Help & Manual
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Help & Manual is a Windows-based help authoring tool published by EC Software, a company based in Austria.
Like many help authoring tools, Help & Manual allows the writer to create a single source text which it then converts to a number of target formats. In this case, the author creates the source text using an editor built in to the Help & Manual program. The text, along with the user's settings for the project, are stored in a single file with an .HMX extension. Version 4.0 of Help & Manual was initially released in August 2005. The current version is 4.15, released in June 2006. Help & Manual currently supports the following target formats:
- Microsoft WinHelp
- Microsoft Compressed HTML Help
- HTML
- Microsoft Help 2.0 / Visual Studio Help
- Rich Text Format (RTF)
- eBooks (Windows executable containing an embedded viewer)
- Round-trip XML for external translation and re-import (own XML schema)
- Printed manuals
Version 4.x of Help & Manual also supports Unicode for creating help in all international languages, including Asian languages like Chinese, Japanese and Thai but excluding right-to-left languages.
The program comes bundled with several tools, including a screenshot capture tool, a graphics program with functions for editing and enhancing screenshots, a help context tool for managing, importing and exporting help context numbers, a "print manual designer" for creating and editing layout templates for PDF files and printed manuals and a reporting tool for generating and exporting project reports.
Prices range from USD 299 to 459. On request the company offers both educational discounts and cross-upgrade discounts for users switching from other major help authoring tools (RoboHelp, Madcap Flare, AuthorIT and Doc2Help).
[edit] Version history
- 3.x - used RTF-based source files with a .HM3 extension.
- 4.x - uses XML-based source files with a .HMX extension
