Help & Manual
Homepage: http://www.helpandmanual.com
Unmatched productivity
Help & Manual makes producing help and documentation a true pleasure. 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.
How Help & Manual works:
Free yourself from the conversion nightmare
All output formats are generated from a single-source, ready to deploy. Forget about converting or post-processing the output every time you change anything. The built-in PDF engine of Help & Manual directly creates PDF files with active hyperlinks and full navigation enabled.
Different content for the various output formats is offered on several levels: from modules, to chapters, to topics and even down to text level. You can include and exclude content based on the output format and on user-defined builds.
Language and localization support
Help & Manual has a long tradition of outstanding language support. The current version is Unicode based and not only deals with all Western and East-European languages, it explicitely support Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, and other Asian languages. The project save format is plain text XML and the project files can be edited directly by translation and localization tools such as Trados, Across and many others. No conversion, pre- or post-processing or additional tools are required.
Reusable content and multi-user editing
Team projects are supported with real concurrent multi-user editing. Everything is handled directly by the program itself, there is no need for any additional software for multi-user editing to work. You can reuse content as entire projects (modules) and also create libraries of reusable topics (snippets), which can be inserted in paste mode for further editing or linked dynamically so that they update automatically when their sources are changed. In the same way topics in projects can also be reused both in the current project or other projects, also in either paste or dynamic link mode.
Pure XML for maximum flexibility
Help & Manual projects are saved directly in pure XML. The XML source files are plain text that can be saved directly in version control repositories. The XML schema is open and fully documented, allowing users to set up their applications to generate Help & Manual XML topics and projects directly by following the schema syntax. These files can then be edited in Help & Manual or compiled to help formats directly using Help & Manual's extensive command line interface. Experienced users can also perform complex search and replace operations directly on the XML source files using XML editors or other editors, for example with support for regular expressions.
Projects can also be saved in a single-file compressed format for maximum flexibility and portability. The single file is an archive that contains exactly the same source files as the uncompressed version.
Key Features
- Integrated working environment with combined WYSIWYG and XML editor
- Concurrent multi-user editing, projects saved in pure XML
- Compiled output formats: HTML Help, MS Help 2.0, Winhelp
- Cross-platform Webhelp
- Built-in PDF engine
- Single-file self-contained eBooks, display on any Windows from W95
- Unicode support
- Explicit handling of Asian languages (106 languages in total)
- XML localization kits for external translation
- Support for dynamic HTML (expanding text)
- Conditional output based on format and user-defined builds
- Fully-configurable HTML templates for output with direct access to source code
- Dynamic HTML variables for search engine optimization on every page
- Content reuse with merged modules, embedded topics and variables
- Create libraries of reusable topics that can be pasted or embedded dynamically
- Automated compilation through command line switches
- Visual template editors, screen capture and image editor included
Pricing
$599 (Professional Edition), $399 (Standard version),
Please ask for volume discounts and rebates for educational institutions.
More product information | Download an evaluation version