topic. Unlike <%
HREF_CURRENT_PAGE%> this variable inserts the Topic ID exactly as it is
displayed in the Topic Options tab, including upper and lower case
characters.
v <%TOPIC_HELPCONTEXT%> inserts the help context number of the current
topic or anchor (if the anchor has a context number). Just inserting the
variable on its own generates a decimal number. You can also export the
context numbers in hexadecimal by adding a hex prefix:
o &<%TOPIC_HELPCONTEXT%> exports to hex in the format &000000FF
o 0x<%TOPIC_HELPCONTEXT%> exports to hex in the format 0x000000FF
v <%ANCHORID%> inserts the anchor ID of an anchor with a help context
number.

5. Click on to generate the map file.

See also:
Assigning help context numbers 212
Changing topic IDs and context numbers 212

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Tools Included with Help & Manual 629

IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849

11.6 The Spell Checker

IN THIS TOPIC:
Using the standard spell checking functions 629
Configuring the spell checker 629
Global Settings and Project Settings 629
Spell checker Options 630
Disabling spell checking for specific styles 630
Selecting the language / main dictionaries 631
Downloading additional dictionaries 631

The spell checker included with Help & Manual supports both manual spell checking (check
topics or the entire project in a single session) and "live" spell checking, which highlights
incorrectly spelled words as you type.

Using the standard spell checking functions:

· See Spell checking 184 in the Creating and Editing Topics chapter for instructions on
using both manual and live spell checking functions.

Configuring the spell checker:

To configure the spell checker select Tools > Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker:

Global Settings and Project Settings:

The spell checker has two sets of settings, Global Settings and Project Settings.

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630 Help & Manual Online Help

Global These settings are stored with your other program settings and are
settings: used for all projects for which no individual Project Settings have been
configured.

Project These settings are stored with your project and have precedence over
Settings: the Global Settings. This makes it possible to use different spell
checker settings and dictionaries for specific projects.

All the settings in Global Settings and Project Settings are identical. The only difference
between the two sets of settings is where they are used.

Spell checker Options:

All the settings in the Options section should be self-explanatory. The only setting we
should draw your attention to here is Suggest from main dictionary only :
The custom dictionaries selected with the button are disabled when the
Suggest from main dictionary only : option is activated!

Disabling spell checking for specific styles:

The settings in the Ignore List tab exclude text formatted with specific styles from spell
checking. This makes it possible to prevent spell checking for text where it would not
make sense, like program code examples and HTML markup.
1. Select Tools > Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker and click on the Ignore List
tab.

2. Select the check boxes of all the styles you want to exclude from checking.
All text formatted with the selected styles will be ignored by the spell checker. These
settings are always global – unlike the other spell checker options you cannot apply them
on a per-project basis.

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Selecting your language / main dictionaries:

· Select the main spell checking dictionary you want to use here. Basically, this is where
you select which language you want to spell check. The program will automatically
display dictionary files located in the \Dictionaries folder in the Help & Manual program
directory, which is normally C:\Program Files\HelpAndManual4.

Do not store main dictionary files in any other location! For example,
please don't try to store main dictionary files in project folders as this may
cause conflicts and errors.

Downloading additional main dictionaries:

· Click on the Download dictionaries... item in the Main Dictionaries section to download
dictionaries for additional languages and language versions. This link will take you
directly to the dictionary download page.
· Copy the new dictionary files to the \Dictionaries folder in the Help & Manual program
directory, which is normally C:\Program Files\HelpAndManual4.
Do not store main dictionary files in any other location! For example, please
don't try to store main dictionary files in project folders as this may cause
conflicts.

See also:
Using custom user dictionaries 631
Creating and editing custom user dictionaries 634
Spell checking 184
11.6.1 Using custom dictionaries
IN THIS TOPIC:
Selecting the current custom user dictionary 632

Activating custom user dictionaries 633

Help & Manual allows you to define and use as many custom user dictionaries as you want.
In addition to the standard function of storing words not contained in your main dictionaries
these dictionaries also have two more very useful functions:

Auto-Correct for frequent errors and abbreviations:

The Auto-Correct function automatically replaces common typing errors and
abbreviations with the correct words or entire phrases. See Spell checking 187 in the

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Creating and Editing Topics chapter for details on using this function.

Excluded Words for exception handling:

The Excluded Words function allows you to enter words that will always be marked
as incorrect, even if they would normally be considered correct. This allows you to
enter exceptions for words contained in the standard main dictionaries that you want
to handle differently.

Selecting the current custom user dictionary:

This dictionary is used when you select the Add functions to add unknown words to your
dictionary when you are spell checking, both with live and manual spell checking.
This dictionary is also used when you select in the manual spell checker. For
more details see Spell checking 184 in the Creating and Editing Topics chapter.
1. Select Tools > Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker.

2. Select either Global Settings or Project Settings tab, depending on whether you
want to configure the dictionary to be used by all projects or by the current project
only.
If you select Project Settings the settings in the Global Settings tab will be
ignored for the current project.
3. Select the dictionary you want to use from the list in the Custom Dictionary: field.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Tools Included with Help & Manual 633

Activating custom user dictionaries:

Although words are always added to the same custom user dictionary (see above) you
can define and use as many custom dictionaries as you like. The spell checker will use
all the activated dictionaries, both for checking spelling and for the Auto-Correct 629 and
Excluded Words functions.
1. Select Tools > Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker.

2. Select either Global Settings or Project Settings tab, depending on whether you
want to configure the custom user dictionaries to be used by all projects or by the
current project only.
If you select Project Settings the settings in the Global Settings tab will be
ignored for the current project.

3. Click on the button to display the custom dictionaries dialog:

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 634 Help & Manual Online Help

· To activate a dictionary select its check box in the Custom Dictionaries: box. All
custom dictionaries activated here will be used by the spell checker.

See also:
Creating and editing custom user dictionaries 634
Spell checking 184
11.6.2 Creating and editing custom dictionaries
IN THIS TOPIC:
Where custom user dictionaries are created 634
Creating a global custom user dictionary 634
Creating a project custom user dictionary 635
How to edit custom user dictionaries 636

Help & Manual can create both global custom user dictionaries which are used for all
projects and project-related custom user dictionaries that are only available to individual
projects. In every project you can configure the program to use the global dictionaries, the
project dictionaries, both or neither (see Using custom dictionaries 633 ).

Where custom user dictionaries are created:

Global custom user dictionaries:

Dictionaries created in the Global Settings tab are created in the \Dictionaries folder
in the Help & Manual project directory, which is normally C:\Program Files
\HelpAndManual4. These dictionaries are displayed in both the Global Settings and
the Project Settings tabs.

Project custom user dictionaries:

Dictionaries created in the Project Settings tab are created in the project directory of
the current project. This is the directory in which your .HMX project file is stored.
These dictionaries are only displayed in the Project Settings tab and are only
available to the project with which they are associated.

Creating a global custom user dictionary:

1. Select Tools > Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker and select the Global Settings

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 Tools Included with Help & Manual 635

tab.

2. Click on the button to display the custom dictionaries dialog:

3. Click on and enter a name for the dictionary. The new dictionary will be
stored in the \Dictionaries folder in the Help & Manual project directory, which is
normally C:\Program Files\HelpAndManual4. The dictionary will be available in both
the Global Settings and the Project Settings tabs.

Creating a project custom user dictionary:

Project dictionaries must have unique names!

When creating custom user dictionaries for projects be careful to ensure
that the dictionary has a unique name. If you create a project dictionary
with the same name as a global dictionary only one of the two will be
displayed in the selection lists and the other will be ignored.

1. Select Tools > Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker and select the Project Settings
tab.

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636 Help & Manual Online Help

2. Select and click on the button to display the

custom dictionaries dialog:

Note that selecting deactivates all the

settings in the Global Settings tab. As long as this check box is active only
the settings in the Project Settings tab will be used.

3. Click on and enter a name for the dictionary. The new dictionary will be
stored in the project directory of the current project, which is the directory where the .
HMX project file is stored. The dictionary will only be available to the current project.

How to edit custom user dictionaries:

1. Select Tools > Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker and select either the Global
Settings or the Project Settings tab. (If you want to edit a project dictionary you must
select Project Settings.)
2. Click on the button at the bottom of the dialog to display the custom
dictionaries dialog.

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 Tools Included with Help & Manual 637

3. Select a dictionary in the list and click on .

4. You can now check and edit the Added Words, Auto-Correct Pairs and Excluded
Words lists.
Added Words: All the words in this list are identified as correct by the spell
checker.

Auto-Correct The first word in each pair in this list will be automatically replaced
List: by the second word during manual spell checks. (This function is
not currently available in live spell checking.)

Excluded All the words in this list are identified as incorrect by the spell
Words: checker, even if they are contained in the main dictionary.

· For more details on using these features see Spell checking 184 in the Creating and
Editing Topics chapter.

See also:
Spell Checker 629
Using custom dictionaries 631
Spell checking 184

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 638 Help & Manual Online Help

11.7 The Repair and Recover Tool

IN THIS TOPIC:
Why the project file sometimes needs reorganizing 638

What the Repair and Recover tool does 638

Automatic Repair and Recover 639
Locating your temporary project files 640
How to use Repair and Recover manually 640

This tool analyzes help project files and repairs them if necessary. There are two situations
where this may be necessary: After a system crash or other event that forces Help & Manual
to close without saving the current project properly, and if the project file ever becomes
corrupted or damaged.
For more background information on system crashes and how to protect your project data
see Data security and crash recovery 886 in the Reference section.

Why the project file sometimes needs repairing:

Help & Manual itself is not known to corrupt the data in your project files – data security
is an extremely high priority – but external influences sometimes can. In addition to
system crashes these can include faulty hardware (for example bad memory chips) and
other badly-behaved programs that crash Help & Manual or damage files on your hard
disk.
If a project file is badly damaged or corrupted Help & Manual may be unable to open it.
Typical symptoms of data corruption in your project file can also include missing topics
that you know you have not deleted yourself, puzzling error messages and "blind topics".
Blind topics are topics that have not been deleted but are no longer listed in the TOC or
Invisible Topics. You know you have a blind topic if Help & Manual warns you that a topic
ID that you cannot find anywhere is already in use.
If the file damage is not too serious the Repair and Recover tool can usually correct all
these problems and others and recover most or all of the data in the project file.

What the Repair and Recover tool does:

Ø It attempts to open the selected help project.
Ø It reads the internal Table of Contents, Invisible Topics and the Help Context indexes
and regenerates them if necessary. If duplicate help context numbers are found they
are removed.
Ø It checks whether each topic record can be read correctly. If a topic record cannot be
read, the tool tries to recover the topic contents. If this is not possible, the topic is
deleted and a report message is generated.
Ø It checks for "blind topics" that are stored in the project database but are not
referenced in either the Table of Contents or the Invisible Topics list. If a blind topic is
found it is added to the Invisible Topics section so that it can be checked by the user.
Ø It checks the link references lists in each topic for validity and repairs them if
necessary.

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 Tools Included with Help & Manual 639

Ø It saves the repaired project file.

Automatic Repair and Recover:

When you edit a project you are actually working on a temporary copy, the original file
always remains closed except when you save your work (see here 886 for more details on
this). This temporary copy is normally deleted after you have saved your work
successfully and closed your project. If a system crash or another situation forces Help &
Manual to close without saving the temporary copy is not deleted.
The next time you start Help & Manual it will automatically locate the temporary copy and
prompt you to recover it. The following dialog will be displayed:

1. Click on the blue file name link in the Temporary file: column to start the Repair
and Recover tool.

The temporary file to be recovered is selected automatically in the File

Name: field. The program also suggests a name and storage location (in
the original project folder) for the recovered version of the project in the
Save Recovered File As: field.
2. If you want you can click on to change the input and output files but this is
not normally necessary.
3. Click on to repair and recover the file. Progress and reports are
displayed in the Messages: box. (If necessary you can copy the report text from this
box by selecting it with the mouse and right-clicking.)
4. When the repair is complete you can close the tool and open the repaired version
of the file with Help & Manual.

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Locating your temporary project files:

Help & Manual will normally find your temporary project files automatically when you
restart it after a Windows crash or power failure. If it does not you can easily locate them
yourself and the run the Repair and Recover tool on them manually (see below).
By default the temporary project files are stored in the standard Windows TEMP folder,
the location of which varies depending on the version of Windows you are using. Since
the names of the temporary files always start with hmd and have the extension .tmp the
easiest way to locate them is to do a system-wide search for:

hmd*.tmp

You can then run the Repair and Recover tool on the files you find.
Changing the storage location for temporary files:
You can change the storage location for your temporary files in Tools > Customize >
Folders. This makes them easier to find when you need them.

How to use Repair and Recover manually:

If you ever need to check and repair an existing project file you can also start the Repair
and Recover tool manually.
1. Make a backup copy of the original project file.
2. Select Tools > Repair and Recover. If the project you want to check is open you will
be prompted to close it before continuing and the project will then be selected
automatically by the Repair and Recover tool:

3. Click on in the File Name: field to choose the file you want to check and
repair.
When you use the tool manually the Save Recovered File As: field is
grayed out because original file is overwritten by the repaired version.

4. Click on to repair and recover the file. Progress and reports are
displayed in the Messages: box. (If necessary you can copy the report text from this
box by selecting it with the mouse and right-clicking.)

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 Tools Included with Help & Manual 641

5. When the repair is complete you can close the tool and open the repaired version
of the file with Help & Manual.

See also:
Customize 731 (setting automatic backups)
Data security and crash recovery 886

11.8 The Project Converter

IN THIS TOPIC:
Conversion limitations and restrictions 641

How to convert .HM3 projects 642

Conversion settings 643

This tool is converts existing .HM3 Help & Manual 3.x project files to the .HMX format. It
makes upgrading from Help & Manual 3.x to Help & Manual 4 a transparent and
straightforward process – generally all you need to do is open an .HM3 project and select
Convert .

Conversion limitations and restrictions

From the point of view of project conversion the two biggest differences between the .
HM3 and .HMX formats are dynamic styles and tables. Help & Manual 3 did not have
dynamic styles and its table formatting options were much more limited than those
available in Help & Manual 4.

Dynamic styles:
If you select Convert Styles in the options (see below 643 ) the Project Converter will
try to identify the styles used in your .HM3 project and replace them with dynamic
styles. This is only possible with text explicitly formatted with styles in the .HM3
project – the formatting of manually-formatted text will be converted but it will not be
associated with a defined style.
If the style of a paragraph cannot be identified uniquely it will be assigned the Normal
style. Its text formatting will converted correctly but it will be applied manually. The
result will be a paragraph with the Normal style containing manually-formatted text.

Tables:
Tables in Help & Manual 3 were fixed-width only and they were often split into
multiple tables to handle page break problems in PDF and printed manuals. The
Project Converter has options for dealing with both of these issues (see below 643 ) but
because of the differences between the two table formats you may need to make
some manual corrections to your tables after importing.

Custom code in HTML templates:

The HTML templates 470 used in Help & Manual 4 have changed considerably, so it is
not possible to transfer custom code from your .HM3 projects when they are

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imported – the risk of mangling the resulting code would be too great.
If you have entered custom code in your templates you will need to re-enter it
manually in the templates of your new .HMX project. Your code should continue to
work in the new templates, however. The templates are functionally the same as
before, they just contain some new tags and variables and their structure has been
changed.

How to convert .HM3 projects:

There are two ways to start the Project Converter. If you open the .HM3 project in Help &
Manual 4 you will automatically be prompted to run the converter program, selecting the
project you are opening for conversion. Alternatively you can also run the Project
Converter manually and select the project yourself.

Open the project to convert:

This is the easiest way to convert your old projects.
1. Select in the Toolbar or File > Open to open the Open Help Project dialog.
2. In the Files of type: field select H&M Version 3 Project Files (*.hm3) .

3. Navigate to the .HM3 file you want to convert and click on , then confirm
the prompt asking you if you want to convert the project file. This will automatically
start the Project Converter with the selected project file:

4. Select Options to check and adjust your conversion options. This is important
because you may need to change your settings depending on the formatting and
content in your .HM3 project to obtain optimum results. See below for details and
explanations of the available settings.
5. then click on Start Conversion to convert the project file. See below 643 for details
on the available options.
The converted project is automatically saved in the same folder and with the same
name as the old Help & Manual 3 project, but with the extension .HMX instead of .
HM3.
After converting you can then open and edit the project normally in Help & Manual 4.

Run the converter manually and convert:

Alternatively you can also start the Project Converter manually. To start it just select
it in the Help & Manual program group in the Windows Start menu.

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Operation is exactly the same as above. The only difference is that you must select
the project file to convert manually. Click on the browse button to locate the project
file.

Conversion settings:
When you click on the Options button in the Project Converter the following dialog is
displayed:

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Conversion settings:
Convert tables to This converts the fixed-size Version 3 tables to dynamic tables
auto-size: that will automatically resize to fit the help viewer window.
Note that this option makes the widths of all columns in your
tables variable – they will adjust automatically on the basis of
their content.
Don't activate this option if your project contains tables with
explicitly defined column widths as it may cause formatting
problems! (For example if you use tables as a formatting tool.)

Convert only last This has the same effect as the previous option but it only makes
column to auto-size: the last (rightmost) column in the table variable. This is the most
flexible table conversion option.

Concatenate similar In Help & Manual 3 it was often necessary to split tables to
tables: control formatting properly. In PDF and printed manuals Help &
Manual 4 splits tables automatically at page boundaries and can
also automatically generate headers on each page so manual
table splitting is no longer necessary.
This option can identify similar tables in your topics and
automatically join them together to create a single table that is
more easy to handle in Help & Manual 4.

Tolerance for Defines how closely matched the columns of tables have to be to
column width be combined with the Concatenate function. Two tables will only
differences: be combined if all the widths of all their columns are within this
tolerance.
Increase this value if your tables contain manually-adjusted
column widths with slight variances.

Try to recognize If this is selected the Converter will attempt to identify styles
styles and format applied to the text in your .HM3 project. It will create new style
converted text with definitions for these styles and apply them to paragraphs
styles: formatted with these styles in the old project.
Please note that this process cannot be perfect because styles in
Help & Manual 3 projects did not have the same close
association with text and paragraphs that they have in Help &
Manual 4. All the formatting of your text will be converted
correctly but you may find that some paragraphs are associated
with the Normal style instead of a newly-defined style matching
the old formatting.

See also:
Creating Projects 125
Text Formatting and Styles 228

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 Tools Included with Help & Manual 645

Dynamic Styles 746

Working with Tables 332

11.9 The Project Synchronization Tool

IN THIS TOPIC:
What Project Synch DOESN'T do 645
How changes are synchronized 646

Project Synch (project synchronization) helps you produce and maintain translated versions
of your Help & Manual projects. Producing the initial translation is easy – you just make a
copy of your original .HMX project with Project Synch and give it to the translator, who
translates all the text in the project into a different language, using Help & Manual.
The real job of Project Synch begins when you need to update your documentation. When
the new version of the original project is ready you use Project Synch to compare the new
version of the original with the last translated version of the .HMX project delivered by the
translator.
The old translated version is then updated: New versions of topics containing changed text
are inserted for translation, completely new topics are inserted, deleted topics are removed,
stylesheets and project properties are updated and so on.
You then send the updated version to the translator, who translates the changes and new
content and returns it to you.

What project synchronization does not do:

Project synchronization compares differences in project structure, not in topic content. This
makes it possible to compare two projects written in completely different languages – the
original version and the translated version – and to update the structural changes in the
translated version.
Project Synch is not a "track changes" or "compare by content" function.
It does not show you where changed text is in individual topics or what specific
changes each topic contains. It only tracks which topics have changed and updates
the project structure to the latest version.
It just shows you that topics contain changes. These changes can be topic content,
keywords, settings in the topic's Topic Options tab or changes in the topic caption in
the TOC.
Project Synch is not suitable for monitoring ongoing changes in two projects.
Project Synch assumes that nothing in the translated version is ever changed
independently. It only checks for changes in the original version and updates the
structure of the translation version to reflect those changes.
If independent structural changes (new topics, moved topics
etc.) are made in the translated version Project Synch will
eliminate them!
It is extremely important to understand this. The translator is not permitted to make
any structural changes to the project!

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646 Help & Manual Online Help

Because of this you shouldn't try to use Project Synch to compare and synchronize
ongoing changes made in two different versions of the same project in the same
language. If you do, all the changes in the target version (equivalent to the
translation version) will be eliminated when you synchronize!

How changes are synchronized:

The original project and the translated project are linked as a "translation pair". When
you compare the two Project Synch can then identify all items in the original project that
have changed since a specified date. This is achieved with internal ID codes and
timestamps that are assigned to the entire project, topics and other elements of your
project.

How the translation pair is linked:

The two projects are linked via a new setting called the Project GUID in
Project > Project Properties > Common Properties. The GUID is generated
automatically and should never be changed unless you know what you are
doing and have a very good reason for doing so!

· New topics: These are inserted in the translated version in the correct positions so
that they can be translated.
· Changed topics: These are highlighted in the translated version. The complete
new version of the content of the changed topic is inserted in the translated
version. This can either replace the old translated text or be inserted above the old
translated text.
· Deleted topics: These are removed from the TOC of the translated version and
moved to a Deleted Topics folder in the Invisible Topics section for checking and
manual deletion. Their topic options are automatically set so that they are not
included in compiled output.
· Moved topics: If their content has not changed they are simply moved to their new
positions in the translated project.
· Topics with changed IDs: Project Synch treats these as new topics. It "deletes"
the original topic and moves it to the Deleted Topics folder in the Invisible Topics
section. Then it inserts the "new" topic in the TOC.

See also:
Identifying changes 652
Interim updates 655
Problems and troubleshooting 658

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 Tools Included with Help & Manual 647

11.9.1 Synchronization Steps

11.9.1.1 Step 1: Create a translation pair

IN THIS TOPIC:
1: Save the project and create the pair 647
2: Send the copy to the translator for translation 648

The first step of using Project Synch is creating a copy of your original project for the
translator to translate. If you want you can do this in Windows Explorer or any other file
manager. However, if you do this you must then link the two projects as a "language pair"
manually later. It is easier to use Project Synch to create the copy, then the two projects are
"paired" automatically.

Synchronizing existing translations:

You can also synchronize projects that have already been translated
without using the Project Synch function. However there are a few points
you need to bear in mind when doing this. Please see the Problems and
Troubleshooting 658 topic for details.

1: Save the project and create the pair:

Before you perform this step you should be certain as certain as possible that your
original project is finished and will not be changed again while the translator is working.
You can synchronize more changes 655 later if absolutely necessary but it will make the
process more complicated.
1. Save your original project. It doesn't hurt to use this as an opportunity create a
backup in a safe place as well! From now on this project will be referred to as the
Master.
2. Select Tools > Project Synchronization... In the first screen displayed select Create
new language from Master, then click on .
3. In the next screen enter the language and character set of your target project and
choose a file name and location in which you want to save it. See International
languages setup 149 for details.
4. Then just click on to create the copy.

Project folder and other project files:

If your project is properly organized your project folder will contain sub-
folders for your graphics and possibly also other files that you are using as
well, like print manual templates, external files referenced in your project
and so on. For the translation it is best to make a complete copy of this
folder and all its sub-folders. References to graphics files are relative so
they will also work in the copy.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 648 Help & Manual Online Help

2: Send the copy to the translator for translation

Now all you need to do is pack the new project folder and all its contents in a ZIP file and
send it to the translator for translation. Before you do this open the project copy and
make sure that the folder contains everything you need and that everything is working
correctly (images visible etc).
It's also a good idea to compile the translation copy once before sending it off to make
sure that that's working too.
Make very sure that the translator reads and understands the
translation guidelines 648 before starting work!

11.9.1.2 Step 2: Translate the original project

IN THIS TOPIC:
Guidelines for the translator 648
Releasing the translated version 649

In this step the translator just works through his or her copy of the project in Help & Manual
and translates it into the target language. There is nothing special about this, but the
translator must observe the following important guidelines:

Guidelines for the translator:

The translator's job is only to translate. Making any structural changes to the project is
strictly forbidden for the translator! For example, if the translator adds, moves or deletes
topics these changes will be deleted the next time the language pair is synchronized!
Project Check and translate all the texts used in Title & Copyright, Text
Properties: Variables (see below), Help Windows (window titles but not window
names) and any text fields used in the relevant output format
sections (HTML Help, Winhelp, PDF etc.).
Topic Options: Never under any circumstances make any changes to anything in
the Topic Options tab except the Keywords: (see below).
Everything else in this tab is taboo and off limits for the translator!
The TOC: Only translate the captions. No other changes here are permitted.
In particular, never make any changes to the structure of the TOC.
Always translate the TOC captions before translating the topic
header above the topic text. The header is normally linked to the
caption and will only need to be translated if it is different.
Translating the header first would break this link.
Topic Headers: Only translate topic headers if they do not get translated
automatically when you translate the TOC captions. (This is only
the case if the header and the caption are different.)
Topic Text: Translate everything here. Be careful not to delete any hyperlinks
and only translate the captions of hyperlinks, not their targets.

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 Tools Included with Help & Manual 649

Text Variables: If the text contains variables go to Project > Project Properties >
Common Properties > Text Variables and translate their definitions.
Hyperlinks: Only translate the captions of hyperlinks. Do not make any
changes to the links themselves or their targets.
Keywords / Only translate the keywords in the upper Keywords: editing box in
Index: the Topic Options tab. Always use the Index tab behind the TOC to
help you find the other topics where the same keywords are used.
Do not translate the A-Keywords. These are never visible to the
user and should remain in the original language because they are
used in special links that must reference the original keyword
names!
Tools > Don't change the ruler units in the Editor tab. This should always
Customize: be left the same as in the original project, otherwise the layout
behavior may change slightly because of rounding differences.

Releasing the translated version:

Once the translation is finished it can be compiled and distributed with the translated
version of your application. This is the end of this step of the process. The real work
comes when you need to synchronize and the next version of the help and translate the
changes.

11.9.1.3 Step 3: Update the original project

This step must be performed on the original project file used to create the translation pair in
Step 1 647 . Only this file will have the correct Project GUID 646 that can be used for
synchronization in the next step 649 .
That is all you need to know about this step. Simply work on your project as you would
normally in Help & Manual, making any necessary changes, deletions and additions. There
are no restrictions on the changes you can make.

Mark the changes with comments while you are working!

To make the translator's work easier use the comments and bookmarks 204 feature to
identify the text that has been changed. You can write comments to explain where the
changes are, particularly if they are only in the Topic Options – otherwise the translator
may waste a lot of time trying to find changes in the text that are not there!

11.9.1.4 Step 4: Synchronize the new version

IN THIS TOPIC:
Synchronize the old translation with the updated original 650

Project Synchronizaton settings 650

This step is where the real work of the Project Synch function comes in. Now you want to
synchronize the new version of the original help with the translation of the original version.
The result will be an updated translation version in which all the topics containing changes

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650 Help & Manual Online Help

are marked, with the new versions of the updated topic contents inserted for translation.
· For this step you need the updated version of the original .HMX project edited in Step
3 649 and the original translation delivered by the translator in Step 2 648 .
· The same process can be used every time you update your original version. The date
of the last synchronization is stored automatically, so you can always synchronize the
last translated version with the current original version to produce an updated version
for the translator to translate.

Synchronizing existing translations:

You can also synchronize projects that have already been translated
without using the Project Synch function. However there are a few points
you need to bear in mind when doing this. Please see the Problems and
Troubleshooting 658 topic for details.

Synchronize the old translation with the updated original:

The synchronization is performed on the translated version because it is here that the
changes will be highlighted for the translator.
1. Open Help & Manual and open the translated .HMX project file delivered by the
translator in Step 2 648 .
2. Select Tools > Project Synchronization and select Synchronize changes from
Master project. The Wizard will show you information on the related master file
and when the last synchronization was performed, if at all.
3. Click on to continue to the next screen of the wizard.
4. This screen will show you the original location of the master project file (stored in
Step 1 647 when you created the translation pair). If this location has changed you
must change the path here now. Use the browse button to locate the file if
necessary.
5. Check your settings (see below) then click on to perform the
synchronization.
This will produce an updated version of the translated .HMX project file, which you can
now send to the translator for review and translation of the new material and changes.
Before the translator starts work make sure that he or she has studied the
instructions for identifying changes 652 and the original translation guidelines
648 .

Project Synchronization settings:

Master project The name and location of the Master file paired with the
file: current translated project. If the location of the file has
been moved you must enter the new path to it here.
Use the browse button to locate the file if necessary.

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 Tools Included with Help & Manual 651

Synchronize By default Project Synch will suggest that you synchronize

changes since: all changes made since the last synchronization. If this is
the first synchronization the original date will be the date
when the translation pair was created 647 .
Leave this unchanged unless you want to leave
changes out!

Keep old and new Selecting this will insert the complete new version of topics
text in TOC and containing changes above the old translated version. The
topics: old and new versions will be separated by a header saying
-----OLD TEXT-----.
The same procedure is used for the TOC captions, the
headers and the keywords in the Topic Options tab.
Only turn this off if you want the translator to
get the new text from the original version of
your .HMX file by copy and paste!

Simply overwrite The content of changed topics, headers, topic captions

with new content: etc. will be completely overwritten with the new versions in
the original language.
The translator must then use a copy of the original version
of the translation for comparison. (Open the copy in a
second instance of Help & Manual.)

Do not overwrite, This is the opposite of the previous option. It just highlights
just flag changes: changed topics in the TOC and does overwrite the
translated version or insert a new version.
The translator must then open the new version of the
original in a second instance of Help & Manual to obtain
the new versions of the topics and their keywords etc.
Note that even when this option is selected the following
changes will still be updated:
· Context numbers
· Topic IDs
· Help window settings
· TOC structure (new, moved and deleted topics)

Highlight changed Selecting this identifies changed topics with colored

topics: highlights (aqua for "Needs Review") in the TOC.
Only turn this off if you only want to update the
project structure. Remember that it will make it
very difficult to see where changes are!

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 652 Help & Manual Online Help

11.9.1.5 Step 5: Translate the changes

Synchronizing 649 the new version of the original with the old translated version updates the
translated version with the changes that need to be made. You can then give the
synchronized translation file to the translator for review and translation of the changes.
The translator then needs to go through the project, locate the changes and translate them.
The actual translation work here is pretty much the same as the original translation, and the
same guidelines 648 should be followed. The main problem is identifying where the changes
are 652 .

See also:
Guidelines for translators 648
Identifying changes in the synch project 652
11.9.2 Identifying changes
IN THIS TOPIC:
New topics 652 Deleted topics 652
Moved topics 653 Changed topics 653
Changed topic captions 653 Changed Keywords 654
Changed topic options 654 Special case: Changed topic IDs 654

Remember that Project Synch doesn't compare content, it only identifies changed, new and
deleted topics and updates the structure of the translation project to match the new version
of the original project.
If possible, you should thus always document and explain your changes with comments 204
while you are working on the new version of the original project.
This is particularly important if you only make changes in the Topic Options, because then
the translator may waste a lot of time looking for changes in the text that are not there. It is
also very helpful for the translator if you systematically tag text changes with comments as
well, however.

How to identify changes in the synched project:

New topics:
New topics are simply inserted in the translation project in the correct position in the
TOC. Since they are in a different language they are easy to identify and are thus not
highlighted.

Deleted topics:
Deleted topics are removed from the TOC but not deleted entirely. Instead, they are
moved to a folder called DELETED TOPICS in the Invisible Topics section and
highlighted in red (Out of Date). This allows you to check them before deleting them for
good.
Topics with changed topic IDs are also moved to the Deleted Topics folder

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Tools Included with Help & Manual 653

and replaced with the "new" version of the topic from the original project.
See Changed Topic ID 654 below for details.

Moved topics:
Moved topics are simply moved to their new position in the TOC. Since they have not
changed in any other way they are not flagged as changed.

Changed topics:
If you have selected highlighting 651 in the synchronization options every changed topic in
the TOC will be highlighted in aqua indicating that it needs review, like this:
Chapter 2
If you have selected Keep old and new text 651 in the synchronization options the entire
new version of the topic text in the original language is inserted in the editor above the
old translated version . The old and new text are separated by a line saying OLD TEXT,
like this:
end of new text...
--------------------OLD_TEXT---------------------
Beginning of translated old text...
The same is done with the topic header above the topic text: The new version is inserted
above the old version, and the two are separated by an OLD text line, like this:
New Heading
--------------------OLD_TEXT---------------------
Old Translated Heading

The changes are not necessarily in the text!

The entire new text and header are always inserted if there is a change
anywhere in the topic. The change may be in the text, but it may also be in
the keywords or any of the other settings in the Topic Options tab. You
need to check text, keywords and topic options to find where the change
is.

Changed topic captions:

If topic captions have changed the new version of the caption will be inserted and the old
version will be enclosed between <OLD> and </OLD> tags, like this:
Getting Started with Widget Confabulator <OLD>Einführung</OLD>
In this example the author has edited the topic caption to make it longer. You can see
the old translated version between the OLD tags – the original caption was probably just
Introduction.
When only the topic caption is changed no new text is inserted in the topic
body or header.

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654 Help & Manual Online Help

Changed Keywords:
When a topic is flagged as changed you should always also check the Keywords, as this
can also be the cause for the change flag. This can cause the entire topic to be flagged
as changed even if there are no changes in the topic text.
If you have selected Keep old and new text 651 in the synchronization options the old and
new keywords are separated by a divider (shown red here to make it easier to see):
styles
new features
dynamic styles
--OLD KEYWORDS--
Stilvorlagen

Here two new sub-keywords were added to the original keyword.

Changed topic options:

It is important to understand that changes in the Topic Options can also cause the topic
to be flagged as changed, even if nothing has actually changed in the topic text. So if
you can't find any changes in the text the change is probably in the Topic Options. Here
especially, it really helps if such changes are commented with comments 204 .

Special case: Changed topic IDs:

Topics are identified by their topic IDs. If the topic ID changes it looks like a new topic to
the Project Synch tool. In addition to this, Project Synch will also notice that the old topic
with the old ID is no longer there.
How Project Synch handles topics with changed IDs:
· The "old" translated topic with the old ID is moved to the DELETED TOPICS folder
in the Invisible Topics section.
· The "new" version of the topic in the original language is inserted in the TOC as a
"new" topic.

Always document changed topic IDs!

When topic IDs need to be changed this should always be documented for
the translator with comments 204 . The translator can then simply copy the
already-translated content back to the "new" topic from the version in the
DELETED TOPICS folder before translating.
In particular, any changes in the topic in addition to the topic ID should
also be clearly documented for the translator!

See also:
Guidelines for translators 648

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 Tools Included with Help & Manual 655

11.9.3 Interim updates

It happens: You thought your project was finished but after the translator has started work
on the new translation you discover that you need to make some more changes and/or
additions to the original project. Can the translator synchronize these changes into his/her
project, even though the actual translation is not yet finished?
Yes! This is possible because of the way Project Synch works. Instead of comparing the
dates and timestamps of the project files it synchronizes all changes made since the last
synchronization of the language pair. So even if the translator has worked on the changed
topics after the new changes have been made, the project will still be synchronized
correctly.

Synchronizing interim updates:

Just open the translated version (even if the translation of the original changes is not yet
completely finished) and perform the project synchronization 649 step with the new version
of the Master project. The new changes will be added to the synchronized project.

Important settings:
· Always select Keep old and new text 651 option in the synchronization
options.
If you select Simply overwrite with new content the work that the translator has
done in the meantime may be lost!
· Always check the Synchronize all changes since date.
This will automatically be set to the date of the last synchronization of the language
pair and should not need to be changed. However, if you are making multiple or
complex changes it is still a good idea to check this date.

See also:
Project synchronization settings 650
Identifying changes 652
11.9.4 Synching existing projects
You may already have versions of your project in different languages. The question is, can
you synchronize these projects? The short answer is yes. However, there are some
important points you need to consider when you are turning two existing projects into a
"language pair".

About matching project pairs:

Projects are synchronized using the hidden internal numerical IDs of your topics and the
topic captions in the Table of Contents (TOC). Each topic and each topic caption has a
unique internal numerical ID that is assigned when the topic is created and never
changed – not even if you change the Topic ID 849 . It is part of the topic forever, until it is
deleted. These IDs are not editable and not visible to the user.
A matching project pair is a pair of projects with identical internal numerical IDs for all
topics and all TOC entries. Only matching project pairs can be synchronized without

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656 Help & Manual Online Help

problems.
In the case of a translated version this is only the case if you created the translated
version by making a copy of the original project and then translated its text. If you built
the translated version from scratch the internal numerical IDs may not match and you will
have a problem.

Synchronizing existing projects that are matched pairs:

If the internal IDs of your projects match (i.e. if you have created the translation by
creating a copy of the original project) you just need to link the projects as a pair. After
this you can synchronize the projects normally.

Step 1: Create the language pair

1. Save both projects. The project in the original language is the Master.
2. Close the master project and open the translated project.
3. Select Tools > Project Synchronization... In the first screen displayed select
Synchronize changes from the Master Project. This will display a warning that
the two projects are not yet a language pair. This is OK, you are turning them into
a language pair now. Then click on .
4. In the next screen click on to navigate to the Master project and select it. Then
adjust the settings as follows (see Step 3 650 in the standard synchronization
procedure for details on these settings):

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Tools Included with Help & Manual 657

Synchronize changes This setting is crucial when you are setting up

made in the master file synchronization for existing projects. You must set it
since: manually and it must be correct.
If the translation and the Master are identical:
· Set this to the current date and time. This will
ensure that no topics are flagged as "changed". It
will simply link the two projects as a language pair.
If the translation is older than the master:
· Set this to the date and time at which the last
change was made to the Master. This will ensure
that any changes in the Master are updated in the
translation.
· If you set this to the date and time at which the
Master was first created it is possible that
everything will be identified as new in the
translation!

Synchronization If the translation and the Master are identical:

Options
· Select Do not overwrite, just flag changes. Since
no changes need to be updated you only want to
link the two projects as a language pair.
If the translation is older than the Master:
· Select Keep old and new text in TOC and topics.
This will update the translation with the changes in
the Master, inserting copies of the new original
version above the translated text in each topic.
WARNING:
Don't select Simply overwrite with new content when
you are setting up existing projects as a language
pair – this would delete all your translated topics!

Highlight changed If the translation and the Master are identical:

topics
· Turn this setting OFF. If you know that the two
languages are identical you don't need to flag any
topics as "changed".
If the translation is older than the Master:
· Turn this setting ON. This will ensure that any topics
identified as changed are highlighted in the TOC.

5. Then just click on to synchronize the two projects, which will turn them
into a language pair.
The first time you do this with existing projects you should check the flagged
changes carefully to make sure that everything is OK. After this the two projects are

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 658 Help & Manual Online Help

a normal matched language pair and you can use the standard procedure 649 for
subsequent synchronizations.

Synchronizing projects that are not matched pairs:

If you created your translated project from scratch it is possible that some of the internal
IDs won't match. However, Help & Manual is quite intelligent in the way that it assigns
these internal IDs so even if you created your project in this way you should not
experience too many problems.

See also:
Problems and troubleshooting 658
11.9.5 Problems and troubleshooting
If you work within its capabilities, remembering that it cannot be used to highlight changes in
topic text, Project Synch should work very reliably. However, you may still encounter some
problems in certain situations, particularly if you don't follow the instructions.

Always create backups before synchronizing

Since project synch automatically modifies your translated version of the project you
should always create backups before synchronizing. This is simply good security policy,
and it is particularly important if you are synchronizing existing translations that were not
created with the help of project synch (see below 659 ). Then you can re-insert text from
the backup to

Comparisons with changes in both projects:

If both projects contain changes the changes in the "translated" version will be
deleted!
Please always remember that this function is only for updating translated versions to
reflect changes made in the original project. It is assumed that the translator does
not make any structural changes to the project. If the translator makes structural
changes like adding new topics, moving or deleting topics etc. these changes will be
deleted when you synchronize the translated project with the master!
Again: The translator is not allowed to make any structural changes to the project or
to alter anything in the Project Properties or Topic Options (except translation of the
keywords). Changes made by the translator will probably be deleted during
synchronization and may also cause problems!
This is also why you cannot use this function to synchronize two different versions in
the same language with changes made in both versions! If you do, the changes
made in the second version (the "translation") will all be deleted when you
synchronize!

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 Tools Included with Help & Manual 659

Comparisons with existing translations:

Can you compare an existing translation with the original master project?
You can do this even if the language pair was not created with the Project Synch
tool. However, you may experience a few problems during the first synchronization
that you will need to tidy up.
· When you perform the synchronization you must specify the "synchronize changes
since" date manually.
· If the translator has already manually created "new" topics to reflect updates in the
original project these will have their own IDs and will not be automatically
synchronized. Depending on how the project is structured some "new" topics may
be created and existing topics may be identified as "deleted" and moved to the
DELETED TOPICS folder in the Invisible Topics section. If this happens you will
need to make some manual corrections, taking the text you need either from the
deleted topics folder or from your backup.
· Otherwise you should not have any problems. Genuinely new topics will be
inserted, deleted topics will be removed and topics that have changed since the
specified date will be flagged as changed.
For full details see Synching existing projects 655 .

See also:
Synching existing projects 655
Translation guidelines 648

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

Part

XII
 Reference 661

12 Reference
This section contains documentation of all Help & Manual's menu options and the
associated dialogs (in Menus and Dialogs 661 ).
The other sections in Reference contain more detailed background information on a number
of key subjects that will help you to gain a better understanding of how Help & Manual
works. Studying these sections is not absolutely essential but it will make it much easier for
you to use Help & Manual efficiently and effectively.
There are extensive cross-references and links to the Procedures sections so that you can
always find the instructions you need to show you how to do what is being described in the
reference topics.

12.1 Menus and Dialogs

This section provides a reference to the individual controls in the dialogs accessed with Help
& Manual's menus.

Only dialogs that need explaining are documented

Please note that although this reference is quite complete, only dialogs that really
need explaining are documented in this section. For example, we assume that you
can figure out what menu entries like Save and Save As do for yourself.
This also applies to simple dialogs whose functions are explained elsewhere. Some
of these dialogs are listed, but only with references to the relevant topics in the
Procedures sections.

12.1.1 The File Menu

This menu contains the basic file options for creating, opening and saving Help & Manual
projects. In addition to this the File menu also contains the options for compiling 410 your
project (i.e. outputting it to a chosen output format) and for printing user manuals.
Most of the options have corresponding tools in the Toolbars, and several already have
keyboard shortcuts assigned to them. You can assign shortcuts to the other options yourself
in Tools > Customize > Shortcuts.

File menu options:

The corresponding Toolbar icons are shown to the left of the options if they are available.

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 662 Help & Manual Online Help

New: Create a new Help & Manual project file.

Open: Open an existing project file.

Recent Open a project you have edited recently (shows a list).

Projects:

Save: Save the current project.

Save As: Save the current project under a different name.

Compile Compile the project to a chosen output format.

Help File:

Print User Output the project directly to a printer.

Manual:

Print Preview your printed manual on the computer screen.

Preview:

Exit: Exits Help & Manual.

See also:
Creating Projects 125
Compiling Your Project 410
Printing user manuals 538
Keyboard Shortcuts 83
12.1.1.1 New

This option creates a new Help & Manual project file. The same function can be accessed
with in the Toolbar. Selecting the option starts a wizard with a series of screens that
guides you through the process of creating a new project.
For full details see Creating Projects 125 in the Basic Working Procedures
section.

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The New Project wizard:

Create a new Creates a new, empty project. Click on Next directly after selecting this
help project: option. For details see Creating an empty new project 128 in the Basic
Working Procedures section.

Import existing Imports help and documentation from a variety of different sources
documentation: and uses it to create a new Help & Manual .HMX project. For details on
importing the various formats see Creating Projects 125 in the Basic
Working Procedures section.

Specify source Click the browse button in this field to locate and select the file you
file / folder: want to import for the above import options, then click on Next to
display the next screen of the wizard.

See also:
Creating Projects 125
12.1.1.2 Compile Help File

This option outputs or "compiles" the current project to any of the seven help and
documentation formats supported by Help & Manual. It can also be selected with the tool
in the toolbar.
Some of the features of the Compile Help File and Run dialog change depending on the
output format you select.

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The Compile Help File and Run dialog:

Special case: XML

Although XML is included in the Compile dialog as an output format outputting to XML is
not really compiling and the settings displayed for generating XML file packages are
completely different from all other formats. See Compiling to XML 415 for details.

Common features for all formats:

Output Format: The output format you want to compile to. The last format used by the
current user is preselected.

Output file and Where you want to generate your output and the name of the output
path: file. By default Help & Manual uses your project directory and the
project name. You can change this here whenever you like, however.
When you do this the program makes all necessary internal changes
automatically.
You can use the browse button to navigate to a different output
directory.

Include These options can be used in combination with Help & Manual's
Options: conditional output features. Topics and content that don't match the
selections you make here will be excluded from your output. Please
study Conditions and Customized Output 451 before using!
If no options are selected the list is highlighted in red to
indicate that no output will be generated.
The Selected Topics option:
Selecting this only outputs the topics currently selected in the TOC.
This function is designed for testing only. Links to excluded topics are
converted to plain text.
When Selected Topics is activated the Include Options list

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is highlighted in yellow as a warning and reminder.

Links have priority over include options!
If included topics contain hyperlinks to excluded topics the topics will
always be included to prevent dead links. This has absolute priority –
the only way you can prevent it from happening is to make sure that
there are no links to your excluded topics. (Use Find Referrers in the
File menu.)
Current format:
By default the include option for the selected output format is
preselected. If you also select other options you must leave the current
format option selected, otherwise only the content matching the other
options will be included.

Display file: Automatically displays the output file as soon as it has been
generated, using the appropriate viewer.

HTML Help settings:

Delete temp Selected by default. Normally all the source files generated to compile
files: HTML Help are deleted. If you deselect this you can view the source
files in the \~tmphtml directory, which you can find in your project
directory.

Winhelp settings:
Delete temp Selected by default. Normally all the source files generated to compile
files: Winhelp are deleted. If you deselect this you can view the source files
in the \~tmprtf directory, which you can find in your project directory.

Test compile: Compiles the Winhelp output without compression. This produces a
larger file but it is much faster. User for testing, not for final output.

Visual Studio Help / Help 2.0 settings:

Do not compile: This is a special debugging option for Visual Studio Help. Instead of
compiling a finished .HXS file it generates a .HWProj project file that
you can open and compile manually in Visual Studio .NET. For details
see About compiling VS Help 529 .

Delete temp Selected by default. Normally all the source files generated to compile
files: Visual Studio Help are deleted. If you deselect this you can view the
source files in the \~tmphxs directory, which you can find in your
project directory.

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 666 Help & Manual Online Help

Browser-based Help settings:

Index page: The default index page for Browser-based Help is index.html. You can
change this here, along with the output path.

Export If you are looking for this option it is no longer available in Help &
invisibles: Manual 4 because it is no longer necessary. All topics in the Invisible
Topics section can now be included or excluded in your output
individually with the Builds which include this topic settings in the Topic
Options tab.

Enable local This setting allows you to test your Browser-based Help in Internet
testing for MS Explorer on your local machine without having to click away the
Internet annoying yellow security warning bar. Click here for further details.
Explorer:

DELETE all Clears all the files in the output folder before compiling. Use this when
files in target you are producing a distribution build to ensure that the folder only
folder: contains the files related to the current version of your project.
Otherwise the directory may contain HTML files for topics that you
have already deleted in your project, left over from previous compiles.
These files take up unnecessary space and are also indexed by the
indexer and included in the full-text search function, which is
something you want to avoid.
Always use this function if you change the title of your project as this
also changes the names of all the output files associated with the full-
text search 594 function. If the old files are present the indexer may
attempt to index them, which can cause errors.

Adobe PDF settings:

Highlight Displays outlines around the hotspots and links in your PDF output.
hotspots: Dead hotspots are also highlighted – for example to topics that are not
present because you are outputting with the Selected Topics option
(see above). Use for testing.

See also:
Conditions and Customized Output 451
12.1.1.3 Print User Manual

This dialog is used for generating a printed user manual from your project. In addition to
normal printing it also supports booklet printing with multiple pages per sheet and fold/cut
options.
The dialog consists of two screens.

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Print options screen 1:

Printer: The printer you want to use.

Print to file: Redirects output to a file in the format supported by your selected
printer. You can use this function to generate a file that can be used by
a print shop with a high-resolution printer, for example.

Template: The Print User Manual function uses the same templates 468 as the
PDF output function. Select to choose an .MNL print manual
template file and to open the selected template in the Print
Manual Designer. (This program has its own separate help.)

Colored text: Options for controlling how colored text and hyperlinks are to be
displayed in your output. Set accordingly for monochrome or color
printers.

Page referrers: Prints hyperlinks with "page referrers" – little icons showing the page
number of the referenced topic.

Include These options can be used in combination with Help & Manual's
Options: conditional output features. Topics and content that don't match the
selections you make here will be excluded from your output. Please
study Conditions and Customized Output 451 before using!
If no options are selected the Include Options list is
highlighted in red to indicate that no output will be
generated.

The Selected Topics option:

Selecting this only outputs the topics currently selected in the TOC.
This function is designed for testing only. Links to excluded topics are
converted to plain text. The Include Options section is highlighted in
yellow as a warning that Selected Topics is active.

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When Selected Topics is activated the Include Options list is

highlighted in yellow as a warning and reminder.
Links have priority over include options!
If included topics contain hyperlinks to excluded topics the topics will
always be included to prevent dead links. This has absolute priority –
the only way you can prevent it from happening is to make sure that
there are no links to your excluded topics. (Use Find Referrers in the
File menu.)
Current format:
By default the include option for the selected output format is
preselected. If you also select other options you must leave the current
format option selected, otherwise only the content matching the other
options will be included.

Print options screen 2:

Print Style: Options for normal or booklet printing. Select Normal (1:1) for best
quality in normal printouts.

Print cutmarks: Prints professional printer-style cutmarks for trimming your output.

Page Range: Options for printing only individual pages or a range of pages.
Select page numbers:
Enter the numbers of the pages you want to print separated by
commas (example: 12,42,49).
Note that all page range numbers refer to the sequential
numbers of the sheets of paper in your output, not to the
numbers shown on the pages, which may be different.
Use Print Preview 669 to check the numbers of the pages to
output.

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From range: Print all pages, only odd pages or only even pages.
Use for printing on both sides of the paper with a printer without duplex
printing (both sides of the sheet) capability.

See also:
Print Preview 669
Conditions and Customized Output 451
12.1.1.4 Print Preview

The Print Preview function previews your printout on the computer screen. The options are
exactly the same as in the first screen of the Print User Manual 666 dialog. Help & Manual's
Print Preview is extremely fast, you can use it for a quick preview of your project layout.
For more details please see Print User Manual 666 (Screen 1 options only).

The Print Preview dialog:

Unsupported functions:
· The selection by page number and booklet printing options are not supported in
Print Preview mode. Selected Topics in the Include Options section works,
however.
· Please also note that the page numbers are not displayed in the page referrers in
Print Preview mode. The page referrer icons are shown, but they are empty. This
is not an error. The referrer numbers can only be generated when you actually
output to a printer.

See also:
Print User Manual 666

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12.1.2 The Topics Menu

The Topics menu contains all the main options for creating topics and manipulating them in
the Table of Contents (TOC). Topics are like individual documents managed within your
project with the help of Help & Manual's TOC pane. There is a separate Toolbar for topic
creation and manipulation directly above the TOC pane.
Several of the options in this menu already have keyboard shortcuts. You can assign
shortcuts to the other options yourself in Tools > Customize > Shortcuts.

Topic menu options:

The corresponding Toolbar icons are shown to the left of the options if they are available.
Note that topic entries in the TOC are referred to as "items" to distinguish
them from the actual topic contents displayed in the editor pane on the
right.

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 Reference 671

Change item: Change the item status (colored highlight in the

TOC), change the icon displayed for the item (not
supported in all output formats), edit the item
caption, convert a topic to a chapter without text.

Add item: Options for creating a new topic and inserting it in

different positions in the TOC relative to the
selected item.

Delete item: Delete the current TOC item and its associated
topic.

Load/Save Topic: Save the current topic to an external file and load
a topic from an external file. Can also be used for
creating templates for topics. See Exporting and
importing topics 202 and Content templates for
topics 466 .

Sort Items Alphabetically: Sorts the current TOC branch or the entire TOC.
Really only intended for the Invisible Topics
section – use with caution!

Expand: Expands either the entire TOC tree and all its sub-
Expand All:
topics or just those topics whose status 672 is not
set to complete.
Expand Status <> Complete

Collapse All: Collapses the entire TOC tree

Find topic: Functions for locating topics in your project.

Find referrers: Displays a list of all the topics containing links to

the current topic and all the topics that the current
topic contains links to.

Refresh topic: Updates the current topic and its references.

Print topic: Outputs the current topic to the printer. Can also
be used for multiple topics.

See also:
Creating and Editing Topics 171
Managing Topics in the TOC 209
Keyboard Shortcuts 83
12.1.2.1 Change Item Options

This option provides several functions for changing the current topic item in the Table of
Contents (TOC).

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672 Help & Manual Online Help

Change Item options:

Topic Status: Changes the background color of the topic caption in the TOC to
indicate topic status. This function can also be applied simultaneously
to multiple topics. (Use Ctrl+Click and Shift+Click to select multiple
topics in the TOC.)

Select Apply status to child entries to change the status of sub-topics

of a chapter.
Please note that these colors are only an editing aid. They are not
displayed in your output!
Tip:
You can use the Expand 671 command in the Topics menu to expand
only those topics whose status is not set to Complete.

Icon: Changes the icon used for the current topic. You can only select icons
from the standard set displayed in the dialog.

Not supported in all output formats:

Non-standard icons are only displayed in HTML Help and eBooks, they
are not supported in Winhelp or Browser-based Help! Also, even in
these formats you can only use the icons displayed, you cannot use
your own icons.
To change the icons used in Browser-based Help go to Project >
Project Properties > Browser-based Help > Navigation 589 and select Use
Custom Icons. You can use your own icons for Browser-based Help
output.

Edit Caption: Edit the caption (title) of the topic in the TOC. You can also do this by
clicking on the topic item in the TOC and pressing F2.

Convert to Converts a chapter with text to a chapter without text. Only available if

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 Reference 673

chapter without the current topic is a chapter with text (a topic with a book icon in TOC
text: with an active editing window in the Editor pane). This option is not
available for normal topics.
Note that doing this will delete any text in the topic along with its ID
and all other details in the Topic Options tab. You will no longer be
able to link to the topic, so use Find Referrers in the File menu to
make sure that there are no links to the topic before converting.

See also:
Managing Topics in the TOC 209
12.1.2.2 Insert Item Options

These menu items add new topic items to the Table of Contents (TOC). See Creating new
topics 171 .for more details.

Insert Item options...

Insert Item Inserts a new topic before the topic selected in the TOC.
Before:

Insert Item Inserts a new topic after the topic selected in the TOC.
After:

Insert Item as Inserts a new topic as a child item (sub-topic) of the topic selected in
Child: the TOC.

Insert Item dialog:

This dialog box is displayed when you select one of the above options to add a new
entry (a topic) to the TOC or the Invisible Topics list.

Item Position:
These settings are exactly the same as the Insert Item options described above:

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674 Help & Manual Online Help

Insert Item Inserts a new topic before the topic selected in the TOC.
Before:

Insert Item Inserts a new topic after the topic selected in the TOC.
After:

Insert Item as Inserts a new topic as a child item (sub-topic) of the topic selected in
Child: the TOC.

Item Type:
Chapter This is an “empty” chapter heading that is used to "contain" sub-topics.
without text: It cannot contain text and has no attributes of its own except include
options 457 . Effectively it is a chapter without a topic. The Help &
Manual editor is disabled when a chapter without text is selected.

Topic or This is a normal topic. If it has sub-topics it is treated as a chapter

chapter with (open/closed book icon in the TOC), otherwise it is treated as a topic.
text: The Help & Manual editor is enabled when a topic/chapter with text is
selected.
Chapters with text in Winhelp:
The Winhelp (.HLP) format does not support chapters with text. If your
project contains a chapter with text Help & Manual exports the TOC
entry twice when you compile to Winhelp: Once as a chapter heading
first and once as a sub-topic with the same caption as the chapter
heading. (This prevents deletion of the chapter with text’s contents.)

Multiple topics: Allows you to enter multiple topics at the same time, for example by
pasting a list of topic titles that you want to use as captions. Each line
of text entered in the Item Captions: field will create a new topic with
that text as the caption in the TOC. The topic IDs 210 are generated
automatically from the caption texts.

Indented entries in the list will create sub-topics of the topic directly
above them.
You can indent entries with the and indent buttons or with the
TAB key.

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Jump to an Only supported for HTML Help and Winhelp files! Topics created with
external help this method are ignored in all other output formats (eBooks, PDF,
file: Word RTF and Browser-based Help).
Inserts an entry in the TOC that jumps to (displays) a topic located in
another help file, which must be present in the same directory as the
calling help file at runtime. Use the browse buttons to locate the help
project and the topic you want to jump to.
You can create the link either by selecting a compiled help file (HTML
Help / .CHM or Winhelp / .HLP) or a Help & Manual .HMX project file.
However, specific topics can only be displayed and selected for .CHM
help files and .HMX project files.
Important:
Note that this only works with HTML Help and Winhelp, and only
between two files of the same type, which must both be in the same
directory. You cannot create jumps between different types of help
files.

Link to a Creates a topic that references a web page on the Internet. How the
WWW address: topic is handled depends on the output format:
In Winhelp and eBooks selecting the topic in the TOC opens the
referenced web page in an external browser window.
In HTML Help and Browser-based Help selecting the topic opens the
page inside the help viewer, as part of the help.
In PDF and Word RTF the topic is ignored and is not included in the
output.
Consider your target users before using this feature! In many countries
the majority of users still have dialup Internet connections with pay-by-
the-minute rates, and these users don't want help topics that force
them to go online.

Include another Inserts a placeholder for another .HMX project, turning the current
help file: project into a master/parent project. When you compile the master
project the TOC of the child project(s) will be added to the that of the
master project.
Use the button to locate and select the project file. Then enter a
caption in the Item Caption: field. This is the text that will be displayed
in the TOC.
Note that it is also possible to insert child projects as children of other
child projects.
For more details see Working with Modular Help Systems 492 .

Topic templates:
Use this This option allows you to choose a content template to be used for the

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template: new topic. By default Help & Manual uses the template
Template_Main.hmtopic for topics created in the TOC and
Template_Popup.hmtopic for topics created in the Invisible Topics
section, if template files with these names are found in the project
directory.
A content template is actually a topic that you load when you create a
new topic. It can contain anything that a topic can contain. For details
see Content templates for topics 466 in the Templates and Secondary
Windows 462 section.

See also:
Creating new topics 171
Content templates for topics 466
12.1.2.3 Find Topic

This option allows you to locate topics in your project by topic ID or help context number.
The two option buttons at the top of the dialog display the available topic IDs or help context
numbers in a sorted list.

The Find Topic dialog:

· Typing text in the Select Topic: field automatically takes you to the first topic in the list
matching the text you type. (This does not work for help context numbers.)
· The topic IDs and help context numbers of modular child projects in your TOC are not
shown in the list.

See also:
Searching for text, topics and referrers 191
Find Referrers
Find & Replace Text 680
12.1.2.4 Find Referrers

This option displays a list of all links to and from one or more selected topics. To use it click
in the Table of Contents (TOC) and select one or more topics, then select the option in the

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menu. You can also right-click in the TOC and select Find Referrers from the popup context
menu.
The Find Referrers report includes both normal links and links in graphics hotspots 321 .
However, please note that the report does not include any references to topics that may be
contained in scripts, macros or plain HTML code 311 that you have entered yourself.

The Find Referrers dialog:

Dialog options:
Incoming All the topics in the current project that refer to the selected topic. Links to
referrers: the topic from other projects are not included, even if the projects are
included in the TOC of the current project as child modules.

Outgoing All the topics in the current project linked to by the current topic. Links to
referrers: topics in other projects are not listed, even if the projects are included in
the TOC of the current project as child modules.
This list also includes references to any topics in which the current topic
is embedded 222 .
You can click on the topic ID links in the list to visit the topics
and edit them without closing the Find Referrers report.

Dialog toolbar:
Returns you to the original topic after visiting other topics in the reports list.
Inactive for reports including results for more than one topic.

Increases the size of the text in the report window to make it more legible.
Selecting repeatedly continues to the largest available size and then switches
back to the smallest size.

Simple search function for finding text in the report window.

Copies text from the report window to the clipboard. (This does not select all the
text in the report - you must select text with the mouse first.)

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Prints the report.

Saves the report to a file. The file is saved in HTML format.

See also:
Searching for text, topics and referrers 191
Find Topic 676
Find & Replace Text 680
12.1.2.5 Refresh Topic

When you edit a topic the changes you make are not applied immediately. The editing
changes you have made since accessing the topic are stored in a temporary buffer until you
save the project or switch to a different topic.
The same applies to all other editable topic properties. For example, Help & Manual does
not constantly check whether graphics referenced in your topic have changed on the disk
while you are working. Also, if you edit the topic's ID or enter keywords in the Topic Options
tab the program does not update references to the ID or the project's index immediately.

What Refresh Topic does:

Refresh updates all the changes you have made to the current topic since you started
editing it. It integrates the editing changes in the topic, updates and reloads graphics if
they have changed, updates the index with any keywords you have entered and so on.
However, note that Refresh Topic does not save your project! You must still do that
yourself.
Everything that happens when you select Refresh Topic also happens when
you save your project or switch to a different topic. The function is just a
convenient way of refreshing the topic without leaving it.

Using Refresh to display changed graphics:

If you have changed graphics used in the current topic selecting Refresh Topic
redisplays the topic with the updated graphics.

Using Refresh to undo editing changes:

If you have made editing changes to your topic since accessing it you will be asked if
you want to save or discard the changes before refreshing the topic. You can use this
feature to undo all your editing changes in a single operation.

12.1.2.6 Print Topic

This option displays the standard Windows Print dialog so that you can output one or more
topics to the printer. To print multiple topics select the topics in the TOC with Ctl+Click or
Shift+Click before selecting Print.

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The Print Topic dialog:

You cannot choose a print range because the function always prints the entire current
topic.
The topics are printed with all the formatting from the editor, including links, graphics
etc., but without any of the layout options provided by the print manual templates used
for printing PDF files and user manuals 538 . Headers and page numbers are not included
in the printout.

See also:
PDF and Printed Manuals 538
12.1.3 The Edit Menu
The Edit menu contains basic editing commands like Cut, Copy, Paste and Undo. All these
commands are also available via keyboard shortcuts (displayed in the menu), and most of
them also have tools in the Toolbar. You can assign shortcuts to the other options yourself
in Tools > Customize > Shortcuts.

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Edit menu options:

Undo: Undo the last editing action. Note that this must be selected
repeatedly for some more complex actions.

Redo: Reverse the last Undo operation.

Cut: Cut the current selection to the Clipboard.

Copy: Copy the current selection to the Clipboard.

Paste: Paste the Clipboard contents to the current cursor position.

Paste Text Paste the Clipboard contents as plain text. All formatting, tables,
Only: graphics etc are stripped and the text is pasted as plain ASCII.

Select All: Selects the entire contents of the current topic.

Find and Search for and replace text, graphics file names and keywords.
Replace
Text:

See also:
Creating and Editing Topics 171
The Help & Manual Editor 740
Keyboard Shortcuts 83
12.1.3.1 Paste Text Only

Although this function is very simple it is worth mentioning here because it is easily
overlooked, and it is very useful.

What Paste Text Only does:

· Paste Text Only pastes copied text as plain text, without any formatting (bold,
underline, graphics etc).
· Use if you want to copy text without any formatting from other topics, projects or other
programs such as MS Word or a web browser.
· This feature is also useful for pasting text into paragraphs formatted with styles without
transferring the style of the copied text into the target paragraph.

See also:
Copying, cutting and pasting 189
12.1.3.2 Find & Replace Text

This is a pretty standard find and replace function but with a couple of extra features for
finding and replacing in Help & Manual projects. The dialog can be used both for simple

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searches and for replacing text. Deselecting the Replace with: check box turns off the
replace function.
Please note that you cannot search for or replace text in the topic captions in
the Table of Contents (TOC).

The Find & Replace dialog:

Dialog options:
Find what: Enter the text you want to find here.

Replace with: Enter the replacement text here.

Only active if the check box next to it is selected, otherwise the dialog
functions as a simple search function.

Find Where: The default is to search in topic headers and text, i.e. in the "content"
of your project. In addition to this you can also search and replace in
topic keywords (i.e. the index) and images (graphics). The images
option allows you to locate specific graphics files and also to replace
graphics files quickly in your entire project. (See Finding and replacing
graphics 324 .)

Search Options: The default setting is to search the entire project from the first topic.
You can also start the search at the current topic or search only the
current topic.
The Match case and Match whole word options function in the same
way as in a standard word processor.

Find Next: Starts or continues the search.

Replace: Replaces the current instance.

Replace All: Replaces all instances of the search text. A prompt is displayed to
make sure that you want to do this before proceeding.
Note that the scope of Replace All is also defined by the selections you
make in Search Options!

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See also:
Searching for text, topics and referrers 191
Find Topic 676
Find Referrers 676
12.1.4 The View Menu
The View menu contains options for showing and hiding the various Help & Manual toolbars
and for docking and undocking the Table of Contents (TOC) and Topic Options panes.
There is also a link to the Customize 731 dialog where you can configure which tools you wish
to display in the toolbars.

View menu options:

Dock / Undock Undock the TOC and Topic Options panes so that you can
TOC and Topic position them outside the main Help & Manual program
Options: window.

Toolbars: Show or hide the various toolbars displayed between the

menu and the editing area.

Customize Open the Customize dialog to choose the tools you want to
Toolbars: display in the individual toolbars.

See also:
Customize 731
Customizing Help & Manual 84
12.1.4.1 Undock / Dock Windows

Dock/Undock Table of Contents and Undock/Dock Topic Options enable you to work more
flexibly if you have a large monitor or a dual monitor configuration. Selecting the options
displays the TOC pane and the Topic Options tab in a separate window that you can
position anywhere you like on your desktop.
This is particularly useful for the Topic Options tab, as it allows you to see both the topic
options and the contents of the editor pane at the same time.

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Undocking the TOC and Topic Options:

Undocking by dragging:
· You can also undock the TOC pane by dragging it onto the desktop with its handle bar
(at the top of the pane). However you cannot dock it by dragging, you must select the
Dock option in the View menu.
· The Topic Options tab can only be docked and undocked with the View menu options.

Undocking and docking menu bars:

You can undock and dock all Help & Manual's menu bars by dragging them onto the
desktop. To dock them again just drag them back onto the desktop.

12.1.4.2 Toolbar display

The toolbar display options simply show or hide individual toolbars in the main Toolbar. See
Customizing Help & Manual 84 and the section on the Customize 731 option in the Tools menu
for more details.

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Toolbar display options:

See also:
Customizing Help & Manual 84
Customize 731
12.1.4.3 Customize Toolbars

This option opens the Customize dialog at the Toolbars tab so that you can modify the
appearance and contents of the toolbars. You can choose all the individual tools you want to
display in each toolbar and also turn the display of entire toolbar categories on and off.
Please see Customize 731 in The Tools Menu for details.

See also:
Customizing Help & Manual 84
Customize 731
12.1.5 The Insert Menu
The Insert menu is particularly important. It contains options for inserting all kinds of
hyperlinks and all the objects that you can use in Help & Manual topics in addition to text.
Tables are the only major class of object not included here because they have their own
separate menu.
Here too, most of the options have corresponding tools in the toolbars, and several already
have keyboard shortcuts assigned to them. You can assign shortcuts to the other options
yourself in Tools > Customize > Shortcuts.

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Insert menu options:

Hyperlink: Displays the dialog for inserting hyperlinks in your topic. You can
insert topic links, file links, internet/email links and links that run
scripts or macros. Select text first to create

Picture: Displays the dialog for inserting a graphic in your topic.

Movie: Displays the dialog for inserting a video or flash animation file in
your topic.

Topic Displays the dialog for inserting an anchor in your topic as a target
Anchor: for topic links and other references. (Anchors can also be used as
targets for HTML links in Browser-based Help.)

Text Displays the dialog for inserting a text variable in your topic.
Variable: Includes both the program's predefined variables and any
variables you have defined for your project.

Conditional Displays the dialog for inserting conditional text to include or

Text: exclude text and other content from your output on the basis of
conditions.

Embedded Displays the dialog for inserting a copy of another topic at the
Topic: cursor position in the current topic. This copy is dynamic and is
updated automatically when you edit the other topic.

Plain HTML Displays the dialog for inserting inline HTML code in your topics
Code: for adding features and functionality in HTML-based output
formats. This code is ignored in all non-HTML based output
formats.

OLE Object: Displays the standard Windows dialog for inserting OLE (Object
Linking and Embedding) objects in your topics. OLE objects are
converted to graphics in your output.

Special Displays the character map dialog for inserting special characters
Character: that are not available on the keyboard in your topic.

Horizontal Inserts a horizontal line in the topic at the cursor position.

line:

Manual Page Inserts a hard page break at the cursor position. Page breaks are
Break: only used in PDF, Printed Manuals and Word RTF. They are
ignored in all other formats.

Comment/ Opens the dialog for entering a comment for yourself or others
Bookmark: working on the project. Comments can also be used as
bookmarks, with which you can find and jump to places in your
project quickly. Comments and bookmarks are not included in
your output.

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See also:
Using Graphics 313
Flash Animations and Video 422
Using OLE Objects 428
Using Context-Sensitive Help 431
Using Variables 440
Conditions and Customized Output 451
12.1.5.1 Insert Hyperlink

This dialog contains all the options for inserting hyperlinks in your topics. For detailed
instructions see the Links, Anchors, Macros Scripts and HTML 293 chapter. The appearance
of the dialog changes depending on the kind of link you are inserting.

The Insert Hyperlink dialog:

Common options for all link types:

Type of Select the type of hyperlink you want to insert. This also switches the
Hyperlink: dialog to the appropriate settings for the link type.

Caption / The caption displayed in the text for the link if you are creating a text
Picture: link. If you select text in the editor before invoking the Insert Link
function the selected text is displayed here.
If you select Picture in the Style section (see below) Picture: is
displayed above this field instead of Caption:. The browse button to
the right of the entry field is then activated so that you can select a
picture to use.

Style:
Text link (blue, The standard link format: text link, displayed in blue with an underline.
underlined):

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Custom text Displays the link as plain text that you must format yourself in the
link editor. If you don't format the link it will be active but it will not look any
(formatted): different from the text around it, i.e. it will not be identifiable as a link.

Button: Displays the link as a standard Windows button. The caption in the
Caption: field is used as the label text on the button.

Picture: Uses a graphic as the link instead of a text caption. All graphics
formats supported by Help & Manual can be used (the supported file
extensions are displayed in the dialog displayed).
Use the browse button to the right of the entry field to select an
graphics file.

Topic link dialog options:

Help file: The file containing the topic you want to link to. By default this is the
current project file but you can also create links to other project files
and compiled Winhelp .HLP and HTML Help .CHM files.
Click on the browse button to select a different help file. Its topics
will then be displayed in the Topic ID list. (Topics are not displayed for
compiled Winhelp files.)
The target help file must be present in the same directory as the file
containing the link at runtime (i.e. on the user's computer). Also, the
target help file must have the same format as the help file containing
the link. You cannot create links between .CHM and .HLP files.
Links to compiled Winhelp files are very limited – you can only link to
the default topic of a Winhelp file, not to any selected topic within the
file.

Topic ID (target The topic you want to link to. Select the topic from the list or type its
of the link): name in the entry field. Each letter you type will automatically display
the first topic matching that letter.

Anchor in topic: Use to link to an anchor inside the selected topic, so that clicking on

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the link takes the user directly to the position of the anchor. Anchors
are only displayed here if the target topic already contains anchors. If
you have just inserted an anchor in the target topic it is not displayed
until you save your project.

Internet link dialog options:

Address: The website URL or email address you want to link to. Always enter a
complete URL for websites, including the http:// protocol prefix.
Links without this prefix sometimes don't work in HTML Help.

Test the URL. Opens your browser or email program.

Links to Select to enter a website URL.

Internet
address:

Sends an email: Select to enter an email address.

Target window: Same as referring topic

Opens the web page in the current browser window or the help viewer
if possible. (The Winhelp and eBooks viewers cannot display web
pages.)
Use this option instead of Top frame when loading
web pages into Browser-based Help topics if you
want the Table of Contents to remain visible when
the web page is loaded.
New window:
Opens the web page in a new browser window.
Top frame:
This option is designed for Browser-based Help output. It loads the
web page into the topmost frame in the current frame structure,
completely overwriting the Table of Contents so that the web page fills
the entire browser window.

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File link dialog options:

File links link to external files located in the same directory as the help file containing the
link. When the user selects the link it is like double-clicking on a file in the Windows
Explorer.
See Inserting file links 300 for details and compatibility with various output formats.

File name: The name of the file you want to link to. You can use the browse
button to select a file but this will not enter any path information
because it is assumed that the file will be in the same directory as the
help file containing the link.
If you enter the file name manually always type the complete name of
the file, including the extension.

Execution Any parameters you want to add to the file link, for example switches
parameters: or a file name to follow an executable program.

Tests the file link with the execution parameters. If you use the
button in the File name: field to select the file this will access the file
wherever it is located.
Note that this doesn't test whether the file link is compatible with your
output format! It only tests how executing the external file behaves with
the execution parameters entered.

Script / macro link dialog options:

This option enters a link that executes a Winhelp macro or some JavaScript code.
Please see Inserting script and macro links 302 for information on how to use this function.

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HTML Select this to enter JavaScript code. Only supported in HTML Help and
JavaScript: Browser-based Help output.

Winhelp macro: Select to enter a Winhelp macro. Only supported in Winhelp output.
However, four special Winhelp macros are automatically converted to
their ActiveX equivalents in HTML Help. See Inserting script and
macro links 303 for details.

Script: Enter your script or Winhelp macro here. See the documentation of
Microsoft Help Workshop for details on Winhelp macros.

Note on JavaScript:
Help & Manual generates JavaScript links by outputting:
<a href=" followed by what you enter in the Script: window,
followed by ">
If you are familiar with JavaScript you can use this information to enter
complex scripts. (See the links under See also: below for full details on
this.)

These buttons allow you to save and load blocks of script and macro
code that you want to reuse.
Save Snippet saves the entire contents of the script window to a text
file.
Load Snippet loads a text file to the current cursor position in the script
window.

See also:
Inserting script and macro links 302
Scripts, HTML and Macros 757 (Reference)
12.1.5.2 Insert Picture / Open Image

This dialog contains all the options for inserting graphics in your topics. For detailed
instructions see the Graphics 313 chapter in Basic Working Procedures. In addition to this

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also see the The Impict Screenshot Editor 621 information on the screenshot enhancement
and graphics editing program included with Help & Manual.

The Insert Picture / Open Image dialog:

Dialog options:
Open file The upper part of the window is a standard Windows file open dialog.
options:

File name: The image file you want to insert. You can select a file from the
directory above with the mouse or type the filename here. You can
also use wildcard characters (? and *) to filter the directory. For
example typing *.jpg will only display the JPG files in the current
folder and ???.gif will only display GIF files with 3-character names.

Files of type: This drop-down list filters all the graphics file formats supported by
Help & Manual. You can display all the supported files or only files of
specific types.

Picture: This box displays a thumbnail image of the currently selected graphics
file and the dimensions of the file. Click on the thumbnail to display a
full-size preview of the selected graphics file.

Picture ID: Text you add here is inserted in the <img> tag as an ID attribute in
HTML-based output formats. This is only relevant if you want to
manipulate your HTML code manually and need to reference your

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images with ID attributes.

Tooltip: Text you enter here is added to the <img> tag as the ALT attribute in
HTML-based output formats so that it will be displayed as a tooltip
when the user positions the mouse over the image.
Note:If you leave this field blank the image filename will be exported
as the tooltip unless you turn this off in Project Properties >
Browser-based Help / HTML Help > HTML Export Options.

Alignment: These options define how the graphic will be aligned in your output.
With text
The default setting. Treats the graphic as though it is a character in the
text. It flows with the text without any wrapping.
Left of text
Positions the graphic to the left of the text and wraps the text around it
to the right.
Right of text
Positions the graphic to the right of the text and wraps the text around
it to the left.
Note that the left/right of text formatting is not
displayed in the editor. It is only shown in the
output.
Left/right of text is an electronic help format
feature. It is not supported in PDF or Word RTF.
Use tables to position graphics in these formats.

Spacing: This defines an invisible margin around the edge of the graphic,
between the graphic and text and any other objects on the page. Enter
a value in pixels.

Zoom %: This setting allows you to resize graphics 317 precisely by percent. It
has the same effect as selecting the graphic in the editor and resizing
it by dragging with the mouse.
Graphics resized with this method are not physically altered until you
compile. When you compile to PDF the full original format is used so
that you get better quality printing. In all other formats the graphics are
physically scaled to the displayed size when you compile.

Caption: Text displayed as a caption beneath the graphic. This text is always
centered and automatically uses the standard style Image Caption.
You can format it manually by selecting the graphic in the editor
window and then selecting text formatting options.

Opens the Hotspot Editor 693 , with which you can add clickable areas
with hyperlinks to your graphics.

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12.1.5.2.1 Hotspot editor

1. The hotspot editor enables you to define "clickable areas" in your graphics and associate
all the different types of hyperlinks with them that are supported by H&M. When the user
clicks on the hotspot area in the graphic it is exactly the same as clicking on a hyperlink of
the same type in the topic text.
The parameters of the different kinds of hotspot hyperlinks are exactly the same as those for
normal hyperlinks. For details see Links, Anchors, Macros, Scripts and HTML 293 and
Graphics with hotspots, macros and scripts 321 .

The Picture Hotspot Editor:

Dialog options:
Toolbar options:
Inserts a topic link hotspot.

Inserts an Internet link hotspot.

Inserts a file link hotspot.

Inserts a script link hotspot.

Aligns the hotspots in a vertical row with the first hotspot selected.

Aligns the hotspots in a horizontal row with the first hotspot selected.

Deletes the hotspot (same as pressing the Delete key).

Selected Shows the properties of the selected hotspot. You can adjust the size
hotspot: and position of the hotspot by dragging with the mouse or by entering
values here.

Rectangle / Choose a rectangular or an elliptical hotspot.

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Ellipse:

Hyperlink settings:
The settings of the various hyperlink types are exactly the same as those for normal
hyperlinks in the topic text. For details see Links, Anchors, Macros, Scripts and
HTML 293 and Graphics with hotspots, macros and scripts 321 .

See also:
Graphics with hotspots, macros and scripts 321
Links, Anchors, Macros, Scripts and HTML 293
12.1.5.3 Insert Movie

This option is used to insert movies in your topics for the output formats that support them.
See Flash Animations and Video 422 for details.

Insert Movie / Movie File tab:

File name: Name and path of the movie file. Use the browse button to select a
movie file to insert.

Placeholder Preview of the graphic image that will be displayed in your topic to
image: represent the movie file.

Select Click here to insert a placeholder image. You can take a snapshot
Placeholder: from the movie or insert a an image from a graphics file or the
Windows clipboard.

Width / Height: Shows the dimensions of the movie as found by Help & Manual.
Sometimes movie files report these values incorrectly. If this happens
you can adjust the values here so that they match the real dimensions.
Don't try to adjust these values to scale movies! The

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results will generally be terrible!

Start Play the movie automatically as soon as the page is displayed. If you
automatically: do not select this the movie may not play properly in the case of some
video formats and/or browsers.

Loop playback: Repeat the movie indefinitely.

Show controls: Display simple player controls for the user. You may need to activate
this option in the case of some video formats and/or browsers.

Insert Movie / HTML Code tab:

This tab displays the HTML code used to embed the movie in HTML-based output
formats (HTML Help and Browser-based Help) and allows you to edit it if you want to.
Requires advanced HTML knowledge and familiarity with the relevant ActiveX controls.
Selecting I want to enter the embedded HTML code displays the code and allows you to
edit it.

See also:
Flash Animations and Video 422
12.1.5.4 Insert Topic Anchor

Inserts and anchor in your topic. An anchor is a "jump target" within a topic that enables you
to define hyperlinks that jump to specific positions in topics.

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The Insert Anchor dialog:

Dialog options:
Anchor ID: An alphanumeric ID that is used as the address of the anchor. Use a
descriptive ID that is easy to identify. These IDs are displayed in the
Topic Options tab and in the Insert Hyperlink dialog.
You cannot use spaces or special characters. A warning will be
displayed if you try to use illegal characters.

Help Context: You can assign help context numbers to anchors so that you can
make context-sensitive calls to specific positions inside topics. If you
have activated the automatic generation 213 of context numbers for
anchors a number will be displayed here automatically.

Keywords: You can also assign index keywords to anchors (normal K-keywords
only, A-keywords 382 are not supported here). If you do this selecting
the keyword in the index will jump to the anchor instead of the top of
the topic.

See also:
Anchors - jump targets 305
12.1.5.5 Insert Text Variable

This simple dialog displays the list of available text variables for insertion in your topic. The
list includes both Help & Manual's predefined variables and any variables you have defined
for your project.
When you insert variables with this dialog they are highlighted in green in the editor, which
makes them easier to identify. This is only a convenience, however. You can also enter
variables by typing them directly in the editor. When you compile your output Help & Manual
will still identify them.

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The Insert Text Variable dialog:

Selecting displays the Text Variables editing dialog from Project Properties so
that you can edit existing variables or add new ones.

See also:
Using Variables 440
12.1.5.6 Insert Toggle

This dialog is used to insert expanding sections, text and images, known as Toggles 345 , in
your topics. There are two versions of the dialog, depending on whether you choose the
Expanding Text or Screenshot Toggle option a the top of the dialog.

The Insert Toggle dialog – Expanding Text mode:

Insert Toggle diialog options for expanding text:

Export Options: These options control whether the toggle is expanded or collapsed in
your output. Normally, toggles are expanded in print formats (PDF,
printed manuals and Word RTF) and collapsed by default in
supported electronic formats.

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Note that toggle switching is not supported in WinHelp

and eBooks and so toggles are always displayed
expanded in these formats.
Optional ID: This is optional and we recommend that you leave it blank. You
only need to enter an ID here if you plan to access the toggle IDs in
the HTML code of your output for any reason.
If you leave this field blank Help & Manual will give each toggle a
unique internal ID. If you enter your own ID you must make sure that
each ID in the current topic is unique and you must also edit your IDs
manually if you copy your toggles, otherwise you will have ID
conflicts.
Caption: This is the "header" of your expanding section. It is also the active
link that the user clicks on to expand or collapse the section. (If you
select text before inserting the toggle the text will automatically be
displayed here).
Link style: Selecting this displays the toggle header formatted as a normal
hyperlink, deselecting it displays the header as plain text (it is still an
active link).
For more details on formatting toggle links see below 351 and in the
Formatting toggle links 361 topic.
Tooltip: Text you enter here is displayed as a mouseover tooltip when the
user positions the mouse pointer over the toggle header.
Icon: This option allows you to choose the image to be displayed to the left
of the toggle header. You can choose no icon, one of the three
standard icons or use your own icons.
If you choose a standard icon the icon files (one for each state) will
be copied to your project or graphics directory the first time you
select the function.
If you choose to use your own icons you can then select the graphics
for the two icon states in the Collapsed: and Expanded: fields. We
recommend storing the icons in your standard graphics folder 325 or
your project folder. See below 352 for more details on using your own
icons for expanding sections.
Toggle a Table: This option creates an expanding section toggle 348 .
Create a new table:
This is the standard option. It automatically creates a new, single-cell
table for the text that you want to expand. This table is inserted
directly after the toggle header (caption). The table and the header
are both automatically indented by the same amount from the icon.
Toggle the table below this link:
This option is displayed if there is a table directly below the current
position and it allows you to toggle an existing table. There can be a
maximum of one paragraph of empty space between the toggle
header and the table. See Using an existing table 351 below for more

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details.
Toggle Inline This option creates an expanding inline text toggle 354 .
Text:
Enter your text in the editing box. You cannot enter any formatting in
this box. You can enter hard returns with enter for easier editing but
they will be ignored in the generated toggle.
Format text with Applies a style to the expanding inline text, for example to make it
Style: stand out against the rest of the text in the paragraph.

The Insert Toggle dialog – Screenshot Toggle mode:

Insert Toggle dialog options for expanding images

Export Options: These options control whether the toggle is expanded or collapsed in
your output. Normally, toggles are expanded in print formats (PDF,
printed manuals and Word RTF) and collapsed by default in
supported electronic formats.
Note that toggle switching is not supported in WinHelp and
eBooks and so toggles are always displayed expanded in these
formats.
Optional ID: This is optional and we recommend that you leave this field
blank. You only need to enter an ID here if you plan to access the
toggle IDs in the HTML code of your output for any reason.
If you leave this field blank Help & Manual will give each toggle a
unique internal ID. If you enter your own ID you must make sure that
each ID in the current topic is unique and you must also edit your IDs
manually if you copy your toggles, otherwise you will have ID
conflicts.
Picture file name: This is the full-size image to be used in your toggle. You can use all
image formats supported by Help & Manual. Click on the Browse
button to select an image file directly.

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Spacing: Inserts spacing around the image. The value is in pixels.

Tooltip: The tooltip and caption you enter here are normally displayed in both
Caption: the expanded and the collapsed states. The texts are automatically
copied to the When Collapsed: fields, which are grayed out unless
you select them to enter different texts there.
The tooltip is displayed when the user positions the mouse pointer
over the image. The caption is displayed beneath the image using
the standard image caption style 249 .
When collapsed Normally, the toggle will use the same image, tooltip and caption for
use different both the expanded and the collapsed states. You can select the
settings: options here to use a different image and enter a different tooltip or
caption.
Picture: Select this option to use a different image 359 in the collapsed state.
Alternatively you can use your own image for the thumbnail version.
If you do this you must create this version yourself with Impict 621 or
your favorite graphics program. You must create the image with the
correct size you want to display – Help & Manual will not zoom the
image for you.
Tooltip: Select these options to enter a different tooltip and/or caption for the
Caption: collapsed state.

See also:
Toggles: Expanding Text and Images 345
12.1.5.7 Insert Embedded Topic

This option inserts another topic in the current topic at the cursor position. The contents of
the embedded topic are displayed with a gray background but they cannot be edited directly
– you must open the source topic of the embedded topic to edit it.
When you compile your project a full copy of the content of the embedded topic is inserted
in the current topic. This means you can exclude the source topics from your output (for
example for HTML Help or Winhelp) if you want, because they are only needed when you
compile.

The Insert Embedded Topic dialog:

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Just select the topic ID of the topic you want to embed from the list and click on
.

See also:
Using embedded topics 222
12.1.5.8 Insert Plain HTML Code

This function is designed for advanced users with a good knowledge of HTML. It is used to
insert your own inline HTML code to be included in HTML Help and Browser-based Help
output. Code you insert with this function is ignored in all other output formats.
The code you enter here is inserted directly in the output page at the point in the text where
you insert it. Your code will not be checked or parsed in any way by Help & Manual – you
are entirely responsible for making sure that it works yourself. If you include references to
files you must also make sure that they are accessible.

The Insert Plain HTML Code dialog:

You don't need to insert any normal page tags like <HEAD> or
<BODY> and so on. these tags already exist in the output pages.

Dialog options:
Just type the code you want to insert in the editing window. You can increase the window
size by dragging the lower right corner.
Saves the contents of the editing window to a text file so that you can
reuse it.

Loads the contents of a text file to the current cursor position in the
editing window.

See also:
Inserting plain HTML code 311
12.1.5.9 Insert OLE Object

This function inserts an OLE (Object Linking & Embedding) object in the editor screen. An
OLE object is a document created by another program. If you double-click on the object in
the Help & Manual editor the document will be opened with its associated program so that

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you can edit it.

Depending on how you create them, OLE objects are either embedded in your project file or
inserted as links. We recommend using the link method, this generates fewer overheads
and allows you to edit the files without opening Help & Manual.

The Insert OLE Object dialog:

When you compile your output OLE objects are converted to bitmap graphics. They are not
exported to your compiled files as active links – this is impossible in the Help & Manual's
output formats. This means that you cannot use all types of OLE objects supported by your
Windows installation. For example, you can't insert movies as OLE objects.

CREATE FROM FILE mode dialog options:

Create from Insert an existing file as an OLE object.
File:

Create New: Open an OLE-enabled program to create a new OLE object. See
below.

File: Click on to select the file to insert. This file does not have to
be in your project folder.

Link: Inserts a link to the file instead of embedding it in your project.

Recommended – this reduces system overheads and makes it
possible to edit the linked file without opening Help & Manual.
If you deselect this option a copy of the file will be embedded in your
project and you can only edit it by double-clicking on it in the Help &
Manual editor.

Display as icon: Displays an icon to represent the object in the editor instead of the
contents of the OLE object file.

CREATE NEW mode dialog options :

Create New: Opens the associated program to create an OLE object and embed it
in your project file. This method is not recommended. It creates
considerable system overheads and you cannot edit the object as an

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external file. Create from File (see above) in Link mode is always
preferable.

Create from Switches to Create from File mode. See above.

File:

Object Type: Select the program with which you wish to create the document for the
OLE link. Only use programs that generate documents that can be
converted to a single bitmap graphic, such as Word or Excel.

Display as icon: Displays an icon to represent the object in the editor instead of the
contents of the OLE object file.

See also:
Using OLE Objects 428
About using OLE objects 861
12.1.5.10 Insert Special Character

This function allows you to insert special characters not available directly via the keyboard.

The Insert Special Character dialog:

· Just select the font you want to use, then select the character and click on
to insert it in the editor at the current cursor position.
· You can increase the size of the character map for easier viewing by dragging the
bottom right corner of the dialog window.
· Note that in most output formats the font you use must be installed on the user's
computer for special characters to be displayed properly! This is particularly important
for help formats like HTML Help and Winhelp. If you need characters from special
fonts here it is better to use small graphics.

See also:
Special characters, lines and breaks 206

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12.1.5.11 Insert Comment / Bookmark

This function inserts a comment in the current topic that can also be used as a "bookmark"
so that you can quickly jump to particular points in your project.

The Insert Comment/Bookmark dialog:

· Just type your comment in the editing box and click on to insert it at the
cursor position.
· Show comment as icon only displays the comment as a red "pin" icon in the editor.
Comments and bookmarks are an editing aid only – they are not included in
your compiled output!
To jump to a comment/bookmark select the tool in the Toolbar.

See also:
Comments and bookmarks 204
Image caption and comment styles 249
12.1.6 The Format Menu
This menu contains the options for formatting text, both manually 230 and with dynamic styles
234 . All the settings that you can apply manually are exactly the same as the settings you can

apply with styles. The only difference is that the manual formatting settings are applied
directly while the settings you define for styles are stored with the style definitions. Exactly
the same dialogs are used for defining the manual settings and the settings to be stored in
style definitions.

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Format menu options:

Font: Options for manual formatting of text in your topic. Select text
and apply formatting options, or choose formatting options and
start typing.

Paragraph: Options for manual formatting of paragraphs in your topic.

Formats the current paragraph if nothing is selected or multiple
paragraphs if they are selected.

Borders and Options for manual application of borders and background colors
Background: to one or more paragraphs. Formats the current paragraph if
nothing is selected or multiple paragraphs if they are selected.

Bullets and Options for creating and formatting bulleted and numbered lists.
Numbering:

Format with Applies a formatting style to one or more paragraphs. Please

Style: read Formatting text with styles 234 for instructions on how this
works.

Edit Styles: Opens the dialog for creating and editing dynamic styles that you
can use to format your text. Please read Defining styles 237 and
Editing styles 243 .

Create Style Defines a new style or redefines an existing style based on the
from current selection.
Selection:

Syntax Functions for formatting program code examples to make them

Highlighting: more easily readable.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Numbered and bulleted lists 252
Formatting program source code 267
12.1.6.1 Format Font

This is a standard font formatting dialog. Everything should be familiar from word processing
programs and pretty self-explanatory. Exactly the same dialogs are displayed for formatting
text manually 230 and for defining styles 237 . The only difference when you define a style is that
your formatting is stored in the style for reuse. All font attributes can either be used directly
or for defining styles.

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The Format Font dialog:

· When formatting text manually select text before selecting Format > Font to apply
formatting to text.
· If you apply font attributes without selecting text they will only be applied to new text
typed at the current cursor position.
· Remember that only standard fonts will be present on most user's computers for most
output formats!

Font tab options:

All these options are standard and do not require any explanation. Virtually all the
settings are exactly the same as in all normal Windows font dialogs. The only option
here that is a little bit unusual is Text background, which makes it possible to highlight
text with a colored background.

Character Spacing tab options:

Character These options increase or decrease the spaces ("leading") between
spacing: individual characters. The effects are shown directly in the preview box.

Horizontal This "stretches" or "compresses" the text horizontally. The effects are
scaling: shown directly in the preview box.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228
12.1.6.2 Format Paragraph

This is the manual paragraph formatting dialog. Most of its features should be familiar from
word processing programs and pretty self-explanatory. Exactly the same dialogs are

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displayed for formatting text manually 230 and for defining styles 237 . The only difference when
you define a style is that your formatting is stored in the style for reuse. All paragraph
attributes are supported both for direct formatting and in styles.
· When formatting text manually paragraph attributes are applied to all paragraphs that
are at least partially selected, or to the paragraph in which the cursor is currently
located.
· Internally, Help & Manual handles all measurements in pixels. For maximum precision
working in pixels rather than inches or centimeters is strongly recommended. You can
change your measurement units setting globally in Tools > Customize > Editor > Ruler
Units 734 .

The Indents and Spacing and Tab Stops tabs:

All the settings in these tabs are exactly the same as in a normal word processor and
should be self-explanatory. Please see Using indents 232 for details on using indents in
help files.

The Line and Page breaks tab:

The first two settings in this tab are only used for printing manuals and generating PDF
output. They are ignored in all other output formats.

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Keep lines Applying this attribute to a paragraph or a style will keep all of the lines
together: of a paragraph together at a page break. Don't use for body text – if
your paragraphs are large this setting will bump the entire paragraph
onto the next page, leaving an ugly gap!

Keep paragraph Keeps the paragraph with the next paragraph at a page break.
with next: Generally only used for headings. If you use empty paragraphs after
headings remember that you must apply this setting to both the
heading and the empty paragraph, otherwise it won't work.

Word wrap: If you disable this setting the lines of paragraphs will no longer
automatically wrap to the next line. It is normally only used for
formatting program code and other text where the ends of each line is
defined with a paragraph end mark. If you disable this in normal text
everything except the first line will disappear off the right margin of the
page.
Tip:
In paragraphs containing graphics instead of text you can also keep
the graphics on the same line by deselecting Word Wrap.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Using indents 232
Tabs, indents and HTML 744
12.1.6.3 Format Borders and Background

These settings allow you to apply borders and colored backgrounds to paragraphs. Most of
its features should be familiar from word processing programs and pretty self-explanatory.
Exactly the same dialogs are displayed for formatting text manually 230 and for defining styles
237 . The only difference when you define a style is that your formatting is stored in the style

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 Reference 709

for reuse. All border and background attributes are supported both for direct formatting and
in styles.

The Format Borders & Background tab:

· When you format text manually border and background attributes are applied to all
paragraphs that are at least partially selected, or to the paragraph in which the cursor
is currently located.

Dialog options:
Settings: These settings define the color and dimensions of the border and the
background. The Offset is the distance between the border and the
paragraph.

Preview: The buttons around the Preview window activate or deactivate the
border display for top / bottom / left / right.

Border style: You must select one of these styles to display borders. If None (the
default) is selected no borders will be displayed!

Multiple paragraphs with borders and backgrounds:

Multiple paragraphs with a background color may have white space
between them. Multiple paragraphs with borders will have individual
borders around each paragraph instead of one border around all
paragraphs. To avoid these problems press SHIFT-ENTER instead of
ENTER between paragraphs with borders and backgrounds.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228

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12.1.6.4 Format Bullets and Numbering

These dialogs are for selecting and modifying the formatting of numbered and bulleted lists.
Just select a style from the list to apply the displayed style to the current paragraph or
paragraphs.
Although selecting numbered and bulleted lists is very simple using them
properly in Help & Manual requires a little more information. Please see
Numbered and bulleted lists 252 for details.

The Format Bullets & Numbering tab:

Restart numbering Select to restart the numbering of the current item or list with a
/ Start at: different number. You can also use this to reset the numbering of a
list to begin at 1.

Select to modify the currently selected bullet or numbering style.

Select to reset the current bullet or numbering style to its default

settings.

The Customize dialog (Bullets):

Displayed by selecting in the main tab. Edits the properties for the bullets
style selected in the main tab.

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Levels: Number of levels in the list. This is not active for bulleted lists, which
always only have one level.

Level Format: Formatting and style for the current level. Bulleted lists always only have
one level.

Number style: Selecting anything except Bullet here switches to a numbered list.

Select a different character to use for the bullet in the bulleted list. The
selected character will be displayed in the preview box on the right.

The Customize dialog (Numbered List):

Displayed by selecting in the main tab. Edits the properties for the numbered
list style selected in the main tab.

Levels: Number of levels in the list. This is not active for ordinary lists, which
always only have one level.

Level Format: Formatting and style for the current level. Ordinary numbered lists
always only have one level.

Number style: You can choose a variety of styles for your numbered list.
Experiment!

Number format: The format of the number displayed in the list. The variable <L1>

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displays the list number and should not be deleted. Any other
characters you enter will be added to the number. The result is
displayed in the preview box on the right.

Start numbering Only active for lower levels of outline numbered lists (see below).
at:

Legal numbering Activates legal numbering style for outline numbered lists, with all the
style: list numbers at the left margin (see below).

Level reset: When this is selected the numbering of sub-levels in outline

numbered lists always re-starts with 1 or the equivalent (see below).

The Customize dialog (Outline Numbered List):

Displayed by selecting in the main tab. Edits the properties for the outline
numbered list style selected in the main tab.

Levels / Count: Number of levels in the outline numbered list style. You can change
the number of levels by adjusting the Count: value.

Level Format: Formatting and style for the current level. Select the level to modify
by clicking in the Levels box.

Number style: You can choose a variety of styles for your numbered list.
Experiment!

Number format: The format of the number displayed in the list. The variables <L1>,
<L2> etc. (for the levels) display the list numbers and should not be
deleted. Any other characters you enter will be added to the number.
The result is displayed in the preview box on the right.

Start numbering Resets the starting number of the current level. Only active for lower
at: levels of outline numbered lists.

Legal numbering Activates legal numbering style for outline numbered lists, with all the
style: list numbers at the left margin. Must be set separately for each level
of an outline numbered list!

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Level reset: When this is selected the numbering of sub-levels in outline

numbered lists always re-starts with 1 or the equivalent. Otherwise
the numbering continues from one sub-level to the next. Must be
selected separately for each level of the outline numbered list.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Numbered and bulleted lists 252
12.1.6.5 Edit Styles

This dialog contains all the settings for creating and editing styles. For full details on
creating, editing and using styles please see Text Formatting and Styles 228 .

Dialog options:
Style name: Name of the current style.

Based on style: The "parent" style of the current style. Styles inherit all attributes

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that you do not explicitly changed from their parent style. You can
change the parent style by selecting a different style in this field.

Shortcut: The keyboard shortcut for selecting the style. To add a shortcut just
click in this field and press the key combination for the shortcut.

Creates a new style definition.

Deletes the current style. If the style has any sub-styles (child
styles) they will also be deleted (a warning is displayed). Not active
for Help & Manual's standard styles, which cannot be deleted.

Copies the styles definition set from another Help & Manual .HMX
project file.
This completely overwrites the current style definition
set, replacing it with the definitions of the other
project.

"View" tabs: You can define three sets of different settings for each style: One
for the appearance in the editor, one for electronic help formats
(HTML Help, Winhelp, Browser-based Help and eBooks) and one
for print formats (PDF, Print User Manual, Word RTF).

"Settings" buttons: These buttons display the dialogs for formatting the Font,
Paragraph and Borders & Backgrounds attributes of the current
style. The dialogs are exactly the same as the standard Format
Font 705 , Format Paragraph 706 and Format Borders & Backgrounds
708 dialogs.

Resets the current styles to the default settings. Always use this
before defining a text-only style 239 to make sure that it does not
include paragraph or border attributes.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Dynamic Styles 746
12.1.6.6 Create Style from Selection

This option turns the current selection into a dynamic style that you can reuse. This feature
is very useful because it formatting text manually and then turning it into a style is much
easier than designing a style "from scratch" in the styles definition dialogs.
If no text is selected the function uses the attributes of the paragraph in which the cursor is
currently located, including the paragraph attributes and the text attributes at the current
cursor position.

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Dialog options:
Create a new Define a completely new style using the current selection as a model.
style:

Change existing Redefine an existing style. The style assigned to the current selection
style: or cursor position is the default but you can select another style to
redefine.

New style name: Enter a new name or accept the name of the style you want to
redefine.

Based on style: Select a "parent" child to make the new or redefined style the child of
another style. If you select a paragraph style as the parent the new
style will also be a paragraph style.

Assign Assigns both the text and paragraph attributes of the current selection
paragraph to the new or redefined style.
attributes:

Opens the Edit Styles dialog for more detailed styles editing.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228
Defining styles 240
12.1.6.7 Syntax Highlighting

This menu option applies highlights program code text to make it easier to read. A number
of programming languages are supported, and you can customize the highlighting styles for
each program language.
For more details see Formatting program source code 267 .

Customize dialog options:

This dialog is displayed when you select Format > Syntax Highlighting > Customize.

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Format with The basic appearance of all text formatted with the Syntax Highlighting
style: function is controlled by the standard Code Example style. This is the
currently only style you can use for syntax highlighting.

Opens the Edit Styles dialog to edit the Code Example style.

Elements: Settings for defining the color and font styles of the various elements
highlighted by the function.

Load reserved Loads your own list of reserved words to be used by the highlighter for
words: the current language. Load the words from a plain ASCII file with one
reserved word per line.

Add list to If you select this your list of reserved words will be added to the
predefined: program's list. Otherwise your list will replace the program's list.

Reset defaults: Resets all settings for the current language to the default values. This
also replaces any reserved words you have loaded.

See also:
Formatting program source code 267

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12.1.7 The Table Menu

This menu contains the options for inserting and manipulating tables in your topics.

Table menu options:

New Table: Opens the dialog for defining and inserting a new table at the
current cursor position.

Table Opens the Table Properties dialog to edit the properties of an

Properties: existing table. Only active when the cursor is in a table in the
editor.

Insert Inserts new table columns or rows in relation to the current

Columns / cursor position.
Rows:

Delete Deletes the selected columns or rows or the entire table.

Columns /
Rows /
Table

Lock Column Locks or unlocks the width of the selected column or columns.
Width: When column width is locked the column will not become wider
or narrower when the user resizes the viewer window on the
screen. Tables with a percentage width must have at least one
unlocked column.

Merge Cells: Merges the selected cells to a single cell.

Unmerge: Unmerges the selected cells and restores the table's original
row and column structure.

Split Cells: Divides the selected cell or cells into a larger number of cells
vertically (into columns) or horizontally (into rows).

See also:
Working with Tables 332
Topics and Tables 880
12.1.7.1 New Table / Table Properties

This dialog defines or changes the formatting, layout and appearance of entire tables and
selected parts of tables. It appears automatically when you create a new table. For details
on creating and using tables see Working with Tables 332 .

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Displaying the dialog for existing tables

Exactly the same dialog is displayed when you display the Table Properties for an
existing table, just with a different title.
· Click in the table or select part of it (see selecting and resizing tables 336 ) and
select Table > Table Properties, or right-click inside the table and select Table >
Table Properties

The Table Layout Tab:

The properties in this tab are applied to the entire table. If you need to apply any of these
properties to individual rows, columns or cells you can achieve this by using nested
tables 343 and setting the properties of the table within the table.

Rows and Columns

Number of If you are creating a new table these values define the total number of
rows: rows and columns in the table. In an existing table increasing the
values adds rows and columns in the last row and column and
Number of
decreasing the values deletes rows and columns from the last row and
columns:
column (i.e. rightmost column and bottom row).
For more precise control over adding and deleting rows
and columns use the Insert and Delete functions 338 in the
Table menu.

Printing
Table can split Tables can now split automatically at page boundaries for PDFs and
to next page: printed manuals generated with File > Print User Manual 666 . Page

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breaks are possible inside table rows but not in rows containing nested
tables 343 .

Number of The heading rows option repeats the first x rows of the table at the top
heading rows: of the table when it is continued on the following page.

Table Size
Autosize: Creates a table that calculates its size on the basis of the contents of
its cells. The absolute width of the table in your output will depend on
how you adjust the width of the cells and the table itself and the
content you put in them.
Initially, an autosized table occupies the full available width of the
current paragraph (if the paragraph has indents the table will be
narrower than the page). You cannot adjust the width of an autosized
table until its cells contain content. After that you can adjust both the
width of the entire table and the width of the columns by dragging with
the mouse.
Note that when you do this it locks 334 the width of both columns
affected by the drag operation. This means that the column width is set
to an absolute value in pixels. You can unlock the column and make it
dynamic again by right-clicking in it and deactivating the Lock Column
Width option in the Table menu.

Size table to fit Creates a table that is permanently maximized to the width of the
on page: current paragraph (if the paragraph has indents the table will be
narrower than the page). This is exactly the same as sizing manually
and setting a width of 100%.
Tables sized with this option always occupy the entire available width
of the current paragraph or page. They can only be made narrower by
increasing the left and/or right indents of the paragraph.
The same applies for tables inside other tables: If paragraph
containing the table is indented the 100% value is the width of the
indented paragraph, otherwise it is the width of the cell containing the
table.

Size table Creates a table with a fixed width in percent or pixels, relative to the
manually: width of the current paragraph. Setting a value of 100% is exactly the
same as Size table to fit on page.
Here too, the percentage values are always relative to the paragraph
containing the table. If the paragraph is indented the value is a
percentage of the width of the indented paragraph; otherwise the value
is a percentage of the page width or the table cell width, if the table is
inserted inside another table.
Note that as in HTML tables, pixel values are "preferred values" rather

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than being absolute. If you insert graphics or other objects that are
larger than these values the cell widths will be adjusted automatically
so that the objects fit, and the other cells will be made narrower
accordingly.

· Note that all automatic width adjustment features can only work if the width of at
least one of the table's columns is dynamic (i.e. has no set width).
· To set/reset click in a table column or select one or more columns. Then select
Table > Lock Column Width or right-click and select Table > Lock Column Width.

Background and Borders

These settings define the background for the entire table. You can define the
background color for individual cells in the Selected Cells 721 tab.
Transparent: This makes the background of the page visible through the table.

Solid color: This selects an opaque background color.

Background This allows you to use a graphics file as the background for your table.
picture: See Using background graphics 344 in the Working with Tables chapter
for details.

Cell Borders
These settings work just like the formatting parameters for borders and cell spacing in
HTML tables. In all settings a value of zero turns the property off (i.e. no borders).
Cell borders: This defines the width of borders around the cells inside the table.

Border around This defines the border around the edges of the table.
table:

Border color: This defines the color of all borders

Border style: This defines the appearance of the border. This is easier to see than
to describe – just try it out!

You can’t define different colors for individual cell borders. However, you can
achieve this by inserting a second table inside your main table. See Nested
tables 343 for details.

Cell Padding and Spacing

Cell padding: This is the space between the edge of the cell contents and the border
of the cell.

Cell spacing: This is the space between the border of one cell and the border of the
next cell. This is effectively like making a broader border between the
cells but it doesn't affect the width of any border lines you define
between the cells.

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You can only define padding and spacing for the entire table. If you need
different settings for individual rows, columns or cells you can achieve this
by using nested tables 343 .

The Selected Cells tab:

The properties in this tab are applied to selected cells only. If no cells are selected the
Selected Cells properties are applied to the cell in which the cursor is located.

To apply these options to a single cell just click in the cell you want to format
before selecting Table Properties. You don’t need to drag to select a single
cell.

Cell Options
Note that adjusting the size of cells manually with the mouse automatically resets the
settings configured in this section.
Preferred This sets the target width of the selected cells/columns in pixels or
width: percent. Percent values are relative to the width of the table. If this is
set to 0 the automatic width is calculated as the table width divided by
the number of columns, unless graphics or other objects force different
widths for individual columns.
If you set the preferred width to a non-zero percent or pixel value the
editor will attempt to achieve the specified value but the widths will be
adjusted if it is not possible. The width of content such as graphics or
other objects always has priority. If you insert an image wider than the
preferred width the cell will be made wider so that the image fits, for
example.

Height at least: This is the minimum height of the cell/row. If it is 0 the height is
calculated automatically on the basis of the cell contents. If it has any

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non-zero value the cell/row will be at least that high, and higher if
necessary to accommodate the content.

Background Sets a different background color for individual cells.

color:

Vertical alignment
Top / Center: These options control the vertical positioning of text and other content
Bottom / within the selected cells. They are pretty self-explanatory.
Default:

See also:
Working with Tables 332
12.1.8 The Project Menu
The project menu only contains two options but it is still one of the most important menus in
Help & Manual. It contains the Project Properties section, which is the control center for your
current project.

Project menu options:

Project Opens the Project Properties dialog with all the options for configuring
Properties: your current project. These options are documented in the separate
Project Properties 548 section.

Bookmarks Displays a list of the bookmarks 204 defined in your project. Selecting a
: bookmark in the list jumps to the topic containing the bookmark.

See also:
Project Properties 548
Comments and Bookmarks 204
12.1.8.1 Project Properties

This is the control center for your current project. All the configuration settings for the project
you are currently editing are stored here. For full details on the settings dialogs contained in
this section see Project Properties 548 .
The settings are organized in categories. The first two categories, Common Properties and
Help Windows, are general settings that affect your entire project. All the other categories
store the settings for specific output formats.

Project Properties sections:

Common These are the basic configuration settings for your project, including
Properties: the language, title, copyright information, the location of the graphics

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files you want to use and so on. Always check all these settings
before starting work on a project.

Help Windows: These settings configure and define the appearance of the help
viewers used to display electronic help formats. They can also be
used to define additional "help windows" with which you can display
individual topics with different styles and in external windows in some
help formats. See Help Windows 800 for detailed background
information on help windows and how they work.

Output format All the other groups of settings are used to configure how Help &
settings: Manual handles the various supported output formats for the current
project.

Copies the properties from another .HMX project file to the current
project. Only copies the properties for the section currently selected
in the Project Properties list. If you want to copy all the properties
from another project you must select each section one after another.
Warning: This function overwrites all the settings of the
current Project Properties section with the settings of the
external project!

See also:
Project Properties 548
12.1.8.2 Bookmarks

This option just displays a list of the bookmarks in your current project. You can jump to the
bookmarks by selecting them in the list. To create a new bookmark or comment select in
the Toolbar.
· See Comments and bookmarks 204 for more details on using this feature.

See also:
Comments and bookmarks 204
12.1.9 The Tools Menu
This menu provide direct access to a variety of tools included with Help & Manual, including
a complex graphics editing program, a powerful screenshot capture program and a separate
editor for designing the layout templates for your PDF files and printed manuals.
These tools are covered in more detail in the Tools Included with Help & Manual 615 chapter,
and several of them also have their own help files.
The Tools menu also provides access to the Customize 731 settings with which you can
modify Help & Manual to suit your personal needs and preferences. Most of the settings in
these dialogs are self-explanatory. For more details see Customizing Help & Manual 84 in
The User Interface.

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Tools menu options:

Screen Help & Manual 's integrated screenshot program, with which you
Capture: 615 can take snapshots of your screen and program components for
using in your help. Captures, windows, controls, menus, the
entire screen and free areas and can also apply a variety of
effects.

Reports: 618 Generates a variety of reports on your current project including

topics, topic IDs and context numbers, referrers, links, dead
links, graphics file names, missing graphics, graphics references
and more. Can be output to HTML files for editing or archiving.

Impict: 621 Help & Manual's graphics editing and screenshot enhancement
program. This is a complete separate graphics editing program.
It is designed specifically for producing high-quality screenshots
quickly and efficiently. Supports multiple layers so that you can
save all the objects you add to your screenshots and edit them
separately. Impict has its own separate help and documentation.

Print Manual This is the special editing program for creating and editing the
Designer: 622 print manual templates 468 that define the layout of your PDF
layout and printed manuals. It has its own separate help.

Help Context This is a special tool for managing and manipulating help
Tool: 624 context numbers. You can apply context numbers to topics that
don't have them, delete numbers, import numbers from map files
and export numbers. You can also automatically generate
missing topics from numbers and topic IDs in map files.

Spell Check: This is the integrated spell checker. In addition to spell-checking

629 individual topics or your entire project it also supports live spell
checking as you type. It is highly configurable – among other
things you can exclude specific styles from spell checking.

Repair and The name of this tool sounds scary but it is actually just a utility
Recover: 638 for reorganizing the internal database in your project file.
Occasionally operating system crashes and other problems can
mix up the internal references of the database. This utility
checks the project file for consistency and corrects any errors.

Customize: 731 Opens the Customize menu with which you can configure Help
& Manual 84 for your own personal needs and preferences.

See also:
Tools included with Help & Manual 615

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12.1.9.1 Screen Capture

This option starts Help & Manual 's integrated screenshot program, with which you can take
snapshots of your screen and program components for using in your help. Captures
windows, controls, menus, the entire screen and free areas and can also apply a variety of
effects.
For details on using this tool see Screen Capture 615 in Tools Included with Help & Manual.

The Screen Capture dialog:

Click on to display all the options shown in the screenshot above.

Dialog options:
Window, Automatically identifies and captures windows, buttons and other
control or program elements and controls.
menu:

A free region of Captures all the contents of a selected rectangular region of the
the desktop: desktop.

A fixed size Captures a region of a predefined size. Define size with Width: and
region: Height: .

Zoom factor: Resizes the screenshot automatically if you select a value other than
100%.

Zoom filter: A collection of different high-quality resizing filters. The default is

Lancos, which works very well for most images, but you may obtain
better results with the other filters on some types of images.

Image shape: The shape of the captured image. Some of these shapes apply
effects, Automatic Shape finds fills the background of the image with

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the background color (see below) to create a fake transparency effect.

Experiment!

Fade out: Applies gradient fade effects to the captured image.

Background The color of the background around the captured image. You will
color: normally want to match to the color of your topic pages (usually white).

Include cursor: Includes the mouse pointer in the captured image.

Add sparkle: Inserts a starburst effect at the mouse pointer tip. You can also apply
this without including the mouse pointer if you want.

Image has Applies a drop shadow to the captured image.

shadow:

Cursor has Applies a drop shadow to the mouse pointer.

shadow:

Shadow Color: The color of the drop shadow. Black creates a normal grey shadow,
any other color will generally look pretty strange, but be our guest...

Shadow These three controls adjust the width, direction and blur intensity of the
properties: shadow. Again, this is easier to see than to describe. Try it out and
you'll see what we mean.

See also:
Screen Capture 615 (Instructions)
12.1.9.2 Reports

This tool generates detailed reports on your project that can be used for a wide range of
purposes, including documentation, providing your programmers with lists of topic IDs for
their help calls, checking project status, locating dead links, finding missing images and
unused images and so on.
For full details on how to generate reports see the Project Reports Tool 618 in Tools Included
with Help & Manual.

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 Reference 727

The Project Report dialog:

Note that all options that exclude topics will usually reduce the accuracy of
link reporting (links to topics that are not included in the report will not be
checked).

Dialog options:
Report type: You can generate four different report types, with increasing levels of
detail. See below 728 for more detailed descriptions.

Sort order: How you want your topics to be sorted in the report. Note that only the
Table of Contents sort option also includes chapters without text. All
the other options (Topic ID, Context Number, Modification Date) only
include topics that actually have contents.
If you sort by context number only those topics that actually
have context numbers will be included in the report!

Modified Only include topics edited between two specified dates.

between:

Topics with Include only topics with specific window types 177 in the report.
window:

Topics with Include only topics with a specific editing status 225 in the report.
status:

Include options: Include topics on the basis of predefined and user-defined include
options. This works in the same way as include options in conditional
output 452 .

View in external Automatically saves the report as an HTML file and opens it in your
browser: default web browser. You may find that the integrated Help & Manual
report viewer is actually more practical for normal viewing as it is
optimized for displaying reports. (You can save the report as an HTML

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 728 Help & Manual Online Help

file from the integrated viewer as well.)

File name: Name and location of the HTML file for saving the report. Use the
browse button to choose the location.

Resets all the dialog options to their default settings.

Report types:

Short project Simple list of all topics in your project with status, caption (i.e. the TOC
report: title), topic IDs, help context numbers, builds in which the topics are
included and date last edited. The report also includes a summary of
the number of topics and keywords in your project.
This is a practical format for providing your programmers with a list of
topic IDs and context numbers for their calls.

Extended Also includes each topic's keywords and help window and a more
project report: detailed project summary at the end with a list of all the images used in
the project.
Missing images are shown in red.

Long project Also includes lists of the images used in each topic, lists of the links in
report: each topic with their targets (including topic links, Internet links, file
links and script links) and the first lines of the text with which the topic
begins. As in the extended report the summary includes a list of all the
images used in the project
Missing images and dead links are shown in red.

Full project Same as the Long Report but also includes an additional full list of
report including images used in the project with references to the topics in which each
image image is used. In addition to this there is also a list of images found in
references: the project's image folders that are not used in the project (useful for
tidying up your project folders).
Missing images and dead links are shown in red.

See also:
Project Reports Tool 618 (Instructions)
12.1.9.2.1 The Report Viewer

The integrated Report Viewer is optimized for displaying the project reports generated by
Help & Manual's Reports tool. Its controls are very simple.

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· For more powerful printing and selection controls display the report in your web
browser 620 .

Report viewer controls:

Font Size: Click repeatedly to adjust the font size. When the largest size has
been reached clicking again will return to the smallest size.
Search: Opens a simple search tool for finding text in the report.

Copy : Copies selected text to the Windows clipboard. Only works if text is
selected.
Print: Outputs the report to the printer.
Save: 'Saves the report to an HTML file.

See also:

12.1.9.3 Image Editor

By default the Image Editor option in the Tools menu starts the Impict graphics editing
program included with Help & Manual. You can change this to a different graphics editing
program in Tools > Customize > General.
The Impict program has its own separate help and documentation.
· If you select an image in the Help & Manual editor before selecting Image Editor the
corresponding graphics file will be loaded into the graphics editing program
automatically.

See also:
The Impict Screenshot Editor 621

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12.1.9.4 Print Manual Designer

The Print Manual Designer is another separate program included with Help & Manual. It is
used for editing the template files that define the layout and appearance of the PDF files
and printed manuals generated from your projects.
The Print Manual Designer program has its own separate help and documentation.

See also:
Print Manual Designer 622
Using PDF templates 543
12.1.9.5 Help Context Tool

The Help Context Tool is a wizard integrated in the main Help & Manual program for
managing the help context numbers 212 in your project. You can use it to assign, delete,
import and export help context numbers in batch mode for your entire project. In addition to
this you can also use the tool to automatically generate context help topics from a map file
containing a list of topic IDs and context numbers.
The screens in the Help Context Tool are documented in detail in The Help Context Tool 624
in the Tools Included with Help & Manual chapter.

See also:
The Help Context Tool 624
12.1.9.6 Spell Check

The Spell Check option in the Tools menu provides access to Help & Manual's spell checker
and its configuration options. Full details of these options and the configuration settings are
can be found in The Spell Checker 629 in the Tools Included with Help & Manual chapter.
· Note that Help & Manual 4 now supports live spell checking that marks incorrectly-
spelled words as you type. Just select Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker and
activate the Check spelling as you type option.

See also:
The Spell Checker 629
12.1.9.7 Repair and Recover

Repair and Recover is a tool that analyzes Help & Manual project files and repairs them if
necessary, for example after a Windows crash. It is presented as a simple wizard with a
series of screens.
The screens in the Repair and Recover tool are documented in detail in The Repair and
Recover Tool 638 in the Tools Included with Help & Manual chapter.

See also:
The Repair and Recover Tool 638

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 Reference 731

12.1.9.8 Customize

This menu contains the settings for configuring how Help & Manual itself works. These
settings are all saved with the program, as opposed to the settings in Project > Project
Properties 548 which are all saved with individual projects.
It is a good idea to check through these settings before you start working with Help &
Manual. You may be surprised at all the things you can adjust and configure!

See also:
Project Properties 548
Customizing Help & Manual 84
12.1.9.8.1 Customize - General

General configuration options:

Display startup Displays an additional help dialog screen when you start the Help &
dialog: Manual.

Automatically Checks for the availability of a more recent version of Help & Manual
check for updates: . New versions are published regularly, both to provide new and
improved functions and to correct issues reported by users.
Note that this only works if you are connected to the Internet. Also, if
you are behind a firewall you may need to configure your firewall
settings give the Help & Manual program helpman.exe permission to
access the Internet.
What does checking "regularly" mean in this option? Here's what the
programmer has to say about it:
It means that it checks for updates not every time you start

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732 Help & Manual Online Help

it, but more frequently than once a month. It will check

more often in the beginning and less often if it gets
frustrated because it hasn't successfully detected an update
for a while. That could be once a week or so. But it never
checks for updates on Sundays and occasionally does on
weekdays, except if the day is a holiday in Austria. It only
checks for updates when it is idle and there are no other
urgent tasks to process and it stops checking when it finds
that you are on lunch break (it figures you will not read the
message while you are away).
Note: The above is not entirely serious...

Show animation Switches on some "eye candy" effects, animating the splash screen
for splash screen displayed when you start the program and the way sub-chapters
and table of expand and collapse in the TOC pane.
contents:

Show mouse-over Recommended, very useful! When this is activated little tooltip
hints for buttons popups are displayed when you position the mouse cursor over
and objects in toolbar buttons and objects in the editor. These popups contain a lot
text: of useful information for your project. They are like an extra status
bar for links, graphics etc.

Automatically Also recommended, particularly if you are one of those authors who
back up project concentrate so much on their project that they forget to save their
file every xx work regularly! This function creates a backup copy of your project
minutes: file in the project directory at the specified intervals. The backup files
have the extension .~HMX (to make them readable just rename to .
HMX).

Open last help Automatically loads the last project you edited when you start Help &
project on start: Manual.

Save window Activating this saves different sets of program windows positions for
positions each monitor size and resolution that you use. This can be useful if
separately for you have multiple monitors with different sizes and resolutions – for
multiple example if you have a large monitor connected to a laptop docking
monitors: station.

Empty Clipboard Automatically clears the Windows Clipboard when you exit the
when Help & program.
Manual closes:

Default image By default Help & Manual starts the integrated Impict graphics
editor: editing program when you click on graphic in the Help & Manual
editor and then select in the Toolbar. This setting allows you to
change this to a different graphics editing program.

See also:
Customizing Help & Manual 84

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 Reference 733

12.1.9.8.2 Customize - Toolbars

Toolbar configuration options:

These options switch individual toolbars on and off. In addition to this you can also
choose which tools are to be included in each toolbar. Just select the toolbar in the
Toolbars: list and then choose the buttons in the Visible Buttons: list.

Toolbars: Select the check boxes next to the toolbar names to turn them on or
off. Select the toolbar name

Visible Buttons: Shows the available buttons for the toolbar selected in the Toolbars:
list. Selecting their check boxes adds them to the toolbar.

Toolbar & The toolbars and menus can be displayed in three different styles.
Menu Style:

Use large Increases the size of the Toolbar icons for better visibility.
toolbar icons:

See also:
Project Properties 548
Customizing Help & Manual 84
12.1.9.8.3 Customize - Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcut configuration options:

You can use these options to assign keyboard shortcuts to almost all of Help & Manual's
menu options. You can also change the standard keyboard shortcuts that are already
assigned if you want, although this is generally not recommended.

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 734 Help & Manual Online Help

Just click on the option you want to assign a new or different shortcut to, then select the
shortcut in the Current Shortcut: fields.
Current These two fields select the letter (right) and the control key (left).
shortcut: Select the letter key first for options that do not yet have a shortcut
assigned.

Resets all the shortcuts to the default settings that Help & Manual has
when it is freshly installed.

See also:
Project Properties 548
Customizing Help & Manual 84
12.1.9.8.4 Customize - Editor

Editor configuration options:

These options adjust the appearance and behavior of the Help & Manual editor.

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736 Help & Manual Online Help

Ruler units: You can select pixels, inches, centimeters or points. Pixels is
recommended for maximum accuracy – Help & Manual handles
all sizes internally in pixels and all other units must be converted.

Show paragraph and Makes tabs and paragraph end marks visible in the editor. This
text marks in editor: can be useful for identifying formatting problems. Can also be
switched on and off with in the Toolbar.

Custom DPI settings Changes the font size used to display text in the editor pane. This
for text editor: does not affect your output, it is only to make text easier to read
while you are working. It can also help you to get an idea of what
your text will look like on computers with larger fonts set in
Windows.
If you have a mouse with a mouse wheel you can
change this setting quickly by holding down the Ctrl
key and turning the mouse wheel.

Show strong table Uses darker and slightly thicker grid lines to show the borders of
grid lines in edit tables. Can be useful to make tables more visible on some
mode: monitors.

Automatically detect When this setting is active Internet URLs and email addresses will
URLs while typing automatically be turned into Internet links 298 as you type.
text:

Auto-correct blanks Topic IDs containing blanks are invalid so we strongly recommend
in topic IDs: leaving this option active.

Apply "Under Automatically displays new topics with a yellow highlight in the
Construction" status TOC, indicating that they are "under construction". See Changing
to new topics: the topic status 225 .

After changes set Automatically change the topic status to the value you specify
status to: after editing changes have been made.

Do NOT modify the This option prevents topics from being marked as 'changed' when
topic date/time you edit them. You can use it to speed up test compiles while
stamp: working because it prevents changed topics from being
regenerated.
For example, you could activate this option before doing a spell
check of your project. Then the topics containing the minor spell
check "changes" will not be identified as changed and you won't
have to recompile them all.
Use with caution! Don't use this option when you are
generating your final output!

See also:
Project Properties 548
Customizing Help & Manual 84

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12.1.9.8.5 Customize - Folders

Folders configuration options:

These options set the paths to two folders used by Help & Manual.

Default folder: If you set a path to a folder here this is automatically used as the
default folder every time you run Help & Manual. This can be useful if
you spend a long time working on the same project.

Folder for By default Help & Manual stores its temporary copies of your project
temporary files: file in the folder defined by the Windows TEMP variable. This is
normally deep down in the Documents and Settings directory, so it is a
good idea to set a more accessible folder for this.
If you have more than one hard drive in your system you can use a
folder on a different hard drive for your temporary files. This radically
increases data security because it is extremely unlikely that two hard
drives will ever both fail at exactly the same time.

See also:
Project Properties 548
Customizing Help & Manual 84
12.1.9.8.6 Customize - Compilers

Compilers configuration options:

These options configure the paths to the Microsoft compilers used to generate Winhelp,
HTML Help and Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0. You can also select the compiler
messages to display during compilation. The paths to these compilers will usually be

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 738 Help & Manual Online Help

found automatically during installation. Only change them if you really need to.

Messages It is a good idea to leave all these messages activated as they make
displayed during it much easier to identify problems when you are compiling.
compilation:

Help Compilers: The paths to the Microsoft compilers for Winhelp, HTML Help and
Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0. You must have these compilers
installed to be able to output your projects to these formats!
Note that the MS Help 2.0 compiler (Visual Studio Help) support is for
programmers only. This compiler can be downloaded from the
Microsoft website with the Visual Studio Help Integration Kit (VSHIK),
but it can only be used in combination with the Visual Studio .NET
package. You do not need this help format if you don't program with
this package – it is only used for documenting programming
components added to VS.NET and it is irrelevant for all other
purposes.

Resets all the settings and paths to the default values.

See also:
Project Properties 548
Customizing Help & Manual 84
12.1.9.8.7 Customize - PDF Export

PDF Export configuration options:

This tab can be used to set a different "reference printer driver" for generating PDF
output. The PDF engine must have a printer driver to generate PDF files – if you don't
have any printer installed on your computer you won't be able to generate PDF at all.

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PDF output anomalies are often caused by bugs in proprietary drivers from printer
manufacturers. If you experience problems try installing a standard driver for a common
printer from the Windows CD and selecting it here. This doesn't have to be a driver for a
printer that is physically connected to your computer.
Problems with the reference driver used for generating PDF output can also result in
incorrect displays for special characters and international languages. However, if you
experience problems like this first check the language settings 551 of your project to make
sure that everything is set up correctly. If you still have problems in your PDF output
after making sure that your language settings are correct you can try using a different
reference printer driver.

Use screen as Uses the computer's screen driver as the reference device for PDF
reference device: output. Help & Manual defaults to this setting if you have no printer
installed. Otherwise using this setting is not generally
recommended.

Use default Uses the default printer driver for PDF output. Leave this setting
reference device: selected if your PDF output is OK.

Use this printer Use this to select an alternative printer driver to use for PDF output.
driver as a Click on the browse button to select the printer.
reference device:

See also:
Project Properties 548
Customizing Help & Manual 84
12.1.10 The Help Menu
The Help menu provides access to this help file (Contents), which can also be accessed at
any time by pressing the F1 key. In addition, this menu also contains a number of links to

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 740 Help & Manual Online Help

specific important information and how-to topics in the help and some useful links to the EC
Software website. You can check whether you are using the latest version of Help & Manual.

What's This? Help:

Selecting the What's This? Help link in the Help menu adds a question mark to the
mouse cursor. If you then click on any control in the Help & Manual user interface
you will see a small popup text window explaining what the control is for.
You can also access the same information by right-clicking on a control in Help &
Manual and selecting What's This? from the popup menu displayed.

Index:
Displays this help file.

The other entries in the Help menu:

Come on, you can figure out those yourself!

12.2 The Help & Manual Editor

Help & Manual's editor, with which you edit your topics in the Help Text tab, works in almost
exactly the same way as a modern word processor. If you are used to using programs like
Word or Open Office Writer the keyboard editing functions and the options available to you
in the File, Edit, Format and Table menus will all be familiar. The help authoring functions
are simply additional functions, that are smoothly integrated with the familiar working
environment of a word processor.

The editor is where you do most of your work in Help & Manual
This section provides a brief overview of the basic editing functions, along with a couple of
tips for operations that are a little different from normal word processors.

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See also:
The User Interface 79
12.2.1 The paragraph end mark
If you're used to working with a word processor like MS Word you will find that editing in
Help & Manual is slightly different. It's just as powerful, but the way it stores text formatting is
different, and you need to understand this.

The paragraph end mark does not store any formatting!

Word processors like MS Word store paragraph styles and formatting in the paragraph
end mark. In word processors like this you can format a paragraph by selecting the end
mark and applying formatting. Also, if you delete the paragraph end mark in these word
processors the formatting of the entire paragraph can "disappear".

You cannot select or format the paragraph end mark!

Help & Manual is different – its end marks don't store anything, they are just carriage
returns marking the end of the paragraph. Instead, the formatting is associated with the
entire paragraph. Since the paragraph end mark contains neither formatting nor any
other information you cannot select it or format it. You will need to get out of the habit of
trying to do this if you're a frequent Word user...

Formatting is associated with the text.

In Help & Manual formatting is associated directly with the text and the entire paragraph.
When you apply formatting to text it is associated with every letter of the text. When you
apply a style 94 to a paragraph in it is associated both with the entire paragraph and with
every letter of the text it contains.

When you copy text all its formatting goes with it!
You will see this, for example, if you copy a passage of text from one paragraph to
another. If you then put your cursor in the copied text and look in the style selector 245 in
the toolbar you will find that it still has the attributes of the source paragraph. (You can
prevent this behavior by using Edit > Paste Text Only 680 or Ctrl+Shift+V.)

It's a slightly different way of working.

It's just a slightly different way of working. Once you get used to it you'll find that it's quite
intuitive and also has it's advantages. For example, unlike Word you can't accidentally
delete the formatting of an entire paragraph by pressing DEL or BACKSPACE. If this
ever happens just press ENTER again to separate the paragraphs.You may need to
adjust the paragraph formatting or reapply a styles 94 to adjust the paragraph formatting,
but that's it. (When paragraphs are joined the program automatically uses the paragraph
attributes of the upper paragraph in the text, because a paragraph can't have two sets of
paragraph settings.)

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12.2.2 The Table of Contents pane

The Table of Contents (TOC) pane on the left shows all the topics in your project. This is
where you select topics for editing. It also provides powerful functions for creating and
changing the structure of your project (see Managing Topics in the TOC 209 ).

· To edit a topic just select it in the TOC. It is then displayed in the Topic Editor on the
right, where you can edit it.

See also:
The User Interface 79
Creating and Editing Topics 171
Managing Topics in the TOC 209
12.2.3 Editing in the Help Text tab
The Help Text tab contains the editor where you enter and edit the topics in your project.
Select a topic in the TOC list on the left, then just click in the Help Text tab and start editing.
The features in the editor are very similar to those in a modern word processor.
· For details see the topics in the Creating and Editing Topics 171 section.

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See also:
The User Interface 79
Creating and Editing Topics 171
Managing Topics in the TOC 209
12.2.4 Topic Options tab
The Topic Options tab is located directly behind the editor and provides access to the index
keywords entry field for the current topic and a number of other settings that are important
for integrating your topics in your help system and accessing them from your applications.
Keywords added to topics in the Topic Options tab are displayed immediately in the real-
time index which is displayed in the Index tab 744 .

Apart from the keyword entry field this tab is not so relevant for the editing functions. For
more details on the options and features available here see Topic Options 81 in The User

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 744 Help & Manual Online Help

Interface.

See also:
The User Interface 79
Creating and Editing Topics 171
Managing Topics in the TOC 209
12.2.5 The Index tab
The Index tab behind the Table of Contents pane provides direct interactive access to the
finished index for your project, which is generated in real time. You can view and edit the
index directly while you are working on topics, and you can see how keywords added to
topics in the Topic Options tab 743 are integrated in the index as soon as they are added.

You can edit the index entries directly by right-clicking on them and selecting the Edit option
in the popup menu. For details see Keywords and Indexes 369 in the Basic Working
Procedures section.

See also:
The User Interface 79
Keywords and Indexes 369

12.3 Formatting
This section contains some useful background information on formatting text in the Help &
Manual editor.

See also:
Writing and formatting text 179
12.3.1 Tabs, indents and HTML
Tab stops and indents as used in word processors are unknown in HTML. You should thus
always avoid using tab stops in any topics intended for output to HTML-based formats, i.e.
HTML Help, Browser-based Help and eBooks.
Any attempts to use spaces to create indented effects in HTML-based output will also fail
miserably. This is because HTML always ignores multiple spaces: It doesn't matter whether
you enter a single space or 100 spaces, the result will always be a single space.

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Tabs and indents are not the same thing:

In the Tab Stops settings screen of Help & Manual's Format > Paragraph dialog you will
see the following dire warning:

This might make you think that you can't use indents at all for HTML-based output but
this is not the case. You can use indented paragraphs, you just shouldn't try to use tabs
or spaces to make indents. You should always use Help & Manual's paragraph indenting
232 functions.

How Help & Manual handles indents in HTML:

How Help & Manual handles indented paragraphs depends on how they are formatted.
Paragraphs with simple indents are formatted with margin settings. This also works for
paragraphs with hanging indents, provided they don't contain a tab stop.
Complex hanging indents containing a tab stop are converted to tables, because this is
the only way to make this construction stable in HTML.

Special case – hanging indents with a tab stop:

Hanging indents containing a tab stop like the example below (this is a graphic to show
the tab stop) are also reliably converted to tables. This is also the only exception where
you can use a tab stop in HTML-based output. The tab stop that is part of a hanging
indent like this is converted to a table structure in HTML, which makes it stable and
robust.

As mentioned in the example, this also works if the beginning of the first line is indented
from the left margin. This will also be converted to a table structure that will be stable in
HTML-based output.

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 746 Help & Manual Online Help

See also:
Using indents 232

12.4 Dynamic Styles

Dynamic styles are one of the most powerful and frequently-requested new features in Help
& Manual. If you are already familiar with using dynamic styles in a modern word processor
like MS Word or OpenOffice you will feel right at home with Help & Manual's styles. If you
haven’t used dynamic styles before then the shift from manual formatting to dynamic styles
takes a little work and there is a learning curve, but it is well worth it!

You don't have to use styles – but you should!

There is nothing at all to prevent you from continuing to use manual formatting 230 if that's
the way you prefer to work. It's just the same as working in MS Word or OpenOffice: Just
don't create any styles and apply all your formatting manually.
However, you will regret this the first time you decide you want to make formatting
changes throughout your project, particularly in large projects. You must invest a little
time to plan and set up your styles, but this will pay for itself many times over in the time
you save later. Also, it will make your projects look much better because they will have a
uniform layout and appearance throughout.
Finally, dynamic styles have another big advantage: In all HTML-based formats they will
make your output files significantly smaller. Complex manual formatting requires a lot of
tag information attached to all formatted text – sometimes the tags take up more space
than the text itself. In contrast to this the formatting for styles is just stored once.
Applying a style just requires one brief tag.

Study this chapter, then decide.

Please take the time to study the topics in this chapter. They will give you a better
understanding of how styles work and what you can do with them. And they will also
make it very clear why you should use styles.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228 (how-to instructions)
12.4.1 Why use dynamic styles?
The advantages of dynamic styles are so radical and far-reaching that you will never want to
go back to manual formatting as soon as you have got used to the basic principles. They will
speed up your work, make it more efficient and make your finished product look more
attractive and professional.

Instant changes throughout your project:

When you format text manually you have to go back and change everything manually
whenever you change your mind about how you want a headline or a paragraph to look.
This can take hours in a big project, and since it's boring and repetitive work you are also

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 Reference 747

likely to make mistakes. Also, when you format manually you will often apply slightly
different formatting to text passages that are supposed to look the same, and your work
will look messy as a result.
Suppose your client or your boss says that they want to use Verdana 16 point instead of
Times Roman 14 point in the topic headers. With styles all you need to do is change the
definition of the heading style, which takes a couple of seconds, and all the headers in
your entire project are updated instantly.
You can think of a style as a named formatting definition for either text or an entire
paragraph. When you use styles you have a separate style for every different type of
paragraph and text in your project. For example, normal body text paragraphs are
normally formatted with a style called Normal, and the topic headers are normally
formatted with a style called Heading1. You can define as many other styles as you like
for other purposes.

Instant formatting:
Once you get the hang of it working with styles is much faster than using manual
formatting. To format an entire paragraph you just select the style in the menu, or press
the hotkey combination for the style, and all the formatting is applied immediately. You
don't even have to select the paragraph. And all new text and paragraphs you type from
that point will also have the selected style until you change it.

Uniform appearance and layout:

Since your styles are predefined all your formatting, indents and so on will be identical,
giving your projects a uniform and much more professional appearance.

The added power of dynamic inheritance:

Help & Manual's styles aren't just dynamic, they also have dynamic inheritance. This
means that styles based on other styles automatically "inherit" the properties of their
parent styles. All properties that you do not change in the child styles are dynamically
linked to the parent style.
This means you can create families of styles in which you can change properties
throughout the entire family just by modifying a single parent style. See About
inheritance in styles 749 for full details on dynamic inheritance and how it works.

Smaller output files:

Note that using styles efficiently can also make your output files quite a bit smaller,
particularly in HTML-based output (HTML Help, Browser-based Help, Visual Studio Help,
eBooks). Manual formatting must include a large number of detailed tags every time it is
applied – in extreme cases these tags can use up more bytes than the text itself. Styles
are only defined once and are applied with a simple and very brief reference to the
internal stylesheet.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228 (how-to instructions)

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 748 Help & Manual Online Help

About inheritance in styles 749

12.4.2 How do styles work?
To understand how dynamic styles work you only need to understand three concepts: Style
definitions, dynamic linking and dynamic inheritance.

Style definitions:
A style is a set of formatting definitions with a name that makes it possible for you to
identify and select it. It can include all the formatting attributes that you can apply to text
and paragraphs with the Font, Paragraph and Borders and Backgrounds options in the
Format menu.
For convenience, you can create two kinds of styles: Text styles, which only define font
formatting attributes, and paragraph styles, which define all available attributes.
Similarly, styles can also be linked to either entire paragraphs or individual passages of
text. These are the two "units" that are used in connection with styles. (See Paragraph
and text styles 753 for details.)

Dynamic linking:
A set of formatting definitions is no good on its own, of course. Styles are useful because
you can link them to paragraphs and text in your project. As soon as you apply a style 234
to a paragraph or a passage of text the style definition is dynamically linked to that
paragraph or that text. All the style attributes are applied to the paragraph or the text
automatically, and when the cursor is in the paragraph or the text the name of the style is
displayed in the style selector in the Toolbar:

Here the cursor is in a paragraph formatted with the Normal style.

We say that the style is dynamically linked because all changes in the style definition are
automatically and immediately reflected in all paragraphs and/or text linked to the style. If
you change the font face, font size, paragraph indents and so on in the style definition
these changes are all immediately reflected in all the paragraphs and text linked to the
style.

Dynamic inheritance:
This concept is a little more difficult to understand. Most styles are based on other styles
– this makes defining styles easier, because you often have groups of quite similar
styles. In addition to this it also makes styles much more powerful. Here's why:
We refer to "parent" and "child" styles. Just as a human child inherits some genes from
its parents and has some unique characteristics of its own, styles in Help & Manual also
inherit some properties from their parents and have some properties of their own.
In styles, however, inheritance is dynamic, in exactly the same way that linking to the text
formatted by styles is dynamic. All attributes that you don't change in the child styles are
shared with the parent style. If you change an attribute in the parent style the change is
immediately reflected in both the child style and all paragraphs and/or text formatted

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 Reference 749

with the child style.

This means that you can make changes to entire "families" of styles, and to all the text
formatted with those styles, just by editing one parent style.
See About inheritance in styles 749 for full details on this subject.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228 (how-to instructions)
About inheritance in styles 749
12.4.3 About inheritance in styles
Alongside dynamic linking 748 , dynamic inheritance is the second feature that gives dynamic
styles their great flexibility and power. If you understand dynamic inheritance you will be able
to use and organize your styles much more efficiently, so please do study this topic carefully!

What is dynamic inheritance?

Put briefly, dynamic inheritance means that styles based on other styles inherit the
attributes of their parent styles, and the inherited attributes are dynamically linked to the
same attributes in the parent styles. If an attribute is changed in the parent the change is
automatically (and immediately) inherited by all child styles. Equally, these changes are
also automatically and immediately reflected in all texts to which the child styles are
linked.
For example, if you change the font of the Normal style, which is usually the
"Granddaddy" style on which almost all styles in any project are based, this automatically
and immediately changes the font in (almost) all styles in your project. The only
exceptions are styles that are not based on Normal, and styles which already have
different fonts set.
And this is the next important aspect of dynamic inheritance: It only applies to attributes
that have not been changed in the child styles. As soon as an attribute is changed in a
style it is "fixed", and no longer affected by changes in the parent style. Styles based on
the changed child style will then inherit this new attribute.

The inheritance tree

Styles do not have to be based on other styles but they usually are. When you create a
new style on the basis of another style (see Defining styles 237 ) it is initially an exact copy
of its parent style, so that it shares all its attributes of the parent. We say that the child
style "inherits" all the attributes of its parent style.
Two identical styles wouldn't be much use, so you then edit some of the attributes of
your new style and leave others unchanged. The key to understanding dynamic
inheritance is understanding its relationship to the changed and unchanged attributes in
the child styles.
Let's have a look at a simple example of a style inheritance tree. The standard style on
which almost all other styles are based is called Normal. You can edit this style 243 , but
like the other standard styles 752 you can't rename it or delete it. The example below
shows some styles based on Normal. Please note that this tree is simplified to make the

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750 Help & Manual Online Help

explanations easier; in reality there are many more attributes, and each style could also
have multiple children on each level instead of just one.

Fig. 1: Simplified example of a style tree

Changed and unchanged attributes:

In this example changed attributes are shown in blue, unchanged attributes in black.
The unchanged attributes are dynamically linked to the corresponding attributes in
their parent styles – changes made to these attributes in the parent are automatically
inherited by the children. By the same token, inheritance from the parent stops at
the changed attributes.

How this works in the example:

In the example above all the child styles except Callout inherit the Arial font from
Normal , because this font face has not been changed in any of these styles. If you
edit Normal and change Arial to Times Roman then the font of all the child styles
except Callout will automatically change from Arial to Times Roman.
The styles Normal Indent and Normal Indent 2 also inherit the font size from
Normal . If you edit Normal and change the its font size from 11 points to 12 points
this change will be inherited by these two styles, but not by the two Heading styles.
Another good example is the Space After attribute. In Normal this attribute is set to
0.1", and this value is inherited by all of the child styles except Heading2. If you edit
Normal and set its Space After attribute to 0.0" this change will be inherited by all the
child styles except Heading2.

Changed attributes start a new inheritance sequence:

A changed attribute in a child style starts a new inheritance sequence:
In Callout the original font has been changed to Verdana 10. Callout 2 inherits the
font face, but the size has been changed to 12. This means that if you edit Callout
and change its font to Tahoma, this change will be inherited by Callout 2. However,
changing the font size in Callout will not be reflected in Callout 2, because the font

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 Reference 751

size has been changed there, thus stopping inheritance for that attribute.
The same applies to the font weight in the two Heading styles. In Heading1 the font
weight has been changed to bold, so changes to the font weight in Normal will not
have any effect on Heading1 or any of its children. Heading2 inherits the font weight
attribute from Heading1, so if you edit Heading1 and change its weight to non-bold
this change will be inherited by Heading2.
This illustrates the most important characteristic of inheritance for changed attributes:
Changing an attribute turns off inheritance from the parent for that attribute. At the
same time, however, it starts a new inheritance tree for the same attribute: when you
create new styles based on the modified style the new setting is inherited by the new
styles.

Parallel inheritance and serial inheritance:

You can also organize the inheritance of your style families in two different ways, with
parallel inheritance and serial inheritance. It works like this:

Fig. 2: Parallel and serial inheritance

In parallel inheritance trees all the sub-styles are direct children of the parent style. This
option is used when you are creating direct variants of a parent style. For example, you
might use this to create three different variants of your body text style that have different
indents but are otherwise identical.
In serial trees you have a grandparent - parent - child relationship structure. Each new
style is based on the preceding variant. This option is used for families of styles that
change progressively. A typical example of this is a family of headline styles with font
sizes that get progressively smaller.
As Fig. 1 750 further above in this topic shows, most style trees use a combination of
parallel and serial inheritance.

Why dynamic inheritance is useful:

Just as dynamic styles make it possible to reformat your entire project by editing a
couple of style definitions, dynamic inheritance makes it possible to make basic changes
to entire families of styles by editing a single style definition. For example, you can
usually change the base font for your entire project by changing the font in Normal. For
more details on using these features to plan your styles see Style organization strategies
754 .

Stopping inheritance:
Precisely because dynamic inheritance is so powerful there may be times when you want

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 752 Help & Manual Online Help

to stop it. There are situations when you want to make absolutely certain that a style will
never be changed when you make changes to another style.
Doing this is very simple: Just don't base your new style on another style: When you
create a new style 237 select (None) in the Based on Style: field for the style definition. You
can also change this later if you want. See Editing styles 244 for details.
The standard Code Example style used for formatting program code with the syntax
highlighter 267 is an example of this. This style does not have a parent because its format
must always be the same – you don't want any other styles to be able to change its font,
size or paragraph formatting.

A style without a parent starts a new inheritance tree

A style without a parent does not inherit any attributes from any other styles. This
means that it is "protected" against unexpected changes caused by changes in
parent styles.
At the same time, a style without a parent is also the "first parent" in a new
inheritance tree: If you base new styles on this style they will inherit the properties of
the style. You can use these capabilities to create new and separate families of
styles. See Style organization strategies 754 for some more ideas on this.

Switch off inheritance with caution!

When you are learning how to use styles it is tempting to switch off inheritance for
many styles because you may think this will give you greater control over your
formatting. In the short term this is true but in the long term it is better to learn to use
inheritance efficiently. Defining many styles without parents will actually create much
more work for you later if you decide to make far-reaching changes in your
formatting. Again, see Style organization strategies 754 for some more ideas on this.

See also:
Style organization strategies 754
Text Formatting and Styles 228 (how-to instructions)
12.4.4 The standard styles
If you look at the styles list in the styles editing dialog you will notice that some styles are
displayed in bold with the words (Standard Style) in brackets after the style name. These
styles are special styles that Help & Manual always expects to find because it uses them for
specific purposes. You can edit them but you cannot change their names and you cannot
delete them.

The standard styles and what they are for:

Normal: This is the basic parent style that almost all other styles, including header
styles, are normally based on. By default Normal is also used for the
standard starting paragraph in all new topics. (You can change this by
defining a new standard topic content template 466 .)
Having almost all other styles based on Normal makes it possible to

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 Reference 753

make changes to the appearance of your entire project by editing Normal

. For example, changing the font of Normal automatically changes the
font of all other styles in which you have not explicitly defined a different
font from the one set for Normal.
For more details on this see About inheritance in styles 749 and Style
organization strategies 754 .

Code This style is automatically applied to all program code formatted with the
Example: Syntax Highlighter 267 . Unlike most other styles it is not based on Normal,
because you don't want its appearance to change when you change the
formatting of the rest of your project.

Comment: This style defines the appearance of the comments 204 you can enter in
your project. This style is quite limited compared to most other styles.
See Image caption and comment styles 249 for details.

Heading1: This is the style used for the topic header displayed in the box above the
editing area. It's a good idea to use it as the parent for a family of
heading styles for use in the rest of your project.

Image This style is applied to the captions of graphics 314 inserted in your topics.
Caption: Like the Comment style it is quite limited: See Image caption and
comment styles 249 for details.

Notes: This style is reserved for function that may be added to Help & Manual in
a future release. It can be ignored for the time being. (No, we're not
saying what it's going to be yet...)

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228 (how-to instructions)
12.4.5 Paragraph and text styles
Help & Manual supports two different kinds of styles, paragraph styles and text styles. As
their names suggest, paragraph styles are for formatting entire paragraphs, text styles are
for formatting text only. See Defining styles 237 and Formatting text with styles 234 and for
details on how to define and use paragraph and text styles.

The difference between paragraph and text styles:

Paragraph styles: These are the most commonly-used styles. They include all style
attributes (font and paragraph) and they are used for controlling the
general layout of your entire project. A paragraph style is generally
applied to one or more paragraphs.
Note that border and background attributes are set separately but they
are actually a subset of the paragraph attributes.
Text styles: These styles only include font attributes. They are used for applying
standard formatting to individual passages of text.

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 754 Help & Manual Online Help

The two paragraphs above are formatted with a paragraph style that defines their base
font, the hanging indent and the general indent from the left margin. The texts Paragraph
styles: and Text styles: on the left (and also in this explanation) are formatted with a text
style that only defines the font, font size and and font weight (Times New Roman, bold
and 11 points).

Display in the Toolbar:

In the style selector in the Toolbar paragraph styles are identified by a paragraph
symbol, text styles by an underlined a symbol. The example below shows a paragraph
style and a text style in the style selector:

Can you convert between the two style types?

Yes. The division between paragraph and text styles is actually made for convenience; in
reality all styles can always store all possible style attributes.

Converting a text style to a paragraph style:

You can always convert a text style to a paragraph style simply by adding paragraph
attributes to it. This is possible even if the style is based on another text style
because you are adding attributes, not taking them away, and this does not cause
any problems in the style's dynamic inheritance tree (see below).

Converting a paragraph style to a text style:

You can also convert a paragraph style to text styles, but this is a little more difficult.
If the paragraph style is based on another paragraph style you must change its
parent setting 244 to (None) or to a text style. This is necessary because of dynamic
inheritance: if a style is based on a paragraph style it must inherit its parent's
paragraph attributes, and this makes it impossible for it to be a text style.
See About inheritance in styles 749 for more information on dynamic inheritance.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228 (how-to instructions)
Defining styles 237
Editing styles 243
About inheritance in styles 749
12.4.6 Style organization strategies
This section describes some basic principles that will help you to use styles more efficiently.
Once you understand styles the way you use them is also a question of your personal
working preferences. For example, some people prefer to have a small, more manageable
set of styles and pay for this convenience with a little more manual formatting work. Others

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 Reference 755

prefer to have a large and almost complete set of styles that allows them to control virtually
all their formatting by editing styles.

Separating formatting and content:

One of the basic purposes of dynamic styles is to allow you to separate formatting and
content. Theoretically, if you do this completely all the formatting in your entire project
would be controlled by styles and you would be able to change the appearance of
everything just by modifying the styles. In the real world all projects will normally contain
a certain amount of manually-formatted text. For example bold and underlining to
emphasize individual words and passages, and individual manually-formatted
paragraphs and sections for which it would not be worthwhile to create one or more
special styles.

The "many styles" and "few styles" strategies:

The number of styles you really need depends mainly on the amount of manual
formatting you are willing to do. There are two basic approaches to this, the "many
styles" strategy and the "few styles" strategy:

Many styles:
If you want to control all your formatting with styles you will need quite a large
number of styles for each project. Most of these styles will not be unique, they will be
variants of other styles. For example you will probably want to have several variants
of the Normal style used for standard paragraphs with indents and other
modifications.
This help file uses this approach, and it has a set of over fifty styles. Here too, the
great majority of these styles are variants of basic styles. For example there is a
whole family of body text styles for indented lists with different left indents and
hanging indents, and a matching family of headline styles with indents to match the
body text styles.

Few styles:
The "few styles" approach uses exactly the opposite strategy. Here you would use a
single style for each basic paragraph type, heading type and so on. With this strategy
you don't create any variants of these styles: If you want to use a variant, for
example with an indent, you must then apply the indent manually while you are
writing and editing your topics.
This approach results in a much smaller list of styles that is easier to manage. It
works if you are quite clear about what formatting you are going to apply manually.
However, you must really be absolutely sure that all the manual formatting you apply
are things you are not going to change. In the case of indents, for example, this is
generally a safe assumption if you are also sure that you are not going to change
font sizes.
You can still make global changes to your styles when you use this method, but any
manual formatting you have applied will not be changed when you change the style
definitions. (Manual formatting always has priority over style formatting.)

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756 Help & Manual Online Help

Personally I still find that the "many styles" approach allows me to work more quickly on
balance because I switch between styles quite frequently and applying a style is much
faster than adjusting indents and other attributes correctly every time. If I have a style for
every variant I don't need to worry about getting the settings right when I apply manual
formatting. But this is really a questions of personal preference; many authors prefer the
"few styles" approach and have just as valid arguments in its favor.

Style families
No matter whether you use many or few styles it is always advisable to organize your
styles in "families", both by name and by inheritance 749 .

Style name families:

This is simply logical and makes your styles easier to identify and find. It makes
sense to create families of headline styles called Heading1, Heading2, Heading3 and
so on. Then they all appear together in the list and you know what they are for. If you
want you can also include some key information in the names. For example, in this
help I have a group of variant styles called Heading4, Heading4 Indent and
Heading4 Indent No Before (this one has no extra space before the heading).
You can organize your other style groups like body text and so on in the same way.
Remember that you can rename your styles at any time!
Don't hesitate to rename your styles if you need to! Help & Manual automatically
updates all style references so you can rename them to improve your styles
organization whenever you want.

Style inheritance families:

Styles inherit properties from the styles they are based on. If you base groups of
styles on a common parent style you can make changes to the common properties of
the entire style group by editing the parent style.
For example, you could base all your headline styles on the standard style 752
Heading1 , if you want them to be similar to Heading1. If you don't want them to be
similar to Heading1 you could create a new parent style for the headlines you want to
use in your topics, and base your other headline styles on that.
The same applies to other groups of styles for text or paragraphs with similar
attributes. See About inheritance in styles 749 for more background information on
this.

Naming paragraph and text styles

It's advisable to apply a prefix to text styles that automatically distinguishes them from
paragraph styles and keeps them together in all the style selection lists, which are sorted
alphabetically. You can also use a prefix for paragraph styles if you want but that's not
really necessary. I use the prefix T_ for text styles and no prefix for paragraph styles and
that works fine for me.
Of course, using T_ for text styles and P_ for paragraph styles prevents paragraph styles
whose names begin with letters after "T" coming after the text styles in the lists, so be

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 Reference 757

my guest...

One inheritance tree or multiple trees?

By default all the styles in Help & Manual except the standard Code Example style (see
The standard styles 752 ) are based on Normal, which is also the style used for standard
paragraphs in topics. This means that you have a single style inheritance tree. The
advantage of this is that it makes it possible to change attributes throughout your entire
project by editing Normal. You can change the standard font in all your styles simply by
changing the font of Normal, provided you haven't explicitly changed the base font in any
styles. The same applies for all other inherited attributes of Normal.

Creating new style inheritance trees:

When you create a new style that is not based on any other styles you effectively
create a new style inheritance tree. The question is, is this an advantage or a
disadvantage?
Pros: The main advantage of a completely new tree is that it is guaranteed that
you can't accidentally change the attributes of styles in the tree by editing
Normal or another higher-level style. Many authors use one tree for body
text styles and another tree for header styles, for example.
Cons: The disadvantage is the same as the advantage: You have to edit the styles
in the second tree separately, which means maintaining your styles can be
a little more work. But it can be worth it if you find making this division
makes it easier for you to manage your project.

It's a question of personal preference:

Ultimately it's a question of personal preference whether you use the one-tree or the
multi-tree method. However, it's probably a bad idea to create too many trees, as
that can get really troublesome to manage.
If you do use multiple trees it's best to stick to one tree for each main group, for
example one tree for body text styles, one tree for header styles (particularly if you
use different fonts for headers and body text) and so on.

Using hotkeys
Last but not least, don't forget to assign hotkeys (keyboard shortcuts) to your frequently-
used styles! If you spend any amount of time working with Help & Manual (and if you're
writing help you will) this can radically speed up your work.

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228 (how-to instructions)

12.5 Scripts, HTML and Macros

In addition to creating word-processor style content help authors sometimes want or need to
"get under the hood" of their help output and add their own code in the form of JavaScript,
HTML code or Winhelp macros. Help & Manual has extensive facilities that allow you to do

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 758 Help & Manual Online Help

this:
· You can create links in your text that execute Winhelp macros or JavaScript code 302 in
the appropriate output formats. These links can be inserted both in the text 302 of your
topics and in hotspots in graphics 321 .
· You can enter inline HTML code 311 in your topics that will be inserted in your output
exactly as you wrote it, without any changes. (HTML-based output formats only, of
course.) This code can include anything supported by HTML, including scripts.
· You can manually edit the HTML templates 475 that are used to generate the topic
pages in HTML-based output formats.
You need to be familiar with HTML, scripting and Winhelp macros to use these features. It is
assumed that you know what you are doing and the code you enter is entirely your
responsibility. It is not corrected, parsed or syntax-checked by Help & Manual. The only
exceptions are some graphic file references in your HTML topic templates, which are parsed
and exported 832 with your output.
The topics in this section provide some extra background information that will help you to
use these features more effectively.

12.5.1 About JavaScript links

You can enter links that execute JavaScript code both in the text 302 of your topics and in
hotspots in graphics 321 . Since JavaScript is an HTML-based technology this feature is only
supported in HTML-based output formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help and Visual
Studio Help/MS Help 2.0). Note that although eBooks are also HTML-based JavaScript is
not supported in eBooks because the compact eBook viewer does not contain a full browser
or script parser.
You can also include JavaScript and other script code in plain HTML code
inserted in your topics using the Insert > Plain HTML Code 311 feature. This
option is normally preferable to script links for more complex code. See
About inline HTML code 761 for some more information on this.

JavaScript restrictions in users' browsers:

In HTML Help you can generally assume that MSIE-compatible JavaScript will work
because the HTML Help viewer is actually a Microsoft Internet Explorer module.
However, when you use JavaScript in Browser-based Help you must always remember
that users' browsers may restrict or completely prevent the execution of JavaScript
code.

JavaScript links that refer to script functions:

You can also refer to JavaScript functions stored in your own external JavaScript code (i.
e. code that you have written) in JavaScript links. There are several different ways to
make these functions available to the JavaScript links:
· Add your separate .JS script file to the Baggage section 520 to include it in your
output. Then edit the HTML template 477 for your topics and add an include for the .
JS script file in the appropriate location in the template file.

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 Reference 759

· Edit the HTML template for your topics and manually add the script with the
functions to the <HEAD> section of the template. Note that this will include the script
code in every topic page, even those pages where the functions are not needed.
(See About inline HTML code 762 for details on how to avoid this problem.)
· Insert the script code containing the functions at the beginning of the topic
containing the link with the Insert > Plain HTML Code 311 function. If you use this
method the code will only be available in the topic where you insert it. Note also
that this will insert the code between the <BODY> tags of the topic page – this will
work in most cases but since scripts should generally be in the <HEAD> section you
may want to use one of the other methods.

How Help & Manual handles JavaScript code in links:

To use this feature effectively it is important to understand how Help & Manual handles
the JavaScript code you enter in your links. When you select the JavaScript option in
the Insert Hyperlink 686 dialog the script you enter in the dialog box is only part of the final
code generated in your output:

This dialog is effectively identical for script links

in your text and script links in hotspots in graphics.
In the HTML output the code is put together as follows:

<a href=" + your code + "> + link caption + </a>

For example, if you enter javascript:alert('Hello World!'); in the Script: entry box and
Hello World! in the Caption: field Help & Manual will generate the following link:

<a href="javascript:alert('Hello World!');">Hello World!</a>

That is just a simple example. Here is a more complex piece of JavaScript as entered in
the Script: entry box (this example opens a popup window):

javascript:window.open('http://www.ec-software.com/helphtml/index.html?whatsnew.
htm',
'PopupWindow','toolbar=0,location=0,directories=0,status=0,menubar=0,resizable=y
es,
scrollbars=1,width=600,height=600,left=0,top=0');

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760 Help & Manual Online Help

The output generated from this script would look like this:

<a href="
javascript:window.open('http://www.ec-software.com/helphtml/index.html?whatsnew.
htm',
'PopupWindow','toolbar=0,location=0,directories=0,status=0,menubar=0,resizable=y
es,
scrollbars=1,width=600,height=600,left=0,top=0');">Your Link Caption</a>

Entering complex JavaScript Code:

Effectively, Help & Manual enters your JavaScript code between the " " characters for
the HREF= attribute of the <A> tag. However, this is not nearly as restrictive as it sounds
at first. When you understand how Help & Manual actually generates the output code
you can also enter quite complex scripts. You just have to remember the syntax and
work within it:

<a href=" + your code + "> + link caption + </a>

For example, you can also create a complex link tags like this, using multiple quotes
within the tag:

<a href="javascript:void(0);"
onmouseover="return overlib('Popup text.', STICKY, MOUSEOFF);"
onmouseout="return nd();">Display Overlib Popup</a>

All you need to do to achieve this is copy the entire link shown above into the Script:
field, leaving out the <a href=" at the beginning and the ">Display Overlib
Popup</a> at the end. For the above example you would first enter Display Overlib
Popup in the Caption: field and the following code in the Script: field:

javascript:void(0);"
onmouseover="return overlib('Popup text.', STICKY, MOUSEOFF);"
onmouseout="return nd();

JavaScript stumbling blocks:

· Remember that JavaScript is very picky about syntax and case! For example, if you
enter javascript:Alert instead of javascript:alert you will just get an error message.
· You must also remember to be very careful about nesting single and double quotes.
Help & Manual generates script links with double quotes on the outside so any quotes
nested within those quotes must be single quotes.

See also:
Inserting script and macro links 302
Inserting plain HTML code 311
About inline HTML code 761
Using HTML Templates 475

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 Reference 761

12.5.2 About Winhelp macro links

The Winhelp macro option in the Insert > Hyperlink 302 function allows you to insert all the
macros available in Winhelp in your projects. Full documentation of these macros is included
with the Microsoft Help Workshop package, which is installed on your computer
automatically when you install the Winhelp compiler, the latest version of which is always
available from the EC Software website.

Winhelp macros translated in HTML Help:

Winhelp macros are a Winhelp technology and they are thus only fully supported in
Winhelp output. If you are outputting to more than one format you may thus want to use
conditional text 454 and other conditional output features to create alternative content for
the other output formats.
In all formats other than Winhelp the macro links will be displayed as plain text without
any function. This also applies in HTML Help, with the following four exceptions, which
are translated to the ActiveX and HTML equivalents so that they work in HTML Help:
ALink() KLink()
TCard() Close()

These macros are translated because their Winhelp syntax is much easier to use than
the complex HTML code needed to use the HTML Help ActiveX object. This is
particularly useful when you are using A-Keywords to build automated See Also.. lists
and links between help files in modular help systems.
If you have upgraded from Help & Manual 3 you may be wondering what has happened
to the ExecFile() Winhelp macro, which used to be translated in HTML Help. This is no
longer necessary because you can now use file links 300 instead, which produce the same
result much more efficiently.
· For details see Inserting script and macro links 303 and Using A-keywords 382 .
· Note that only keywords are supported as arguments in the ALink and KLink macros
when they are used in HTML Help. All other arguments are ignored.

See also:
Inserting file links 300
Inserting script and macro links 302
Using A-keywords 382
12.5.3 About inline HTML code
The Insert > Plain HTML Code 311 function allows you to include plain HTML code at any
point in your topics and export it unchanged to all HTML-based output formats (HTML Help,
Browser-based HTML, eBooks and Visual Studio Help/MS Help 2.0).

Plain HTML code in eBooks:

Note that although plain HTML is exported to eBooks only plain formatting code will
actually work in this format. You cannot use scripts or DHTML because the simple

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762 Help & Manual Online Help

viewer application included in eBooks does not interpret any scripting.

When to use plain HTML code:

There are basically two situations where you may want to use plain HTML code:
· When you want to add features to your HTML-based output with dynamic HTML
and scripting.
· When you want to write your own HTML code to achieve formatting results that
you can't create directly with Help & Manual.
Since the introduction of Help & Manual 4 with its dynamic styles and other radically-
improved formatting capabilities you will probably have much less reason to use plain
HTML for formatting. However, it is still very useful for advanced users who want to
"tweak" their output in any number of ways.
The Insert > Plain HTML Code 311 function is also preferable to using JavaScript links 758
for inserting more complex JavaScript code in your pages. Since the code is inserted in
the page you can also include links, and you have more freedom to format your code
because you are not restricted by the link insertion syntax.

How plain HTML code is inserted:

Plain HTML code is inserted directly at the current insertion point in your topic text. It is
inserted exactly as you write it without any changes, and it is not parsed or syntax-
checked in any way. The only exceptions are some graphic file references in your HTML
topic templates, which are parsed and exported 832 with your output.
This means that you are 100% responsible for making sure that you write valid
code!
Since the entire topic contents are always inserted between the <BODY> and </BODY>
tags of the HTML topic template 477 the plain HTML code you enter is also always
inserted after the opening <BODY> tag, even if you enter it right at the top of the topic
page. It is important to remember this if you are inserting scripts that need to be in the
<HEAD> section.
If your code contains scripts that only function if they are in the <HEAD> section or
another page section above the <BODY> section it is better to insert the code in the HTML
template 477 for topic. See below for details.

Adding HTML code to HTML templates:

You cannot use Insert > Plain HTML Code 311 to add code outside the <BODY> and </
BODY> tags of the HTML output pages. If you need to do this you must add the code to
the HTML template 477 that is used to generate all the topic code outside the <BODY> and
</BODY> tags.
The code you add to the HTML template will be included with every topic generated with
the template. If you add the code to the Main template this means the code will be added
to almost every topic in your entire project, because Main is the default template.

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 Reference 763

Adding template code to selected topics only

If you only want to include the code with specific topics just create an additional help
window type 177 and add your additional code to the HTML template for that window
type. (Each help window type has its own HTML topic template.) Then the code will
only be included in topics associated with that help window type.
· To assign a help window type to a topic select the name of the help window type in
the topic's Topic Options tab, in the Help Window: field.

Referencing script functions in plain HTML code:

If the code you insert in your topics with Insert > Plain HTML Code 311 contains calls to
JavaScript functions you have written you may want or need to include these functions in
external .JS files or in the <HEAD> section of your topic pages. There are two ways to do
this:
· Add your separate .JS script file to the Baggage section 520 to include it in your
output. Then edit the HTML template 477 for your topics and add an include for the .
JS script file in the appropriate location in the template file.
· Edit the HTML template for your topics and manually add the script with the
functions to the <HEAD> section of the template. Note that this will include the script
code in every topic page, even those pages where the functions are not needed (
see above 763 for details on how to avoid this problem).

See also:
Inserting script and macro links 302
About JavaScript Links 758
Inserting plain HTML code 311
Using HTML Templates 475

12.6 Help Formats

This section provides an overview of the features, characteristics, advantages and
disadvantages of the seven output formats currently supported by Help & Manual. There is
no such thing as the "best" format. Each format serves its purpose, and each can be a good
choice for some tasks and a less good choice for others.
By the way: If you are counting you will notice that we actually list eight current formats in
this section, not seven. We still say that Help & Manual supports seven formats because
printed manuals and PDF are actually the same format – the program outputs printed
manuals by generating a temporary PDF file in the background and then deleting it when
printing is finished.
In addition to this we also list two additional formats that are not yet implemented in this
version of the program, XML / XLIFF and Windows Longhorn Help Help & Manual (see
below for more details).

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764 Help & Manual Online Help

The supported formats:

HTML Help: 765 This is currently the most popular electronic help format for Windows
applications. It packs your entire help project into a single .CHM file.
Fast, compact, excellent navigation and usability, universally
compatible and full interaction with applications. Displayed by the
HTML Help Viewer, that has been included with Windows since
Windows 98.

Winhelp: 768 The predecessor of HTML Help. Consists of separate help (.HLP) and
contents (.CNT) files. Still supported by all Windows platforms but
navigation is less advanced and intuitive and appearance is not as
slick as HTML Help. It is now obsolete but full support is included for
backward compatibility.

Browser- An emulation of the HTML Help interface generated by Help & Manual
based Help: 771 and designed for use on the Web and intranets. Complete with a
dynamic Table of Contents pane, keyword index and full-text search.
Consists of a directory containing a large number of HTML files,
graphics files and the files needed to display the Table of Contents
etc.

eBooks: 773 This proprietary Help & Manual format packs your entire project into a
single .EXE file with an integrated viewer program that can be
displayed on any Windows computer, from Windows 95 to XP, without
any additional software. This format also provides an emulation of the
familiar HTML Help Viewer layout so that all users will be able to use it
intuitively without additional explanation.

Adobe PDF: 774 Your project can also be output as a fully-formatted and full-featured
PDF file that can be displayed on any computer with a PDF reader.
Ideal for providing manuals that users can print themselves, either on
CDs or for download.

Printed The Print User Manual feature (in the File menu) generates a
manuals: 776 temporary PDF file in the background and outputs it to your printer.
Also supports booklet format (multiple pages per sheet) and duplex
printing.

MS Word RTF: Provided for backward compatibility. Outputs your project to an MS

776 Word Rich Text Format (.RTF) file.

Visual Studio This special format is also known as MS Help 2.0. It is provided for
Help: 777 programmers who need to use MS Help 2.0 to document projects in
Visual Studio .NET. It is not documented extensively in the help
because Microsoft has not released it for general use under Windows.
This format is irrelevant for normal application documentation.
For details see Visual Studio Help 527 in the More Advanced Procedures
section and the documentation of the MS Visual Studio .NET package.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 765

(If you don't have this package you don't need and cannot use Visual
Studio Help.)

XML / XLIFF: This format is used for translation of help projects into other
778 languages. It exports your entire project to an XML file that can be
edited by a translator who does not have Help & Manual. You can then
re-import the translated XML document into Help & Manual, preserving
all the formatting and data of the original project.

Longhorn Also known as Windows Vista Help. This format is not yet
Help: 779 implemented because it has not yet been released. According to
Microsoft, Longhorn Help will be the successor to HTML Help as the
standard help format for Windows applications. Longhorn Help will
probably be released with the new "Longhorn" version of Windows,
which is currently scheduled to be launched at some time in 2006.
Visit the MSDN website for background information and the latest
news on Longhorn Help.

12.6.1 HTML Help

HTML Help is now fully established as the standard Windows help format and unless you
have a very good reason to use something else it is the best choice for online help
distributed with modern Windows applications. Users are familiar with it, navigation is
intuitive, it looks modern and attractive and it supports all the interactive and context-
sensitive help technologies that make good help effective. And since it is HTML-based you
have enormous flexibility for both formatting and introducing special features and functions.
HTML Help does have a couple of small disadvantages but they are definitely outweighed by
the benefits. It is not ideal for web-based help or for help on networks, but it is the top choice
for help installed with applications on the user's computer.

Windows XP restrictions on HTML Help on network drives:

Recent security updates to Windows XP have introduced some restrictions
for accessing HTML Help files across network drives. Under Windows XP
most file links 300 in HTML Help files will now generally not work at all across
networks and HTML Help itself is also restricted. Without registry changes
on the user's computer HTML Help now cannot be used at all on network
drives. More details and a fix for this problem are available on the Help &
Manual user forum.

Features and pros and cons of HTML Help:

File extension: .CHM

Format: One .CHM file contains the entire help.

Platforms: Windows 32 bit, viewer is pre-installed in Windows 98 and later

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

766 Help & Manual Online Help

Typical use: Local online help for applications installed on the user's local
computer

Table of Yes. Integrated in the .CHM file and always visible in the viewer.
contents: Excellent, immediately intuitive navigation for the user.

Keyword index: Yes

Full text search: Yes

Context sensitive Yes, full context-sensitive help support

help:

Popups: Yes, both in the help viewer and for context-sensitive help. Natively,
HTML Help supports text-only popups without formatting or
graphics. Help & Manual can also produce dual-mode HTML Help
436 , in which the popups are output to a classic Winhelp .HLP file

supporting formatted text and graphics but no hyperlinks.

In addition to this you can also use Help & Manual's new JavaScript
popups 199 in HTML Help. In addition to formatted text and graphics
JavaScript popups also support hyperlinks and even videos and
animations.

Multimedia: Flash animations and all supported video formats are supported.
However, support for playing the formats used must also be
installed on the user's computer. For example, if you use a DiVX
video don't expect it to be playable on all user machines!

Printable by The Print function of HTML Help is very limited. The help viewer
user: can print topics and chapters but each topic is printed on a separate
page.

Pros: Single file containing all topics, graphics and the table of contents.
More attractive, modern appearance than classic Winhelp. Intuitive,
directory tree style table of contents that is always visible to the
user. Flexible formatting with HTML (in Help & Manual you have full
control over your topic pages with HTML templates 475 ), including
the ability to add functions with JavaScript etc. by adding your own
code to topics 311 and templates 475 .The HTML base makes it easy to
produce a browser-based version for the web that looks almost
identical to the HTML Help version.

Cons: Popup topics are limited to plain text in native mode but this
restriction can be solved in Help & Manual with dual-mode help 436 .
The HTML Help viewer is not pre-installed on the original versions
of Windows 95 and NT4 but most users of these systems have now
updated and this issue is becoming less and less relevant. You may
want to deploy the redistributable HTML Help update package 888
from Microsoft for the tiny minority of users who do not have it
installed. The Viewer is based on a subset of MS Internet Explorer,

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 767

which must be installed on the user's computer for HTML Help to be

available. Problems with deployment on networks, only really
suitable for local help.

See also:
HTML Help 394 (Configuring Your Output)
HTML Help 565 (Project Properties)
12.6.1.1 HTML Help project files

When you compile your project to HTML Help Help & Manual creates a temporary directory
called \~tmpchm in your project directory (this is the directory containing your .HMX project
file). It then outputs all the files needed by the Microsoft HTML Help compiler to this
directory. These files include all the standard HTML Help project files that you would create
if you were producing HTML Help manually with HTML Help Workshop.

Viewing your project files:

Normally the \~tmpchm file and all its contents are deleted after your project has been
compiled. If you want to view the files after compiling to check them just deselect the
Delete temporary files after compilation option in the Compile Help File 663 dialog.

HTML Help project files:

projectname.hhp: This is the "control" file that brings together all the elements of the
project, telling the compiler what is going to be used and what goes
where.
projectname.hhc: This file contains the table of contents.
projectname.hhk: This file contains the keyword index.
projectname.hm: This is the map file containing the help context number assignments.
projectname.h: This file contains the alias assignments, if applicable.
projectname.log: This file is generated by the Microsoft HTML Help compiler. It contains
the log of the last compile session and any error messages or
warnings.
default.css: This file is generated by Help & Manual and contains the styles
information for your project. It may have a different name if you have
changed it in Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > HTML
Export Options 583 . (Note that these settings are shared with all HTML-
based output formats. They are also accessible in the Browser-based
Help and Visual Studio Help sections of Project Properties.)
CSHelp.txt: This file is generated by Help & Manual if you have activated plain-text
popups for HTML Help. It is a plain-text file containing the texts of your
popup topics. It may have a different name if you have changed it in
the popup options 567 for HTML Help.
hm_popuptopics.js: This file is generated by Help & Manual if you have activated
JavaScript popups 199 in your project. It contains the code for your

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 768 Help & Manual Online Help

JavaScript popups. It is added to the compiled .CHM help file.

HTML files: These files with the extension .htm or .html (depending on your
settings in Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > HTML Export
Options 573 ) contain your topics. They are generated from your project
by Help & Manual so that the compiler can use them to create the
compiled .CHM help file.
Graphics files: These files are generated from your project in the correct formats by
Help & Manual so that the compiler can use them to create the
compiled .CHM help file.

12.6.2 Classic Winhelp

NEWS: Winhelp is no longer supported in Windows Vista!

Please note that support for the Winhelp format has been completely
discontinued in Microsoft Windows Vista. Even if your applications run under
Vista, any calls to Winhelp help will simply produce an error message. This
also applies to dual-mode popups in HTML Help. We thus strongly recommend
that you start transitioning to an alternative help format as soon as possible.
See here for details

Winhelp was the original help format introduced with Windows 3.1 in the 1980s and then
improved slightly for Windows 95 and later. Like HTML Help its primary purpose is to provide
local help for applications installed on the user's computer.
This format is still widely used and is supported by all Windows versions to date, including
Windows XP. This and its fully-formatted popups are its only advantages, however, and in
the current environment support for HTML Help is effectively just as universal as for
Winhelp.
Navigation in Winhelp is counter-intuitive (you cannot view a topic and the table of contents
at the same time). Winhelp is RTF-based and formatting is not as flexible as HTML Help,
and it is difficult to produce a Winhelp help file that matches the appearance of modern
applications. Generally, a Winhelp file will reflect poorly on your application. Only use this
format if you absolutely must.

Formatting and other features not supported by Winhelp:

Winhelp is a very old format and it has not been changed or upgraded for many years. It
lacks support for a lot of modern formatting features. The following Help & Manual editor
formatting features are not supported by Winhelp and should not be used if you plan to
generate Winhelp output:
Chapters with The Winhelp format does not support chapters with text. If your
text: project contains chapters with text they will be exported twice: Once
as a chapter without text and once as a sub-topic of the chapter
without text, with the same name as the chapter. This "duplicate"
topic will contain the content of your chapter with text.
If you are outputting to both Winhelp and formats that support

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 769

chapters with text you can use Help & Manual's conditional output
features 451 to create alternative topic and chapter versions for
Winhelp and the other formats.

Complex tables: Winhelp only includes extremely limited support for tables. You can
only use very simple tables to arrange items in the topic page.

Table borders: Table borders are not supported by Winhelp and will be invisible if
you define them.

Nested tables: Nested tables are not supported and will generate compiler errors
in Winhelp.

Backgrounds and Winhelp has no support at all for background colors or borders.
borders: This applies to text, paragraphs and tables.

Superscript/ Winhelp does not support superscript, subscript or any other non-
subscript: standard text decorations.

Features and pros and cons of classic Winhelp:

File extensions: .HLP (help file) and .CNT (table of contents)

Format: One .HLP file for the help and a separate .CNT file for the TOC

Platforms: 32-bit versions of Windows 32 bit. The old 16-bit version of Winhelp
has serious compatibility problems and is no longer supported by
Help & Manual. This is not a problem because 16-bit Winhelp is
only relevant for Windows 3.0.

Typical use: Local online help for applications installed on the user's local
computer

Table of Yes, in a separate .CNT file

contents:

Keyword index: Yes

Full text search: Yes

Context-sensitive Yes, full support

help:

Popups: Yes, fully-formatted popups with graphics, both in the help viewer
and for context-sensitive help. In Winhelp popups can also contain
hyperlinks

Multimedia: Multimedia support in Winhelp is very limited. Only standard

Windows .AVI videos are supported. Flash animations and other
video formats are not supported.

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 770 Help & Manual Online Help

Printable by Not really. The Winhelp viewer will only print single topics. Poor
user: graphics print quality.

Pros: Compact file format with strong compression, all graphics are
packed in the .HLP file, just as in HTML Help. Classic Winhelp is
still widely used but fewer and fewer users are now familiar with it.
Supported by virtually all Windows application development tools,
easy to integrate with applications.

Cons: Extremely poor, unintuitive navigation. The navigation controls

(Table of Contents, keywords and full text search) are in a separate
window that cannot be displayed at the same time as the topic
viewer. Less flexible formatting than HTML Help. Only supports .
BMP graphics (these are compressed, however). More difficult to
produce help matching modern applications in appearance. Users
are now generally more familiar with HTML Help. Only use Winhelp
if you absolutely must. It is a dying format and that is a good thing.

See also:
Winhelp 397 (Configuring Your Output)
Winhelp 575 (Project Properties)
12.6.2.1 Winhelp project files

When you compile your project to Winhelp Help & Manual creates a temporary directory
called \~tmphlp in your project directory (this is the directory containing your .HMX project
file). It then outputs all the files needed by the Microsoft Winhelp compiler to this directory.
These files include all the standard Winhelp project files that you would create if you were
producing HTML Help manually with MS Word and Help Workshop.

Viewing your project files:

Normally the \~tmphlp file and all its contents are deleted after your project has been
compiled. If you want to view the files after compiling to check them just deselect the
Delete temporary files after compilation option in the Compile Help File 663 dialog.

Winhelp project files:

projectname.hpj This is the Winhelp project file, which contains all the project's
settings. It describes the entire structure and of your project and all
the project settings. The topics and text are stored in the .RTF file (see
below).
projectname.hm: This is the map file containing the help context number assignments.
projectname.rtf This .RTF file contains the topics and help text along with the topic IDs
and keywords.
projectname.cnt This file contains the table of contents (TOC) of the Winhelp project.
In Winhelp this is actually both a project file and a distribution file – it
must be distributed together with the compiled .HLP file, otherwise the

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 Reference 771

Winhelp viewer cannot display the TOC. Because it is also a

distribution file Help & Manual generates it in your project directory
and not in the temporary \~tmphlp directory.
projectname.log: This file is generated by the Winhelp compiler. It contains the log of
the last compile session and any error messages or warnings.
bitmap files (.bmp) If the help includes graphics you also need the .BMP bitmap source
files (Winhelp can only use .BMP), which may be stored in the project
directory or another directory.

12.6.3 Browser-based Help

Browser-based Help outputs your project to normal HTML pages that can be displayed with
a standard web browser, either locally or on the Internet. The Browser-based Help
generated by Help & Manual is designed to emulate the appearance and functionality of
HTML Help, with a TOC tree pane, a keyword index and full-text search (Pro version only). It
is cross-platform compatible and works with all major modern browsers.
The HTML code generated for Browser-based Help has been completely rewritten from the
ground up for Help & Manual 4. Instead of being based on JavaScript it now based primarily
on CSS and DHTML, which means that it is compatible with all modern browsers. It is
intelligent code that automatically "downgrades gracefully" when it encounters old browses
and browsers with restrictive security functions. On these browsers some of the "eye candy"
functions will be turned off but the help will still be fully functional.
Browser-based help is the best choice for help on the Internet and on local intranet systems,
where HTML Help and Winhelp are not so efficient.

Features and pros and cons of Browser-based Help:

File extensions: .HTM and .HTML, graphics in .JPG, .PNG or .GIF format

Format: A collection of HTML, graphics and other files in a directory, just like
a website (it is a website)

Platforms: All major computer platforms and browsers, including Mac and
Linux

Browser The Browser-based Help output by Help & Manual 4 is fully

compatibility: compatible with all major browsers. In addition to this the output will
also work transparently on older and security-restricted browsers. It
achieves this by automatically identifying browser capabilities and
"downgrading gracefully", providing less dynamic and formatting
features but still presenting a fully-functional help system.
For more details see Browser compatibility 772 .

Typical use: Online help on the web or on local intranets where the use of HTML
Help is not practical. (HTML Help is primarily design for local use on
single-user computers.) Quite a few users have also used Help &
Manual 's Browser-based Help mode to develop websites that need
to be organized in the same way as a help project.

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 772 Help & Manual Online Help

Table of Yes
contents:

Keyword index: Yes

Full text search: Yes (available in the Professional version of Help & Manual only)

Context-sensitive Not to the same extent as HTML Help and Winhelp, but context
help: calls from applications 438 to topics and anchors in topics are
possible. Context popups called from applications are not
supported.

Popups: Yes. Help & Manual introduces JavaScript popups 199 that are
compatible with all current browsers.

Multimedia: Flash animations and videos are supported. Support for playing the
formats used must be installed on the user's computer. Also, the
degree and quality of the support also depends on the support
provided by the browser the user is using. So please test your
output on all relevant browsers before distributing!

Printable by Limited to browser print functions, which can generally only print
user: individual topics.

Pros: Platform and cross-browser compatible, ideal for help on the web
and intranet systems. All the flexibility and formatting power of
HTML, including the ability to add functions with JavaScript etc. by
adding your own code to topics 311 and templates 475 .

Cons: Browser-based Help consists of dozens to hundreds single HTML

files, graphics and other files. Not ideal for application help because
of the multiple files and limited support for context-sensitive
features.

See also:
Browser-based Help 398 (Configuring Your Output)
Browser-based Help 586 (Project Properties)
Browser compatibility 772
12.6.3.1 Browser compatibility

The top priority of the code design of Help & Manual's Browser-based Help output was that it
should always work, no matter what browser it is viewed with. A modern browser will allow
the help to display all of its advanced dynamic features, but an older browser won't break
your help. This enables you to distribute Browser-based Help with confidence because you
know that the huge majority of your users will be able to view it properly.

Different appearance in different browsers:

It is unavoidable that your Browser-based Help output will look slightly different

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 Reference 773

depending on the browser used to view it. HTML Help and Visual Studio Help / MS Help
2.0 are controlled Microsoft formats that use MS Internet Explorer to render their HTML
code, and your output in these formats will always look almost exactly like your source in
the Help & Manual editor.
This is not possible in Browser-based Help. The HTML code generated is the best
possible compromise between compliance with the W3C specifications for HTML 4.01
and CSS1 and the quirks of individual browsers. Unfortunately, no browser is really
compliant with all the standards. In addition to this, individual browsers often interpret the
same rules completely differently.

Smooth backward compatibility:

The code generated is smoothly backward compatible with "graceful automatic
downgrading". This means that the full features require a newer browser with JavaScript
activated. However, viewing the code with an older browser or with JavaScript support
disabled will not "break" the display, it will just switch off the dynamic features. This
process is completely transparent to the user.

Requirements for all features:

The minimum requirement to display all supported features is a browser that supports
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS1) and JavaScript. This now applies to all major browsers,
for example Netscape 5 and above, MS Internet Explorer 4 and above Opera 7 and
above and the current versions of Firefox and Mozilla. Most older browsers will still
display the help but with less functionality and less "pretty" formatting.
Whether or not all features are actually supported will also depend on user settings. For
example, if the user turns off JavaScript support the menu will be static instead of
dynamic, but it will still work. On browsers with support for frames turned off the TOC
and topics will not be displayed side by side, but they will still both be displayed.

JavaScript popups and full-text search:

The only two features that have an absolute make or break requirement are full-text
search 594 and JavaScript popups 199 . Both these features depend entirely on JavaScript
and neither will work on browsers that do not have JavaScript or on which JavaScript
support is turned off.

See also:
Browser-based Help 398 (Configuring Your Output)
Browser-based Help 586 (Project Properties)
12.6.4 Help & Manual eBooks
This is a proprietary Help & Manual format that combines a viewer and data in one .EXE file
that will run on any 32-bit Windows system (Windows 95 and above) without installation,
additional files or software. The format is HTML-based and the viewer also provides a
navigation structure similar to that of HTML Help and Help & Manual's Browser-based Help
771 format.

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 774 Help & Manual Online Help

Features and pros and cons of Help & Manual eBooks:

File extension: .EXE

Format: A single executable file containing the viewer and all data

Platforms: All 32-bit Windows versions (Windows 95 and later)

Typical use: Online CD ROM catalogs and documentation, stand-alone

documentation, kiosk applications, eBooks

Table of Yes
contents:

Keyword index: Yes

Full text search: Yes

Context-sensitive No support for context-sensitive help, you cannot make direct calls
help: to specific topics in the help

Popups: Yes, formatted popups containing formatted text (bold, italics, fonts
etc), graphics and hyperlinks to other topics are supported. No
support for context-sensitive popups.

Multimedia: Flash animations are supported if support for playing Flash is

installed on the user's computer. Videos are not supported.

Printable by Limited printing function for single topics only

user:

Pros: Single file format. Very similar to HTML Help (familiar and intuitive
navigation). Runs immediately without installation of any additional
files, even under Windows 95 and Windows NT 4. Password
protection is possible. A choice of viewer templates ("skins") are
available for different layouts and appearances.

Cons: Not appropriate for application help because of the lack of context
sensitive help support

See also:
eBooks 407 (Configuring Your Output)
eBooks 609 (Project Properties)
12.6.5 Adobe PDF
Adobe's Portable Document Format is now the de facto industry standard format for
electronic distribution of printable manuals. PDF provides a high level of formatting fidelity.
Layout and appearance are "fixed", and unlike HTML it is not dependent on the quirks of
browsers.

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 Reference 775

It is also a compact, single-file format that is now supported by all major computer platforms
as well as Windows. Navigation can be quite good but it is less flexible for on-screen viewing
and navigation than HTML Help. The domain of PDF is printable manuals with clearly-
defined layout and formatting that do not change on different systems. It is suitable for
downloading but not for online viewing as users must always download the entire document,
even if they only want to view a single page.
PDF is also used for Help & Manual's Print User Manual 538 function.

Features and pros and cons of Adobe PDF:

File extension: .PDF

PDF version: The PDF output conforms to version 1.2 of the PDF specification
and can be viewed with version 3 and above of Adobe Acrobat and
Acrobat Reader.

Format: One .PDF file containing all text and graphics

Platforms: All major computer platforms and operating systems

Typical use: Print manuals distributed in electronic form, electronic books

Table of Yes, integrated in the PDF file. Hyperlinks are supported for on-
contents: screen viewing.

Keyword index: Yes but limited, just page number references at the end of the
document.

Full text search: Yes, in Adobe Reader

Context-sensitive No, zero support for context help

help:

Popups: No support for popups. Popup links are displayed as normal text.

Multimedia: No multimedia support.

Printable by Yes. The PDF format is ideal for printing.

user:

Pros: Printer orientated format supporting precise layout with specifically

defined page sizes, margins, headers, footers, etc. Highly
customizable with Help & Manual using print manual templates 468 .

Cons: Requires the Adobe Reader viewer but this is free and installed on
almost all computers. On-screen readability is limited. Not
appropriate for application help because of the lack of context-
sensitive features and poor on-screen readability. Not suitable for
online or network viewing because the entire document must be
downloaded to view a single page.

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 776 Help & Manual Online Help

Other All the topics in the Invisible Topics 193 section of your project are
information: excluded from PDF output and printed manuals. This is by design
because PDF is treated as a print format. By definition, Invisible
Topics are excluded from the TOC and are designed to be
displayed by reference only (i.e. with links) and so there is no
logical place to put them in the PDF.
If you want to include information from the Invisible Topics section
in your PDF version you need to use Help & Manual's conditional
output features 451 to make alternative content for the PDF version.

See also:
Adobe PDF 405 (Configuring Your Output)
Adobe PDF 604 (Project Properties)
PDF and Printed Manuals 538
12.6.6 Printed manuals
When you output a manual to your printer with the File > Print User Manual 666 feature Help
& Manual generates a temporary PDF file and deletes it after the printout has been
completed.
Just like Adobe PDF output, the layout of printed manuals is controlled with print manual
templates 543 . For details on printing manuals and using print manual templates see PDF and
Printed Manuals 538 .

See also:
Adobe PDF 405 (Configuring Your Output)
PDF and Printed Manuals 538
12.6.7 MS Word RTF
This format – equivalent to the Rich Text Format files generated by MS Word – is provided
for backward compatibility but it is no longer maintained in Help & Manual. Because of its
limitations its use is generally not recommended. PDF provides very superior output and
much more control over formatting. There may be some special cases where you still need
to use it, but generally PDF is always preferable.

Features and pros and cons of the Word RTF format:

File extension: .RTF

Format: One .RTF file, graphics in external files if used

Platforms: Actually platform-independent but optimized for MS Word

Typical use: Print manuals distributed in electronic form, has now been generally
replaced by PDF

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 Reference 777

Table of Yes, but very limited (page number references without links at the
contents: beginning of the document)

Keyword index: Yes, but very limited (page number references without links at the
end of the document)

Full text search: Yes (with MS Word or other program supporting RTF files)

Context sensitive No
help:

Popups: No support for popups. Popup links are displayed as plain text.

Multimedia: No multimedia support.

Printable by Yes (with MS Word or other programs supporting RTF files)

user:

Pros: Can be viewed, searched and printed with MS Word and other
programs that support the RTF format.

Cons: Limited formatting options, many Help & Manual features not
supported, large files, graphics are in external files.

Other All the topics in the Invisible Topics 193 section are excluded from
information: RTF output. This is by design because RTF is treated as a print
format. By definition, Invisible Topics are excluded from the TOC
and are designed to be displayed by reference only (i.e. with links)
and so there is no logical place to put them in the PDF.
If you want to include information from the Invisible Topics section
in your RTF version you need to use Help & Manual's conditional
output features 451 to make alternative content for the RTF version.
Help & Manual 4 can now also export active hyperlinks 608 to MS
Word RTF files.

See also:
MS Word RTF 409 (Configuring Your Output)
MS Word RTF 608 (Project Properties)
12.6.8 Visual Studio Help
Visual Studio Help is also known as MS Help 2.0. Originally this help format was intended to
be the successor of HTML Help. However, Microsoft then postponed its release indefinitely
and it is now clear that it is never going to be released as a help format for normal user
applications.
· Important Note:
Please note that the support for Visual Studio Help/MS Help 2.0 is only included in the
Professional version of Help & Manual 4.

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 778 Help & Manual Online Help

Visual Studio Help is not for consumer applications!

Visual Studio Help is now only used for documenting add-on components designed to
be integrated into the Visual Studio .NET programming environment. The advantage of
this is that the documentation becomes part of VS.NET's own documentation, making it
possible to provide context-sensitive help for third-party VS.NET components.
For all other online help applications you should always use HTML Help.
· For more information see Visual Studio Help 527 in the More Advanced Procedures
section.

See also:
Visual Studio Help 527 (Advanced Procedures)
Visual Studio Help 579 (Project Properties)
12.6.9 XML
Although you output to XML by selecting Compile Help File and Run 411 , XML is not actually a
help format in its own right and the XML output files cannot be viewed or used as help files
on their own. XML Export/Import is a "round-trip" function that allows you to export your
project, edit or translate it with an XML-aware editor or translation tool and then re-import it
to Help & Manual with all project properties, layout and settings intact.
Compiling to XML outputs the entire project in XML format, using Help & Manual's own XML
schema. In addition to the XML files containing all the data, XSL stylesheet files are also
generated to allow WYSIWYG previews in web browsers and XML editors that support
XSL.
For full details see XML Export/Import 786 in the Reference section.

About the Help & Manual XML Language schema:

The Help & Manual XML Language schema is fully documented and anyone who wishes
to is welcome to write their own tools, templates and transformers for it. For full details
on the schema and the format please see the separate help file (
Helpman_XML_ref.chm), which can be found in the Help & Manual program directory.

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 Reference 779

IMPORTANT: Help & Manual can only process its own XML
files!
Help & Manual can only process XML files created with Help & Manual.
Currently you cannot export or import any other XML formats. Help &
Manual uses its own XML schema known as the Help & Manual XML
Language. This schema is designed specifically for exporting Help & Manual
projects for external processing and then re-importing them, and it is the
only XML schema with which this is possible.
The Help & Manual XML Language is fully documented in a separate help
file included with the program (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help &
Manual program directory). The schema is fully open and you are welcome
to develop your own applications for converting between the Help & Manual
XML Language and other XML variants.

See also:
Project Synchronization 645
XML Export/Import 786 (Reference)
Compiling Your Project 410
New project from an XML project file 142
Importing H&M XML projects 165
12.6.10 Windows Vista Help
Previously known as Windows Longhorn Help. This help format is not yet implemented
because it has not yet been released by Microsoft. According to current information from
Microsoft, Windows Vista Help will be the successor to HTML Help as the standard help
format for Windows applications. However, Microsoft also said that MS Help 2.0 777 was
going to be the successor to HTML Help and that never happened, so we shall have to wait
and see.
Longhorn Help/ Windows Vista Help will probably be released with Windows Vista (which
has been known as Longhorn for several years), which is currently scheduled to be
launched at some time in late 2006. However, it currently seems possible that Vista Help will
initially only be used for Windows Vista's own integrated help and will not be available for
general use until later.
Support for the new format will be added to Help & Manual as soon as possible once the
new help format is stable and a compiler becomes generally available.
· Visit the MSDN website for background information and the latest news on Windows
Vista Help.

See also:
Longhorn Help information at MSDN
Longhorn Help information at Winwriters UA
Windows Vista Help information at Helpware.Net

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 780 Help & Manual Online Help

12.7 International Languages and Unicode

Help & Manual 4 introduces extensive support for Unicode 780 , which means that it can be
used to develop help projects in all languages, including Asian languages and other
languages with more than 255 characters that are supported under Windows.
When you are working in Help & Manual with languages requiring Unicode and some other
languages requiring special characters, including Eastern European languages, Greek and
Turkish, it is important to configure your project correctly to avoid problems in your compiled
help files.
In addition to this there are also some important requirements for your Windows
configuration for Unicode-based languages, and you need to be aware of these before you
start work on a project in a language requiring Unicode.
The topics in this chapter provide some useful background information on handling
international languages that should make these issues easier to understand.

See also:
Language Settings 551 (Project Properties)
International Language Setup 149
12.7.1 About H&M's Unicode support
Help & Manual 4 introduces full support for Unicode, which is now the international standard
for storing and displaying international characters on computers. This means that you can
now edit and compile help files in all languages supported by Windows, including Asian
languages and other languages with more than 255 characters that store characters in two
bytes instead of one byte. If you are interested in learning more about this subject you can
find a good introduction to the technology and background of Unicode on Wikipedia.
This topic provides some important background information that will help you to understand
how to use Help & Manual with languages that cannot be edited or displayed properly
without Unicode.
In addition to reading this section please also see International languages setup 149 and
Language Settings 551 for details on configuring your project output in the language you are
using, both with Unicode-based languages and other languages.
· Important Note:
Please note that Unicode support is only included in the Professional version of Help &
Manual 4.

Which languages require Unicode?

Not all languages with special character sets require Unicode. Here is a general rule of
thumb:

Unicode required:
Unicode is only required for languages that have more than 255 characters and store
their characters in two bytes instead of one byte. This includes Chinese, Japanese,
Thai and many other Asian languages.

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 Reference 781

To develop help in these languages you must set the language settings 551 for your
project correctly. In addition to this your Windows version and configuration must
meet the requirements for working with Unicode in the language you are using. See
below 781 for details.
Some Eastern European languages like Polish, Russian and Czech also use double-
byte characters for some special characters. Among other things, this depends on
the fonts and whether or not it is required is sometimes unpredictable. It is thus
generally a good idea to set the Unicode setting in your Language Settings 551 to
Force Unicode when you are working in Eastern European languages.

Unicode not required:

Unicode is not required for any western European languages. In addition to this it is
also not required for languages that simply require special character sets but do not
have more than 255 characters, such as Greek and Turkish.
The requirements for Unicode described below do not apply for these languages.
Help in these languages can be edited, compiled and viewed with all versions of
Windows. All you need to do is set the language settings 551 for your project
correctly.

Unicode support in Help & Manual's output formats:

Provided the other requirements listed below are met Help & Manual can output projects
written in Unicode-based languages to all its output formats.

Windows versions supporting Unicode:

Help & Manual runs on Windows 98, Me, NT4, 2000, XP and 2003. You can develop,
compile and view help in English and all languages that do not require Unicode on all
these versions of Windows. However, working with Unicode requires special support
from the operating system and under Windows this support is only provided by
Windows 2000, Windows XP or later. You cannot develop help in Unicode-based
languages with Windows 98, Me or NT4.

Windows configuration requirements for working with Unicode:

In addition to the Windows version there are also some specific Windows configuration
and language version requirements for editing, compiling and viewing help projects using
Unicode-based languages. Although you can edit and compile projects on any language
version of Windows that is properly configured you can only test the compiled Unicode
HTML Help or Winhelp properly on a version of Windows with a matching language. For
example, Chinese Winhelp and HTML Help can only be tested properly on a Chinese
version of Windows. You may be able to display the help, but things like full-text search
and the index will not work correctly.
This means that ideally, a matching language version of Windows 2000, XP or later is
probably required for development of help in Unicode-based languages. You need a
Chinese Windows to develop Chinese help, Thai Windows to develop Thai help and so
on.

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782 Help & Manual Online Help

Requirements for editing Unicode-based projects:

Help & Manual help projects written in Unicode-based languages can be edited with any
version of Windows 2000, Windows XP or later. The language version of Windows itself
is irrelevant for this. For example, you can edit a Chinese or Thai help project with an
English or German version of Windows 2000 or Windows XP, provided you have support
for the languages installed.

Requirements for compiling Unicode-based projects:

Browser-based Help, eBooks, MS Word RTF, Visual Studio Help / MS
Help 2.0:
You can compile Unicode projects to these formats with any version of Windows
2000, Windows XP or later provided you have the necessary language support
installed to display and edit the language you are using. Help & Manual itself handles
the Unicode output to Browser-based Help, eBooks and MS Word RTF, and the MS
Help 2.0 compiler is fully Unicode-compliant.

Winhelp and HTML Help:

The Winhelp and HTML Help compilers are not natively Unicode-enabled. (This is a
restriction of the compilers, not of Help & Manual). To be able to compile a project
written in a Unicode-based language to Winhelp or HTML Help the system locale of
your version of Windows 2000, Windows XP or later must be set to match the
language you are using. This is necessary to enable the HTML Help and Winhelp
compilers to process the language correctly for Unicode output.
Changing the system locale
Note that the system locale and the user locale are different! Simply setting the
display and/or data entry language does not change the system locale!
1. Log in to a user account with administrator privileges.
2. Open the Regional and Languages section in the Windows Control Panel.
· Windows 2000: Activate your language in the list of languages at the
bottom of the main tab and then select the same language as the locale at
the top of the same tab.
· Windows XP: Select your language as the default language for non-
Unicode programs in the Advanced tab (this tab is only displayed if you have
administrator privileges!).
· Windows Vista: Select the Change System Locale button in the
Administrative tab (this tab is only displayed if you have administrator
privileges!).
3. Click on OK to apply the setting and then restart Windows.

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 Reference 783

Requirements for viewing Unicode-based help:

Browser-based Help, eBooks, MS Word RTF:
You can view Unicode help in these formats with any version of Windows 95 or later
provided you have the necessary language support installed to display the language
in question. The browser and word processor used to display Browser-based Help
and RTF must be Unicode-enabled, of course.

Winhelp and HTML Help:

You can display Unicode in these formats with any version of Windows 95 or later
provided you have the necessary language support installed to display the language
you are using. However, some features of the help, such as the full-text search and
index, will only work properly on Windows versions with a matching language.
(Windows 95 and Windows NT4 must also be updated with MSIE 4 or later and the
HTML Help runtime to be able to display HTML Help 888 , of course.)

Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0:

MS Help 2.0 is only supported on Windows 2000, Windows XP or later. However, it
is fully Unicode-compliant and will display properly with all features on any language
version of these versions of Windows provided they have support installed for the
language of your help file.

See also:
International languages setup 149
Language Settings 551
12.7.2 About project language settings
The language settings for your project in Project > Project Properties > Language Settings 551
control how texts with international languages and character sets are handled in your output.
If you work in English or any other Western European language you should not need to
change the default settings, but in other languages you will need to adjust the settings to
avoid font display problems in your compiled output.
If you are working in a Unicode-based language there are also some
important requirements for your Windows version and configuration. See
About H&M's Unicode support 780 for details.

Relevant language settings:

It is important to understand what the language settings do to be able to use them
correctly. Although there are four settings in the language settings 551 configuration
screen only three of them – Language of the Help File, Bi-directional Language Mode
and Font Character Set – are relevant for your output. The Default Font setting (see
below 785 ) only controls the font used for the Table of Contents and dialog boxes in
Winhelp and HTML Help and does not have any effect on the handling of international
languages.

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784 Help & Manual Online Help

Language of the Help File:

This sets the language code of your project. On its own this setting does not actually
affect how characters are displayed, it only identifies the language to the system and
controls how sorting is handled in the Keyword Index and everywhere else where sorting
is used.
Setting for English and other Western European Languages:
The default setting is English (United States) and if you are using English or any
other Western European language you don't need to change this. In fact, it's better if
you don't because if you do you may experience a known problem in your HTML
Help output: On some users' computers the title bar of your help will sometimes
display "HTML Help" instead of the title of your help project. Setting this option to
English (United States) will prevent this problem.
See Helpware Net for an explanation of the reason for this.
Setting for other languages:
If you are using languages like Eastern European language, Greek, Turkish (non-
Unicode languages with special character sets) or any languages requiring Unicode
780 support like Chinese, Japanese or Thai, you must change this setting to the

language you are using. In these languages this setting makes sure that sorting
works correctly. In addition to this it also identifies the language to the system so that
special characters and Unicode processing (if necessary) are handled correctly for
the language.
In addition to this you must also change the Font Character Set setting (see below)
to the correct character set for your language. In these languages both these
settings must set to the correct values for the language you are using for the
language to be handled properly in your output.

Bi-directional Language Mode:

This is used to switch Help & Manual's writing mode to right-to-left for languages like
Hebrew, Arabic and Farsi. The setting makes radical changes to the way Help & Manual
operates, switching the writing direction of the TOC and all text in both the program itself
and all output formats.
Don't change the default setting unless you are using one of these languages!

Font character set:

This is the setting that really controls how international characters are displayed on the
user's computer, because it defines the character set containing the characters to be
displayed.
Setting for English and other Western European Languages:
The default setting is ANSI_CHARSET and this character set contains all the
characters required for English and all other Western European languages. If you
are using any of these languages you do not need to change this, and you shouldn't!
For example, if you change it to DEFAULT_CHARSET or any other value you may
experience display problems with special characters in your output.

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 Reference 785

Setting for other languages:

If you are using an Eastern European language, Greek, Turkish (non-Unicode
languages with special character sets) or any language requiring Unicode 780 support
you must change this setting to the language you are using to ensure that all
characters are handled correctly in your output.
In addition to this you must also change the Language of the Help File setting (see
above) to ensure correct sorting and to identify the language you are using to the
system. In all these languages both these settings must set to the correct values for
the language you are using to be handled properly in your output.

Unicode mode in Windows 2000 and XP:

This setting does not change the way Unicode is encoded, but it gives you more control
over whether text is encoded as Unicode or ANSI in your output. It is only available in
Windows 2000 and XP because Windows 98, Me and NT4 do not have the necessary
Unicode support integrated in the operating system.
The default setting is to encode as Unicode or ANSI automatically, depending on the
characters you enter, and this will work well in the majority of projects. However, in some
circumstances you may want to force ANSI or Unicode encoding for your entire project.
Note that changing this setting will not re-encode existing text in your project. After
making the change the encoding of existing text will only be changed if you re-format it,
for example by applying a style. For more details see Language Settings 551 in the Project
Properties section.

The Default Font setting:

This setting in the language settings 551 configuration screen is not relevant for
international languages and it does not set the default font for your help file! It only
defines the font used in the dialog boxes and Table of Contents in Winhelp and HTML
Help. It is ignored in all other output formats.
The default setting for this is MS Sans Serif,8,0 and you should not change this unless
you really know what you are doing. Both the Winhelp and the HTML Help viewer are
designed to be used with this font and font size setting and they will work correctly in all
languages if your other language settings are correct.
The HTML Help and Winhelp viewers are not really designed to be used with other fonts
or font sizes. If you change the setting for this option to anything other than MS Sans
Serif,8,0 this may cause display problems on some users' computers, particularly if you
use larger fonts. For example, texts in dialog boxes may not fit and entries in the Index
may overlap.

See also:
Language Settings 551
International Languages Setup 149

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 786 Help & Manual Online Help

12.7.3 Language settings and PDF

Font handling in PDF:

In addition to the language settings in Project > Project Properties > Language Settings 551 ,
which apply to all output formats, font handling in PDF and printed user manuals is also
controlled by the reference printer driver 738 that is used to generate the PDF output.
(Printed manuals are also generated using PDF.)
Problems with the reference driver used for generating PDF output can also result in
incorrect displays for special characters and international languages. However, if you
experience issues like this first check the language settings 551 of your project to make
sure that everything is set up correctly. If you still have problems in your PDF output after
making sure that your language settings are correct you can try using a different
reference printer driver.
To set the reference printer driver for PDF output go to Tools > Customize > PDF Export.

PDF and Unicode languages:

The original version of Help & Manual 4 did not support Unicode in PDF output. As of
version 4.2 the program now has a new PDF engine that includes full support for
Unicode and Asian languages in PDF output.
This also includes a special new option called CID Font Mode for more efficient
embedding of Unicode fonts in PDF files. See CID font mode for Unicode fonts 545 for
more details on this.

See also:
Language Settings 551
Customize - PDF Export 738
PDF Font Embedding 606

12.8 XML Export and Import

XML Export/Import is a round-trip function that allows you to export your project, edit or
translate it with an XML-aware editor or translation tool and then re-import it to Help &
Manual with all project properties, layout and settings intact.
Compiling to XML outputs the entire project in XML format, using Help & Manual's own XML
schema, which is documented in a separate help file that can be found in the Help & Manual
program directory (Helpman_XML_ref.chm). In addition to the XML files containing all the
data, XSL stylesheet files are also generated to allow WYSIWYG previews in web browsers
and XML editors that support XSL.
This section provides general background information on Help & Manual's XML output, how
it works, what it is for and how it is structured.

Windows 2000 or Windows XP required!

You need at least Windows 2000 or Windows XP to work with XML export files, and your
Windows version should have the latest Service Pack installed, along with all current

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 Reference 787

updates and patches from Microsoft. Earlier versions of Windows do not have the
Unicode and UTF-8 encoding support that is necessary for displaying and working with
these XML files.

IMPORTANT: Help & Manual can only process its own XML
files!
Help & Manual can only process XML files created with Help & Manual.
Currently you cannot export or import any other XML formats. Help &
Manual uses its own XML schema known as the Help & Manual XML
Language. This schema is designed specifically for exporting Help & Manual
projects for external processing and then re-importing them, and it is the
only XML schema with which this is possible.
The Help & Manual XML Language is fully documented in a separate help
file included with the program (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help &
Manual program directory). The schema is fully open and you are welcome
to develop your own applications for converting between the Help & Manual
XML Language and other XML variants.

See also:
New project from an XML project file 142
Importing H&M XML projects 165
Exporting and importing topics 202
Editing XML source code 208
Compiling to XML 415
Project Synchronization 645
12.8.1 XML output files and folders
IN THIS TOPIC:
XML file timestamps 787
XML output folders and file names 788

Single-file XML output 788

Multiple-file XML output 790

When you export to XML by compiling 415 your project to XML you can choose to generate
either a single large XML file containing your entire project or a folder system containing a
separate XML file for every topic. In addition to this you can also generate your output in a
zip archive so that you can mail it off directly for further processing.
This topic describes the files and folders generated when you compile to XML output with
each of these options. For details on the format of the XML files see XML output file format
792 .

XML file timestamps:

All the files output when you compile to XML have their original timestamps, as far as
this is relevant and applicable. XML files for individual topics have the timestamp of the
last time the topic was edited, not the time when you compiled to XML. The same applies
to image files and Baggage 520 files, all of which are stored with their original timestamps.

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788 Help & Manual Online Help

XML output folders and file names:

The folder structure of the XML output is fixed and should not be changed. Most files
contain internal relative references within this folder structure and changing the positions
and names of the folders would make these references fail and make re-importing the
project impossible.
The same applies to the names of all output files. They are essential to the structure of
the XML system and should not be changed, otherwise both reading the XML files and
re-importing will probably fail.
If you feel that you absolutely must edit folder and file names and structure Help &
Manual will be able to re-import your modified project if you correctly modify all relevant
references throughout the entire XML project system. This is not recommended,
however. It is much easier to leave the original structure intact.

Single-file XML output:

When you compile your project as a single XML file the following files and folders are
generated:

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 Reference 789

projectname.xml This file contains all the XML data. Effectively it has
the same content as your .HMX project file.
Everything that is normally stored in your project file
is also in this file, except the Baggage files (see
below).
helpproject.xsd This is the Help & Manual XML Language schema
file that is automatically exported with every project
when you save to XML. Among other things, it
allows XML editors that support syntax checking to
test your editing changes for compliance with the
schema.
projectname.xsl This is the XSL stylesheet file with the formatting
rules. It is not essential – it is only provided so that
XML editors and web browsers that support XSL
stylesheets can generate an approximate
WYSIWYG preview so that you can obtain a basic
idea of what the topic layout and formatting will look
like when it is compiled by Help & Manual.
.\Images\*.* This folder contains all the images referenced in
your topics. In contrast to other help formats, the
images here are output in their native formats – i.e.
.BMP images will be exported as .BMP and Impict .
IPP images will be exported as .IPP. This is
necessary because otherwise the image references
in the XML code would be incorrect when you re-
import your images.
XML editors will generally be able to handle all
image formats supported by Help & Manual except
Impict .IPP, which is a proprietary EC Software
format. If the images are essential for
understanding the text (for example for the
translator) it is better to use a different image
format. You can use conditional text tags 454 to
create alternative versions of your .IPP images for
XML export if you wish.
Image files are exported with their original
timestamps, not with the timestamp of the XML
export operation.
.\Baggage\*.* This folder contains all the files from the Baggage 520
section of your project, which are normally
embedded in your .HMX project file.
Baggage files are exported with their original
formats and with their original timestamps.

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790 Help & Manual Online Help

Multiple-file XML output:

When you compile your project as multiple XML files a separate XML file is created for
every topic in your project. The the following files and folders are generated:

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 Reference 791

projectname.xml When you generate multiple XML files this file

contains all your project information except the
content of the individual topics, which are stored in
separate files.
helpproject.xsd This is the Help & Manual XML Language schema
file that is automatically exported with every project
when you save to XML. Among other things, it
allows XML editors that support syntax checking to
test your editing changes for compliance with the
schema.
.\Topics\*.xml This folder contains all the XML files for your
individual topics, with one file for each topic. The
files are named by combining the topic ID in lower
case with the .xml extension.
The topic files are exported with timestamps
corresponding to the last time when each topic was
edited in Help & Manual.
projectname.xsl This is the XSL stylesheet file with the formatting
rules for previewing the XML project file
projectname.xml in XML editors and web browsers
that support XSL. It is only needed for previewing
and is not essential.
projectname_topics. This is an additional XSL stylesheet with the
xsl formatting rules for viewing the individual XML topic
files. Like the main XSL stylesheet, it is only needed
for previewing and is not essential.
.\Images\*.* This folder contains all the images referenced in
your topics. In contrast to other help formats, the
images here are output in their native formats – i.e.
.BMP images will be exported as .BMP and Impict .
IPP images will be exported as .IPP. This is
necessary because otherwise the image references
in the XML code would be incorrect when you re-
import your images.
XML editors will generally be able to handle all
image formats supported by Help & Manual except
Impict .IPP, which is a proprietary EC Software
format. If the images are essential for
understanding the text (for example for the
translator) it is better to use a different image
format. You can use conditional text tags 454 to
create alternative versions of your .IPP images for
XML export if you wish.
Image files are exported with their original
timestamps, not with the timestamp of the XML
export operation.
.\Baggage\*.* This folder contains all the files from the Baggage 520
section of your project, which are normally
embedded in your .HMX project file.
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

Baggage files are exported with their original

formats and with their original timestamps.
 792 Help & Manual Online Help

See also:
New project from an XML project file 142
Importing H&M XML projects 165
Exporting and importing topics 202
Editing XML source code 208
Compiling to XML 415
12.8.2 XML output file formats
IN THIS TOPIC:
Encoding of the XML files 792

Encoding of other files 792

This topic contains everything general users need to know about the XML file format
exported by Help & Manual. If you wish to do development work of your own with the format,
for example to develop your own XML transformers, converters or export and import tools,
please refer to the separate help file documenting the Help & Manual XML Language (
Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help & Manual program directory).

Encoding of the XML files:

Unicode and UTF-8
The XML data files and XSL preview stylesheets are encoded in UTF-8 Unicode for
universal access. This means that you must have at least Windows 2000 or
Windows XP to display and work with these XML files. Earlier versions of Windows
do not have the necessary Unicode support.
Exporting to XML automatically converts to Unicode, irrespective of what format the
texts in your original topics had. When you re-import the XML project to Help &
Manual the text will remain in Unicode format. This is not a problem and you don't
need to worry about it.
The Byte Order Mark (BOM)
Every XML file generated by Help & Manual has a special sequence of bytes at the
beginning of the file known as the Byte Order Mark or BOM. These bytes identify the
Unicode/UTF-8 text encoding and are not displayed in XML editors or text editors.
The BOM is essential for proper processing of the XML files.
Programs running on versions of Windows earlier than Windows 2000 or XP will
probably be unable to read these XML files, among other things because of the BOM
at the beginning of the file.

Encoding of other files in the XML output:

All other files generated in the XML output folder are output in their original formats. Your
graphics and Baggage 520 files will all be output in their original formats, with their original
timestamps.
See XML output files and folders 787 for full details on the output files.

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 Reference 793

See also:
New project from an XML project file 142
Importing H&M XML projects 165
Exporting and importing topics 202
Editing XML source code 208
Compiling to XML 415
12.8.3 Zipped XML output
When you compile your XML output you can also choose to store your output in a ZIP
archive. This option is provided so that you can easily send your entire XML project to a
translator or other people who need to process the XML files.

About the ZIP archive output

· The ZIP archive contains all the same folders and files 787 that would normally be
generated when you compile to XML.
· Help & Manual cannot import an XML project directly from one of these ZIP archives.
You must unpack the contents of the archive with a program like WinZip or Windows'
own integrated unpacker first.

See also:
New project from an XML project file 142
Importing H&M XML projects 165
Exporting and importing topics 202
Editing XML source code 208
Compiling to XML 415
12.8.4 Importing XML files
IN THIS TOPIC:
Options for re-importing XML data 794
Creating a new project from XML files 794
Importing an XML package to an existing project 794

Importing individual XML topics 794

It is very important to understand that Help & Manual's XML Export/Import is a round-trip
facility that can only import XML that was exported with Help & Manual. You cannot import
"just any" XML from other XML schemas like DocBook or Darwin. However, the Help &
Manual XML schema is fully open and documented in detail in a separate help file included
with the program (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help & Manual program directory). All the
information is provided for developing XML transformers, converters and templates for
displaying working with the Help & Manual XML schema in any way you want.

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794 Help & Manual Online Help

IMPORTANT: Help & Manual can only process its own XML
files!
Help & Manual can only process XML files created with Help & Manual.
Currently you cannot export or import any other XML formats. Help &
Manual uses its own XML schema known as the Help & Manual XML
Language. This schema is designed specifically for exporting Help & Manual
projects for external processing and then re-importing them, and it is the
only XML schema with which this is possible.
The Help & Manual XML Language is fully documented in a separate help
file included with the program (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help &
Manual program directory). The schema is fully open and you are welcome
to develop your own applications for converting between the Help & Manual
XML Language and other XML variants.

Options for re-importing XML data:

There are basically three ways to re-import the XML files generated by Help & Manual:
· Create a completely new project from the the entire package of XML files
· Import the entire package of XML files into an existing project
· Import individual XML topic files

Creating a new project from XML files:

Creating a new project from XML files is essentially the same as creating a new project
from any other imported source, with one major difference:
Since the XML files are already a Help & Manual project with all style information,
formatting and project settings intact you will not have any of the small problems that you
sometimes encounter when converting material from other sources. Importing an edited
Help & Manual XML package is really the same as opening a normal Help & Manual .
HMX project file.
If the people who edited the XML files did not damage the XML tags – and if they used a
proper XML editor this is unlikely – everything will be exactly as it was in the original
project. Only the text will have changed.
For instructions see: New project from an XML project file 142

Importing an XML package to an existing project:

Here too, importing an XML package is just the same as opening an existing .HMX
project file. You will have none of the importing difficulties you sometimes experience
with other formats because the data is already in Help & Manual's own native format.
For instructions see: Importing H&M XML projects 165

Importing individual XML topics:

In addition to entire XML packages you can also import individual XML files created with

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 Reference 795

Help & Manual. These can be either files that are part of an XML package (provided you
exported your XML as individual topic files 788 ) or individual XML files created with the
Topics > Save Topic to File 202 function.
When you import individual topics you must first create an empty topic to import to,
otherwise the current topic will be overwritten. Imported topics retain all their properties
except the timestamp and topic ID of the original topic.
For instructions see: Exporting and importing topics 202

See also:
New project from an XML project file 142
Importing H&M XML projects 165
Exporting and importing topics 202
Editing XML source code 208
Compiling to XML 415
12.8.5 Editing XML files in external programs
When you generate XML file packages with Help & Manual you will normally want to do this
so that you can edit the content of your topics in other programs and then re-import the
edited content, for example for translation. There are many XML-aware programs available
at the moment, including a huge range of XML editors and a number of translation support
and translation memory programs that can import, process and re-export XML files.

Perform tests before you commit to an editor!

XML is still a new and rapidly-growing field and the quality and capabilities of all these
programs vary very widely. The XML code generated by Help & Manual and its XML
schema are fully validated and have been tested very thoroughly for well-formedness
and compliance with all XML standards and guidelines. However, it is theoretically
possible that an external program might change the XML code in your files in ways that
would make it impossible for Help & Manual to re-import the file package. This is the
case with some versions of MS Word 2003 799 , for example, which automatically save
XML files using a different schema without warning the user.
It is thus strongly recommended that you should perform some systematic tests on a few
topics before editing an entire project in any external program. Make sure that the XML
editing program works as you wish. And above all, make sure that you can re-import the
edited XML file package before you do a lot of work on the project!

WYSIWYG previews and editing

Help & Manual generates well-formed XML code and the XSL stylesheets included
should allow a reasonable approximation of a WYSIWYG preview in web browsers and
XML editors that support XSL. WYSIWYG editing is a different matter, however. In most
cases editors can only provide WYSIWYG editing with special formatting templates for
the specific XML schema, which in the case of XML files generated by Help & Manual is
the Help & Manual XML Language schema.
At present there is no XML template standard and as a result the XML market is in a
state of total Babylonic confusion. All XML editors use their own proprietary templates

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 796 Help & Manual Online Help

and so custom templates are not yet available for the Help & Manual XML Language
schema. However, the schema is fully documented in a separate help file included with
the program (Helpman_XML_ref.chm in the Help & Manual program directory), so all
the information necessary for creating these templates is available.

Syntax checking
The Help & Manual XML Language schema file helpproject.xsd is automatically output
with every XML file package generated by Help & Manual. This file enables editors that
support these features to check your editing changes for well-formedness and
compliance with the schema definition.

See also:
New project from an XML project file 142
Importing H&M XML projects 165
Exporting and importing topics 202
Editing XML source code 208
Compiling to XML 415
12.8.6 Instructions for translators and editors
IN THIS TOPIC:
What you are NOT allowed to translate 796

What you ARE allowed to translate 797

Translatable elements 797
XML code example 798

When you are working on the XML files it is important that you should only translate or edit
those parts of the file that are "editable". This topic provides basic instructions for translators
and editors working on the XML files. How important these instructions are will depend on
the XML editing tool you are using. Some XML editors will protect attributes and tags,
making it difficult or impossible to accidentally damage them, others don't provide this
protection and must be used with great care.

What you are not allowed to translate or edit:

You are not permitted to translate:
· Anything inside tags (XML elements)
· Tag/element attributes

Anything inside tags (XML elements)

The first and most important principle is that you are never allowed to edit anything
inside tags. All text in tags and tag attributes – i.e. anything between the < and >
characters marking the beginning and end of a tag – is strictly off limits for translators
and editors. Don't even think about editing anything inside tags, this information
doesn't even exist for you. Just ignore it.
Nothing inside tags is ever seen by the user so nothing inside tags ever needs to be
translated or edited. For example, even though many of the words inside the

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 797

following tag are in English you are not allowed to translate them because they are
inside the tag:

<config-value name="title" translate="true">Help &amp;

Manual XML Language Reference</config-value>

You are only allowed to translate the text shown in red, because it is plain text
between tags (and because the tag has a translate="true" attribute, see below).

Element attributes
Element attributes are also inside tags so that is already a very good reason not to
translate them. However, this point is so important we would like to repeat it. Don't
even think about translating or editing the attributes of any XML elements. Again,
none of these attributes are ever seen by the user so they don't need to be
translated. And if you do translate them you will almost certainly break the project
and make it unusable.
In the following example too, you can only translate or edit the text shown in red.
Everything else is strictly off limits. All the texts shown in green are element
attributes. Editing or translating them will probably make it impossible to re-import the
XML files because of the strictness of XML syntax.

<para styleclass="Heading2"><text styleclass="Heading2">

What you are </text><text styleclass="Heading2" style="
text-decoration:underline;">not</text><text styleclass="
Heading2"> allowed to translate or edit:</text></para>

Of course, sometimes you will have to use your own judgment a little. In the example
above you will have to move around the underline tags around the word "not"
because the structure of the sentence will probably be quite different in another
language. This is generally OK provided you do it carefully and don't move these
tags outside any other tags enclosing them. Just be careful and if you are not entirely
sure what you are doing leave it alone or get help from someone with more
experience.

What you are allowed to translate or edit:

Text data between tags with the translate="true" attribute
What you may translate is very clearly defined. Every element containing translatable
data is identified with the translate="true" attribute in the opening tag. This means
that you don't even need to look at any elements that don't have this tag.
Here too, of course, you are only allowed to translate or edit the text data between
the tags. You are still not permitted to touch anything inside the tags, even in the
tags with translate="true".

Translatable elements:
The following list shows which elements in the XML code generated by Help & Manual
can contain translatable data:

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798 Help & Manual Online Help

Element Translatable
text Text is always translatable. It always has a translate attribute and the
setting is always "true".

link The captions of hyperlinks (topic links, web links, file links, script/macro
links) are always translatable. They always have a translate attribute and
the setting is always "true".

caption Captions are always translatable. They always have a translate attribute
and the setting is always "true".

keyword Keywords are always translatable. They always have a translate attribute
and the setting is always "true".
Note that this does not apply to a-keyword elements! A-
keywords are never seen by the user and should never be
translated because this can break help functionality!

html-code The translate attribute of html-code elements is always set to "true".

However, whether a translation is really required will depend on the nature
of the code. If in doubt, ask!

config-value Only some config-value elements are translatable. If they have a translate
attribute they can be translated. If not they should be left alone.

Example of XML code with translatable data:

Example of XML code with translatable data:
Only elements with the translate="true" attribute (blue here)
contain translatable data (red). Other elements with text data (
green) are not translatable because they have no
translate="true" attribute.

<config>
<helpwindows>
<helpwindow name="Main" headercolor="#649CCC" textcolor="#FFFFFF"
left="-1" top="-1" width="-1" height="-1">
<caption translate="true">&lt;%TITLE%&gt;</caption>
<window-options-hlp autosize="true" maximize="false" keepontop="false"
posabsolute="false" buttons="0">
</window-options-hlp>
<window-options-chm navigation="true" search="true" favorite="true"
saveregistry="true" buttons="12366" navigationwidth="200">
<user-button name="home" href=""></user-button>
<user-button name="jump1" href=""><caption translate="true">Button
Caption 1</caption></user-button>
<user-button name="jump2" href=""><caption translate="true">Button
Caption 2</caption></user-button>
</window-options-chm>
</helpwindow>
</helpwindows>
...
<config-group name="project">

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 Reference 799

<config-value name="title" translate="true">Help &amp; Manual XML

Language Reference</config-value>
<config-value name="author" translate="true">Enter your company name
</config-value>
<config-value name="summary" translate="true"></config-value>
<config-value name="copyright" translate="true">© &lt;%YEAR%&gt;
&lt;%AUTHOR%&gt;</config-value>
<config-value name="comment" translate="true"></config-value>
<config-value name="versionmajor">1</config-value>
<config-value name="versionminor">0</config-value>
<config-value name="versionbuild">0</config-value>
<config-value name="lcid" translate="true">en-us</config-value>
<config-value name="charset">0</config-value>
<config-value name="deffont">font-family:&apos;MS Sans Serif&apos;;
font-size:8pt; color:#000000; </config-value>
<config-value name="contents"></config-value>
<config-value name="unicodemode">0</config-value>
<config-value name="topicprefix"></config-value>
<config-value name="autohelpstart">0</config-value>
<config-value name="autohelpincrement">1</config-value>
<config-value name="autohelpanchor">0</config-value>
</config-group>

See also:
Project Synchronization 645
Editing XML source code 208
Editing XML files in Word 2003 799
12.8.7 Editing XML files in Word 2003
Microsoft Word 2003 can now edit XML files, so if you want you can also edit the XML topic
files output by Help & Manual with Word 2003. Word now provides reasonable XML editing
support, with a tag view for editing and an XSL view using the XSL stylesheet to provide an
approximate WYSIWYG preview.

WARNING:
Some versions of Word 2003 make H&M XML files unreadable!
However, it is important to know that not all versions of Word 2003 come with full XML
support. This is currently only available in the version of Word 2003 included in the
Professional version of Microsoft Office and in the version of Word 2003 that is sold as a
separate product (i.e. not as part of MS Office).
The versions of Word 2003 included in the other Office packages only provide very
rudimentary XML support. These versions of Word save all XML files using Microsoft's
own XML schema, without warning the user that they are doing this.
If you edit and save the XML files generated by Help & Manual with these versions of
Word 2003 you will no longer be able to import them to Help & Manual. They will be
completely unreadable – all the necessary code will be changed and overwritten, and it
will not be possible to repair the files so that Help & Manual can read them.
If you plan to do any serious XML editing with Word 2003 please perform tests
first to make sure that Help & Manual can re-import the results!

See also:
Editing XML source code 208

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 800 Help & Manual Online Help

12.9 Help Windows

"Help windows" are often a source of confusion for people first learning to produce help and
documentation. This applies in particular when you are using a tool like Help & Manual that
also uses several different types of templates 475 to define the appearance and behavior of
topics and pages. The confusion is made even worse by the fact that all the output formats
that support help windows handle them in different ways.
If you study this chapter you will have a better understanding of help windows in particular
and help formats in general. The Questions and answers 801 topic provides a general
introduction to help windows and what they are for. The other topics in the chapter explain
how help windows work in the output formats generated by Help & Manual.

See also:
Help Windows settings 557
Choosing a help window 177
External windows and invisible topics 806

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 801

12.9.1 Questions and answers

Are help windows used in all output formats?

No. Help windows are only used in electronic help formats.

Help windows are only relevant in electronic help, i.e. HTML Help 765 , classic
Winhelp 768 , Browser-based Help 771 (HTML) and eBooks 773 . You could argue that
Adobe PDF 774 is also electronic, but at least as far as help windows are concerned
it is treated as printed documentation, along with Word RTF 776 .

Hmm... I'm already confused. So what is a "help window" and what

does it do?
Basically, the help window is the entire "help viewer" in which the your help is
displayed.

Traditional electronic help – which means Winhelp and HTML Help in the Windows
world – is always displayed in a "viewer". This viewer is both the program that
displays the help and the help window. It has two main components, the Table of
Contents (TOC) pane and the topic window pane in which the topics are displayed.
Remember, by definition the help window is the entire help
viewer, including all its navigation controls, the TOC and the
topic window pane. It is not just the topic window!

The HTML Help viewer. This layout is also

used in browser-based HTML and eBooks.

Since the introduction of HTML Help, help has always been displayed in one
window which is divided into two "panes", with the TOC in the pane on the left and
the current topic in the pane on the right. Help & Manual reproduces this layout in
both its Browser-based Help output and its eBooks with viewer layouts that
correspond as closely as possible to the appearance of the HTML Help viewer. (
Help & Manual itself also uses this layout, by the way.)
Winhelp does not use this clear and intuitive layout, and that is one of the key
problems with Winhelp and one of the main reasons why it is now becoming
obsolete.

OK, so the help viewer is the help window. So what?

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802 Help & Manual Online Help

The definition of the help window controls the color, position and appearance of
the help viewer and navigation controls displayed in the help viewer.

Since you always have a help viewer you also always have a help window, and the
definition of this window defines the initial appearance and behavior of the help
viewer in which the user views your help. (The user can change many things after
the viewer is first displayed, of course.)
You access these definitions in Help & Manual in Project > Project Properties >
Help Windows 557 . These definitions are referred to as "help window types".
In Help & Manual you control the appearance and behavior of the main help
window, and thus of the help viewer, by editing the definition of the help window
type called Main. This window type definition always exists and you cannot delete it
or rename it.

This is also where it begins to get complicated, however:

The degree of control the help window type definition actually gives you over the
appearance of the help viewer ranges from very extensive (in HTML Help) to
almost zero (in Browser-based Help and eBooks).
It is important to understand this when using help windows. See the other topics in
this chapter for details on what help windows do and don't do in the various output
formats. In addition to this, read the question and answer on help windows and
templates 804 below.

Does the help window definition only control the appearance of the
viewer?
No, there's more. You can also define "secondary" help windows with different
properties.

If there was just one help window we wouldn't need to discuss the subject in such
detail. What makes help windows really useful is that you can define additional
help window types (as many as you like) with different properties and
appearances. And you can use these windows to display individual topics in
different ways and with different styles.
These additional help window types are referred to as "secondary help windows".
Once you have defined one or more secondary help windows you can assign them
to individual topics 177 , so that the secondary window type is used automatically
when the corresponding topic is displayed. You can also specify secondary
windows in link definitions 310 , to display a "normal" topic in a secondary window
when the user clicks on a link.

So secondary windows can have different properties from the Main

window?
Yes, secondary windows can have completely different properties from the Main
window.

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 Reference 803

You can make secondary windows look very different from the main help viewer
window, although the amount of control you have depends on the output format
(see the other topics in this chapter for details). Among other things you can turn
off the header, change the background color, define a different window size and
activate or eliminate the navigation controls.
In Help & Manual secondary windows are also linked to HTML
topic Templates 477 , which gives you even more control.

Here the topic is associated with

a
The standard Main window with a yellow help window with no
header.

Important:
In HTML Help most of these changes are only possible in external windows (see
below), however! For example, if the main help viewer has a TOC and navigation
controls you can only turn them off in a secondary window if you display the
secondary window in an external window.
In the example above, the yellow secondary window cannot turn off the TOC or
navigation buttons in the viewer because it is not displayed in an external window.
See Help windows in HTML Help 809 for details on this. (In Winhelp 811 secondary
windows are always opened in external windows.)

I've seen help that opens some topics in external windows when you
click on a link...
Right! You can also use secondary help windows to display individual topics in
external windows.

External windows are effectively a second instance of the help viewer, and this
makes them much more powerful than popups 808 , for example. They enable you to
display additional information when a user clicks on a link without forcing the user
to leave the original topic:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

804 Help & Manual Online Help

This secondary window is yellow and

has no header or navigation controls.

In Winhelp 811 secondary window types are always displayed in

external windows.
In HTML Help 809 you can choose whether you want to display
secondary window types in external windows or the main
window.
External windows are not supported in Browser-based Help and
eBooks 811 .
External windows cannot be used across module boundaries in
modular help 492 with HTML Help. You cannot make a link that
opens a topic from another help file in an external window.

Interesting. What about templates? How do they relate to help

windows?
In all HTML-based output formats every help window definition, including Main,
has its own HTML topic template that can be edited separately.

This is a very important point to understand and it is one of the features that
makes Help & Manual so powerful and flexible.
In the formats that support them (HTML Help 765 , Browser-based Help 771 and
eBooks 773 ) HTML templates 475 significantly increase the power and control that
help windows give you over the appearance of your topics, even in Browser-based
Help and eBooks where the help window definitions themselves only give you very
limited control.
Since every help window type is associated with its own HTML template you can
assign a different template to a topic just by changing its help window type 177 . See
Using HTML Templates 475 for more information on what you can do with HTML
templates.

So in addition to defining the appearance of topics help windows are

also a way of selecting HTML templates for topics?
Bingo! This is a very important point to understand and it is one of the features
that makes Help & Manual so powerful and flexible.

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 Reference 805

Help windows have their own definitions, but they are also linked to HTML
templates, and this is crucial for all HTML-based output formats. You can change
the entire HTML code defining a topic's layout simply by changing the help window
type in the topic's Topic Options tab.
Now you are probably beginning to see why we felt it was necessary to devote so
much time to explaining help windows!

I can't edit the Popup window type! What's it for?

The "Popup" window type is one of two special standard window definitions. The
other one is "Main".

Like Main, this is a special window type that cannot be renamed. Unlike Main,
Popup also cannot be edited. This is the standard window type used for all topics
defined as popups 194 (all topics created in the Invisible Topics section are assigned
the Popup window type by default).
This window type cannot be edited because the formatting of popups is handled
differently than that of normal topics. See Help windows and popups 808 and
Standard help window types 805 for details.

See also:
Help Windows settings 557
Choosing a help window 177
External windows and invisible topics 806
12.9.2 Standard help window types
Every new project has two standard help window types 800 , Main and Popup. These are also
the only window types a new project has. If you want to use additional window types – for
example to create topics with a different appearance 471 from your standard topics, or to
display topics in external windows 473 – you must define them yourself 177 .

Settings location:
Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557

The Main window type

Main is the standard window type that is automatically applied to all new topics that you
create in the Table of Contents (TOC). You can edit its definition and the HTML topic
template 477 that is linked to it in HTML-based formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help
and eBooks) but you cannot change its name.
The definition of Main controls the appearance of the entire help viewer in HTML Help 809
and Winhelp 811 and the appearance of the topic window in all electronic help formats, i.e.
HTML Help, Winhelp, Browser-based Help and eBooks (but not in PDF 813 , which is
treated as a print format from the point of view of help windows).

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 806 Help & Manual Online Help

Main in Browser-based Help and eBooks:

In Browser-based Help and eBooks 811 Main only defines the appearance of the topic
window, which it does through its linked HTML topic template 477 . In these formats
Main does not control the appearance of the help viewer.
The appearance and behavior of the help viewer for Browser-based Help is
controlled by the settings and the other HTML templates in Project > Project
Properties > Browser-based Help 586 . The help viewer for eBooks is controlled by the
special templates and settings in Project > Project Properties > eBooks 609 .

The Popup window type

Popup is the standard window type that is automatically applied to all topics that you
create in the Invisible Topics section. You cannot change its name and, unlike Main, you
also cannot edit its definition.
As its name suggests, Popup is the standard window type for popup topics 194 . By default,
popup topics have no header and this normally is the only feature controlled by Help &
Manual and the Popup help window definition.
Everything else is handled by the individual help viewer, and so the Popup window type
is usually really little more than a placeholder. Like Main, Popup is also linked to a HTML
topic template 475 in HTML-based formats, but this template is actually almost never really
used.
· See Help windows and popups 808 for some more background information on this.

See also:
Help Windows 800
Help Windows settings 557
Choosing a help window 177
Help windows and popups 808
Help windows in HTML Help 809
Help windows in Winhelp 811
Help windows in HTML and eBooks 811
Help windows in RTF and PDF 813
12.9.3 External windows and invisible topics
Authors often define secondary windows 471 so that they can display topics in external
windows 473 . External windows are only supported in HTML Help 809 and Winhelp 811 . In HTML
Help you can choose whether you want to use external windows, in Winhelp secondary
windows are always displayed in external windows.

Create external window topics in the Invisible Topics section!

Topics that you always want to open in an external window should always be created in
the Invisible Topics section. This prevents them from being included in the TOC, where
they only cause problems and confusion. External windows are only useful when they
are accessed by reference, i.e. when the user clicks on a link.

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 Reference 807

Problems caused by external windows in the TOC:

If you include a topic associated with an external window in the TOC (Table of
Contents) it will also open in an external window when you click on its entry in the
TOC. This is confusing for the user and defeats the purpose of external windows,
which is to display additional information while leaving the current topic visible.
Under certain circumstances linking to external window topics that are included in the
TOC can also cause other problems, including dead links in your compiled HTML
Help output.
Navigation deadlock in Winhelp:
Including an external window topic in the TOC in Winhelp can make it impossible for
the user to return to the TOC, causing "navigation deadlock". This happens when the
external window type is defined with no navigation buttons.
Since Winhelp doesn't display the TOC together with the topic window, linking to an
external window like this from the TOC makes it impossible to return to the TOC
because there are no buttons. Oops!

When you can include external window topics in the TOC:

There are only two situations where it is OK to include topics displayed in external
windows in the TOC:
Normal "Main" topics displayed in external windows by links in HTML Help:
If external windows are activated in HTML Help you can display any topic in an
external window by selecting a secondary window type in the definition of the link 310
to the topic. It is OK to leave topics like this in the TOC because they are just that,
normal topics that are displayed normally when you click on their TOC entries.
Note that in HTML Help you cannot open topics in external windows across module
boundaries in modular help systems 492 . If you link to a topic in another module it will
always be displayed in the current help viewer, even if your link specifies a window
type defined as an external window. This is a restriction of HTML Help and it cannot
be changed.
External windows in Winhelp with full navigation controls:
In Winhelp the TOC and the topic window are never displayed together. This means
that it's OK to include external window topics in the TOC of Winhelp so long as they
have full navigation controls, because then clicking on the TOC entry just displays
the normal full help viewer with a slightly different definition.
If the external window definition doesn't have full navigation controls the user won't
be able to return to the TOC from the external window (see Navigation deadlock in
Winhelp above).

See also:
Help Windows 800
Help Windows settings 557
Using secondary windows 471
Using external windows 473

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 808 Help & Manual Online Help

Help windows in HTML Help 809

Help windows in Winhelp 811
12.9.4 Help windows and popups
The full functionality of popups 194 is only supported in HTML Help and Winhelp. eBooks
support fully formatted popups in topics but don't provide any support for context-sensitive
popup topics. Browser-based Help can now use Help & Manual's new JavaScript popups 199
but it does not support context-sensitive popups. And popups are not supported at all in PDF
and Word RTF. In these formats popup links are simply displayed as normal text and the
user has no access to the popup text.
· If you want to output your project both to formats that support popups and formats that
do not you should consider using Help & Manual's conditional output features 451 to
create alternative versions of the popup information for the formats that do not support
popups.

About the Popup window type:

Popup is one of the two standard help window types 805 that every Help & Manual project
contains. Whereas Main is the standard window type for normal topics, Popup is the
standard window type for popup topics. All topics created in the Invisible Topics section
of the Table of Contents (TOC) are automatically assigned the Popup window type in
their Topic Options tabs.
However, the Popup help window type is different from other window types. You cannot
change its name and you cannot edit it. In most cases its only real function is to define a
topic as a popup topic, i.e. a topic without a header that gets displayed as a popup in the
formats that support this.
All the other features of the popup topics are handled by the help viewers, and the
formatting of the popup topic's content (when it is supported by the selected output
format) is defined by the formatting you apply in the topic itself.
See Context-Sensitive Help and Popups 834 for more information on popup
topics and how they are handled in Help & Manual and the output formats
that support them.

About Popup's HTML topic template:

Like all help window types, Popup is linked to an HTML topic template 477 in the HTML-
based output formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help and eBooks). However, this
template is usually not used, because the formatting and appearance of the popup are
handled by the help viewer.

When the Popup window type's HTML template is used:

HTML Help: In HTML Help the Popup HTML template is only used if you set popup
topics to display in normal windows in the help viewer by selecting the
HTML Encoded Topics option in Project > Project Properties > HTML
Help > Popup Topics 599 . Then the popup is effectively just another help
window type with its own HTML topic template.

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 Reference 809

The Popup template is not used in any of the other HTML Help popup
modes. JavaScript Popups 199 have their own formatting options and
they do not use the Popup template.

Browser-based In Browser-based Help the Popup HTML template is only used if you
Help: select HTML Encoded Popups in Project > Project Properties >
Browser-based Help > Popup Topics 599 .
JavaScript Popups 199 have their own formatting options and they do
not use the Popup template.

eBooks: In eBooks popups are formatted automatically but they take their
background color from Popup template. If you have HTML editing skills
you can change this by editing the Popup template in Project > Project
Properties > HTML Help > Topic Pages 565 .

See also:
Help Windows 800
Help Windows settings 557
Using external windows 473
Help windows in HTML Help 809
Context-Sensitive Help & Popups 834
Help windows in Winhelp
Using HTML Templates 475
12.9.5 Help windows in HTML Help
Help windows can be quite confusing until you understand them, then they are very easy to
use. If you have not already done so please read the introduction to help windows 800 first.
Please also read External windows and invisible topics 806 for some important information on
using external windows in HTML Help.

Settings location:
Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557

About help windows in HTML help:

Level of The definition of the Main help window controls the entire appearance
control: of the HTML Help viewer and the controls it contains.

Secondary Secondary windows can be displayed either in the main help viewer or
windows: in external windows. If they are displayed in the main help viewer they
cannot turn off controls (e.g. TOC, navigation buttons) set by the
definition of the Main window.

External External windows are supported. This is a global setting, however. If

windows: you activate external windows all secondary windows are displayed in
external windows.

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810 Help & Manual Online Help

HTML Each help window definition, including Main, is linked to its own HTML
templates: topic template, which is fully editable. The background color and
header features defined in the window definition are actually stored in
the HTML template. These templates control the appearance of the
topics in the help viewer but not the entire help viewer. See Using
HTML templates 475 for full details.

Popups: The non-editable Popup help window type normally only defines that
popup topics are called as popups and do not have a header.
It is linked to a HTML topic template but in HTML Help this template is
only used when you display popups as full topics in the help viewer by
setting the HTML Encoded Topics option in Project > Project Properties
> HTML Help > Popup Topics 567 .
In dual-mode help popups in HTML Help are handled in the same way
as in Winhelp 811 .

Special characteristics of help windows in HTML help:

External windows:
External windows 473 can be activated by setting the option Allow secondary HTML
Help windows in Project > Project Properties > Help Windows > HTML Help Options
563 . This is a global setting: when it is activated all secondary windows are opened in

external windows and you can activate and deactivate the navigation elements for
secondary windows. When this option is disabled you can only define the navigation
elements for the Main window, i.e. for the main HTML Help viewer.
Calling external windows by links:
If external windows are activated you can display a "normal" topic (associated with
Main in its Topic Options tab) in an external window by specifying a secondary
window in the link definition 310 . If you do this the topic will display in an external
window when the link is clicked but its color and header will still have the features of
the Main HTML template 475 .
This is because in all HTML-based formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help and
eBooks) topics are always displayed with the HTML template associated with the
help window type defined in their Topic Options tabs. This is because the topics are
generated and stored with this template when you compile, and this cannot be
changed by the link reference.

See also:
Help Windows 800
Help Windows settings 557
Choosing a help window 177
Help windows in Winhelp 811
Help windows in HTML and eBooks 811
Help windows in RTF and PDF 813

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 Reference 811

12.9.6 Help windows in Winhelp

Help windows can be quite confusing until you understand them, then they are very easy to
use. If you have not already done so please read the introduction to help windows 800 first.
Please also read External windows and invisible topics 806 for some important information on
using external windows in Winhelp.

Settings location:
Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557

About help windows in Winhelp:

Level of The definition of the Main help window controls the entire appearance
control: of the Winhelp viewer and the controls it contains.

Secondary Secondary windows are supported and are always displayed in

windows: external windows.

External External windows are supported and secondary windows are always
windows: displayed in external windows.

HTML HTML templates are not supported in Winhelp. The window type
templates: definitions are the only control you have over the appearance of your
windows.

Popups: The Popup help window type only defines the topic in question as a
popup. Its linked HTML topic template 477 is not used in Winhelp.

Special characteristics of help windows in Winhelp:

Secondary windows:
Secondary windows are always opened in external windows. Because of this do not
include secondary windows without navigation controls in the TOC, otherwise you will
create "navigation deadlock"! See External windows and invisible topics 806 for details.

See also:
Help Windows 800
Help Windows settings 557
Choosing a help window 177
Help windows in HTML Help 809
Help windows in HTML and eBooks 811
Help windows in RTF and PDF 813
12.9.7 Help windows in HTML and eBooks
Help windows can be quite confusing until you understand them, then they are very easy to
use. If you have not already done so please read the introduction to help windows 800 first.

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812 Help & Manual Online Help

Settings location:
Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557

About help windows in Browser-based Help and eBooks:

Level of Help windows are only used to provide access to HTML templates 475 in
control: these formats. Assigning a help window to a topic 177 only links the
topic in question to a specific HTML template. The color and header
settings entered in the help window type definition are also stored in
the HTML template.

Secondary Secondary windows are supported but they are always displayed in the
windows: main help viewer. The color and header settings are assigned to the
secondary windows, any other changes must be made by editing the
HTML topic template (see below). You cannot use window definitions
to display or suppress navigation controls.

External External windows are not supported in these formats. Secondary

windows: windows are always displayed in the main help viewer.

HTML Every window definition, including Main, is linked to its own HTML topic
templates: template 477 . These templates control the appearance of the topics in
the help viewer but not the entire help viewer.
In Browser-based Help the appearance of the help viewer is controlled
by the other templates in Project > Project Properties > Browser-based
Help 586 . In eBooks the viewer properties are defined by the settings
and special templates in Project > Project Properties > eBooks 609 .

Popups: Popups 194 are not supported in Browser-based Help. In this format
topics defined as popups are displayed in the full browser or help
viewer window, just like normal topics, using the HTML topic template
477 linked to the Popup help window type.

The Help & Manual eBooks format supports formatted popups, i.e.
popups containing formatted text (bold, italics, fonts etc), graphics and
hyperlinks to other topics. However, eBooks does not include any
support for context-sensitive popups that interact with applications.

Special characteristics of help windows in HTML and eBooks:

Calling secondary windows by links doesn't work:
Since external windows are not supported in these formats specifying a secondary
window in the link definition 310 does not have any effect at all – the target topic will be
displayed normally using the HTML template of the help window type specified in its
Topic Options.
This is because in all HTML-based formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help and
eBooks) topics are always displayed with the HTML topic template 477 associated with

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 813

the help window type defined in their Topic Options tabs. In the compiled help they
have already been generated with this template and this cannot be changed by the
link reference.
In HTML Help 810 you can open topics in external windows by specifying a secondary
window type in the link definition, but in Browser-based Help and eBooks this has no
effect because external windows are not supported.

See also:
Help Windows 800
Help Windows settings 557
Choosing a help window 177
Help windows in HTML Help 809
Help windows in Winhelp 811
Help windows in RTF and PDF 813
12.9.8 Help windows in RTF and PDF
Help windows are not used at all in PDF and Word RTF. All their settings are ignored, they
have no effect on the appearance of your topics in these formats. These formats also do not
support popups, so all popup topics are also excluded from PDF and RTF.

PDF and Print User Manual:

In PDF, and in the File > Print User Manual 666 function (which simply prints the PDF
output) the layout and appearance of your output is controlled by a special template
called the Print Manual Template 543 .
You can create and edit as many print manual templates as you like with the Print
Manual Designer,which gives you full control over the formatting and layout of your PDF
output. This is a separate program included with Help & Manual, which can be accessed
in the Tools menu.
Other PDF layout and format settings are controlled by the options in Project > Project
Properties > Adobe PDF 604 .
· For details see PDF and print manual templates 468 and Adobe PDF settings 604 .

Word RTF:
In Word RTF the output is simply a rough equivalent of the formatting in your topics. You
can control some basic formatting and layout parameters in Project > Project Properties
> Microsoft Word RTF 608 , but that is all. Word RTF is a deprecated format that is quite
limited in its capabilities and it is only included for backward compatibility. Unless you
have a special reason for using it please use Adobe PDF instead!

See also:
Help Windows 800
PDF and Printed Manuals 538
Adobe PDF settings 604
PDF and print manual templates 468

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 814 Help & Manual Online Help

12.10 About HTML Templates

HTML templates are used to define the layout of all Help & Manual's HTML-based output
formats (HTML Help 765 , Browser-based Help 771 , eBooks 773 and Visual Studio Help 777 ). What
you enter in the editor defines the content, the templates define the framework in which your
content is presented. The HTML templates are stored together with your project, in the
internal database in the main .HMX project file.
The same HTML templates are used for the topic pages in all three formats. In addition to
this there are also separate templates for the Table of Contents 482 and Keyword Index 484
frames used in Browser-based Help to emulate the HTML Help viewer user interface.
For instructions on using HTML templates see Using HTML Templates 475 in
the More Advanced Procedures section.

HTML templates and help window types:

In Help & Manual HTML templates are linked to help window types 177 . You select a
template by selecting a help window type for a topic. The standard help window type and
the default for all topics is Main, but you can define additional types yourself and each
type has its own separate template, which is fully editable. For a better understanding of
help windows and their relationship to templates please study Help Windows 800 in the
Reference section.

What you can do with HTML templates:

Normally you don't have to worry about the content of HTML templates. You can set
some basic settings with a point-and-click interface in Project > Project Properties >
Browser-based Help 586 , but everything else is handled by the program in the background.
(For details on the settings see Browser-based Help settings 586 in the Reference section.)
However, if you are familiar with writing HTML code "by hand" you can edit all the HTML
templates directly. This gives you full control over the appearance of your topics and
allows you to change the page layout an any way you want, add features like headers
and footers, use DHTML, ActiveX objects and JavaScript and so on.
In Help & Manual eBooks only HTML formatting is supported in the HTML
topic page template. The eBook viewer does not support any scripting,
DHTML, ActiveX etc.

Variables:
Help & Manual's HTML templates also support a wide range of variables. In addition to
specialized predefined variables 826 for HTML templates only, you can also use all the
standard global predefined variables 863 and your own user-defined variables 449 in all
HTML templates.
See Variables in HTML templates 485 for details on using variables in HTML
templates.

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 Reference 815

Conditional output:
You can also include or exclude code from your output with conditional tags, on the basis
of both output format (HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks etc.) and any of the
user-defined include options 453 defined in your project. In addition to this there are also a
number of special conditional tags for HTML templates only, for example a condition that
includes a block of code only if the current topic has a header.
You can use these tags to create different versions of your templates that are selected
automatically depending on the output format or your own user-defined conditions. They
can also be used in combination with variables so that you automatically only include
variables in places and output formats where they are relevant.
See Conditional output in HTML templates 487 for details on how to use this
feature in your HTML templates.

Help & Manual's HTML templates:

There are four categories of HTML templates. The first category, topic page templates,
are used for all HTML-based output formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks,
Visual Studio Help/MS Help 2.0). The other three categories are only used for Browser-
based Help.
The topic page templates (shared): 477
Topic page templates are used in all HTML-based output formats. There is only one
set of topic page templates that are shared for all these formats. The templates can
be accessed in all the Project Properties sections for these formats.
· Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Topic Pages
· Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help > Topic Pages
· Project > Project Properties > Visual Studio Help > Topic Pages
Note that although you can access the topic templates in all these locations they are
always the same templates. You cannot create different templates for the individual
output formats!
These templates define all the layout settings for your topic pages in HTML Help,
Browser-based Help, eBooks and Visual Studio Help/MS Help 2.0. The settings in
your help window type definitions are also added to the templates (using automatic
variables). In these formats the topic page template also stores the settings related
to topic window appearance made in Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557 .
Each help window type 177 has its own HTML topic page template that can be edited
476 separately. This means that changing the help window type applies a different

topic page template to the topic. The default help window type applied automatically
to all topics in the TOC is Main. To apply a different help window type to a topic you
must change the assignment in the Help Window: field in its Topic Options tab. See
Using secondary windows 471 for more details on this.
The table of contents template (Browser Help only): 482
Located in the Table of Contents section of the Browser-based Help settings. This

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 816 Help & Manual Online Help

template is only used in Browser-based Help. It defines the appearance and

functionality of the TOC pane, emulating the HTML Help viewer as closely as
possible.
The keyword index template (Browser Help only): 821
Located in the Keyword Index section. This template is also only used in Browser-
based Help. It defines the appearance and functionality of the Keyword Index pane in
the browser emulation of the HTML Help interface.
The full-text search template (Browser Help only): 823
Located in the Full-text Search section. This template is also only used in Browser-
based Help. It defines the appearance and functionality of the Search pane in the
browser emulation of the HTML Help interface. (Browser-based Help output includes
a powerful full-text search function that uses full indexing for high-speed searching.)

See also:
Help Windows 800
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
Choosing a help window 177
12.10.1 The default Topic Pages template
The Topic Pages template is used to define the layout and behavior of topic pages in all
HTML-based output formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks and Visual Studio
Help / MS Help 2.0). Each window type has its own copy of the topic page template that can
be edited separately. To apply a different template to a topic you just need to define a new
window type, edit its template and assign the window type to the topic. See Using secondary
windows 471 for details.
You can view the code of the template by going to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help
/ Browser-based Help > Topic Pages and selecting "Let me edit HTMLcode directly" .
· See Editing HTML templates 476 in Using HTML Templates 475 for instructions on
how to edit the templates.
· The Popup window type also has its own copy of the same default template, but it
is only ever actually applied to popup topics when you export them as normal
HTML topics instead of as popups. See Help windows and popups 808 for details.

Variables used in the Topic Pages template:

A topic template is basically a simple HTML/XHTML page with a number of dynamic
variables whose contents are set automatically when you compile depending on the
specific output format and your settings.
The list below only describes the most important variables used. For a full reference of
variables available in HTML templates see HTML template variables 826 .
Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<%DOCTYPE%> This variable is new in Help & Manual 4. It sets the correct HTML or

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 Reference 817

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

XHTML document type depending on your output format and

settings. It is essential for correct HTML output, Unicode support
and full-text search. It must be the first item on the first line of the
template and if you change or delete it you will get an error
message when you compile your project.

<%DOCCHARSET%> This variable is new in Help & Manual 4. It sets the correct HTML or
XHTML character set depending on your output format and
settings. It is essential for all HTML output and Unicode support. It
must be included in the Content Type meta tag. If you change or
delete it you will get an error message when you compile your
project.

<%STYLESHEET%> This is another new variable. It inserts the link reference to the CSS
stylesheet file, which contains all the styles definitions from your
project. This means that you can also reference any of the styles
defined in your project in the template if you want. (This is easiest if
you activate the Export style names option in HTML Export Options
601 .)

Note that if you enter text in a template without specifying a <P> or

<SPAN> tag explicitly it will be formatted with the standard Normal
style automatically.

<IF_TOPIC_HEADE The <IF_TOPIC_HEADER> condition checks whether the topic has a

R> header (you can switch the header off in the help window type
definition 178 ). If it does the template generates a table with the
background color of the topic header (<%TOPIC_HEADER_BGCOLOR%>
), inserts the topic header (<%TOPIC_HEADER%>) and the navigation
links (Top, Previous and Next) in the table. The Previous and Next
links are enclosed in conditions that only include them if previous
and next pages actually exist. (The <IF_PREVIOUS_PAGE> condition
is false in the first topic in the help.)

<%TOPIC_TEXT%> This little variable is actually the most important part of the template.
It inserts the entire content of your topic from the Help & Manual
editor in the output topic page. (If you leave it out the compiler will
only generate blank topics.)
You can create "headers" and "footers" by inserting code and
variables directly above and below this variable.

See the Variables in HTML templates 485 and Conditional

output in HTML templates 487 for details on using
variables and conditional switches.

See also:
Using HTML Templates 475

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 818 Help & Manual Online Help

Editing HTML templates 476

HTML template variables 826
HTML template output conditions 830
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
Help Windows 800
12.10.2 The default Layout template
The Layout template is specialized and its content varies depending on the layout you select
(no frames, 2 frames, 3 frames). If you use a 3-frame layout the individual references in the
template will also vary depending on your layout choices. Because of this the default code is
not included here. To view the code make your selections in the Layout section 401 and then
select Let me edit HTML code directly to load the template code into the integrated HTML
editor.
This template should not be edited unless you have advanced HTML editing skills and
understand all the code and the JavaScript used in the template.
This topic just provides a brief reference to the unique variables used in the Layout template.

Variables used in the Layout template:

Variable Content and/or function of the
variable

<%NAVIGATION_SCRIPT%> This inserts the script that controls the

dynamic navigation features in the
Table of Contents. It is essential and
should not be left out.

<%HREF_CONTENT_PAGE_DYN These variables reference the dynamic

%> and static versions of the Table of
<% Contents. Which one is used depends
HREF_CONTENT_PAGE_STATI on whether the user's browser supports
C%> dynamic features.

See also:
Using HTML Templates 475
Editing HTML templates 476
HTML template variables 826
HTML template output conditions 830
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
12.10.3 The default TOC template
This HTML template is only used for Browser-based Help, to generate the Table of Contents
(TOC) pane in the frame layout that emulates the appearance and functionality of the HTML
Help viewer in a normal browser. (The TOC in HTML Help cannot be customized from Help
& Manual. The TOC in the eBooks viewer is also non-configurable.)
You can view the code of the template by going to Project > Project Properties > Browser-

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 Reference 819

based Help > Table of Contents and selecting "Let me edit HTMLcode directly" .
See Editing HTML templates 476 in Using HTML Templates 475 for instructions
on how to edit the template.

Be particularly careful when editing this template!

The TOC template is an integral part of the dynamic TOC of the help viewer
generated by Help & Manual for Browser-based Help. Its code is essential
for the proper functioning of the viewer and the TOC. Please be extremely
careful when you are editing this template – if you don't understand what a
piece of code is for it's better to leave it alone!

Template variables, style definitions and functions:

The template is basically a simple HTML/XHTML page with a number of dynamic
variables whose contents are set automatically when you compile depending on the
specific output format and your settings. In addition to this the template also defines the
styles of the TOC entries for up to six levels.
The list below only lists the local styles and most important variables used. For a full
reference of variables for HTML templates see HTML template variables 826 .
Variable / Style Content and/or function of the variable

<%DOCTYPE%> This variable is new in Help & Manual 4. It sets the correct
HTML or XHTML document type depending on your output
format and settings. It is essential for correct HTML output and
Unicode support. It must be the first item on the first line of the
template.

<%DOCCHARSET%> This variable is new in Help & Manual 4. It sets the correct
HTML or XHTML character set depending on your output
format and settings. It is essential for all HTML output and
Unicode support and it must be included in the Content Type
meta tag.

<%STYLESHEET%> This is another new variable. It inserts the link reference to the
CSS stylesheet file, which contains all the styles definitions
from your project. This reference is not essential for the TOC
unless you want to reference any of the styles defined in your
project. (This is easiest if you activate the Export style names
option in HTML Export Options 601 .)
Note that if you enter text in a template without specifying a <P>
or <SPAN> tag explicitly it will be formatted with the standard
Normal style automatically.

.heading1 This block of style definitions controls the appearance of the

.. TOC headings in the normal (non-selected) state.

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820 Help & Manual Online Help

Variable / Style Content and/or function of the variable

.heading6

.hilight1 This block of style definitions controls the appearance of the

.. TOC headings when they are selected, with a different
.hilight6 background color and font to produce the highlight effect.
Note that if your TOC has more than six levels (not
recommended!) all subsequent headings will automatically use
the style of heading6.

.navtitle This style formats the default heading of the Table of Contents,
which is inserted with the <%TITLE%> variable here (just below
the <BODY> tag, not the <TITLE> tag at the beginning of the
document!).

.navbar This style formats the line Contents | Index | Search below the
title.

.TD.toc This style defines the table cells that enclose the individual
TOC entries. You can change the spacing of the entries and
the right margin of the TOC by adjusting the padding-bottom
and padding-right attributes.

<%TITLE%> This variable inserts the title of your project.

<%HREF_INDEXPAGE%> This variable inserts the link address for the keyword index 484
so that the user can switch to it from the TOC.

<%HREF_SEARCH_PAGE% This variable inserts the link address of the full-text search
> pane so that the user can switch to it from the TOC.

<%TABLE_OF_CONTENTS This variable inserts the table of contents list from your project
%> in the TOC page, in the same way that <%TOPIC_TEXT%>
inserts the topic from the editor in the topic page. This is the
most important variable in the template. If it is not there you
won't have a TOC.

<%COPYRIGHT%> This variable inserts the copyright notice from Project > Project
Properties > Common Properties > Title & Copyright 550 .

See the Variables in HTML templates 485 and Conditional output in HTML
templates 487 for details on using variables and conditional switches.

Script tags for expanding/collapsing the TOC:

You can use the following two script tags in the TOC template to create links that will
expand and collapse the entire TOC when the user clicks on them:

<a href="javascript:parent.fullexpand()">Expand the TOC</a>

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 Reference 821

<a href="javascript:parent.fullcollapse()">Collapse the TOC</a>

See also:
Using HTML Templates 475
Editing HTML templates 476
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
Help Windows 800
12.10.4 The default Index template
This HTML template is only used in Browser-based Help, to generate the keyword index
pane within the frame layout that emulates the appearance and functionality of the HTML
Help viewer in a normal browser. (The index in HTML Help cannot be customized from Help
& Manual. The index in the eBooks viewer is also non-configurable.)
You can view the code of the template by going to Project > Project Properties > Browser-
based Help > Keyword Index and selecting "Let me edit HTMLcode directly" .

Be particularly careful when editing this template!

The keyword index template is an integral part of the help viewer
generated by Help & Manual for Browser-based Help. Its code is essential
for the proper functioning the keyword index. Please be extremely careful
when you are editing this template – if you don't understand what a piece
of code is for it's better to leave it alone!

See Editing HTML templates 476 in Using HTML Templates 475 for instructions
on how to edit the template.

Template variables, style definitions and functions:

The template is basically a simple HTML/XHTML page with a number of dynamic
variables whose contents are set automatically when you compile depending on the
specific output format and your settings. In addition to this the template also defines the
styles of the keyword index entries.
The list below only lists the local styles and the most important variables used. For a full
reference of variables for HTML templates see HTML template variables 826 .
Variable / Style Content and/or function of the variable

<%DOCTYPE%> This variable is new in Help & Manual 4. It sets the correct
HTML or XHTML document type depending on your output
format and settings. It is essential for correct HTML output
and Unicode support. It must be the first item on the first line
of the template.

<%DOCCHARSET%> This variable is new in Help & Manual 4. It sets the correct
HTML or XHTML character set depending on your output
format and settings. It is essential for all HTML output and

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

822 Help & Manual Online Help

Variable / Style Content and/or function of the variable

Unicode support and it must be included in the Content Type

meta tag.

<%STYLESHEET%> This is another new variable. It inserts the link reference to

the CSS stylesheet file, which contains all the styles
definitions from your project. This reference is not essential
for the keyword index unless you want to reference any of the
styles defined in your project. (This is easiest if you activate
the Export style names option in HTML Export Options 601 .)
Note that if you enter text in a template without specifying a
<P> or <SPAN> tag explicitly it will be formatted with the
standard Normal style automatically.

.navtitle This style formats the default heading of the keyword index,
which is inserted with the <%TITLE%> variable here (just below
the <BODY> tag, not the <TITLE> tag at the beginning of the
document!).

.navbar This style formats the line Contents | Index | Search below the
title.

.idxsection This defines the text format and the paragraph format of the
index section headers (the letters from A to Z that mark the
beginning of each section).

.idxkeyword Defines the text format and the paragraph format for a top-
level keyword, but not the indent.

.idxkeyword2 Defines the text format and the paragraph format for a
second-level keyword, but not the indent.

.idxlink Defines the text format for the topic links that are displayed in
a small popup window if a keyword points to more than one
topic (otherwise the keyword itself is a link). The popup in
which the link list is displayed is a formatted table with a thin
border. You can customize the popup table layout with the
next two styles.

.TABLE.idxtable This formats the table of the link-list popup. Basically, the
TABLE tag defines the background, border width and margin
of the popup.

.td.idxtable This formats the inner cell of the popup table. It can used to
apply a different format to the cell that actually contains the
link list (i.e. different formatting for outer table and inner cell).

filter: Did you notice the filter attribute in the .TABLE.idxtable

style? This is a specialty of Microsoft Internet Explorer. MSIE

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 823

Variable / Style Content and/or function of the variable

(5.5 and later) provides really nice filters to improve the

appearance of HTML elements. In this case, the filter adds a
soft shadow to the popup.

<%TITLE%> This variable inserts the title of your project.

<% This variable inserts the link address of the TOC pane.
HREF_CONTENT_PAGE Without this the user would not be able to switch back to the
%> TOC after viewing the index.

<% This variable inserts the link address of the full-text search
HREF_SEARCH_PAGE% pane so that the user can switch to it from the index. It is
> enclosed by a matching condition to ensure that the entry is
only displayed if full-text search is activated in the help.

<%KEYWORD_INDEX%> This variable inserts the keyword index generated by Help &
Manual in the page. This is the most important variable in the
entire template. If you leave it out you won't have an index.

See the Variables 485 and Conditional output 487 topics in this chapter for
information on using variables and conditional switches.

See also:
Using HTML Templates 475
Editing HTML templates 476
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
Help Windows 800
12.10.5 The default Search template
This HTML template is only used in Browser-based Help, to generate the full-text search
pane within the frame layout that emulates the appearance and functionality of the HTML
Help viewer in a normal browser. (The search in HTML Help cannot be customized from
Help & Manual. The full-text search in the eBooks viewer is also non-configurable.)
You can view the code of the template by going to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help
/ Browser-based Help > Topic Pages and selecting "Let me edit HTMLcode directly" .

Be particularly careful when editing this template!

The full-text search template is an integral part of the full-text search
function generated by Help & Manual for Browser-based Help. Its code is
essential for the proper functioning of full-text search. Please be
extremely careful when you are editing this template – if you don't
understand what a piece of code is for it's better to leave it alone!

See Editing HTML templates 476 in Using HTML Templates 475 for instructions
on how to edit the template.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

824 Help & Manual Online Help

Template variables, style definitions and functions:

The template is basically a simple HTML/XHTML page with a number of dynamic
variables whose contents are set automatically when you compile depending on the
specific output format and your settings. In addition to this the template also defines the
styles of the full-text search results.
The list below only lists the local styles and the most important variables used. For a full
reference of variables for HTML templates see HTML template variables 826 .
Variable / Style Content and/or function of the variable

<%DOCTYPE%> This variable is new in Help & Manual 4. It sets the correct
HTML or XHTML document type depending on your
output format and settings. It is essential for correct HTML
output and Unicode support. It must be the first item on
the first line of the template.

<%DOCCHARSET%> This variable is new in Help & Manual 4. It sets the correct
HTML or XHTML character set depending on your output
format and settings. It is essential for all HTML output and
Unicode support and it must be included in the Content
Type meta tag.

<%STYLESHEET%> This is another new variable. It inserts the link reference

to the CSS stylesheet file, which contains all the styles
definitions from your project. This reference is not
essential for the full-text search pane unless you want to
reference any of the styles defined in your project. (This is
easiest if you activate the Export style names option in
HTML Export Options 601 .)
Note that if you enter text in a template without specifying
a <P> or <SPAN> tag explicitly it will be formatted with the
standard Normal style automatically.

.navtitle This style formats the default heading of the full-text

search pane, which is inserted with the <%TITLE%>
variable here (just below the <BODY> tag, not the <TITLE>
tag at the beginning of the document!).

.navbar This style formats the line Contents | Index | Search

below the title.

.submit Defines the text style of the submit area. This is the entry
box where you enter a search word, number of results per
page and whether you want to search for all or any
words.

.highlight Defines the style of the highlight for matching words in the
results summary (not in the topic pages of the help). If

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 825

Variable / Style Content and/or function of the variable

you don't want matching words to be highlighted just

remove this style.

.searchheading These styles fine-tune the formatting of all the elements

.summary of the search results. They should be self-explanatory.
.results
.description
.context
.result_title
.zoom_categories These styles are used internally by the search indexer
.zoom_categories ul and should not be changed.
.zoom_categories li
input.zoom_button

input.zoom_searchbox These styles are used internally by the search indexer

.result_image and should not be changed.
.result_image img
.result_block
.result_altblock These styles are used internally by the search indexer
.result_pages . and should not be changed.
result_pagescount
.searchtime
.recommended These styles are used internally by the search indexer
.recommended_heading and should not be changed.
.recommend_block
.recommend_title
.
recommend_description .
recommend_infoline

<%TITLE%> This variable inserts the title of your project.

<%HREF_CONTENT_PAGE%> This variable inserts the link address of the TOC pane.
Without this the user would not be able to switch back to
the TOC after viewing the index.

<%HREF_INDEX_PAGE%> This variable inserts the link address of the keyword index
pane so that the user can switch to it from the index. It is
enclosed by a matching condition to ensure that the entry
is only displayed if the help has an index.

<%SEARCH_SCRIPT%> This variable inserts the search generated by Help &

Manual in the page. This is the most important variable in
the entire template. If you leave it out the search will not
be functional.

<NOSCRIPT>... This piece of code is required for browsers without

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 826 Help & Manual Online Help

Variable / Style Content and/or function of the variable

</NOSCRIPT> JavaScript or with JavaScript disabled. The full-text

search function does not work without JavaScript and the
code displays a message explaining this to the user.

See the Variables 485 and Conditional output 487 topics in this chapter for
information on using variables and conditional switches.

See also:
Using HTML Templates 475
Editing HTML templates 476
Templates and Secondary Windows 462
Help Windows 800
12.10.6 HTML template variables
You can use all global predefined variables 863 and user-defined variables 449 in HTML
templates 475 . In addition to this you can also use the following special predefined variables,
which are only relevant in HTML templates.

Variables for use in topic page templates only:

These variables can only be used in topic page templates. They are valid in all HTML-
based output formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks and Visual Studio
Help / MS Help 2.0).
Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<%DOCTYPE%> Inserts the correct DOCTYPE tag at the beginning of the

HTML output pages. This variable is essential in all
templates and should not be removed. If you do remove
it you will get an error message from the compiler.
<%DOCCHARSET%> Inserts the correct character set information in the meta
tags at the beginning of the HTML output pages. This
variable is essential in all templates and should not be
removed. If you do remove it you will get an error
message from the compiler.

<%STYLESHEET%> Inserts the reference to the CSS stylesheet containing

all the styles information for your project. This variable
is essential in all templates and should not be removed.
If you do remove it you will get an error message from
the compiler.

<%TOPIC_HEADER%> Inserts the header of the current topic if it exists. If the

current topic has no header the value of this variable is
null. This can be different from the topic caption

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 827

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

inserted with <%TOPIC_TITLE%>.

<%TOPIC_HEADER_TEXT%> Inserts the header of the current topic as plain text. This
is particularly useful if your project headers are different
from and longer than the TOC captions, which is
inserted with <%TOPIC_TITLE%>.
This is used primarily for search engine optimization, for
which you would insert it in the description meta tag, like
this:
<meta name="description" content="<%
TOPIC_HEADER_TEXT%>">

<%TOPIC_TEXT%> Inserts the body text of a topic, i.e. the entire topic as
edited and formatted in your project in the Help &
Manual editor. This is the most important variable – if
you leave it out your topics will be empty!
<%TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS%> Generates a series of "breadcrumb trail" navigation
links to topics above the current topic in the TOC tree.
This variable is empty in top-level topics. In second-
level topics and below the variable generates a series of
links in the format Link1 > Link2 > Link3 ...
The current topic is not included in the series. If you
want to place the current topic title at the end of the
breadcrumb trail you can do so with the <%TOPIC_TITLE
%> variable (see below).
The breadcrumb trail variable is empty in topics in the
Invisible Topics section.
This variable has a matching condition pair:
<IF_TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS> and
<IFNOT_TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS> . These conditions can
be used to only insert the trail where it is relevant and to
insert alternative content when it is not relevant.
See here 479 for details on how to use this variable.

<%TOPIC_TITLE_PATH%> This variable is similar to the breadcrumbs variable

above but it delivers the breadcrumb trail as a plain text
string without any links. Unlike the breadcrumbs
variable it also includes the name of the current topic,
so it always delivers a full trail.

The primary use of this variable is for search engine

optimization, for which you would insert it in the <title>
tag of your topic page template instead of the normal <
%TOPIC_TITLE%> variable, like this:

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

828 Help & Manual Online Help

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<title><%TOPIC_TITLE_PATH%></title>

Modification for HTML Help:

If you also output to HTML Help you should use
conditional text to ensure that this variable is only used
in Browser Help, otherwise you will get the full path as
the topic name in your search results in the HTML Help
viewer. Do it like this:
<title><IF_HTML><%TOPIC_TITLE_PATH%></
IF_HTML><IF_CHM><%TOPIC_TITLE%></IF_CHM></
title>

<% HTML-encoded color string triplet that represents the

TOPIC_HEADER_BGCOLOR% background color of the topic header, if one has been
> set.

<%TOPIC_TEXT_BGCOLOR% HTML-encoded color string triplet that represents the

> body background of the topic.

<%TOPIC_TITLE%> Topic title (this is the caption of the topic in the TOC).
<%TOPICID%> Returns the plain topic ID as written in the Topic ID:
field of Topic Options, without any filename extension
and without changing the ID text to lower case. This can
be used to add an ID reference in your meta attributes
in your web pages, for example:
<meta name="id" content="<%TOPICID%>" />

<%TOPIC_KEYWORDS%> Inserts all the keywords 370 of the current topic, comma-
separated. Needless to say, this variable is essential for
the keyword index and shouldn't be removed...
<%TOPIC_AKEYWORDS%> Inserts all the A-keywords 382 of the current topic,
comma-separated.
<%HREF_PREVIOUS_PAGE%> Link address of the previous topic (used for Previous/
Next buttons).

<%HREF_NEXT_PAGE%> Link address of the next topic.

<%HREF_DEFAULT_PAGE%> Link address of the "Default" topic. This is used for the
standard Top navigation link in the topic headers so that
users can return to the default topic in your project.

<%HREF_PARENT_CHAPTER Link address of the parent topic (chapter). This can be

%> used as an alternative to <%HREF_DEFAULT_PAGE%>.
If the parent is a chapter without text, this is the link

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 829

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

address of the parent's parent. If no valid parent is

available, the variable is the link address of the default
page.

<%HREF_CURRENT_PAGE%> Link address of the current page.

All the <%HREF variables insert the local

names of the corresponding pages within the
current directory without any path
information, e.g. topic1name.htm,
topic2name.htm and so on.

Variables for use in Browser-based Help only:

All the remaining variables are only relevant in Browser-based Help 771 (HTML):

Global variables for all Browser-based Help templates:

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<%HREF_TOP_PAGE%> Link address of the top frame (e.g. "index.html")

<%HREF_CONTENT_PAGE%> Link address of the TOC page

<%HREF_INDEX_PAGE%> Link address of the keyword index-page

<%HREF_SEARCH_PAGE%> Link address of the full-text search page

Variables for the Layout frameset template only:

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<% Link address of the dynamic TOC page.

HREF_CONTENT_PAGE_DYN
%>

<% Link address of the static TOC page.

HREF_CONTENT_PAGE_STATI
C%>

<%NAVIGATION_SCRIPT%> Inserts the navigation script required by the top frame.

Variables for the Table of Contents template only:

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<%TABLE_OF_CONTENTS%> Inserts the entire TOC in the page.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 830 Help & Manual Online Help

Variables for the Keyword Index template only:

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<%KEYWORD_INDEX%> Inserts the entire keyword index in the page.

Variables for the Full-text Search template only:

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<%SEARCH_SCRIPT%> Inserts the full-text search script in the page.

See also:
Using HTML Templates 475
Editing HTML templates 476
Help Windows 800
12.10.7 HTML template output conditions
You can use all of Help & Manual's standard conditional output options in HTML templates,
both your user-defined include options 453 and options based on the current output format. In
addition to this there are a few special conditional switches which are only for use in Help &
Manual's Browser-based Help output, because they are only relevant there. See the lists
below for details.
You can think of these conditions as proprietary HTML tags. They are used to enclose
blocks of HTML code in your template that you want to include in the output only if the
condition is fulfilled.
· Conditions based on the output format are only relevant in the topic page template 477 ,
which is used in HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks and Visual Studio Help /
MS Help 2.0. The TOC and keyword index templates are only used in Browser-based
Help so it does not make sense to use format-based conditions there.

Predefined HTML template conditions:

In addition to the predefined conditions listed here you can also use your own user-
defined include options 453 as conditions in HTML templates. See Conditional output in
HTML templates 487 for details on how to use the conditions.
Conditions Function of the condition

<IF_TOPIC_HEADER> True if the current topic has a header and the header is not
empty (the variable <%TOPIC_HEADER%> is not "").

<IF_PREVIOUS_PAGE> True if a previous page exists (the variable <%

HREF_PREVIOUS_PAGE%> is not empty). Used to suppress

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 831

Conditions Function of the condition

the Previous navigation button in the very first topic.

<IF_NEXT_PAGE> True if a next page exists. Used to suppress the Next
button in the very last topic.

<IF_INDEX_PAGE> True if a keyword index is included in the output. Only

relevant for Browser-based Help.
<IF_SEARCH_PAGE> True of full-text search is included in the output. Only
relevant for Browser-based Help.
<IF_FRAMES> True if Browser-based Help is exported with frames (
Dynamic HTML selected in the Navigation 589 options). This
could be used for entering a link from topic pages to your
TOC page when you select Simple HTML, for example.
Only relevant for Browser-based Help.
<IF_TOPIC_BREADCRUMB True if the <%TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS%> variable is not empty
S> (see HTML template variables 826 ). For example, this
variable is always empty in topics in the Invisible Topics
section and in top-level topics.

<IF_HTML> True when you generate Browser-based Help (HTML)

<IF_CHM> True when you generate HTML Help

<IF_HXS> True when you generate Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0

<IF_EBOOK> True when you generate e-Books

<IF_TOGGLES> True if the current topic contains one or more toggles 345
(expanding text and images).

"IFNOT" versions negate the meaning of the conditions:

Exclude Conditions Function of the exclude condition

<IFNOT_TOPIC_HEADER> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_PREVIOUS_PAGE> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_NEXT_PAGE> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<INOTF_INDEX_PAGE> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_SEARCH_PAGE> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_FRAMES> Negates the positive version of the condition.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 832 Help & Manual Online Help

Exclude Conditions Function of the exclude condition

<IFNOT_TOPIC_BREADCR Negates the positive version of the condition.

UMBS>

<IFNOT_HTML> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_CHM> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_HXS> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_EBOOK> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_TOGGLES> Negates the positive version of the condition.

See also:
User-defined include options 453
Using HTML Templates 475
Conditional output in HTML templates 487
Help Windows 800
12.10.8 Graphics in HTML templates
You can reference external graphics in HTML templates. You can use .JPG, .GIF and .PNG
images. It is best to store your external graphics in the project directory (i.e. in the same
directory as the .HMX project file) so that you can reference the graphics files without any
path information, as shown below. If your graphics are not stored in the project directory use
relative path names to reference them.

Relative path references:

The following relative path reference would access a graphics file in D:\Images
\Cartoons\ if your project directory is D:\Projects\Current Project\WidgetApp:
...
<BODY BGCOLOR=<%TOPIC_TEXT_BGCOLOR%> BACKGROUND="\..\..\Images\Cartoons\donald.
jpg">
...

The following relative path reference would access a graphics file in D:\Projects
\Current Project\WidgetApp\Graphics\Cartoons if your project directory is D:
\Projects\Current Project\WidgetApp:
...
<BODY BGCOLOR=<%TOPIC_TEXT_BGCOLOR%> BACKGROUND="Graphics\Cartoons\donald.jpg">
...

How Help & Manual processes external graphics references:

When you compile your project to an HTML-based format Help & Manual parses the
template, resolves the graphics file path, copies the file to the destination output

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 833

directory and removes any path information from the template. In the case of HTML Help
and Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0 the graphic is automatically integrated in the output
file.
However, the parser only recognizes the three HTML tags and attributes listed below. No
other image references are processed automatically.

Supported HTML tags:

Graphics referenced using the tags and attributes shown below are identified
automatically by Help & Manual and exported with your project when you compile to
HTML-based output formats. You do not need to do anything yourself to include them in
your project.
If you reference graphics in your templates in any other way you must take steps
yourself to make sure they are exported with your project. In particular, this also includes
the variant images for mouseover buttons as they are not referenced with the tags listed
below!
HTML Tag Supported image reference attributes

<BODY> BACKGROUND="imagename.jpg"
OR
STYLE="BACKGROUND: #FFFFFF url(image.jpg)"
Note that you cannot combine these two attributes! If you use the
BACKGROUND attribute in the STYLE reference at all (even if it is only for
the background color) you cannot also use the BACKGROUND attribute
outside the STYLE reference to define a background image.

These settings will work:

Background color and image attributes in style:
<body style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; background: <%
TOPIC_TEXT_BGCOLOR%> url(image.jpg);">

Background color and image tags:

<body style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;" bgcolor="<%
TOPIC_TEXT_BGCOLOR%> url(image.jpg);">" background="image.
jpg">

This setting will not work:

Style tag and separate tags combined:
<body style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; background: <%
TOPIC_TEXT_BGCOLOR%>;" background="image.jpg">

<IMG> SRC="imagename.jpg"

<TABLE> BACKGROUND="imagename.jpg"

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 834 Help & Manual Online Help

Example of a template with graphics references:

The following example is a modification of the standard topic page template 818 . It defines
a tiled image for the background of the page with the BACKGROUND attribute in the <BODY>
tag and adds some button graphics for the navigation links in the header section. The
image reference code is highlighted in red.

<%DOCTYPE%>
<html>
<head>
<title><%TOPIC_TITLE%></title>
<meta name="generator" content="Help &amp; Manual" />
<meta name="keywords" content="<%TOPIC_KEYWORDS%>" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=<%DOCCHARSET%>" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
<link type="text/css" href="<%STYLESHEET%>" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; background: <%TOPIC_TEXT_BGCOLOR%>
url(image.jpg);">

<IF_TOPIC_HEADER>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" bgcolor="<%
TOPIC_HEADER_BGCOLOR%>">
<tr valign="middle">
<td align="left">
<%TOPIC_HEADER%>
</td>
<td align="right">
<span style="font-size: 9pt">
<a href="<%HREF_DEFAULT_PAGE%>"><img src="myHomeButton.gif"></a>&nbsp;
<IF_PREVIOUS_PAGE><a href="<%HREF_PREVIOUS_PAGE%>"><img src="myBackButton.
gif"></a>&nbsp;</IF_PREVIOUS_PAGE>
<IF_NEXT_PAGE><a href="<%HREF_NEXT_PAGE%>"><img src="myNextButton.gif"></
a></IF_NEXT_PAGE>
</span>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</IF_TOPIC_HEADER>

<!-- Placeholder for topic body. -->

<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"><tr
valign="top"><td align="left">
<img src="companylogo.jpg"><br />
<%TOPIC_TEXT%>
</td></tr></table>

</body>
</html>

See also:
Using HTML Templates 475
Editing HTML templates 476
Help Windows 800

12.11 Context-Sensitive Help & Popups

Windows now supports a range of powerful context-sensitive help technologies 835 that
enable users to obtain help that is directly relevant to a specific program feature or the task
they are currently performing. Using these technologies well can make it much easier for
users to learn how to use your application. This makes your users happier and saves you

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 835

time and money by reducing the amount of support you have to provide.

What is context-sensitive help?

There are basically three kinds of context-sensitive help that you need to think about as
a help author:
· The user presses F1 and the help is displayed with a topic relevant to the
"context" in which the user pressed the key. For example, pressing F1 in an editor
could display a topic on editing, pressing F1 in a configuration dialog could display
a topic on the features of that dialog, and so on.
· Clicking on a Help button in a dialog displays a help topic describing that dialog.
· Right-clicking on a control in an application and selecting What's This? displays
a popup window with a text describing the control and what it is for. (There are also
other ways to display popup help like this but What's This? is currently the most
popular.)
The first two kinds of context-sensitive help are implemented with normal calls to specific
topics in your help. These are almost always ordinary topics that are included in the
Table of Contents (TOC). As the help author you only have to make sure that relevant
topics are available, and you must also coordinate with the programmers on the topic
IDs and/or help context numbers 849 that are to be used to access the topics from the
application. See About implementing context help 843 for some more background
information on this.
The third type, context-sensitive help with popup topics, needs a little more explaining.
See About context-sensitive popups 840 in this chapter for full details.

See also:
Context-Sensitive Help 431 (HowTo)
About context-sensitive popups 840
12.11.1 Context-sensitive help technologies
A full tutorial on implementing context-sensitive help in applications would go well beyond
the scope of this help. This topic is just provided to inform you of the various context-
sensitive help technologies that are available in Windows so that you can consider using
them in your application.

Context-sensitive help technologies available in Windows:

Windows now provides a large and powerful set of context-sensitive help tools, including:
Tooltips: Little "tips" that appear automatically when the user moves the mouse
over a control. These are usually implemented in the application itself
rather than being stored in an external help file. Most modern
programming environments support tooltips.
Even if you don't implement any other kind of context help for the
controls in your application it is always a good idea to include tooltips
with brief explanations of what the controls do. This alone can

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

836 Help & Manual Online Help

significantly reduce the number of support requests you have to deal

with!

What's This? In many modern applications you can right-click on a control and
help: select a What's This? option that displays a popup window with a help
text. This is an excellent way to familiarize your users with the controls
of your program and can also significantly reduce support requests.
There are also other ways to display popup help like this but What's
This? is currently the most popular. (Extensive use of this feature is
made in Help & Manual, by the way!)
This can be implemented with the help of popup topics created in Help
& Manual. The advantage of this is that the topics are displayed on
their own in a little independent window, without opening the entire
help.
If you are using HTML Help you can implement What's This? help
both with the native plain-text popups supported directly by HTML
Help or with an additional Winhelp file containing the popups, which
can then contain formatted text and graphics. This file can be
generated automatically by Help & Manual, see Formatted popups
with dual-mode help 436 for details.
Microsoft includes support for What's This? help in its programming
languages. The free EC Software Help Suite tools package (see
above) makes implementing What's This? help much easier in Borland
Delphi and Borland C++.

Help buttons These buttons link directly to the relevant topic in your main help file.
in dialogs: These are implemented with a direct call to the help file and the topic.
All dialogs requiring any explanation should have a button.
In addition to making your application much easier to use these buttons
also help to ensure that your users actually read your help instead of just
reaching for the phone or writing you an email!

F1 context Relevant help is displayed automatically when the user presses the F1
help: key. What help topics or features are called depends on where and
when the user presses F1 (the "context"). How this is implemented
depends on the individual programming language and it is entirely up
to the programmer. As the help author you only have to provide the
programmers with the necessary topic IDs and/or help context
numbers 849 so that they can call the appropriate topics.

Training card This is a powerful help technology developed by Microsoft and

help: supported in both HTML Help 765 and classic Winhelp 768 . It allows you
to create interactive tutorials in your help that automatically perform
actions in your application when the user clicks on hotspots and links
in your help. For example you can invoke functions, display menus,
select options and fill out data fields to show the user how to do
things.

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 Reference 837

For programming information on implementing training card help see

the MSDN HTML Help Library for HTML Help and the MSDN
Winhelp Library for Winhelp.
Although training card help is a very powerful tool it should also be
mentioned that it does have its disadvantages. It can be quite tricky to
implement and every programming language handles it differently.
It is also very important to design interactive wizards using training
card help wizards very carefully. In particular, you need to give the
user the opportunity to actually practice the procedures you are
explaining. Otherwise you can end up teaching the user how to
operate the wizard rather than the program!

Interactive There are basically two kinds of interactive wizards: "Programmed

wizards: wizards" created as part of your program and "help wizards" created
with help technologies like Winhelp and HTML Help.
We don't want to go into programmed wizards here, but they can be
very useful for guiding your users through complex configuration
tasks. For example, a help wizard could guide a user through the
process of configuring a complex program, only continuing to the next
dialog screen when all the settings have been completed correctly.
Non-programmed help wizards are simply ordinary help files, or
sections of help files, that teach users how to perform a specific task
in a systematic way. They can be integrated in your main help but it is
generally a good idea to create them as separate help files. Then they
can be called when needed and they don't get in the way when they
are no longer needed.
Simple help wizards guide the user through a task or procedure
without direct interactivity. For example, you could create a little help
project that shows the user how to configure your program. Each topic
would be a single step in the procedure, with screenshots showing
exactly what needs to be done and Next and Previous buttons for
navigation.
More advanced help wizards make use of training card help (see
above) to open dialogs and perform operations in your application. If
you use this you should always also prompt your users to try the
procedure out for themselves as well, otherwise they will only learn
how to use the wizard rather than the program itself!

Flash demos: Flash demos are not really a context-sensitive help technology but
they can be a very useful addition to interactive wizards. Help &
Manual can insert Flash demos 422 in your help files with just a few
mouse clicks.
These demos are animated movies in the Macromedia Flash® format
that show your users exactly how specific operations are performed in
your application, just as if a teacher was there demonstrating it for
them on the screen. There are now a number of software tools
available for making Flash demos. These tools are like screenshot

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 838 Help & Manual Online Help

programs, except they record a movie of what you do on your screen

instead of just a single still image. Some even allow you to include
sound
Making Flash demos can be a quite a lot of work but they are an
excellent way of showing beginners how to do things. It is not a good
idea to include them in the main help because users generally don't
need to view them more than a couple of times. It is best to use them
in separate help wizards that users only run when they want to learn
how to perform a specific task.

See also:
Using Context-Sensitive Help 431
Creating popup topics 194
12.11.2 About popup topics
Popup topics 194 are created in the Invisible Topics section because they are never included
in the TOC (Table of Contents). Their name describes their function: instead of being
displayed in the help viewer they are displayed in little "popup windows" that are closed
again when the user clicks after reading their contents.
Popup topics can be displayed with links from within your help file and by calling them
directly from applications.

The two uses for popup topics:

Within the Inside the help file popups are used to display small items of
help file: information that you want to make available but you don’t want to
include again and again in the help text.
A good example of this would be a definition of a technical term that is
used frequently in your text. Instead of repeating the definition again
and again you would turn the term into a link that links to a popup
topic.
When the user clicks on the link the contents of the topic are displayed
in a small popup box, without leaving the current topic.

Context-sensit HTML Help and Winhelp popup topics (but not JavaScript popups 199 )
ive help: can also be called directly from applications. When they are called in
this way they are displayed on their own, without displaying the help
file, and closed again immediately when the user clicks on them. This
makes them a useful context-sensitive help tool for describing controls
and functions in programs. See About context-sensitive popups 840 for
more details.

The pros and cons of using popups:

Popups are definitely useful for context-sensitive help and there they do not cause any

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 Reference 839

problems. It is tempting to also make extensive use of them in normal help but there are
a couple of issues you need to think about before doing so:
· Using popups makes it more difficult to produce a printed version of your help. The
user can’t display popups in a PDF or a printed manual so to produce the printed
version you need to provide different ways of accessing the same information, for
example by creating different versions of the text and using conditional output 451 .
This can be quite a lot of work and can get quite complicated to maintain.
· Popups reduce the multi-output compatibility of your source. Popups work
differently in Winhelp and HTML Help, and in Browser-based Help (HTML) you can
only use JavaScript popups 199 . Popups do not work at all in Word RTF, PDF and
printed manuals.
· If you want to produce multiple format versions of your help project from the same
source it’s best not to use popups too much because they can significantly
increase the work involved in maintaining the multiple versions.

Where popup topics are supported:

Popups are not supported in all the output formats generated by Help & Manual, and the
way popups are handled and the options available also vary from format to format. The
following table provides a summary of where and how you can use popups:
NEWS: Winhelp is no longer supported in Windows Vista!
Please note that support for the Winhelp format has been completely
discontinued in Microsoft Windows Vista. Even if your applications run under
Vista, any calls to Winhelp help will simply produce an error message. This
also applies to dual-mode popups in HTML Help. We thus strongly recommend
that you start transitioning to an alternative help format as soon as possible.
See here for details

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 840 Help & Manual Online Help

Output Format Supported Popup Types Where Supported

HTML Help (. · Plain-text popups integrated in Plain-text and formatted dual-
CHM): the main help file. mode Winhelp popups are
· Formatted dual-mode 436 popups supported both in the help
stored in an external Winhelp . text and as context-sensitive
HLP file. popups in applications.
· Formatted JavaScript popups 199 Formatted JavaScript popups
stored in the main help file. can only be used in the help
text. They are not supported
for context-sensitive help.
Winhelp (.HLP): · Fully-formatted Winhelp popups Winhelp popups are supported
stored in the main help file. both in the help text and as
context-sensitive popups in
applications.
Browser-based · Fully-formatted JavaScript JavaScript popups can only be
HTML popups 199 integrated in the used in help topics. You
(.HTM): individual HTML files. cannot link to them from your
application.
Help & Manual · Fully-formatted popups with Only available within eBooks.
eBooks: graphics, fonts, emphasis (bold, eBooks do not support context
italics etc.) and hyperlinks (topic calls of any kind from
and Internet links). applications.
Adobe PDF and · Popups are not supported.
printed user Popup links are automatically
manuals: converted to plain text.
Word RTF: · Popups are not supported.
Popup links are automatically
converted to plain text.

See also:
Context-Sensitive Help 431 (HowTo)
Conditions and Customized Output 451
Using JavaScript popups 199
12.11.3 About context-sensitive popups
A context-sensitive popup is a popup displayed directly from within your application (right-
click on any control in Help & Manual and select What's This? to see an example).
The first thing to understand is that context-sensitive popups are actually the same topics as
the normal popup topics displayed within your help. In your Help & Manual project the same
popup topics in the Invisible Topics section can be used for both purposes. The main
difference is how they are called:
· Normal popup topics are displayed within the help when the user clicks on a link in a
topic – for example to display a definition or an explanation.
· Context-sensitive popup topics are called directly by the application and displayed
in little windows of their own. This is done without displaying the rest of the help at all.

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 Reference 841

Only the little popup is displayed, and it is closed again as soon as the user clicks on it.
In addition to this there are settings in the Project Properties that control how popups are
handled in HTML Help and Browser-based Help. (See below for more details.)

Example of a context-sensitive popup:

The example on the left shows a popup topic
displayed in an application. It is displayed on its
own, without the main help file.
Exactly the same popup could also be displayed
within the help with a popup link. It would look
almost identical – in the help it would just usually
A context-sensitive popup in an
application.
be white instead of yellow. (This is dictated by the
help viewer and cannot be controlled from within
Help & Manual.)

· The example above uses dual-mode help 436 , which makes it possible to use popups
with formatted text in HTML Help. This is why it is possible for the popup to have a title
with bold text. However, note that Windows Vista does not include support for Winhelp
, so if Vista is important for you don't use dual-mode help any more.
· Help & Manual 4 also supports a new technology called JavaScript popups 199 for
formatted popups in HTML Help and Browser-based Help. JavaScript popups cannot
be used for context-sensitive help however.

About creating context-sensitive popups:

To create context-sensitive popups basically all you need to do is create popup topics 194
in the Invisible Topics section and provide the necessary topic IDs and/or help context
numbers to the programmers so that they can make the calls. See About implementing
context help 843 for more information on this.
It is also important to understand that only Winhelp and HTML Help can be used for
context-sensitive popups called directly from applications and displayed in the
applications. See Popups in Winhelp and HTML Help 845 for more details on how popups
are handled in these output formats.
Finally, if you are writing context-sensitive popups for an application you may have to
produce a lot of popups. You can save yourself a lot of work by generating your
context-sensitive popups automatically 435 .

In Winhelp:
In Winhelp you don't need to configure anything to generate context-sensitive
popups. The popup topics in the Invisible Topics section will be integrated in the
main help file and support formatted text, graphics and links. Context-sensitive calls
are made directly to the topics in the main help file.

In HTML Help:
In HTML Help you can choose from four different popup modes. Only two of these
modes can be used for context-sensitive popups called from applications, so you

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842 Help & Manual Online Help

must choose one of these modes:

· Go to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Popup Topics 567 to set the popup
mode for HTML Help.

Modes supporting context-sensitive popups:

Text-only This is HTML Help's "native" popup mode. The popups are stored
popups: in the main help file in an internal plain text-file, which is called
CSHelp.txt by default (you can change this). Calls are made to this
file using the standard popup calling syntax of the HTML Help API.
No graphics, links or formatted text (bold, italics etc.) are
supported.

Dual-mode If you select this mode Help & Manual exports all the popup topics
help: in the Invisible Topics section to a separate Winhelp .HLP file.
Topics in Invisible Topics with other help window types (set in their
Topic Options tabs) are not included in this file. Calls to the topics
are made to this .HLP file using the standard Winhelp popup calling
syntax.
Tip:
You can achieve exactly the same result by creating a separate
Winhelp project for your popup topics. Just create your popup
topics in the Invisible Topics section, leave the TOC section empty
and compile as Winhelp. Here too, the calls to the .HLP file from
your application are made using the standard Winhelp popup
calling syntax.
You can use this approach to use JavaScript popups in your help
and Winhelp popups for context calls for your application. See here
437 for details.

Modes not supporting context-sensitive popups:

HTML-encoded This mode outputs popup topics as normal topics that are
popups: displayed in the main window of the HTML Help viewer. They are
basically just invisible topics using the template of the popup
window type. This mode cannot be used for context-sensitive
popups called from applications because the topics are not really
popups, they are normal topics.

JavaScript This new popup mode uses JavaScript coding to generate popups
popups: that can contain formatted text, links, graphics and even videos
and animations. These popups also support graphical effects and
transitions (fade-in etc.), and can be used in both HTML Help and
Browser-based Help. However, JavaScript popups also cannot be
used as context-sensitive popups called from applications. See
Using JavaScript popups 199 for details.

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 Reference 843

See also:
Creating popup topics 194
Using Context-Sensitive Help 431
IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords 849
12.11.4 About implementing context help
Windows now has a number of different context-sensitive help technologies 835 . Generally,
implementing these technologies is the job of the programmers. They must write the calls
that access specific topics in your help, and the syntax of these calls depends both on the
help format (Winhelp or HTML Help) and the programming language they are using.
Context-sensitive help is only fully supported in Winhelp ( .HLP) and HTML
Help (.CHM). However, it is also possible to make limited context calls to the
Browser-based Help generated by Help & Manual. See Context calls to
Browser-based Help for details 438 .

Free tutorials and context-sensitive help tools for programmers:

How the context-sensitive help technologies described here are implemented varies
depending on the programming language you are using. A collection of free tutorials for
programmers is available on the tutorials page at the EC Software website. These
tutorials cover implementing context-sensitive help and interfacing with the help files
generated by Help & Manual in Delphi, Visual Studio (VB and C++), MS Access, Visual
Objects, Clarion, APL, Visual Foxpro and REALbasic.
You may also be interested in EC Software Help Suite (EHS), a free package of tools
for interfacing with help for Borland Delphi and Borland C++ programmers. EHS is
particularly useful for implementing all kinds of context-sensitive help and ships with the
full source code. It is available on the Delphi resources page at the EC Software
website, where you can also download a comprehensive free tutorial on integrating help
in Delphi applications.

Your job as the help author

There are a number of things that you need to do as the help author to help make
context-sensitive help work:

Topic IDs and context numbers for the programmers

Your programmers need a way to access the topics in the help. This applies equally
to topics in the main help that bring up the entire help and popup topics that are
accessed individually.
Programs access the topics in your help with the topic IDs and/or the help context
numbers 210 , both of which are stored in the Topic Options tab of each topic in Help &
Manual. When you are planning your help project you need to talk to the
programmers and find out whether which they want to use, and if they need to use
special formats. (Some programming languages require special formats for topic IDs
or specific number ranges for help context numbers.)

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

844 Help & Manual Online Help

Topic ID If your programmers require special topic ID prefixes you can

prefixes: apply these to the IDs of new topics automatically. Just go to
Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Topic IDs &
Help Context 553 and insert the prefix you want to use in the Topic
ID Prefix field.

Auto- Help & Manual can also generate and apply help context numbers
generating help to new topics automatically. Go to Project > Project Properties >
context Common Properties > Topic IDs & Help Context 553 to set up this
numbers: feature.

Applying help You can also apply help context numbers to existing topics and
context import "help context map files" with lists of context numbers
numbers to provided by your programmers. See The Help Context Tool 624 for
existing topics: details.

Changing topic Don't despair if you discover that you've been using the wrong
IDs: topic ID format! You can edit your topic IDs at any time, Help &
Manual updates all internal links automatically. See Changing
topic IDs 214 for details.

Planning your structure for context-sensitive help

Before you start writing you also need to plan the kind of context-sensitive help you
are going to use. For example, if the dialogs in the application are going to have a
Help button you need to have appropriate topics for those buttons to link to from all
the relevant dialogs. This may sound trivial but it's quite easy to forget!

Planning the use of context-sensitive popup topics

Context-sensitive popup topics are exactly the same as popup topics used within
your help. The only difference is that they are accessed directly by the application
instead of with a link from a help topic.
When they are used in this way they are displayed in their own little window that is
closed after the user has read the contents, without displaying the entire help. They
are most commonly used for What's This? 836 help 836 , but they can also be accessed
by buttons etc. (To see an example of this just right-click on any button or control in
Help & Manual and select What's This? in the context menu.)
If you are going to use context-sensitive popup topics these require some careful
planning. Among other things, you need a full list of all the controls and other
program elements for which you need context-sensitive popups, along with all the
topic IDs and/or help context numbers that are going to be used to access them.

Auto-generating your context-sensitive popup topics

Since there are generally a lot of these topics creating them manually can be a lot of
work, and you will probably start to wish that you could generate them automatically.
Well, you can!
All you need to do is get a "help context map file" from the programmer with a list of
the topic IDs and help context numbers (if applicable). Once you have this you can

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 845

automatically generate all the popup topics in Help & Manual, together with the
matching IDs and help context numbers.
· See Auto-generating context-sensitive popups 435 for details.

See also:
Using Context-Sensitive Help 431
The Help Context Tool 624
Creating popup topics 194
Changing topic IDs 214
12.11.5 Popups in Winhelp and HTML Help
There are a couple of things you need to bear in mind when editing popup topics because of
the different ways they are handled by HTML Help and Winhelp.
In addition to Winhelp and HTML Help popups are also supported in Help &
Manual eBooks. This format also supports popups with formatted text,
graphics and links. However, these features can all only be used within the
eBook. No context-sensitive features are supported.

NEWS: Winhelp is no longer supported in Windows Vista!

Please note that support for the Winhelp format has been completely
discontinued in Microsoft Windows Vista. Even if your applications run under
Vista, any calls to Winhelp help will simply produce an error message. This
also applies to dual-mode popups in HTML Help. We thus strongly recommend
that you start transitioning to an alternative help format as soon as possible.
See here for details

Popup topics in Winhelp:

In Winhelp popup topics have all the features of regular topics except that they do not
have a header. In fact, they are regular topics, just without headers. This means that
they can contain formatted text, graphics, tables (note that Winhelp cannot display table
grid lines) and even macros and links.
You can create links both from regular topics to popup topics and from popup topics to
regular topics. Theoretically, you can also create links between popup topics but this is
not recommended because of uncorrected bugs in the Winhelp viewer.
All the features of Winhelp popups are also supported when they are used as
context-sensitive popups 840 .

Popup topics in HTML Help:

HTML Help's native popup topics are plain-text only. They do not support anything
except plain text. This means that even if you enter formatted text in the popup topics in
the Help & Manual editor (which is possible because it is needed for other output
formats) all formatting, links, graphics, tables, table contents etc. will be stripped when
you compile to HTML Help.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 846 Help & Manual Online Help

Information for application programmers:

When you export to HTML Help with native, plain-text popups Help & Manual stores
the popup text topics in an internal text file in the HTML Help .CHM file. By default
this file is called CSHelp.txt, but you can change this file name in Project > Project
Properties > HTML Help > Popup Topics 567 . When your application calls makes
context calls to plain-text popups you must include this file name in the call.
Formatted popups with dual-mode help:
Even Microsoft's help authors are not very happy with HTML Help's plain-text
popups. In many of their own applications they use a separate Winhelp file for their
context-sensitive popups, even though they use HTML Help for the main help. Help &
Manual can produce this kind of "dual-mode" help automatically, generating an
HTML Help .CHM file for the main help and a Winhelp .HLP file for the popups. Your
application must then use standard Winhelp calls to the separate .HLP file to access
the context-sensitive popup topics.
· See Formatted popups with dual-mode help 436 for details.
Formatted JavaScript popups:
Help & Manual introduces a powerful new JavaScript popup mode that can be used
in both HTML Help and Browser-based Help.
· See Using JavaScript popups 199 for details.

Controlling the width of popup topics:

In both Winhelp and HTML Help the width of popup windows is controlled by the help
viewer on the basis of the amount of text and the user's screen width. Since this system
was designed a long time ago it does not allow for modern computers with wide-format
screens and multiple monitors. When normal popups are displayed on these computers
the popups can be much too wide, which looks terrible.
There are a couple of simple tricks for solving this problem, which are described in
Creating popup topics 196 in the Basic Procedures section.

See also:
Creating popup topics 194
Using Context-Sensitive Help 431
Using JavaScript popups 199
12.11.6 About map files
The compilers for many modern programming languages have facilities for automatically
generating special text files called "map files" containing the topic IDs and/or help context
numbers for the components and controls used in the program. These files can save you a
lot of work in Help & Manual.

Generating missing topics and context numbers:

Help & Manual can use these files both to assign missing help context numbers to

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 Reference 847

existing topics and to automatically generate missing topics with the topic IDs and help
context numbers. This second capability is particularly useful for generating the context-
sensitive popup topics used to document program components controls and controls
with the right-click What's This? function and other similar functions. See Auto-
generating context-sensitive popups 435 and The Help Context Tool 624 for details.

Map file syntax:

These files have a very simple syntax. Each line simply contains a #define instruction
followed by the topic ID and the help context number.

Example:
#define IDH_DEFAULT 100001
#define IDH_OK_BTN 100002
#define IDH_CANCEL_BTN 100003
#define IDH_CLOSE 100004
#define IDH_HELP_BTN 100005
#define IDH_APPLY_BTN 100006
#define IDH_APP_HMB 100010
#define IDH_WHAT_IS_THIS_CMD 100011
#define IDH_WHAT_IS_THIS_POPUP 100012

Restrictions of map files:

Using map files to apply help context numbers to existing topics is very straightforward.
However, there are two basic restrictions when you are using map files to generate
topics that do not yet exist in your help project:

You cannot generate topic captions

Since the map file syntax only includes the topic ID and the help context number you
cannot include captions (i.e. the names of the topics in the TOC) for the topics in the
map file and you cannot use the map file to generate captions. All topics generated
from map files use the topic ID as the caption.

You can only generate topics in the Invisible Topics section

This second restriction follows from the first. Since auto-generated topics cannot
have real captions they are always generated in the Invisible Topics section and
defined as popup topics in their Topic Options tabs (the default for topics in this
section).
This is generally not a problem since the primary purpose of this function is to auto-
generate context-sensitive popup topics for documenting program components.
If you need to use the function to generate topics in the TOC you must drag them to
the TOC with the mouse after generating them and edit their captions manually.

See also:
Auto-generating context-sensitive topics 435
The Help Context Tool 624
Using Context-Sensitive Help 431

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 848 Help & Manual Online Help

12.11.7 About invisible topics

The main difference between a normal topic and an invisible topic (topics created in the
Invisible Topics 193 section) is that invisible topics do not have entries in the Table of
Contents (TOC). They can be linked to, accessed and referenced just like normal topics, but
they are not included in the TOC so it is not possible to browse to them directly.
Both Winhelp and HTML Help include invisible topics that are not popup
topics in their full-text search. This means that users will be able to find and
display all invisible topics except popups by searching for them.
The Invisible Topics section is most commonly used for popup topics, which is why topics
created here are also automatically defined as popups with the help window type setting in
their Topic Options tabs. However, there are also a number of other uses for invisible topics
that are worth considering:

Other uses for invisible topics:

Topics for display in external windows:
In Winhelp and HTML Help you can display topics in external windows. This is
effectively a "fully-featured popup", because it opens a topic in a new instance of the
help viewer while leaving the current help viewer on the screen. Topics displayed like
this are normally also created in the Invisible Topics section to prevent them from
appearing in the TOC. See Using external windows 473 for details.

Source topics for embedded topics:

In larger help projects you often need to use the same passage of text again and
again. One of the easiest ways to do this is to use Help & Manual's embedded topics
feature, which can "injects" a topic into any location in another topic.
To use this feature you create topics containing the text you need to repeat and then
embed these topics in the locations where you want the text to appear. This allows
you to include different text before and after the embedded text in each location.
Since you don't want to include the source topics in the TOC these also need to be
created in the Invisible Topics section and excluded from your final output (they are
not needed after the copies have been made). See Using embedded topics 222 for
details.

Normal topics you want to exclude from the TOC:

In some circumstances you may want to exclude some normal topics from the TOC,
so that your users can only access them by clicking on links in other topics. This can
also be achieved by creating the topics in the Invisible Topics section. Then you just
change each topic's help window type to Main in the Topic Options tab. (If you use
any other window type the topics may also be displayed in external windows 473 .)
These topics will then only be accessible via links, but when you link to them they will
be displayed normally in the help viewer.
This possibility should be used with caution. If the information is important it
is generally a good idea to include the topics in the TOC, otherwise many
users will fail to find it when they need it.

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 Reference 849

Support for invisible topics in Help & Manual's output formats:

There are restrictions on the use of invisible topics in some output formats (Visual Studio
Help / MS Help 2.0 is the same as HTML Help here):
Winhelp: Full support for invisible topics

HTML Help: Full support for invisible topics

Visual Studio Full support for invisible topics

Help:

Browser-based Invisible topics are exported as normal HTML files. By default only
Help: invisible topics that are linked to from topics included in the TOC
are exported. However, you can export all invisible topics by
selecting the Export all topics listed in "Invisible Topics" option in
the Compile Help File 663 dialog.

PDF and printed Invisible topics are completely ignored in these formats. Since the
manuals: formats are entirely based on the Table of Contents invisible topics
have no defined location and cannot be included.

eBooks: Full support for invisible topics except for context-sensitive help.
The eBooks format provides no support at all for context-sensitive
help.

See also:
Creating invisible topics 193
Using embedded topics 222
Using secondary windows 471
Using external windows 473

12.12 Topic IDs, Context Numbers and Keywords

Topic IDs, context numbers and keywords are grouped together in this chapter because
they are all used for locating things in your help files.
Topic IDs and context numbers are used as the "addresses" of topics, both for links within
your help files and for context-sensitive calls to your help file from applications.
Keywords are used for generating index entries, which are also hyperlinks to topics in
electronic help files. In addition to this there are also special keywords called "A-keywords"
can also be used to create other kinds of links, including See Also... links to related topics
and links between different help files.

12.12.1 About topic IDs and anchors

Topic IDs:
Every topic in your help project has a unique alphanumeric topic ID, which you can view

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850 Help & Manual Online Help

by clicking on the topic's Topic Options tab above the editor pane. The topic ID is
required because it is the unique identifier of each topic. Without the topic ID neither
Help & Manual nor any electronic help system can find the topic.
Topic IDs are used as the "addresses" for accessing topics within your help, both via the
TOC and via hyperlinks. In addition to this they are also used as the addresses for calls
to topics in your help from applications, both on their own and in combination with help
context numbers 852 .
For information on making these calls to different help formats see the documentation of
your programming language and the tutorials for programmers available on the EC
Software website.

Topic ID properties:
Maximum topic In Help & Manual 4 and above topic IDs can be up to 256 characters
ID length: long.

Permitted Spaces and a number of special characters (\ / : * ? # = + % ! @ [ ] >

characters: " | , < > & and ')are not permitted in topic IDs and Help & Manual will
display a warning message if you try to enter them. In addition to this,
however, it is actually advisable only use a..z, A..Z, 0..9, the underline
character _ and the $ character in topic IDs.

Changing topic IDs:

Help & Manual allows you to edit topic IDs at any time. All internal links within your
project are updated automatically when you do this. However, remember that
changing topic IDs may break links from other projects and calls to the topics from
applications.
· For more information see Changing topic IDs and context numbers 214 .

Topic IDs and HTML output files:

Topic IDs are used for creating the names of the HTML files generated for your
topics by Help & Manual. This is also how they are used as addresses in the HTML-
based output formats – links and calls to them simply access the HTML files
containing the topics.
This applies both for the visible files generated in Browser-based Help and the
"internal" files used in HTML Help (here the HTML topic files are hidden inside the .
CHM help file, as though they were inside a directory).
In both cases the file name is created by converting the topic ID to all lower case
characters and adding the file extension. In HTML Help this extension is always .htm.
In Browser-based Help the default is also .htm but you can change this in Project >
Project Properties > Browser-based Help > HTML Export Options 601 .

Anchors:
Anchors are named "jump targets" that you can insert in your topics so that you can
create links to specific locations within topics. They can be used both for hyperlinks

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 Reference 851

within your help project and for calls to your help topics made from application
programs.
Anchors are entered with Insert > Topic Anchor. The anchors stored in each topic are
listed in the topic's Topic Options tab in the Anchor in Topic: field. This field always
contains at least one anchor called (Top of Page), which is the standard jump target for
links without anchors.
· For details see Anchors - jump targets 305 .
Maximum In Help & Manual 4 and above anchor IDs can be up to 256 characters
anchor ID long.
length:

Permitted Spaces and a number of special characters (\ / : * ? # = + % ! @ [ ] >

characters: " | , < > & and ')are not permitted in anchor IDs and Help & Manual will
display a warning message if you try to enter them. In addition to this,
however, it is actually advisable only use a..z, A..Z, 0..9, the underline
character _ and the $ character in topic IDs.

Where not Links to anchors are not supported in external windows 473 in HTML
supported: Help.

Anchors with context numbers and keywords

Help & Manual allows you to assign both help context numbers and keywords to
anchors. This makes it possible to make help calls to anchors from application
programs and to create index entries that take the user to a specific location in a
topic instead of to the top of the topic containing the keyword.
· For details see Assigning help context numbers 213 and Using keywords with
anchors 379 .

Syntax for browser links to anchors in topics

You can create ordinary links from web pages to anchors in your Browser-based
Help topic pages. However, the syntax for these links is slightly different from the
standard HTML syntax for linking to anchors:

index.html?topicname.htm#anchorname

Note that Help & Manual 4 now uses the standard # hash character as the separator
between the HTML topic file name and the anchor name instead of the comma that
was required in Help & Manual 3!
· See Anchors - jump targets 305 for details.

See also:
Assigning topic IDs 210
Changing topic IDs and context numbers 214
Anchors - jump targets 305

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 852 Help & Manual Online Help

12.12.2 About help context numbers

Help context numbers are a second unique numeric identifier for each topic (the first and
main identifier is the topic ID 849 ). Unlike topic IDs context numbers are optional – you can
use them if you want, but you don't have to.

Introduction:
Like topic IDs context numbers can be viewed and edited in the Topic Options tab of
each topic. They are displayed in the Help Context Number: field. You can enter and edit
them there, but they can also be assigned automatically. See Assigning help context
numbers 213 for details.
Help context numbers were introduced with Winhelp as the main way of making
application calls to help topics. Many programmers and programming languages still use
them but they have actually become less popular in recent years. Since they are numeric
only they are not very "human-friendly" and it is quite easy for a programmer to make a
call to the wrong help context number and not notice it.
Most modern programming languages can make calls directly to topic IDs 849 in both
HTML Help and Winhelp without using context numbers at all. Topic IDs are fully
alphanumeric and can be up to 256 characters long, which means that they can
descriptive and easily human-readable.

Help context number range:

Help context numbers are stored as unsigned 4-byte integers. This means you can enter
values between 0 and 4294967295. This gives you nearly 4.3 billion unique numbers,
which should be just about enough for most help projects.

Help formats that use context numbers:

Help context numbers are only used for calls from applications to topics in your help in
Winhelp and HTML Help. They are not used for internal hyperlinks within your help
project.

Context numbers in anchors:

In addition to context numbers in topics Help & Manual also allows you to assign help
context numbers to anchors 305 . This makes it possible to make direct context number
application help calls to defined points within topics instead of just opening the topic at
the top.

Compatibility and call syntax:

Help & Manual's HTML Help and Winhelp output is generated directly by the Microsoft
compilers and is 100% compatible with all HTML Help and Winhelp standards. This also
includes the format and syntax of the help context numbers. If your project contains help
context numbers you can make calls to them with the standard syntax of the Winhelp
and HTML Help APIs.
For details on making calls to help context numbers see the documentation Microsoft

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 Reference 853

Help Workshop for Winhelp and Microsoft HTML Help Workshop for HTML Help. In
addition to this you can also find some useful tutorials for programmers on the EC
Software website that explain how to interface to Winhelp and HTML Help with range of
common programming languages.

See also:
Assigning help context numbers 212
Changing topic IDs and help context numbers 214
12.12.3 About index keywords
Index keywords are a list of words associated with a topic that are used to generate the
keyword indexes in the output formats that support them (all formats except Word RTF).
Keywords are entered and viewed in the Keywords: field of each topic's Topic Options tab.
In addition to this you can also view and manage the resulting index interactively by right-
clicking in the Index tab in the Table of Contents / Index pane.
· See Keywords and Indexes 369 for details on using these features.

Keywords and sub-keywords:

Keywords can have sub-keywords, which are also described as child keywords. This is a
standard feature of all indexes in both printed and electronic form. For example, an entry
called Indexes might have the following kind of child keywords:
Indexes
about
editing
editing, in teams
organizing
problems

One level of sub-keywords only:

Indexes cannot have more than one level of sub-keywords. This is a restriction of the
output formats, not of Help & Manual. All the supported output formats only have one
level of sub-keywords and Help & Manual is thus also limited to one level.

Choosing relevant keywords:

Producing a good index is not a process that can be automated. It is an art, not a
science, and needs to be done manually. There is simply no alternative to the selection
of individual relevant keywords in each topic by the author. For example, an index
including all occurrences of all the words in your help would be worse than useless,
because it would make it impossible to find anything relevant. You need to examine each
topic individually and make individual decisions whether a word merits being added to
the index or not.
It may be relevant to list every single reference to an author's name, for the sake of
completeness. However, in a help file you will not want to list every single reference to
most subjects. For example, index entries that refer to passing mentions in introductory

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 854 Help & Manual Online Help

chapters will simply waste the user's time. When users click on an index entry they want
to find information that they can use, and that should be the criterion for including a term
in the index.

See also:
Keywords and Indexes 369
12.12.4 About A-keywords
A-keywords, which are also referred to as "associative keywords" (that's what the A stands
for) or "A-link keywords", are quite a mystery to many help authors. They are actually not as
complicated as many people believe, but they tend to get neglected because most people
believe they are too difficult to understand or use.

The essence of A-keywords:

The following brief list describes the main features and capabilities of A-keywords.

A-keywords are a Microsoft help technology

First and foremost it is important to understand that A-keywords are a Microsoft help
technology that is only available in Winhelp and HTML Help. Their functionality is not
available in any other output format.

A-keywords are invisible

A-keywords are essentially exactly the same as ordinary keywords, which are often
referred to as "K-keywords" or "K-link keywords". The only real difference is that they
are never displayed in an index. This might seem strange at first – what good is a
keyword that nobody can see?

A-keywords are used for "associative" linking

A-keywords are not used for indexes, they are used for creating "associative" links.
Instead of linking directly to a topic you use what is called an "A-link macro", which
generates a list of links to all topics that contain one or more specified A-keywords.
Hence the name "associative": the links are only generated for topics for which the
"association" with the keyword is true. Also, the links are not pre-defined by the help
author, they are generated at runtime, when the user views the help.
When the user clicks on an A-link macro link the help viewer searches all the topics
in the help, including all topics in external help files in modular help systems 492 , and
returns a list of links to all topics containing the specified A-keywords.

A-keywords are "soft" and "conditional"

This means that you don't have to "hard code" links to specific topic addresses. Only
links to topics containing the A-keyword (or keywords) at runtime are displayed, and
this makes some interesting functions possible (see below).

A-keywords have their limitations

All this being said, A-keywords are not really the greatest thing since sliced bread.
They are extremely useful for creating links to external help files in modular projects.

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 Reference 855

However, as you will discover yourself when you try, it is difficult or impossible to use
them to create genuinely meaningful "See also" lists.
The problem is that the inclusion of a simple keyword is too mechanical to be able to
provide a real basis for relevance in all but the most simple and technical texts. Also,
managing your A-keywords and their relevance is actually much more difficult than
simply deciding yourself which topics are really relevant to the current topic. You will
either end up overwhelming the user with too many links that are not really relevant,
or you will miss the relevant links.
Just like indexes, really good "See also" lists need to be made by hand. It is one of
the cases where there is no alternative to hard work if you want quality.

More information about A-keywords

If you are interested in more background information about the technology and uses
of A-keywords the best place to start is the website www.helpware.net. Be warned,
however, that the information provided there will be easiest to understand if you have
experience with developing HTML Help and Winhelp files manually with Microsoft's
Help Workshop and HTML Help Workshop!

The main uses of A-keywords

There quite a few technical uses for A-keywords but the main purposes in normal help
files are for automated generation of "See also" lists and for links between separate help
files in modular help systems 492 .

"See also" lists:

You can use A-keywords to create "See Also" links that automatically display link lists
of related topics when the user clicks on them. The list includes all topics found
containing the A-keywords specified in the A-link macro definition. These links work
in both individual help files and modular help systems 492 consisting of multiple help
files.
One of the most interesting features of this function is that you don't have to specify
which help files you want to look in. The help viewer will automatically search all
available help files that are part of the modular help system for the A-keyword. This
means that it will automatically include topics from modules that are available from
the list and exclude topics from modules that are not available.
· See Using A-Keywords 382 for details on how to make your own "See also" lists.

Links between help modules:

You can also A-keywords to create links between modular help files 492 . The
advantage of this method is that if the target file is not available at runtime the link is
not dead. Instead, the user sees an alternative topic from the current help file. If the
target file is available the user sees a dialog in which he or she can choose the topic
from the target file or the alternative topic.
· See Using A-keywords 383 for details on how to make associative links between
help modules.

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 856 Help & Manual Online Help

See also:
Keywords and Indexes 369
Using A-keywords 382

12.13 Graphics, Videos and OLE Objects

This section contains some useful background information on using graphics, multimedia
files and OLE objects in your help projects.

12.13.1 Graphic formats and file size

The main factor that increases the size of your help files is the use of big graphics with too
many colors. Compared to images text hardly takes up any space at all.
Contrary to what you might imagine, the image format you use also doesn't make much
difference to the size of help files. This because all the image files output by Help & Manual
are compressed automatically. If you use BMP files they are converted to the appropriate
formats and compressed automatically, and the other formats you can use are already
compressed. In fact, we recommend using .BMP files for best results and best compression.

How to keep your graphics and help files small:

Here are some basic rules of thumb for minimizing the size of your graphics and output
files:

Always use images with 256 colors or less for screenshots.

This rule probably reduces file size more than anything else. You will never need
more than 256 colors for screenshots unless your program contains graphical
components with complex color gradients.
Both Help & Manual's integrated screen capture utility and the more powerful
external TNT program do a good job of reducing the number of colors. If you don't
use drop shadows (these don't look so good with less than 256 colors) you can often
get by with 16 colors, which saves even more space. The only exception here is the
Windows XP themes interface with all its 3D elements. Here too, however, you can
often get away with 16 colors, so it's always worth a try.

Don't use JPEGs or PNGs for screenshots.

Help & Manual allows you to insert compressed .JPG, .PNG and .GIF images directly
into your projects for HTML and HTML Help output. However, .JPG and .PNG images
are always TrueColor, so it's not possible to reduce the number of colors to 256 or
less. Also, the compression used in JPEG images often makes screenshots look bad
because it creates ugly "artefacts" at the sharp borders between screen elements.
It's better to use uncompressed .BMP images with 256 colors or less and allow Help
& Manual's Image Conversion function to handle the compression at compile time.
· The Image Conversion settings are in the HTML Export Options 573 , which can
be accessed in both the HTML Help and the Browser-based Help sections of
Project > Project Properties.

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Avoid conversion of photos reduced to 256 colors:

Modern graphics programs can do an excellent job of reducing photos to 256 colors
with little or no reduction in visible quality, which also saves space. However, doing
this can cause a problem in Help & Manual if you save the images as .BMP:
If your Image Conversion 573 settings are set to convert images with 256 colors or less
to .GIF your photos will also be converted to .GIF if they are stored in .BMP files. This
can make them look bad, with nasty posterizing effects, and it can also increase the
size of your files because continuous-tone images compress poorly in the .GIF
format.
If you get bad results with 256-color photos saved as .BMP try saving them in the
.PNG format with your graphics program and then insert them directly into your Help
& Manual project. This will ensure that they will not be converted.
Alternatively, if you have a program with a good JPEG optimizer like PaintShop Pro
or Photoshop, you can also save directly as .JPG files which you can then insert
directly in your project. The photos will then be TrueColor, but they may still be better
and smaller.

Keep the dimensions of your graphics small.

Smaller graphics take up much less space. Do you really need to include a full-size
screenshot of the main program window? If the user is reading your help the
program you are describing is already on the screen, and full-size screenshots also
make the help difficult to navigate. A 75% or even 50% size version is normally
plenty as a visual reference.
You can shrink the screenshot and add attractive callouts and other features with
Impict 621 , the full-featured screenshot editing program bundled with Help & Manual.
You can also make screenshots at reduced sizes directly with Help & Manual's
integrated screen capture utility 615 or with the stand-alone TNT screen capture
program.

Don't use photographs unless you have to.

Nothing bloats your help files like lots of full color photos. If you do use them keep
them small and if you are producing HTML Help or Browser-based Help make sure
that your Image Conversion settings are set to Convert 256 colors to GIF and True
Color to JPEG. While you are at it, experiment with the JPEG compression setting in
the same place; your pictures may be smaller and look just as good with a lower
quality setting. A value between 70 and 80 is generally fine for most purposes.
Photos also look good in .PNG but this format generally (though not always) takes up
more space than JPEGs. Winhelp (.HLP) only understands bitmaps so the only way
to keep file size down there is small graphics and fewer colors. For example, almost
all photographs look just as good with 16-bit color (65,536 colors) as with 24 bits (16
million colors).
· The Image Conversion settings are in HTML Export Options 573 , which can be
accessed in both the HTML Help and the Browser-based Help sections of Project >
Project Properties.

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 858 Help & Manual Online Help

Don't show the entire image if you don't have to.

Areas of an image that are a single color take up very little space when the image is
compressed and parts of an image that are not there take up no space. Quite often
you can save space by cropping your images to remove unnecessary information,
and this also focuses user attention on what is important.
You can also crop your screenshots with special effects like Ripped Paper Edge in
the Screen Capture 615 tool and the Impict 621 screenshot editing program. This both
saves space and makes your screenshots look better!

Tips and tricks for graphics formats:

Adding JPGs, PNGs and GIFs to your projects directly:
Help & Manual inserts .JPG, .PNG and .GIF images directly, without converting or
re-compressing them. They are simply inserted in your compiled output as they are.
This means that you must handle the compression yourself with a graphics program
before using the images in your projects.

JPGs, PNGs and GIFs in Winhelp projects:

The Winhelp compiler is a very old program that only understands .BMP images
(they are compressed by the compiler). Help & Manual automatically converts these
formats to .BMP when you compile to Winhelp.
Note that you don't get any compression advantage by using these formats in
Winhelp because they are converted to uncompressed .BMP files before being
re-compressed by the compiler!

Windows metafiles:
You also can add Windows metafiles (.WMF and .EMF) to your projects directly.
When you compile these files are converted to BMP and then the normal conversion
and compression options set in your Image Conversion settings are applied.
· The Image Conversion settings are in the HTML Export Options 573 , which can
be accessed in both the HTML Help and the Browser-based Help sections of
Project > Project Properties.

See also:
Using Graphics 313
12.13.2 Embedded graphics
Normally when you insert graphics in Help & Manual you only insert references to external
graphics files. This is also the recommended way for handling graphics because it is much
more efficient and prevents your project file from getting too large.
There are two kinds of images that actually get embedded in your project and saved with
your project file: Embedded OLE objects 428 and images pasted together with text from word
processing programs like Microsoft Word.

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Avoid using embedded images whenever you can.

For technical reasons embedded images use up many times their own size in memory
and also place quite a heavy load on system resources. If you use a lot of them they will
also radically increase the size of your .HMX project files, which may slow down the
functioning of the Help & Manual editor on older computers with limited memory and
computers running Windows 98 or Me.

Embedded OLE objects:

See Embedded OLE objects 861 and Inserting OLE objects 429 for information on how
to use OLE objects in your projects without embedding them.

Pasting graphics from MS Word:

When you paste graphics together with text from MS Word the images are initially
embedded. After doing this should always immediately go through the pasted text
and check the images. Right click-on each image and if you see the Convert
Embedded Image menu option then convert the image to a disk file.
If you have already embedded graphics in your project you can also convert them to
external files by right-clicking on the graphic and selecting Convert Embedded
Image in the popup menu. This is always advisable.
· Identifying embedded images:
When you click on an embedded image it does not appear as a "negative" image.
Normally-inserted images appear as negatives with all their colors reversed when
you click on them.

See also:
Using Graphics 313
12.13.3 About using media files
Media files (movies and animations) used in Help & Manual and the output formats it
generates are always handled by the associated players, not by Help & Manual itself. These
players must be properly installed, both on your computer for editing and on the user's
computer for viewing. Because of this a number of restrictions apply that you should be
aware of before using media files in your projects.

Support for media files in output formats:

Classic Winhelp support for media files is extremely limited. Winhelp only
Winhelp supports Microsoft Media Player objects, which are restricted to AVI
(.HLP) files without sound. Flash animations are not supported.

HTML Help Supports all media formats supported by Help & Manual. Whether the
(.CHM) formats are playable on the user's computer depends on installation of
the associated players (see below 860 ).

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860 Help & Manual Online Help

Browser- Supports all media formats supported by Help & Manual. Whether the
based Help ( formats are playable on the user's computer depends on installation of
HTML): the associated players (see below 860 ).

eBooks (.EXE Flash animations are supported and are embedded in the eBook .EXE
): file. Other video formats are not supported.

Adobe PDF: No support for media files.

MS Word RTF: No support for media files.

See Conditions and Customized Output 451 for details on creating alternative
content for different output formats.

Embedding of media files:

Flash animations are embedded in HTML Help (.CHM) files and eBooks. All other media
files must be distributed with your help, including Flash animation files when used in
Browser-based Help (HTML). When you compile your project a list of the files you need
to distribute with your help is always displayed in the compiler window, so always
remember to check this!

Important warnings and restrictions for media files:

Crashes and freezes caused by badly-behaved media players
All media files are played by the players associated with them, not by Help & Manual.
In extreme circumstances incorrectly installed and/or incompatible media players can
cause program crashes while working in Help & Manual. We have done everything
we can to "catch" such crashes and they are very rare occurrences, but it is not
possible to prevent them entirely.
Save and back up your work!
Always save your work and make backups before working with media files,
particularly when using new formats for the first time. Since we cannot control
the behavior of media players it is impossible to predict what they can do in all
circumstances and it is better to be safe than sorry.

Players and codecs are required on the target system

Videos and other media files always use the associated players to play, even in
compiled help files. This means that they will only play in your help file on the user's
computer if the user has the correct player and/or media codecs installed.
Help & Manual inserts the code that automatically offers to download missing players
for the formats that support this (e.g. Apple QuickTime and Macromedia Flash) but
remember that many users have become "plugin weary" and may not want to do this.
If you want to be absolutely certain that your media files will play on the maximum
number of users' computers it is thus best to stick to only the standard formats
supported by Windows, plus Macromedia Flash, which is now a standard in its own
right. Don't expect all your Windows users to have any other formats installed or to

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be willing to install them!

Functionality in Help & Manual also depends on the players

How and whether the preview function works in Help & Manual also depends on the
player installation on your computer. If the necessary players or codecs are not
available or not installed properly the preview function will not work.

You may need administrator rights to run the preview function

On some systems you need to be working in a Windows account with full
administrator rights to use the movie preview function. If the function doesn't work
and you know that the correct player is installed try switching to a full administrator
account.

See also:
Flash Animations and Video 422
12.13.4 About using OLE objects

How OLE works in Help & Manual

OLE support has some restrictions because of the impossibility of supporting OLE in the
compiled output formats generated by Help & Manual. OLE objects in the editor remain
clickable and editable so that you can edit them in their associated applications.
However, when you compile 410 your project the objects are converted into static
graphics.
You can think of OLE objects as static graphics that remain editable until you compile
your output.

Linking is always preferable to embedding:

You can either embed OLE objects in your project or insert them as a link to an external
file.
Ø The Create New option in the Insert OLE Object 701 dialog always embeds the
object in your project.
Ø The Create from File option embeds the object if you deselect the Link option.
Embedding OLE objects in your projects has several disadvantages:
· It increases the size of your project file.
· Handling embedded objects generates considerable system overheads. This can
slow down Help & Manual, particularly on older computers and systems with less
memory.
· Embedded objects can only be edited by opening Help & Manual and double-
clicking on the object in the editor. Linked objects can be edited normally as
external files
It is thus always preferable to use links to external files instead of embedded OLE
objects.

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Restrictions on OLE objects in Help & Manual

Because of the restrictions listed below it is advisable to only use OLE
objects when there is no alternative. For example, you can now copy text
with tables and complex formatting 189 directly from MS Word and Excel,
so you no longer need to use OLE objects for this.

You can only use You cannot use dynamic objects like videos 422 and other media
OLE objects that files. The OLE selection dialog is a Windows element that
can be displayed automatically displays all the OLE-capable applications installed on
as graphics. your system. This does not mean that you can use all the object
types listed!

Only the visible For example, if you insert a Word document consisting of several
part of large OLE pages only the page (or part of the page) that is visible in the Help
objects is & Manual editor will be included in your compiled output. This is a
included in the restriction imposed by conversion of the objects into static graphic
output. images.

Print quality and This is caused by the conversion to static graphics designed for on-
the quality of OLE screen viewing and cannot be prevented.
objects in PDFs
may be slightly
inferior.

See also:
Using OLE Objects 428
Insert OLE Object 701

12.14 Variables and Conditional Output

This section contains background information on the various kinds of variables and
conditional switches available in Help & Manual and reference lists of all the variables and
switches.

See also:
Using Variables 440
12.14.1 Where you can use variables
The following table provides a quick reference showing where you can use which kinds of
variables in your projects:

Location: Supported variables:

Topic text and Global predefined variables and user-defined variables inserted
headers 441 with Insert > Text Variable 696 or typed manually.
Note that variables typed in manually are not highlighted in the

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 Reference 863

editor and double-clicking on them will not open the variable

selection list.
TOC, keywords, Global predefined variables and user-defined variables inserted
image captions, link manually by typing the variable names.
captions, macros
and scripts 442

HTML code objects Global predefined variables and user-defined variables inserted
311 manually by typing the variable names.

HTML templates 450 Global predefined variables, user-defined variables and special
HTML template variables inserted manually by typing the
variable names.
PDF templates 451 Global predefined variables, user-defined variables and special
PDF template variables inserted manually by typing the variable
names.

See also:
Using Variables 440
12.14.2 Global predefined variables
These variables can be used everywhere in your project where variables are supported,
including topics, headers, links, the TOC, scripts, macros and all HTML templates. See
Using Variables 440 for details.

All the date and time variables except <%TOPICLASTEDITED%> and <%
TOPICLASTEDITEDTIME%>insert the current system date and time at
compile time. These two special variables insert the date and time on
which the topic containing the variable was last edited.
All date and time variables use the corresponding date and time formats
set in the Windows configuration on the computer on which you are
running Help & Manual.

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<%TITLE%> The title of the help project defined in Project > Project
Properties > Common Properties > Title & Copyright .
<%COPYRIGHT%> The copyright statement defined in Project > Project
Properties % Common Properties > Title & Copyright .

<%AUTHOR%> The name of the author of the help defined in Project >
Project Properties > Common Properties > Title &
Copyright.

<%SUMMARY%> The Summary text for the project defined in Project >

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864 Help & Manual Online Help

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

Project Properties > Common Properties > Title &

Copyright.
<%VERSION_MAJOR%> The Major Version text for the project defined in Project >
Project Properties > Common Properties > Title &
Copyright.

<%VERSION_MINOR%> The Minor Version text for the project defined in Project >
Project Properties > Common Properties > Title &
Copyright.
<%VERSION_BUILD%> The Build Version text for the project defined in Project >
Project Properties > Common Properties > Title &
Copyright.
<%VERSION%> An automatically-generated combination of the Major, Minor
and Build version variables, with dots between the versions.
For example, if Major=3, Minor=25 and Build=329 then
Version will be 3.25.329.
<%CITATION%> The "citation" for Winhelp files defined in Project > Project
Properties > Winhelp > Miscellaneous Winhelp Options .
This is the text automatically added to text copied and pasted
from compiled Winhelp files.

<%SELF%> The name of the current project file without path or

extension.

<%DATE%> The current date in short format.

<%DATELONG%> The current date in long format.

<%TIME%> The current time in short format.

<%TIMELONG%> The current time in long format.

<%NOW%> The current date and time.

<%YEAR%> The current year in 4-digit format.

<%MONTHNAME%> The current month in long format (i.e. February, not Feb or
2)

<%TOPICLASTEDITED% The date when the topic containing the variable was last
> edited in short format.

<% The time when the topic containing the variable was last
TOPICLASTEDITEDTIME edited.
%>

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 Reference 865

See also:
Using Variables 440
Using HTML Templates 475
12.14.3 HTML template variables
You can use all global predefined variables 863 and user-defined variables 449 in HTML
templates 475 . In addition to this you can also use the following special predefined variables,
which are only relevant in HTML templates.

Variables for use in topic page templates only:

These variables can only be used in topic page templates. They are valid in all HTML-
based output formats (HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks and Visual Studio
Help / MS Help 2.0).
Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<%DOCTYPE%> Inserts the correct DOCTYPE tag at the beginning of the

HTML output pages. This variable is essential in all
templates and should not be removed. If you do remove
it you will get an error message from the compiler.
<%DOCCHARSET%> Inserts the correct character set information in the meta
tags at the beginning of the HTML output pages. This
variable is essential in all templates and should not be
removed. If you do remove it you will get an error
message from the compiler.
<%STYLESHEET%> Inserts the reference to the CSS stylesheet containing
all the styles information for your project. This variable
is essential in all templates and should not be removed.
If you do remove it you will get an error message from
the compiler.
<%TOPIC_HEADER%> Inserts the header of the current topic if it exists. If the
current topic has no header the value of this variable is
null. This can be different from the topic caption
inserted with <%TOPIC_TITLE%>.

<%TOPIC_HEADER_TEXT%> Inserts the header of the current topic as plain text. This
is particularly useful if your project headers are different
from and longer than the TOC captions, which is
inserted with <%TOPIC_TITLE%>.
This is used primarily for search engine optimization, for
which you would insert it in the description meta tag, like
this:
<meta name="description" content="<%
TOPIC_HEADER_TEXT%>">

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866 Help & Manual Online Help

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<%TOPIC_TEXT%> Inserts the body text of a topic, i.e. the entire topic as
edited and formatted in your project in the Help &
Manual editor. This is the most important variable – if
you leave it out your topics will be empty!
<%TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS%> Generates a series of "breadcrumb trail" navigation
links to topics above the current topic in the TOC tree.
This variable is empty in top-level topics. In second-
level topics and below the variable generates a series of
links in the format Link1 > Link2 > Link3 ...
The current topic is not included in the series. If you
want to place the current topic title at the end of the
breadcrumb trail you can do so with the <%TOPIC_TITLE
%> variable (see below).
The breadcrumb trail variable is empty in topics in the
Invisible Topics section.
This variable has a matching condition pair:
<IF_TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS> and
<IFNOT_TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS> . These conditions can
be used to only insert the trail where it is relevant and to
insert alternative content when it is not relevant.
See here 479 for details on how to use this variable.

<%TOPIC_TITLE_PATH%> This variable is similar to the breadcrumbs variable

above but it delivers the breadcrumb trail as a plain text
string without any links. Unlike the breadcrumbs
variable it also includes the name of the current topic,
so it always delivers a full trail.

The primary use of this variable is for search engine

optimization, for which you would insert it in the <title>
tag of your topic page template instead of the normal <
%TOPIC_TITLE%> variable, like this:
<title><%TOPIC_TITLE_PATH%></title>

Modification for HTML Help:

If you also output to HTML Help you should use
conditional text to ensure that this variable is only used
in Browser Help, otherwise you will get the full path as
the topic name in your search results in the HTML Help
viewer. Do it like this:
<title><IF_HTML><%TOPIC_TITLE_PATH%></
IF_HTML><IF_CHM><%TOPIC_TITLE%></IF_CHM></
title>

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 Reference 867

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<% HTML-encoded color string triplet that represents the

TOPIC_HEADER_BGCOLOR% background color of the topic header, if one has been
> set.

<%TOPIC_TEXT_BGCOLOR% HTML-encoded color string triplet that represents the

> body background of the topic.

<%TOPIC_TITLE%> Topic title (this is the caption of the topic in the TOC).

<%TOPICID%> Returns the plain topic ID as written in the Topic ID:

field of Topic Options, without any filename extension
and without changing the ID text to lower case. This can
be used to add an ID reference in your meta attributes
in your web pages, for example:
<meta name="id" content="<%TOPICID%>" />

<%TOPIC_KEYWORDS%> Inserts all the keywords 370 of the current topic, comma-
separated. Needless to say, this variable is essential for
the keyword index and shouldn't be removed...

<%TOPIC_AKEYWORDS%> Inserts all the A-keywords 382 of the current topic,

comma-separated.

<%HREF_PREVIOUS_PAGE%> Link address of the previous topic (used for Previous/

Next buttons).

<%HREF_NEXT_PAGE%> Link address of the next topic.

<%HREF_DEFAULT_PAGE%> Link address of the "Default" topic. This is used for the
standard Top navigation link in the topic headers so that
users can return to the default topic in your project.

<%HREF_PARENT_CHAPTER Link address of the parent topic (chapter). This can be

%> used as an alternative to <%HREF_DEFAULT_PAGE%>.
If the parent is a chapter without text, this is the link
address of the parent's parent. If no valid parent is
available, the variable is the link address of the default
page.

<%HREF_CURRENT_PAGE%> Link address of the current page.

All the <%HREF variables insert the local

names of the corresponding pages within the
current directory without any path
information, e.g. topic1name.htm,
topic2name.htm and so on.

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868 Help & Manual Online Help

Variables for use in Browser-based Help only:

All the remaining variables are only relevant in Browser-based Help 771 (HTML):

Global variables for all Browser-based Help templates:

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<%HREF_TOP_PAGE%> Link address of the top frame (e.g. "index.html")

<%HREF_CONTENT_PAGE%> Link address of the TOC page

<%HREF_INDEX_PAGE%> Link address of the keyword index-page

<%HREF_SEARCH_PAGE%> Link address of the full-text search page

Variables for the Layout frameset template only:

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<% Link address of the dynamic TOC page.

HREF_CONTENT_PAGE_DYN
%>

<% Link address of the static TOC page.

HREF_CONTENT_PAGE_STATI
C%>

<%NAVIGATION_SCRIPT%> Inserts the navigation script required by the top frame.

Variables for the Table of Contents template only:

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<%TABLE_OF_CONTENTS%> Inserts the entire TOC in the page.

Variables for the Keyword Index template only:

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<%KEYWORD_INDEX%> Inserts the entire keyword index in the page.

Variables for the Full-text Search template only:

Variable Content and/or function of the variable

<%SEARCH_SCRIPT%> Inserts the full-text search script in the page.

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 Reference 869

See also:
Using HTML Templates 475
Editing HTML templates 476
Help Windows 800
12.14.4 HTML template output conditions
You can use all of Help & Manual's standard conditional output options in HTML templates,
both your user-defined include options 453 and options based on the current output format. In
addition to this there are a few special conditional switches which are only for use in Help &
Manual's Browser-based Help output, because they are only relevant there. See the lists
below for details.
You can think of these conditions as proprietary HTML tags. They are used to enclose
blocks of HTML code in your template that you want to include in the output only if the
condition is fulfilled.
· Conditions based on the output format are only relevant in the topic page template 477 ,
which is used in HTML Help, Browser-based Help, eBooks and Visual Studio Help /
MS Help 2.0. The TOC and keyword index templates are only used in Browser-based
Help so it does not make sense to use format-based conditions there.

Predefined HTML template conditions:

In addition to the predefined conditions listed here you can also use your own user-
defined include options 453 as conditions in HTML templates. See Conditional output in
HTML templates 487 for details on how to use the conditions.
Conditions Function of the condition

<IF_TOPIC_HEADER> True if the current topic has a header and the header is not
empty (the variable <%TOPIC_HEADER%> is not "").

<IF_PREVIOUS_PAGE> True if a previous page exists (the variable <%

HREF_PREVIOUS_PAGE%> is not empty). Used to suppress
the Previous navigation button in the very first topic.

<IF_NEXT_PAGE> True if a next page exists. Used to suppress the Next

button in the very last topic.
<IF_INDEX_PAGE> True if a keyword index is included in the output. Only
relevant for Browser-based Help.
<IF_SEARCH_PAGE> True of full-text search is included in the output. Only
relevant for Browser-based Help.

<IF_FRAMES> True if Browser-based Help is exported with frames (

Dynamic HTML selected in the Navigation 589 options). This
could be used for entering a link from topic pages to your
TOC page when you select Simple HTML, for example.

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870 Help & Manual Online Help

Conditions Function of the condition

Only relevant for Browser-based Help.

<IF_TOPIC_BREADCRUMB True if the <%TOPIC_BREADCRUMBS%> variable is not empty

S> (see HTML template variables 826 ). For example, this
variable is always empty in topics in the Invisible Topics
section and in top-level topics.
<IF_HTML> True when you generate Browser-based Help (HTML)
<IF_CHM> True when you generate HTML Help
<IF_HXS> True when you generate Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0
<IF_EBOOK> True when you generate e-Books
<IF_TOGGLES> True if the current topic contains one or more toggles 345
(expanding text and images).

"IFNOT" versions negate the meaning of the conditions:

Exclude Conditions Function of the exclude condition

<IFNOT_TOPIC_HEADER> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_PREVIOUS_PAGE> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_NEXT_PAGE> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<INOTF_INDEX_PAGE> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_SEARCH_PAGE> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_FRAMES> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_TOPIC_BREADCR Negates the positive version of the condition.
UMBS>

<IFNOT_HTML> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_CHM> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_HXS> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_EBOOK> Negates the positive version of the condition.

<IFNOT_TOGGLES> Negates the positive version of the condition.

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 Reference 871

See also:
User-defined include options 453
Using HTML Templates 475
Conditional output in HTML templates 487
Help Windows 800
12.14.5 PDF template variables
You can use all Help & Manual's global predefined variables 863 and your own user-defined
variables 449 in the text objects in PDF print manual templates 543 . In addition to this there are
also a number of special predefined variables that can only be used in print manual
templates. These variables are described and listed in the separate help and documentation
of the Print Manual Designer program included with Help & Manual.

See also:
PDF and Printed Manuals 538
The Print Manual Designer 622
12.14.6 Conditional output
Help & Manual supports multiple levels of conditional output that give you very precise
control over what is included in your compiled output on the basis of output format and user-
defined output conditions 453 . These features make it possible to generate different versions
of your project for different purposes and output formats. You can control the inclusion or
exclusion of everything from individual words (or even single letters) to entire topics and
branches of the Table of Contents (TOC).
For example, if you output your project to both HTML Help and PDF you will generally need
to make some small changes to the text for the PDF version because some things that are
relevant in electronic help just don't make sense in PDF or a printed manual. With
conditional output you can include both versions in the same project and only the relevant
components will be included when you compile.

How conditional output works:

Instead of creating and maintaining multiple versions of your project for different versions
you only have one project containing all the alternate versions of your output. The chapters,
topics and topic content (text, graphics, tables etc.) for the alternate versions are "tagged"
with conditions called "include options" (also known as build conditions) that control whether
they are included in the output or not.

Format-based include options:

For example, suppose you have two different versions of a sentence, one for the
HTML Help version and one for the PDF version. You would enclose the first version
in an IF_CHM conditional text tag 454 and the second in an IF_PDF tag. And that is all
you have to do, everything else is automatic. When you compile to HTML Help only
the IF_CHM version is included, and when you compile to PDF only the IF_PDF
version is included.

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872 Help & Manual Online Help

User-defined include options:

In addition to this you can also use your own user-defined output conditions 453 , which
basically work in the same way as the built-in conditions based on output format. The
difference is that whereas format conditions are "set" automatically when you choose
your output format you must specify which user-defined conditions you want to apply
when you compile your project.
For example, suppose you defined an include option called BETABUILD and tag
specific text passages 454 and topics 457 in your project with an IF_BETABUILD
condition. To include those passages in your output you just select the BETABUILD
include option in the Make Help File & Run 663 dialog when you compile, along with
any other relevant options.
As the name BETABUILD indicates you can use this feature to generate different
versions of your project for different purposes or contexts. For example, you could
generate one version for the light version of your product and another version from
the pro version, all from the same project.

Conditional output and links

Just as when you are working with modular projects 492 it is important to plan your links
when you are working with conditional output. In modular projects Help & Manual cannot
check whether a link to a topic in another project is going to work or not, because it has
no way of knowing whether external project is going to be present at runtime.
The situation is different in conditional output. When you exclude a topic Help & Manual
checks all the links to the topic before actually excluding it. If there are links to the topic
from other topics in your project the links would fail if the topic was excluded, so Help &
Manual will not exclude it.
Before excluding a topic always right-click on its TOC entry and select Check
Referrers to make sure that excluding it will not create any dead links. If it
will the topic will not be excluded from the compiled output.

Levels of conditional output supported by Help & Manual:

Conditional On the text level you can use conditional text tags 454 to mark
text: sections in your topics – paragraphs, graphics, sentences
and even individual words and letters – that should only be
included when a specific condition is fulfilled (output format
or user defined).

Text Text variables (see Using Variables 440 ) allow you to use
variables: variables for text items. Then if the item changes you only
need to redefine the variable once to implement the change
throughout your entire project.
Variables are not really conditional output in the strictest
sense of the term, but you can use them for conditional
output by redefining them globally 461 with an external file
with definitions that replace the variable definitions in your

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 873

project at compile time.

Topic These conditions allow you to include or exclude entire

conditions: topics and chapters 457 on the basis of output format or user-
defined conditions.

Modular Help & Manual's modular projects features 492 enable you to
projects: include or exclude entire projects in your help at compile
time. This makes it possible to quickly add or remove entire
blocks with multiple chapters

HTML You can also use some special conditional switches in

conditions: HTML templates 475 to control when code in the template
should be included or excluded.

See also:
Conditions and Customized Output 451
Using Variables 440
Working with Modular Help Systems 492
Conditional output in HTML templates 487

12.15 Modular Projects

A modular help system is a help system that consists of multiple help projects that can be
edited separately but compiled and output as though they were a single project. There are
also two levels of "modularity": Authoring modularity (your project consists of multiple Help &
Manual modules) and output modularity (your output help files also consist of modules).

Authoring modularity:
This applies to all modular projects in Help & Manual. It means that your Help &
Manual project consists of multiple projects, referred to as "modules", that you edit
separately but compile together with the help of a main project referred to as a
"master project" or "master module".
You can output a modular project as a single help file, then you are only using
authoring modularity, or as multiple help files, then you are also using output
modularity.
Authoring modularity gives you practical advantages for managing your projects,
output modularity gives you additional flexibility for the configuration of different
versions of your help.

Output modularity:
You are using output modularity when you also output your modular help system as
multiple help files. This is then a "truly modular" help system and it gives you great
power and flexibility. The TOCs of individual modules are automatically included in
the master TOC if the modules are present on the user's computer, and excluded if
the modules are not present. With a little planning you can then easily distributed
different versions of your help for different product versions just by including or
excluding individual modules in your distribution package.

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874 Help & Manual Online Help

See Runtime and compile time merging 875 for more details on truly
modular projects.
Generation of truly modular help systems with multiple help files is only
supported in Winhelp and HTML Help.

Why use modular help systems?

There are a number of very good reasons for using modular help systems:

Flexible version control:

In HTML Help and Winhelp you can create genuinely modular help systems (output
modularity, see above) in which you can include and exclude entire sections of the
help simply by including and excluding help files from your distribution package. You
must always include the master file but if a child file is not found its contents are
simply excluded from the TOC automatically. This is ideal for applications with
different versions.

Reusing content efficiently:

You can create "boilerplate" projects for reusable project sections, for example
introductions that are always very similar or your product lists or terms and
conditions.

More efficient group work:

When you are working on a project in a team you can assign separate modules to
each team member. Each author can then work on his or her own modules
separately.

Managing very large projects:

Modularizing your help projects makes very large projects easier to manage. Among
other things, compiling the smaller child modules is faster and you can check your
output more quickly.

Master projects and child projects:

A modular project consists of one master project and multiple child projects (which can in
turn be sub-master projects containing their own child projects).
Both master projects and child projects are ordinary Help & Manual projects. The only
thing that makes them "modular" is the way they are structured: Child projects are
inserted in the TOC of the master project as single items, in exactly the same way that
you insert topics. But all the individual projects can (and should) still be edited separately
when you want to change their content.

What happens when you compile:

When you compile the master project it behaves as though it was a single project. The
entire TOC of each child project and all the topics it contains is merged into the output.
This works in all output formats supported by Help & Manual, but there are differences in
how it is handled and the options you have depending on the format you choose:

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 Reference 875

HTML Help You can choose whether you want to merge the projects completely
and Winhelp: and create a single output file, or create individual projects whose
TOCs are all displayed and accessed through the TOC of the master
help file. See Runtime merging and compile time merging 875 .

Browser- In Browser-based Help the output of a modular project is always

based help: merged completely. The files of all the modules are output to a single
directory and accessed with a single index.html file that integrates
the master and all child TOCs in a single master TOC.

eBooks: The entire modular project is always compiled to a single eBook. The
TOCs of the master module and all child modules are integrated in the
single TOC of the eBook.

PDF and RTF: Modular projects are always merged to a single document when you
output to PDF or RTF or print a user manual with the Print Manual
option in the File menu. Unlike Help & Manual 3 and earlier you can
now include more than one level of child project and child projects that
contain their own child projects.

See also:
Working with Modular Help Systems 492
12.15.1 Runtime and compile time merging
In Winhelp and HTML Help you can create genuine modular projects with separate help files
that are displayed in a single TOC. Alternatively, you can also combine all your modules to
one large help file.
See Choosing the merge method 494 for instructions on how to set the
different merge methods for HTML Help and Winhelp output.

You cannot mix runtime and compile time merging!

The merging method always applies for the entire project. You cannot mix
runtime and compile time merging in a single project. For example,
although you can nest projects 880 you cannot set one module to be merged
at runtime and another at compile time. You must use the same merge
method throughout.

Compile time merging – one integrated help file

Compile time merging generates one single help file from all your module projects. From
the point of view of your output this is no different from working with one single project
without modules. With this method the project is only modular while you are working on
it, your output is exactly the same as that produced from a single help file without
modules.
One of the more practical advantages of compile time merging is that all the modules,
including all the child modules, are compiled in a single quick process when you compile
the master project. You don't have to open and compile every module separately as you
do for projects configured for runtime merging.

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876 Help & Manual Online Help

In compile time merging Help & Manual combines all the modules and
creates one big help file when you compile the master module. If you
want to exclude a module you must recompile without the module.

Runtime merging – separate help files

When you generate separate help files for each module in your project this is called
runtime merging: When the user "runs" the help the separate help files are "merged"
and displayed in a single help viewer with a single Table of Contents (TOC) containing
all the topics of all the available modules.
Runtime merging produces genuinely modular help systems in both Winhelp and HTML
Help. The master module containing the main TOC must always be present, but you can
include or exclude the other modules from the help simply by including and excluding the
help files of the child modules from the directory in which the help is stored. If a module's
help file is not present its topics are simply not included in the TOC.
The great advantage of this is the enormous flexibility it gives you. With a little planning
you can reduce the work involved in distributing different versions of your help for
different versions of your product to almost zero. All you need to do is include or exclude
help files from your distribution package.

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 Reference 877

With runtime merging you create separate help files for the master and
child modules (each module must be compiled separately). Help files
that are not present on the user's computer are automatically excluded
from the TOC.

Advantages and Disadvantages of the Two Merging Methods

Runtime Merging Compile Time Merging
Advantages Disadvantages Advantages Disadvantages
Truly modular, All the component Single help file, You must recompile
dynamic help modules must be exactly like those 503 to produce

systems. Different compiled separately produced from different versions of

versions can be 503 . single Help & the help for
created simply by Manual projects. All different product
including and the component versions.
excluding help files modules are
in your distribution compiled
without automatically in a
recompiling. single quick
process.
Duplicate topic IDs When creating links Links to the help You must be careful
and context to the help from from your to avoid duplicate
numbers in your application you application are topic IDs 497 and
modules are not a must always be always to the same context numbers in
problem because careful to link to the help file. different modules
the output files are correct help file 499 . because the
truly separate. modules are
merged to a single
help file.
Invisible topics of Multiple files that You must take
all modules are must be distributed additional steps to
included instead of a single include invisible

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 878 Help & Manual Online Help

Advantages and Disadvantages of the Two Merging Methods

Runtime Merging Compile Time Merging
Advantages Disadvantages Advantages Disadvantages
automatically help file. topics 502 of child
because the child modules in your
modules are output.
compiled
separately.

See also:
Working with Modular Help Systems 492
Planning modular projects 878
12.15.2 Planning modular projects
If you want to get the full benefits from modular projects you need to do some careful
planning, and a little discipline is also required while you are working. Module divisions
should be logical rather than arbitrary. You must break your project up into modules in a way
that increases your flexibility, and you need to plan ahead to make sure that you take any
possible future changes into account. You also need to think very carefully about links
between modules and make sure that any links you create will not create problems for you
later.

Important note:
Most of the rules described here are most important for genuinely modular help systems
created with runtime merging 875 . In projects using compile time merging they are not so
essential for your output. Even so, it is still a very good idea to plan your projects this
way anyway. Then you always have the freedom to switch to runtime merging if you
want, and your projects will also have a better and more logical structure that is easier to
manage in the long run.

Be clear about which module is your master module:

Even though every Help & Manual project can contain as many modules as you like you
should always manage each modular help system with one master project, otherwise
you will go crazy trying to keep track of everything and mistakes are almost guaranteed
sooner or later. You can reuse modules in different modular help systems, but then they
should be completely separate systems with their own master modules.
Sub-modules can also contain their own sub-modules. However, it is probably easier to
avoid using this capability unless your project is really large. If all the module
components of your help system are clearly visible in the master project it can help to
keep things clear. And since you can insert modules as sub-modules of modules within
the master project there is not really any pressing need to nest modules within sub-
projects.
It's a good idea to store your child module projects in subdirectories of your master
module project on your hard drive. This isn't essential but then you have one more

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 Reference 879

structure that reflects the actual structure of your project. This makes the project easier
to understand, particularly for new team members who join the project after you have
started working.
Common components of your documentation that are always included in your output can
be included in the master module, or in one or more separate modules that are always
included. Which approach you choose is up to you and depends on the nature of your
project. If you put everything in separate modules so that the master module has no
content of its own then nobody ever needs to actually edit the master module except the
person responsible for doing the final compile, and this can be an advantage.

Your help structure should mirror your application structure:

The design of the help system should always reflect the architecture of the application it
is made for. If your application consists of several modules, you should create a
separate Help & Manual project module for each application module. You should also
organize your modules so that you need a minimum number of links between the
modules.
This applies even if you are working in a group and want to assign individual modules to
different authors. If one author is going to be working on part of the help for one part of
your application and another part of the help for another part it is tempting to create a
project module for that author that contains those two parts. However, that would be a
bad idea, because it would create an illogical help structure that is different from the
structure of your application, and this could cause management and linking problems
later.
If your application is really large and complex you can create multiple projects for each
part of the application module, but they too should be grouped and divided logically.

Minimize links between modules:

Each module should be as independent and complete in itself as possible. It should
contain all the information needed to describe the module of your application that it is
built for.
If you are using runtime merging it is particularly important to make sure that the context-
sensitive help topics 431 needed by your application modules are provided by the
corresponding help modules. Calling context help topics across module boundaries is
possible, but it is a sure recipe for confusion and problems, because you can never be
sure that the modules containing the topics will always be there. (If you are using runtime
merging you must always make your context-sensitive calls directly to the modules
containing the topics. Calls to popup topics are not routed from the master module to the
child modules.)
Actually, it is really a good idea to avoid context links across module
boundaries in compile time merging projects as well – this will save you a lot
of work and hair-tearing if you ever decide you want to switch to runtime
merging.
Links to the master module are never a problem because that is always present, but
links between modules and from the master to the child modules should be kept to an
absolute minimum. If you must create inter-module links you should make absolutely
sure that the target module will always be present when the user runs the help.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 880 Help & Manual Online Help

Alternatively, use A-links 500 to make sure that links to non-existent modules will display a
suitable alternative topic.

Take steps to avoid duplicate topic IDs and context numbers:

In compile time merging duplicate topic IDs and help context numbers 849 in modules will
cause link failures and other errors in your help files. Help & Manual can only prevent
duplicates within a single project so you have to take steps to prevent duplicates in your
modules yourself. For details see Managing IDs and context numbers 497 in Working with
Modular Help Systems 492 .

Avoid nesting modules:

You can nest modules (i.e. make modules children of other modules, either in the TOC
of the master module or within the child modules themselves) but it is good to keep this
to an absolute minimum if possible. Every additional nesting level is one more additional
level of complexity and one more source of potential user errors. The simpler you keep
your structure the easier it is to manage.

Avoid mixing runtime and compile time merging:

As a general rule you cannot mix runtime and compile time merging in a single project.
For example, when you compile your master project with compile time merging it should
not include a child project that contains projects that are merged at runtime – this will not
work.
The other way round is not a problem: If the master project is compiled with runtime
merging it can contain child projects that contain their own child projects merged at
compile time, because these projects will be included in the single output project. Be
careful when doing this, however, because it's very easy to lose track of the structure
and create problems that are very difficult to solve.

Always place all your output files in the same directory:

This should be an absolute rule. HTML Help in particular has some annoying bugs that
make it almost impossible to call files from the help that are not in the same directory as
the help file. Even if links to other directories seem to work on your test computer they
will fail on very many users' computers, so don't use them.
Don't worry about the whys and wherefores, just always put all your help files and any
external files you need to call in the same directory. That is the only way to avoid
problems and have a help system that always works.

See also:
Working with Modular Help Systems 492

12.16 Topics and Tables

This section contains some additional information that will make it easier to understand how
embedded topics and tables work in Help & Manual.

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 Reference 881

See also:
Working with Tables 332
Using embedded topics 222
12.16.1 Embedded topics and multiple references
Help & Manual gives you two different ways to "reuse" topics in your project: You can "
embed 222 " a topic in another topic, which inserts a copy of the contents of one topic in
another topic, and you can create multiple references 220 to a single topic in the Table of
Contents (TOC). Both these methods have their advantages and disadvantages.

About multiple TOC references to a single topic:

Creating multiple TOC references to a single topic is a little like having several doors to
the same room. You may be able to enter through different doors, but the room is always
the same. A topic with multiple TOC references is still just one topic, but the user can
display it by clicking on different entries in the TOC.
For the user it looks as though there is a separate copy of the topic in several different
locations. Actually, however, there isn't. There is still just one topic, and this means that it
is 100% identical in every location. It cannot have even the smallest difference because
it is the same topic. The only difference that is possible is that you can have different
captions (titles) for the TOC entries for each instance – the doors are different but the
room is the same.
See Multiple TOC entries for one topic 220 for instructions on using this
feature.

Advantages:
· The "multiple topics" do not increase the size of your output files because there is
really only one topic. If all you want is identical copies of the same topic in different
locations then this method is preferable to the embedded topics method (see
further below for details).

Disadvantages:
· All the "instances" have the same topic ID so it is only possible to create hyperlinks
to the original instance.
· For the same reason all keywords associated with the topic will always link to the
original instance of the topic.
· All the instances are 100% identical because they are the same topic. You cannot
have different text before or after the "copies" in the individual locations.

About embedded topics:

Embedded topics are different from multiple references. The Insert > Embedded Topic 700
function creates a dynamic reference at a selected point within one topic that inserts a
copy of the contents of another topic at that point when you compile your project.
The current contents of the source topic are displayed in the editor at the insertion point

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 882 Help & Manual Online Help

(with a grey background), and are updated automatically if any changes are made to the
source topic. You can embed the same source topic in as many target topics as you like.
To change the contents in the target topics you only need to edit the one source topic.
In addition to this the source topic also exports any index keywords 370 it contains to the
target topic. This means that any keywords associated with the source topic also only
need to be entered once; they are automatically exported to all target topics and
combined with any keywords the target topic already contains. This only works with index
keywords, however. A-keywords 382 , topic IDs 210 and help context numbers 212 are not
exported, because this would cause logical problems.
When you compile your project real copies of the source topics are created in all the
locations where you have inserted them as embedded topics. The target topics are all
real, independent topics with their own topic IDs and help context numbers, and you can
have different text in each topic both before and after the embedded topics. After
compilation there is no difference between the ordinary content of the topic and the
content that was inserted by embedding another topic.

Advantages:
This method has several important advantages over multiple TOC references 220 :
· You can include different text before and after the embedded topic. This makes
embedded topics ideal for documentation where you need to repeat the same
instructions in different contexts.
· In the compiled output all the topics containing embedded topics are real, unique
topics containing copies of the source information. Each topic has its own unique
topic ID that can be linked to directly.
· All normal index keywords are embedded together with the topic – you only need
to enter the keywords for the embedded text once. (A-keywords are not embedded
because this would cause logical contradictions.)

Disadvantages:
· The only real disadvantage of embedded topics is that they make your project
larger, but not really all that much larger. Text does not take up much room and
multiple instances of graphics don't inflate your file size because there is never
more than one copy of identical graphics in your output file.
See Using embedded topics 222 for instructions on using this feature.

See also:
Multiple TOC entries for one topic 220
Using embedded topics 222
12.16.2 How table sizing works
The dynamic sizing options for tables and their cells used by the new Help & Manual editor
may be a little unfamiliar if you come from a word processing background. This is because
they work much more like HTML tables than like tables in word processors like Word or
Open Office Writer. However, if you have any experience at all with HTML and web design
you will feel right at home with Help & Manual's table sizing functions.

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 Reference 883

By default, table sizing is dynamic

This is the most important characteristic of Help & Manual tables, just as it is with HTML
tables. The content of your cells has priority over everything else when it comes to
defining the width and height of your cells. No matter what width and settings you apply,
they will always be ignored if your content is higher or wider. Table cells will always
expand to accommodate all the text, graphics or other content they contain. Content in
table cells is never hidden, the cell is always made large enough to display all of it.
This applies to both height and width for graphics and movies and to height for text.
Normally, text will flow to stay within the defined width of a table cell/column, making the
height of the cell/row greater. However, if you turn off word wrap 707 for your paragraphs
the width of table cells will also expand to display all the text in the longest paragraph on
a single line. (This is a bad idea with long paragraphs as it can result in cells that are
thousands of pixels wide!)
Summary: You cannot make your table cells smaller than your fixed-width content.
Normal text will flow to fit a defined cell/column width but everything else will
force cells to become larger to fit. And even text will also force cells/columns
to become higher to accommodate all of it.

Widths can be dynamic or "locked"

The width of tables is controlled by the combination of the table and cell/column width
settings. This sounds obvious but it is important to understand how it works because it is
possible to enter contradictory values for table and cell/column widths that will produce
incorrect or unpredictable results.

Table width:
The width of a table can be set to Autosized, Fit to Page or Manual (pixels or
percent).
Autosized The width of an autosized table is dictated by the content it
tables: contains.
When you create an autosized table it initially expands
automatically to occupy the entire width of the current
paragraph. Its width cannot be changed with the mouse until its
cells actually contain content. Once it contains content you can
resize both the total table width and the column widths with the
mouse.
If you add content to the columns without adjusting the column
widths manually the widths will be adjusted automatically on the
basis of the content. All the column widths will remain dynamic
unless you lock 335 them, and the width of the entire table will
also expand if necessary – for example if you insert large
graphics.
Note that changing column widths with the mouse automatically
locks 335 the width of both affected columns, setting the width to a
fixed value in pixels.

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884 Help & Manual Online Help

Fit-to-page A fit-to-page table always expands to occupy the entire width of

tables: the current paragraph (indents in the paragraph will make the
table narrower than the actual page). Selecting fit-to-page is
exactly the same as setting the table width to 100%.
If you create a fit-to-page table without any dynamic-width
columns, Help & Manual will solve this problem by making all the
columns dynamic and the results will be unpredictable. A fit-to-
page table should always have at least one dynamic-width
column, otherwise it won't work properly.

Manual width A manual width table can have a percentage width or an

tables: absolute width in pixels. The percentage width is always relative
to the width of the current paragraph, which will be narrower
than the page if the paragraph has indents.
A table with a percentage width will expand and contract as the
user expands and contracts the help window. For this to be
possible, the table must contain at least one dynamic-width
column. If it does not, Help & Manual will solve this problem by
making all the columns dynamic and the results will be
unpredictable.
A table with an absolute width in pixels is fixed and its width
does not change. This also means that any dynamic-width
columns it contains can only expand and contract within the
confines of the table and in relation to one another, in response
to the content they contain. In a static-width table, single
dynamic-width columns and dynamic-width columns between
static-width columns behave just the same as static-width
columns.

· For full details on the settings see New Table / Table Properties 717 in Reference >
Menus and Dialogs > The Table Menu.

Cell/column width:
The widths of cells/columns can be absolute (Preferred width set in pixels), relative (
Preferred width set as percentage of table width) or dynamic (no Preferred width
set).
Absolute-width Absolute-width cells/columns will only retain their width if it is
cells/columns: possible. If they contain fixed-width content (graphics, text
without word wrap) they too will expand to fit the content.
They will also be expanded or contracted if there is no other
way to meet the table width requirements, but only as a last
resort.
Note that selecting Lock column width in the Table
menu sets the width of the selected column(s) to
an absolute value in pixels.

Percentage width Cells/columns with percentage widths will only have the

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 885

cells/columns: assigned widths if it is possible. This means that the table

must either also contain columns with dynamic widths that
can compensate so that the percentage-width column(s) can
have the right percentage widths, or all the widths of all the
columns must add up to exactly 100%. Here too, the width
you set will be ignored if the cells contain fixed-width content
that forces them to be wider.

Dynamic-width Dynamic-width cells/columns are at the bottom of the priority

cells/columns: scale. They always adjust their widths to enable your
settings for the table and/or the other columns to be
maintained.
Note that deselecting Lock column width in the
Table menu sets the width of the selected
column(s) to dynamic (i.e. no defined width).

· For full details on the settings see New Table / Table Properties 717 in Reference >
Menus and Dialogs > The Table Menu.

Row height:
Row height can be either dynamic (no Preferred height setting) or absolute (
Preferred height set to a pixel value). The default setting is dynamic and this is also
the best option for almost all applications. Absolute row heights will always be
ignored as soon as the content of any cell exceeds the height you set.
It is actually advisable to regard row height as always dynamic. If you want to create
rows with white space the easiest way to achieve this is by entering some empty
paragraphs in any cell in the row. Only use absolute pixel values when you really
need precise sizes for PDF or printed output.

Controlling table and cell/column widths

Controlling the height of tables and table rows is not really an issue. Rows are basically
always just high enough for their content, or higher if you add more empty space. What
can be tricky is controlling the relationships between the widths of cells/columns and the
width of the table. Rather than trying to cover all the possible combinations it makes
more sense to outline the two basic principles:

Principle 1: Dynamic-width columns make tables controllable

Columns with dynamic widths make tables flexible and enable you to control the
widths of other columns. Unless the width of your main table is set to a static value in
pixels, it is always advisable to make sure that the table contains at least one column
with dynamic width. Which column you choose for this will depend on your content.
This column will then act as a buffer, expanding and contracting to allow the settings
you specify for the remaining columns to be maintained (even when the user resizes
the help viewer window).
Use Lock Column Width to switch dynamic columns on and off:
The easiest way to set a dynamic width column is with the Lock Column Width

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 886 Help & Manual Online Help

setting: Right-click in the column and select Table in the context menu. If Lock
Column Width is activated just click on it to de-activate it. Then repeat to check
the Lock setting for the other columns in the table.
· For more details on this see Controlling column widths 334 in Basic Working
Procedures > Working With Tables and New Table / Table Properties 717 in
Reference > Menus and Dialogs > The Table Menu.

Principle 2: Avoid logical contradictions

This is basically a matter of thinking about your settings and the effects they can
have on each other. If your settings result in logical contradictions the results will be
unpredictable. In most cases Help & Manual will simply set all widths to dynamic,
adjusting them on the basis of the content they contain.
Examples of contradictions:
· All column widths are defined as percentage values that add up to more then or
less than 100%. Ideally, you should always have at least one dynamic column
when you are using percentage widths.
· The table width is set to 100% and the column widths are set to absolute pixel
values that add up to less than 100% of the current page/paragraph width.

See also:
Working with Tables 332

12.17 Security and Deployment Issues

This section contains some general information on data security and distributing your
compiled help files. Your data is your most valuable capital so you really want to ensure that
it is kept safe. Although Help & Manual is already very secure there are a number of things
you can do to improve the security of your data still further, so that you can minimize data
losses even in the event of major power failures, hardware failures and Windows crashes.

See also:
Repair and Recover 638
Customize - General 731 (configuring automatic backups)
12.17.1 Data security and crash recovery
Serious Windows crashes are quite rare nowadays but they still do happen occasionally.
Help & Manual itself is a very stable program and has undergone thorough testing.

How Help & Manual protects your data:

Help & Manual is extremely reliable and the security of your valuable data is the top
priority in all operations. Even if you experience a system crash it is very unlikely that you
will lose any data except the editing changes made between your last save and the
crash.
This high level of security is achieved with a very simple strategy: When you edit a

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 887

project you are always working on a copy, not on the original project file (you can locate
these copies, provided they have not yet been deleted, by searching for hmd*.tmp).
Since the project file remains closed while you are working it is always safe, even in the
event of a Windows system crash.
The actual project file is only opened when you save your project. As soon as you have
finished saving it is closed again and you return to working on a new temporary copy.

How crash recovery works:

If you experience a system crash or any other event that forces you to close Help &
Manual without saving your project properly you have two versions of the project file: The
last saved version, which was not open when you crashed, and also the last version of
the temporary working file, which was not deleted because of the crash. The temporary
file probably contains the most complete version of your data, so this is the one you will
want to try to recover. The next time you start Help & Manual this temporary backup file
is located automatically and the program prompts you to use the Repair and Recover
tool to recover all the available data.
This tool then recovers the data and prompts you to save it in a new project file with a
different name. You can then open both the original project file and the recovered
temporary version. Between the two of them you will almost always be able to recover
almost all of your data.
· See Repair and Recover 638 for more details on this tool and how to use it.

Strategies for maximum security:

Use recent Windows versions and reliable hardware:
Despite Windows' reputation for crashes, which was earned by the 9x versions,
Windows XP and Windows 2000 are actually both very stable and mature operating
systems. Although Help & Manual will run on all versions of Windows we strongly
recommend using Windows XP or Windows 2000 if you are serious about your work.
No operating system can be more stable than the hardware it runs on. Make sure
that your computer contains high-quality components that are compatible with one
another. Nowadays most Windows crashes are caused not by Windows itself but by
poor-quality or incompatible hardware or badly-behaved application programs.
Be particularly careful to buy good quality brand name memory (RAM) and a good
power supply. More crashes are caused by cheap faulty memory and power supplies
than anything else.

Activate automatic backups:

You can further increase your data security by configuring Help & Manual to make
automatic backups of your project at regular intervals. See Customize -General 731 for
instructions on activating and configuring this feature.

Make regular backups on a second medium:

In addition to this it is always a good policy to make regular backup copies of your
work on a different hard disk or other media at least once a day as protection against

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 888 Help & Manual Online Help

hard disk failures. You can use a second hard disk, recordable CD's or DVDs, tape
drives, ZIP drives, USB sticks or any other suitable medium. Simply having a copy on
a second medium radically increases the security of your data because it is very
unlikely that both media will fail at the same time.

Use different hard disks for work and temporary files:

If you have more than one hard disk on your system you can increase security still
further by using one hard drive for storing your projects and a different hard drive for
the temporary copies that Help & Manual creates while you are working. It is
extremely unlikely that two hard drives will both fail at exactly the same moment so
you will always have either the original or the temporary copy. See Customize -
Folders 737 for instructions.

See also:
Repair and Recover 638
Customize - General 731 (configuring automatic backups)
12.17.2 HTML Help for W95 and NT4
HTML Help was introduced as the standard Windows help format with Windows 98. The
files needed for running it are not installed by default on old versions of Windows 95 or
Windows NT4 that have not been updated. In extremely rare cases (this is now actually
almost unheard-of) you may hear from users of these obsolete systems who are unable to
open HTML Help files.
Please note that you will only need the following information for users of Windows 95 and
NT4 who have not updated their systems for years!

Providing support for HTML Help for W95 and NT4:

Users of old Windows 95 and Windows NT4 systems need to update to Microsoft
Internet Explorer 4 or above. This will automatically install all the components needed to
run HTML Help.
It used to be possible to provide HTML Help support for users of Internet Explorer 3.02
with a HTML Help runtime package called hhupd.exe. However, this package is no longer
available on the MSDN website (all the links are now dead). This is actually quite a good
thing because IE 3.02 and the runtime package did not really provide full HTML Help
support. Among other things, no DHTML was possible, so many features in modern help
systems did not work.

12.18 Accessibility
The purpose of the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, or VPAT, is to assist Federal
contracting officials in making preliminary assessments regarding the availability of
commercial “Electronic and Information Technology” products and services with features
that support accessibility. It is assumed and recommended that offerers will provide
additional contact information to facilitate more detailed inquiries.

Date: March 6, 2007

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 889

Product Name: Help & Manual® 4 (Standard and Professional Edition)

Product Version Number: Version 4.3
Vendor: EC Software GmbH
Contact for more information: Alexander Halser, Managing Director, EC Software
GmbH

Summary Table for Help & Manual

Voluntary Product Accessibility Template
Criteria Supporting Features Remarks and explanations
Section 1194.21 Software Completed See Section Detail for
Applications and Operating 1194.21.
Systems 889
Section 1194.22 Web-based Completed See Section Detail for
internet information and 1194.22.
applications 892
Section 1194.23 Not applicable Help & Manual is not a
Telecommunications Products Telecommunications Product.
Section 1194.24 Video and Not applicable Help & Manual is not a Video
Multi-media Products or Multi-media Product
Section 1194.25 Self- Not applicable Help & Manual is not a Self-
Contained,Closed Products Contained or Closed Product.
Section 1194.26 Desktop and Not applicable Help & Manual is not a
Portable Computers Desktop or Portable
Computer.
Section 1194.31 Functional Completed See Section Detail for
Performance Criteria 894 1194.31.
Section 1194.41 Information, Completed See Section Detail for
Documentation, and Support 1194.41.
896

Section 1194.21 Software Applications and Operating Systems - Detail

Voluntary Product Accessibility Template
Criteria Supporting Features Remarks and explanations
(a) When software is
All actions are executable
designed to run on a system
from the keyboard. Frequently
that has a keyboard, product
Criteria fully met. used functions have
functions shall be executable
customizable keyboard
from a keyboard where the
shortcuts.
function itself or the result of

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

890 Help & Manual Online Help

performing a function can be

discerned textually.
(b) Applications shall not
disrupt or disable activated
features of other products that
are identified as accessibility
features, where those
features are developed and
documented according to
industry standards.
Applications also shall not Help & Manual does not
disrupt or disable activated disrupt any accessibility
Criteria fully met.
features of any operating features of the operating
system that are identified as system.
accessibility features where
the application programming
interface for those
accessibility features has
been documented by the
manufacturer of the operating
system and is available to the
product developer.
(c) A well-defined on-screen
indication of the current focus
shall be provided that moves
among interactive interface
elements as the input focus
Criteria fully met.
changes. The focus shall be
programmatically exposed so
that Assistive Technology can
track focus and focus
changes.
(d) Sufficient information
about a user interface
element including the identity,
Information about user
operation and state of the
interface elements including
element shall be available to
the identity, operation and
Assistive Technology. When Criteria fully met.
state of the element is
an image represents a
available to Assistive
program element, the
Technology.
information conveyed by the
image must also be available
in text.
(e) When bitmap images are
used to identify controls,
status indicators, or other Criteria fully met.
programmatic elements, the
meaning assigned to those

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 891

images shall be consistent

throughout an application's
performance.
(f) Textual information shall be
provided through operating
system functions for
displaying text. The minimum
Criteria fully met.
information that shall be made
available is text content, text
input caret location, and text
attributes.
(g) Applications shall not
override user selected
contrast and color selections Criteria fully met.
and other individual display
attributes.
(h) When animation is Help & Manual does not use
displayed, the information animations, except for
shall be displayable in at least progress bars, where
Criteria fully met.
one non-animated additional textual information
presentation mode at the about the progress of an
option of the user. operation is available.
(i) Color coding shall not be The status of a help topic - a
used as the only means of user defined attribute - (e.g.
conveying information, "complete", "under
indicating an action, Criteria fully met. construction") is indicated by
prompting a response, or color highlighting and also
distinguishing a visual available as textual
element. information.
(j) When a product permits a
user to adjust color and
contrast settings, a variety of
Criteria fully met.
color selections capable of
producing a range of contrast
levels shall be provided.
(k) Software shall not use
flashing or blinking text,
Help & Manual does not use
objects, or other elements
Criteria fully met. flashing or blinking text,
having a flash or blink
objects or any other elements.
frequency greater than 2 Hz
and lower than 55 Hz.
(l) When electronic forms are
used, the form shall allow
Help & Manual does not use
people using Assistive Not applicable.
electronic forms.
Technology to access the
information, field elements,

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

892 Help & Manual Online Help

and functionality required for

completion and submission of
the form, including all
directions and cues.

Section 1194.22 Web-based Internet information and applications - Detail

Voluntary Product Accessibility Template
Criteria Supporting Features Remarks and explanations
Notes to section 1194.22: this section applies to Help & Manual's HTML based output
formats, such as browser-based help and compiled HTML Help. Help & Manual offers
user customizable export options for these output formats, which may overwrite the default
values set by the program.
(a) A text equivalent for every
Help & Manual by default
non-text element shall be
creates a text equivalent for
provided (e.g., via "alt", Criteria fully met.
every non-text element. This
"longdesc", or in element
option is user customizable.
content).
It is the authors (users)
responsibility to implement
(b) Equivalent alternatives for
alternatives, if the author uses
any multimedia presentation
Not applicable. multimedia presentations in
shall be synchronized with the
help topics. Help & Manual
presentation.
has no direct influence on
user defined content.
(c) Web pages shall be
designed so that all
information conveyed with
Criteria fully met.
color is also available without
color, for example from
context or markup.
(d) Documents shall be Help & Manual creates HTML
organized so they are pages that are readable
Criteria fully met.
readable without requiring an without an associated style
associated style sheet. sheet.
(e) Redundant text links shall
Help & Manual does not
be provided for each active
Not applicable. create server-side image
region of a server-side image
maps.
map.

(f) Client-side image maps Help & Manual creates client-

shall be provided instead of side image maps with
server-side image maps Criteria fully met. geometric shapes when using
except where the regions links in image. A non-text
cannot be defined with an element ("alt", "title" tag) is

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 Reference 893

provided automatically. This

available geometric shape.
option is user customizable.
Help & Manual cannot distinct
between tables with
(g) Row and column headers
informational content and
shall be identified for data Criteria not met.
tables used for layout. It has
tables.
no direct influence on user
defined content.
(h) Markup shall be used to
associate data cells and
header cells for data tables
Criteria not met.
that have two or more logical
levels of row or column
headers.
Frames, when used, are
(i) Frames shall be titled with automatically titled with
text that facilitates frame Criteria fully met. descriptive names such as
identification and navigation "navigation frame" and
"content frame".
(j) Pages shall be designed to
avoid causing the screen to
flicker with a frequency Criteria fully met.
greater than 2 Hz and lower
than 55 Hz.
(k) A text-only page, with
equivalent information or
functionality, shall be provided
to make a web site comply
with the provisions of this part,
when compliance cannot be Not applicable.
accomplished in any other
way. The content of the text-
only page shall be updated
whenever the primary page
changes.
Help & Manual does not use
(l) When pages utilize scripting languages to display
scripting languages to display content or create interface
content, or to create interface elements. It is, however,
elements, the information possible for the author to
Criteria fully met.
provided by the script shall be customize the output with
identified with functional text user defined scripts. Help &
that can be read by Assistive Manual has no direct
Technology. influence on user defined
content.
(m) When a web page Criteria fully met. Help & Manual does not

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

894 Help & Manual Online Help

require applets or plug-ins to

be present on the client
requires that an applet, plug- system. It is, however,
in or other application be possible for the author to
present on the client system customize the output and
to interpret page content, the extend content with user
page must provide a link to a defined HTML code that may
plug-in or applet that complies require applets. Help &
with §1194.21(a) through (l). Manual has no direct
influence on user defined
content.
(n) When electronic forms are
designed to be completed on-
line, the form shall allow
people using Assistive
Technology to access the Help & Manual does not
Not applicable.
information, field elements, create electronic forms.
and functionality required for
completion and submission of
the form, including all
directions and cues.
(o) A method shall be
provided that permits users to
Criteria fully met.
skip repetitive navigation
links.
(p) When a timed response is
required, the user shall be
alerted and given sufficient Criteria fully met.
time to indicate more time is
required.

Section 1194.31 Functional Performance Criteria - Detail

Voluntary Product Accessibility Template
Criteria Supporting Features Remarks and explanations
(a) At least one mode of
operation and information
retrieval that does not require
user vision shall be provided,
Criteria fully met.
or support for Assistive
Technology used by people
who are blind or visually
impaired shall be provided.

(b) At least one mode of

Criteria fully met.
operation and information

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Reference 895

retrieval that does not require

visual acuity greater than
20/70 shall be provided in
audio and enlarged print
output working together or
independently, or support for
Assistive Technology used by
people who are visually
impaired shall be provided.
(c) At least one mode of
operation and information
retrieval that does not require Help & Manual does not
user hearing shall be provide information in audio
Criteria fully met.
provided, or support for form. No information retrieval
Assistive Technology used by requires hearing.
people who are deaf or hard
of hearing shall be provided
(d) Where audio information is
important for the use of a
product, at least one mode of
operation and information Audio information is not
retrieval shall be provided in Criteria fully met. required for operation of Help
an enhanced auditory fashion, & Manual.
or support for assistive
hearing devices shall be
provided.
(e) At least one mode of
operation and information
retrieval that does not require
user speech shall be Speech is not required for
Criteria fully met.
provided, or support for operation of Help & Manual.
Assistive Technology used by
people with disabilities shall
be provided.
(f) At least one mode of
operation and information
retrieval that does not require
No fine motor control or
fine motor control or
Criteria fully met. simultaneous actions are
simultaneous actions and that
required.
is operable with limited reach
and strength shall be
provided.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

896 Help & Manual Online Help

Section 1194.41 Information, Documentation, and Support - Detail

Voluntary Product Accessibility Template
Criteria Supporting Features Remarks and explanations
EC Software provides
(a) Product support
electronic versions the
documentation provided to
product documentation, with
end-users shall be made
Criteria fully met. mechanisms available for the
available in alternate formats
conversion of these
upon request, at no additional
documents to alternate
charge.
formats.
(b) End-users shall have EC Software provides
access to a description of the electronic versions the
accessibility and compatibility product documentation, with
features of products in Criteria fully met. mechanisms available for the
alternate formats or alternate conversion of these
methods upon request, at no documents to alternate
additional charge. formats.
(c) Support services for Support for EC Software
products shall accommodate products is available in
Criteria partially met .
the communication needs of electronic form only (email,
end-users with disabilities. user forum).

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

Part

XIII
 898 Help & Manual Online Help

13 Frequently Asked Questions

This section covers some problems that are frequently encountered by users of Help &
Manual. The questions are organized by category and where necessary links are provided to
relevant sections of the help.

13.1 Compiling questions

· I get a message saying topics have been "implicitly compiled"? What does this mean?
898

I get a message saying topics have been "implicitly compiled"? What

does this mean?
There is a very good reason for these messages. They are telling you that you have
used conditional output options to exclude topics to which there are links from other
topics in your project. (See the chapter on Conditional Output 451 .) When you do this
Help & Manual will automatically include the topics anyway (but without TOC entries) to
prevent the creation of dead links.
When you create conditions to exclude topics you should always select Topics > Find
Referrers (also available by right-clicking on the topic in the TOC) to check whether
there are links to the topic you want to exluce. If there are, you can apply the same
condition to the links using Conditional Text 454 to exclude them. You can also use
matching conditions to insert alternative text instead of the links, if necessary.
»Return to Top 898 «

See also:
Compiling your Output 410
Conditions and Customized Output 451

13.2 Crash recovery

Windows crashed or froze or you suffered a power failure in the middle of a Help & Manual
session? Three hours of work lost! And because bad news never comes alone, the original
help project file is damaged as well, so you lost everything!
Relax! Help & Manual is designed to cope with disasters like this. When you are working you
are actually only working on a temporary copy of your project, not on the original. The
temporary file is created when you open the project for editing and deleted after the original
project file has been successfully saved. This means that there is always at least one copy
of the project file that is OK. In most cases, Help & Manual's Repair and Recover Tool 638 will
be able to restore the entire contents of the temporary file, so that you will only lose a very
small amount of work.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Frequently Asked Questions 899

What to do after a Windows crash or power failure:

Recover your temporary files:
When you restart Help & Manual after a crash or power failure it will normally
automatically detect the temporary files (called hmd*.tmp) and offer to repair and
recover them. You should always do this. The repaired version will be saved to a
.HMX file with a new name.
If the temporary files are not located automatically you can find and recover them
yourself. See The Repair and Recover Tool 638 for instructions.

Check your original project file:

In addition to your temporary files the you will normally also have the original .HMX
project file in your project directory. Since this file is always closed while you are
working it should be undamaged unless you suffered a really serious problem like a
hard disk crash.
So open and check your original project file and compare it to your recovered
temporary file. (The easiest way to do this is to open Help & Manual a second time
so that you can compare both projects on the screen.)

Where to find more information:

For more information see The Repair and Recover Tool 638 in Tools Included with Help &
Manual and Data security and crash recovery 886 in Reference > Security and Deployment
Issues.

See also:
The Repair and Recover Tool 638
Data security and crash recovery 886 (Reference)

13.3 Dynamic styles questions

· My paragraph style is "stuck"! Applying a style doesn't seem to
change it! 899
· I can't reformat a new empty paragraph. Applying a new style doesn't
seem to change anything. 899

My paragraph style is "stuck"! Applying a style doesn't seem to change it!

Then you have probably applied manual formatting to the paragraph. To apply a new
style or reapply the original settings of the current style first select the entire
paragraph, then apply the style. If only part of the text in the paragraph is selected only
font attributes are applied.
»Return to Top 899 «

I can't reformat a new empty paragraph. Applying a new style doesn't

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 900 Help & Manual Online Help

seem to change anything.

This is the same problem as the last question. Your empty paragraph contains manual
formatting and you can't select the paragraph because it doesn't contain any text. To
solve this type a couple of characters and select all of them, then apply the style.
»Return to Top 899 «

See also:
Text Formatting and Styles 228

13.4 Editing questions

· Where is the Replace Font Styles function I used to use in H&M 3? 900
· I'm trying to activate paragraph borders but no borders are being
displayed! 900
· Editing has become very slow and my .HMX project file is much larger
than I expected! 900
· I'm having trouble copying paragraphs with the mouse – my copied
paragraph gets "combined" with the next paragraph! 901
· I sometimes experience unexpected small changes in indents and
spacing when I change paragraph and other formatting attributes! 901
· When I select bold, underlined or italics it always formats the word to
the left of the cursor! 901
· When I format lists in a single indented paragraph the indent
disappears! 901

Where is the Replace Font Styles function I used to use in H&M 3?

This function has been re-introduced in Help & Manual 4.2 in a much more powerful
version. See Replacing Formatting and Styles 271 for full details.
I'm trying to activate paragraph borders but no borders are being
displayed!
You have to select a Border Style option in the Paragraph Border & Background 708
dialog. The default setting is None and this does not display any borders.
Editing has become very slow and my .HMX project file is much larger
than I expected!
You probably have a large number of image objects embedded in the text. This can
happen when you copy and paste images and text together MS Word. This
automatically inserts the images as embedded OLE objects, which uses up a very
large amount of memory and computer resources. Inserting a large number of large
OLE objects can also have the same effect, particularly on older and slower computers
with limited memory and computers running Windows 98 or Windows Me.
To solve this problem you can convert these embedded images into external graphics
files. Just right-click on the embedded images and select Convert Embedded Image in
the popup menu.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Frequently Asked Questions 901

· Identifying embedded images:

When you click on an embedded image it does not appear as a "negative"
image. Normally-inserted images appear as negatives with all their colors
reversed when you click on them.
»Return to Top 900 «

I'm having trouble copying paragraphs with the mouse – my copied

paragraph gets "combined" with the next paragraph!
You're probably used to working with a word processor like Word or Open Office. Help
& Manual's editor is a little different from these programs and it stores its paragraph
formatting in a different way. Because of this it's not possible to select the "paragraph
mark" at the end of each paragraph.
The best way to copy paragraphs "cleanly" is to press Enter once in the target location
to create an empty paragraph, then copy to the empty paragraph. After completing the
copy you can then delete any extra paragraphs without losing style information.
»Return to Top 900 «

I sometimes experience unexpected small changes in indents and

spacing when I change paragraph and other formatting attributes!
Since Help & Manual is primarily a help authoring tool it calculates all dimensions in
pixels. If you display your dimensions in inches or another unit the values are
converted from pixels and the results must often be rounded.
If you want to work with maximum precision choose pixels for all dimensions. You will
get used to it quite quickly and then you won't experience any rounding "surprises".
»Return to Top 900 «

When I select bold, underlined or italics it always formats the word to the
left of the cursor!
This is a quick formatting feature. To select bold, italic or another formatting style to
type new text just make sure that there is a space to the left of the cursor. Then there
is no "word" to the left of the cursor and you can just start typing.
»Return to Top 900 «

When I select or in a single indented paragraph the indent

disappears!
Technically lists need to contain at least two items (paragraphs) because the
formatting of the list is "controlled" by the first paragraph. You can solve this problem
by selecting more than one paragraph or the entire text of a single paragraph before
selecting the bullet or numbering tool in the Toolbar.
»Return to Top 900 «

See also:
Writing and formatting text 179

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 902 Help & Manual Online Help

13.5 General questions

· Which help format is the "best"? 902
· How can I integrate my help files with my application? 902
· Where can I get the Microsoft help compilers for compiling my
output? 902

Which help format is the "best"?

There is no simple answer to this question. Each of the seven formats currently
supported by Help & Manual (eight including printed manuals) has its advantages and
disadvantages. For detailed information see Help Formats 763 in the Reference section.
»Return to Top 902 «

How can I integrate my help files with my application?

Help & Manual creates 100% standards-conform Windows Winhelp (.HLP) and HTML
Help (.CHM) help files. How compiled help files are integrated with Windows
applications depends on the development tool used for creating the application.You
can download a collection of free tutorials for programmers from our website
describing how to integrate Winhelp and HTML Help with number of leading
programming tools:
http://www.ec-software.com/tutorial.htm
»Return to Top 902 «

Where can I get the Microsoft help compilers for compiling my output?
Like all help authoring tools on the market, Help & Manual uses Microsoft help
compilers to turn output into a compiled help file. The compilers for producing HTML
Help and Winhelp can be freely downloaded from the Microsoft website.
However, since the compilers are quite hard to find on the Microsoft site you can
always download the most recent versions of the compilers from on our home page:
http://www.ec-software.com/reshelp.htm
Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0 compiler:
The Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0 compiler is part of the Visual Studio Help
Integration Kit (VSIK) which can be downloaded from the Microsoft website.
However, it is not a stand-alone compiler, it can only be used in combination with the
Visual Studio .NET programming package. You don't need it if you don't have this
package. – this format is only used for documenting Visual Studio .NET components. It
is not used for creating normal help for applications and you will not need it unless you
are a Visual Studio .NET programmer.
»Return to Top 902 «

13.6 HTML and HTML Help questions

· My HTML Help file doesn't work on a network drive – I just see error
messages instead of the topic pages! 903
· I entered tab stops or spaces to create indents but they don't work in
any HTML-based output formats! 903

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Frequently Asked Questions 903

· Full-text search isn't working in my HTML Help output, even though I

enabled it in Project Properties! 903
· When some of my users open my HTML Help file they get this error
message: 904
· I want to change the Top / Previous / Next navigation texts in the
topic headers of my output! 904
· How can I change the title of the help window in my output? 904
· I entered the title correctly but the help window of my output file
always has the title "HTML Help"! 905
· The names of my image files are displayed as tooltips in my HTML-
based output formats! 905
· The popups in my HTML Help output are only plain text, although I
included bold and other formatting in my popup topics! 905
· The Winhelp .HLP file for my dual-mode popups isn't getting
generated! 905
· Can I view and edit the HTML Help source files? 905
· I want to use my own custom icons in the HTML Help TOC! 905
· My help file fails or crashes if it is installed in a path containing a #
character! 906
· I would like to call a HTML Help .CHM file from the command line! 906
· Our programmers need a list of help context numbers! 907

My HTML Help file doesn't work on a network drive – I just see error
messages instead of the topic pages!
Recent security updates to Windows XP have introduced some severe restrictions for
accessing HTML Help files across network drives. Under Windows XP most file links 300
in HTML Help files will now generally not work at all and HTML Help itself is also
severely restricted. Without registry changes on the user's computer HTML Help now
cannot be used at all on networks. More details and a fix for this problem are available
on the Help & Manual user forum.
»Return to Top 902 «

I entered tab stops or spaces to create indents but they don't work in any
HTML-based output formats!
Tab stops are unknown in HTML, it simply doesn't support them at all. Spaces also
don't work for indents in HTML because all groups of spaces are ignored and
displayed as a single space. If you need to create accurate spacing to format code
examples use indented paragraphs (these are converted automatically in HTML-based
output formats) or tables. Also use tables to create tabulated lists in HTML-based
output formats.
»Return to Top 902 «

Full-text search isn't working in my HTML Help output, even though I

enabled it in Project Properties!
This is probably a Microsoft HTML Help Workshop installation problem. To correct this
proceed as follows:
1. Uninstall MS HTML Help Workshop.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

904 Help & Manual Online Help

2. Download the latest version from our website at

http://www.ec-software.com/reshelp.htm
3. Log on to a Windows account with administrator rights (this is essential!) and
install the new version.
»Return to Top 902 «

When some of my users open my HTML Help file they get this error
message:

This message will only appear on some versions of Windows. It is caused by an

incomplete installation of MS Internet Explorer. For details on the cause and the
solution see:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q235653
»Return to Top 902 «

I want to change the Top / Previous / Next navigation texts in the topic
headers of my output!
You can change these texts and also select graphics files to use as buttons instead of
the texts. Go to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Topic Pages 565 and edit the
options in the section titled Topic with headers have Top, Previous and Next links .
(You can also edit the HTML template manually here if you have HTML editing skills.)
Note that these are shared options that can also be accessed in the Browser-based
Help and Visual Studio Help sections. For more details See HTML Help 565 and
Browser-based Help 586 in the Project Properties chapter.
»Return to Top 902 «

How can I change the title of the help window in my output?

By default the title bar of the help viewer displays the Project Title entered in Project >
Project Properties > Common Properties > Title & Copyright 550 . You can also enter
individual titles for individual help windows so that the title displayed in the title bar
changes depending on the help window type being displayed:
Go to Project > Project Properties > Help Windows 557 . Select the Main help window
type and edit the entry in the Title bar text: field. (By default this field normally contains
a variable that inserts the title you entered for your help project in the Common
Properties section.) This title is used both in the main help viewer and in topics
displayed in external windows 473 .
Note that if a different title is assigned to the current help window
this has priority over the Help Title entered in the Title & Copyright
550 section. The help window title will then be displayed in the help

viewer title bar when a topic using the corresponding window type
is displayed.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Frequently Asked Questions 905

»Return to Top 902 «

I entered the title correctly but the help window of my output file always
has the title "HTML Help"!
Non-English HTML Help files always display "HTML Help" in the title bar when they are
displayed by Windows versions with a different language from the language of the help
file. Only the titles of English help files are displayed correctly on all language versions
of Windows. This is caused by an uncorrected bug in the Microsoft HTML Help viewer.
The only known solution is to set the Language of the help file in Project Properties >
Common Properties Language Settings to English (United States) if this is possible for
your help project. (This is generally possible for all western European languages
without special character sets.)
See About project language settings 783 in Reference > International Languages and
Unicode for more details.
»Return to Top 902 «

The names of my image files are displayed as tooltips in my HTML-based

output formats!
Go to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > HTML Export Options 573 and
deselect the option If an image has no caption export file name as hint (ALT tag) .
Note that these are shared options. They can also be accessed in the Browser-based
Help and Visual Studio Help sections.
The popups in my HTML Help output are only plain text, although I
included bold and other formatting in my popup topics!
By default, HTML Help only supports plain-text popups without any formatting. Help &
Manual provides two different solutions for formatted popups in HTML Help. See
Creating popup topics 194 for details.
»Return to Top 902 «

The Winhelp .HLP file for my dual-mode popups isn't getting generated!
Due to an uncorrected bug in the Winhelp compiler you must have a minimum number
of popup topics in your Invisible Topics section for dual-mode help to work. If your .HLP
file is not getting generated when you compile just add two or three empty dummy
popup topics to your Invisible Topics section.
Can I view and edit the HTML Help source files?
Help & Manual generates all the files needed for viewing and editing HTML Help
projects with the MS HTML Help Workshop application. However, these files are
normally deleted automatically after compiling. To prevent this deselect the option
Delete temporary files after compilation in the Compile Help File and Run 663 dialog
when you compile your project. You will then find all the project files in the \~tmpchm
folder in your project directory (the directory containing your .HMX project file).
»Return to Top 902 «

I want to use my own custom icons in the HTML Help TOC!

Help & Manual includes 42 predefined icons that can be used in the HTML Help TOC

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

906 Help & Manual Online Help

by selecting Topics > Change Item > Icon 671 . These icons are predefined by HTML Help
and they are the only ones that are available. Although the Microsoft HTML Help
Workshop documentation suggests that these default icons can be replaced by a
custom icon strip this feature has never actually worked in HTML Help.
Technically, a custom icon strip can be referenced in the Table of Contents by editing
the .hhc contents source file 905 with HTML Help Workshop. But if you experiment with
HTML Help Workshop you will discover that the help compiler requires an absolute
path to the icon strip file to display it correctly, including the drive letter. This makes it
impossible to distribute your help file to customers.
»Return to Top 902 «

My help file fails or crashes if it is installed in a path containing a #

character!
This is a restriction of HTML Help that cannot be changed. The # character is reserved
for bookmark (anchor) references from URLs and cannot be used in the paths. The
only solution is to make sure that there are no # characters in the paths to your help
files.
»Return to Top 902 «

I would like to call a HTML Help .CHM file from the command line!
Just execute the hh.exe HTML Help viewer with the name of the help file as the first
parameter:

HH "myhelp.chm"

HH.EXE is the HTML Help executable. It is located in the Windows directory does not
require a path.
Examples:
· Note that topic names are referenced as Topic ID + .htm in all lower case
characters. (The standard extension is .htm but this can be changed in Project >
Project Properties > HTML Help > HTML Export Options 573 .)

HH "myhelp.chm::/requestedtopic.htm"

Opens the file myhelp.chm and displays the topic requestedtopic.htm. The "::/" in
the parameter separates the requested topic (the html file name in the internal
structure of the .chm file).

HH "myhelp.chm::/requestedtopic.htm#paragraph2"

Opens the file myhelp.chm and displays the topic requestedtopic.htm and jumps to
the topic anchor paragraph2.

HH -mapid 123456 myhelp.chm

Opens the file myhelp.chm and displays a topic referring to its help context
number.
»Return to Top 902 «

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Frequently Asked Questions 907

Our programmers need a list of help context numbers!

Select Tools > Help Context Tool 624 and select the option Export Help Context
Numbers. This exports the Topic IDs and corresponding context numbers to a
standard MAP file.
»Return to Top 902 «

See also:
HTML Help 765 (Help Formats)

13.7 PDF questions

· My PDF files seem to be too big. What could be causing this? 907
· Where are the settings for activating/deactivating PDF pages? 907
· I configured my template to start chapters on odd pages but all my
chapters are starting on the next available page, no matter whether
the page is odd or even! 908
· I can't output PDF documents! 908
· My PDF output looks strange or garbled! 908
· I created a PDF with active hyperlinks but the links are invisible! 908

My PDF files seem to be too big. What could be causing this?

There are a number of possible causes for this:
· Graphics scaling: The first thing to check is the images used in your files. Help
& Manual supports image scaling 319 of high-resolution images for PDF files. If
you are using large images to improve printout quality your files will be bigger
and there is not a lot you can do about it, other than turning off scaling and using
smaller images.
· Graphics compression: Check your image compression settings for PDF in
Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF > PDF Options / Image Quality 606 . You
can significantly reduce the size of your files with JPEG compression but this
also reduces image quality.
· Font embedding: Embedded fonts radically increase the size of PDF files.
Unless it's absolutely essential only use standard fonts like Arial and Times
Roman so that you don't have to embed fonts. Check your embedding settings
in Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF > Font Embedding 606 .
Note that the nominal image format doesn't affect the size of your PDF
files. All supported formats are converted to bitmaps.
»Return to Top 907 «

Where are the settings for activating/deactivating PDF pages?

If you are upgrading from Help & Manual 3 you may be looking for the Project
Properties settings that activate and deactivate PDF components (TOC, Introduction
etc.) in your output. This functionality is now only available in the print manual template
543 , which you must edit with the Print Manual Designer 622 . In Help & Manual 3 it was

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 908 Help & Manual Online Help

possible to make these settings in two places (Project Properties and the template),
and this caused conflicts and mistakes for some users.
»Return to Top 907 «

I configured my template to start chapters on odd pages but all my

chapters are starting on the next available page, no matter whether the
page is odd or even!
Go to Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF > PDF Layout 604 and deselect the
option Ignore blank pages in PDF file . Setting this option automatically disables the
"Start on odd pages" setting.
»Return to Top 907 «

I can't output PDF documents!

Help & Manual uses a printer driver to generate PDF documents and you cannot
create PDFs unless you have at least one printer driver installed. This driver does not
have to be for a printer that is physically connected to your computer. In fact, you will
probably achieve the best results with a standard printer driver from the Windows CD
rather than with an "optimized" driver from a printer manufacturer.
»Return to Top 907 «

My PDF output looks strange or garbled!

Help & Manual uses a printer driver to generate PDF documents and "optimized"
drivers from printer manufacturers sometimes cause output problems.
You can solve this problem by installing a different printer driver and selecting it as the
reference driver for PDF generation. This driver does not have to be for a printer that is
physically connected to your computer. In fact, you will probably achieve the best
results with a standard printer driver from the Windows CD rather than with an
"optimized" driver from a printer manufacturer.
· See Customize - PDF Export 738 for details on how to set this up.
»Return to Top 907 «

I created a PDF with active hyperlinks but the links are invisible!
Go to Project > Project Properties > Adobe PDF > PDF Layout and activate the
Underline topic links and paint in color: option to define the visibility and color of the
hyperlinks in your PDF document.
For more details see PDF Layout 604 .
»Return to Top 907 «

See also:
Adobe PDF 774 (Help Formats)

13.8 Printing questions

· The page referrer numbers aren't shown in my print preview! 909
· My printouts look strange or garbled! 909

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Frequently Asked Questions 909

The page referrer numbers aren't shown in my print preview!

This is not an error. Page referrers can only be displayed in the actual printout.
»Return to Top 908 «

My printouts look strange or garbled!

When you print a user manual Help & Manual first generates a PDF file and then prints
it. The PDF is generated using a printer driver and "optimized" drivers from printer
manufacturers can sometimes cause output problems. The printer driver used to
generate the PDF is normally your default printer driver but it is possible to select a
different driver for PDF generation if necessary.
You can generally solve this problem by installing a different printer driver and
selecting it as the reference driver for PDF generation. This driver does not have to be
for a printer that is physically connected to your computer. In fact, you will probably
achieve the best results with a standard printer driver from the Windows CD rather
than with an "optimized" driver from a printer manufacturer.
See Customize - PDF Export 738 for details on how to set this up.
»Return to Top 908 «

See also:
PDF and Printed Manuals 538
Customize - PDF Export 738

13.9 Searching in Browser-based Help

· How does searching work in Browser-based Help? 909
· My index includes references to additional files that I added to my
output directory manually! Huh?? 909
· My index includes references to deleted topics! What's happening? 910
· Why can't I search for phrases in Browser-based Help? 910
· How can I search for exact words in Browser-based Help? 910

How does searching work in Browser-based Help?

After you compile your Browser-based Help project the indexer scans all the files found
in the HTML output directory and creates an index file. This index contains a list of all
the words found and their locations in the files in your project.
When the user accesses the search function for the first time the index file is
downloaded by the user's browser. All subsequent searches during the current session
then access this local copy on the user's computer.
»Return to Top 909 «

My index includes references to additional files that I added to my output

directory manually! Huh??
It's important to understand that the indexer scans all the files in your output directory!
This means if you add your own files to the directory before you compile they will be

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 910 Help & Manual Online Help

scanned too.
If you don't want your own files to be included in the index you must add them to the
output directory after you compile your project – or upload them to your server
separately so that they cannot be indexed when you compile.
»Return to Top 909 «

My index includes references to deleted topics! What's happening?

Normally Help & Manual doesn't delete anything in your HTML output directory. Since
every topic is a separate HTML file in Browser-based Help the files for deleted topics
are still in the output directory when you compile a new version of the project that no
longer contains these topics.
To prevent this it's a good idea to use the function in the Compile
dialog when you compile a build for distribution. See Compiling 413 for more details on
this.
»Return to Top 909 «

Why can't I search for phrases in Browser-based Help?

Full-text search uses an index of words found in the project, together with the locations
where the words are found. This means that it is not possible to search for phrases
because the index only knows about the locations of the individual words. Enclosing
words or phrases in quotes searches for exact words (see below).
»Return to Top 909 «

How can I search for exact words in Browser-based Help?

Enclosing one or more words in quotes searches for exact words. For example,
entering cat will find cat, catalog and advocate, but entering "cat" with quotes will only
find cat. This also works for groups of words – entering "cat dog fish" will only find the
exact occurrences of all three words.
This can be combined with wildcard characters. For example, "cat*" will find catalog
but not advocate.
»Return to Top 909 «

See also:
Full-text Search configuration options 594

13.10 Spell check questions

· Can I create custom dictionaries for specific projects or subjects? 910
· I selected "Auto-Correct" for a correction during spell checking but
the auto-correct word pair was not added to the custom dictionary! 911
· Where can I get additional dictionaries for the spell checker? 911

Can I create custom dictionaries for specific projects or subjects?

Yes, as many as you like! Select Tools > Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker 629 and

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Frequently Asked Questions 911

activate Use custom spelling options for this project in the Project Settings tab.
Then click on the button to select, create and edit custom dictionaries.
See The Spell Checker 629 in Tools Included with Help & Manual for full details.
»Return to Top 910 «

I selected "Auto-Correct" for a correction during spell checking but the

auto-correct word pair was not added to the custom dictionary!
You have probably created two custom dictionaries with the same name, one in the
\Dictionaries folder in the Help & Manual program directory and one in your project
directory. This can cause a number of puzzling problems. The only solution is to make
absolutely sure that all custom dictionary names are unique.
»Return to Top 910 «

Where can I get additional dictionaries for the spell checker?

You can download additional dictionaries directly from the spell checker configuration
dialog. Go to Tools > Spell Check > Configure Spell Checker and then select Download
dictionaries... in the Main Dictionaries section.
»Return to Top 910 «

See also:
Spell checking 184
Spell Checker 629

13.11 Table questions

The widths of the columns in my tables are different from what I expect
them to be!
You have probably entered contradictory settings for the table and cell/column widths.
When this happens Help & Manual automatically sets the widths of all columns to
dynamic and they then adjust themselves on the basis of their content. You can usually
correct this by setting at least one column with a dynamic width so that you can "lock"
the width of the other columns.
To do this right-click in a table column and select Table > Lock Column Width. (This is
a toggle setting. Selecting it once locks the column width, selecting it again unlocks it
and makes the column dynamic. The current setting is indicated in the context menu.)
· See Controlling column widths 334 and How table sizing works 882 for more
information on this subject.

See also:
Working with Tables 332

13.12 Unable to save topic!

When I try to save a topic I get a message saying that it is not possible to

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 912 Help & Manual Online Help

save the current topic!

You are are running up against an inherent problem in the topic ID naming system,
which means that it is necessary to avoid topic IDs with a length of 31 characters or
multiples of 31 characters (62, 93 etc).
If topic A has an ID that is exactly 31 characters long and you then rename topic B to
have an ID that is exactly the same plus a couple of additional characters you will not
be able to save the topic. This is caused by an error in the Borland Delphi treeview
component that H&M uses here. This would be relatively easy to fix but unfortunately
doing this would break existing H&M4 projects. You can reproduce this problem by
performing the following steps on a test project:
· Enter 0123456789012345678901234567890 as the Topic ID for one topic.
· Enter 0123456789012345678901234567890_1 as the ID of another topic and try to
save the topic.
You will then get the "Failed to save current topic" message when you try to save or
move away from the current topic. If this happens the solution is to IMMEDIATELY
make a change anywhere in the first 31 characters of the topic that failed to save. For
example, if you change the ID of the second topic above to (the change is the X):
012345678901234567890123456789X_1
it will solve the problem. The easiest way is to do this BEFORE you move away from
the topic with the problem ID. However, so long as you do it before closing or saving
your project you can also repair it even after moving away. You just need to select the
topic and click away the message saying that it does not exist. The content of the topic
should still be visible – then just change its ID to anything else (xxx or whatever) and
save to recover it.
After doing this it is possible that you will have a few dead links to the topic because
the internal link updating system won't work properly while the topic is in "limbo". But
you won't lose your topic content.
This is an annoying problem, but unfortunately it can't be fixed without breaking a large
number of people's existing projects, because the problem in the Delphi component
was discovered after the release of Help & Manual 4. (We would have to change the
internal structure of the topic IDs.) However, Help & Manual does trap the error when it
occurs (this is why you get the "failed to save" error message) and if you correct the
topic ID immediately you should not have any problems.
The only real solution at the moment is to avoid topic IDs that are 31 characters (or
multiples of 31 characters) long.

13.13 User interface questions

· I undocked the TOC by dragging it onto my desktop and now I can't
dock it again! 912
· I'd also like to be able to undock the Topic Options tab! 913

I undocked the TOC by dragging it onto my desktop and now I can't dock

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Frequently Asked Questions 913

it again!
You can undock the Table of Contents pane by dragging it but you can't dock it by
dragging it. To re-dock it just double-click in the title bar of the TOC window or select
Dock Table of Contents in the View menu.
»Return to Top 912 «

I'd also like to be able to undock the Topic Options tab!

You can, but you can't do it by dragging. Just select Undock Topic Options in the View
menu. Here too, you can re-dock the Topic Options window by double-clicking on its
title bar or by selecting Dock Topic Options in the View menu.
»Return to Top 912 «

See also:
Customizing Help & Manual 84

13.14 Video and animation questions

· My movie or animation is not playing properly. What can I do? 913
· The movie preview function in Insert Movie dialog doesn't seem to be
working! 913

My movie or animation is not playing properly. What can I do?

Check that the correct codec and/or player are installed. Videos and animations can
only be played if the correct player and codec support for them is installed on the
computer your help is being viewed on. So it's a good idea to only use common
formats like Flash and Windows Media that most users will have support installed for.
With some formats and/or browsers you may need to activate the Start Automatically
and Show Controls options in the Insert Movie 694 dialog for the animation or video to
play correctly.
»Return to Top 913 «

The movie preview function in Insert Movie dialog doesn't seem to be

working!
On some systems you may find that need to be working in a Windows account with full
administrator rights to use the movie preview function. If the function doesn't work and
you know that the correct player is installed try switching to a full administrator
account.
»Return to Top 913 «

See also:
Flash Animations and Video 422

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 914 Help & Manual Online Help

13.15 Winhelp questions

· Where are the browse sequences that I used to use in Help & Manual
3? 914
· My compiled Winhelp file doesn't display a Table of Contents! 914
· The "chapters with text" in my project are empty in the Winhelp
output! The contents of the chapter have been inserted as a topic
with the same name beneath the chapter heading! 914
· The custom TOC icons I selected with Topic > Change Item > Icon
aren't displayed in my Winhelp output! 915
· Single top-level topics become sub-topics of the next chapter above
them in the TOC! 915
· Some users are reporting that my Winhelp file is crashing on their
computer! 915
· How can I call a Winhelp file directly from the command line? 915
· Our programmers need a list of help context numbers! 916

NEWS: Winhelp is no longer supported in Windows Vista!

Please note that support for the Winhelp format has been completely
discontinued in Microsoft Windows Vista. Even if your applications run under
Vista, any calls to Winhelp help will simply produce an error message. This
also applies to dual-mode popups in HTML Help. We thus strongly recommend
that you start transitioning to an alternative help format as soon as possible.
See here for details

Where are the browse sequences that I used to use in Help & Manual 3?
Support for this feature has been removed in Help & Manual 4. Browse sequences
were actually only relevant in Winhelp (HTML Help and all other formats do not support
browse sequences), which is now an obsolete format and is only supported in H&M4
for backward compatibility.
My compiled Winhelp file doesn't display a Table of Contents!
Winhelp always consists of two files: An .HLP file containing the help topics and a .CNT
file containing the Table of Contents (TOC). You must always distribute both of these
files if you want to have a TOC. If you only distribute the .HLP file the help will be
functional but you will not have a TOC.
»Return to Top 914 «

The "chapters with text" in my project are empty in the Winhelp output!
The contents of the chapter have been inserted as a topic with the same
name beneath the chapter heading!
The outdated Winhelp format doesn't support chapters with text. If your project
contains chapters with text they will be exported twice: Once as a chapter without text
and once as a sub-topic of the chapter without text, with the same name as the
chapter. This "duplicate" topic will contain the content of your chapter with text.
If you are outputting both to Winhelp and to formats that support chapters with text you
can use Help & Manual's conditional output features 451 to create alternative topic and
chapter versions for Winhelp and the other formats.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Frequently Asked Questions 915

»Return to Top 914 «

The custom TOC icons I selected with Topic > Change Item > Icon aren't
displayed in my Winhelp output!
This is a limitation of the Winhelp format. It does not support custom icons in the TOC.
»Return to Top 914 «

Single top-level topics become sub-topics of the next chapter above them
in the TOC!
This is a bug in the Winhelp format. If you create a content structure as shown below,
the last topic will not appear in the Table of Contents of the compiled .HLP file. Instead,
it is displayed as the last topic of the previous chapter (in the example this would be
Frequently asked questions).

This problem only affects single topics (i.e. topics that are not part of a chapter) that
are top-level topics. Help & Manual automatically applies a fix to correct the problem
for single topics that are not top-level topics. However, there is no solution for the
top-level topics because Microsoft has not corrected the bug in the compiler. The only
workaround is not to use single topics below other chapters in the TOC.
»Return to Top 914 «

Some users are reporting that my Winhelp file is crashing on their

computer!
Due to (yet another) uncorrected bug in the Microsoft Winhelp compiler Winhelp files
containing images with more than 256 colors will often crash when they are displayed
on computers with the screen resolution set to 256 colors or less. This is particularly
common on Windows NT systems.
The only solution is to ensure that all the graphics in your help file have 256 colors or
less. You can do this automatically with the Limit images to 256 colors setting in
Project > Project Properties > Winhelp > Miscellaneous Settings 575 .
»Return to Top 914 «

How can I call a Winhelp file directly from the command line?
Just execute the winhlp32.exe Winhelp viewer followed by the name of the help file you
want to open:

winhlp32 "myhelp.hlp"

WINHLP32.EXE is the Winhelp viewer executable. It is located in the Windows

directory does not require a path.

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

916 Help & Manual Online Help

Command line parameters:

-Kxxxx
Find a keyword (xxxx)
-Nxxxx
Open a specific topic using the help context number (xxxx)
-Ixxxx
Open a specific topic using the topic ID (nnnn)
-H
Run Winhelp and open Winhelp.hlp (help on help)
Examples:

winhelp32 -N23678 "myhelp.hlp"

Opens the file myhelp.hlpand displays the topic with the context number 23678.

winhelp32 -Iintroduction "myhelp.hlp"

Opens the file myhelp.hlp and displays the topic with the ID introduction.
»Return to Top 914 «

Our programmers need a list of help context numbers!

Select Tools > Help Context Tool and select the option Export Help Context Numbers.
This exports the Topic IDs and corresponding context numbers to a standard MAP file.
»Return to Top 914 «

See also:
Winhelp 768 (Help Formats)

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Index 917

not displayed in XML output 787

Index .JPG 856

.JPG images 313
.PCD images 313
.PNG 856
-#- .PNG images 313
.PSD images 313
#MERGE command for importing HTML files 159
.PSP images 313
.RTF format
-.- exporting/importing topics 202
.RTF output format
.~HMX backup files 125, 731 about 776
.BMP images 313 help windows in 813
.CHM files pros and cons 776
importing into existing projects 155 settings in Project Properties 608
importing to a new project 130 .RVF format
.DFM files exporting/importing topics 202
eBook templates 471 .SHG images
.EMF 856 hotspots converted automatically 23, 313
.EMF images 313 supported formats 313
.GIF 856 .TIF images 313
.GIF images 313 .WMF 856
.HHP file for HTML Help .WMF images 313
options for modifying 571 .XLIFF
.HLP files about 778
decompiling 137, 161 .XLS stylesheet files 122
importing into existing projects 161 .XML 50, 787, 795
importing to new projects 137 about 778
.HM3 projects importing XML file packages 165
conversion 47 importing XML file packages to new projects
converting 126, 641 142
custom HTML code in 47, 126, 641 reference 786
style conversion 126, 641 Windows requirements 786
styles in 47 .XPJ files
table conversion 126, 641 importing RoboHelp® X5 projects 144, 167
tables in 47 .XSD schema file 122, 787, 795
.HMTOPIC format .XSL stylesheet files 787, 795
exporting/importing topics 202
.HMX project files 125
.HPJ file for Winhelp -<-
options for modifying 577
<!--ZOOMRESTART--> 404
.HPJ files
<!--ZOOMSTOP--> 404
importing into existing projects 160
importing to new projects 135
.INI files
for command line options 517
-A-
.IPP files about Help & Manual 69
hotspots in old .IPP files 313, 321 Accessibility 888

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 918 Help & Manual Online Help

Across® 530 assigning help context numbers to 212

Add Item context numbers in 852
Topics menu 673 do not edit 214, 305
addresses 77 hyperlinks to 109
Adobe PDF in browser-based HTML 305
about 538, 774 in embedded topics 294
CID font mode 149, 545, 606 Insert menu 695
configuring Adobe PDF output 405 inserting 305
font embedding 405 linking to 305
font embedding settings in Project Properties linking to in Browser-based Help 308, 849
149, 606 linking to in topics 294
generating 541 long IDs 65
help windows in 813 maximum length 849
including/excluding pages 405, 468, 541, 543 permitted characters 849
layout settings in Project Properties 604 syntax for calling 849
max. TOC levels 541 using keywords with 44, 305, 379
media files support 859 animations and videos 41, 913
page referrers 604, 666 Insert menu 694
Print Manual Designer 622 movie preview function not working 913
printer driver required for 405 support in output formats 428
pros and cons 774 videos not playing properly 913
reference driver for 738 Arabic 551, 783
settings 541 Asian languages
settings in Project Properties 604, 606 requiring Unicode 780
template variables 871 test-compiling on non-Asian Windows 149,
templates for 468, 622 411
templates, location 543 associative linking
templates, using 543 and A-keywords 854
Unicode languages and 544 auto-correct
Unicode now supported 786 dictionary 184
videos and animations 428 speed typing aid 184
Adobe PDF problems spell checker 184
can't output 907 auto-correct function 631, 634
files too big 907 automatic URL detection 65
garbled output 907 autosize tables 333
including/excluding pages 907 awards 16
invisible hyperlinks 907
odd/even page problems 907
A-keywords -B-
about 854
automated "See Also" lists 382 background
linking between help modules 382, 499 Format menu 708
not supported in embedded topics 222 background color
not translatable in XML 796 changing for header and topic 177
uses and limitations 854 backups
ALink() macro automatic 125, 731, 886
translation in HTML Help 302, 761 making 125
anchors Baggage
about 849 about 65, 520

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Index 919

Baggage frames settings 587

alternative to Extended .HHP settings 571 full-text search 48, 398, 483
can't rename 525 full-text search issues 411, 909
filename length limit 329, 522, 523 full-text search settings 594
frequently-used graphics and 328 help windows in 811
graphics files 523 JavaScript popups 772
graphics files, HTML template references 489 Keyword Index settings 593
integrating external files 311, 520, 521 Layout section in Project Properties 398
non-graphics files 521 layout settings 587
removing, deleting and renaming Baggage files link syntax 505
525 linking to anchors in 305
restrictions and handling 525 links between projects 505
settings in Project Properties 554 links to 308
size of 525 media files support 859
supported file formats 525 navigation behavior (single or double click) 398
batch files Navigation section in Project Properties 398
for command line options 517 navigation settings 589
blind topics 638 popup topics settings 599
BODY section of HTML template pros and cons 771
adding HTML code outside of 761 settings in Project Properties 586
BOM (Byte Order Mark) support for videos and animations 428
and XML output 792 syntax for calls/links to 438
bookmarks and comments testing locally in Internet Explorer 411
converting to plain text 204 TOC settings 591
improvements 44 topic pages 597
Insert menu 704 turning off yellow warning bar in Internet Explorer
inserting, using and editing 204 411
Project Properties 723 build conditions 871
text style 204 conditional text 454
borders defining user conditions 453
Format menu 708 build options 58
in tables 344 modular project build options 460
no paragraph borders displayed 708, 900 topic build options 457
breadcrumb trail navigation 64, 826, 865 bulleted lists
example and how-to 477 adjusting indents 264
browse sequences changing 253
removed in H&M4 914 creating 253
Browser-based Help customizing 253
about 771 not controlled by styles 252
and modular projects 505 problems with indents 266
appearance in different browsers 398 styles in 266
browser compatibility 772 bullets and numbering
compiling 113 Format menu 710
configuring output 398 improvements 38
context calls and 438
deleted topics found by search 413
deleting output folder before compiling 411,
-C-
663, 909
cannot save topic 911
expand automatically on open 398
captions (TOC)
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
 920 Help & Manual Online Help

captions (TOC) about 507

spell checking 184 and include options (conditional output) 512
captions for graphics 314 multiple-format output 514
formatting 249 redefining variables 516
style of 249 syntax reference 508
CD ROM catalogs 773 using 511
cells (tables) Comment style 752
borders 344 comments
deleting contents 339 formatting 249
formatting 336 style of 249
merging/unmerging 339 comments and bookmarks
resizing 336 converting to plain text 204
selecting 336 improvements 44
splitting 339 Insert menu 704
Change Item inserting, using and editing 204
Topics menu 671 Project Properties 723
chapters text style 204
and invisible topics 225 common HTML settings 565, 579, 586, 609
moving, cutting and pasting 217 Compile Help File
chapters with text File menu 663
empty in Winhelp 914 compile time merging 494, 875
chapters without text compilers
and invisible topics 225 options 737
checklist for publication 410 setting locations 737
child modules 878 where to get help compilers 902
child projects 493, 873, 878 compile-time merging 503
opening from the TOC 495 compiling
Chinese 149, 780 about 410
CID font mode for PDF 149, 545, 786 Asian languages on non-Asian windows 411
Close() macro implicitly compiled topics message 898
translation in HTML Help 302, 761 include options and 411
Code Example style 752 Microsoft help compilers 410
Collapse All 670 modular projects 873
code to collapse TOC in Browser Help 482 projects 411
column width and height 882 quick launching 411
selected topics 411
column widths (tables)
temporary files 419
controlling 334
temporary folder names 419
locking/unlocking 334
XML 415
preferred width 334
setting 334 compiling selected topics 54
columns (tables) conditional output
adding/deleting 338 about 451, 862, 871
formatting 336 and command line options 512
resizing 336 build conditions 871
selecting 336 conditions for HTML templates 830, 869
widths 333 HTML template conditions 462
in HTML templates 814
command line options
include options 871
.INI and batch files 517
links and 871
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
 Index 921

conditional output unformatted text 189

redefining variables for 461 without style information 189
tutorials 119 copyright notice 147
using, general instructions 452 crash recovery 886, 898
conditional text 871 automatic repair 638
conditional text include options Repair and Recover tool 638
setting and editing 454 creating hyperlinks 109
context menus, improved 53 creating new topics 97
context numbers creating projects (tutorial) 88
and anchors 212 CSS styles 354, 357, 361
assigning automatically 212 custom build options 58
assigning manually 212 custom builds
auto-generating 212 settings in Project Properties 556
auto-generating topics with 624 custom code in HTML templates
changing 214 transferring from .HM3 projects 126, 641
exporting and importing 624 custom dictionary 184
finding 191, 390 customized output
generating list 902, 914 about 451
Help Context Tool 730 customizing Help & Manual 84
in modular projects 497 automatic backups 731
listing 618 compiler location settings 737
reassigning and deleting multiple 624 default folders options 737
supported range 624 editor customizing options 734
context-sensitive help mouseover hints 731
about 431, 834 PDF reference driver 738
about implementing 843 Tools menu 731, 733
and Browser-based Help 438 cut and paste
application calls and 434 from Word and Excel 189
auto-generating topics for 435 inserting graphics with 314
creating topics for 432 inserting text with 189
dual-mode HTML Help 432, 436 cutting and pasting topics 100
popup topics for 432
Czech 551, 780
popups and 838
technologies for in Windows 835
tutorials and tools for programmers 434, 843
context-sensitive popups
-D-
about 840 data
in HTML Help 840 importing 155
in Winhelp 840 data security 886
converting backups 886
Help & Manual 3 projects 126, 641 crash recovery 886
converting styles 753 strategies 886
copy and paste dead link highlighting 40, 388
between projects 155, 169 dead links 387
from MS Word 138, 162 default folder
copying and pasting for Help & Manual startup 737
from Word 91 for temporary files 737
copying, cutting and pasting default topic 147
text and other content 189 deleted topics found by search 413
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
 922 Help & Manual Online Help

dictionaries for spell checker templates for 471

auto-correct function 184, 631, 634 EC Software contact information 77
custom project dictionaries 634 Edit menu 679
custom user dictionaries 184, 631, 634 Find and Replace 680
downloading 184 Paste Text Only 680
excluded words 631, 634 editing text 91
main 184 editor
multiple languages 184 about the Help & Manual editor 740
selecting and downloading 629 customizing 734
spell checker 184 editing 742
distribution files (output formats) 417 editing is slow, oversized .HMX projects 900
docking/undocking options Index tab 744
re-docking 84 navigating in 179
toolbars 84 new features 29
View menu 682 paragraph copying problems 900
windows 84 selecting text in 183
dual-mode help 840, 845 TOC pane 742
.HLP file is not generated 902 Topic Options tab 743
dual-mode HTML help 567 using 179
application calls and 434 ELSE condition
combining with JavaScript popups 436 and text include options 454
formatted popups with 436 and topic include options 457
dual-monitor displays not supported in HTML templates 487
and Screen Capture tool 320 embedded graphics
help window size and positon settings 558 identifying 858
duplicate graphics filenames 325, 497 embedded topics
from RTF files 138 and invisible topics 848
dynamic styles editing 222
differences from H&M3 229, 900 finding where embedded 222
new features 36 hyperlinks and 222
dynamic styles (see styles) 746 improvements 46
Insert menu 700
jumping to source topic 222
-E- keywords in 222
linking to anchors in 294, 305
Eastern European languages 149
locating targets with Find Referrers 676
eBooks using 222
about 773 visible in Search and Index 222
configuring eBooks output 407 vs. multiple references 881
functionality settings in Project Properties 612
embedding files in PDFs 300, 544
help windows in 811
Excel
layout settings in Project Properties 609
copying from and to 189
media files support 859
ExecFile() macro
popup topics in 194
no longer needed in HTML Help 302
popups in 613
Expand All 670
pros and cons 773
code for expanding Browser Help TOC 482
settings in Project Properties 609
expand Browser-based Help automatically on open
support for videos and animations 428
398
template files 122
Expand Status <> Complete 670

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Index 923

expanding image toggles and invisible topics 806, 848

converting existing images 357 displaying regular topics in 473
creating 357 in Browser-based Help and eBooks 811
formatting with CSS 357 in HTML Help 809
expanding inline text toggles in HTML Help and Winhelp 473
creating 354 in modular projects 499, 806
formatting text and links 354 in Winhelp 811
expanding section toggles using 473
creating 348
editing 348
embedded topics in 348 -F-
existing tables with IDs 348 F1 context help 835
formatting headers 348
Farsi 551, 783
icons, swapping 348
file format
icons, using in 348
new project file format 30
indents in 348
file links
nesting 348
compatibility in output formats 300
supported content 348
creating 300
expanding sections
using in hotspots in graphics 321
nesting 345
File menu 661
expanding text and images
Compile Help File 663
copying 360
New 662
copying and editing 360
Print Preview 669
CSS styles for links 361
Print User Manual 666
duplicate ID conflicts 360
file size
examples 345
smaller with styles 229, 746
Expand All / Collapse All functions 363
files
IDs 360
excluding from full-text search in Browser-based
Print button with Expand All 363
Help 404
support in output formats 345
project backup files 886
troubleshooting 365
temporary files 638, 886
updating old expanding sections 367
Find and Replace
expanding text and images, troubleshooting Edit menu 680
large output files 365
font styles 271, 275, 900
output file size 365
formatting 271
page breaks in PDFs and printed manuals 365
graphics 324
problems with expanding section toggles 365
images 62, 191, 390
problems with formatting in toggle links 365
in TOC and Invisible Topics 191, 390
problems with IDs 365
paragraph styles 271, 282
exporting referrers 191, 390
topics 202 text 191, 390
Extended .HHP Settings 571 topics 191, 390
file references in 311 variables 447
external files Find Referrers
integrating in projects 520, 521 Topics menu 676
referencing in HTML code 311, 521 Find Topic
external windows Topics menu 676
and help window definitions 801 Firefox
and hyperlinks 310
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
 924 Help & Manual Online Help

Firefox in Browser-based Help 48, 772

underlined TOC entries, suppressing 118 issues in Browser-based Help 411
firewalls language files for other languages 122
and update checking function 731 not working in HTML Help 902
Flash animations 422 settings for Browser-based Help 594
editing HTML code for 426 special settings for in Browser-based Help 404
in eBooks 859 template for in Browser-based Help 404
in output formats 859 full-text search in Browser-based Help
Insert menu 694 deleting output folder before compiling 909
inserting in topics 422 searching for exact words 909
inserting placeholder images for 423, 425 searching for phrases not possible 909
previewing 425
taking snapshots from 425
Flash demos 835 -G-
folders in Invisible Topics 57 generating XML files 415
font size preview getting help for Help & Manual 73
changing with mouse wheel 35, 91, 179 global predefined variables 863
font styles graphics
searching and replacing 271, 275 about 856
fonts aligning 316
CID font mode 606 as table background 344
different in print and help file 247 Baggage files 328
embedding in PDF files 606 caption style 752
Format menu 705 captions, adding and formatting 314
formatting toolbar 230 converting to expanding image toggles 357
footers and headers creating shortcuts to 328
creating in topics (HTML only) 477, 816 duplicate filenames 138, 325, 497
Format menu 704 editing 317
Borders and Background 708 editing and resizing 317
Bullets and Numbering 710 embedded 858
Create Style from Selection 714 embedded in RTF files 138, 162
Edit Styles 713 finding and replacing 324
Font 705 folders for 325
Paragraph 706 for Flash animations and videos 423
Syntax Highlighting 715 formats and file size 856
formatting frequently-used 328
searching and replacing 271 hi-res for PDF and printing 317
searching and replacing, about 271 hotspots, macros and scripts in 321
formatting text 91 in HTML templates 832
frames in Browser-based Help 587 in modular projects 138, 325, 497
frequently-used graphics in the Baggage section 523
creating shortcuts to 328 Insert menu 690
full text search template 814 inserting 103
full-text search inserting from files 314
excluding files from search index in inserting in topics 314
Browser-based Help 404 inserting with cut and paste 103, 314
excluding page sections from search index in keeping together on line 706
Browser-based Help 404 listing 618
HTML template for Browser Help 483 locations for in Project Properties 553
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
 Index 925

graphics changing background color 177

managing 325 headers and footers
missing 387 creating in topics (HTML only) 477, 816
missing and unused, finding 618 Heading1 style 752
moving and renaming 325 Hebrew 551, 783
new features 37 Help & Manual
opening in Impict graphics editor 320 about 69
pasting from Word 103, 858 buying 77
Picture Shortcuts for frequently-used graphics customizing 84, 731, 733, 734, 737, 738
66, 328 getting help 73
positioning 316 online users' forum 75
referencing in HTML templates 489 quick search tools 73
replacing manually 324 Quick Start Tutorial 88
resizing increases output size 317 RSS feed link 75
RTF imports 138 tutorials 73
selecting 183 tutorials for programmers 75
setting default editor 729, 731 user interface 79
supported formats 313 what's new? 29
testing for missing graphics 388 why Help & Manual? 71
translating text in 531, 533 workspace 79
updating for translations 531, 533 Help & Manual 3 projects
using 313 converting 126, 641
using as hyperlinks 320 custom HTML code in 126, 641
zoom factor 314, 317 style conversion 126, 641
graphics editor table conversion 126, 641
Impict 621 Help & Manual help
setting default editor 621, 729, 731 author 75
using 621 using as a template for your projects 463
Greek 149 Help & Manual help source code 121
group work Help 2.0 777
with modular projects 873
help authoring
links to useful sites 75
-H- Help buttons 835
help compilers 410
H&M editor options 737
new features 29 setting locations 737
H&MHelp_Template.hmx where to get 902
using as a template for your projects 463 help context numbers
hanging indents about 852
and tab stops 744 and anchors 212
restrictions 232 assigning automatically 212
using 232 assigning manually 212
hard page breaks auto-generating 212, 553
inserting 206 auto-generating topics with 624
HEAD section of HTML template exporting and importing 624
adding HTML code and scripts to 761 generating list 902, 914
header help formats 852
adding material to on every page 477 in modular projects 497
output format compatibility 852
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
 926 Help & Manual Online Help

help context numbers in Browser-based Help and eBooks 811

reassigning and deleting multiple 624 in HTML Help 809
settings in Project Properties 553 in RTF and PDF 813
supported range 624, 852 secondary windows 310
Help Context Tool secondary windows, defined 462
Tools menu 730 secondary windows, using 471
using 624 setting title 147
help files settings for dual-monitor systems 558
integrating with applications 902 settings in Project Properties 557, 558, 560,
help for Help & Manual 563
quick search tool 73 standard types 805
types 393
help format
Winhelp 811
choosing 126
Winhelp options 560
help formats
helpproject.xsd schema file 787, 795
about 763
Adobe PDF 774 hhupd.exe 888
Browser-based Help 771 hmd*.tmp files 638, 886, 898
eBooks 773 horizontal lines
HTML Help 765 inserting 206
Longhorn Help 779 hotkeys
MS Word RTF 776 for styles 237
printed manuals 776 Hotspot editor
Visual Studio Help/Help 2.0 777 Insert menu 693
Winhelp 768 hotspots
XML 778 aligning 321
Help menu compatibility in output formats 321
reference 739 copying, cutting and pasting 23
help project in old .IPP and .SHG files 313, 321
language and character set 149 inserting in graphics 321
Help Text tab 742 new features 37
editing in 742 HTML
help title 147 appearance in different browsers 398
help viewers configuring Browser-based Help output 398
and help window definitions 801 output format for lists 265, 573, 583, 601
changing appearance of 177 HTML (Browser-based Help) 771
defining appearance of 154 HTML code
for different output formats 177 about using 757
help window title in HTML Help 902 for inserting videos 426
help windows inserting in topics 311, 701
about 800 syntax highlighting 62
and output formats 393 HTML code, inline
and popups 808 about 761
changing for topic 177 inserting outside <BODY> tags 761
choosing (basic setup) 177 limitations in eBooks 761
creating, deleting and editing 177 referencing script functions in 761
external 310 where supported 761
external windows 473 HTML Export Options 573, 583, 601
FAQ 801 HTML files
HTML Help options 563 importing 132, 157, 159

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Index 927

HTML files in Browser-based Help and eBooks 811

merging into existing topics 159, 171 in HTML Help 809
HTML Help in Winhelp 811
about 765 Index template for Browser Help 484
calling from command line 902 Layout template 481
configuring output 394 Layout template variables 818
context-sensitive help 431 output conditions (reference) 830, 869
context-sensitive popups in 840 referencing external files in 490
crashes 902 referencing graphics in 489
custom TOC icons 902 Search template for Browser Help 483
editing source files 902 TOC template for Browser Help 482
Extended .HHP settings 571 topic pages in Project Properties 565, 581, 597
help window title issues 902 troubleshooting 491
help windows in 809 Unicode support in 23
links to external windows across modules 499, variables and 814
806 variables in 485
media files support 859 variables in (reference) 826, 865
modular help settings 570 hyperlinks
navigation links in header 902 about 293
on Windows 95 and NT4 888 and external windows 310
popup topics in 194, 845 and secondary windows 310
popup topics settings 567 captions 304
project files 767 converting to normal text 304
pros and cons 765 creating 109
referencing external files in 571 editing and formatting 304
restrictions on network drives 765, 902 file links 300
search not working 902 graphics as hyperlinks 320
settings in Project Properties 565 handling 38
support for videos and animations 428 Insert menu 686
temporary files 767 Internet links 298
TOC behavior, configuring 394 macro links 302
topic pages 565 script links 302
users get error message 902 selecting 183
HTML Help files testing 38
importing into existing projects 155 testing for dead hyperlinks 388
importing to a new project 130 to anchors 109, 305
HTML templates to browser-based HTML 308
about 470, 475, 814 to other projects and help files 308
and Baggage graphics 489 to popup topics 194
and help window types 801, 814 topic links 294
conditional output in 487
default Index template 821
default Search template 823 -I-
default TOC template 818
IDs
default topic page template 816
assigning and choosing 210
editing 476
internal numerical IDs (Project Synch) 655
ELSE condition 487
image captions
for topic pages 477
entering 314
graphics in 832
formatting 249, 314
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
 928 Help & Manual Online Help

image captions about 451

in insert picture dialog 690 and compiling 411, 454, 457, 460
standard style for 234, 249, 752 and modular projects 460
variables in 442 conditional text 454
image editor defining user options 453
selecting default 729 editing 454, 457, 460
image folders exclude all a topic's subtopics 457
managing 325 for invisible topics 193
moving and renaming 325 format-based 871
settings in Project Properties 553 in command lines 512
images in HTML templates 487
converting to expanding image toggles 357 settings in Project Properties (custom builds)
find and replace 62 556
topic include options 457
images (see graphics)
user-defined 871
about 313
indents
Impict graphics editor
adjusting in lists 264
output file larger after resizing 317
and tab stops 744
resizing images with 317
hanging indents 744
using 320
how exported 744
Impict screenshot editor
problems when adjusting 900
using 621
problems with lists 253, 264, 266, 900
implicitly compiled topics 898
restrictions 232
import capabilities 47
unexpected changes 900
imported text
using 232
globally applying styles to 271
index
globally applying styles to, example 290
anchors and 369
importing
editing 369
compiled HTML Help .CHM files 155
editing directly 373
compiled HTML Help .CHM files to a new project
expandad view (Index tab) 377
130
HTML template for Browser Help 484
compiled Winhelp .HLP files 137, 161
Index tab 744
data from external sources 155
managing 377
external HTML files into topics (MERGE) 159,
171 proofreading support 42
from MS Word 138, 162 section header separators in 384
globally applying styles to imported text 271 two-way live keyword index 42
HTML files into new projects 132, 157, 159 using efficiently 377
plain text files into new projects 132, 157, 159 index keywords
RoboHelp® X5 projects 144 about 853
RoboHelp® X5 projects into .HMX projects sub-keywords 853
167 Index template 814
RTF files 138, 162 default 821
styles from other projects 237 inheritance
topics 202 in styles 748, 749
Winhelp project source files 135, 160 inheritance trees 749
XML file packages into .HMX projects 165 stopping 749
XML file packages to new projects 142 style families 754
importing data 155 inline HTML code
include options about 761

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Index 929

inline HTML code merging in modular projects 502

inserting in topics 311 organizing 225
inserting outside <BODY> tags 761 promoting and demoting 225
limitations in eBooks 761 support in output formats 848
referencing script functions in 761 Invisible Topics section
where supported 761 folders in 57
Insert menu 684
Anchor 695
Comment / Bookmark 704 -J-
Embedded Topic 700
Japanese 149, 780
Hotspot editor 693
JavaScript
Hyperlink 686
about JS links 758
Movie 694
about using 757
OLE Object 701
complex code in links 758
Picture 690
complex scripts 302
Plain HTML Code 701
nesting quotes 758
Special Character 703
script links 302
Text Variable 696
syntax in Help & Manual 758
Toggles 697
troubleshooting 758
inserting graphics 103
using in hotspots in graphics 321
inserting tables 106
where supported 758
Interactive wizards 835
JavaScript popups 48, 840, 845
international languages about 59
about 780 combining with dual-mode HTML Help 436
and PDF 786 in Browser-based Help 772
CID font mode for PDF 149 in HTML Help and Browser help 199
configuration settings for 149 options 199, 567, 599
project settings 783 using 199
requiring Unicode 780
jump targets 305
Unicode mode in Windows 2000 and XP 149,
783 jump to an external help file 171
Unicode setup 149
Unicode support 31
Internet Explorer
-K-
turning off yellow warning bar in Browser-based keyboard shortcuts 52
Help 411 assigning and editing 83
Internet links customizing options 733
compatibility in output formats 298 displaying 83
creating 298 for styles 237
creating automatically 298 using with styles 83, 234
using in hotspots in graphics 321 keyword index
invisible topics proofreading support 42
about 848 two-way live keyword index 42
as source for embedded topics 222 keyword index template 814
creating 193 keywords 369
for embedded topics 848 about 849
found in search 848 adding 370
include options with 193 adding child keywords 373
including in Browser-based Help 663 adding master keywords 373

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 930 Help & Manual Online Help

keywords 369 Hebrew 551, 783

A-keywords 382 Japanese 149, 780
checking 387 Polish 551, 780
deleting 373 right-to-left languages 551, 783
duplicates and variants 370 Russian 149, 551, 780
editing 370, 373 Thai 149, 780
entry format 370 Turkish 149, 780
find and replace 376, 391 Unicode support 31
in embedded topics 222 Western European 149, 780
in invisible topics 370 large fonts in Windows 35
in popups 370 Layout emplate 481
Index tab 744 variables 818
listing for project 618 Layout section in Browser-based Help 398, 401
managing 377 legal numbering style 259
red underline 370 level reset (outline numbering) 259
sorting problems 149 levels (outline numbering) 259
sub-entry levels 370 lines
testing 391 inserting 206
Topic Options tab 743 link styling tutorial 118
using with anchors 44, 305, 379 linking
kiosk applications 773 to popup topics 194
K-keywords links
in embedded topics 222 about 293
KLink() macro creating 109
translation in HTML Help 302, 761 dead 387
dead link highlighting 40

-L- handling 38
Insert menu 686
language and character set 149 styling with CSS, tutorial 118
language settings 147 testing 38
and PDF 786 to anchors 109
CID font mode for PDF 149 lists
configuration settings for 149 applying deletes indent 900
for project 88, 783 bullets and numbering 252
help file language 149 Format menu 710
in Project Properties 551 improvements 38
project language and character set 149 not included in styles 252
right-to-left languages 783 output format in HTML 265, 573, 583, 601
right-to-left languages, activating support for live spell checking 91
551 localization 530
Unicode 149 Longhorn Help 763
Unicode mode in Windows 2000 and XP 551 about 779
languages links 779
Arabic 551, 783 lost files 65
Chinese 149, 780
Czech 551, 780
Eastern European 149, 780 -M-
Farsi 551, 783
macro links
Greek 149, 780
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
 Index 931

macro links compiling 503

creating 302 compiling, about 873
Macromedia Flash 41 creating 493
macros (Winhelp) graphics in 138, 325, 497
about 761 IDs and context numbers in 497
translation in HTML Help 302, 761 include options 460
using in hotspots in graphics 321 linking between modules 499, 878
Main help window type 805 managing modules in the TOC 495
map files merge methods 494
about 846 merging invisible topics 502
auto-generating topics with 435 nesting modules 878
exporting (with custom syntax) 624 planning 878
generating context numbers and topics with reusing content 873
846 runtime and compile time merging 875
importing 624 structuring 878
restrictions 846 modules
master modules 878 master and child 493
master projects 493, 873, 878 MojoPac 23
media files monitors, multiple
support in output formats 859 save window positions for 320, 731
menus reference mouse wheel
Edit 679 changing font size preview setting 35, 91, 734
File 661 mouseover hints
Format 704 for objects in the editor 40
Help 739 in the TOC 57
Insert 684 movies
Project 722 Insert menu 694
Table 717 moving topics 100
Tools 723 MS Excel
Topics 670 copying from and to 189
View 682 MS Help 2.0 (Visual Studio Help) 580
MERGE command for importing HTML files 159, about 527, 777
171 compiler 410, 528
merging H&M projects 155, 169 compiling 113, 411, 528
metafiles 856 configuring Visual Studio Help output 409
Microsoft help compilers example calls 528
where to get 902 limitations 528
missing graphics 387 requirements 528
missing topics MS Word
restoring with Repair and Recover 638 copying and pasting from 91
modular help copying from 138, 162
about 492 copying from and to 189
A-keywords and 382, 854 differences from Word 91, 179, 741
linking between modules 382 importing files from 138, 162
modular help systems paragraph end mark 91, 179
about 873 pasting graphics from 858
modular projects MS Word RTF
about 873 about 776
and Browser-based Help 505 pros and cons 776
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
 932 Help & Manual Online Help

MS Word RTF output examples 431

settings in Project Properties 608 implementation in Help & Manual 861
multi-monitor displays Insert menu 701
and Screen Capture tool 320 inserting from files 429
save window positions for 731 restrictions 861
multiselect in the TOC 54 online users' forum
RSS feed link 75
organizing styles 754
-N- outline numbered lists
adjusting indents 264
Navigation section in Browser-based Help 398, 403
customizing 259
nested tables
formatting 259
don't split across pages 343
indent problems 263, 265
not supported in Winhelp 343
level reset 259
network drives
levels 259
HTML Help doesn't work 902
number format 259
restrictions on HTML Help 765
number style 259
New project styles in 266
File menu 662
outliner
New Project wizard 662 using Help & Manual as 217
Normal style 94, 176, 752 output formats 48
Notes style 752 about 763
number format (outline numbering) 259 Adobe PDF 774
number style (outline numbering) 259 Browser-based Help 771
numbered lists configuring (introduction) 392
adjusting indents 264 configuring Adobe PDF output 405
creating 255 configuring Browser-based Help output 398
customizing 255 configuring eBooks output 407
format 255 configuring HTML Help output 394
formatting numbers in 265 configuring printed manuals 405
not controlled by styles 252 configuring Visual Studio Help output 409
outline numbered lists 259 configuring Winhelp output 397
problems with indents 266 configuring Word RTF output 409
styles in 266 distribution files 417
numbering eBooks 773
restarting in numbered lists 255 HTML Help 765
style in numbered lists 255 Longhorn Help 779
numbering and bullets MS Word RTF 776
Format menu 710 printed manuals 776
Visual Studio Help/Help 2.0 777

-O- which is best? 902

Winhelp 768
XML 778
OLE objects 428
about 856 output size
creating new 429 larger after resizing graphics 317
editing 429
embedded 858
embedding 429
embedding vs. linking 861
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
 Index 933

printer driver required for 405

pros and cons 774
-P- reference driver for 738
settings 541
page breaks
settings in Project Properties 604, 606
errors caused by tables 343
template variables 871
inserting 206
templates for 468, 622
page referrers for PDF 666
templates for, standard files 122
page referrers for PDF output 604
templates, location 543
paragraph end marks templates, using 543
cannot select 741 Unicode languages and 544
do not contain formatting 91, 179, 741 Unicode now supported 786
paragraph marks using hi-res graphics in 317
displaying in editor 65, 230, 734 PDF manual 73
paragraph styles 234, 753 PDF problems
defining 237 can't output 907
defining from selection 237 files too big 907
naming for easy finding 754 garbled output 907
searching and replacing 271, 282 including/excluding pages 907
paragraphs odd/even page problems 907
borders and backgrounds 708 Picture Shortcuts
borders not displayed 900 for frequently-used graphics 328
copying problems 900
placeholder graphics
Format menu 706
for Flash animations and videos 423
formatting toolbar 230
plain HTML code
indenting 232
about 761
no borders displayed 708
adding to <HEAD> section 761
parent style
and Baggage 520
changing 243
files referenced in 520
Paste Text Only Insert menu 701
Edit menu 680 inserting in topics 311
PDF inserting outside <BODY> tags 761
about 538 limitations in eBooks 761
CID font mode 149, 545, 606, 786 referencing script functions in 761
configuring PDF output 405 where supported 761
embedding files in 300, 544 plain text files
file embedding setting 604 importing 132, 157
font embedding 405
Pocket PC, project template for 120
font embedding settings in Project Properties
149, 606 Polish 551, 780
generating 541 Popup help window type 805
help windows in 813 HTML template for 808
including/excluding pages 405, 468, 541, 543 popup topics
layout settings in Project Properties 604 about 834, 838
max. TOC levels 541 and context help 838
media files support 859 and help windows 808
page break errors 343 application calls to 434
page referrers 604, 666 auto-generating for context help 843
Print Manual Designer 622 auto-templates for 466
can't edit template/window definition 801
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
 934 Help & Manual Online Help

popup topics no page referrers in print preview 908

context-sensitive 840 toggles 367
creating 194 printing selected topics 54
dual-mode 194 program code
for context-sensitive help 432 Syntax Highlighting 715
in Browser-based Help 48 project
in Browser-based Help and eBooks 811 title & copyright notice 550
in eBooks 613 Project Converter
in HTML Help 809 converting H&M 3 projects 126, 641
in HTML Help and Winhelp 194 custom code in HTML templates 126, 641
in Winhelp 811 restrictions and limitations 126, 641
in Winhelp and HTML Help 845 project files
JavaScript popups 199, 599 damaged and corrupted 638
linking to 194, 294 repairing and recovering 638
plain text only in HTML Help 902 Project menu 722
pros and cons 838 Bookmarks 723
settings for Browser-based Help 599 Project Properties 722
settings for HTML Help 567 Project Properties
where supported 194, 838 about 548
width of, controlling 194, 845 Adobe PDF font embedding options 606
popup window type Adobe PDF Layout 604
can't edit 801 Adobe PDF Options 604, 606
prefixes for topic IDs 210 Baggage Files 554
Print Manual Designer Browser-based Help 586, 587, 589, 591, 593,
configuring PDF output with 405 594, 599
configuring printed manuals with 405 CID font mode 606
reference 730 Common Properties 548
Tools menu 730 copying settings between projects 189
using 622 custom builds 556
print manual templates eBooks functionality settings 612
editing 468, 543 eBooks layout settings 609
opening current template for editing 604 eBooks settings 609
selecting 468, 543 editing 147
standard files 122 help windows 557
standard templates 468, 543 help windows color & position 558
using 468 help windows common properties 558
Print Preview function 538 help windows HTML Help options 563
Print Topic help windows Winhelp options 560
Topics menu 678 HTML Export Options 573, 583, 601
Print User Manual HTML Help 565
File menu 666 HTML Help Extended .HHP settings 571
Print Preview function 669 HTML Help modular help 570
printed manuals HTML Help popup topics 567
about 538, 776 Image Folders 553
configuring 405 Language Settings 551
printing 538 MS Word RTF settings 608
templates for 468, 538 right-to-left languages, activating support for
551
printing
Text Variables 555
garbled printouts 908

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Index 935

Project Properties creating (tutorial) 88

Title & Copyright 550 creating by decompiling HTML Help .CHM file
Topic IDs and Help Context numbers 553 130
Topic Pages 565, 581, 597 creating by decompiling Winhelp .HLP file 137
using variables in 548 creating by importing .XML projects 142
Visual Studio Help (Help 2.0) settings 579, 580 creating by importing HTML files 132
Winhelp 575 creating by importing RoboHelp® X5 projects
Winhelp Extended .HPJ Settings 577 144
Winhelp modular help options 576 creating by importing RTF file 138
creating by importing Winhelp source 135
project reports 387
creating new 128
saving as HTML files 618
importing HTML and text files into 157
using the Reports Tool 618
importing RoboHelp® X5 projects 167
Project Reports tool 618
importing Winhelp source files to 160
not all topics included 726
importing XML file packages 165
reference 726
language settings 783
Report Viewer 728
large projects 873
Tools menu 726, 730
master and child projects 873
Project Synchonization 50
merging 155, 169
Project Synchronization
modular projects 873
about 645
PDF and language settings 786
creating translation pairs 647
Project Properties 722
how changes are synchronized 645
quick launching 113, 411
identifying changes in synchronized projects
templates for 463
652
testing 387
interim updates 655
title, copyright and language settings 147
internal numerical IDs 655
translating in Help & Manual 531
material disappears after synchronization! 658
translating with XML in external editors 533
no text-level comparison 645
project folder and 647
synchronizing existing translations 655, 658
synchronizing new versions 649
-Q-
translating changes 652 Quick Launch 113, 411
translating the original project 648 QuickTime 41
updating the original project 649
project templates
applying to existing projects 463 -R-
creating 463
Real 41
the Help & Manual help project template 463
using to create new projects 463 re-docking windows 84
projects Reference section 661
checking status 618 references
compiling 113, 411 to topics, finding 676
converting old projects 72, 126, 641 referrers 387, 452
copying and moving topics between 155, 169, finding 40, 191, 390
217 Refresh Topic
copying settings between 189 Topics menu 678
copying styles between 250 Repair and Recover tool 886, 898
copying text and content between 189 about 638
creating 125 automatic repair 638

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 936 Help & Manual Online Help

Repair and Recover tool 886, 898 script links

manual repair 638 creating 302
Tools menu 730 using in hotspots in graphics 321
why necessary 638 scripts
replace font styles 900 about using 757
replacing formatting 271 files referenced in 520
about 271 inserting JavaScript in topics 758
replacing styles 271 SDL Trados INI file 122
about 271 SDL Trados® INI file 530
Reporting Tool search
locating missing graphics with 388 excluding files and topics from Browser search
using to test projects 388 index 404
reports excluding page sections from search index
saving as HTML files 618 404
using the Reports Tool 618 full-text search for Browser-based Help 48,
404, 483
Reports tool
not working in HTML Help 902
not all topics included 726
special settings for in Browser-based Help 404
reference 726
search and replace
Report Viewer 728
font styles 271, 275
Tools menu 726
formatting 271
resizing graphics 314, 317
graphics 324
right-to-left languages 23, 551 images 191, 390
RoboHelp® X5 conversion 46, 47 in TOC and Invisible Topics 191, 390
RoboHelp® X5 projects paragraph styles 271, 282
importing into .HMX projects 167 referrers 191, 390
importing into new .HMX projects 144 text 191, 390
row height 882 topics 191, 390
rows (tables) variables 447
adding/deleting 338 search engine optimization 826, 865
RTF search finds invisible topics 848
configuring Word RTF output 409 search language files for Browser Help 122
RTF files Search template 814
importing 138, 162 default 823
importing graphics with 138, 162 secondary windows
preparing for import 138, 162 and help window definitions 801
runtime merging 494, 503, 875 and hyperlinks 310
Russian 551, 780 in Browser-based Help and eBooks 811
in HTML Help 809

-S- in Winhelp 811

using 471
sample projects 73 Section 508 compliance 888
Screen Capture tool 615 section header separators (in keyword index) 384
reference 725 security 886
Tools menu 725 See Also lists
using 320 creating with A-keywords 382
screenshots selecting
Screen Capture Tool 615 keyboard shortcuts for 183
with Screen Capture tool 320 text and content 183

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Index 937

settings changing on the basis of selection 243

copying project settings between projects 189 changing parent 243
shared HTML settings 565, 579, 586, 609 converting styles 753
shortcuts 52 copying from other projects 250
single-click option for Browser-based Help navigation copying text without styles 189
398 creating from selection 714
snippets defining 237
in HTML code 311 defining from selection 237
source code defining new 94, 176
ANSI SQL 267 differences from H&M3 229, 900
C++ 267 different for print file and help file 247
Pascal 267 display in Toolbar 245
syntax highlighting 267 dynamic linking and inheritance 748, 749
syntax highlighting examples 269 editing 243, 713
Visual Basic 267 explained 748, 749
Visual Objects 267 families 754
source code for the Help & Manual help 121 Format menu 713, 714
spaces formatting text with 234
multiple spaces in HTML 744 image captions and comments 249
spacing imported 237
unexpected changes 900 importing from another project 237
special characters in tables 251, 341
Insert menu 703 inheritance trees 749, 754
inserting 206 introduction 228
Spell Checker new features 36
configuring 629 not used for lists 252
custom user dictionaries 631, 634, 910 organization strategies 754
dictionaries 629 paragraph and text styles 234, 753
disabling for selected styles 629 paragraph style "stuck" 899
improvements 60 renaming 754
Tools menu 730 searching and replacing 271
using 629 searching and replacing, about 271
selecting and applying 234
spell checking
smaller files with styles 229, 746
auto-correct 184
source code 267
configuring 184
standard styles 752
custom user dictionaries 910
syntax highlighting 267
live spell checking 91, 184
toolbar display 753
manual 184
using (tutorial) 94
multiple languages 184
using in numbered and bulleted lists 266
TOC captions 184
why use? 746
style inheritance
switching off 243 styles for topics
controlling with topic templates 466
style selector 742
stylesheets
styles
applying from project template 463
about 746
copying between projects 250
applying to table contents 251, 341
applying to tables 251, 341 subtopics
exclude all a topic's subtopics 457
basic setup 176
can't reformat empty paragraphs 899 symbols

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 938 Help & Manual Online Help

symbols features 332

inserting 703 formatting 336
syntax highlighting how inserted 332
customizing 267 indenting 340
examples 269 inserting 106
Format menu 715 manipulating 106
syntax highlighting for HTML code 62 merging/unmerging cells 339
system locale nested 343
changing for Unicode 780 new features 33
paragraph settings for 340
printing settings 333
-T- properties 717
resizing 336
tab stops restrictions 332
and indents 744 selecting 336
not supported in HTML 744, 902 size options 333
table grid lines splitting cells 339
displaying darker 734 styles and 251
Table menu 717 Table menu 717
New Table 717 tabs
Table Properties 717 and indents 744
Table of Contents displaying in editor 230
changing topic icons in 224 not supported in HTML 744
compiling & printing selected topics 54 TCard() macro
creating multiple links from 56 translation in HTML Help 302, 761
docking and undocking 912 Template_Main.hmtopic 466
enhanced drag & drop 55 Template_Popup.htmtopic 466
managing topics in 209
templates
mouseover hints in 57
and help window definitions 801
multiple entries for one topic 220
automatic topic templates 466
multiselect in 54
external templates included with Help & Manual
promoting and demoting topics in 219 118
spell checking 184 for eBooks 471
toolbar 216 for new topics 171
undocking 682 for PDF and printed manuals 468, 538
table width and height 882 for PDF and printed manuals, using 543
tables for projects 463
about 332 for topic styles 466
about table sizing 882 for topics (with content) 466
adding/deleting rows/columns 338 Help & Manual help project template 121
background images 344 HTML templates 470, 475
borders 344 HTML templates, conditional output 487
column width problems 911 HTML templates, editing 476
column widths 333, 334 HTML templates, external file references in
converting tables to text 340 490
converting text to tables 340 HTML templates, graphics references in 489
creating 333 HTML templates, troubleshooting 491
deleting cell contents 339 HTML templates, variables in 485
displaying grid lines darker 734 HTML topic templates 477

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 Index 939

templates changing topic icons in 224

Index template for Browser Help 484 compiling & printing selected topics 54
PDF templates with Print Manual Designer 622 creating multiple links from 56, 295
Pocket PC help project template 120 docking and undocking 912
Search template for Browser Help 483 enhanced drag & drop 55
TOC template for Browser Help 482 managing topics in 209
types, defined 462 mouseover hints in 57
temporary files 638 multiple entries for one topic 220
default folder 737 multiselect in 54
HTML Help files 767 promoting and demoting topics in 219
project backup files 638, 737, 886, 898 spell checking 184
Winhelp files 770 timestamps of topics in 227
temporary files (compiling) toolbar 216
handling and folder names 419 undocking 682
testing hyperlinks 38 TOC pane 742
text TOC template 814
copying unformatted 189 default 818
copying, cutting and pasting 189 toggles 348, 354, 357
formatting manually 230 copying 360
formatting with styles 234 copying and editing 360
pasting without formatting 680 CSS styles for links 361
selecting 183 duplicate ID conflicts 360
wrapping around graphics 316 examples 345
text and paragraph marks Expand All / Collapse All functions 363
displaying in editor 230 IDs 360, 365
text files menu options 697
importing 132, 157 nesting 345
text formatting output file size 365
new features 31 pre-expanding toggles for printing 367
text styles 234, 753 Print button with Expand All 363
creating from selection 714 printing 367
defining 237 Pro version only 345
defining from selection 237 support in output formats 345
display in Toolbar 245 troubleshooting 365
editing 713 updating old expanding sections 367
Format menu 713, 714 toggles, expanding images
naming for easy finding 754 converting existing images 357
Text Variable creating 357
Insert menu 696 formatting with CSS 357
text variables toggles, expanding inline text
managing 555 creating 354
settings in Project Properties 555 formatting text and links 354
Thai 149, 780 toggles, expanding sections
timestamps creating 348
TOC entries 227 editing 348
topics 227 embedded topics in 348
variable for 227 formatting headers 348
title & copyright notice 550 icons, swapping 348
icons, using in 348
TOC
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
 940 Help & Manual Online Help

toggles, expanding sections assigning and choosing 210

indents in 348 auto-correcting blanks in 734
nesting 348 auto-generation 65
supported content 348 changing 214
toggles, troubleshooting descriptive 210
large output files 365 editing/changing 849
page breaks in PDFs and printed manuals 365 finding 191, 390
problems with expanding section toggles 365 hierarchical 210
problems with formatting in toggle links 365 in modular projects 497
problems with IDs 365 listing 618
Toolbar long 65
customizing 684, 733 maximum length 849
customizing options 684 permitted characters 849
display options 683 prefixes, generating automatically 210
for TOC 216 settings in Project Properties 553
toolbars 742 unable to save topic! 911
Tools 615 topic include options
Tools menu 723 checking and correcting dead links 457
compiler location settings 737 exclude all a topic's subtopics 457
compiler options 737 setting and editing 457
Customize 731 topic links
default folders options 737 compatibility in output formats 294
editor customizing options 734 creating multiple 294
general customize options 731 inserting 294
Help Context Tool 730 Topic Options
Image Editor 729 docking and undocking 912
PDF reference driver 738 Topic Options tab 81
Print Manual Designer 730 customizing Toolbar 684
Repair and Recover 730 undocking 682
Report Viewer 728 topic page template 814
Reports 726 default 816
Screen Capture 725 Topic Pages
Shortcuts customization options 733 HTML editing mode 565, 581, 597
Spell Check 730 simple editing mode 565, 581, 597
Toolbar customization options 733 topic status
Tooltips 835 changing 225
topic caption topic styles
editing 217 controlling with topic templates 466
link with topic header (off/on) 217 topic templates 466
topic header topic templates, HTML
adding material to on every page 477 breadcrumb trail navigation 477
editing 217, 477 using and editing 477
link with topic caption (off/on) 217 topic timestamps 227
topic icons topic title 91
and invisible topics 225 TOPICLASTEDITED variable 227
changing in TOC 224 topics
topic IDs Add Item functions 673
31-character problem 171, 911 auto-generating with map files 846
about 849 auto-templates for 466
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
 Index 941

topics Refresh Topic 678

blind topics 638 Trados 530
cannot save topic! 911 Trados INI file 122, 530
changing background color 177 Training card help 835
changing status 225 translatable elements in XML 796
compiling selected 54 translating projects 530
copying and pasting between projects 169 project synchronization and 645
correcting spurious references 638 translating individual topics with XML 533
creating and editing 171 translating projects in Help & Manual 531
creating invisible 193 translating with external editors 533
creating multiple 171 tutorials 533
creating new 97, 171 translation 530, 531, 533
creating popups 194 translation support 50
creating with link to an external help file 171 TrueType fonts
creating with templates 171 CID font mode 606
cutting and pasting 100 embedding in PDF files 606
editing caption and header 217 Turkish 149
embedded 222
tutorials
embedded vs. multiple references 881
adding topics 97
excluding from full-text search in Browser-based
A-Links for links between modules 119
Help 404
background images for topics and headers
exporting and importing 202
118
Find function 676
build conditions, defining 119
finding 191, 390
compiling projects 113
finding references to 676
conditional output 119
implicitly compiled, compiler message 898
creating hyperlinks 109
importing and exporting 169
creating projects 88
inserting JavaScript in 758
customized icons for Browser Help TOC 118
invisible, merging in modular projects 502
DHTML Examples 118
listing editing dates 618
entering and editing text 91
managing in the TOC 209
excluding topics and content 119
moving 100
expanding and collapsing sections 118
moving, cutting and pasting 217
external tutorials included with Help & Manual
multiple TOC entries for one topic 220 118
printing 207 for programmers 75
printing (dialog) 678 inserting graphics 103
printing selected 54 inserting tables 106
promoting and demoting in the TOC 219 modular help systems 119
refreshing current 678 navigation buttons 118
restoring missing topics 638 non-scrolling headers 118
sharing 169 organizing the TOC 100
testing 388, 390 Pocket PC help 120
unable to save topic! 911 Print link 118
Topics menu 670 Quick Start 88
Add Item 673 styling hyperlinks with CSS 118
Change Item 671 suppress underlined TOC entries in Firefox
Find Referrers 676 118
Find Topic 676 translation and localization 530
Print Topic 678 using Help & Manual 73

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 942 Help & Manual Online Help

tutorials inserting in topics and headers 441

Using Styles 94 managing 555
maximum characters 440
redefining for conditional output 451, 461
-U- redefining in command line options 516
search and replace 447
unable to save topic! 911
settings in Project Properties 555
Unicode
typing manually 441
about support in H&M 31, 780
user-defined, creating and editing 449
compiling requirements 780
user-defined, importing and exporting 449
editing requirements 780
using in Project Properties 548
in PDF 23, 544
using outside topics 442
international language setup 88, 149
variable syntax 448
now supported in PDF 786
where supported 440, 862
support in HTML templates 23
with and without highlight 441, 447
which languages require 780
Version 4.1 new features 27
Windows requirements for 780
Version 4.2 new features 23
Unicode mode in Windows 2000 and XP 149, 551,
783 Version 4.3 new features 19
update checking function Version 4.31 new features 18
and firewalls 731 videos and animations 41, 422
configuring 731 about 856
URLs editing HTML code for 426
detecting automatically 65, 734 Insert menu 694
inserting in topics 422
user dictionary
inserting placeholder images for 423, 425
for spell checker 184
movie preview function not working 913
user manuals
previewing 425
using hi-res graphics in 317
support in output formats 428
UTF-8 149
taking snapshots from 425
and XML output 792
videos not playing properly 913
View menu 682
-V- customizing 84
customizing Toolbar 684
variables docking/undocking options 84, 682
about 440, 862 Toolbar display options 683
breadrcrumb trail variable 826, 865 Vista compatibility 23
disabling 444 Visual Studio .Net 48
editing and formatting 444 Visual Studio Help (MS Help 2.0) 48
find and replace 447 about 527
formatting and styles with 444 compiler 528
global predefined variables 448, 863 compiling 113, 411, 528
in HTML templates 450, 485, 814 configuring Visual Studio Help output 409
in Index template 821 example calls 528
in Layout template 818 limitations 528
in PDF templates 451, 871 requirements 528
in Search template 823 settings in Project Properties 579, 580
in TOC template 818 topic pages 581
in topic page templates 816 Visual Studio Help Integration Kit 528
Insert menu 696 Visual Studio Help/Help 2.0
© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved
 Index 943

Visual Studio Help/Help 2.0 restrictions with tables 332

about 777 settings in Project Properties 575
pros and cons 777 single-level topics become sub-topics 914
Voluntary Product Accessibility Template 888 support for videos and animations 428
VPAT 888 temporary files 770
VSIK 528 text formatting restrictions 228
Winhelp .HLP files
decompiling 137, 161
-W- importing 137, 161
Winhelp macros
web pages
about 761
inserting in topics 171
translation in HTML Help 302, 761
Western European languages 149 using in hotspots in graphics 321
What's new? 29 Winhelp source files
What's This? help 835 importing into existing projects 160
windows importing to new projects 135
external windows 310, 473 wizards 835
large fonts setting 35 Word
secondary windows 310 copying and pasting from 91
secondary windows, defined 462 copying from and to 189
Windows 95 and HTML Help 888 differences from Word 91, 179
Windows Media Player 41 paragraph end mark 91, 179
Windows metafiles 856 pasting graphics from 103, 858
Windows NT4 and HTML Help 888 Word 2003
Windows versions editing XML files with 799
recommended for Help & Manual 886 Word files
Windows Vista compatibility 23 importing 138, 162
Windows Vista Help 763 preparing for import 138, 162
Winhelp word formatting
about 768 automatic for word left of cursor 900
browse sequences no longer supported 914 Word RTF
calling from command line 914 about 776
configuring output 397 configuring Word RTF output 409
context-sensitive help 431 pros and cons 776
context-sensitive popups in 840 videos and animations 428
crashes 914 workspace 79
custom TOC icons not supported 914 writing and formatting text in the editor 179
empty chapters 914 WYSIWYG preview and editing in XML 795
Extended .HPJ Settings 577
formatting features restrictions 768
help windows in 811
media files support 859
-X-
modular help settings 576 X5 projects
navigation deadlock 806 importing from RoboHelp® 144, 167
nested tables not supported 343, 768 XML
no TOC 914 about 778
popup topics in 194, 845 and translating projects 533
project files 770 configuring XML output 408
pros and cons 768 no section in Project Properties 408

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved

 944 Help & Manual Online Help

XML
pros and cons 778
translating individual topics 533
XML elements
translatable elements 796
XML Export/Import 48, 50, 778
and translating projects 533
Baggage files and 787
BOM (Byte Order Mark) 792
compiling 415
Darwin 142, 165
DocBook 142, 165
file encoding 792
file timestamps 787
graphics files and 787
importing entire XML packages 165, 793
importing individual XML topics 793
importing XML file packages to new projects
142
importing XML files 793
output files 792
output files and folders 787
reference 786
translating individual topics 533
UTF-8 and 792
Windows requirements 786
zipped XML output 793
XML files
check list for translators and editors 796
editable elements 796
editing in external programs 795
editing with Word 2003 799
testing external editors 795
WYSIWYG preview and editing 795
XML schema 48, 50, 142, 165, 208, 415, 533, 778,
793
exported schema description file 787, 795
XML schema and stylesheet files 122
XML Source tab
editing XML source code 179, 208
how the XML Source editor works 32

-Z-
ZIP XML archives
must unpack to open 793
zoom factor for graphics 314, 317

© 1997 - 2007 by EC Software, all rights reserved