Re: JavaHelp

["Higgins, Lisa" <LHiggins -at- CARRIERACCESS -dot- COM>]

> I did some work with the beta version of JavaHelp. Unless
> they made major
> changes before they released it, I do not recommend this
> product. It was
> designed to be freeware, and you get what you pay for.

This really is a dangerous assumption. Very often, freeware is a better,
cleaner, more dependable alternative to software you pay for.

> You have to create the directory structure yourself using
> XML. The help
> files themselves are HTML, but the viewer does not support the latest
> version of HTML (4.0?).

Yeah, HTML 4 is the current version, and it's true that JavaHelp doesn't
support all of it, but I haven't seen a browser that does yet. Mozilla comes
close, and so does Amaya. At any rate, I've found that the JavaHelp browser
degrades gracefully, which is more than I can say for some big honking
browsers I can think of.

As far as the XML, JavaHelp comes with an extensive help system, and you can
cut and paste the XML. It's really not that difficult to write XML if you've
know HTML and understand the concept behind it.

> Their search feature is not context sensitive--it only finds
> occurrences of
> the word. You might be able to do something to make it
> context sensitive,
> but from what I read in the user manual, this is difficult.

The context sensitive help and the search engine are different animals.
Context-sensitive help is help that you access from an application, and the
search engine is the tool provided with JavaHelp that catalogs your help
files.

JavaHelp, BTW, supports both.

And in response to the question about HTML Help, unless you're writing to a
strictly Windows-based audience, isn't that out of the question?

Anyone, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Lisa Higgins.


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