Output file and path:

Where you want to generate your output and the name of the output file. By default Help & Manual uses your project directory and the project name. You can change this here whenever you like, however. When you do this the program makes all necessary internal changes automatically.

You can use the browse button to navigate to a different output directory.

Compile with skin:

Only available for HTML-based output formats.

Allows you to select a .hmskin skin file to replace the entire design of a project while compiling. This allows you to apply a completely different layout and "branding" to your project with a single click. You can save the current project as a skin with Save As in the Application Menu.

In PDF you can also select the .mnl print manual template file that defines the layout of the PDF output.

Include Options:

These options are used in combination with Help & Manual's conditional output features.  Topics and content that are "tagged" with the options you select here will be included in your output, those that don't match will be excluded from your output. Please study Conditions and Customized Output before using!

The Selected Topics option:
Selecting this only outputs the topics currently selected in the TOC. This function is designed for testing only. Links to excluded topics are converted to plain text.

When Selected Topics is activated the Include Options list is highlighted in yellow as a warning and reminder.

Links have priority over include options!
If included topics contain hyperlinks to excluded topics the topics will always be included to prevent dead links. This has absolute priority – the only way you can prevent it from happening is to make sure that there are no links to your excluded topics. (Use Find Referrers in the File menu.)

Current format:
By default the include option for the selected output format is preselected. If you also select other options you must leave the current format option selected, otherwise only the content matching the other options will be included.

Topic Status:
Complete Only

Only exports topics with the status "complete" to your published output. This enables you to prevent topics that are not yet finished from being included in your output.

Display file:

Automatically displays the output file as soon as it has been generated, using the appropriate viewer.

Delete temp files:

Selected by default. Normally all the source files generated to compile HTML Help are deleted. If you deselect this you can view the source files in the \~tmphtml directory, which you can find in your project directory.

Index page:

The default index page for Webhelp is index.html. You can change this here, along with the output path. Help & Manual remembers your setting for the current project.

Enable local testing for MS Internet Explorer:

This setting allows you to test your Webhelp in Internet Explorer on your local machine without having to click away the annoying yellow security warning bar. Click here for further details.

Delete all files in target folder:

Clears all the files in the output folder before compiling. Use this when you are producing a distribution build to ensure that the folder only contains the files related to the current version of your project. Otherwise the directory may contain HTML files for topics that you have already deleted in your project, left over from previous compiles. These files take up unnecessary space and are also indexed by the indexer and included in the full-text search function, which is something you want to avoid.

Always use this function if you change the title of your project as this also changes the names of all the output files associated with the full-text search function. If the old files are present the indexer may attempt to index them, which can cause errors.

Print manual template:

Selects the .mnl print manual template file to be used to generate the PDF file. This template file defines the PDF layout, generates the print-style table of contents and the index and adds a number of additional pages and other features like headers, footers, page numbers etc.

Highlight hotspots:

Displays outlines around the hotspots and links in your PDF output. Dead links and hotspots to missing targets are also highlighted.

Do not compile:

This is a special debugging option for Visual Studio Help. Instead of compiling a finished .HXS file it generates a .HWProj project file that you can open and compile manually in Visual Studio .NET. For details see About compiling VS Help.

Delete temp files:

Selected by default. Normally all the source files generated to compile Visual Studio Help are deleted. If you deselect this you can view the source files in the \~tmphxs directory, which you can find in your project directory.

Delete temp files:

Selected by default. Normally all the source files generated to compile Winhelp are deleted. If you deselect this you can view the source files in the \~tmprtf directory, which you can find in your project directory.

These formats have no special settings in the Publish dialog.