Can Dreamweaver be used for chm or WinHelp help file generation?

I'm a developer of Win32 applications. Chiefly I use Borland C++ Builder which is a
lot like Delphi except with C++.

I'd like to write help in HTML and then generate from that into various formats
including of course HTML but also PDF and some sort of context-sensitive help format
that can be invoked from within an application.

The old WinHelp format can be developed for using RoboHelp or a couple of other
tools. Some of those tools can also generate HTML. But, to take just one example, one
can write documentation in Word and then use various tools to generate help files.
But the HTML generated by Word XP has a number of problems with bloat being just one
of them.

I'd rather author help in HTML and then from HTML generate out to various formats.
I'd rather use a dedicated HTML editor made by a company committed to making a great
HTML editor rather than use some help application's editor since the vendor that is
making the help app has got to have a lot of other priorities and problems to solve
aside from making the HTML output look good. Plus, such a company is in a smaller
niche and has less engineering resources than a bigger player making a more general
tool.

So my intuition is that an HTML editor tool would be a better thing to write help in
if it can be made to generate WinHelp and/or chm. Can this be done? Easily?

Does one have to stick special tags in the HTML to signal to a help file generator
tool what to put in an index of words and how to split up a file to make various
context-sensitive help entry points?

Anyone here using Dreamweaver to generate help files? Does it have any special
support for generating help files? Or is there a third party product that can take
Dreamweaver HTML files and generate WinHelp or chm files with them?

Also, does HTML print well into PDF? I would like to generate PDF and then make
printed manuals. I am wondering whether HTML can provide enough formatting
information to make that work.

Randall Parker wrote:

I'd rather author help in HTML and then from HTML generate out to various formats.

RoboDemo 5 can import HTML from Dreamweaver. It also has its own
built-in HTML editor.

http://www.macromedia.com/software/robohelp/

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Linda Rathgeber
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Randall,

The old WinHelp format can be developed for using RoboHelp or a couple of
other tools. Some of those tools can also generate HTML. But, to take
just one example, one can write documentation in Word and then use
various tools to generate help files. But the HTML generated by Word XP
has a number of problems with bloat being just one of them.

Recent versions of Word can produce fairly clean HTML if you choose to
save the documents as "Web Page, Filtered", and for Word 2000 there is
a downloadable filter that strips out all the Office-specific markup,
but I'd definitely agree that in general it's better to use something
other than Word to create HTML documents.

I'd rather author help in HTML and then from HTML generate out to
various formats. I'd rather use a dedicated HTML editor made by a
company committed to making a great HTML editor rather than use some
help application's editor...

I don't use RoboHelp, but I believe that you can now configure it to
use your preferred HTML editor rather than its own built-in editor.
Also, you may want to check out these two tools:

Deva Tools for Dreamweaver: http://www.devahelp.com
Help Publisher for FrontPage & Dreamweaver: http://www.indigoware.com

However, I don't believe that either tool is designed to output
print-ready material.

Does one have to stick special tags in the HTML to signal to a help file
generator tool what to put in an index of words and how to split up a
file to make various context-sensitive help entry points?

For compiled HTML Help (.chm) files, the index keywords are either
embedded in the source HTML files using <object> tags or stored in a
separate index (.hhk) file. It's possible to keep all the topics
together in a single HTML file -- see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/htmlhelp/html/vsconsplitovr.asp
from Microsoft's documentation for HTML Help Workshop -- but much more
common to split them into multiple HTML files, one for each topic.

There are quite a number of help authoring tools around that should
meet your single-sourcing requirement, even if most force you to use
their own editing facilities. For information on the more popular
ones, see:

http://www.helpstuff.com/helpstuff.html#hats
http://www.mshelpwiki.com/index.php?page=SoftwareReviews
http://www.cherryleaf.com/which_hat_(help_authoring_tool)_should_I_buy.htm

--
Pete (Microsoft Help MVP)

"Randall Parker"
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wrote in message news:cd4u7s$nbu$1 (AT) forums (DOT) macromedia.com...
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Anyone here using Dreamweaver to generate help files? Does it have any
special
support for generating help files? Or is there a third party product that
can take
Dreamweaver HTML files and generate WinHelp or chm files with them?

Yes. For three separate projects now, I have created HTMLHelp systems
compiled into chm's. I used DW to develop the HTML files and used
Microsoft's free HTMLHelp Workshop tool to build the TOC and index and to
compile everything into a single CHM.