NEWS: Update from Microsoft on Help plans

[derke -at- accountview -dot- com]

Shane McRoberts, Lead Program Manager for Microsoft Help, just posted the
following news in
news://news.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.helpauthoring.

Derk Ederveen
-----------------------------------------------

The Microsoft® Help team has decided not to release Microsoft Help 2 as a
general Help platform. This is primarily in response to customer feedback
that the most important thing is providing a standard Help experience on
everybody's machine. With that in mind, we are focusing our work efforts
on
providing a great Help experience in the next client release of Windows
(codename "Longhorn") rather than on releasing an interim solution that is
not integrated with the operating system.

While Microsoft develops future Help technologies, we encourage Help
authors to continue using HTML Help 1.x. Visual Studio® .NET has great
support for integrating HTML Help 1.x content into the applications you
build, see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vbcon/html

/vbconApplicationAssistance.asp. There are also many 3rd party tools
available that provide a rich authoring experience for HTML Help 1.x
content (for some examples, see http://www.winwriters.com/restools.htm
[not
a Microsoft site]).

The Help 2 engine will continue to be provided with several of Microsoft's
developer-related products, including Visual Studio .NET, MSDN® Library,
Microsoft .NET Framework SDK, and Microsoft Office Developer. Component
developers and others who need to integrate their Help content into the
Help system in Visual Studio .NET can do so using the Visual Studio Help
Integration Kit (VSHIK). See
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/htmlhelp/h

tml/hwmscExtendingNETHelp.asp for more information. There are also 3rd
party tools that provide support for Help 2, including FAR HTML
(http://www.helpware.net/FAR/index.html [not a Microsoft site]) and
ComponentOne® Doc-To-Help® (http://www.componentone.com/helptools.aspx
[not
a Microsoft site]).

Shane McRoberts
Lead Program Manager, Microsoft Help

This posting imposes no obligations upon Microsoft and is provided "AS IS"
with no warranties, and confers no rights. Some of the sites listed above
are not under the control of Microsoft and Microsoft makes no
representations whatsoever concerning the content of those sites. These
links are provided as a convenience to you.  Such listings do not
constitute an endorsement, authorization, sponsorship, or affiliation by
Microsoft with respect to such sites, their owners, or their providers.
The
information, software, or products found on these sites have not been
tested by Microsoft and Microsoft therefore cannot make any
representations
whatsoever with respect thereto.



^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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A new book on Single Sourcing has been released by William Andrew
Publishing: _Single Sourcing: Building Modular Documentation_
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