Re: Seeking opinions about windows online help utilities

["Chuck Murray, ZK2-3/K35, DTN 381-2648 05-Sep-1993 1252" <cmurray -at- 4GL -dot- ENET -dot- DEC -dot- COM>]

Re. Ilana Levenson's about Windows online help creation utilities:

I've been using the Windows Help Authoring Tool (WHAT), an officially
unsupported tool that's shipped on the Microsoft Developers' CD-ROM.
I was very satisfied with it, at least until I recently ran into an
apparent bug. I won't go into the gory details, but I ended up with a
corrupt RTF file after trying to include some hotspots (popup and/or
jump) in popup displays. (For example, I want popup definitions to be
able to include hotspots for other popup definitions and for jumps to
related topics.) I know such features are possible; however, when I
used WHAT to include them, I ended up with an RTF file that Word for
Windows couldn't subsequently open -- and sometimes I ended up having
to restart windows.

I did what the Beta Release Notes for WHAT said: faxed a complete
description to a number and addressed it to "Microsoft Help Author."
Unfortunately, within minutes I got a call from the person at Microsoft
who routes the faxes, who was very nice and eager to help, but hadn't
heard of that product or title ("Microsoft Help Author"). He and I then
made a good guess about where it should be sent, and presumably it's in
the right hands now.  However, until I find out the cause of the problem
and a solution, I'm reluctant to recommend the Windows Help Authoring Tool.

- Chuck Murray
  cmurray -at- 4gl -dot- enet -dot- dec -dot- com