tcworld Review of H&M 6

[Tim Green]

Nice review of Help & Manual 6 in Tekom's tcworld online magazin:

http://www.tcworld.info/tcworld/technic ... lp-manual/

Conclusion:
"Help & Manual remains the most pragmatic and flexible among Help authoring tools even with the new version. The online Help and the electronic media generated leave almost no wish unanswered."

[Aitch]

What a fantastic review!
And of course, we expected nothing less from this great product.

Well done!

[Winsteps]

Tim, how about responding to the review's "Limitations", "Vis-a-vis the Competition" and the negative implication of "even with the new version"?

[Alexander Halser]

I think it's a very fair review, and the "limitations" cover a very few weak(er) points of Help & Manual. Commenting on that would be nitpicking, as the advantages over competing products are much more emphasized. We are all happy with this fantastic review

[Winsteps]

Thanks, Tim, but reviews (positive and negative) of our own products often give us great ideas for new features. That review would be a disappointment if it does not do the same for you (but perhaps you wouldn't want to tell us this early).

[Xtructur]

 
Hello,

Mr. Halser declares himself satisfied with the review of Mr. Achtelig and, of course, he does minimize the referred problems. This is partly understandable, mainly because Mr. Achtelig is comparing Help+Manual with other help compilers, not with structured editors in general, the other significant role of Help+Manual.

It is not infrequent to observe the dominance of the compilation abilities against the edition ones in the development of Help+Manual, probably because of historic requests of its users. If we read particular cases of some users of the Forum, we will see scenarios of near unchanged documentation, but with many different output formats; and situations where documentation is generated by other programs and bulk imported into Help+Manual. But, when desktop publishing is completely addressed by Help+Manual, then many disadvantages appear: needing of format automation, forced search and replace combined dialog, absence of simple search of formatted text, lack of undo for replace operations...

From my point of view, the code of the publisher (Page Editor) is the weakest part of Help+Manual. Some of the problems that Mr. Achtelig indicates could also start from this component of software. I believe it is the origin of addition or suppression of spaces when we modify text at the end of some lines, mainly when they are affected by format changes or include conditional labels. This disadvantage is random enough to be easy replicated and, what is worse, it can be generated when doing multiple replacements. If the user is not watchful, spaces could disappear between words, and unexpected double spaces should appear too.

The lack of an own scripting tool is another feature which evidences that Help+Manual is considered more like a compiler than like an editor. In fact, Mr. Green suggests KeyText as halfway solution and some users refer to alternatives like AutoIt or AutoHotkey. Although all these solutions are acceptable, they are not absolutely trustworthy for situations with different configurations from screen, video cards and speeds of process. In addition, the developers of Help+Manual have recently rearranged the internal name of some objects, several required as keyboard macro targets. The edition problem is so remarkable that Mr. Green proposes to overcome some of the most general obstacles by means of grepping tools.

However, the most important fault of Help+Manual is the impossibility of search dialog to find a text when it has different formats throughout its string. In fact, until this difficulty is not solved, the editing facet of Help+Manual will not begin to be up to the standard set by word processors, even less structured editors, which is what would correspond to a tool of its features.

Regards,

Xtru

 

[Martin Wynne]

Hi Xtru,

If you want a word processor, use Word.

If you want to do desktop publishing, use PagePlus.

If you want to create help files and technical manuals, use H&M.

It's horses for courses. You can't expect one program to do everything. You can't hammer nails with a saw.

For help files and manuals, users want just two things -- good information; easily found. H&M is brilliant for that. The odd extra space between words or a dot out of place doesn't matter a damn in the context of finding information. If you are creating something where such things do matter, you should be using some other software. It's not fair to criticise a thing for not being what it doesn't claim to be.

regards,

Martin.

[John Waller]

"However, the most important fault of Help+Manual is the impossibility of search dialog to find a text when it has different formats throughout its string."

On this point, I agree with you. It trips many people up making the feature unusable.

http://helpman.it-authoring.com/viewtopic.php?t=9528