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My preference in HATs is ForeHelp, which includes options to build JavaHelp,
MS HTML Help, its own cross-platform HTML InterHelp, and Netscape's NetHelp.
One or all four, with options available so you can build multi-flavored
projects and build all the output in one pass.
I have used it very successfully to build HTML systems (from FH Premier 99)
as well as WinHelp 3.1 and 95 systems (from FH 2.95 and 2.96, FH Premier 98
and 99).
My only caveat at present is that there's NO option available to build
plain, vanilla, match-the-W3.org-specification for HTML 4.0 (that option
existed for HTML 3.2 in FH Premier 1998 and 1999). I had to hand-edit (using
DreamWeaver 1.2 but NotePad or WordPad would've done) its output and remove
the ForeHelp-inserted references to several JavaScript files (filename.js)
in the HTML header because my output HTML files are inserted into a template
file in the UI and Netscape wouldn't display them correctly if it didn't
find the JS files. (Adding a single CSS file to my code caused two
developers to have to make changes to their code and I wasn't about to add
four more (JS) files of unknown behavior when it wasn't in the specs for the
product.)
But I can say that ForeHelp support is stellar. Absolutely stellar.
Deborah Snavely, Senior Technical Writer, Aurigin Systems, Inc.
