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Help & Manual is a documentation tool and content management
system for both single and multi-author editing.
While it is as easy to use like a normal word processor, Help &
Manual gives you the full power of a true WYSIWYG XML editor.
All the tools you need are at your fingertips in a single intuitive
environment, and the program handles all the complex, technical
aspects of the process for you. Instead of wasting countless hours
"programming" your help you can focus all your energy on actually
writing your documentation, so that all your working time is
productive time.
Intuitive working environment
Help & Manual´s working environment gives you all the formatting
and editing features of a modern word processor, including dynamic
styles and complex tables.
This is combined with powerful features for generating and editing
help and documentation files, including full support for multimedia
and complex modular projects.
Your projects are displayed and edited with the same hierarchical
tree structure used by all Windows help formats. The editor and
content tree view are combined in a single window. Editing topics
and manipulating the structure of your projects is fast and
intuitive.
Single source, Multiple output
Single source is much more than just outputting exactly the same
information to different formats. Help & Manual supports conditional
and customized output features that enable you to include variant
content versions for different output formats and purposes – all in
the same project, no post-processing is required.
Help & Manual handles all the complexities of help formatting and
generation for you, letting you concentrate on the work of writing.
But there is also extensive support for power users and experienced
help authors. You can get under the hood and insert your own HTML
code, change the code the program uses to generate your projects,
manipulate topic and project templates and more.
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Features
Generate all Windows help formats
You can output your projects to all standard Windows help formats
(HTML Help, Winhelp and MS Help 2.0 / Visual Studio Help), and
since Help & Manual is directly integrated with the Microsoft
compilers for these formats all your output is 100%
standard-compliant.
Help & Manual also generates Webhelp, PDF and Word RTF. In
addition to this you can generate fully-formatted printed manuals
directly from the same projects used for all the other formats.
The Webhelp output includes a full menu structure that emulates
the appearance and functionality of HTML Help and includes
full-text search with highlighting for found words.
PDF output and printed manuals are fully customizable with the
bundled Print Manual Designer program: You can include a table of
contents and a keyword index, automatic page referrers for links
and cross-references, customized page layouts, headers, footers,
page numbering, covers, introductions and more.
All languages of this world
This world is a big place and localization becomes ever more
important. Help & Manual lets you create documentation in up to
106 languages. It is one of the few help authoring tools that
fully support Unicode and can handle languages like Japanese,
Chinese, Korean and many others.
Help & Manual 5 Professional saves projects in uncompressed XML
format that can be directly translated with external editors.
Easy migration
One of the most critical tasks is to migrate existing
documentation when you switch to another tool. And this has never
been easier than now. Help & Manual imports regular HTML and text
files, compiled HTML Help, Word files (RTF format), Winhelp source
files and even decompiles HLP files.
To help new users migrate existing help projects, Help & Manual
includes a dedicated import tool for RoboHelp® X5 projects.
HighLights
The Help & Manual user interface
The user interface of Help & Manual has much in common with a
compiled help file: You work with the familiar three-pane window
with the table of contents always displayed for navigation. Next to
the navigation pane is the topic area - the internal WYSIWYG XML
editor.
Eight output formats
Help & Manual creates eight output formats,
ranging from compiled HTML Help to Webhelp, to
fully formatted PDF files to XML.
Build conditions - predefined and user defined -
allow different content for every output format.
User-defined builds can be used to create
customized versions of your online help for a
client. And if that isn't enough, the export can
be fully automized with command line options.
XML Source code editor
Help & Manual saves project files in XML format,
so you can edit the source with any XML editor.
Moreover, you can edit topics in XML format in
Help & Manual directly. The integrated XML
editor gives you access to the XML source.
Import formats: migration of existing
sources
Among the supported import formats are compiled
HTML Help, HTML and text files, Winhelp file
(source + compiled), Word documents and XML.
To offer a migration path especially for
Robohelp users, Help & Manual imports
Robohelp X5 (for HTML Help) projects
directly.
Customizable HTML templates
The WYSIWYG editor for topics is complemented by
an HTML editor for topic templates: topic
templates build the "frames" for your topics
where Help & Manual inserts the content during
help compilation.
Using templates, you not only can fully
customize the layout of your help file. It is
also possible to export help pages dynamically
using variables.
Impict Screenshot Editor
Help & Manual includes a full-featured image
editor. Impict comes with many cool image
effects that you typically need when preparing
software screenshots for online help.
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