Windows Vista And Help Files
More on Vista for a programmer: it’s rather annoying, since Vista has dropped support for the .HLP (help file) that we’ve had since the 80s.
With the older help format not running, all your favorite programs are ‘help less’ for now (sorry, it’s late when I wrote this).
It will run HTML Help, and since we’ve had that for close to a decade, it’s quite reasonable that the old one is being phased out.
Of course, I’m a programmer: no one expects me to be reasonable.
Instead, I have to take my perfectly fine code (which all runs well, by the way), and add new code to manage the change to HTML help.
And I need a new editor: I was using a Help tool from a decade ago, but it doesn’t create help files in the HTML Help format. And I don’t feel like spending the better part of a thousand dollars for RoboHelp or similar tools.
So I’m digging into Microsoft’s free HTML Help tool (the basic compiler that creates HTML Help), available on their site, and learning more about the internals of HTML Help than I ever expected (or wanted) to know.
And this is only a problem for me: non-programmers can add the old style of Help by following the Microsoft update. But since I have to test on the basic setup, I can’t install it!
And in fact I wonder how many computer users will notice it - after all, help is usually not a priority for computer users.
And it’s not a priority for programmers too (the HTML Help tool IS showing its age), so maybe it’s just as well Microsoft is closing off one avenue.
I just wish they didn’t make it a ‘do it or else’ situation - I really wanted to do other programming this summer…
