Creating Help files

About Help authoring tools

There are many authoring tools and related products available
for creating online Help files on Windows. All of the authoring
tools for RTF-based Help files use the Microsoft
Help compiler to compile a set of source files into a finished Help
file.

What to include

The source files for any Help system typically include:

• Topic files (RTF),
  which contain the text of your Help system as well as footnote codes
  and commands that serve to identify the topics and provide navigation
  and other features
• Graphics files, typically bitmaps
  (BMP), which are associated with specific topics
• A project file (HPJ),
  which does not become part of the finished Help system but contains
  instructions for the compiler, some of which can affect the appearance
  and functionality of the Help windows you specify
• A contents file (CNT),
  which is not compiled into the finished Help file but is deployed
  along with the Help file as part of the overall Help system
  The contents file provides the entries that populate the Contents
  tab of the Help Topics dialog box and other information that can
  affect the overall behavior of the Help system.

How to proceed

If you are using one of the full-featured Help authoring tools,
you can follow its instructions for creating the necessary source
files and compiling them.

If you are using the Microsoft Help Workshop that comes with
the Microsoft SDK, you can use the tool to create your project file
and contents file and to compile the finished Help file. However,
you will need to author your Help topics directly in Microsoft Word.
The online Help for the Microsoft Help Workshop provides much information
on Help authoring, including instructions on how to use the various
footnote codes recognized by the Help compiler, the WinHelp macros,
and the WinHelp API.

Sample project file

For your convenience,
the text of a sample project file is provided in one of the topics
of the PBUSR100.HLP file that is installed
with PowerBuilder. To access it:

1. Open PowerBuilder Help
   and click the User button.
2. Navigate to the Sample Help Project File topic from
   the Contents tab in the Help Topics dialog box, under User-defined
   Help.
3. Copy the Help topic to the Windows clipboard.
4. Open a text editor such as Notepad and paste the
   clipboard text into a blank document.
5. Save the document in text format as PBUSR100.HPJ.

You need to edit your project file to reflect the details
of your Help development environment, such as source file names
and directory path names. You can do this in a text editor, or open
the project file in Help Workshop or another Help authoring tool
and edit it there.

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