Microsoft Help 2
MS Help 2 SDK preview is now available via VSHIK 2.1 (Visual Studio .NET Help
Integration Kit). VSHIK is designed to allow users to create MS Help 2 based
help and (optionally) plug into the MS.VSCC collection (VS.NET/MSDN Help). At
this stage VSHIK will only install on systems containing VS.NET. At this stage
the only H2 viewers available are the MSDN Viewer (DExplore.exe) and some 3rd
party viewers (see below).
Links - Download
MS Help 2 Forum
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MSHelp2
Changes for the users
- MS Help is a completely new help system. New file
extensions. New API DLLs.
- MS Help requires a minimum of MS IE5.0 because of its
XML requirement.
- Like MS HTML Help 1.x before it, MS Help uses HTML
topics, and uses TOC, Index, Search, Favorites navigation tabs, as well as
KLinks, ALinks.
- MS Help can have multiple indexes. Think of an index as
a list of Name - Value pairs. These lists are static in that they are set at
compile time.
- MS Help Data Services allow you to interface with the
help file data via COM interfaces.
- Some MS HTML Help 1.x features may not have been
implemented in MS Help. Note however you can always use a mixture of HTML Help
1.x and MS Help in your projects. Remember that some features such as HH 1.x
Shortcuts will not work outside of a CHM.
- MS provide a conversion tool HxConv.exe which does a
good job of converting .CHM or .HHP over to MS Help project.
- The compiler no longer strips info from source files.
And round trip compiles mean that when you decompile a HxS file you get all
the original source files back, including the .HxC project file.
- You must specify the exact list of files to be compiled into target .HxS
help file, unlike HH 1.x which could crawl hyper-links to find files. The H2
file list is kept in a .HxF file. Wild cards such as "*.htm" and "images\*.gif"
are allowed.
- No more confusion over Binary or Non-binary TOCs and Indexes. They are
always stored in the help file as binary.
- MS Help collections can be very big. Bigger than MS
HTML Help 1.x merged document sets.
- Help 2 dynamic filters work on TOC, Index and
Search items, and even right down to the paragraph
level in a topic file (with some help of JScript). Filters
are based on topic attributes attached to each topic.
Help 2 Tools
MVP Robert Chandler is developing FAR and H2Reg - I think the best to make
Help 2 at this stage.
MVP David Liske released a little tool in addition to the converter. You can
download the CHM-to-HxS converter or a Help 2 Viewer at the following URL's: