RE: editable help systems

["Hyde, Barb # IHTUL" <Barb -dot- Hyde -at- tulsa -dot- cistech -dot- com>]

Hi Cathleen,
A word to the wise:
Another disadvantage of using annotations is that if you ever send these
clients an updated Help file, they will lose the connections between the
Help file and their custom annotations. For reasons unknown, Microsoft
attaches annotations to the offset address of the topic title, not to the
context string or the title itself. When a new help overwrites the annotated
Help, all the connections are gone. In most cases, the .ann file still
exists as a text file in \windows, but that's all that's left of their
carefully annotated system.

We update our programs and Help a couple of times a year and were bit big
time with this gotcha. Now we do not recommend annotating to our customers.

-----Original Message-----
>Subject: editable help systems
>From: "McIntosh, Cathleen"
>Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 11:23:05 -0500

<snip>
What we 
decided to use was WinHelp's annotation feature.

If you open a WinHelp file and click the edit button, one of the choices 
you'll see is "annotate".  Click that selection and you see a window where 
you can type whatever you like.  When you save the information, you'll see 
a small paper clip graphic beside the title of the Help topic.  Click that 
graphic and the annotation window opens with the information you typed
earlier.

Help file annotations are stored in a separate file - what our clients do 
is write the annotation files and then transmit them to each of their shops.

The disadvantage to such a system is that end-users can modify the 
annotation files - sometimes inadvertently.  All they have to do is reload 
the original annotation file to recover.
<Snip>