RE: RoboHELP and Java applications

["Rene Stephenson" <RStephenson -at- mwci -dot- mea -dot- com>]

David Handy <davidh -at- automsoft -dot- com> wrote:

> ...what is the best way to write and
> deliver a Help system for this [Java] app? 
> 
> I'm using RoboHELP Office v.7 at the moment (which includes HTML Help) and
> hope for a solution that will involve minimal retooling.

David,
I am writing context-sensitive application help for our cross-platform Java 
application. After checking all of my options, I decided to use RoboHELP 
Classic (v2000) to generate WebHelp.

I chose RH Classic over RH HTML, because our UNIX clients require .html 
extensions, rather than .htm extensions, which is an option only available 
with RH Classic. After I design the help system in RH Classic, I can always 
import it to RH HTML at a later date to manage it, and clean up the code. 
RH HTML does give you the option of producing .html files if you're 
importing a .hpj project. BTW -- Generating WebHelp from RH Classic is a 
breeze.

I chose WebHelp over JavaHelp for 2 reasons: better features that allow 
creating a more usable help system and difficulty in getting JavaHelp to 
run on my PC -- even with JDK, JIT, JRE, etc., installed. If it's that 
complicated to get it to run on my NT workstation, I'll not subject my 
audience to the same potential frustration.

Although WebHelp IMHO is a better help product than JavaHelp, there is a 
downside to choosing WebHelp for context-sensitive help with Java aps. 
WebHelp doesn't create map files like JavaHelp does, so if you want the 
context-sensitive help to display with the complete help frame, you'll have 
to create modifications of the start.html file for each context-sensitive. 
Search the archives for discussions on this topic in the last quarter of 
99.

HTH
Rene Stephenson
Consultant, Mitsubishi TND
rstephenson -at- mwci -dot- mea -dot- com