Previously I talked here about the tools that I use when developing my MZ-Tools add-in. I would like to mention an awesome tool named Help and Manual 4 that I will use to create help files. I previously used the free HTML Help Workshop, that, if you have used it, you know that is far from perfect, to say the less.
There are many things remarkable about Help and Manual, from a very nice user interface and ease of use to two things that I have found very valuable:
- You can generate several output formats from a single source: this allows you to generate a HTML Help file along with online help to integrate on a web site; or a downloadable PDF file.
- You can create builds with conditional inclusion of topics or text. This allows you to use a single source to generate the help file of several versions or editions of the same product. For example, the help file of my free MZ-Tools 3.0 for VBA add-in is a subset of the help file of MZ-Tools 3.0 for VB6 and now I can create them easily. Very cool indeed.