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| > 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.
And moreover, all of the dominant online help platforms, like JavaHelp, are
free. Microsoft has never charged a dime for WinHelp or HTML Help. The
WinHelp viewer is free with every copy of Windows. IE is also free. NetHelp,
the once interesting online help platform from Netscape, was free. Oddly
enough, the only online help platforms you have to pay for are those that
are created by the HAT vendors.
| > 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.
Neither IE nor NN fully supports the HTML 4.0 specification. JavaHelp does a
pretty good job of fully supporting HTML 3.2. Support for the 4.0 spec will
come later. In the meantime, 3.2 supports what you need for most online help
systems.
| 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.
And the major HATs all provide (or will shortly provide) a GUI interface for
building the XML-based TOC and index files.
| 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?
