Custom Help Collections

I have been keeping an extensive set of technology notes since 1999 which I used to keep organized in a compiled help file. Being a web developer, I liked to write my notes as web pages rather than use a word processor. I could even include sample code and functional examples in my notes if the topic was JavaScript or anything that runs client-side in the browser. I liked a compiled help file because it provides a navigation structure, searchable indexing, and reduced everything to one file which I could easily copy to other computers and thumb drives.

However, I eventually got fed up with the Microsoft Help Workshop which is the buggiest software Microsoft has ever produced. As my help project grew to include hundreds of files, it would frequently crash whenever I moved a topic in my table of contents. Since I update my notes every day this became very frustrating.

Finally I learned how to convert my HTML Help 1.x compiled help file into a new MS Help 2.x help collection which requires the Microsoft Document Explorer to view. Now all of my personal notes are available alongside the MSDN documentation.

To integrate your personal help files into The Visual Studio .NET Combined Help Collection you first need to download the  Visual Studio .NET Help Integration Kit 2003 at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ce1b26dc-d6af-42a1-a9a4-88c4eb456d87&DisplayLang=en You will also need far42_inst660.exe from http://helpware.net/ The process is actually quite long and rather involved but the FAR Collection Wizard found in Far-V4.2.0 is the key to doing this.

My help collection now has 912 topics and I maintain it in Visual Studio 2003 rather than use the awful Microsoft Help Workshop. Unfortunately, Visual Studio 2003 frequently chokes on this huge project so I've learned to directly edit the HxF include file, the HWProj project file, and the HxT table of contents file. Today I learned how to use the hxcomp.exe command line compiler to build my help project without opening it in Visual Studio 2003. This will save me a lot of time!

Below you can see my help collection of personal notes integrated into the Visual Studio 2003 help collection. This is the only time you will ever see RPG II help topics appearing in a Visual Studio environment!

My help collection also integrates into the Microsoft Document Explorer. Here you can see that I have a lot of personal topic files covering ASP.NET 2.0 which I am still studying.