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Re: Best Modern Alternative to CHM?

Subject: Re: Best Modern Alternative to CHM?
From: Mark Giffin <mgiffin -at- earthlink -dot- net>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2017 10:37:00 -0700

Thanks Chris D for more info on your cool doc system, I've been admiring it for years.

I happen to like .chm very much and consider that it is a high point for snappy self-contained help systems that has not been improved upon. All the newer ways to do things are not as fast and they consist of many individual files. But .chm is almost unusable for me these days for these reasons:

1. It's Windows-only.
2. It's got weird security problems.
3. It may still be supported by Microsoft but there is no visible future for it. No roadmap. The "support" may only be to include the .chm executable on Windows and to patch the more embarrassing security bugs.

Googling around, I can see that some people have reverse-engineered the chm format and may have even made it cross platform.

Has anyone used these? I'm hoping they might be useful.

Mark Giffin

On 6/27/2017 1:04 AM, Chris Despopoulos wrote:

If the app is client/server, then implement an HTML window in the client. Windows libraries provide all you need to do that so you can integrate HTML display in your app. Then have the server also serve up the content. Yes, it means your developers have to add more to the client, but in the long run it will improve the user experience. And yes... They can implement different types of HTML windows in the client to embed the help more directly into the user experience.
IMO the ONLY reason to consider CHM is if you need a stand-alone delivery of HTML that doesn't use a server of any kind. And I would question that need. But for a modern, client/server app, there's no excuse for using CHM. (Again, my opinion...)


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RE: Best Modern Alternative to CHM?: From: Chris Despopoulos

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