How to add help menu with cabalility of some features in a java app

Question

I want to add help menu which have to include some features such as search ability, tree structure in a java application but i dont know how can I do. I searched about the topic and I found a microsoft html help workshop. As I understand, need to create .chm file with compiling .html files. After compilation, microsoft html help viewer is need to be run from java program with compiled html files when user click the help button. Is there a any different solution or does java has a library about help authoring. In short, I created a template in my head, but I do not know that I have enough information. I would also appreciate it if you could post any documentation that might be useful on this subject.

Answer 1

HTMLHelp (HH) also known as Compiled Help Modules (.chm) is about 20 years old but available and running on Windows 10. HTMLHelp is in "maintenance mode" for several years now.

You can spend a lot of money on "bells and whistles" tools that simplify and streamline the process of creating help files. Before you do so, it is worth trying out a few freeware tools.

Some thoughts:

• CHM's are good for application help on Windows.
• Please note - more and more content is web-based.
• Help authoring has a learn curve and good help topics are time consuming.
• Think about single-sourcing - one source of topics and different target formats (e.g. CHM, web-based (uncompressed help) on a server).
• You should gain some experience with a workflow like e.g. Markdown -> Pandoc -> HTML files.

By the way, HTML Help Workshop (HHW) is the tool for compiling CHM's. For beginners the GUI of HHW is somewhat difficult. Use a time saver tool like FAR HTML (Freeware).

Please have a look at an old thread Code Project for some code snippets like:

Runtime.getRuntime().exec("hh.exe myhelpfile.chm");

Have a look at some samples for web-based (uncompressed) help:

• Example 1: Uncompressed help - a bit dated
• Example 2: FAR Web help created using FAR HTML.