Authoring program documentation

[Richard Gorsuch]

I am looking for a tool that can be readily used to write documentation files that does not require knowledge of anothor system (a fancy way of saying I've never programed hdlm). WinHlp is on its way out, so what are you using??

[Scott Slater]

MS Word --> PDF

Or are you looking for a help file creation utility?

[Michael Mattias]

>Or are you looking for a help file creation utility

um, er.... to anyone under the age of about forty, "documentation" MEANS "help file."

They've only seen printed manuals in the museum.

[Eddy Van Esch]

I am using HelpScribble. Not free.
It can compile the same 'source file' into WinHelp (.hlp), HTML Help (.chm), Web Help (.html) or a 'flat manual' for printing or creating pdf files.
It works for me.

Kind regards

[Hans-Dieter Veit]

I'm useing HelpNDoc from IBE-Software. You can create help file (CHM) Webpages (HTML), export to word doc and PDF.

It's simple to use with it's varity of document formats it satisfies all my needs for documentation.

Hans

[Fred Buffington]

Richard,
Simple html is not that difficult and there's plenty of help manuals on the internet as well as windows web sites and forums that can help.

As an example, I use a simple html web page I made that has all the main links i want to go to plus a search textbox that calls up a yahoo search page.
I use it as my home page for IE and, of course, it's only on my computer.

Another advantage of learning html is to be able to look at other web pages
and seeing how things are done. Although this is getting harder to do with style sheets and compiled html taking up most web sites (but not all) these days.

[Volker Butzlaff]

Help file tools ...

@all,

like Eddy said: Helpscribble from JGSoft ( http://www.just-great-software.com/ ) is hard to beat, concerning the cost/benefit relations.

It's feature-rich, fast, easy to use and not expansive. I made some evaluations the last months and I think that's it...

I've to switch from "old" Winhelp to a broader help environment ( Winhelp, CHM-Help, Web HTML and Pdf etc.) and that seems to be a professional solution.

Only my two cents.

bye,
Volker

[Barry Marks]

um, er.... to anyone under the age of about forty, "documentation" MEANS "help file."

Who cares what children think! When they grow up then their experience might matter a little.

Barry

[Russ Srole]

I use helpmaker. Free, easy to use. Does the job. http://www.brothersoft.com/helpmaker-55215.html