Status for CHM file format?

[Swede]

Hi!
Does anybody know the status of the CHM file format? Are there any plans for updates or is it basically a sunset mode product? As far as I know it's very old and has not been updated for almost two decades. Still, it's widely used, e.g. for the helpfile for Help & Manual 8.
I looked up one of my older posts here in the forum (viewtopic.php?p=55124#p55124) where the reply described the CHM system as "very ancient and creaky". One of our customers recently pointed out that they can't view the images in our helpfile and we've also encountered other examples of odd behavior in published CHM files.
We have been considering switching to Webhelp but there are some very useful functionalities that only seem to be available in CHM, specifically master projects in runtime HTML Help (CHM) projects.
So, what's your advice? Should we stick with CHM or are there other more modern formats with the same functionality?

[Tim Green]

Hi Swede,

The chances of Microsoft ever updating the CHM system are precisely zero. They abandoned it completely directly after releasing it in 1998. None of the updates, bug fixes or features originally promised ever materialized, and none of the developers involved in it have been at Microsoft for many years. As far as we can see, it only still works in Windows because Windows has been patched around it. The CHM code is just a black box, carried over unchanged from one version of Windows to the next without changing so much as a single byte. It doesn't understand Unicode or high resolution monitors, and its user interface is pretty much unconfigurable. That is why the icons in the TOC are still so stubbornly tiny.

That being said, you shouldn't be having problems with images in your CHM files. There are a couple of reasons this might be happening, but we'd have to check your project and the images for that.

As for alternative formats: WebHelp can only be used on a web server, but that is also its huge advantage: You can update at any time without having to redistribute your documentation. If you absolutely must have locally installed documentation, look into Help+Manual's eWriter format. It packages WebHelp in a single local file with a compact standalone viewer you can install together with your documentation, and the files are neutral compressed data files that can be downloaded and even mailed without problems.