Creating helpfiles, what to use?

Hi,
I'm developing a software for both Win Xp and Win 7 and have a load of problem when trying to create a helpfile.

If I use the old fashioned CHM file format (using WinCHM) i can open the helpfile but with the classic "This program cannot display the webpage" (Its NOT the enable button It just wont work (not even on XP).

And if I use the new microsoft way and use Innovasys Helpstudio Lite and create a hxs file I get Invalid commandline OR "You are attemting to open a file of type Microsoft help ...... (hxs)
If you still want to open the file, click open with.....

Im using Visual Studio 2008 and have the 2008 SDK installed but I need to creta a help file that everyone can use independent of the operating system.

What software shall I use to crete the helpfiles and what kind of helpfiles shall I use?

/M

A lot of major corporations use doxygen:
www.doxygen.org/

Installed it but I am more of a wysiwyg kind of person. Didn't really understand how I can use doxygen to create helpfiles

/M

If you're using Visual Studio, this is built in for you btw.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc302121.aspx

Use XML tags for your comments and you can generate a help file directly from the IDE.

Yes a documentation yes, but I want to make a helpfile, like HOWTO use this feature in the program and so on

I'm not sure I understand the difference... Your documentation IS a help file. Are you writing a help file for users or other engineers of your code?

If it's for users, then you should make a word doc, visio doc, powerpoint, etc... If it's for other programmers/engineers of your library/code, then use the MSDN type documentation, which is the link I gave you.

Its for the basic users of the software.

This might help ;) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...02(VS.85).aspx

If it's for basic users, just write a wiki page, or a word doc. There's no software that takes code and translates it into user friendly how-to's for regular end users of your application.

Back in the good old days Delphi provided good support for developing high quality, context-sensitive (F1) help for the software end user (i.e., customers). I used HDK from Virtual Media in Australia to generate the help, which linked perfectly at runtime to the Delphi-produced exe. Sadly, Microsoft has never shown the slightest aptitude for this developer concept. The best I can do with Visual Studio is to create extensive, very verbose 'tooltips' (with the text updated to explain concepts in the current user's data state) for everything.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zips

Sadly, Microsoft has never shown the slightest aptitude for this developer concept. The best I can do with Visual Studio is to create extensive, very verbose 'tooltips' (with the text updated to explain concepts in the current user's data state) for everything.

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Eh... as far as I remember I used the MS help compiler back when MSVC 1.52 was hot stuff. Today other tools are of course provided. One entry from the link in my previous post http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...69(VS.85).aspx

I Moved the helpfile to c:\windows\help so now it works