What is the best tool to create CHM help files in visual foxpro projects

[avsalf]

It is paid, but it automatically generates help for you by importing the visual classes and the classes to be learned from PRGs
The shareware version places at the bottom of each page the legend "Unregistered copy"

http://www.west-wind.com/wwhelp/

http://www.create-chm.com/

https://helpcreator.net/

https://www.pilotlogic.com/

I recommend HelpNDoc. It's free, super friendly, and generates fully VFP compliant help files.

https://www.helpndoc.com/

Does anyone use Html or Xml directly as help files?

 

[Mike Lewis]

My personal favourite is Help + Manual (

https://www.helpandmanual.com/).

I've used it to create several complex Help files for large projects. I think it's an excellent product, but it does take a bit of learning (as would any sophisticated authoring tool). It is not particularly cheap, but I think it's good value.

However, Help + Manual is not VFP-specific. It won't do things like importing VFP classes, as you mentioned. I would think that would be a minority requirement, unless you are creating Help files to serve as technical docs for your project (as opposed to end-user help). If that's the case, then the West Wind product would probably be a good choice.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Olaf Doschke]

If you want to integrate this deeper into the application itself, meaning make use of all the features, the native parts of the VFP language and forms only offer a deeper CHM integration (by just setting some help context ids, once you understand them).

I wonder if you can redirect help context ids to something else, but of course you can easily trap the F1 key and run whatever external help system and you could also reuse the CHM related properties of VFP, not using them for their original purpose or introduce your own attributes. The system of topic ids is hard to get anyway, so you can come up with something simpler for yourself, you don't have to use the CHM specific features of VFP, it even spares you the runtime about its features.

Bye, Olaf.

Olaf Doschke Software Engineering

https://www.doschke.name