Re: Online Help Questions

["Michael A. Lewis" <lewism -at- BRANDLE -dot- COM -dot- AU>]

Mary Beth Fowler wrote:
>
>      1. We're thinking about a guideline to delimit the size of help files.
>      Any ideas for file size considerations, either of the source file or
>      the .HLP file?

Depends on the application / subject matter. A help file that doesn't
answer the user's questions might as well be zero bytes. By the same
token, you're probably not trying to put product support out of
business: there are some things that 99% of users will never need. Do
you include that kind of stuff?

In part, that second issue depends on the platform. If you are
distributing to individual desktops, you need to consider total file
size: will it fit on their hard drives? If you are installing on a file
server for access via a network, the size of individual topics is what
matters -- the help engine only retrieves individual topics. (That makes
topic size a performance issue too.)

>      2. We need a tool to archive our help systems. Have you used a good
>      one? Which of the many Windows help files generated do you archive?

You only need to archive the source files -- everything else can be
recreated by recompilation. That means any decently flexible backup
system will work. For management of the .HLP files themselves, you might
like to look at Virtual Media's "HyperShelf".
--
Michael Lewis
Brandle Pty Limited, Sydney, Australia
: PO Box 1249                : Suite 8, The Watertower   :
: Strawberry Hills, NSW 2012 : 1 Marian St, Redfern 2016 :
: Tel +61-2-9310-2224        : Fax +61-2-9310-5056       :


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