Support for MAML?

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cliftonm
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Joined: Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:08 am

Support for MAML?

Unread post by cliftonm »

Are there plans for H&M to support Microsoft's new help format, MAML?

Thanks!

Marc
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Tim Green
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Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Marc,

If Microsoft ever releases their new help format and provides a compiler for it, Help & Manual will support it. Unfortunately, Microsoft has done a repeat of the song and dance they did with Help 2.0 with Vista Help and the associated MAML XML dialect. Originally it was announced as the best thing since sliced bread that would solve all help authoring problems and probably also bring about world peace. This was followed by a long period of silence. Then a couple of months before Vista was actually released Microsoft made a quiet announcement that Vista Help would not be released directly as a public help format.

Since then there has been a lot more silence, but it is now pretty clear that like Help 2.0, Vista Help is never going to be released as a public help format for applications. At least at the moment the party line is that Vista Help is an internal Microsoft format only, and that it is only used for documenting Vista.
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