Migration to eWriter

Nothing is perfect! This is where you can post your ideas and wishes for functions you'd like to see in Help & Manual. Current version only please (H&M7).

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Greg Smith
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Location: Cambridge, England

Migration to eWriter

Unread post by Greg Smith »

The eWriter tool looks interesting. Is there a guide to migrating to it from chm files? In particular, we make extensive use of context sensitive help. Every dialog has a Help Context number that we use to provide general help when the user asks for help. We also make use of the help index, so when the user asks for help in a text file we locate the word the cursor is over and look this up in the chm file to give help (for example looking up built-in function names in a programming language to get argument descriptions). This lookup is an essential feature.

From reading the doc for the EWriter I can see how to programatically open a particular page by knowing the name of the file holding it, but I could not see how to launch the page based on the Help Context or how to look up a word in the index. Is there some additional documentation that tells us how to do this? WIthout these features, the new help format is a step backwards (at least for us).
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Tim Green
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Re: Migration to eWriter

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Greg,

Here you go, using context numbers is explained in both linking options (integrated viewer and separate viewer):

http://www.helpandmanual.com/help/index ... ctions.htm
http://www.helpandmanual.com/help/index ... ormats.htm

I just noted that some pasted notes that shouldn't be there are still at the top of the first topic referenced above. Will be fixed asap... :oops:
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Greg Smith
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Location: Cambridge, England

Re: Migration to eWriter

Unread post by Greg Smith »

Hi Tim,

This answers the question on how to use a context help ID number, so many thanks (is this new in the 7.2 help; I did not find this in the previous help...).

However, unless I misread or did not find the right place, it does not provide the equivalent of looking up a word in the index. I can see how to look up an anchor, but is there a way to look up a word in the index as you could with the CHM help using HH_KEYWORD_LOOKUP?
That is, the user asks for help on a word for which we have no anchor on a page, but it does exist in the index, so we want the help program to go to the page (if there is only one hit in the index) or display a list of pages if there are multiple hits.

It would be really good to escape from the ancient MS tool (which has several gotchas and can hang your program if used incautiously)... also your took has the possibility of being cross-platform...

Greg
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Tim Green
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Re: Migration to eWriter

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Greg,

Note that EWriter is currently Windows only, because the viewer is a Windows program. That may get extended in the future, but I wouldn't hold my breath at the moment... 8)

Performing a search with a help call is something that is entirely dependent on the scripting you use in the WebHelp inside the EWriter viewer. The viewer itself is just a container for WebHelp, all the functionality is provided by the WebHelp itself. You can perform searches with URL switches with the updated WebHelp/EWriter skins in Premium Pack 3. See this chapter in the PP3 help for details:

http://www.it-authoring.com/info/pp3hel ... witch.html
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Greg Smith
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Location: Cambridge, England

Re: Migration to eWriter

Unread post by Greg Smith »

I feared it would involve HTML scripting of some kind... surely to do that I need more information about the structure and format of the output... or do I look at the generated web-help output for that?

I do not need cross-platform support, but I assumed you were doing this with that in mind.
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Tim Green
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Re: Migration to eWriter

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Greg,

You don't need to do any scripting if you use the EWriter skins that already have this integrated. Programming it yourself would be a lot of work. Basically, EWriter is "WebHelp in a box". If you are generating it with Help+Manual instead of with the stand-alone tool you can use any WebHelp skin you like, and the layout and functionality you get depends entirely on the skin (beyond the features that are provided by the viewer itself, explained in this chapter).
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
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