Microsoft WinHelp

Microsoft WinHelp is a format owner for the help files of the programs turning under Microsoft Windows, developed by Microsoft. Introduced on the market for Windows 3.x, it is always used on Windows XP but was abandoned for Windows Vista. It is replaced by Microsoft Compressed HTML.

For Windows 95, one speaks indifferently about Windows 95 Help or WinHelp 4.0 .

Functionalities

The format Microsoft WinHelp provides:

a On line help: it is about a consultable handbook on computer (in general accessible by the menu Aide , sometimes noted ? ), with contents, bonds hypertextuels, and a research by keywords;
a contextual Assistance: a Information-bubble (pop-up) appears when one indicates an order (field of text, button, check box…) with the click of the secondary button, or touches it.

On the other hand, the bubbles of assistance which appear by leaving the motionless cursor on an object (tooltips) do not depend on the assistance Microsoft WinHelp but are directly in the program. One can also post on line help while double-clicking on the help file since the Explorateur Windows (file .HLP, to see hereafter).

Help files

The assistance Microsoft WinHelp is composed of two files:

a file having the extension .HLP (for help ), which contains the posted pages (on line help and contextual assistance);
a file having the extension .CNT (for content ), and which contains the table of content of on line help.

If the file .CNT is absent, one can always use the contextual assistance; one can also post the first page of on line help and sail using the bonds hypertextuels or of the buttons “precedent” and “following”, but one does not have access to the contents and certain pages can of this fact of not being accessible. For Windows 3.x, there was no file .CNT. The table of content was a page with the bonds towards the various pages; starting from Windows 95, the contents are a miter of a floating window which appears when the assistance is opened or when one clicks on the button Content window with assistance.
The first time that one makes a research by keyword, the engine of assistance generates a file .GID which allows this research (the file can be unobtrusive, it will be regenerated with the next use).
One can possibly have a file .FTS (full-text search index slips by) and .FTG (full-text search group file) .
All these files bear the same name as the program to which they are referred, only their extension changes.

Generation of the assistance Microsoft WinHelp

The file .HLP is generated starting from a file rtf having a particular formatting. A window of assistance, a heading (topic) , that it is of on line help or the contextual assistance, is a page of file rtf:

the title is preceded by footnotes,

the note with the reference “#” contains the single reference of the heading (topic ID) , which is, in the case of the contextual assistance, the reference of the object;
the note with the reference “K” contains the keywords (keywords) for research;
the note with the reference “$” contains the title of the heading;

the text of the bonds hypertextuel is underlined twice (it appears not underlined in the final assistance, this working is useful just during compilation); the single reference of the target heading (cf item preceding), in invisible police force, is coupled with this text;
the images are replaced by a chain of the type “ {bmc nom_image.bmp} ”, the nom_image.bmp being the name of the file image;
for the contextual assistance, the reference of the object is placed in a textual file called “partition” (map) , carrying the extension .HM in general, establishing the link between the reference and the binary identifier; this binary identifier can be obtained with the program spyxx.EXE of Visual Studio; this file of partition can be generated automatically starting from the Source code by the program makehm.EXE (the programmer gives an identifier to the object in the Source code, beginning with ID… , and it is this same identifier but beginning with HID… which is used as reference);

The file .CNT is simply a textual file. Each page is referred on a line of the file. The line includes/understands:

the hierarchical level of the page (1 for a principal title, 2 for a section, 3 for a sub-section…) ;
the title of the page;
the single reference of the page, separated from the name by an equal sign;
the type of window in which it is posted: > main for the principal window, > proc for the floating window (procedure).

The settings in base form, like alignment and the police force (grease and italic included/understood) are returned such as they are in the generated assistance.

; Example of page of file rtf

^{# K $} Titer of the heading

This is the text of the heading of assistance, with un bond hypertextuelrubrique2.

^#rubrique1

^Kmot-clef

^$Titer of the rubrique

In the example above, the reference in invisible police force is underlined in dotted lines.

There exist tools avoiding creating file rtf with the hand, such as for example RoboHelp or Doc.-To-Help. The insertion of a bond or an image is done then “with the mouse” (RoboHelp), or the program takes a file Microsoft Word and transforms it into file rtf and files BMP (Doc.-To-Help, individual concept of Monosource, sourcing ). These tools are also given the responsability to generate the file .CNT.

The file rtf and files BMP are then compiled by the program HCRTF.EXE to create the file .HLP. It is necessary for that to create a file of project, of extension .HPJ (help project) , which counts the file to integrate (various files rtf, files where the images are put, file giving the correspondence between the identifiers

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